For those of us who waited for what felt like half a lifetime to see the Ashes returned to safe keeping, a nine-year hiatus is a mere trifle. But for George Steinbrenner, the head of the overbearing clan that owns the New York Yankees, the nine years between the baseball team’s 26th and 27th World Series triumphs was an itch that cost him in the region of $1.4 billion (now about £845 million) in player wages to scratch.
Steinbrenner did not make it to his spanking new stadium in the Bronx to see the decisive victory, although New Yorkers made up for his reticence with a ticker-tape pageant down the Canyon of Heroes that made the 2005 Ashes celebrations resemble a Cub Scout parade. An