For the sheer enjoyment of it I chose to use some passages from Niccolo Machiavelli's masterpiece The Prince to discuss the New York Yankees and their recent exit from the post season. You will find it applies to other modern sports teams. It's quite the stretch to compare The Republican city-states of Italy and the New York Yankees, but fun nonetheless. Besides, Steinbrenner and Machiavelli would probably have shared a game of backgammon.
The Yankees don't win anymore. Like Renaissance Italy, the grandeur and aura of New York is crumbling (okay, not really crumbling but work with me) before our eyes. Why?
"…Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies…"
How many mercenaries are in the Yankee lineup? The New York Rangers tried (and still do) that route. Notice how they fell apart in the playoffs against the New Jersey Devils — a team that does not rely on the mercenary athlete.
"….they are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in hand; * and he who told us that our sins were the cause of it told the truth, but they were not the sins he imagined, but those which I have related. And as they were the sins of princes, it is the princes who have also suffered the penalty.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
Machiawhosi? You've officially gone over my head.
2 - RJ Elliott
Sun Tzu could kick Machiavelli's ass...
3 - alessandro nicolo
...but I hear Mack's played a mean game of backgammon.