Depression. That’s right, the D word. You know, I’ve got to hand it to Yankees fans, depression is tough. I think it’s something you learned from your counterparts in Boston, especially after that loss to the Marlins in 2004. That was the last time the pinstriped knights from the Bronx were even close to being World Champs. I can understand why you’ve been depressed.

But let’s face it, you’re all a bunch of pansies. Your team has won the most number of World Series, and for that matter, championships, in the history of sport. Before the institution of baseball’s salary cap, your venerable leader George “The Boss” Steinbrenner was spending 184.8 MILLION dollars a year on his team of mercenaries.

So what has this team, the supposed best of the best, gotten Steinbrenner?

Well first off, it got the playboy son of a rich shipping baron something to get himself in the limelight. I can only imagine if Steinbrenner spent as much as he did to purchase Alex Rodriguez from George W. Bush and the Rangers on his ships, he may have had to widen the Great Lakes just to fit them.

The Yankees now stand on the edge of yet another pennant and a berth in the World Series. But as they struggle along against a pack of nobodies from Orange County, Steinbrenner’s boys have something new on their side: Yankees fans that feel pain. You Yankees fans have begun to feel what real baseball is all about, the pain of the loss, the screeching close of an inning off a double play, and the agony of extra innings.

In all of this is Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees’ golden goose, the most expensive thoroughbred in Steinbrenner’s stable. Rodriguez may have deserved his star salary when he was in Texas, where the Rangers, using some patented W. Bush logic, assumed that a single man could hold up an entire baseball team. In the time that Rodriguez was being paid $172,839.50 per game. Just for comparison, that’s about twice as much as a Computer Science grad out of Cornell gets at Google … in an entire YEAR. At that price I would hope that he’d follow me around and serve me dirty martinis whenever I need to sign his checks. When he was traded to the Yankees, the Rangers were so happy to get rid of their line item expense, they agreed to pay $69 million of the $179 million left in his contract.

One thing that hasn’t changed, and probably never will, is that people hate the Yankees. There’s something about how the Yankees show that every man has his price, that anybody can be bought –– a sentiment that seems to drive people nuts.

Johnny “I Just Won A World Series” Damon was purchased for $52 million. Jason “Steroids? What?” Giambi was purchased for $120 million. Giambi even shaved his signature goatee and cut his hair due to “team regulations.” Hideki “I make more money than Ichiro” Matsui, purchased for $52 million.

But this is exactly how Steinbrenner likes it. This is the guy who claimed that he got in a fight with two Dodgers fans after Game 3 of the World Series in 1981. He held a press conference to show reporters his battle wounds, and how much he loves his team. He’ll spend as much money as needed, he’ll fake fights, he’ll even pay a guy $40,000 for dirt and consequently get banned from the game.

But for all the crap that people give the Yankees, they’ve always been a good team. A really bad year for the Yankees is one when they don’t make the playoffs, a feat that’s about as rare as the Cubs making the playoffs.

But this year, their path to the ultimate prize has been long and arduous. This is the first season in my life of 19 years, where the Yankees have actually had to work for every victory, where their hard work, more than their talent, seemed to pay off in results. This group, one of the most talented in Yankees history, might slowly be becoming a team. It seems a rarity that so many players have stayed on the Yankees roster for so long, and that they have a real leader in Derek Jeter, a homegrown Yankee.

If this is the year that the Yankees break through once again and hoist that trophy for the 27th time, then for the first time ever I can say that they deserve it. Steinbrenner has found a team that has power, finesse, talent and can pull through in the clutch.

I’ll admit it, for once, I might just like the Yankees. But that’s only because the Dodgers can suck it, the Phillies have lost the most number of games in the NL … ever, and no self-respecting Californian could ever support Orange County Republicans. So my Yankee brethren, my hedge fund managers from Connecticut, my Investment Bankers from Manhattan and of course my Upper East Side socialites, let us unite in pinstripes and say: GO CAPITALISM!