The Best of "Oedipus Bronx"

The New York Times' Play Magazine has a highly entertaining article on what I like to think of as Steinbrenners: The New Class. It's by Jonathan Mahler, who wrote the excellent Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning (don't let the clunky ESPN miniseries put you off). If you're at all interested in the topic it's well worth reading the entire thing, but here are a few quotes that caught my eye:

*On Jessica Steinbrenner's ex:

"Before Lopez, Jessica, who is in her mid-40s, was married to Joseph Molloy, who served briefly as the team’s general partner when Steinbrenner was banned from baseball in the early 1990s. (Molloy is now a physical-education teacher at a middle school in Tampa; Jessica keeps an office at Legends Field but devotes most of her time to the family’s horses.)"

From general partner of the Yankees to middle school gym teacher. That guy's head must still be spinning.

*Jennifer Swindal Steinbrenner on the openings left by the DUI arrest and subsequent divorce of her ex-husband Steve Swindal:

"... Jennifer avoided discussing the change in management caused by her ex-husband’s departure. Instead, she dismissed her tabloid divorce, and the resulting upheaval within the Yankees, with peppy spin. “It couldn’t have been scripted any better,” she told me."

Really? Not any better?

*On the new Stadium's field:

"...the rain tarp will be moved from the first-base side of the field to the third-base side so that Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ two most valuable assets, will have something soft to land on when they dive after foul balls..."

This is great. Sorry, Shelley Duncan! Pay real close attention to those fielding lessons with Tino, and try not to break anything when you and your very affordable contract crash into cold , hard metal!

*The money quote, Hank on the Red Sox:

“Red Sox Nation?” Hank says. “What a bunch of [expletive] that is. That was a creation of the Red Sox and ESPN, which is filled with Red Sox fans. Go anywhere in America and you won’t see Red Sox hats and jackets, you’ll see Yankee hats and jackets. This is a Yankee country. We’re going to put the Yankees back on top and restore the universe to order.”

I'm still trying to figure out whether to cringe or laugh over this one; I suppose since everyone already thinks of the Yankees as arrogant, you may as well embrace that identity and make it your own. And really -- if he'd said something diplomatic about what a great organization Boston has, you'd have been bored to tears, right? Just give in.

Release your anger... with our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy...

*A surprisingly honest assessment of the team from everyone's favorite alleged Joe Torre backstabber Randy Levine:

“The Yankees today are an entertainment company with a baseball team at its core,” Randy Levine, the team’s president, told me recently, ticking off some of the club’s less visible businesses, including its memorabilia company, Yankees-Steiner Collectibles, which sells players’ game-used uniforms and gear, and its partnership with the Japanese media company Yomiuri Shimbun, the owner of the Yomiuri Giants.

Personally I think sports are entertainment in and of themselves, but that's not the point here; Levine is acknowledging that the actual Yankees are now almost incidental to the massive corporation they're part of. The team is always central to the fans, of course, but not so much to the owners:

Last summer, when Goldman Sachs was shopping around its approximately 40 percent stake in YES, the network was valued at around $3 billion. According to Forbes magazine, the team itself isn’t worth half that.

That's the reality of modern big market sports. But it makes me nervous, because it's shades of Cablevision -- which is such a vast empire that no matter what a disgrace the Knicks mutate into, their owners, the Dolans, feel virtually no ill effects financially. Obviously the Yankees, as big as they are, aren't a monster like Cablevision, but I'm traumatized from years of Isiah Thomas basketball and I do worry. The timeline at the end of the Play story reminded me, much to my horror, that Cablevision actually tried to buy a big share of the Yankees back in 1998, and came extremely close to an agreement; the deal collapsed because Steinbrenner wouldn't give up control.

Whatever George Steinbrenner's faults -- and they were many -- let us never forget that his stubbornness spared New York baseball from the staggering horrorshow that is Jim Dolan. In my book, that that makes up for quite a few illegal Nixon campaign contributions.

How Many Yankee Executives Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?

So it's the end of the Joe Torre Era and, essentially, the end of the George Steinbrenner Era... and the new Yankee brain trust just took 10 days to massively botch their first major decision. Not a good sign, people.

I should've jumped into this fray earlier, because by now you're sick of reading about it, but in short: I can understand the desire to bring in a new manager; my only real issue with it, sentimentality aside, is that I'm not sure there's a better candidate than Joe Torre available right now. But like most Yankee fans, I think, I'll hear you out if you want to argue that it's time for a change. The way they went about it, however, could hardly have been more inept -- "they" here referring to a vague oligarchy that includes the two Steinbrenner sons, one son-in-law, Brian Cashman, COO Lonn Trost (great name), and last but not least Randy Levine, who managed the tricky feat of going from virtually unknown among average Yankee fans to universally despised in the span of just 48 hours.

The only bright thing to come out of this mess is that it led to a flock of reporters racing around Tampa in search of the Yankee meetings, and then settling in for a completely fruitless stakeout, which led to a number of amusing articles and an absolutely classic hour-by-hour live blog on NJ.com:

2 p.m.: Meetings and smoke breaks

The meetings continue. Every 40 to 60 minutes, Hank Steinbrenner (the older son and the one more involved in baseball decisions) takes a smoke break on the concrete open-air stairwell outside George Steinbrenner's office on the south end of the fourth floor of Legends Field.

For his last break, at about 1:40 p.m., Hank was accompanied by brother-in-law Felix Lopez.

3 p.m.: Grounds gets attention

As the meeting continue (as far as I can tell) in the Legends Field offices, a grounds crew attends to the half-field just outside the stadium.

The field is used for pickoff drills, pitchers' fielding practice and perhaps bunt work. So there seems no way it will be used until mid-February. But the workers are cutting the grass and watering the dirt as if a game will be played there tonight.

4 p.m.: Meetings may be over

There is some activity here that leads one to believe the meeting is breaking up soon...

Sports writing is a glamorous business, and never let anyone tell you different! Anyway, live updates aside, the situation was a total mess, leaving Torre and the fans ticked off and the Yankee ownership-by-committee looking self-serving, indecisive, two-faced, and scared.

As usual, it's not the underhanded shenanigans that bother me, but their clumsiness in executing same -- I enjoy a good Machiavellian power play as much as anyone, it just pisses me off when people don't take the time to disguise it intelligently. Randy Levine: "We were all stunned and remain stunned that he turned the deal down." Literally, and I am not making this up, my superintendent's 12-year-old grandson immediately knew that this was bullshit. Now granted he's a bright kid, but come on -- if you can't lie any better than that, how the hell did you ever manage to climb the corporate ladder in the first place?

I can already feel the nostalgia coming on, yet I've never been a George Steinbrenner fan -- the yelling and irrational firings, the compulsive trades, the illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign... he put money into the team and he wanted to win as badly as any fan, and I admire that, but didn't like a lot of what came with it. Still, he was his own guy: he did what he wanted, and he didn't give a rat's ass if anyone else liked it, which they usually didn't. I don't want to romanticize him too much, because he's hardly a hero, but at least his particular brand of sinister wasn't bland or sneaky or bureaucratic. These new guys will slowly bleed you dry with a thousand tiny paper cuts; Steinbrenner ripped out your spine with his bare hands and beat you to death with it. In retrospect, I have to respect that.


I'll have more soon on Sox/Rox. And by the way, has anyone heard from the Mets recently? It's awfully quiet over there.... think we should we send someone over to check on them?

I Do Believe in Fairies, I Do, I Do

George Steinbrenner believes in his GM, manager, and team. Well -- PR man Howard Rubenstein does, anyway, but I suppose that's a start.

The ESPN fellas took Steinbrenner's statement to mean that he wanted to see more "accountability" from the Yankees. But, really, Joe Torre has consistently taken responsibility for the team's record; Brian Cashman said that he should be blamed; and the players all insisted it was their fault. Accountability is basically the only thing this team does have right now. Pitching? No. Hitting? Not at the moment. But accountability, sure! I will try to take comfort in this thought until such time as the Yankees pass the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the standings.

Meanwhile, while I think trading Gary Sheffield was a good move -- though given that Humberto Sanchez is out for the season, that may not have been the right trade -- I do miss him sometimes. Especially when reading stories like this one:

Sheffield homered off Cabrera moments after the pair had to be pulled apart, leading the Tigers to an 8-4 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Monday night...

..."Danny was struggling with his control all night, but I guess they thought he was throwing at Sheff," Baltimore manager Sam Perlozzo said. "I have the utmost respect for Gary, and if I was going to pick someone to get angry, it wouldn't be him."

Heh.

Anyway, given the current state of the Yankees, I turned for wisdom and solace to fans of other suffering teams. The brilliant and deranged Washington Wizards site Wizznutzz posted this while their team was being destroyed by the combination of massive injuries and the Cleveland Cavaliers:

The team has all the momentum of a hippopotamus pregancy. They are like a dying tauntaun, we can just hope to climb into its warm carcass and wait out the endlessly bitter Hoth night!!!...

...Its not about dying with dignity.
In fact, the only thing we have left is the power of dying WITHOUT dignity.
Wiz goal should be to die the least dignified death ever died.
They need to lose these games so dreadfully, so painfully, and desperately, with moans and urine and loud cursing, so that Cleveland will turn their eyes away, and be filled with a deep guilt and species shame and be so sickened and horrified to see fellow ballers suffering so that it will snuff out all joy and competitive fire forever and cleveland will be forever stained and stumbling with the pointless, lost gait of a man who has seen another mans, and therefore all men's, ultimate ruin.

GO TEAM!!

They also quote T. S. Eliot and Hall & Oates. I love Wizznutzz.