Bronx cheers welcomed all around

The New York Yankees failed to win the World Series again last season, for the sixth consecutive year. It was a great thing for baseball.

The St. Louis Cardinals won, and yet another city shouted itself hoarse at an October victory parade. Perhaps autumn screams will be heard this year in Cleveland or Philadelphia, in Toronto or San Diego.

With attendance and revenue soaring to record levels -- that’s $262 million for Alfonso Soriano and Barry Zito alone, and neither signed by the Yankees -- the myth has been exposed. Is it really better for the game if the Yankees dominate?

“If you’re a Yankee fan, you would say that,” Tampa Bay Devil Rays Manager Joe Maddon said. “If you’re a true purist, you like the idea of somebody new every year.”

With purity and with parity, baseball has thrived. The Yankees last won in 2000, for the fourth time in five years. The victors since then, in order: the Arizona Diamondbacks, Angels, Florida Marlins, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and Cardinals.

If a new team hoists the trophy this season, that would be eight champions in eight years.

In the last five years, nine teams have played in the World Series, with the Cardinals losing in 2004 and winning last season. If two new contestants advance this year, the Series would feature 11 teams in six years, tying a major league record.

“It’s a sign of something good happening,” Maddon said. “It’s an indication you can’t buy a championship. When a team wins because they have the most money, it doesn’t have the same kind of purity to it.”

However, because the Yankees remain critical to the economic fortunes of their rivals, baseball is living its best-case scenario right now: The Yankees win, and they win a lot, but they don’t win the World Series.

The Yankees lead the major leagues in home attendance and road attendance. By filling up their ballpark and yours too, they make money for every team. They draw superior ratings, increasing the value of broadcast rights, so they make money for every team that way too. And they outspend every other team, paying tens of millions each year in luxury taxes in search of another championship.

They could win their 10th consecutive American League East title this year. If they deteriorated into a .500 team and no one watched, in person or on television, the result would be a financial bloodbath -- not necessarily for the Yankees, but for small-market clubs counting on a chunk of the Yankees’ revenue.

The Yankees paid more than $110 million in revenue sharing and luxury taxes last season, according to a high-ranking baseball executive. Only three teams spent that much on player payroll last season: the Yankees ($208 million), Red Sox ($138 million) and New York Mets ($117 million). No team besides the Yankees or Red Sox paid a luxury tax last season.

So, when Commissioner Bud Selig says parity results in part from a luxury tax designed to make high-spending clubs think twice, Angels General Manager Bill Stoneman begs to differ.

“In the case of the Yankees, they don’t appear to have been affected by it,” Stoneman said.

Teams will not pay a luxury tax this year unless their payroll hits $148 million, a number that increases each year.

“I question the thresholds going forward,” Stoneman said. “The payroll number is so high it really only affects a couple of clubs -- for sure one, and potentially another.”

But Selig also says parity results from revenue sharing, and on that score Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti supports him.

“In the past, with the small-market teams and even some of the big-market teams, when a player got to be arbitration-eligible, they would get traded if they couldn’t be afforded,” Colletti said. “Guys who were on the verge of free agency at the end of the season? They were almost all getting traded.

“Now teams sign their young players. They’re not afraid to go year-by-year through the process and pay whatever the going rate is, or they’ll sign them for two, three or four years and hang onto them.”

Those trades usually favored the wealthy but not always. Under the current system, the Montreal Expos could have afforded Delino DeShields, who in 1993 was a premier second baseman. Instead, they traded him to the Dodgers for a middle reliever named Pedro Martinez.

Now, clubs dominated by youngsters can funnel revenue-sharing money toward signing players, sometimes their own. The Blue Jays spent $126 million this winter to keep outfielder Vernon Wells out of free agency; the Milwaukee Brewers spent $39 million to retain pitcher Ben Sheets two years ago and $42 million to add pitcher Jeff Suppan this year.

The Detroit Tigers spent wildly to sign catcher Ivan Rodriguez in 2004 and outfielder Magglio Ordonez in 2005, and look who showed up in the World Series last fall.

“Detroit could not possibly have won, three years after losing 116 games, without a new system,” Selig said, referring to the 2003 Tigers, who actually lost 119 games.

“Revenue sharing enabled them to do things they could not have done.”

The Tigers advanced to the World Series after 12 consecutive losing seasons. The Kansas City Royals spent wildly this winter to sign pitcher Gil Meche, and they have lost 310 games over the last three seasons, so who knows?

“The chance to win being spread out is tremendous for the game,” Colletti said.

“I think where the game really struggled five years ago, 10 years ago, was that there would be some teams sitting here on this date and they knew clearly they had no chance to win 81 games, let alone the World Series. I don’t think that’s healthy for the sport.”

*

bill.shaikin@latimes.com