COMMENTARY : Yankees Just Can’t Break the Steinbrenner Curse

This is Steinbrenner’s Curse. Players who play for him will be paid a lot of money and they will be working in the most stimulating city in the world.

They will never win.

New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner has confirmed that again. Never.

That’s a long time. Poor Don Mattingly is destined to be the Ernie Banks of New York, playing long and well but never getting to the World Series. Never was a long time for Ernie Banks, too.

This Dave Winfield business is not a cause, not a reason why; worse, it’s one more symptom of the lunacy. Steinbrenner has found the reverse of the alchemists’ dream. Eureka! He can take the gold of Yankee tradition and turn it into dross, just like that. Just by double-crossing his legs.

They go from bad to verse. As Ogden Nash put it: The Bronx? No thonx.

Ask what did they get for Winfield or Jack Clark or Rickey Henderson? Well, Harding Peterson, the so-called general manager, reported Monday he had tried to make a deal with 15 teams and concluded that he didn’t have players to make a deal. Dick Tracy couldn’t read the clues better.

If they traded off or banished good players for not much, the most you could expect for players who aren’t nearly so good are more players who can’t help at all.

The way the Winfield trade was handled is a condensed edition for those people who may not realize what has gone on at River Avenue and 161st Street, Bronx 10451 since 1973.

Just Monday Steinbrenner said that he had nothing to do with this deal, that it was made by his baseball people over his objections, “Bull-leeve me.” Well, why should anybody bull-leeve him? A whole sequence of managers and general managers and undersecretaries have been involved at his behest in trying to move Winfield for years.

But just a minute. Who says there was a Winfield trade? Steinbrenner’s people? Since when do you believe Steinbrenner’s people? The Players Association said that it had received no official paperwork as of the end of the workday Monday. Is this one more instance of Steinbrenner harassing Winfield?

You know Steinbrenner has fumed in his own fumes since waking up the morning after signing Winfield to a monumental 10-year contract in 1980 and finding out it that was worth much more than he thought. Here this self-styled master of the deal had been outsmarted by a mere player and his agent, the late Al Frohman, a former piano player with Jimmy Dorsey’s band and former kosher caterer.

Player and agent gave in to Steinbrenner on the cost-of-living increases, but that never soothed Mr. Dithers. He couldn’t stand Frohman, and Winfield never gave the great owner what he wanted. Winfield did everything his performance with San Diego said he would do. Steinbrenner wanted thunder over the Bronx, and that wasn’t Winfield.

Winfield was almost a superstar. Steinbrenner’s bullying made Winfield more appealing and in a lot of ways obscured Winfield’s shortcomings.

He played a wonderful outfield, ran the bases well and drove in 100 or more runs six times since coming to the Yankees in 1981. One year he drove in 97; in the strike season he drove in 68. Last year he played not at all. What he couldn’t do was overcome Death Valley in left-center field or his own personality. He lived in his own locker. Smart as he is, it isn’t his nature to reach out and make others around him better.

In 1987 when Bobby Meacham was having a dreadful time at shortstop and made an error that cost a game, he was left to bear the brunt of the media horde by himself. Winfield was off attending to his own washing and dressing. Across the room, spare outfielder Ron Kittle noted, “Do you think that would have happened if Baylor was here?”

Don Baylor would have found a way to deflect the pressure. Reggie Jackson would have drawn the crowd from Meacham to himself. Winfield, knowingly, did not. Mattingly doesn’t either, but he reaches teammates in other ways. Winfield, as good as he was, was more like a subcontractor delivering his product and leaving his invoice.

He played hard, he played well and he played hurt when he could. He had this Dave Winfield Foundation to help inner-city kids, which looked like such a good thing for Steinbrenner to hitch himself to. But Steinbrenner didn’t like Frohman’s involvement.

And just when Steinbrenner was looking like a four-flusher for not keeping up his agreed payments to the Foundation, it was revealed that Winfield had failed to keep up his payments for more than two years, and had chiseled expenses on limousine service to work and for balloons for a birthday party.

Both sides smelled bad.

And then Steinbrenner allegedly got into the business of paying Howard Spira to spill information to make Winfield look so bad he’d want to get out of town. But bull-leeve him, Steinbrenner opposed this trade.

Now what are the players to think? Bucky Dent is left with no credibility because he sat Winfield down before ever finding out whether he could play anymore. Peterson is left with no credibility because his name is on the trade. And all the players are left to conclude that if they get hurt, the decision will be made on them in a twinkling.

Maybe Winfield can’t play anymore. The Yankees certainly don’t know. Mike Port, who trades for the California Angels, thinks Winfield is worth a chance.

The arbitrator has to rule in Winfield’s favor. Having won his point, Winfield should throw Steinbrenner the crooked-arm salute and say he’d be happy to go to the Angels -- he has this new home in Beverly Hills, Calif. -- but only if Steinbrenner paid a sizable bonus.

He could win a new contract from the Angels. He might even win a division with the Angels before he’s too old. That won’t happen in the Bronx.