Welcome to the Yankee Time Tunnel -- a direct link to the good old days when
the Bombers owned the American League, George Steinbrenner's favorite hobby
was second-guessing his manager and a Page Six superstar roamed the
clubhouse.
Obviously, times have changed in the Bronx. Joe Torre doesn't
have Billy Martin's temper and Jose Canseco is mellower than Reggie Jackson
ever was. But George is still George, which explains why the Yankees
experienced their wildest week of political in-fighting since Torre replaced
Buck Showalter after the 1995 season.
|  | | Jose Canseco slammed his first homer as a member of the Yankees on Thursday. |
Yes, the winds of war may have begun to howl.
It all started when general manager Brian Cashman mistakenly claimed Jose Canseco off
waivers on Monday, thinking Tampa Bay would pull the slugger back after the
claim. That way, Canseco would have been effectively blocked from being traded
to the Blue Jays, A's or Red Sox later this month.
Instead, the Devil Rays dumped Canseco on the Yankees -- and, in effect,
gave Torre a second right-handed-hitting designated hitter he absolutely doesn't need or
want. Glenallen Hill already serves that capacity.
The stoic Torre -- normally a team player and company man -- went out of
his way to say he was "surprised" and "stunned" at Canseco's acquisition.
This was seen as a direct tweak of the GM, who was man enough to admit to
his mistake to reporters, and was hoping that Torre would be more subdued in
his criticism.
After all, Cashman has added eight veteran players to the roster since
June -- including Denny Neagle and David Justice -- and fattened the Yankees
payroll from $90 million to nearly $112 million.
Nevertheless, Torre looked into the TV cameras after an 8-5 loss to
the Mariners on Monday and said, "I'm a little stunned. I'm not surprised very often,
but I am this time."
Steinbrenner was apparently outraged that Torre would take Cashman to
task. The Boss responded by issuing a statement through the Yankees' PR staff
the next day, words that club officials hinted were aimed right at Torre.
The Boss said: "I want it made very clear that I support the decision of
Brian Cashman 100 percent and I'm very surprised by anyone who would be
surprised by his aggressiveness. I know we have made some decisions and
choices in the past that have been criticized, but they have worked out."
Obviously, this rift will heal, because the Yankees are winning, and
Torre is a mature, professional baseball man who won't be provoked into an
open-air quarrel with Steinbrenner. In fact, when asked for a reaction to
Steinbrenner's comments, the manager said, "He's The Boss and I respect that.
He can pretty much do whatever he wants."
The bigger-picture question, of course, is how much of this burden Torre
wants to keep shouldering. He has one year remaining on his contract for $3
million, but he's 60 and recovering from prostate cancer. In addition, Torre
is now managing without his pitching coach and close friend, Mel Stottlemyre,
who will soon leave the team to intensify his fight with bone marrow cancer.
And after four relatively serene summers, Torre is finally discovering what it's
like to have Steinbrenner in his face.
Thus, when asked about the 2001 season, Torre said, "At the end of the
year I will probably weigh everything and see what I want to do. As of right
now I am under contract for next year and that carries a lot of weight with
me."
Still, there's no question the Yankee landscape has changed. The flurry
of roster moves reminds Bronx historians of the dark ages of the late '80s and early '90s, when a new player walked into the clubhouse every day and the team's record slowly deteriorated.
Steinbrenner was so desperate to keep pace with the Mets, who then owned
New York, he fell in love with the rotisserie-league mentality. The frenzy
subsided in the mid-'90s, when the Yankees became the model of stability
in the big leagues. But as Cashman said, "The rest of the league has closed
the gap on us. We've made changes because we've had to."
Of course, Yankee haters will only renew their charge that Steinbrenner
is buying another pennant, and it's true the Bombers seem more mercenary. But
as Cashman said, "All we're doing is going by our mission statement, which
is, 'Win now.' We don't want to cheat our fans."
For that reason, Torre is lucky. He has more weapons and resources than
any other manager in baseball -- even if the surcharge is dealing with a
sometimes-irrational owner who, for some reason, has inserted himself in this
petty squabble.
The real issue is whether the Yankees should be sweating their longterm
future, since so many prospects were traded away in assembling this
stretch-run team.
That would be a potential problem for most managers, but not Torre, who
said, "I'm 60 years old. I'm not looking too far down the road. My down the
road is the next 7-8 weeks."
Bob Klapisch of the Bergen (N.J.) Record writes his Baseball in the Big Apple column throughout the season.
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