TAMPA – You do wonder what it would have been like in the old days, when he was younger, louder, brasher, more bellicose, more vain, more hungry for the back page, more in love with the sound of his own voice, more enamored with the very idea of being George Steinbrenner.
You wonder how a greener, meaner Steinbrenner would have reacted to the collapse the Yankees suffered against the Red Sox last October, how he would have overreacted to the Red Sox winning a World Series on his watch, something no Yankee owner had had to swallow since the earliest hours of Col. Jacob Ruppert’s reign.
Who would have been fired? Anyone? Everyone? Who would have been traded? Anyone? Everyone? Who would have been filleted on the Boss’ griddle?
Anyone?
Everyone?
“I’m looking forward to getting back in, getting back on track and going after what we know we should’ve done last year,” is the way Steinbrenner described his disappointment yesterday. “Boston deserves all the credit, and they can give their rings out anytime they want. They deserve that.”
With the notable exception of his withering appraisal of Arn Tellem’s business practices, it had been a terribly quiet spring for Steinbrenner, who refused even to be engaged by the daily dispatches from Red Sox camp. But it reflects a “Serenity Now!” version of the Boss that extends back at least as far as Game 7 of last year’s cataclysmic ALCS with the Red Sox.
As several witnesses have recalled it over the past few months, as the reality of what the Red Sox had done started to settle in, a few angry Yankees officials began to seethe as they saw a few thousand Red Sox fans begin to loudly celebrate the end of the Yankees’ hex over them. Sox players came out of the clubhouse, sprayed champagne on them, and the officials grew ever angrier.
This was unseemly! This was outrageous! These people weren’t going home! Surely the Boss wouldn’t approve of this! So they marched into the solemn owner’s quarters, lodged their formal complaints. Steinbrenner listened very carefully to the complaints, leaned back in his chair and shook his head.
“Keep the lights on for them as long as they want to stay,” Steinbrenner said quietly. “They’ve earned it.”
That conciliatory tone was all over Steinbrenner yesterday, as he drove his golf cart conspicuously past Max’s Cafi, the Legends Field lunchroom where he knew the flower of New York’s media corps would be nourishing itself.
“Boston deserves all the credit, and they can give their rings out anytime they want,” Steinbrenner said. “They deserve that.”
Sigh.
Think about it. Pretend it’s 1979, and Bucky Dent’s home run never cleared that screen the previous October, and the Red Sox wound up sweeping the Royals and dusting off the Dodgers, and the Sox took care (with the schedulemaker’s help) to hand out their championship rings right in front of the Yankees! On second thought, why go back that far? What if Aaron Boone’s blast had died on the warning track in 2003, and those Sox had survived the epic ALCS, gone on to maul the Marlins in that World Series?
How do you think that ring-ceremony controversy would have sat with the Boss then?
“Losing that series was very hard. Very hard. I hate to lose,” Steinbrenner said.
“I’m a very bad loser. And I hope my men feel the same way this year. I just hope we get out there and get the job done.” And the Red Sox?
“They will be tough. They will be very tough.”
Steinbrenner admitted it took a long time for him to get over the ALCS, but said it never occurred to him to address the team about it, something he would have put above the margin in his things-to-do list in years past.
“Yeah,” he said. “When I was younger.”
He paused, smiled.
“But I’m getting older,” he said.
Sigh.
Aren’t we all.
