Is Yahoo Microsoft's Roger Clemens?

(Well, to be perfectly honest, as a devout Red Sox fan, my real first thought was: "Oh, s@#$@*t!." But that's neither here nor there.)

As logical thinking set in, it became clear that Clemens was signed by a team driven to desperate measures.

Not that that necessarily makes the move stupid. By spending $18 million-and-change for maybe 15 starts by a 45-year-old pitcher with a history of chronic groin pulls and behavioral issues, the Yankees did several things.

First: They placated irate fans—I visited some over the weekend—who want heads to roll. You know these guys: They're the ones who consider A-rod a loser despite his red-hot early numbers.

At the very least, Yankee Big Daddy George Steinbrenner can say he spent what it took to win, blah blah, blah..

Second: They'll get at least a handful of wins from a future hall of famer. In their mind, some will doubtless come at the expense of the Sox.

Third: The onus of the Yankee's post-June 1 season now lies squarely on Rocket Roger's prodigious shoulder(s). This could be job security for Cashman and makes for one extremely pricey scapegoat.

Now Microsoft/Yahoo isn't quite the same thing as the Yankee move which, face it, reeks of fear. If the two end up doing some kind of collaboration to take on Google, it could be viewed as a proactive, smart step. But should Microsoft drop the billions it would take to buy Yahoo outright, it would come close to the same sort of panic buy.

An outright acquisition would seem a knee-jerk reaction to Google pre-empting Microsoft's buy of Doubleclick. To continue the baseball analogy Doubleclick thus becomes Daisuke Matsuzaka aka Dice-K.

Whether or not Microsoft over-reacts to Google's M&A activity is not even the point. If it seems to be doing so, that becomes the new script.

There could be a pretty good fit between Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo remains the Web portal of choice for many, many people. In the pre-RSS era, it was the best way to aggregate stuff that interested you from a variety of Web sources. Many who set up "My Yahoo" portals back then, continue to use them now. In some cases, that is many years later. That is called stickiness.

In a recent interview with USA Today Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sussed out the current search situation: In his view: "Microsoft has the most visitors, Yahoo actually has [people] spending the most total time with them. And Google makes the most money."

If a Yahoo alliance or even an outright buy meant that Microsoft usurps Google's money-maker there, it could be the deal of the century. Or at least the rest of the season.