COMMENTARY : Michael Had the Grace to Admit He Erred

George Steinbrenner keeps saying he is “embarrassed” that his general manager, Gene Michael, was arrested for drunken driving. Steinbrenner certainly is entitled to his opinion. But here is something he should keep in mind: Michael would have to make a fool out of himself every single day for the rest of the year to catch up with all the times Steinbrenner has embarrassed the New York Yankees.

After the career Steinbrenner has had in public life, and especially with the Yankees, he has forfeited the right to be embarrassed by anything.

Did Gene Michael make a mistake? He sure did. Steinbrenner has made a lot more, and also broken the law.

Michael probably isn’t too proud that he works for someone, Steinbrenner, who was convicted of a felony for illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign in 1972. Steinbrenner later was pardoned by Ronald Reagan at the end of Reagan’s presidency. But Steinbrenner’s felony conviction got him suspended from baseball by commissioner Bowie Kuhn in 1974.

In 1991, then-commissioner Fay Vincent suspended Steinbrenner again, after it was proved that Steinbrenner paid $40,000 to a known gambler named Howie Spira. It makes Steinbrenner the only sports owner in known history to be kicked out of his own sport twice. That isn’t embarrassing. It is humiliating.

There is no defense for Michael getting behind the wheel of an automobile if he had too much to drink. And even if he did, he is still an altar boy compared to the principal owner of the Yankees.

Michael probably has been embarrassed all the times he has seen Steinbrenner act like a career bully, with him and Yankee managers and Yankee public relations men, and the Yankee secretaries Steinbrenner still reduces to tears over nothing.

And Michael probably finds it downright silly to watch Steinbrenner walk around and act as if he is the one who rebuilt the Yankees across the last couple of seasons.

If the Yankees win this year, Steinbrenner will say it was because of Jack McDowell and John Wetteland, and forget the Yankees had the best team in the American League and perhaps in baseball last season without them, because Steinbrenner is not just a career bully, he is a career phony. This is Michael’s team, and Buck Showalter’s team, and he knows it.

Steinbrenner doesn’t get to change the record on that, the way he tries to change his own record all the time.

Steinbrenner isn’t as embarrassed about Michael getting arrested for drunk driving as he is about this: The Yankees got better while Steinbrenner was on baseball’s ineligible list, while Steinbrenner was no better in the eyes of baseball than Shoeless Joe Jackson or Pete Rose.

Michael at least has had the grace to admit he made a mistake. Steinbrenner has blamed every bad thing he has ever done on someone else. When confronted with the money paid to Spira, Steinbrenner came up with about 16 different explanations, finally wanting everyone to believe Spira was more dangerous than Al Capone.

Steinbrenner is embarrassed by Gene Michael? It is a laugh. Michael is not just a better baseball man than Steinbrenner deserves, he is a better man.