Well, the Subway Series we couldn’t bear watching is over, and we got through it, didn’t we? The Yankees win again, all the stretch limos can return to home base, as well as the main eventers who discovered first base in October and wouldn’t know a token if they found one in their finger bowl.
It happens every autumn at every World Series, but the fact that it happened again in New York, where almost every season ends with a parade, is especially vexing to those of us in Chicago, where we settle for ticker-tape promises.
Among the oldest of hollow hymns in our bereaved athletic precinct is that we desperately need a George Steinbrenner to own here. George once was an assistant football coach at Northwestern and, typically, we let him get away to pursue big business, such as funding the Yankees’ estimable achievement, four championships of the last five available.
We conveniently forget that Steinbrenner presided over one of the least successful and most expensive droughts in franchise history, a span from 1982 through 1995 without a pennant. Just as easily we attribute the Yankees’ current reign to Steinbrenner’s penchant for outspending the competition.
The truth is the New York baseball scene was invigorated by having not one Steinbrenner, but two. After the crosstown Mets went to the 1973 World Series, they waited until 1986 for their next trip. In between they were down and out and alienating fans by dumping demigods such as Tom Seaver. Another funk occurred during the late ’80s and early ’90s. The woebegone Mets of 1996 carried a measly $25 million payroll and drew fewer customers than the White Sox, would you believe? But when Mets owners Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon realized they either had to get into it or get out of it, Steinbrenner felt a new pressure, a pressure from within the Big Apple.
Say what you will about Steinbrenner, but he has played according to the rules. The game’s system is flawed, but his organization is solid. He’s kept homegrown assets such as Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera, boldly chased potential stars like Orlando Hernandez and, last but not least, added by subtracting–witness Hideki Irabu.
We’ll repeat that for the benefit of any Chicago sports executives who might have missed it. Steinbrenner doesn’t compound mistakes by retaining them. He can’t, because the Mets want a new ballpark, too, and they aren’t about to surrender the territory. Yes, that was Seattle free agent Alex Rodriguez at Shea Stadium the other night.
Now let us digress. Or, more impolitely, let us drop from the exalted level of baseball in New York to whatever it is that transpires here. Shortly after the Cubs concluded a rousing 65-victory campaign, manager Don Baylor issued his wish list of players he’d like, the sooner the better.
The story, on these very pages, read like Exhibit A in Tampering 101. But if the Cubs escape a fine from Commissioner Bud Selig, it must be because he senses Baylor’s desperation. The Cubs paid through the nose for a sorry summer, in part because they employ expensive, mediocre veterans in places where young prospects should be, if they had any.
The White Sox have plenty of those, and it was a fun story about how they and their bargain brothers from Oakland would scare those Yankees this October. Fun for a while, anyway. But where do the White Sox go from here? Kenny Williams is the new general manager, no surprise because Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf got the idea years ago.
Here’s what’s puzzling. One of Williams’ first pronouncements creates a headline: World Series or bust. Then the fine print: Williams says he hasn’t yet discussed the budget with Reinsdorf. Is this possible?
An all-Chicago World Series is, once in a rare while. Who can forget Cubs vs. Sox in 1906? We did it first, and none of those copycats can take that away from us. Not Steinbrenner, the Yankees or the Mets. We just haven’t quite figured out how to arrange for a curtain call.
