Foul Territory

Season of Lies

It's hard not to laugh, or at least not to do a Danny Thomas?style spit take with your beer, when John Sterling's Indian Point "Energy Center" radio spot airs on 880 AM between innings of Yankee games. Nothing says "Steinbrenner" more than a nuclear power plant with a questionable safety record buying AM radio ad time during baseball games.

The true meltdown, though, is the fact that this season the Yankees are rerunning their blatant lie from last year: a house ad claiming they "have won the most championships of any team in the history of sports."

Alleging Yankee baseball supremacy is one thing, but when a team's marketing department starts dropping lines like "in the history of sports" in its commercials, the numbers and facts had better back up the bravado. And by numbers and facts, I don't mean Bill James idolatry or his D&D nine-sided-die subterfuge that passes for "statistics" and performance equations favored by nerdy American League general managers.

The numbers and facts are cozily ensconced in the massive Real Madrid trophy room. At last count, Real Madrid had won 29 Spanish League titles, 17 Spanish Cup titles, nine European championships and two UEFA Cup championships. They also have 18 regional championships, one UEFA Super Cup title, one League Cup title and seven Spanish Super Cup wins. That gives Real Madrid 87 total championships, not exactly tapas portions when it comes to victory-feast catering.

Celtic, meanwhile, has 39 Premier League championships, 32 Scottish Cup wins, and they've hoisted the Scottish League Cup 12 times. That gives them 83 championships total, a solid second behind the "Galacticos" of Real Madrid.

Add up all of the Yankees' hardware, including 13 postmodern modern-era American League East championships, and the Bronx Braggers have a total of 78 titles, which is good enough for third "in the history of sports."

Glasgow Celtic's p.r. department was e-mailed pointed questions about the arrogant stance of the Yankees commercial and the tendency of America-first sports-marketing executives to play fast and loose with the most ancient of facts.

Here's the reply from a Celtic spokesman: "Celtic Football Club is delighted to have achieved so many domestic honours [sic]... Clearly, the New York Yankees are also a tremendous sporting institution and we are sure they will be proud to have so many achievements and join great clubs such as Celtic and Real Madrid as one of the big names in world sport."

Yankees p.r. wonk Rick Cerrone couldn't have passed the buck any better. Nor could the Mets' tenured model of media relations inefficiency, Jay Horwitz, though he would likely throw in a Rotary lunch speaker gag and at least two spelling errors.

Next time we're looking for some pride and passion from the Scots, we'll call the Glasgow Rangers instead.

- Spike Vrusho