Rob Neyer is often attacked as being anti-Yankee. But he's also slammed for being anti-Red Sox, anti-Braves and just about anti-every other team too. That is one of the perils of writing a national column, I suppose. Anyhow, in his latest piece, Neyer has some positive things to say about the Bronx Bombers:

The Yankees do have to find some starting pitchers because they're losing at least one and quite possibly three, but they could begin next season with exactly the same starting lineup and be a pretty good bet to win 95-100 games. Anything that happens in New York gets magnified, almost beyond recognition, but this was a good lineup in September and it's a good lineup right now.

Which isn't to say the Yankees shouldn't try to get better. One of the reasons they haven't missed the postseason since 1994 is simple: they're always trying to get better, and that's not something you can say about every winning team. Some winning teams seem happy to tread water, but when you're treading water it's easy for a shark to take off one of your legs at the knee.

Speaking of sharks (he wrote, clumsily switching metaphors), a baseball team might be said to resemble a shark: if you're not moving forward, you're dying. And while it's not precisely true that the Yankees are always moving forward -- remember Hideki Irabu, anybody? -- it's true that they're almost always trying to move forward. If they don't run into a bunch of injuries, the Yankees will be better next year than they were this year.

Actually, according to Woody Allen in "Annie Hall," relationships are like sharks. Woody tells this to Diane Keaton as they travel back to New York from a weekend in Hollywood (she loved it, he was miserable). "Relationships are like sharks. They have to keep moving forward," in order to survive. "And what I think we have here is a dead shark."