With the focus of every signing or trade being on the rivalry between the Yankees and the Red Sox, this needs to be said first about the Yankees’ signing of Mark Teixeira. The Yankees didn’t snatch him away from the Red Sox because they outbid or outsmarted the Red Sox. Teixeira didn’t sign with the Red Sox, a baseball official said, because he and his wife, especially his wife, didn’t want to live in Boston. If necessary, they were going to choose the big bad city of New York, and they did.

“He just didn’t want to go to Boston,” the official said. “He didn’t want to be a Red Sox so Boras called the Yankees and said he really wants to be a Yankee.”

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This column was going to be about the number of shortstops available as free agents this winter, among the better known Edgar Renteria, Orlando Cabrera, David Eckstein, Omar Vizquel, Nomar Garciaparra, Rafael Furcal, Adam Everett, Cesar Izturis.

Renteria, Cabrera and Eckstein were all free agents after the 2004 season and played a game of musical shortstops, each one moving to a new team, though not always at his desire. That was the same season Garciaparra was traded by the Red Sox to the Cubs and the last season he was primarily a shortstop.

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The vultures are circling overhead. They smell blood. Well, I don’t know enough about vultures to know if they can actually smell blood, but they smell or sense something that tells them someone is dying. Anyway, in this instance it’s not the literal birds of prey who are circling but human vultures.

They smell Fred Wilpon’s blood, and they are drooling at the prospect of picking at his bones. These human vultures sense a disaster in waiting. Like every other owner of a professional sports team, Wilpon faces uncertainty because of the decaying economy. But Wilpon’s problems go beyond the state of the national economy.

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