Yankees Suffering Because of Henderson, Clark Trades

The New York Yankees are off to their worst start in 18 years, attendance is slipping and their offense is so feeble that any inning in which they score more than one run must be considered an outburst. They have managed to do so only four times in their past 86 innings, prior to Friday night’s game at California.

Not only are the Yankees a bad team, they are a boring one, too. Do you suppose they could use Rickey Henderson and Jack Clark right about now?

The Yankees’ troubles are the direct result of giving away those two players in two terrible trades. And what do they have to show for them?

“Do you want to know the truth? Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Henderson said. “I’m not taking anything away from the guys they got. But when you trade two of the best players in the game, you have to get a top, top player in return. You don’t get guys who are still trying to prove themselves.”

The Yankees traded Clark to San Diego after the 1988 season for pitchers Jimmy Jones and Lance McCullers and outfielder Stan Jefferson. Eight months later, they sent Henderson to Oakland for pitchers Eric Plunk and Greg Cadaret and outfielder Luis Polonia.

Only three of those players -- McCullers, Plunk and Cadaret -- remain on the roster, and all of them have proven to be nothing more than middle relievers. Jefferson and Polonia have been traded for John Habyan and Claudell Washington. Jones is in Columbus, where, having allowed only 14 hits in 31 1-3 innings while compiling a 3-0 record, he is again proving he is a good Triple-A pitcher.

Effectively, that amounts to, as Henderson so well put it, “absolutely nothing.”

The Yankees traded two star players and did not obtain a frontline starting pitcher or a catcher. Since the second of those two trades, the Yankees are 48-64.

“They ruined that team,” Henderson said. “They had a lot of good players they could have built a team around for a few years. But they’re always switching so much. They don’t give anything a chance.”

Said Ken Phelps, another player the Yankees sent to the Athletics, “They have a different plan every week. When I was there they had too much left-handed hitting. Now they made a trade for left-handed hitting and they need more. Next week, it will be something else.”

The Yankees are in disarray because George Steinbrenner’s vision carries no further than the next game. In the past 30 months, he has empowered five people with player-personnel responsibilities: Woody Woodward, Lou Piniella, Bob Quinn, Syd Thrift and George Bradley. Invariably, they wind up trying to satisfy Steinbrenner’s urges, no matter how destructive they may be.

Clark, though he had two more years on his Yankees contract, asked Steinbrenner to trade him to the West Coast. He did not demand a trade nor did he have the right to force one.

“George wanted to accommodate him,” the source said.

So Steinbrenner did what was best for Clark and not for his own team.

Then Steinbrenner decided he didn’t want to keep Henderson, who was off to a slow start last season while seeking a new contract. Henderson, who had a no-trade provision, said he would accept a trade to just one team: Oakland. So Thrift made the deal, but without getting highly regarded pitcher Todd Burns or a proven starter.

“I’m convinced we could have signed him,” said the source. “We could have signed him for between 2.6 and 2.8 (million dollars per year for three years). It wasn’t the money. In fact, we told Oakland we would sign him first and then trade him if they wanted. But they didn’t want that.

“It all comes down to George being so impetuous. Everything is, ‘Do this! Now! Now! Now! Today! Today! Today!’ Every other team takes a careful look at things before they act. George has his six-guns blazing and just empties them.”

Thursday was Attendance Recognition Day at Yankee Stadium. Students with perfect attendance records were rewarded with a free ticket to the game. Considering the Yankees’ drawing power these days, they could not have created a more ironic promotion. New York City baseball fans are playing hooky from Yankee Stadium.

Through 14 dates, the Yankees’ attendance is down 8.6 percent from the same period last year, a season that resulted in the team’s lowest attendance since 1984. And compared to two years ago, when the Yankees set a franchise attendance record, paying customers are down 25 percent.

The apathy is understandable. The Yankees do not play exciting baseball. Sometimes they can be flat-out embarrassing, as they were Thursday when they were seven outs away from a 5-1 win and wound up losing, 10-5, to Cleveland. The Yankees are last in the league in runs, ninth in home runs and 10th in stolen bases.

It is safe to assume the Yankees would be generating more interest -- not to mention more victories -- had Henderson and Steve Sax been hitting in front of Don Mattingly, Clark and Dave Winfield.