Out of all competitive endeavors, sports are the easiest to romanticize. Since they are so hardwired into our childhood, we sprinkle faerie dust on a time that we always assume is better, when we were younger and our heroes were perfect. And no sport is more celebrated through these rosy hues than baseball, from movies to stories to cherished historical items - baseball cards, gloves, and jerseys - passed like a baton down the generations. Then add the Yankees and stir.
The Yankees were generally more corporate than other MLB teams. Fans would wear suits and fedoras to Yankee Stadium. And those of us born in NYC and raised as Yankees fans felt an epic sense of entitlement. Those pinstripes weren't chosen, but rather something we inherit. My generation got spoiled by George Steinbrenner, who saved the team, if not the town, when he bought the club in 1973.
Over the next three decades, the Boss shook the pinstriped tree until the lazy scrubs and draft duds dropped to the ground. He restored the old equation of sports, and of its greatest team - winning is essential, and losing is inexcusable. The world west of the Hudson would call the Boss and his thunderous moods an embarrassment to such a proud franchise, while we listened to Steinbrenner with pride. For a moment he was among us, not above us. He felt each loss as viscerally as we did, and it's hardly a coincidence that the Yanks started winning the moment he wrenched the team from CBS – and even less of a coincidence that his Bronx Bombers went dark after he died.
Of course, it would be unfair to declare that the Yanks don't care about winning since the Boss passed away. His son Hank seemed to have some of his emotional fire, but it seemed the family worried about his temper and benched him. The other son, Hal Steinbrenner, seems to get, in an intellectual sense, what winning means to his team and town, and what each expects of his club. But the truth is the Yankees have won one World Series since the Boss collapsed at Otto Graham's funeral, in 2003. And they have not even reached a World Series since Steinbrenner died in July 2010.
There are many reasons for this dry spell, but among the hallmarks of a World Series drought was some serious outrage from the old man. He would shake up his brass and his players by uttering a public apology to Big Apple baseball fans, to assure them that this is unacceptable at all levels of the Yankees hierarchy, from the bat boy to the cleanup hitter. The implication, of course, that they didn't do all they could to win was one that ticked off all his people.
Mike & The Mad Dog used to get geeked up over the burning missive slowly sticking out like a tongue from the fax machine. Mike or Dog used to tug it out, queue up the patriotic flutes for the general's latest edict, and then read with an exaggerated sense of royalty. Steinbrenner was quick to brand any campaign an abject failure, no matter the circumstances surrounding the team's loss. Even if some overreaction was in the pipeline - such as poaching an aging player from another club, or overpaying to keep one of his own - you know that the Boss had one priority when it came to his baseball club: winning, at all costs and at great cost.
Maybe there's no direct correlation between the team’s success and Steinbrenner's frothing, fire-breathing approach to management. But since it worked so well for so long, it's hard to dismiss it out of hand. And it's even harder to ignore that these new Yankees, all about class and glass and luxury items, don't seem to have the inherent toughness to win the World Series.
Perhaps, middle-aged folks like myself have equated volume with victory, ignoring all the quiet champions in sports history. But the Yanks did seem to get their marching orders from The Boss, who could laugh, shout, or cry at a moment's notice. We loved him for it, and some of us miss his burning rage over baseball, over his Yankees, and his yearly desire to win a World Series, for us. That's why he bought the greatest sports team on Earth, to feel the gratitude from the greatest city on earth.
Follow Jason Keidel on Twitter: @JasonKeidel
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