COMMENTARY : Michael’s Indecisiveness Hurting Yankees

Twelve days after firing Stump Merrill -- and many weeks after he actually arrived at that decision -- Gene Michael stood before the partnership of the New York Yankees and provided a brief on the status of his search for a manager. The key word here is brief, because Michael still had no idea what to do. He might as well have showed up at that Cleveland meeting wearing a round, red rubber nose that honks, a polka-dot suit and floppy, oversized shoes.

“He was only there a few minutes,” said Charlotte Witkind, one of the partners. “He had a list of names. A long list.”

The best he could do was to say he liked Doug Rader. Imagine that kind of innovative thinking. He had about a month to track down a manager, and he came up with Doug Rader. Put him in charge of coming up with a Supreme Court nominee and the man would have turned up Judge Wapner.

Michael left the meeting after that. It was, oh, about two seconds later that the partnership decided Michael needed some help.

The partners, led by managing partner Robert Nederlander, decided Buck Showalter should be the next manager of the Yankees. This is the same Buck Showalter whom Michael essentially fired as a coach.

“In the long run,” Witkind said, “the decision is up to Bob Nederlander. It’s his call.”

Michael was sure of only two things: He wanted a manager with major-league experience, and he did not want one of his coaches. So now he has Showalter, the third-base coach who never has managed in the big leagues. Michael comes out of this taking a huge hit on his already weakened credibility, like a shot of seltzer water in the face.

Two weeks ago, one of the partners, who asked not to be identified, said, “The guy I think we should go after is Jeff Torborg.”

Torborg, according to sources familiar with his thinking, would have preferred the Yankees to the New York Mets, with all elements of his contract being equal. But Michael never contacted Torborg. When the Mets hired Torborg, Michael said the Mets acted too quickly. It wasn’t that; it was that Michael was too indecisive -- again. The partnership saw that, too.

And who knows about Lou Piniella? Yes, the Yankees would have encountered some resistance in trying to pry him from Cincinnati. But the point is that Michael didn’t try there, either.

Despite Michael’s bumbling, the Yankees will come out of this having made a good choice about their manager. It is not the best one, but a good one, especially when your alternative is Rader.

Davey Johnson was the right man for this job, but Michael chose to protect his own insecurities rather than serve the team. He gave Johnson a perfunctory telephone call, but never had any intention of hiring him.

There was no interview. Michael, according to a source close to him, had his mind made up that Johnson “had some problems with discipline with the Mets.” He also thought Johnson had been too critical of the Mets’ front office while managing that team.

That point is not to be underestimated in Michael’s thinking. He is the same man who scolded his pitching staff in spring training after some of them were quoted anonymously as preferring Bob Geren as the team’s catcher. He routinely telephones reporters to complain about stories he does not like. (My answering machine will be on today, Stick.) And he likes to badger reporters into revealing their sources.

You get the feeling that in all his paranoia, Michael’s idea of a good newspaper is the old Pravda. He doesn’t want any of his uniformed personnel to have long hair, beards or an opinion.

“I don’t know what he’s thinking,” an obviously distraught Johnson said from his home in Florida. “I don’t know all the things that he knows, so I really can’t say much.

“The only thing I’m down about is that there have been all of these openings over a long period of time. I mean, I’ve been away for one-and-a-half years and you think you have a chance and everything is so slow to materialize. I don’t know exactly why. I have no idea. I really don’t.”

Johnson, the manager with the .588 winning percentage and world championship ring, has been blackballed from baseball. Eighteen jobs have opened since the Mets fired Johnson, and he is 0-for-18. The Chicago White Sox probably will hire Jim Leyland, who likely will be replaced in Pittsburgh by Gene Lamont, one of his coaches. Johnson is not a serious candidate in Milwaukee or Seattle. And a Cubs source said he is not high on their list, either.

“I may just call up Whitey,” Johnson said, referring to Whitey Herzog of the California Angels, “and see if he needs an advance scout or something.”

A former Chicago Cubs player, a veteran who has played for several teams, called Michael “the worst manager I ever played for.” Michael has not exactly been a bright light as a general manager, either.

Last offseason, he appeared to be as lost as his briefcase, which he once left in the coffee shop of the hotel that hosted the winter meetings. And now, having proved to be incapable of conducting an organized, determined search for a manager, he has been undermined by that infamous ogre, Broadway Bob Nederlander, or “mild-mannered, quiet, unassuming Bobby Nederlander,” as Witkind called him.

Michael started out in the post-Steinbrenner era as perhaps the most autonomous general manager in baseball. Now, having shown to be incapable of handling that, he comes with strings attached. Or maybe a plastic flower that squirts water.