COMMENTARY : Please, George, Sell ‘Em

George, I hope you don’t take this personally: Sell the team. Please.

It’s a tantalizing thought. That’s what spring training is for, that’s what March is for. March is the kindest month.

Maybe George Steinbrenner will sell the New York Yankees. What a lovely thought. That’s the only way they’re going to be any fun again; let’s be realistic. Now that the seed is planted, a fan could dwell on the thought for a long time -- even after the flowers that bloom in the spring are faded.

I believe the voices that tell me Steinbrenner is denying things outside his office but with the door closed is saying, “I’m interested; tell me more.”

Look, it makes sense. And we learned a long time ago not to take Steinbrenner’s denials at face value. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; that’s one of his favorite expressions.

George, sell the team. It makes sense. Think of it this way: It doesn’t make sense not to sell the team. The ego rewards just aren’t there anymore. Boy, he loved being captain of that ship. He’d call a news conference up in that office with the sofa and chairs made of exquisite leather in the shape of baseball gloves and the flower of New York sports journalism would listen to his words. He’d sit at the big table with the photo of Cary Grant behind him and, in front of him, the slogan “Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.” He had this device called a chadburn on the table, the thing the captain uses to signal full speed ahead from bridge to engine room. That was Steinbrenner’s stuff.

Boy, he loved being seen in charge of that team. He loved being interviewed by Barbara Walters, loved being whispered as a cafe society item with her. He loved being on a list of America’s 10 sexiest men. It was explained that power attracts and he had power.

Now the truth is that he’s in the way. Everything he does, he demonstrates himself as a clown, a buffoon, a fool. So what’s sexy about that? He can’t even get back into baseball.

He’s tried to develop this bloodline with the Yankees, projecting the passing of control to his sons. He knows about bloodlines in the thoroughbred business. But first the eldest son decided he didn’t want to run the Yankees, he’d rather work with the horses. Now the other son has enrolled in graduate business school.

There’s still the daughter, whose husband, Joe Molloy, a former junior high coach, Thursday was nominated managing general partner of his father-in-law’s team. Baseball requires he own a piece of the team, so the piece Molloy likely will get is one-tenth of 1%. What kind of ego is in that?

Paramount is the logical buyer. Paramount owns the other regular sports shows it can put on local television, with the exception of the New York Mets and Yankees. It has turned the New York Rangers and New York nicks in a direction of energy. It is paying the Yankees -- or their banker -- $486 million for television rights, so now Paramount could be taking the money out of one pocket and putting it in the other. Besides, the Paramount people were concerned that the entertainment they had bought from the Yankees wasn’t entertaining anybody.

George, sell the team.

Of course Paramount wouldn’t want to be a minority owner to Steinbrenner. Nothing, we have been told, is quite so limited as Steinbrenner’s limited partners. But if one minority went to Paramount to sell and suggested there might be other sellers -- even the big guy -- Paramount was interested.

Steinbrenner and his people bought the Yankees for about $12 million in 1973. Considering the $95 million price for expansion franchises and $100 million offered for the Mariners, a price of $300 million isn’t exaggerating the Yankees’ value. That would be a pretty good profit for Steinbrenner and his people, considering they’ve already taken out $100 million from the television contract. And Steinbrenner’s shipbuilding business has been listing.

What we can’t measure is this: Could we really expect Steinbrenner to go out a loser to Fay Vincent, still excluded from baseball by his own arrogance and blundering? Well, how much beating does he take before even his ego says: That’s it, enough, no more.

Maybe it could be worked out as a three-way deal: Paramount buys out the Leonard Kleinman suit, Steinbrenner gets reinstated with the agreement that he will sell to Paramount. Then he would have his and his money, too. He could bail out the ships and get back in the best graces of the Olympic movement. He could even get into the baseball team that inevitably will come to Tampa, Fla.

Is that worth thinking about?

So we can go on dreaming. Maybe the Yankees aren’t being sold to Paramount today. But those things don’t happen so fast even for people who think $300 million is really not a staggering sum. Maybe this is just the beginning.

George, sell the team. It makes sense.

Maybe it makes sense because we want it to -- this is emotional stuff -- but it does make sense for a lot of reasons. Most important, it makes sense for those people who still are Yankee fans. Once Steinbrenner was a tornado of fresh air. He came from Cleveland in 1973 and resurrected what was the most glamorous team in sports. Give the devil his due: He made it happen again.

He had energy and he had ego. He kicked butt from the beginning. If you couldn’t play, Steinbrenner didn’t want you on his team. And sometimes if you could play, he didn’t want you. There was a lot of misjudgment mixed in with the sheer meanness. But he did understand the star system and the concept of buying free agents, and he won in his fourth season. Not only did he win in 1976, if Goose Gossage hadn’t wrecked his hand in a shower-room fistfight with Cliff Johnson in 1979, Steinbrenner’s Yankees would have won five division titles -- or more -- in a row.

He would have made a new dynasty in his own image. Then the rest of the owners caught on to this free agency and the best players realized they didn’t have to put up with Steinbrenner to make a lot of money. There’s only one way out of this. George, sell the team. You can even take this personally.