Trade Good Non-Move For Johnson

The idea was as big and interesting as Randy Johnson himself from the start: Get him so the Indians don’t get him. Keep him away from the Red Sox for the same reason. Bring him on the way you brought on Cecil Fielder in the summer of ’96. You’ve got the money, you’ve got the players. Close out the competition before you get anywhere near October. The Yankees have always made plays like this, all the way back to the Big Cat, Johnny Mize. So do it now with the Big Unit.

And in the end, it would have been wrong for this Yankee team, this Yankee season. Ultimately, the play for Johnson would have been a scared play. Here is what George Steinbrenner would have been saying to his team, and the rest of the field:

I’m scared of the Indians if the Indians get Johnson. Scared we can’t beat Johnson and Pedro Martinez of the Red Sox in a short series. Even with 76 wins before the first of August.

In the end, the idea wasn’t just wrong around these Yankees, it was insulting. Because day by day and game by game these Yankees are building one of the great runs New York has ever seen, in any sport. They have put together not just a splendid baseball team, but a splendid clubhouse, full of both passion and professionalism. To start rearranging things over a moody and past-his-prime fastball pitcher would have been a mistake.

You don’t change things now, not with this team, not with the way things are going. Let everybody else make their huge sweeping changes. Baltimore is desperate to get back into the wild-card race and goes for Juan Guzman. The Texas Rangers, trying to win the AL West, change the whole left side of their infield by getting Royce Clayton and Todd Zeile. They get better, but still aren’t good enough to beat the Yankees in a playoff series.

Neither are the Indians, even if they had gotten Johnson. Neither are the Red Sox. Neither are the Astros, now that they have traded for Johnson the way they once traded for Nolan Ryan. Not this season. Maybe, as Steinbrenner flirted with the idea of making the deal for the Big Unit (even the nickname doesn’t seem to fit pinstripes), he looked at Johnson and could still see the Johnson of October of ’95. But Johnson isn’t that pitcher, and probably won’t ever be that pitcher again.

And if this was all supposed to be about the playoffs, please remember that Johnson kept getting the ball against the Orioles in October of ’97 and couldn’t beat them. Maybe once it would have felt as if the Yankees had swung a deal for some kind of 6-10 Koufax. No more.

Would I have gone for Johnson last winter, if the price had been right? Sure. There were so many questions around the Yankee starters at the time. No one knew how David Cone would come back. No one knew what they would get out of Hideki Irabu. Now Cone maybe is on his way to another Cy Young Award. There was Irabu, around some home run pitches, doing the same sort of job against the Mariners Friday night he did back in April, when we thought the Yankees were in trouble.

They aren’t in trouble anymore. They are just trouble for the rest of baseball on the way to winning a second World Series in three years. This team never needed Randy Johnson. The Yankees don’t scare, neither should the owner.

*

When Rudolph Giuliani suddenly acts offended that George Steinbrenner keeps insulting the Bronx, the mayor of Steinbrenner comes up as a bigger phony than usual.

You have to believe that the New Jersey chapter for the National Organization for Women had to have something better to do the other day than picket Mike Tyson.

Because that hearing wasn’t about Tyson’s rape conviction, it was about what happened between Tyson and Evander Holyfield in a boxing ring one time.

Tyson is no altar boy, and everyone who says it is too late for him to change very much is probably right.

But he did his time for his rape conviction.

He has done a year of time for biting Holyfield.

And so he gets to resume boxing now.

He is who he is, boxing is what it is.

Did Tyson lose his temper the other day?

Sure he did, and everybody saw.

But afterward I saw headlines that began this way: “Tyson snaps ... “

Excuse me?

Mike Tyson snapped against Holyfield.

He said a bad word in Trenton.

Doris Kearns Goodwin used the word “a--” on Don Imus’ radio show the other day.

Does that mean we have to revoke her historian’s license?

If John Franco can’t do better than this, the Mets have no chance.

But Brian McRae sure is making that Cubs trade look better and better, isn’t he?

I was not terribly surprised to find out that Turk Wendell -- a lefthander trapped in a righthander’s body -- plays golf crosshanded.

Make me see “BASEketball.”

The young Diana Rigg -- who used to play Emma Peel in “The Avengers” -- could take Uma Thurman easy in a fair fight.

It occurred to me the other day that my Ping Anser 3 putter is older than Se Ri Pak.

Which, you know, bothers me a little.

People tell me that the first half-hour of “Saving Private Ryan” is more grisly than a Florida Marlins baseball game.

If you don’t think this is still Fun City, please consider that we’ve welcomed Tony Phillips and Bryan Cox to town the same weekend.

Andre Dubus, one of the great American writers, has a new collection of essays out, called “Meditations from a Movable Chair.”

And, as usual, Dubus writes the way Ella could sing.

If Tim Floyd is really using Michael Jordan’s old pal, Buzz Peterson, as an intermediary with Jordan, isn’t that a clear violation of the league lockout rules?

One of these days everybody’s going to figure out that “Spin City” is as funny as anything on television.

With the possible exception of Geraldo, on one of those nights when you think he’s finally going to lose it defending Clinton.

By the way, the President played golf at Atlantic this weekend, out in Bridgehampton, and I’m willing to pay big bucks for a look at the First Scorecard.

Though I hear the Big Guy is in the same sort of denial about his golf game that he is about a whole lot of other stuff.

You could always look over across the court, after Red Holzman had retired from coaching, and see his wife Selma sitting next to him, reading glasses on the end of her nose, keeping score.

But then Mrs. Holzman, who passed away this week, always seemed to know the score at the Garden.

She was a woman of quiet wit, quiet grace, immense generosity.

Like her husband.

She had her own long season of illness, even as her husband has battled leukemia. Too many nights, two empty seats over there across from the visitors’ bench.

Two champions in that marriage, always.