Yankees Perplexed By Luxury Tax Bill

The Yankees were recently hit with a $13.9 million luxury tax by MLB. Yankee brass, however, was for the most part befuddled by the bill.

"Thir...teen? Million?" asked a confused Randy Levine. "Do numbers even go that low?"

"When I saw the number, I thought it was the latest minor league signing bonus by the Nationals," explained Brian Cashman. "I've never heard of a number that low associated with the Yankees. I called experts at Columbia University just to make sure it was an actual number and not a theoretical construct or algorithm or something like that."

"We haven't paid it yet," explained new Boss, Hal Steinbrenner. "You know how regular checks have that line which ends with the printed word 'dollars'? My checks end with the printed words 'billion dollars', so I can't pay the bill until I get my new pedestrian checks. That's how they're known in the industry."

One Yankees executive raised a more pressing social concern: "I read about a number like that in college once. How are the Pirates expected to live on that this year?"