Randy Levine Is Not George Steinbrenner

George Steinbrenner is dead. Hank Steinbrenner has been muzzled like one of the Steinbrenners’ prize horses. Hal Steinbrenner is almost Derek Jeter-like in his ability to speak and say nothing at the same time. That leaves team president Randy Levine as the team spokesman with whom the media feels it can light a fuse and ignite an explosion.

The fact remains that Randy Levine is not George Steinbrenner. Whether or not this is a good or bad thing is in the eyes of the beholder. It’s a natural occurrence for memories to focus on the positive after someone is dead and gone. The truth is that George spent a lot of money, fired a lot of managers and had long stretches of dysfunction and embarrassment surrounding his organization. That’s before getting into his two suspensions. The Yankees rebuilt with George suspended for the Howie Spira affair and it’s unlikely that the young players who were part of the Yankees five championships over the past 18 years would have been allowed to develop as Yankees had he been around amid all his impatient bluster. He would have traded them. Through fortuitous circumstances, he returned to a team on the cusp of a championship and his public profile grew from a raving dictator who’d ruined a once-proud franchise into the generous general who led the club and gave his employees everything they needed to be successful.

The Yankee fans who started rooting for the team, conveniently, when they won their first championship of the era in 1996, only remember the “good” George. He was irreplaceable in a multitude of ways, positively and negatively. Writers miss him because their newspapers and websites would be filled with threats, missives, irrational screaming sessions that could just as easily have come from the pages of Mein Kampf, and demands that the team play better with no excuses. The fans miss him—with some justification—because if he were around, there wouldn’t be an $189 million limit on the 2014 payroll and they wouldn’t be trotting the array of cheap and limited no-names at catcher, at third base, at first base and in the outfield as they have so far this season.

But he’s gone. Now there’s a college of cardinals in his place with an interest in making money above winning. They don’t have the passion for the game and competition that the father had. Perhaps it was inevitable that once he was gone the edge would be gone too. The fear that accompanied working for the Yankees has degenerated into a corporate comfortableness. The sense of urgency has disappeared and there’s no one to replicate it.

In this ESPN piece, Wallace Matthews tried to get some answers from Levine and walked away with nothing. Levine has been under fire in recent days because of his comment that the team has the talent to contend. Whether or not he really believes that is known only to him. He’s not a baseball guy, but the Yankees’ baseball guys haven’t done a particularly good job either and that’s something that George would’ve latched onto and, also with some justification, gone into a raving rant wondering why the young players that were supposed to be the cornerstones to the future have, by and large, faltered. If it was George, he’s openly ask why the Rays, A’s, Pirates and others are able to win without a $200 million payroll and his team can’t. It’s obvious, from Hal’s statements, that he too is wondering the same thing. The difference between him and his father is that he’s acting on it by slashing payroll. Levine is the front man, nothing more. He’s not able to do the George thing and cause earthquakes with his bellowing. People sort or roll their eyes at him and/or ignore him.

Levine also failed to give votes of confidence to general manager Brian Cashman and manager Joe Girardi. Was that by design? If it had been George in his heyday, both would be in serious jeopardy. The ground under Cashman’s feet should be teetering regardless of whether it was George, the Steinbrenner kids or Levine making the decision; Girardi deserves a better fate and if they fire him, he’ll have his choice of about four to six jobs almost immediately, some very tempting like the Nationals, Angels and his hometown White Sox. Dismissing Girardi would speed the team’s downfall. Dismissing Cashman would probably be a positive given the team’s new financial circumstances and the GM’s clear inability to function under this template.

Levine sounded as if he was trying to be positive and not be controversial. Because he’s not George and because the media and fans are looking for fire and brimstone, they’re clutching at what Levine said, as innocuous as it was, and what he didn’t say. That makes it a no-win, meaningless situation. Nobody really cares what Levine says because he doesn’t have the surrounding lunacy that was a George hallmark. There’s no George Steinbrenner anymore. He’s not coming back. And as things stand now, neither are the Yankees that George’s money built.

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Joel Sherman’s Hackdom Reaches New Lows Even For Him

This is from the August 27^th issue of The Weekly Standard and has to do with the plagiarism of Fareed Zakaria:

Plagiarism is not a crime in any legal code, but among people who make their living with words, there is no deeper offense. The plagiarist has not just stolen from the work of another writer; he has used it to disguise his own inadequacy. It is a symptom of laziness, to be sure; but above all, it’s a crime of arrogance.

If there are a series of words that appropriately describe New York Post baseball columnist Joel Sherman, “lazy,” “inadequate,” “arrogant,” and “plagiarist” come immediately to mind.

There’s no proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the evidence is clear that in May of 2010, Sherman plagiarized me. You can decide for yourself by reading my posting from my old blogspot site here, dated May 22^nd, 2010 and having to do with the Astros trying to trade Roy Oswalt; here’s Sherman’s posting on his NY Post Blog on May 25^th.

What he wrote regarding then-Astros owner Drayton McLane, Scott Kazmir, Cliff Lee and the Phillies is nearly verbatim to what I wrote three days earlier. When I pointed it out in a subsequent posting here (scroll down to the section beginning with “Hmmmm,”) and challenged Sherman directly on Twitter, he responded by blocking me.

It’s typical.

The same Joel Sherman who writes with the tone of the tough Brooklyn street kid he portrays himself to be ran away when directly called on his transgressions. Sherman, who often writes of the “professionalism” exhibited by the New York Yankees—professionalism that he implied so “engaged” David Wright to the degree that Sherman suggested in this column from March of 2011 that Wright would do well to have a two-week “furlough” to see first-hand the professionalism of—are you ready?—the Yankees and Red Sox clubhouses. Yes. The Red Sox turned out to be so professional that they’ve come completely undone a year-and-a-half later amid infighting, blame, and entitlement. The Yankees’ myth of dignity and professionalism is part of the sale of the franchise as better than everyone else, bolstered by the constant harping on history and inherent self-importance from the YES Network, Michael Kay, Suzyn Waldman, Mike Francesa and anyone else who thinks they played an integral part in the Yankees’ success over the past two decades. George Steinbrenner is no longer the meddlesome buffoon he was in the 1980s, but a beloved patriarch whose attention to detail and conservative values laid the foundation for the juggernaut the Yankees have become.

Of course it’s nonsense.

I doubt Wright was “engaged” by anything. It’s more likely that he was just staring off into space and waiting for Sherman to slink off in another direction and leave him alone. The Yankees are the favored team of him and his newspaper, but in spite of all that professionalism oozing from the Yankees organization, it has yet to embed itself into Sherman. Either that or he doesn’t understand the concept well enough to indulge in it himself.

Or maybe he does and has accepted the fact that he hasn’t the capability to behave as a professional, so he chooses to adhere to the mandates of his editors and his own anti-Mets bias and write the sort of drivel that inevitably ends with anything and everything culminating in a clumsy indictment against the Mets regardless of what they do or don’t do. The latest was on Sunday when, as Craig Calcaterra summed it up here on Hardball Talk, the true losers in the massive blockbuster trade from last weekend between the Red Sox and Dodgers were…the Mets!!!

Obviously!!!!!

This is on the heels of Francesa’s deranged and scattershot ranting and raving session against the Mets days earlier.

The suggestion that the Mets would’ve been able to package Johan Santana and Jason Bay with Wright is so out-of-context and indicative of the media’s desire to torment the Mets that it’s not even worth discussing in a baseball sense. Josh Beckett, right now, is able to get on the mound and pitch and is making the same amount of money in 2013-2014 that Santana is due next year alone; Bay is a lost cause while Carl Crawford’s downfall hasn’t been a clear loss of skills as is the case with Bay, but because of injuries; I suppose Wright and Adrian Gonzalez are comparable, but the Mets are not going to trade Wright and alienate the remaining fans they have willing to come to games, buy merchandise and support the club for a collection of minor league prospects that may or may not make it. Aside from Sherman’s warped world, there’s no correlation between the trade the Red Sox and Dodgers made and the Mets.

This is not about the Mets in a direct criticism and blueprint for turning the ship around, but the Post’s gleeful use of the Mets as a perpetual target to accumulate webhits, spur discussion, and aggravate Mets’ fans. Sherman’s evangelical fervor and condescending hypocrisy is highlighted by his pure lack of ability to smoothly put into words an attack on the Mets that isn’t this transparent. Following the edicts of his editors in a “kill them all and let God sort them out” way, he’s unable to face the consequences and hides when called on his trash. Much like his conceited attempts to be the first to break the story of Cliff Lee’s trade to the Yankees (a trade that wasn’t completed and never came to pass) and his subsequent explanations of why he was wrong, he wasn’t really wrong because Mariners’ GM, Sherman’s “Truly Amazin’ Exec” Jack Zduriencik (dubbed as such in another attack on the Mets) had used shady practices to extract what he perceived to be a better deal for the Rangers and left the Yankees and their apologists angry and slighted.

Sherman knows shady techniques well because he partakes in them on an everyday basis. He’s an annoying pest—Howie Spira without the nerve.

Those poor Yankees were done wrong. And those hideous Mets are “losers” because they failed to make a blockbuster trade that wasn’t available to them and wasn’t going to happen because they’re not trading Wright. Strangely, there was less of this vitriol when the Mets were playing well; when they had young players contributing significantly to their surprising first half of the season; when the Bernie Madoff lawsuit that was going to bankrupt the Wilpons was settled out of court.

Does it matter that GM Sandy Alderson—who Sherman continually pushed the Mets to hire—isn’t going to acquiesce to the media pressure as his predecessor Omar Minaya did? That it’s quite likely that Alderson has told the Wilpons that they’re going to have to take these public floggings for the club to be financially stable and a contender in 2014?

The team is rebuilding. This is what a rebuild looks like. They have financial problems, but spending available money to sign players who won’t help much to get the press off their backs, or making stupid trades to get down to the bare bones with unrecognizable players who will “someday” be part of the renaissance, aren’t going to fix the team, nor will it be salable for 2013 when Wright and R.A. Dickey are at least reasons for fans to come to the park.

Sherman exemplifies clumsy opportunism from a low-level sleaze who followed orders from management well enough to garner himself a column while using “sources” that may or may not exist, bad writing, and self-aggrandizement to put forth his agenda. That agenda is to hammer the Mets and whether the hammer is held from the wrong end and swung awkwardly and ineptly doesn’t matter, nor does the fact that all he succeeded in doing was whack himself in his own nether regions that are, judging by his behavior, quite small or even nonexistent.

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Jim Tressel And George Steinbrenner

What would one of the most famous alumnus of Ohio State University think of the Jim Tressel scandal and resignation?

Would said individual have joined the brigade of those who leapt off the Tressel bandwagon of success as soon as the allegations of impropriety and rule-breaking forced him to step down?

Or would he have defended his friend?

What would George have done?

The George I’m referring to is the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner—a man who, like Tressel, knew his fair share of scandal and punitive measures being taken against him; and who, like Tressel, had reasons for doing what he did. Whether they were good, bad, self-serving, nitpicky, mean-spirited or politically motivated reasons is irrelevant—nothing was done just because.

If Steinbrenner fired his manager, it was because he wanted to make a change.

If he contributed to Richard Nixon’s presidential re-election campaign illegally, it was because he wanted his candidate to win, circumnavigated legality and was convicted and punished.

If he tried to dig up dirt as a vengeful act against one of his own players, Dave Winfield, and got involved with a sleazy hustler like Howie Spira, it was because he was irate at having been essentially taken in a contract negotiation to sign the star outfielder.

Steinbrenner was friends with Tressel.

In fact, when the college football game dubbed The Boss Bowl was staged at Yankee Stadium last December, Bill Madden wrote about Steinbrenner only being seen wearing one ring other than a Yankees championship ring; that ring was the 2002 Ohio State National Championship ring given to him by…Jim Tressel—NY Daily News Story, 12.28.2010.

How would Steinbrenner have reacted to this mess in which Tressel is embroiled? The mess that cost him his job and sullied his reputation?

I think we know the answer.

As a total outsider and college football neophyte with no connection either way, I have to ask: Considering some of the things that are going on in big, massive moneymaker college sports programs, was Tressel helping his kids make some extra money and gain perks such an awful thing?

So they were trading memorabilia for tattoos—so what?

In 1989, Barry Switzer was forced out at the University of Oklahoma for a series of transgressions by players that included a shooting, drug dealing and allegations of rape—Sports Illustrated 2.27.1989.

Because Switzer won and won and won during his run at Oklahoma, his personal behaviors were never scrutinized to the point where he was either told to rein in his players and himself or he’d have to go. Many winked and nodded at Switzer, envying him for the way he lived his life without pretense or restraint.

But once the scandal erupted and the team wasn’t winning National Championships, it was easier to dump Switzer to show that the university was “serious” about cleaning up its act.

Were they?

Or did they want to put on a show of zero tolerance to get the media and angry public—and donating boosters—off their backs and continue the financial and practical support for the school?

Switzer’s personal life dovetailed with the way he ran his programs, college and pro. He was proud of his lack of hypocrisy as a poor kid who made good; a drinker, partyer and womanizer; the stories of his generosity with money and time are prevalent.

Because Switzer didn’t live with the preferred conservative, made-for-public-consumption face that many like to associate with football coaches, there was always a risk of something terrible happening; after the series of incidents related in the SI story, he was no longer viable as the leader of Oklahoma’s massive football program and once the threat of money no longer coming in from supporters was issued, it was easy to force him out.

How does this relate to Tressel?

The overwhelming sense I get from reading the articles and editorials is that Tressel is viewed as a wily politician who played the angles. If that meant looking the other way when he knew there were violations going on, helped his players line their pockets with feigned ignorance as his personal protective shield, or behaved in a manner that the public Tressel would consider immoral while the private Tressel shut his eyes and ignored what he knew in the interests of winning, so be it.

Part of Tressel’s problem appears to be that image that was so carefully crafted with the ends justifying the means. Quite possibly, in his mind, the young men he was in charge of weren’t doing something so awful that it was a detached brick in the foundation of a downgrading of society; in essence, “it’s just tattoos and the trading of collectibles”; “they’re getting no-show jobs and cars to drive and no one’s getting hurt”.

No harm, no foul. Just don’t get caught.

They got caught.

The integrity of the public and the games weren’t harmed by this as they would with the dealing of drugs or shaving points.

In comparison to some of the stuff the players could’ve been doing, was what they were doing worthy of this outrage?

I find it laughable at the speed in which those who were supposedly ardent supporters and “friends” of people who get embroiled in these types of circumstances abandon them when they’re no longer of use. Tressel wasn’t going to get past NCAA sanctions; his position was impossible to maintain; and the team wasn’t going to be as successful as OSU fans are accustomed with him staying.

That, more than his lying, is the reason he had to go.

Tressel’s rectitude was probably partially real, partially a salesmanship persona. In order to function in that world, it’s necessary. Those aghast at the dichotomy between the public Tressel and the private Tressel need to examine their belief systems. Switzer was the same guy privately as he was publicly; Tressel was being a politician as his “senatorial” image suggests.

Switzer’s players acted with the tacit acknowledgement of the coaches and university supporters, it was okay as long as they won and didn’t wind up in jail or the morgue.

It’s like this everywhere.

Was Tressel being a self-interested liar with ends justifying the means? Or was he functioning as anyone who wants to run a big time college football program has to function in order to win and keep the money rolling in?

George Steinbrenner understood how these things worked and would most likely have supported his friend.

And he wouldn’t have been wrong.

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