SPORTS WATCH : You’re Out

Consider the idea of “control” as a theme in Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent’s ruling that New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner must give up his day-to-day supervision of the club.

The game of baseball is rich with the infinite possibilities of chance, and it defies too much meddling. It rewards a patient approach to the building of franchises and the winning of games. Since buying the club in 1973, Steinbrenner has done everything in his power to tamper with those dynamics of the sport.

He sought to control every aspect of his team’s fate, right down to the way the ball might bounce through the infield, even to the point of apologizing to fans for losing a series to the Dodgers in 1981. Managers went at the drop of a hat, and a great franchise, not loved by all but respected for its stature in sports history, fell on bad times.

Ironically, it was Steinbrenner’s tampering off the field--allegedly paying $40,000 to a gambler for information on Dave Winfield, now relieved to be playing under Southern California skies with the Angels--that proved his undoing. Vincent and the rest of baseball will be watching to see who really will run the Yankees now.

But Vincent, in carefully shrinking Steinbrenner’s future role but seeking to avoid litigation, endeavored to neutralize one man’s negative effect on the great game. In doing so, Vincent has asserted his control, which is, after all, a charge to protect baseball and its unexpected pleasures from undue influence, and thus preserve its wonderful qualities. That he appears to have done, and skillfully.