Eh-Rod | Try as I might, I just can't seem to get all worked up about the Yankees' trade for Alex Rodriguez. I think I'm supposed to be outraged or surprised or enthusiastic or some combination, but mostly what I feel is a kind of expected resignation about the whole thing. The bloodsport in which New York and the Red Sox are engaged feels somehow separate from the rest of the game, and with each escalation, the "They did what?!" factor decreases. Peter Gammons is the annual winner of the Best-Known Sports Columnist in Need of an Editor Award, but I think he gets it right in a piece filed today on ESPN.com:

Fairness is not the issue because the rules are the rules. When the Red Sox worked their deals with Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke, they did what the Blue Jays or the Indians or the Padres couldn't afford to do. Just as what the Yankees did to get Alex Rodriguez was something only they could afford. That's just the way it is, good old-fashioned Republican baseball, and six strikes haven't changed the fact that the Yankees are in a different world from the Red Sox, who have a huge advantage over the Rangers or the A's, just as George W. Bush and John F. Kerry were born with an advantage because they were born rich.

With the last three World Series winners being the Marlins, Angels, and Diamondbacks, I can't help but feel that if George Steinbrenner and Larry Lucchino want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prove, in essence, whose is bigger, well, that's fine by me. Both the Yanks and Boston will contend for the title this year, but so will a lot other teams, and at a fraction of the payroll.

I'll leave the final word to the Daily News's Rich Hofmann, who checks in with Sons of Sam Horn and concludes with this brilliant nugget:

And so it went. By early last night, there were more than 600 posts on the site that concerned the A-Rod deal, all fear and loathing. Amid all of the raw emotion, though, at least one guy was able to identify what really mattered:

As TheYellowDart5 wrote, "Anyone else feel sorry for all the baseball video-game designers? A week before pitchers and catchers and now they gotta draw A-Rod in a Yankee uniform. Does Steinbrenner have compassion for no one?"