It’s Just One of Those Springs for Yankees

Eight days after the end of a lockout, which lasts 32 days, Pascual Perez reports to the spring residence of the New York Yankees, who sign this unique entertainer for $5.7 million for three years.

Pascual is unique in that he wins nine games last year at Montreal. The nine, you presume, must be very select. It’s like golf selling itself to television. Ratings are low, but audiences are claimed to be special.

Perez ascribes his tardiness to a legal problem he encounters in the Dominican Republic. A lady seeking money for support goes to court, creating for Pascual a pesky visa problem.

His countryman, Luis Polonia, reports on time. Given three months for a romance in Milwaukee with a 15-year-old girl who, according to Luis, reports her age as 19, he is out in a month, with an order by the judge that he performs community service.

And who could use community service more than the Yankees?

You see Dave Winfield in the clubhouse, cool in the light of a rap he recently receives in court. He is told to give a former common-law wife $1.6 million, plus $3,500 a month, a condo and a car.

Dave appeals, but isn’t playing under protest.

Roberto Kelly walks in, fresh from a ho-hum off-season. Roberto is sleeping at his home in Panama when a war breaks out--and not far from where he is sleeping.

He is so thankful to be in Ft. Lauderdale that he offers his chair to a reporter who is interviewing Steve Sax. Roberto does this in the absence of a little old lady who needs help crossing the street.

He is even happy to see his boss, George Steinbrenner, who appears at camp amid charges he conspired with a gambler to get information on Winfield during a legal rumble.

It is the kind of uneventful spring with which you normally link the Yankees, who take their exercises here under a manager hired last August and still on the job.

The lockout helped his longevity, but Bucky Dent, whose face still bears the bloom of youth, is not troubled by history.

Let’s see now, from 1980 until the present, the Yankees have employed as manager Dick Howser, Gene Michael, Bob Lemon, Gene Michael again, Clyde King, Billy Martin again, Lou Piniella again, Dallas Green.

Why would there be cause for concern on the part of Bucky Dent?

“Are you happy in New York?” a visitor asks Steve Sax, who left the Dodgers at the end of 1988 to bat .315 for the Yankees last year.

“Couldn’t be happier,” he answers. “You don’t have trouble around here if you play ball and mind your own business. I am not paid to monitor the activities of the Yankees. I am paid to play second base.”

“So you have no regrets leaving Los Angeles?”

“Smartest thing I ever did. Fans were nice to me in Los Angeles, but they’re nice to me here, too. And something very important has happened. I am respected here as a veteran, whereas in Los Angeles I was looked upon as a kid. You stay in the same place all your life and you can be taken for granted.”

“What has been your relationship with George Steinbrenner?”

“On the occasions I have seen him, he has been great to me. Speaking for myself, I can’t complain.”

Steve’s predecessor in New York, Willie Randolph, confided he never had trouble with Steinbrenner, either, leading one to conclude that George doesn’t come in at the level of second base.

In this age of specialization, he concentrates more on first base and left field. He also gives an inordinate amount of study to the bullpen and the rest of the pitching game, proof of which is, he has hired 15 pitching coaches over the last 17 years.

Of that number, only five have lasted an entire season.

You study the modus operandi of Steinbrenner and you find, for the most part, that the managers he has employed were guys down on their luck, or holders of drab jobs willing to roll the dice.

These are the people he seems to enjoy beating up and throwing out, unless he recaptures them and repeats the process.

The Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 1978, proving George’s science isn’t without imperfection.

But he has an idea this time. He signs Pascual Perez, who, in his time, has made the disabled list, the suspended list, the restricted list and the released list.

Scheduled to start one time for Atlanta, he gets lost driving to the park, runs out of gas and misses the assignment.

And reporting to camp here, he is eight days late in the wake of a 32-day lockout.

Steinbrenner’s strategy in hiring Perez? He wants to give the Yankees stability.