The owner is, like so many of his fans, delusional about the truth, and despondent about the reality that no amount of money he spreads around can ever recapture the magic of what used to be.

George Steinbrenner can apologize to his fans and he can continue to take kindergarten-style pot shots at the manager who rescued him from the championship desert the last time. He is free to speak his opinion at any time, no matter how addled it might be.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the biggest problem facing the Yankees for now and for the immediate future has little to do with their opponents, or the way the rest of baseball has caught up to them competitively, passed them by organizationally in every place but the bank vault.

No, the biggest problem facing the Yankees of 2006 and beyond are the Yankees of 1996-2001 – the championship Yankees – whose image still burns in the collective memory of New York as well as that of Steinbrenner. That image provides ready access to the qualities possessed by dynastic baseball teams. Those Yankees had it in abundance.

These Yankees aspire to it, but routinely expire in its pursuit. “I congratulate the Angels, and their manager, on the great job they’ve done,” came the breathlessly anticipated postscript from the owner. “Our team played hard but we let our fans down. Our fans are the greatest in the world and I want to thank them for their amazing support throughout the season. We will do better.”

Steinbrenner doesn’t really mean that, because if he meant that he would officially suspend his favorite offseason pastime, which is trying to spend his way into oblivion in the hope that he might recapture what the Yankees were. If he were thinking reasonably, if he allowed his people to act rationally, he would notice that the Yankees only stopped winning championships when they stopped thinking like a baseball team and started acting like drunken rotisserie-league players.

As each autumn comes and each autumn goes, each time some other team starts pouring champagne all over itself, the recollection of what the Yankees used to be grows brighter and stronger, a memory tinged with melancholy.

There were five World Series appearances in six years and four titles, three of them in consecutive years. There were 14 straight Series victories, covering the final four games in ’96 through the first two in 2000. Most staggering of all, they won 11 straight postseason series from ’98 through the first two rounds of ’01.

These are the Yankees against whom everyone, from Steinbrenner on down, compares the current batch of lawn tennis and croquet players wearing pinstripes. It’s a fanciful comparison for the fans and a fatuous one for the owner, the man principally responsible for collecting this assortment of bigticket, small-hearted desperadoes.

Look, Steinbrenner has gotten exactly what he always wanted out of this team. It wasn’t that long ago when the owner grumbled about everything in his South Bronx neighborhood but the cost of a Big Mac at the McDonald’s down the block. Now, he gets 4 million people to swarm the place. Why? Because of Alex Rodriguez. Because of Randy Johnson. Because of Jason Giambi, and Gary Sheffield, and Hideki Matsui.

You think it’s a coincidence that all those wonderful Yankee teams, even the ’98 juggernaut that won 125 games, never drew four million fans? Of course not. It’s the same reason why “The Odd Couple” is already sold out for its entire run before Nathan Lane throws his first plate of spaghetti against the wall. New York craves stars. Is “The Odd Couple” “Othello?” Of course not. But New Yorkers wouldn’t be arranging second mortgages for “Othello” standing-room tickets.

No, Steinbrenner now gets exactly what he deserves. He was the one who made the Yankees the biggest ticket in a big-ticket town. He’s the one who made show-biz a priority, over rings. This is his team now: good enough to sell out every night, too weak-kneed to close out a wellconstructed team like this year’s Angels or last year’s Red Sox.

The Yankees for whom Steinbrenner and everyone else still pine belong to history books, same as the ’27 Yankees, same as the ’49 Yankees, and no amount of money can buy them back. Not now. Maybe not ever.

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‘I congratulate the Angels and their manager on the great job they’ve done. Our team played hard, but we let our fans down. Our fans are the greatest in the world and I want to thank them for their amazing support throughout the season. We will do better.’ – George Steinbrenner