Randy Johnson Deal Would Aid Yankees Over Mets

The proposed trade of SP Randy Johnson would boost the Yankees in two ways: 1) ease budget constraints to make room for the aquisition of free agents Roger Clemens or Barry Zito; and 2) block the crosstown rival Mets from acquiring Zito, thus strengthening the Yankees at the Mets expense.

Both concepts are important in the competition for off-field revenues generated from everything from caps and T-shirts to commercial advertising sales.

Though the Yankees and Mets split the nation's largest TV revenue pie, the pie is finite and the competition for broadcast advertisers is fierce. That hard lesson was first learned in 1969, when the Mets won the World Series and swooped up much of the New York metropolitan area sponsorship, forcing the Yankees to cancel numerous TV and radio broadcasts with a commensurate loss of earnings for 1970 and for several more years to come.