25 Questions, 25 Days: Day Eight

Everybody who pays any attention to professional sports is familiar with the number: $200 million. It is the amount, give or take 10 mil, that the Yankees spend on baseball players every year.

To some, it is an abomination, a travesty, a symbol of everything that is wrong with Major League Baseball and the country at large.

To others, it is a birthright. To wit: They're the New York Yankees. They're the biggest team in the biggest city in the most lucrative market in the USA. No sense in pretending they are something that they're not, like the Mets. Of course they spend more than anyone else. They also charge more than anyone else. (They also win more than anyone else, which I believe is what irks the anti-spending crowd the most.)

And to a few, it is a pittance.

This winter, while the Yankees were dozing through their sleepy offseason and GM Brian Cashman was acting like that poor Monopoly guy with the holes in his pockets, I had several long conversations with some high-powered baseball agents on the subject of New York Yankees finances.

None of them were buying the "poor little us'' party line that was being handed out, not with a franchise valued at $1.7 billion, a 40 percent stake in a network valued at another $3 billion, and more revenue streams than the Aqueduct racino.

And all of them were burned up that the Yankees weren't buying any of the players they had to sell. (In fact, team sources were saying the payroll would be going down, to under $189 million by 2014.)

One agent, who will remain nameless, was particularly vocal on the subject. "What's the difference between spending $200 million and spending $300 million?'' he asked. "They've already set themselves apart. Why not just send the payroll right through the roof?''

The man was not joking, and of course, it would only serve his purposes if Hal Steinbrenner were to take the rubber band off the family bankroll and buy up every available free agent.

The question is, does he have a point? Should the Yankees actually be spending more money, not less, on ballplayers?

After all, they do charge among the highest ticket prices in professional baseball, an average of $63 a seat, according to Forbes.com. Last year, parking was an obscenity, at $35 for a regular-season game, $45 for a playoff game, of which there were mercifully only two. (The Yankees rightly point out that they don't set the parking prices nor do they get a nickel of that money, since the lots are owned by the city, but it is still part of your game-day expense.) You need to take out a loan to eat at the concession stands (I know this from experience, having been shocked at having to pay $12 for a Heineken when I took my son to a game a couple of years ago).

And they have a voracious beast of a stadium that needs to be fed between 40,000 and 50,000 human beings, along with their wallets, 81 times a year in order to remain financially healthy. The only way to attract that many on a nightly basis, you would think, is by packing the roster with superstars, no matter the cost.

They've already done that, you say. The result is a payroll choked by bad contracts and a roster anchored by aging, untradeable players. (And, I might add, a team that has been to seven of the last 16 World Series and won five of them.)

Still, following a first-round playoff exit in 2011, the Yankees found themselves with serious needs this offseason.

And yet, they barely sniffed at Albert Pujols, shrugged at Prince Fielder, hardly even glanced at C.J. Wilson or Edwin Jackson. They only bothered to make a move in the free-agent market when the pricetag for Hiroki Kuroda came down to a "reasonable'' $10 million for one year.

The reason, of course, is not that the Yankees can't afford to spend $300 million on ballplayers; all available evidence indicates that they could if they so chose. (Being privately owned companies, neither the financials of the New York Yankees nor the YES Network are public information, and not surprisingly, no one at either entity is volunteering to make them so.)

And it is not because the Yankees think that burying the opposition under a blizzard of cash is in any way unfair or unethical. It was, in fact, the Steinbrenner Way of playing the game, from 1973 until the Boss' death in 2010.

But these are different Steinbrenners, and the Yankees are no longer run like a rich man's favorite toy, but as a business.

And there's that little complication known as the luxury tax, something that rankled the Old Man but is said to be driving the Young Prince absolutely nuts. Since 2003, when luxury tax was established to ensure ''competitive balance'' in Major League Baseball, a total of approximately $228 million has been paid into it.

By four teams.

And of that $228 million, $207 million has come from the New York Yankees. That's 91 percent of the slush fund created to prop up the rest of the league.

What it means is, if Pujols asks for $250 million, he will really cost the Yankees $350 million when you add on the 40 percent luxury tax surcharge. And that extra $100 million will either come back to haunt the Yankees in the form of a suddenly revitalized Florida Marlins, or worse, disappear into a small-town owner's pocket.

So you can't really blame the Yankees, and particularly, Hal Steinbrenner, for growing weary of being a one-man welfare fund for the rest of baseball.

But Hal's problems are not your problems, and the question for you today is, do you really care what it costs Hal Steinbrenner to put a team on the field?

After all, it is your money, spent on seats and hot dogs and jerseys and programs and your cable TV bill, that makes it all possible in the first place. Every dollar the Yankees spend on players comes from you.

So what do you say? Are they spending enough of your money on what you want to see? Or should they behave the way they used to, like drunken sailors in Times Square on New Year's Eve? Let us know in the comments section.

Tomorrow: Who's afraid of Big Bad Bobby? (Valentine, that is.)