Flak Magazine: Kick Out the Sports! 11.03.03

Loud, greedy and willing to sign top free agents at any price, New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner has been criticized for representing everything that's wrong with Major League Baseball. Critics of his free-spending ways say teams need a cap on player salaries to equalize competition. For his part, however, Steinbrenner is steering the league toward parity by running the Yankees into the ground.

It hasn't happened yet, but it's coming. Steinbrenner was quiet while the Yankees won four out of five World Series between 1995 and 2000. But with the World Series loss to the Marlins this year and Yankees going a whole three seasons without a title — hey, Cubs and Red Sox fans, you have your crosses to bear, Steinbrenner has his — Mount George's volcanic temper is ready to erupt.

History has shown that nothing pushes Steinbrenner's monstrous ego and petulant personality over the edge like watching a team other than his clinch a World Series title in his ballpark. In 1981, the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series title from the Yankees in a game on Bronx soil. That loss set in motion a Steinbrennerian pattern of frequent managerial firings, often-public head games with players and staff and big-money signings of players who melted under the stress. Well, not that those things hadn't happened since Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973, but they tended to happen less often when the Yankees won titles.

In Game 5 of this year's World Series, Steinbrenner — who once paid millions to a pitcher who became the Ghost of Ed Whitson Past — watched the Ghost of Ed Whitson Present (known as Jeff Weaver) give up a game-winning home run to banjo-swinging Alex Gonzalez of Florida. The Marlins clinching their title one game later at Yankee Stadium guarantees Steinbrenner will soon panic and sign the Ghost of Ed Whitson Future.

Steinbrenner's 1981 meltdown led to the signing of Whitson, a pitcher whose biggest accomplishment in his two years in New York was breaking manager Billy Martin's arm in a 1985 barroom fight. The Yankees bottomed out with a 67-95 record in 1990, the kind of record they hadn't seen since they signed Babe Ruth.

Yet under the steady hand of the mild-mannered, anti-Steinbrennerian Joe Torre, the Yankees returned to prominence. Heck, most teams would kill to have the kind of performance the Yankees have had in the last three years, winning the American League East all three years and the American League pennant twice. For Steinbrenner, it isn't enough.

Some may say it's great that the Yankees have an owner who wants to win so much, who's willing to carry a $185 million payroll to guarantee a title. The problem is, there's never a guarantee of a title, but Steinbrenner doesn't understand that.

Early on last season, Steinbrenner got in the middle of managerial decisions, ordering that Cuban defector/high-priced free agent Jose Contreras be sent to work with a team pitching adviser, rather than to the minor leagues as Torre wanted. It was a part of a pattern in which Steinbrenner seemed to go out of his way to undermine Torre, a run that continued when the Yankees signed Ruben Sierra. Sierra already had one semi-disastrous stint with the Yankees under Torre, whose impression of Sierra was that he was a "liar." Kiss and make up, guys!

In early September, again ripping Torre's laid-back style, Steinbrenner told the New York Post, "We can't be hugging players when they are doing dumb things. Maybe the hugging time is over. We need to get tough." The next day he reversed himself and denied wanting to put undue pressure on Torre, who appears to be tiring of Steinbrenner's act. On Halloween, he told reporters he wouldn't seek an extension on a contract that ends after next season.

Torre is probably getting tired, too, of trying to learn the names of everyone Steinbrenner sends through the clubhouse. Steinbrenner made at least 11 player trades during the regular season. The one that signals the most panic was the July 31 acquisition of third baseman Aaron Boone from Cincinnati, because Steinbrenner gave up Brendan Claussen, the Yankees' top pitching prospect, in return. The Yankees' aging staff, losing Roger Clemens to retirement, could have used a strong young lefthander. Despite hitting the home run that sent the Yankees to the World Series, Boone otherwise spent the playoffs hitting .170 and clanking grounders off his glove.

As they say in the stock market, past performance is not an indication of future returns, but it seems as if Steinbrenner is warming up for another big eruption. This season, he punctuated the loss to the Marlins by firing the first low-level staffer he saw at the team's postseason meeting in Tampa, Fla. (To be fair, he rehired that staffer. Then he fired the team's hitting coach.)

The best hope to stop Steinbrenner, to keep the Yankees atop baseball and allow owners to push the idea of a salary cap, is to find a way to suspend him. New York's World Series runs over the past 30 years came after baseball separated Steinbrenner from his team. It's as if the Yankee players need to cleanse their palate of Steinbrenner's temper, if not his money, for a while in order to build the confidence needed to win.

In 1974 Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended Steinbrenner for two years, later reduced to 15 months, after he pleaded guilty to two criminal counts — illegal campaign contributions and obstruction of justice — in relation to his role in the Watergate scandal. Steinbrenner missed much of the 1974 season and all of 1975. After he came back, the Yankees went to the World Series three straight times, winning two.

In 1990, Commissioner Fay Vincent suspended Steinbrenner for life, though Vincent reinstated him in 1993, after Steinbrenner paid gambler Howie Spira $40,000 to dig up dirt on outfielder Dave Winfield, who had sued Steinbrenner over a contract dispute. After all that was over, the Yankees broke a streak of four straight losing seasons, then a few years later began their World Series string.

But Bud Selig, baseball's current commissioner, is independent only in name, so suspending Steinbrenner will tough. Then again, as long as you're not a Yankees fan, watching Steinbrenner turn his team into a living hell will be fun to watch.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.