Post #1-Team Identity

In A. Sen's chapter 'Making Sense of Identity', he states that everyone identifies with many different groups. Someone can, at a single moment, identify him/herself as Asian, American, Californian, as well as a vegetarian and a smoker. People belong to thousands of groups they often do not consciously realize. On a sports team, there are anywhere from 10 to 55 athletes who each belong to their own sets of groups. The successful teams are the ones who find a common team identity and work as one, rather than a group of individuals. I see this quite often in professional baseball. Despite the fact that baseball is arguably the most individualistic of the major team sports, the teams who win are the ones who play together. In the past decade, no team embodies this more than the New York Yankees. When they won their last World Series in 2000, they had a very good team, but it wasn't stocked with superstars as the Yankees of the mid-to late-2000s. They had a few great players such as Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, and Roger Clemens, and a bunch of very good role players such as Tino Martinez, Jorge Posada, Paul O'Neill and Scott Brosius. That team knew how to play together and were constantly picking each other up. The Yankees of today, however, have a very different team makeup. The team is packed with some of the best players the game as well as the best players from a few years ago. Players such as A-Rod, Jeter, Damon, Abreu, Giambi, Sheffield, Johnson, and Mussina cannot possibly find a common identity because these players are all accustumed to being the 'go-to guy'. Superstars have a difficult time identifying with other players because they are often above the game. And while a team needs some firepower, too much is usually counterproductive.
Baseball teams do not even need many superstars to be productive as long as the team as a whole is cohesive. The 2006 Florida Marlins are a perfect example of this phenomena. Their team payroll was just $14.9 million, while the Yankees' was a shade below $200 million. (The Yankees had five players with salaries more than the entire Marlins team payroll.) The Marlins, however, finished a little below .500 and were in contension for the playoffs until they tailed off in the last 2 weeks of the season. Why did this occur? Because the Marlins had a very young team of players who grew up in the minors playing together as well as two exceptional players in Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. The players already had a common team identity because they knew each other so well. As quoted in Sen's chapter by E.M. Forster, "If I had to choose between betraying my country or my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." A role player on the Marlins is much more likely to help his team because they are his friends. Unlike the Yankees who only have their own interests in mind.