One thing that people fail to realize about George Steinbrenner is that he was a very active participant in competitive sports in college.
He was an excellent hurdler on the varsity track and field team, served as sports editor of the student paper, played piano in the band, and played halfback on the football team in his senior year. Steinbrenner served as an assistant football coach at Northwestern University from 1955-56, and at Purdue University from 1956-57.
Why is this relevant? When you spend your formative years playing competitive sports, and then take that a step further and serve as a coach for programs like Northwestern, and Purdue, you learn more than a few things along the way.
Besides learning about the fire of your own desire to win as a competitor, when you become a coach you observe and learn about how different players respond to different situations. You see how they change, how they wilt, or how they grow. You learn to motivate. You learn how to teach players to win, you learn how to rebound from failure. Most of all, you get to watch the human element in action and you see different personalities day in and day out and how those personalities respond to competition.
This is a large part, a driving rudder of why George Steinbrenner is not your average sports franchise owner, why he is relentless in his pursuit of winning. When he bought the Yankees he claimed, and I believe that he intended, to stay hands off - but a sportsman can't avoid the lust for competition and victory.
I needed to juxtapose George with the title above to drive the point home. To display why Brian Cashman doesn't have the necessities to successfully build this Yankee team back to Championship form.
The juxtaposition of George and both of his sons, dumb and dumber. I know that the've played with horses, but niether of them to my knowledge have the competitive sports background that George did - and consequently, they don't have the know-how for building a winner. If they did, then they could dissect the areas and the moves wherein the Yankee organization made poor decisions.
They would undestand that Brian just isn't a great baseball man as far as evaluating talent and personalities - he needs someone who was a ballplayer like a Stick Michael to help him not only make decisions, but to nurture him and educate him. He needs better people around him.
Remember the movie, CLASH OF THE TITANS? There were those three blind sisters, they all shared this glass eye that they had to pass around amongst themselves in order to see what was going on around them. Yeah, well, thats what the Yankee organization is beginning to look like.
The Yankees want Brian Cashman back as their general manager next year, and have told him so, Yankees co-chairman Hal Steinbrenner told Newsday in a phone interview Monday.
"He knows that we're with him, that we want him back," Steinbrenner said.
Cashman confirmed that to Newsday in a phone interview, saying: "Yes, we've talked. They've [the Steinbrenners] mentioned that during the season."
Steinbrenner said conversations took place among himself, brother and co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner, father and principal owner George Steinbrenner and Cashman when the Yankees played in Tampa earlier this month. Hal Steinbrenner said: "We did talk in Tampa. We didn't talk about dollars, but we talked about time frame, length [of contract]."
Now I ask - how could they possibly want him back for any reason other than the fact that they simply do not know any better?
Look at his moves - his not grasping the logic behind getting Johan Santana - when he has a core of stars looking at the last few best years of their career, the 30-somethings like Jeter, Posada, Rivera, and Arod - the simple base logic of striking while the iron is hot escaped him because he is all businessman.
The motherfuckers who run the team charge unGodly amounts of money for tickets, they have their own network, advertising dollars up their asses - and they have the balls to tell us that $20-$25 million was too much with a new Stadium opening - and a boatload of money coming off the books?
If you want one of the clear cut examples of why Hank Steinbrenner is not only useless beyond punchlines, but also harmful just look at his comments about "next year" and the "injury" challenges the team had. You didn't hear a peep out of the guy for a month, so you were left wondering what is he thinking right now. Then he comes out and talks about the bad injuries the Yankees have had and how good they are going to be next year? ASSHOLE!! As a leader you cannot be silent for so long and then come out with that, how feeble, how weak. When he said that he let the little bit of air that was in the Yankees baloon right out. When he said 'next year', he let the players know that it was "ok" to shit-can this year.
Brian Cashman's impending return only adds insult to injury and again reminds us that 2008 has been appropriately called "THE FINAL SEASON"... The beginning of the end.
