The Yankee Dollar

It is the season of change. Winter, casting its icy shroud over the land, has confined a thousand gloves to distant cupboards. Yet beneath the glowing embers of the hot stove, baseball burns. Indeed, while it may be snowing in the Big Apple, the grass beneath appears greener than ever. Depending, of course, on which side of the fence you belong.

With the start of spring training less than a month away, the time for prediction has come. After the familiar seasonal flurry of bribes, bullying and negotiation, the free agent crop has thinned to a trickle comprising the unknown, the old and the brittle. $1 billion has changed hands. Led, as ever, by the Yankees and the Mets, the offseason has thrown up innumberable story lines and surprises.

And now, with only the T's to cross and the I's to dot on the National's gleaming new shirts shirts -- give or take a stadium that needs building -- the bulk of the work behind the scenes is done. The rich have flexed their financial might, the poor have lamented, and some of those in the middle have taken the plunge. On the face of it, it has been an offseason like any other. Almost. As we have seen, strange things have been afoot -- not least in New York. In the end, Randy Johnson was all the Yankees could afford.