In which the Yankees are the Austrian Habsburgs

This is for the true history geeks among you. And I’m not talking Civil War buffs or French Revolution experts, because you guys are a dime a dozen. I’m talking about those of you who know a bit about 17th Century nation-states and the Holy Roman Empire and stuff and are able to chuckle at analogies between current baseball teams and the continental powers of the age:

Baltimore Orioles: Poland

Once a strong, powerful, and proud team/nation that won three World Series/dominated Eastern Europe and formed a shield against onrushing hordes from Central Asia, the Orioles/Poland have fallen on hard times. With a governing structure that makes adaptation and serious reform all but impossible, the GM/king all but falls into figurehead status at times. These internal forces prevented the productive use of the team’s/country’s bounty of resources, leaving a wide-open path for unproductive interference from Peter Angelos/France and Saxony. Eventually the Orioles/Poland fell into such disarray that it was simply devoured by the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays and Blue Jays/Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

And yeah, it kind of goes on like that. I think I got about 1/3 of the analogies, and that was with some help from Wikipedia. I’m guessing there are some humanities majors among you who will get a few more yuks from it all.

I now expect Wezen-Ball to raise this guy by doing a comparison between Cy Young Award winners of the 1960s and their counterparts in the Abstract Expressionist art movement.