Believe me when I say I'm a man who knows something about excess.

If I could smoke one cigarette, why not two packs? If there was one glass of scotch to drink, I could drink 10. A 10-oz. ribeye wasn't any good unless it was 20 ounces, with a baked potato and lots of butter.

Excess was my friend.

But the wages of those sins are collected at some point in life, and justifiably so.

That's why I'm hoping that the wages of sin get collected for the New York Yankees this year.

The baseball season is almost upon us, and I am fixated on two things. One is that the Brewers surprise us all by being good again. The other is that the Yankees pay the price for their ridiculous excess by falling flat on their face. I'm not talking about coming close and missing. I'm talking about abject failure. I'm talking a record of something like 62-100.

Because if excess has a logo, it's that familiar "NY" on a hat.

Any discussion of the Yankees has to start with money.

Their payroll is absurd. With A-Roid ($275,000,000) and Jeter ($189,000,000) they have the two biggest contracts in baseball. Those two contracts each are larer than the entire payroll for four teams combined -- Oakland, Pittsburgh, Tampa and Florida.

Then the Yankees added Mark Teixeria ($180,000,000), CC Sabathia ($161,000,000) and A. J. Burnett ($82,500,000). Speaking of which, how did they get that extra $500,000 on Burnett's contract. I mean, does that make any sense at all?

I suppose that if you've got the money, you might as well spend it trying to win a pennant. That's what every team does. But somehow, with the Yankees, it is so very unseemly.

We've all heard about the new Yankee Stadium.

A single ticket to a game at the new stadium, if you are next to the dugout, costs $2,500. One Ticket. You know that oft-cited "family of four?" You do the math. There are hundreds of tickets that cost $500 each. It makes you shake your head in wonder.

I'm not really bummed by how much that ticket costs. What bums me out, big-time, is that the Yankees have this innate belief that it's OK for them to charge that much.

Just like Notre Dame in college football, the Yankees have this sense that God thinks they should win every time they take the field. It's absolutely disgusting.

I know people say the Yankees are guilty of a blatant attempt to buy a pennant. But wouldn't any team do that if they had the money. Don't you think that Mark Attanasio and Doug Melvin would do it if they had the cash? Of course they would.

So, it's not just about spending money. You hate the Yankees more for what they are rather than what they do.

For me, it's very simple. And it has to do with a guy I know pretty well, a guy I've been in a few dozen meetings with. This guys is one of the most cold-hearted people I've ever known.

Rudy Giuliani likes the Yankees. And the Yankees like him.

Enough said.