COMMENTARY : Get Ready for Steinbrenner’s Return

This Steinbrenner presents a vexing problem. Troublesome. Irksome, too. I fear he’s coming back from Elba. Inexorably. If you listen carefully, you can hear his footsteps under the bridge.

It’s perhaps only hours before the Kleinman suit is dropped and Steinbrenner will have bought the last formal obstacle. Sooner or later Commissioner Fay Vincent will have to sit down and talk with that man about his rehabilitation.

What to do! What to do?

Vincent, a resourceful presence when he was in the movie business, will have to be as devious, as diabolical as Steinbrenner himself. He who lives by the sword should perish by the sword.

Remember how Steinbrenner wat on the witness stand in the trial of Howard Spira and convinced a jury that the tears he was shedding were real tears of love and fear for his family.

I’m told there are crocodiles in swamps everywhere teaching their young the meaning of Steinbrenner tears. But the jury drank it up.

So let the commissioner take a hostage, and not a firstborn or second son. How about Joe Molloy, the lawful wedded husband of Steinbrenner’s daughter?

Remember how Steinbrenner said he gave Howard Spira $40,000 “out of the goodness of my heart.” Remember how that used to be one of his favorite plrases in dealing with Billy or Winfield’s foundation or those things. Remember how he diverted his team from the spring training regimen in order to play an exhibition game to raise money for lights on the ball field at his daughter’s college. I can still hear Graig Nettles’ rumbling about that one.

Remember how the firstborn son and then the second declined to run their father’s kingdom, and how he restrained himself. He wasn’t going to demean his own flesh and blood.

If the man truly has goodness in his heart, there must be a way to exploit it. Surely Steinbrenner wouldn’t hurt or embarrass his daughter’s husband. Surely a man who would stop at nothing would stop there.

I don’t like to be cruel, but this is one of those situations Hammurabi told us about. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Certainly, Steinbrenner has held this city hostage for long periods of time.

Back to that in a minute.

First of all, I wish Steinbrenner -- like the sinus condition to which Vincent has likened him -- would go away. But there’s no sign of that. Then I wish he’d sell, but there’s nothing to cling to there, either.

Then I wish Fay Vincent could say Steinbrenner is never coming back, and that’s that. But that really never was the commissioner’s intention when he intended to suspend Steinbrenner in the first place. This lifetime purgatory was Steinbrenner’s blunder, remember.

In the meantime, however, the economy has fallen upon difficult times and has taken television. Now the commissioner must consider whether baseball’s needs are great enough to have Steinbrenner back. It’s Vincent’s mandate to develop a place for his return that would be least damaging for fragile conditions.

Baseball has a crocodile by the tail right now. Salaries are shooting upward as if drawn by gravity. Salaries have been based on revenue from a television contract and a concept that is about to die. People in television feel they were stung on the last contract; they’ll offer less.

One of the things television wants over the long run is -- like a baseball team -- power at the the corners, third base and first base, New York and Los Angeles. The Yankees, the most identifiable, most hallowed of sports names, have not been pulling their weight. America loves to hate New York, but what’s the thrill about beating the Yankees when it’s like poking a stick at a terrible ogre inside a cage? After a while, the people stop being afraid of the ogre and the poking is no fun.

So the Yankees have to be better on the field to be worse in America’s eyes. A decade of Steinbrenner-induced instability ruined them. Without him, they show some signs of getting better, if only because they suggest a concept of growth the man didn’t understand. What he understood was the joy of standing on the bridge with his whip and seeing all 28 oars rowing in unison. Having him lurking, poised to take over, means nothing lasting can be put together. If he comes back in his old Pharaoh suit, he’s going to be hiring and firing and executing all over again. Progress will be turned upside down; they’ll never get better. Unless ...

Reinstate Steinbrenner -- not before the end of this season -- with the stipulation that Molloy remain as managing general partner. Steinbrenner can go to all the swank meetings, and sit in the owner’s box with Molloy; Molloy makes all the pronouncements and ostensibly the decisions, and is held accountable. Molloy hires and keeps professional help.

If things work well, then Molloy and Steinbrenner’s daughter and their children bask in the success and Steinbrenner can enjoy grandfatherly pride. Virtue would be his reward. But then everything irrational, petulant, impatient, cruel, vindictive, meddlesome or egotistical that Steinbrenner orders from behind Molloy’s back would be presented as if it were Molloy’s doing.

Then all the criticism, ridicule and responsibility would be pointed at Molloy. Why does poor Joe Molloy, former junior-high coach, deserve that? He doesn’t. But if Steinbrenner wanted to protect his daughter and her husband -- out of the goodness of his heart -- Steinbrenner would restrain himself.

No more dithers in the front office. No more torturing players and managers. Players would play better, managers would manage better and general managers would general manage better. The fans would love the feeling in the hallowed ballpark; it would be respectable to be a Yankee fan again.

It’s Vincent’s job to structure the arrangement.

And if Steinbrenner is uncomfortable back in baseball, then he can sell out of the goodness of his heart.