WHY DO YOU keep fighting for Joe?” Randy Levine asks. “He’d never fight for you.”
Brian Cashman lets the question hang there, unanswered, as the two men gather their thoughts after the brutal tongue-lashing they’ve just received from George Steinbrenner. The Boss has faded from public view. His sore knees have slowed him down. And there are as many bad days—when he struggles with his memory and finds himself disoriented—as good. But there’s no question he’s still capable of erupting, and this is the worst outburst the two Yankees executives have experienced in quite some time.
George’s frustration started to roil when a loss to the Mets three days ago pushed the Yankees to a season-high four games behind Boston in the AL East. And as the runs piled on during today’s humiliating 19–1 loss to the Indians in George’s hometown—and on July 4, his 76th birthday—Cashman knew what was coming. So he wasn’t at all surprised when Levine conferenced him in to the phone call with their boss.
“What the hell is going on with this team of yours?” Steinbrenner shouted from Tampa. “I’m spending $200 million, and what is Torre giving me? Nothing!”
Cashman tried to tell George that it wasn’t entirely Joe’s fault—both Gary Sheffield and Hideki Matsui have been out since late May with wrist surgeries. Their young star Robbie Cano went down with a hamstring injury two weeks ago. But that was a mistake.
“Shut the hell up, Cashman!” Steinbrenner said. “The whole team is letting me down, do you hear me? Just tell Torre he better fix this!” And he hung up the phone. Calls from Steinbrenner often end abruptly, and now Cashman is on the line listening to Levine. “You have to call Joe in Cleveland,” Levine says. “Tell him George just put down the gauntlet.”
Cashman knows both Steinbrenner and Levine truly dislike Torre; they’ve disliked the manager for years. Steinbrenner never forgave Torre for writing a book after winning it all in ’96, the one in which Joe claimed he kept quiet about the extent of George’s behind-the-scenes meddling. Cashman had to laugh about that. Steinbrenner, burned badly by the media and fan reaction when he fired Buck Showalter in ’95, long ago shifted his attacks to his GM—first Bob Watson and now Cashman. Torre is on scholarship, Cashman often jokes—he has no idea the hell other Yankees managers endured.
The GM knows Steinbrenner and Levine think Torre is in it for himself, and it’s getting harder and harder to defend Joe. Even Cashman, Torre’s longtime ally, has to admit that success and money have changed the Yankees skipper. Torre came to the Yankees close to bankruptcy. Now he’s in the middle of a three-year, $19.2 million deal through 2007—the highest for a manager in baseball history—and has his pick of endorsement opportunities.
“Father Joe,” whose door was always open for his players in the early years, is now “Joe, Inc.,” who entertains business partners in the manager’s office. And Cashman worries that Torre seems to have time only for the players who won titles for him, a feeling that is splitting his clubhouse. Many disillusioned new Yankees have asked Cashman if this is the same Torre they’ve heard players rave about in years gone by.
“We’re on the clock here, Joe,” he’s told Torre several times the last few seasons. “George is spending all this money, and he’s sick and tired of losing. Those championships we won don’t count anymore.” Joe just smiles, pats Brian on the back, and tells the GM he worries too much. But scholarships last only so long—especially when you haven’t won a title in five years—and the owner is apologizing to fans for that failure at the end of every season.
The once-tight relationship between Cashman and Torre is beginning to fray, too. Cashman still thinks Torre went around him to get Ron Guidry as pitching coach last November. Torre wanted Guidry to replace Mel Stottlemyre. Cashman told Joe he had nothing against Guidry, but the former Yankees star had never coached on any level. Yet when George asked Torre who he wanted, Joe said Guidry, and Steinbrenner made the deal.
When Cashman assigned an intern to track pitch counts in spring training, Torre accused him of spying. Cashman has begged Torre to stop burning out one relief pitcher after another—Steve Karsay, Paul Quantrill, Tom Gordon, and Tanyon Sturtze have all broke down from overuse. And now it looks like Torre will break Scott Proctor, the hard-throwing young reliever who’s already on pace to throw more than 100 innings this season.
But Torre’s not listening, and he’s bristling over the changes Cashman’s made this year. Cashman has eliminated the overlap George built into the system, redefined roles, and added a department for quantitative analysis—10-men deep—pulling the Yankees into baseball’s modern age of statistics.
In Torre’s case, he was pulled in kicking and screaming. Cashman has given him sheets charting hitters’ tendencies, and Joe’s ignored them. He’s provided the manager with detailed studies on matchups, and Torre reminds him there’s a heartbeat in this game. Cashman tells him less talented teams are beating the Yankees by paying attention to these numbers, and Torre says he’ll always manage with his gut.
Torre’s gut just might cost him his job one of these days, Cashman thinks as he punches his manager’s number into his cell phone. Maybe this time, hopes Cashman, he’ll listen. But the Yankees GM is not counting on it.
Torre holds a team meeting before the next game—“Nothing more than making sure that we’re ready to play,” he says—and the Yankees respond by battering the Indians, 11–3. The win kicks off an 18–6 roll that wipes out the Red Sox lead and lifts the Yankees into first place on August 3, one game ahead of Boston. It’s second-year players Chien-Ming Wang (5–0, 1.64 ERA) and Melky Cabrera (.319, 12 RBI, 12 runs) who deliver much-needed energy and production. And Cashman makes a big move at the trade deadline, getting Philadelphia’s Bobby Abreu—a .301 lifetime hitter—for three prospects.
But it’s Derek Jeter who truly ignites this run. The 32-year-old captain hits .396 and knocks in 20 runs in what is rapidly becoming a career year. Jeter puts together 13 multihit games, raising his season average to .354. All of which is in stark contrast to the one Yankee who is not producing: Alex Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is mired in a slump that is now entering its third month. Since his strong play in May, last year’s AL MVP has hit just .265 with nine home runs, striking out 52 times in 53 games. Alex is slumping in the field, too, with every ground ball hit his way a potential adventure. In one gruesome game against the Mariners on July 17, Rodriguez threw the ball away three times, pushing his season total to 16 errors—one more than the previous two seasons combined. He also struck out with the bases loaded after Seattle intentionally walked Giambi ahead of him. Though the Yankees won, 4–2, the 53,444 fans jeered Rodriguez at every opportunity, now a regular feature of his life at the Stadium.
Even away from the Stadium, there are few safe havens for the star-crossed Yankee. Rodriguez was spotted in Central Park with his wife and two young daughters the morning of the Mariners game, and media critics wondered if he was too tired to play that night. The tabloids are using him for headline fodder—E-ROD and K-ROD are the mainstays. “Why Do We Hate This Guy?” asks ESPN.com. Talk show hosts and their callers plead for the Yankees to trade him.
“Alex isn’t going anywhere,” Cashman repeats publicly. Privately, he pushes Torre to urge Jeter to show public support for the man Derek once considered his close friend. Cashman knows most Yankees are leery of paying attention to Alex for fear of offending Jeter, who’s made his disdain for Alex all too clear. It’s for the good of the team, Cashman tells Torre, but the Yankees manager won’t buy in.
Neither does Jeter. “My job as a player is not to tell the fans what to do,” he tells reporters when questioned about the fans’ treatment of Rodriguez.
Noticeably absent from the debate is Steinbrenner, whose appearances at the Stadium are increasingly rare. New York newspapers are now assigning reporters to stake out the owner’s entrance before and after games, but when Steinbrenner shows up on July 15, security guards keep the media 30 yards away, enforcing the team’s new policy for protecting the Yankees owner.
The next sighting is on August 16, the brutally hot afternoon the Yankees break ground for the new stadium. Looking pale, his face a bit puffy, Steinbrenner needs help to climb up the makeshift podium in a parking lot of the old Stadium, and speaks for all of 25 seconds. “It’s a pleasure to give it to you people,” says Steinbrenner, who repeats the phrase “you people” three times. “Enjoy the new stadium.”
Steinbrenner is hustled to his car after the 90-minute ceremony, leaving team officials to answer questions about their vanishing leader. “Believe me, he’s still the Boss,” Cashman says. “He just doesn’t relish publicity the way he used to,” public relations guru Howard Rubenstein explains. “He’s a great chairman,” Levine says, “and like all the great ones, he’s learned to delegate day-to-day operations.”
It’s Yankees communications director Jason Zillo, tasked with answering questions about Steinbrenner day in and day out, who puts it best. “We don’t feel it’s our owner’s responsibility to answer questions after every home game that he attends,” Zillo says.
Rodriguez’s bat finally comes alive in September—A-Rod hits .345 with seven homers and 20 RBI in his first 17 games of the month—and the Yankees officially clinch the AL East on September 20. The team is sitting in the visitors clubhouse after a 3–2 loss to Toronto, watching the Twins put down the Red Sox on a big-screen TV. Corks pop and Champagne and beer flow as the Yankees celebrate their ninth straight AL East title.
In 13 days, they’ll face the Tigers at the Stadium in the ALDS, and the pressure will mount once again. Everyone celebrating in the clubhouse tonight understands that another first-round exit will not sit well with the Boss.
“We need to make this postseason a lot longer than it’s been for us,” says Torre, who may finally be listening to Cashman. “Hopefully, we’re poised to do something special.”
The cascade of boos from the 33,989 fans in Miller Park rains down on Barry Bonds the moment he is announced. The aging Giants star ambles to the plate and responds with a sly smile as he digs in against Brewers left-hander Chris Capuano. He’s heard a lot worse this season.
He’s also on a tear. What Bonds does tonight is the only meaningful thing in this September 23 game between two losing teams playing out the string. Last night, Bonds hit a 403-foot home run off Brewers right-hander Chris Spurling, tying Hank Aaron for the most home runs by a National League hitter. Now he has the chance to break one of Hank’s records in the same town Aaron started and ended his playing career.
Capuano, who surrendered a line-drive single to Bonds in the 1st, enjoys a 6–1 lead in the bottom of the 3rd. The tall, left-handed finesse pitcher misses with his first pitch to Bonds. His next offering is a fastball that tails back over the middle of the plate. Bonds jumps on it with that short, powerful stroke, sending the ball sailing to right-center field. Brewers outfielders Brady Clark and Corey Hart can only watch as Bonds’ drive just clears the fence.
The 734th home run of Bonds’ career momentarily silences the crowd as the new National League home run king circles the bases. The fans resume booing Bonds in each of his three remaining trips to the plate in the Brewers’ 10–8 win. There is no visit—or even phone call—from the Commissioner, who watches the game on TV at his home 14 miles away, the same place he’s been for the first two games of this series. Major League Baseball makes no mention of the feat.
What Bonds’ 26th and last home run of the 2006 season elicits instead is a list of questions.
Will Bonds return next season to chase Aaron’s all-time home run record of 755, now just 21 homers away?
Will he do it in a Giants uniform?
Will he be under indictment for perjury, obstruction of justice, tax evasion—or all three?
Some or all of these questions seemed moot as recently as late July, when the feds appeared on the verge of indicting Bonds and the 42-year-old looked close to retirement. But Barry’s trainer Greg Anderson chose jail time over testifying against his childhood friend, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan got cold feet, and the government convened a new grand jury instead of issuing an indictment.
Anderson, the only person other than Bonds who can say whether the player knowingly took steroids, left jail after 15 days, when the first grand jury looking into perjury and obstruction charges against Bonds ended its term. But he went back in on August 28 after refusing to testify before the new grand jury. And there he remains, sitting in his 8-by-12-foot cell, as tight-lipped as ever about what Bonds did or did not do.
It was about that time that Bonds’ play changed for the better. On August 20, the Giants star was hitting just .235 with 16 home runs and 51 RBI. In the fifth and final year of his $90 million contract, with bone chips floating in his left elbow, Bonds talked more about retirement than chasing records. And the Giants made little effort to discourage him.
But tonight’s home run was his 10th in his last 27 games. Playing once more like a seven-time MVP, Bonds is hitting .400 in his last 106 plate appearances, with 26 RBI, 21 walks, and 22 runs scored.
“There’s a pretty big difference in what he looked like the first time we played,” says Brewers manager Ned Yost, who last saw Barry in mid-July. “He’s healthy now, he feels better, and it shows.” And now both Bonds and the Giants are talking about spending at least one more season together.
How much longer the feds and Senator Mitchell will spend chasing after Bonds—and what they will find—is still anyone’s guess.
George Steinbrenner is angry. He went to sleep angry after the Tigers eliminated his Yankees from the playoffs in four games, he woke up angry, and he’s still angry as he listens to Howard Rubenstein read back the statement he released earlier this morning. It’s been 90 minutes since Rubenstein sent out the Yankees owner’s promise to make changes, big changes, for next season. Now George wants his public relations man to make a change in his promise.
Read it back again, he tells Rubenstein.
“I am deeply disappointed at our being eliminated so early in the playoffs. This result is not acceptable to me nor to our great and loyal Yankee fans,” Rubenstein says over the phone. “I want to congratulate the Detroit Tigers organization and wish them well. Rest assured, we will go back to work immediately and try to right this sad failure and provide a championship for the Yankees, as is our goal every year.”
“Change that to absolutely not acceptable,” Steinbrenner says.
“George—”
“Howard, just do it!”
Rubenstein is unfazed, as he always is when talking his volatile client off the ledge. “George, the writers have been calling all morning about the Daily News story,” Rubenstein says. “They say Torre was stunned when he heard about it. I told them no decision has been made and you have nothing more to say.”
“Good. Send out this statement again.”
Steinbrenner hangs up and mulls over the turmoil of the last 24 hours. The Daily News ran with the story he leaked to them last night. The headline OUTTA HERE! in great big block letters screams off the Sunday edition’s front page over a picture of Joe Torre. Inside, the story says George is about to fire his manager and hire former Yankees player and manager Lou Piniella, one of his longtime favorites.
Torre’s stunned. How the hell can he be stunned?
George is tired of hearing what a great job Torre did juggling his lineup when Matsui and Sheffield went down this season. And he’s tired of hearing about the nine straight AL East titles. He pays Torre more than any other manager—far more—to win World Series titles, not division titles. Didn’t he spend $200 million to give Torre the best collection of players in the game? Didn’t he tell Torre he had to win this year, not get beat—get embarrassed!—by a team that pays its players less than half of what he pays his team? Detroit’s payroll is $82 million, equal to what he pays Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, and Mike Mussina combined.
Torre’s great strength has always been dealing with his players, but Steinbrenner wonders if that’s still true. Why hasn’t he done anything about the Jeter-Rodriguez rift? Why did his problems with A-Rod show up in a Sports Illustrated story written by the coauthor of Torre’s book? And why did he bat Rodriguez eighth in Game 4? Rodriguez is as fragile as he is talented, and batting him “double cleanup”—as Torre so flippantly put it—was a surefire way to break his confidence right when the Yankees needed him most.
George has been annoyed about Joe’s distractions for months. His deals to endorse products like Bigelow tea. His racehorse. His charitable foundations. Hell, Joe, do those on your own time. Torre is supposed to be thinking of one thing during the baseball season, and one thing only: George’s team.
About the only thing going Steinbrenner’s way is the lack of media interest in his health. At least for the moment. And this is the best George has felt in months, even if his knees are really killing him. The doctors keep saying he should get his knees cleaned out or maybe even replaced, but George doesn’t believe much in doctors. Never has. He’s three months past his 76th birthday, and his aversion to doctors just isn’t going to change.
Besides, it’s not his knees that worry him. He’s not going to see any doctors about those other problems, either, especially since right now he has no need for help. It’s been a while since his hands have trembled. Or since he’s cried for no reason—except when he sees his son Hal’s little girls. That always seems to bring him to tears these days.
His memory is still fading in and out, but he’s concentrating on the good days and trying to ignore the bad. And on this day, Steinbrenner knows exactly what he wants to talk about with his lieutenants: Joe Torre. He’s ready to get rid of the manager, even with a year left on his contract. He’s never liked Torre’s laid back methods, and even if they worked before, they’re not working now. So when Swindal, Levine, Cashman, and Lonn Trost all check in for their conference call this Sunday afternoon, George asks the only question that matters:
“Tell me why I shouldn’t fire my manager.”
Swindal speaks first. He feels strongly that Torre has earned the chance to finish out his contract, the one Steve negotiated for him four years ago, and not because they would have to pay Joe the final $7 million whether they keep him or not. He’s done a good job, Swindal says—the team won 97 games despite all their injuries and an aging pitching rotation. “I vote for bringing him back,” says Swindal.
Trost quickly agrees, and Cashman speaks next. The young general manager has his own issues with Torre. The manager has to stop abusing his relievers. He has to stop favoring the old guard, even if it’s unintentional. And he has to repair his relationship with Rodriguez. But the GM and manager have been successful together too long and worked through too many problems for Cashman to think these things can’t be fixed.
“I don’t think we should fire Joe,” Cashman says. “We had a bad series. It happens. I don’t think getting rid of Torre will solve any of our problems. I think it will only make things worse.
“Are we better than we have performed? Yes. Does Torre have flaws? Yes. But we are still making the playoffs every year, and Joe is popular. We’re stepping on our dick if we fire him. This run’s not over yet.”
Steinbrenner asks Levine what he thinks, though the Boss already knows. His team president and Torre have battled almost from the day the former New York City deputy mayor arrived in 2000. Steinbrenner expects Levine to be his eyes and ears when he’s home in Tampa, which is most of the time now. But Torre considers Levine a well-paid spy.
Levine thinks Torre has lost his focus and his team. But he’s not going to fight the group. Not this time. “Boss, I think you know how I feel,” Levine says. “But if everybody else thinks Torre should come back, then I’ll go along.”
Cashman and Swindal call Torre on Monday, urging him to call Steinbrenner and tell him how much he wants to come back. Torre agrees. “Boss, all I ever wanted to do was make you proud,” Torre tells Steinbrenner later that day. “If you think in your heart you have to make a change, then you should do it. But I’d like to stay and finish the job.”
The Boss told his manager he had not yet made his decision, and Torre still doesn’t know his fate when he walks into his office at the Stadium on Tuesday around noon. The Yankees have called a media conference for 1 p.m. to discuss their manager’s future. His scholarship has officially ended, just as Cashman warned him it would. It’s one thing for George to tell the press your job is in jeopardy, it’s another when he really means it. And this time he does.
Sitting with Torre is his friend Arthur Sando, a veteran PR man. If he’s fired, Torre wants Sando to set up his own press conference—out of the Stadium, of course—so Joe can tell his side of the story. The phone rings in Torre’s office a few minutes before 1 p.m. It’s Cashman, calling from the Yankees offices upstairs. Also on the line are Swindal and Levine—and George. “Joe,” Cashman says, “Mr. Steinbrenner would like to speak with you.”
“Joe, we want you to manage the team,” Steinbrenner says. He waits a few moments to let his words sink in. “But I want you to understand that I will be holding you accountable. Cut out the distractions. Be the manager. I expect you to win this year—it’s about time. And I don’t expect to hear any excuses.”
It’s a relieved though somewhat miffed Torre who sits at the podium in the Yankees media room a few minutes later, wearing a dark blazer, blue shirt, and red tie, answering questions from the New York reporters. Steinbrenner has hardly given him a vote of confidence. That’s a point George makes abundantly clear in the release his PR staff hands out as the reporters file in.
“I spoke to Joe Torre today and I told him, ‘You’re back for the year,’ ” the statement reads. “ ‘I expect a great deal from you and the entire team. I have high expectations and I want to see enthusiasm, a fighting spirit and a team that works together. The responsibility is yours, Joe, and all of the Yankees.’
“Yes, I am deeply disappointed about our loss this year. We have to do better. And I deeply want a championship.”
“It’s about time.” Torre bristles at the words. The team hadn’t won a World Series in 18 years before Torre got there, and he gave Steinbrenner four championships in five years. No one had done that in 53 years. His teams have made the playoffs every one of the last 11 seasons. Only Atlanta’s Bobby Cox can say the same thing.
Even if George isn’t the raging tyrant he once was, Torre is finally discovering what life under Steinbrenner was like for Billy Martin, Lou Piniella, and all the other managers who came before him. But he will be the manager for at least one more year. So he alternately smiles and grimaces as reporters ask their questions, each one a variation on the same theme: How does it feel to be—what? Publicly humiliated?
“You can’t pick and choose the parts you like about working for George Steinbrenner,” Torre says. “You have to understand the whole package. He requires a lot, we know that. When you work here, you have to understand that every year may be your last year.”
Torre pauses, then continues. “He gave me his support,” the Yankees manager says. “I’m just pleased I’m able to stay on and do this.”
Five.
That is the number of times Don Fehr has shared a podium with Bud Selig to announce a new labor deal for baseball.
It’s also the number of times he’s listened to Selig use the word historic to describe the nature of their agreement, the fifth coming right now before the nation’s baseball media in a crowded Busch Stadium conference room. It’s the afternoon of October 24, and Fehr is sitting next to Selig in the middle of a dais 10-men strong, with baseball players, union officials, and MLB officials at each man’s side. In a few hours, the Tigers will play the Cardinals in Game 3 of the World Series, which is tied at a game apiece.
But first, the Commissioner of baseball has a few things he wants to say about the new six-year labor deal the owners have just reached with the game’s players.
“This is an historic agreement for a number of reasons,” says Selig. He leans into the microphone in front of him and ticks off his talking points. “First, it is the longest labor contract in baseball history. Second, we reached the agreement nearly two months before the deadline. And third, by the end of this contract, baseball will have gone 16 years without a strike or lockout.”
Five times Selig and Fehr have announced a deal together. There was always some unfinished business with the previous four deals—something more Selig wanted, something less Fehr wanted to give him. Something that would form the battlefield for the next labor war.
But there was every reason to believe this fifth time was going to be different for one simple reason: the economics of the game appear to be working for both sides. The players have free agency and salary arbitration and are generally happy with the system. The owners have revenue sharing and a competitive balance tax, and all but the one owner based in the Bronx are generally happy with their arrangement. There should be no issue out there to serve as a battleground going forward.
And there wouldn’t be if Selig had let their drug agreement do its job, stood up to the headline seekers in D.C., and not hired George Mitchell. The union has little doubt about where the blame is going to fall in Mr. Mitchell’s investigation.
In fact, Selig and the Senator have started publicly condemning the players for refusing to cooperate in the investigation and accusing the union of telling them not to talk. After the union twice opened the basic agreement to toughen the drug testing program last year, Fehr and his colleagues see the Commissioner’s decision to launch the Mitchell investigation as a betrayal of everything the two sides have accomplished through collective bargaining in 20 years.
Hell, with Mitchell looming behind the scenes, it’s just short of a miracle that this deal was done peacefully—or at all.
Fehr stares out at the several hundred reporters crammed into the conference room while Selig congratulates both sides on what they’ve done. Fehr finds the familiar faces—Murray Chass of the New York Times, Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Peter Gammons, now working with ESPN, and a few other veterans who have been here before when there were far fewer smiles and a lot more gritted teeth.
There are many faces Fehr barely recognizes and even more that he doesn’t know at all. Heck, many of these reporters here today were barely out of grade school when he and Selig announced their first agreement together, the shotgun marriage then-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth pushed them into after a two-day strike back in 1985.
Fehr never intended to be in this job this long, but here he sits, coming to terms with Bud Selig for the fifth time. It’s the second time without a work stoppage and the first time without the threat of a strike or lockout.
And, he’s all but certain, it’s the final time with Don Fehr as the executive director of the Players Association.
That was part of his message last Saturday night at MLB headquarters in New York, the one he delivered after it was apparent that a deal was at hand. Selig had been in a day earlier to give a pep talk and then fly back to Milwaukee. Late Saturday night, Fehr, his brother Steve, Michael Weiner, and a few union lawyers were finally just sitting back and relaxing. So, too, were Bob DuPuy and Rob Manfred, baseball’s top negotiators, and their small team of lawyers.
After so many ugly battles and so many angry words in previous negotiations, they all agreed this deal was reached in a professional fashion. It was a moment to savor, especially for the man who had been at it the longest.
“This will be probably be—may well be—my final negotiation,” he told the group that night. “In all the years I’ve been involved with these negotiations, I never thought I’d be able to say there is cooperation between players and management and an environment that allows the game to grow.
“But after all these years, I can finally say that. I am very proud of that.”
Both sides have reason to be proud. Revenues this season will reach $5.6 billion, a 56 percent increase from the beginning of the current contract in 2002. Attendance will surpass 76 million, setting a record for a third straight season. The new television contracts with Fox and TBS, combined with the one-year-old deal with ESPN, are going to bring in $5.5 billion over seven years, another record haul. Baseball’s website is booming, and more regional sports networks are coming online every season.
The players’ average salary is now $2.87 million, an all-time high. For comparison, this year’s $327,000 minimum salary is slightly more than the average player’s salary in 1984. By any measure, the business of baseball has never been better. “You always have a better relationship when both sides are making money,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland told reporters in the interview room moments before the contract was announced. “When you’re putting money in a lot of pockets—and in our case it’s a lot of money—it tends to make people feel real good.”
Indeed, both sides felt so good that they weren’t looking for anything more than minor revisions. The new deal retains the revenue sharing and competitive balance tax rules that were established in the 2002 agreement with only slight changes in thresholds and rates. There are no changes in the drug testing program, and no team will be contracted during the life of the agreement.
There was one thing Fehr wanted that had little to do with money: a big turnout of players at bargaining meetings. He got that, too. Nearly 100 players participated in at least one bargaining session, and many more took part in conference calls and team meetings. It was important for management to see the players at the table, to understand they were engaged and invested in the process. And he wanted to make sure the players understood that, too.
For as proud as Fehr is to have reached a productive working relationship that has ushered in a new Golden Age, as Selig loves to say, and as relieved as he is that this agreement means the game will enjoy 16 seasons without a work stoppage, he still knows it is dangerous for the players to let down their guard as long as the man sitting to his left remains the Commissioner of baseball.
Selig is done talking now, and it’s Fehr’s turn to speak. He’s not going to bring up Mitchell, though he knows the reporters here want him to address that subject. But those are words best saved for another day.
“I share the Commissioner’s view that our game has experienced enormous growth,” says Fehr, who predicts the new agreement will keep the boom going. “We were able to conclude this new agreement because the two parties brought to the table a respect for the positions and needs of the other. As a result, the discussions were workmanlike and pragmatic, and, while difficult on some issues, the talks were conducted in a mutual attempt to get the job done.”
If only Fehr could say the same about Selig and his friend’s ongoing investigation.
George Steinbrenner feels very much at home on the picturesque Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina. This is where his daughter Jennifer went to college, graduating in 1981, five years behind the man she would marry, Steve Swindal. Steinbrenner brought his Yankees here for exhibition games three times while Jenny was an undergrad. And just this spring, George wrote a check for $1 million to help renovate the baseball stadium. When completed, the stadium entryway will be called the Steinbrenner Family Courtyard.
On the pleasantly warm afternoon of Sunday, October 29, George Steinbrenner and his wife Joan are settling into their seats alongside Jenny and Steve in the campus’ historic Playmakers Theatre, home to the school’s musical theater troupe. They all flew in earlier today to watch Haley Swindal play the starring role of Sally Bowles in the troupe’s production of Cabaret.
Haley, the oldest of George’s 13 grandchildren, is a junior and a talented singer and actress. Steinbrenner is enjoying his granddaughter’s portrayal of the scantily clad cabaret singer when he begins to feel ill. By the time the second act ends, he is ghostly pale, his eyes are closed, and he is fading in and out of consciousness. Someone in the audience calls the school’s public safety office as director Benjamin Rumer clears the theater. Steinbrenner is alert but complaining of chest pains as the paramedics wheel him to the ambulance and speed off to the university hospital.
You suffered a series of small transient ischemic attacks, the doctors tell him. They give the family the same news, with a bit more detail. Although it’s not a stroke, the doctor explains, a TIA is a blockage of blood to the brain that can bring on stroke-like symptoms. If the blockages break up quickly, there is no damage to any brain tissue. If.
“I’m fine,” Steinbrenner tells everyone. He insists that Haley not miss the second performance of the play later that night. The doctors run tests to make sure Steinbrenner is stable and suggest that he remain in the hospital a few days. “Forget it!” says George, who is already telling his family to make plans to leave in the morning.
Steinbrenner is resting back in Tampa by the time the Daily Tar Heel, the university’s student newspaper, reports the story two days later. “It looked like he had fainted,” a student sitting two rows behind Steinbrenner told the paper, which reports that the Yankees owner suffered chest pains. The story soon hits the wires, and Rubenstein is ready with a statement.
“George Steinbrenner is well and raising hell today,” Rubenstein wrote. “George felt ill during the performance, which was held in a Revolutionary War auditorium with no air-conditioning and the windows closed tight—it was very hot.”
Rubenstein also takes all calls for the Yankees owner. No, he tells New York reporters, Steinbrenner did not suffer chest pains. Yes, George is already back to work. “I talked to him yesterday and again today,” Rubenstein says. “He’s in great spirits, and we’re all very pleased.”
The Yankees have a lot of decisions to make this offseason: Should they pick up the options on 37-year-olds Sheffield and Mussina? Do they make an offer to Andy Pettitte, now a free agent? Is Melky Cabrera their everyday center fielder? George is indeed involved and back at his desk at the team’s Himes Complex in Tampa, though only for a few hours each day.
He’s gone to see his personal doctor but refuses to share anything he’s learned with Swindal, his sons, or any of his senior staff. Nobody is surprised: George has always kept his health concerns to himself.
But it won’t be long before questions about George’s health won’t have to be asked. The answers will be there for all to see.