Yankees’ Watson Should be Executive of the Year

The strongest finisher of all for the Yankees, the last tough guy out of the bullpen, is Bob Watson. Watson looked like just another yes-Boss general manager at the start. He looked like nothing more than a temp. Now he turns out to be one of the heroes of it all.

“One of my most valuable players,” is the way Joe Torre described Watson the other night.

Watson would never have been my choice to replace Gene Michael. Then he came in and seemed to say all the wrong things, about Don Mattingly and everybody else. No one seemed to be in charge of the Yankees last winter and the whole thing looked more than ever like a the the baseball circus, a wonderful back-page cartoon. Watson, once a proud Yankee player, looked like a member of a Crack Yankee Baseball Committee out of the past, nothing more.

Now he should be Executive of the Year in baseball for the moves he made, and then if he’s very lucky, George Steinbrenner will fire him. If Watson walks away, he doesn’t get the money he deserves from Steinbrenner. He doesn’t get nearly what the money he deserves.

Watson turns out to be another good man who deserves better than the treatment he has gotten here. Steinbrenner wrote a lot of checks to help build this Yankee team, spent more money than any baseball owner in history. Watson put himself on the line, and got treated like a bellhop.

Even now as the Yankees are having one of the great weeks in their history, Steinbrenner blows his top behind the scenes every time the great Tim McCarver criticizes him on television, then Steinbrenner screams at Watson behind the scenes for leaking misinformation to McCarver.

Even now Steinbrenner wants Kenny Rogers to be everybody’s idea, and is allowed to float that pathetic notion like a cheap kite. And everybody around the Yankees knows that Kenny Rogers was Steinbrenner’s idea all the way. Gene Michael wanted Al Leiter, Watson wanted Chuck Finley, Steinbrenner crunched the numbers and decided he wanted Rogers.

Period.

Anything else having to do with those meetings is a great big baseball lie.

To the end, Watson gets blamed. Once there was a Yankee general manager, way back, who said his autobiography would carry this title: “I Was in Charge of Everything That Went Wrong.” That is Watson, in the year when just about everything he did -- especially Graeme Lloyd -- turned out right.

Joe Girardi was a terrific acquisition, and I was always a Mike Stanley man. I thought the Yankees were crazy to let Randy Velarde just walk away, and Watson replaced him with Mariano Duncan, who only hit .340. When it seemed as if everyone around the Yankees, starting with the owner, was worrying a first-place team to death. Near the end of August, Watson went out and got Charlie Hayes and where would they be without Hayes now?

Bob Watson took it all from Steinbrenner this year, in a way that even made Yankee front-office veterans embarrassed by what they saw and heard. He took it all, and is still standing. Even Torre now talks about the “crap” and “garbage” that Watson had to take after the deal that sent Milwaukee Gerald Williams for Lloyd and Listach. Don’t worry, this was Torre letting his guard down about what he saw and heard this season from George Steinbrenner, the “new” Steinbrenner I keep reading about.

The truth is, he is just George (New Stadium) Steinbrenner, which is the way he will be known from now on.

Ask Bob Watson about the new Steinbrenner. Watson was supposed to be another Yankee GM in charge of everything that went wrong. Instead, he was the man running the Yankees in the year when just about everything went right. Steinbrenner absolutely deserves his fair share of the credit for this team. Bob Watson deserves so much more.

If Andy Fox of the Yankees had ever won one of these World Series games, ESPN’s Peter Gammons says the headline in one of the local tabloids would have had to be, “Fox beats Turner.”

Paul O’Neill has been too good a player for the Yankees not to contribute in this World Series, and that is why he deserved to make a catch like he did at the end of Game 5.

Even if he did seem to be pulling a dog-sled as he chased down Luis Polonia’s ball.

I always knew Darryl would be out there because of his glove.

Once the Yankees are out of the way that leaves us with the Giants and Jets, and so my idea is for the Yankees and Braves to keep going from here and play best of 27.

When does Notre Dame start Lou Holtz towards the door?

So Notre Dame can go after Northwestern’s Gary Barnett?

I will already ask a question we have to ask around here sometimes: Are the Rangers aware these games count?

That fight between Charles Oakley and Charles Barkley the other night was a real “Auld Lang Syne” job, wasn’t it?

Coach Riley stopped by to say hello to Joe Torre the other night in Atlanta, but did not offer to fit Torre under the salary cap in Miami?

Has Juwan Howard signed any new $100 million contracts, by the way?

I am one of the people who believes the Orlando Magic will win more games without Shaq this season than the Lakers will win with him.

Neil O’Donnell has not been sacked a single time doing those “Scratch ‘n Match” television commercials for the Daily News.

Victor Green of the Jets says, “You want to go into the bye week with some happiness,” and so my suggestion to Mr. Green is this: Rent “The Wizard of Oz.”

The new ESPN Sports-HL Center commercial about self- defense is the coolest one yet.

Which is saying something.

Mike Francesa invited Mr. Imus to make a trip with him to the Yankee Stadium bleachers, and I will just say this from the heart: A trip like that would have been a heck of a lot livelier with Mr. Imus in the old days.

There is still nobody who can touch McCarver.

Those security cops at Yankee Stadium tackle about as well as the Jets, don’t they?

I was afraid one of those slobs out of the stands last weekend was going to break away from them and do one of those Deion Sanders’ touchdown dances all the way around the bases.

I have a question for some of the Braves people who had such a sporty time ripping into New York City this week: When exactly did Atlanta turn into Paris?