In 1950, it was the Whiz Kids against Joe DiMaggio and his lofty $100,000 salary, which tied him with Ted Williams for the largest paycheck in baseball. Years before DiMaggio, Babe Ruth had spent more than a decade as the game's richest player.

Before anyone ever talked about payroll as an issue, the Yankees had the largest.

Size, then and now, matters.

The steroid-tainted Alex Rodriguez is now the richest player in the game, but it is hard to feel sorry for his teammates. While Rodriguez is playing on a $275 million contract, Mark Teixeira's deal pays $180 million, CC Sabathia gets $161 million, and poor Derek Jeter has been struggling along on the 10-year, $189 million deal he signed back in 2001.

(Sure, Rodriguez loses the equivalent of DiMaggio's salary in his sofa cushions every year, but Joltin' Joe's $100K drew the eye of Marilyn Monroe. A-Rod is keeping company with Kate Hudson, proving that inflation doesn't apply across the board here.)

Why talk about payroll as the Phillies and Yankees prepare for their showdown in the World Series? Because it remains a major problem for baseball, and now is the time to drive that point home.

As good as it is for the Yankees and Phillies that Sabathia and Cliff Lee are starting Game 1 tonight, it is that bad for baseball. Two men who won Cy Young awards for the Cleveland Indians should be pitching for the Cleveland Indians, not for teams better able to compensate them.

The Yankees have always had the advantage. When they win, as they did in the 1990s, the temptation is to throw up your hands at the unfairness of it all. When they fail to win the title, as they've done for much of this decade, it's fun to mock them for trying to buy a championship.

Last winter, in a grim economic climate, the Yankees went on a spending spree. They blew Sabathia away with an offer miles above what anyone else could manage. They overbid on Teixeira and spent a fortune on pitcher A.J. Burnett as well. The rationalization was that they'd dropped salaries from an earlier crop of overpaid mercenaries, so they were close to even.

But the Yankees still had an opening day payroll of just over $200 million, more than $50 million more than the second-place New York Mets. That's just insane, and it's bad for baseball, and you've already heard most of the reasons why: the competitive imbalance (which is why football, basketball, and hockey have salary caps), the salary inflation created when arbitrators base their awards on comparable players, the net effect of turning half of baseball into the Yankees' farm system.

The bottom line has a direct impact on what happens on the field. This year's final four - Yankees (1), Phillies (5), Angels (6) and Dodgers (8) - were all in the payroll top 10. The gap is widening all the time between the teams that compete and the teams that can't.

The big change in these parts is that the Phillies are now among the teams that compete. They were a little late to the party, but they've been having a really good time since showing up.

First-year general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. has been rightly praised for making smart moves to tweak the championship roster built by his predecessors, Ed Wade and Pat Gillick. Amaro was able to sign Raul Ibanez to a three-year, $31.5-million deal last off-season. During the season, he signed Pedro Martinez and traded for Lee.

While modest compared to the Yankees' orgy of spending, these were moves that would have been unthinkable for a Phillies GM five or 10 years ago. Adding to a $110-million payroll? Luring a superstar because he wanted a chance to win? Taking advantage of another team's decision to unload a big contract?

"I like being able to buy instead of having to sell," Amaro said.

Ultimately, having the resources means being able to compete. Amaro doesn't have the no-ceiling platinum card issued by the Steinbrenner family to Yankees GM Brian Cashman, but that gold card goes a long way if you spend wisely. This return to the World Series is proof that Amaro did just that.

Nobody in Philadelphia and New York cares to think about what all this means to the Indians or the Royals or the Pirates or Padres. Not this week, anyway. But it is still worth noting, as the Series opens, that while the Yankees may still be baseball's equivalent of Goliath, the Phillies are a long, long way from being David.