Yankee Fan’s Lament: Owner’s Identity Supersedes the Club

Being a Yankee fan these days, it seems, means always having to say you’re sorry.

Damn sorry.

The once-proud franchise’s descent into the cellar of the American League East is, of course, only the latest chapter in this long saga of shipbuilder George Steinbrenner’s misguided navigation.

Stump Merrill’s sentencing as manager-of-the-month proves only that fans need a scorecard to tell who’s in charge in the dugout. Will Bucky Dent return? Do we really care? The Yankee manager’s office produces more sequels than Hollywood--and with even less redeeming value.

“Who Killed the Yankees?” can hardly compete with Laura Palmer’s demise as a national mystery. General George’s San Andreas-like faults were evident from Day 1. Even though he initially brought winning back to the stadium--along with Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Tommy John--it was hard to avert our eyes.

But now, going on nine years without so much as a division championship, and with no prospect of participation in a pennant race in the foreseeable future, his team’s futility on the field matches his offensiveness off it.

No buck-passing by the boss can take his fingerprints off a mind-boggling series of giveaways that have robbed the team of its competitiveness and its fans of the annual arrival of spring’s hope.

Remember Rickey Henderson for Luis Polonia, Greg Cadaret and Eric Plunk? Or Jack Clark for Jimmy Jones, Lance McCullers and Stanley Jefferson? Half of these guys are already gone, and the rest would hardly be missed.

Steinbrenner’s nautical empire for a run? This club doesn’t have the firepower to launch a dinghy.

As a veteran of 26 years following the team’s peaks and Death Valley--from outposts as far removed as Los Angeles, no less--I suspect I speak for legions of Yankee loyalists who have finally turned the corner into no-fans-land this year.

Can it be, we ask ourselves, that we have begun to take private delight in the team’s demise? That each daily failure of the best that George’s revolving door can field is a source of secret satisfaction rather than despair?

How many of us deny engaging, at least occasionally, in a Sunday ritual of checking the statistics of high-flying former pinstripers? Show him, Dave Winfield. Even Ron Kittle is flourishing elsewhere.

It used to be depressing; we felt as though we’d let these players get away. Now, however, their success prompts gloating.

These Bronx castaways would be lifesavers compared to the current crew of retreads and untrieds.

Remember when Steinbrenner apologized to New York for the Yankees’ failure to beat the Dodgers in the 1981 World Series? Since then, he’s had nothing comparable for which to say he’s sorry. Will he apologize for blowing the chance even to apologize?

Don’t hold your breath. The man is as likely to accept responsibility as he is to employ one manager for an entire season.

The bottom line--beyond the club’s place in the standings--is that the Yankees are no longer a team of 24 athletes whose daily triumphs and travails are cause for comfort or concern through the days of summer.

Aside from Don Mattingly, Dave Righetti and Steve Sax (each of whom deserves better), how many of the current crew can most fans relate to as more than a name and a disappointment?

Indeed, they might as well call the club the New York Steinbrenners, so much has its identity fused with that of its bigger-than-life owner.

That is the way the franchise is viewed by much-desired free agents, who negotiate with George only to increase their market value. What a reversal from the days when players wanted to be part of the Yankees, whether for love of the lore or for the lure of the money.

A friend and fellow Yankee sufferer recently found himself walking beside Steinbrenner in a building with steep ledges. He confesses that he was tempted to execute a different kind of hit-and-run.

I did it for the good of the team, he might have alibied. He wasn’t delivering. The chemistry wasn’t right. We couldn’t fire the players, he could have pleaded in perfect sports cliche.

Is this what it has come down to as a Yankee fan? From reveries of Mantle’s glory and Reggie’s heroics and Guidry’s brilliance to vengeful fantasies of ejecting an owner whose identity has virtually swallowed that of the team?

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, indeed ?

I never thought I’d bring my fingers to bang out these words: Let’s go Brewers. And Blue Jays. And even Bosox. Steinbrenners be damned.