John Sterling, Suzyn Waldman, Cashman, Steinbrenner and Torre thoughts; Playoff baseball coming up

I had a long car ride yesterday from DC to Atlanta (If a Tour Championship falls in the forest and Tiger isn’t playing it did it really happen?) and, as I always do I spent a lot of time on the phone before it got dark and I could begin to pick up ballgames on the radio.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: it is amazing how fast the time passes when I’m spinning the dial from game-to-game in the car; even if some of the games are meaningless (as in Mets-Marlins). Two of the games I picked up were very meaningful: Yankees-Rays and Braves-Phillies.

Listening to the Yankees is always entertaining. As I’ve said before I like both John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman personally and Suzyn works as hard as anyone in the business to try to know what is going on in the clubhouse she covers. That said, listen to the two of them wax poetic about George Steinbrenner and the ceremony unveiling his monument was almost fall down funny. (BTW, did anyone else notice that Steinbrenner’s plaque is about four times bigger than any of the others in Monument Park? Actually, I’m not sure why they need a monument at all, the new stadium IS the monument he built to himself).

So John and Suzyn are going on about how moving the ceremony was and how tastefully it was handled and how great it was to see Joe Torre and Don Mattingly back in Yankee Stadium. I wondered for a second if either of them had mentioned Torre’s name on the air since 2007 but then realized I was being silly. I think. Then I wondered this: If Joe Girardi decides at the end of the season that the Cubs really are his dream job—there are some around the Yankees who believe it will happen; others say absolutely no way—and goes to Chicago would Brian Cashman bring Torre back for a farewell tour?

I understand the chances are at least 100-to-one. Torre’s book (which Tom Verducci wrote and reported brilliantly) burned some serious bridges between himself and the Steinbrenner family. Or so it would seem. Yogi Berra didn’t set foot inside Yankee Stadium for close to 20 years. Steinbrenner was famous for firing people—most notably Billy Martin but others too—and then making up with them and bringing them back.

Brian Cashman isn’t Steinbrenner. My guess is he’s more of a grudge holder and he felt burned by Torre’s book. But he’s also pretty smart and, if Girardi decided to leave and there’s no other eye-popping candidate (is there?—certainly not on the coaching staff and if you think Bobby Valentine is a good idea you should, well, work for the Mets) maybe he would sit down with Torre?

Highly unlikely but still worth a thought or two as I-85 winds its way through South Carolina. As my mind was wandering I was brought back to reality by Suzyn, who was still going on about Steinbrenner.

“Do you know what Curtis Granderson said to me after the game last night?” she said to John in a hushed tone.

“What,” John prompted in an equally hushed tone.

“He said,” Suzyn said, pausing for dramatic effect, “’I wish I’d known him.’”

Okay, now I was almost into a tree driving off the road. Really? Curtis Granderson is a bright guy—if you listen to him for five minutes you’ll know that. Surely, if he thought about that, he might restate his position. If Steinbrenner was still running the Yankees now how do you think he would have reacted when Austin Jackson was hitting something like .350 in June and Granderson, who the Yankees traded Granderson to get, was hitting .200? It would have been great. “My baseball people said Granderson would hit 30 home runs, drive in 100 runs and steal 30 bases? What were they thinking?” Granderson might have been traded to Kansas City at the All-Star break for a middle relief pitcher.

Steinbrenner would have had George Costanza’s father on the phone screaming, “Curtis Granderson for Austin Jackson, what were you thinking?!”

So let’s be real about Steinbrenner, okay? We’ve all heard the stories since his death about his acts of kindness and I don’t doubt them. When I hear them though I’m reminded of my first conversation with Dan Snyder, who called me years ago to tell me I shouldn’t be so critical of him.

This is how it went:

“Are you being critical of me because you have something against Children’s Hospital?”

“WHAT? What in the world are you talking about?”

“Well, you know, I’m on the board of Children’s Hospital and I raise a LOT of money for them so I thought maybe you had a problem with them so you’re turning that on me.”

(I swear to God I’m not making this up).

“First of all Dan, I think Children’s Hospital is a great place. My son had hernia surgery there and they were fabulous, start to finish. Second, if he hadn’t ever been there why in the world would I rip someone for raising money for a hospital—especially one devoted to kids?”

Long pause as he thinks of his next move.

“Well, you probably don’t know how much money I give to charity.”

“Dan, I honestly don’t CARE how much money you give to charity. You’re a rich guy, you SHOULD give a lot of money to charity and then NOT brag about it. Either way, it has nothing to do with what you do as an owner or how you treat people.”

I think I’d say the exact same thing about Steinbrenner. I’m not saying he’s Snyder; the major difference besides the fact that Steinbrenner did finally learn to let his baseball people actually run things after his second suspension from baseball, is that Steinbrenner did feel badly when he behaved badly and tried to do something about. Snyder still thinks he should be allowed to scream at people because he gives money to charity.

The Yankees won 7-3 which is good because I thought John and Suzyn were going to go down and lecture Phil Hughes right on the mound about handling an early 5-0 lead if he didn’t get his act together. The Phillies also won, leaving the Braves scuffling to try to get a wildcard berth. I truly hope they do even though I think the Padres are a great story because I’m a Bobby Cox fan and I’d like to see him go out with a playoff team, not a team that led most of the season and didn’t make it to postseason.

The problem right now is their starting pitching is either hurt or struggling. On the other hand if I had to pick one team I like in postseason it would be the Phils. They’ve been hurt all year and now they’re the hottest team in the game. The team I’d like to see win is the Twins. I love the way they run their team; I can’t wait to see the new ballpark in person someday soon and Joe Mauer is just SO good.

Here’s hoping his knee is okay. Oh, and here’s hoping the Yankees don’t hire Torre and the Mets do. They might even play a September game next season worth listening to if that happens.

George Steinbrenner, a larger-than-life figure; Bob Sheppard

When I heard this morning about George Steinbrenner’s death, I thought right away about something a good friend of Bob Knight’s once said about college basketball’s winningest coach: “He’s a jerk. But he knows he’s a jerk and he tries to make up for it.”

I didn’t know Steinbrenner 1/100th as well as I know Knight—I met him once, in 1985 when the late Shirley Povich took me into his box at Yankee Stadium and introduced me—but my sense is the same could be said of Steinbrenner.

He was a bully; an ego-maniac; a man who threw tantrums when he didn’t get his way; a man who hired and fired people on a whim and someone who could be absolutely impossible to deal with. Forget that he hired and fired Billy Martin five times, he made YOGI BERRA so angry that he stayed away from Yankee Stadium for years.

He was also someone who believed in redemption and second chances; who actively sought out people he had wronged to try to make things right; who was generous to employees or former employees in trouble and who had a sense of humor. He enjoyed the ‘Seinfeld,’ parody and took part in more than one commercial mocking his ego and willingness to do anything to win.

Certainly he was a larger-than-life figure. In fact, when I think of him I also think of something Eric Sevareid said on the day Lyndon Johnson died: “He was a great man with great flaws.”

That was Steinbrenner. Of course in death, as so often happens, he will be sainted by many. You can bet a year from now he’ll be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame even though he will be no more or less deserving in death than he was in life.

A lot of people will forget that this was a man who subverted federal law in making contributions to Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign and later gave a sleaze bag named Howie Spira $40,000 to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield. The latter may have been worse because it was so monumentally stupid.

Those same people will probably forget too that the best thing that happened to the Steinbrenner Yankees was Steinbrenner getting caught in the Spira caper. He had spent most of the 1980s mis-managing the team, constantly trading young players for old ones in search of instant gratification. The Yankees of the 1980s were best summed up by Frank Costanza: “How could you give up Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps?! What were you thinking?”

Because of Spira, Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball (initially for life, eventually for three years) by then-commissioner Fay Vincent. It was during the time that Steinbrenner was NOT in charge of the Yankees in the early-90s that Gene Michael and Buck Showalter rebuilt the team. The most important things they did were what they didn’t do: They did NOT dangle prospects Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada as trade bait to try to get good again fast. They were patient. They dealt with mediocrity for a few years and then, soon after Steinbrenner returned, those young players began to mature.

At the same time, Steinbrenner made two moves that he was castigated for, both of which turned out to be brilliant: He fired Showalter as his manager after the Yankees flamed out in the 1995 playoffs—their first postseason team in 14 years—and hired Joe Torre to replace him. Showalter probably did nothing to deserve getting fired but Torre’s calm approach, which was far different than the tightly-wound Showalter, proved to be just what the Yankees needed. From 1996 to 2000 they won four World Series and during Torre’s 12-year tenure they never missed the playoffs.

Torre was pushed out after the 2007 season, technically not fired since he was offered a one-year contract, but clearly pushed, as much by Steinbrenner’s sons as by Steinbrenner. The fact that he lasted as long as he did was a tribute to Torre but also to the fact that Steinbrenner had learned at least a little bit of patience after his exile from the game.

The first time I had a clear inkling that all wasn’t well with Steinbrenner came in February of 2007. I was at spring training working on, “Living on the Black,” the book I wrote on Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine. I was in the Yankees camp a couple of days after the players had reported and had spent some time with Mussina and Torre. I went upstairs to the press box to pick up some paperwork—media guides et al—and, after chatting with some people for a few minutes, headed to the elevator to leave.

There were several other reporters at the elevator. “They’re not letting us leave right now,” someone told me. “We have to wait a couple of minutes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“George,” was the answer.

Apparently Steinbrenner had visited the stadium—that was named for him two years later—that day. Mussina told me later he hadn’t come into the clubhouse to see the players. When he exited the building, the lobby area was sealed off—apparently The Boss didn’t want people to see him in his weakened condition. Once he was gone, we were free to leave. It wasn’t long after that day that the rumors began circulating that he wasn’t well.

Steinbrenner’s death means that two Yankee icons have died in the last three days. On Sunday morning, Bob Sheppard, who was the voice of Yankee Stadium for 56 years—“The voice of God,” Reggie Jackson famously called him—died at the age of 99.

I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Sheppard—through basketball. For many years, he did the PA at Alumni Hall at St. John’s, where he taught speech and diction. Whenever I was at St. John’s I would try to spend a few minutes before he had to go to work just listening to him talk and tell stories. People talk often about the way he pronounced the names of famous Yankees and visiting players but I always enjoyed hearing him say, “and the coach of the Redmen is Lou Carnesecca.” He didn’t stretch it out, no ‘Looooo,’ and he didn’t say, ‘Con-a-seca,’ the way so many in New York did. He said it exactly the way it was spelled. But it still gave you a chill when you heard him say it.

As it turned out, 2007 was his last year doing the PA at Yankee Stadium. He had his own table in the dining area in the bowels of Yankee Stadium and, when I had the chance to sit with him on a few occasions, he looked very frail—not surprising at 96. But when he would get in that PA booth, his voice was as majestic as ever.

Steinbrenner’s story will be the talk of the All-Star game tonight and it should be. There’s no doubting his impact on baseball and on the city of New York. But I certainly hope people won’t forget to honor Bob Sheppard too. For a lot of those lean “Ken Phelps,” years he was the one Yankee who never lost a step.


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