The YES Network and Its Reporting Sham

The failure of the YES Network to acknowledge the Brian Cashman-stalker story as anything of note should prove with finality that they’re the propaganda arm of the Yankees’ apparatus and should be treated as such.

No longer can anyone confuse YES with a venue for legitimate analysis and sports news, if they ever could to begin with.

Because Michael Kay has yet to discuss this issue isn’t indicative of a conspiracy on the part of the employees of YES and Yankees’ apologists to ignore it and hope it goes away. If you’re listening to Kay in the interest of a genuine dissemination of objective information, you need to check your premises before moving forward to anything in the real world. Paraphrasing Kay, the self-absolving line regarding Cashman’s scandal, “it’s personal” or something to that effect, is typical of one whose interests coincide with the organization and not to his listeners.

The concept that Cashman and his stalker and apparent former lover Louise Meanwell/Neathway is out of bounds for the sports world had weight before the police got involved and she was arrested; before the revelation that Cashman had given her $6000 in an effort to quiet her; before it became known that the GM of the Yankees had written a letter of recommendation for a clearly disturbed person with the Yankees letterhead across the top of the page.

How is this not relevant enough to mention in passing? How has it not been part of the discussion of Cashman doing his job properly and if his involvement with this woman and his wife filing for divorce will affect his ability to do it?

The out-front representative of the entire organization was writing recommendation letters under the implied auspices of the Yankees. As that representative of the Steinbrenner family and the Yankees, Cashman was essentially saying that this woman—who was either having sex with him or blackmailing him—was, in the view of Cashman, a qualified and stable person.

Is that not a story rife questions that a high school reporter would know needed to be asked?

There has never been an honest and aboveboard reporting wing on YES. Even when Kim Jones was asking difficult questions to Joe Torre, they weren’t asked in the pursuit of answers for the audience; it later was revealed that the questions were traps set by George Steinbrenner and Randy Levine due to their ongoing feud with the then-Yankees manager and Torre knew it.

Kay, as is his wont, made sure to kick Torre after the manager was out the door with the statement that he “protected” Torre.

Is that his job?

Or was he following the mandated plot to keep his bosses happy?

And if that was the case, how dare he claim to be providing evenhanded, “expert” baseball analysis on his radio show while simultaneously functioning with a clear and transparent agenda.

Kay’s lack of journalistic integrity and skill are self-evident, but what about everyone else on the network?

Last season, when Joe Girardi had an on-field confrontation with pitcher A.J. Burnett, YES reporter Jack Curry almost apologetically broached the subject so as not to offend the manager and upset the hierarchy of what was and wasn’t okay to say on the Yankees’ signature network.

During the Penn State scandal, we saw what a dogged and legitimate journalist Jones was with her on-site reporting and analysis from the point-of-view of a Penn State alumnus.

It’s a shame we never got to see that while she was the sideline reporter and post-game clubhouse voice of the YES Network. But she had her marching orders and she followed them. I can’t blame her for that.

Under no circumstances am I suggesting the Cashman should be fired nor that this is anything other than what he says it was and what’s been reported so far. He got involved with an attractive woman who appears to have a long history of stalking, obsessive and harassing behaviors. It’s embarrassing, but nothing that he can’t overcome and continue to do a job he’s done competently for almost a decade-and-a-half.

But it is a story even for the network whose identification is side-by-side and in lockstep with the Yankees baseball and business wing. The problem is when side-by-side becomes indistinguishable with intertwined and that’s what the relationship has become.

When you can’t tell the difference is the time that you can’t believe anything they say because what they say won’t be truth-centric; it will be based on organizational needs.

That’s not reporting.

It’s a sham.

And a blatant one at that.

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Truth is Stranger Than Bad Fiction with Brian Cashman

Tom Wolfe had the “Masters of the Universe” in The Bonfire of the Vanities, I have the GM of the Evil Empire.

I need a title.

The Life of Brian would be good, but it’s taken.

But we’ll worry about the title later.

A useful technique in fiction is that if you have the exoskeleton of a story mapped out in your mind, but don’t want to lose the plot by thinking too much, then you come up with names that represent the role of the characters therein and give them believable names once a rough draft or outline is complete.

But if you’re doing satire and want it to be clear satire, you give them names that are so absurd that they have to be real.

It’s a fine line.

Truth is stranger than fiction and given the names of the two protagonists—Brian Cashman and Louise Meanwell—are so ludicrous for a story of this kind, I feel compelled to come up with some names for the other participants.

They may or may not be thinly veiled for “real people”.

May or may not.

Let’s take a look:

—

Brian Cash-man: GM of the fictional Big Apple Highlanders (*wink*), he’s enduring a mid-life crisis that resulted in his newfound honesty in dealing with his players to the detriment of his employers, engaged in at least two affairs that have gone public and acquired a real life would-be stalker who tried and succeeded in extorting money from him.

—

Louise Mean-well: Is she a crazy criminal or is she a crazy person who got involved with a powerful man and used that to her advantage by trying to accumulate money?

There’s more to her story than the tabloids are telling and because someone may or may not be mentally unstable doesn’t mean they’re lying about everything they say.

—

A.J. Tabloidreporter: Working for a self-described muckraking website and crossing the line from exposing athletes and sports people into the tawdry, he broke the story just as it was about to explode.

Perhaps there’s a correlation between the two.

Or maybe not.

—

Jimmy Goodcop: a lifelong Highlanders fan, walking the beat in the toughest neighborhoods to “do some good”; he’s honest to a fault, plays by the rules and is the legitimately kindhearted police officer who arrested Ms. Meanwell and assured the Yankees GM that he and his estranged family were safe.

—

Robert Badcop: A fan of the crosstown Meadowlarks and Jimmy’s intimidating partner who made sure to let Ms. Meanwell know that she would never ever harm Mr. Cashman nor his family. His tough guy persona is a cover for the underlying heart of gold.

—

Jane Prosecutor: Attractive, conservative and not a baseball fan, she’s considered a hardline district attorney who advocates harsh sentences for any and all crimes and public transgressions. Political aspirations will be ably assisted by this high-profile case. Her intention is to publicly dress down the Yankees GM for his complicity in the prototypical affair.

—

Michael Yankeesshill: The lead broadcaster for the Highlanders signature network, HEN, in his delusional world if the story isn’t mentioned by him, it didn’t happen.

If Cash-man had worked for the crosstown Meadowlarks and was dealing with the Ponzi scheme perpetrated by international criminal Irving Made-Off gutting their coffers and ruining their team and reputations or if it was the scandal-plagued former GM of that team—Phil Stevens—the story would’ve been the entire show even during Super Bowl week.

Instead, it was ignored.

—

Fritz and Helmut Sensenbrunner: the owners of the Highlanders and right wing conservatives for whom any embarrassment to their franchise is spitting on the grave of their late father, the tyrannical raving maniac Rolf Sensenbrenner. They’re unhappy that the GM of their team is behaving in this way and, worse than anything, getting caught.

—

A-Rod: Alex Rodriguez has to be in this story as A-Rod.

Just because.

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In all seriousness, when Deadspin broke the story in a gauche manner with A.J. Daulerio going so far as to say he was wearing Cashman’s pajama bottoms at “Lou’s” apartment, it was something that was done to embarrass a man because of his personal life and it wasn’t really anyone’s business but Cashman, his family and the Yankees.

The next day, it became news that is going to affect the Yankees organization because once it reaches these proportions, the behavior of the man running the team is absolutely relevant on and off the field.

Cashman was obviously involved with this woman.

If he hadn’t been, why did he pay her one penny let alone $6000? Why is there the audio of Cashman calling her (in a tone that suggests he wants her to do his taxes rather than contacting a former or present lover) and writing recommendation letters on her behalf?

And why, if she was some “psycho stalker”, was he taking part in consultations with her family and psychiatrist? Is he a humanitarian that he wants to save the world lunatic by lunatic?

Why didn’t he call the police and alert the Yankees that he had a problem with a disturbed person? She would’ve been arrested and the police and Yankees would’ve taken steps to protect Cashman and his family.

This ongoing saga is a strange, scandalous turn of events that will go on and on until the media and public tire of it.

And that’s not going to be for a long, long while.

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Yesterday the Cashman Story Was Gossip; Now It’s News

Brian Cashman took part in a “sting” to catch this woman who was supposedly stalking him?

Okay.

It’s a little farfetched, but okay.

Yesterday Deadspin published an article detailing this woman (the mysterious “Lou”) who claimed to have had a relationship with the Yankees GM and I wrote that Cashman’s off-field activities are no one’s business as long as they’re not affecting his job.

They updated the piece after “Lou” was arrested. You can read it here.

A few hours later, the woman was arrested.

You can read the news story here on NYTimes.com.

Obviously Cashman had some sort of relationship with this woman and it morphed into extortion, arrest and embarrassment.

With the revelation (also on Deadspin) that Cashman had been carrying on with a different married woman last year, this along his newly outgoing and somewhat self-destructive decision to openly discuss his players as if he were a columnist or TV analyst with ruthless honesty, is Cashman’s mid-life crisis permeating into the way he does his job?

If so, that’s not good.

Were George Steinbrenner still around, he never would’ve tolerated his GM acting in this way and having it get into the public sphere as foundation of ridicule for his franchise; nor would he have taken lightly Cashman’s public rift with his bosses over the signing of Rafael Soriano a year ago and the hard-line he took with Derek Jeter which angered the iconic star.

Hank and Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine—conservatives all—can’t be happy with the “new” Cashman’s image either.

Having just signed a 3-year, $9 million contract and running the team in a mostly effective fashion, Cashman’s job is not in any kind of jeopardy. But if this off-field meltdown continues, there may come a day where they say enough is enough. And if Cashman thinks his four World Series rings as a GM and history of success is going to get him another job immediately if he and the Yankees part ways, he’d better realize that there’s still the perception in many circles inside and outside of baseball that he’s an average GM who’s benefited greatly from a $200 million payroll and can’t transport his success from one club to another as Pat Gillick did.

Yesterday this was fodder for tabloid gossip and in the wink, nod and giggle section of the paper. Today it’s in the front of the paper and making the GM of the most famous team in sports and his organization look foolish. If he wants to maintain a reputation of professionalism, he’d better get his personal life and attitude in order and somewhere close to what it was five years ago or his problems are going to expand to the point where he won’t have a job in New York anymore.

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