Spring Training is in the air and that's usually a time of hope for October, of renewing acquaintances with favored players and of forceful statements from the office of George Steinbrenner. Big Stein has made a habit of appearing on the back pages of New York tabloids when he rips into Joe Torre or Brian Cashman after a meaningless exhibition loss and, bereft of any actual news, the papers eat it up like Dom DeLuise at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Times are changing, though, according to Ken Davidoff of Newsday.
In truth, team officials have been strategizing how to keep The Boss as invisible as possible, to avoid awkward scenes and potentially explosive words to be reported back to you the fans.
Here's hoping they succeed.
It's time to wean ourselves off our Steinbrenner addiction. To acknowledge who this man is now, and the role he actually plays in the Yankees' hierarchy.
This won't necessarily be easy, and certainly, Newsday won't ignore a rip job of Torre by the Yankees' principal owner, for instance. But Steinbrenner and his words now have to be placed in their proper context: We can call him The Boss, for old times' sake, but that's really not his role anymore.
He is the Yankees' patriarch, still, yet at 76 his health is in obvious decline, widely believed to be the result of something more serious than mere aging. The tales of Steinbrenner's fluctuations in memory and emotions are too numerous to wave off; some have occurred in the presence of the media.
I read "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning", the fine book on New York City in 1977 by Jonathan Mahler, this winter and was struck by two things Steinbrennerian. His youthfulness and the level he was involved with the team. I guess that the years of success from 1996 forward had lessened my memories of the 80's when Big Stein was still firing people on whims and attacking without restriction through the press. Howard Rubenstein's role as mouthpiece has increased over the years and that's done a lot to leaven the commentary from the owner's box and the obvious decline in the Boss's health has done its fair share as well. For some reason Davidoff's article, taken along with the departure of Bernie Williams, has me in a reflective mood this morning. Things are changing for the Yankees, new names on and off the field and a new modus operandi for a franchise that was as dysfunctional as any in history. It's not better nor is it worse, necessarily, it's just different and that's not always the easiest thing to swallow.
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