I agree with everything in your post except the "B" comments. The greatest period of parity in the major leagues was from the dawn of free agency through 1995. Then the unbalanced TV revenues took over and small to mid market teams began to be outbid for free agents by the few large market teams. Here are the teams who played in the World Series from1979 through 1995: Pirates, Orioles, Twins, Dodgers, Reds, Blue Jays, Royals, Brewers, Mets, Red Sox,. A's, Giants, Cardinals', Padres, Braves, Phillies, Tigers, Indians, Reds, Yankees. That's 20 different teams over 16 World Series. Every organization had a legitimate chance to build a Championship organization. It's true the Yankees have a history of using other major league clubs as their personal farm club. The Kansas City Athletics are the most obvious example. As I recall, the A's owner actually had an ownership claim in the Yankee Stadium too, so he purposely fed his best players to the Bronx Bombers. These pre-1995 instances are examples of greedy, incompetent smaller market owners selling players to the Yankees for their own profits. What's going on now is far different. There's a little more to the Ruth story than the oft-repeated legend. Here's Wikipedia: