Bye George

It is an uncomfortable but fitting coincidence that two of the stalwarts of the Yankee era have passed away within a week of each other. Last week it was longtime P.A. announcer Bob Sheppard, and this morning old George Steinbrenner finally faded away like a good soldier. Given the rule of three, if I were Yogi Berra I'd definitely go in for a check-up.

Of course there is sadness in the passing of each of these Yankee icons, but at least each lived a full and fruitful life and got to observe the results of their efforts and the ultimate appreciation by the public. In Sheppard's case this was a cinch. His mellifluous tones were always an auditory treat, and if not the "Voice of God," as Reggie Jackson called him, it came awfully close for me. Given my quasireligious fervor for baseball, the Yankees, and the grandiose temple that was Yankee Stadium, it's hard not to consider his dulcet announcements as somewhat deific. And Derek Jeter will see to it that as long as he plays it will be Sheppard's recorded voice that announces his plate appearances. Okay, perhaps that speaks of excessive hubris by Jeter, but after all, he is the Captain.

I think that if Sheppard had his way, he would be remembered for the announcements of Mickey Mantle and Jose Valdevioso, two wonderfully mellifluous monikers. And I will be smiling for a long time remembering Sheppard's plaint, "What can you do with 'Steve Sax'? What can you do with 'Mickey Kluttz'? In fact,"What can you do with Mickey Kluttz?" ought to be the name of his biography.

Well he was rewarded for his skill and durability with a 99-yer-life span, exceed by only George Burns, Bob Hope and my mother.

My Mom, in fact, has the same birthday as George Steinbrenner, but celebrated hers last week in far better shape. George had been declining for years, severely enough to cede control of the Yankees to his less manic son Hank. The Steinbrenner mark will continue, though the hunger for victory may not be quite as demanding.

I hold mostly positive feelings about George, acknowledging that I probably would not like him at all as a person or a boss. But he achieves something quite profound in my affective life, which was to bring the Yankees back from the bottom of the pond in their post-1964 depression and create a championship team by 1977. He was a visionary and a mover, and his advocacy of free agency--or at least his adaptation to it after the Messersmith decision--was a literal game changer. He brought Catfish Hunter to the Yankees, then Reggie Jackson, along with talented managers like Billy Martin (over and over) and Bob Lemon.

That success, though, created unreasonable expectations and a profligacy of spending on over-the-hill free agents in the 1980s, when the Yankees could not win a pennant despite the importation of Dave Winfield and Rickey Henderson. Steinbrenner's instinct for pitching talent was not as commensurate, and the Yanks could not climb over teams with better chemistry. He also thought that changing managers like one change linens would somehow improve results, and instead it caused chaos. Given that the Yanks won more games in that decade than any other team, and only got into the series once (1981), there was something amiss in his formula.

It took a judge-imposed hiatus from baseball that loosened his grip on the gene3al management in the early '90s that helped the Yanks realign themselves with the young talent that would produce a championship team in the late '90s, the last baseball dynasty, some of whose start still function admirably today. The "Core Four" or Jeter, Posada, Rivera and Pettitte are still major forces in the team with the best record so far in 2010. If George was less responsible for their development, he deserves credit for bringing in the smartest baseball people, from Gene Michael then to Brian Cashman now. And so we have Arod, Tex, Cano, C.C., Hughes and Gardner.

The last pronouncement I heard from Steinbrenner came last week, when he was reported as saying how pleased he was with this year's Yankee performance. And although he was too weak last fall to participate in the Yankee victory parade, the pride and joy he must have felt was certainly merited. Thank you.