New Yorkers tend to think that everything revolves around New York City. True, it is the media and financial capital of the United States but what is going on with Mark Sanchez, the Yankees and Canal Street is not the center of everyone's universe. 

The recent example of this self-inflated importance is an article at Newsday comparing WEC featherweight champion, Mike Brown, to Yankees third baseman, Alex Rodriguez. I don't know if Mark La Monica is a baseball fan but this is hands down one of the worst cross-sport comparisons in a long time. 

La Monica's argument centers around Brown's detractors and how that is somehow similar to Alex Rodriguez's well documented troubles.

I am not sure how Mike Brown's doubters bear any resemblance to Alex Rodriguez's horrible relationship with the media and fans. 

La Monica poitns out that Brown's detractors refer to Urijah Faber's overconfidence in their first fight and then his broken hand in their second fight, as the reasons for Brown's victories, that these somehow lessen his accomplishments. Any reasonable person knows this isn't the case (as Luke Thomas explains) and Mike Brown is generally considered the top featherweight in the world. 

A-Rod is considered to be the greatest baseball talent of this generation so I could see the comparison to Brown along those lines, though no one is elevating Brown to greatest pound-for-pound fighrer of our generation. But when it comes to the actual fiber of their being, Alex Rodriguez and Mike Brown couldn't be more different. 

First A-Rod succumbed to the temptations of steroid use, something that will forever haunt his legacy. I think most MMA fans are confident in assuming that Brown has never taken PED's so his legacy won't have the dark shadow following it. 

When it comes to acolades, Rodriguez, for all his talent and MVP's, hasn't won a championship, something Brown has done twice now. The teams that A-Rod departed actually improved without him. In 2001, the Mariners won 25 more games and in 2004, the Rangers won 18 more games. Then there is the issue Rodriguez's ability to be 'clutch'. The statistical evidence and debate over this issue is interesting but it doesn't really effect the comparison to Mike Brown because I am not sure how one can be 'clutch' in a combat sport. 

The real fault with this comparison is with the media and fan perceptions of Alex Rodriguez which is in no way similar to Mike Brown despite Brown's critics. 

A-Rod may be dating Madonna, has a fetish for muscular women, a propensity to pick up strippers, was called bitch-tits by his teammates,  posses a quality of narcissism that is just plain weird and is always trying to please whomever he is speaking to whether he blatantly contradicts himself or not. How in the world is Mike Brown similar to that man?

Bill Simmons sums up A-Rod's status in the sporting world perfectly, 

It's an embarrassment of column-related riches. A-Rod has even shattered the Tyson Zone: when an athlete's life turns so bizarre you become numb to any twist in his story. A-Rod allegedly broke up Madonna's marriage? I'm not blinking. A-Rod kissed himself for a magazine photo shoot? I'm unfazed. A-Rod is having a torrid romance with conjoined twins? If you say so. He's A-Rod, dammit. I'm prepared for anything.

This picture does a pretty good job of showing A-Rod's career path too. 

Compare that person to Mike Brown. Brown is hard working, sincere and honest. He is well liked by his teammates at American Top Team and is generally considered a stand up guy. He also doesn't get paid $20 million a year and is working hard for the chance to be financially secured. For Mike Brown there isn't any indication of the sleaziness that is often associated with A-Rod. 

How the hell can Mark La Monica justify this comparison? It is quite simple really, he is from New York and all New Yorkers care about is New York.