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 estimated two million people turned up to shower 36 tonnes of recycled paper upon Derek Jeter, the victorious captain, and his colleagues.

Civic joy, then, for sure, and even among those of us not touched by the Yankees’ magic there was forced and humble acknowledgement, in part, that this was a victory over, rather than for, common sense. At the heart of the Yankees’ success was a core of old-timers for whom professional sport, by the standards of the age, ought to have been beyond them.

Mariano Rivera, 39, Andy Pettitte, 37, Jorge Posada, 38, and Jeter, 35, were veterans of the Yankees’ previous World Series victory and were central to this year’s success, as were Johnny Damon, 36, and Hideki Matsui, 35. As training methods change, so do our perceptions of what is possible. Theirs was a victory for all middle-aged sportsmen with aching bones.

Even in the redemption of Alex Rodríguez, the preening narcissist of whom it was relayed by a previous girlfriend that he had murals of himself as a centaur on his bedroom wall, it was hard not to feel some of the shared joy. Rodríguez, the most expensive player in baseball, had developed a reputation as a choker on the big occasions, known not so much as A-Rod, according to the book written by Joe Torre, the former Yankees manager, as A-Fraud.

Bit of an A-Hole, too. In February, Rodríguez was forced to admit that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs in what was seen as the final, painful chapter of a juiced-up age.

According to Torre, Rodríguez was “an ambitious superstar impressed and motivated by stature and status, particularly when those qualities pertained to himself”; shorthand for why the Yankees failed to lift the World Series in the years after 2000. Yet in 2009 his contribution was pivotal and he seemed almost humble as he celebrated with the team-mates who had stood by him during those grim pre-season revelations.

These touching stories aside, those who believe in sport as one of the few battlegrounds where money can’t buy you everything will have taken little joy in this year’s outcome. Since the previous success in 2000, the Steinbrenners have splurged, and then splurged some more, in one of the most outrageous displays of conspicuous consumption in sport.

Since 2000 they have given the thumbs-up to massive purchases, $433.5 million on three players during the last close season alone, so that before the start of the season their payroll was a third as big again as that of their nearest rivals.

Since the publication of Moneyball, the prevailing orthodoxy in baseball has been that money is not the be-all and end-all. But as what Michael Lewis, its author, called “market inefficiencies” become harder to find, so those with the biggest chequebooks will out.

Steinbrenner helped to bring about an inflation of wages through his ruthless pursuit of the biggest stars and now, with the deepest pockets, he stands to reap the benefits. His son, Hal, said: “Having the highest payroll in the majors doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to win.” No, but it sure helps.

The picture of Steinbrenner the elder, as painted by Torre, is of an interfering, egomaniacal, sometimes bullying owner, the type we have become used to in English football and who bring little credit to their sport. One commentator, referring to the owner’s controlling tendencies, said that he had seen Steinbrenner’s yacht and “it was a beautiful thing to observe, with all 36 oars working in unison”.

If you want sport to be a place where the rich and powerful get brought down to earth, or at least do not start with a massive inbuilt advantage, you should hope that next year the Yankees catch a crab.

Remembering the times, and the talent, of Alan Gibson

Older readers will need little persuading of the talents of Alan Gibson, who for many years covered county cricket for this newspaper.

Those of us who came to these pages too late to enjoy him can take that pleasure, too, after the decision of his son, Anthony, and Stephen Chalke, the publisher, to commit his pieces to book form.

In the title of the book, Of Didcot and the Demon, lies a clue as to why Gibson’s writing is worthy of republication. These are not dry match reports, rather a vivid snapshot of a lost world delivered by a writer who developed a memorable and distinctive voice and who, despite being afflicted by depression and alcoholism, found humour and generosity in most things on and off the pitch.

The Didcot of the title refers to the train station at which Gibson was marooned rather too often for his liking on his travels between his beloved West Country and other county grounds. The Demon is Colin Dredge, the Somerset trundler, to whom Gibson awarded the moniker “The Demon of Frome”, which made Dredge more well-known than his cricketing prowess perhaps deserved.

The Demon was one of a number of eccentric characters who became part of Gibson’s, and therefore the readers’, world. It was the closest thing to soap opera in sports writing.

As well as the Demon, Gibson gave us the Shoreditch Sparrow (Robin Jackman, of Surrey), the Old Bald Blighter (Brian Close) and Magisterial Michael (Brearley), as well as characters who helped Gibson to fill the watching hours, including GRIP (Glorious, Red-headed, Imperturbable Pamela), the barmaid at Bristol.

John Woodcock, Gibson’s senior partner on these pages, said that he wrote about the cricket and Gibson about a day at the cricket, and it is in the characters and absurdities of the county game that Gibson’s funniest lines are found.

Take this opening from one of his match reports at the Oval in 1980: “I knew it was going to be an interesting day when I entered the press box at the Oval and saw our cricket correspondent sagely installed. I am grateful for the clerical error which enabled me to meet him, a rare event in the season. It was decided, after a couple of quick snorts, that it would be best if I returned to the West to pick up what was left of the Gloucestershire match.”

It was a different time, for cricket and its writers — a time of rail strikes, of bibulous lunches, missed deadlines, plentiful jokes and generous expenses.

It was a time, too, when county cricket was regarded as important in its own right, rather than simply an adjunct of the international game.

Gibson loved the county game and he painted a rich portrait of it. His demise was swift and sad, and it is a good thing he did not live to see what county cricket has become.

He would not much have cared for it, if his report of Somerset’s match against the World XI at Ashton Gate in 1980 was anything to go by: “No doubt floodlit cricket has a future, for this is the age of the sporting stunt and it is only fuddy-duddies who remember it was once the meadow game with the beautiful name.”

Cricket has changed and cricket writing has changed, and not always, as Gibson shows us, for the better.

Of Didcot and the Demon: The Cricketing Times of Alan Gibson by Anthony Gibson, published by Fairfield Books (01225 335813), £20.