There’s something else that people say: They talk about how money doesn’t guarantee wins. And they point out that other teams (the Mets, the Cubs, the Astros, etc.) spend a lot of money and don’t win. I think this actually makes for an interesting argument if you want to talk about the inequities of baseball… big markets, small markets, all that.
But the Yankees are a whole different argument. They are their own argument. The Yankees are not a big-market team. They DWARF big-market teams. They are quantitatively different from every other team in baseball and every other team in American sports. They don’t just spend more money than every other team. They spend A LOT more money than every other team. The Boston Red Sox spend $50 million more than the Kansas City Royals? Who cares? The Yankees spend $80 million more than the Boston Red Sox.

I’m often struck by how writers confuse form and formula. Or how writers can take a form and turn it into formula (the Hero’s Journey comes to mind). To me, there’s a distinct difference between the two, although it’s difficult to put it into words: like art that I like, I just know it when I see it.

Maybe it’s this: form is a simplicity of line and structure.

Form offers a set of limitations that encourages innovation and releases creativity. Everything from master haikus, which are limited to an entirety of 17 syllables, to films like The Terminator or Star Wars, where the writer/directors needed to create a convincing science-fiction story while working around the problems of budget and limited special effects.

(Contrast the power of a movie like Star Wars to one of its recent sequels, when Lucas had the world at his disposal.)

Form is about, well, form. Structure.

Formula is a contrived and convoluted set of rules.

Form ‘feels’ beautiful; formula does not. Formula suppresses creativity and kills off originality and individual expression.

If form is about structure, formula is about content. Formula is what happens when you don’t understand the meaning of that structure and try to break it down into easy bite-size pieces, a set of instructions you can package and sell.