Yankees rebuild? Perish the thought!
Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 8:50 PM
In nothing else, Hank Steinbrenner, who’s just taken over the baseball side of the New York Yankees, has already shown himself to be superior to his infamous father in one thing – vocabulary.
On his way to an interview with managerial candidate Tony Pena, Hank used two words that George was never heard to utter in relation to his team during his 35 years as owner. One was “patience.” The other was “transition,” which is a euphemism for another word the elder Steinbrenner never used – “rebuilding.”
And then Hank made a suggestion that would have sent his pops into an apoplectic fit. He hinted that the Yankees not only might not win it all next year, but might not even make the playoffs.
I’ll tell you this much: it’s a good thing that the old man isn’t what he used to be. If he was, Hank would be out of the front office and hawking programs in the stands.
“I think the most important thing is whoever we hire, give 'em a chance because he's not getting the '96 Yankees,” the Associated Press quotes Hank as saying. The new manager – and it’s all but certain to be either Don Mattingly or Joe Girardi – is “getting an even younger team or for the most part a team in transition. Give him a little while. We want to win the World Series every year. We're not stupid enough to think we can do it.”
To George Steinbrenner, such talk was blasphemy punishable by banishment from the kingdom of pinstripes. Never once did George suggest he would be stupid to expect a championship every year. Never once did he say that a new manager – or player or secretary or clubhouse boy – should have even a teeny-tiny while to settle in.
No question about it, these are not going to be your father’s Yankees.
Patience isn’t a bad thing for a team to have, nor is the perspective to realize you can’t win every year. Depending on how good Brian Cashman, the general manager, is at his job, Yankee fans could come to embrace such foreign concepts.
But we won’t know that until we see what other ideas Hank and his brother Hal, who’s running the business side of the team, have. One thing rebuilding – er, transition – may mean is dumping salaries. I’ve a suspicion these guys are saying novenas in the hope that A-Rod will declare himself a free agent so they don’t have to pay him anymore. I doubt they’d let Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada go, but they might be willing to do that – after all, they’re in transition.
Whatever else you thought of George, you could never accuse him of avarice. He was greedy for titles, but not for money. Yes, he makes a ton of it, but he also didn’t mind spending it. He really didn’t care about taking money out of the team; most of what he made was plowed back into players.
You can’t expect every owner to behave that way, and Hank and Hal could be looking at the Yankees as their personal cash cow. If they can slash payroll and still keep drawing four million fans a year, that’s more money for them.
They’re smart enough to know the team has to contend every year to keep drawing those fans, so they’re not going to turn the Yankees into the Marlins. But they do seem intent on getting younger, which also means less expensive. And Hank is already making it clear that he intends to exercise patience.
It’s a good thing for Hank that the old man isn’t the ogre he used to be, because if he were, Hank would be out of a job.
