Face Saving Face is What This Steinbrenner Conflict About

Maybe they should bring Charles Dolan of Cablevision and George Steinbrenner of the Yankees into Madison Square Garden next Saturday and let them be the undercard for Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis. Dolan and Steinbrenner make it clear now that when they fight, they fight for keeps. This is all about the things that make sports the show it is in the ‘90s, money and ego and juice, bottom-line rich guys trying to show us and each other how rugged they are.

And fights like these always cost the fans money in the end, in ticket prices and cable fees, even at the concession stands. They pay and pay. It is still a great show, now more than ever with Dolan making a play to buy the Mets and basically make the same deal he wanted to make with Steinbrenner.

Pay-per-view with old rich guys.

This is all about face, too. Face and saving face. That is another crucial element to sports in the ‘90s. Steinbrenner, more obsessed with his image than ever now that he is getting along in years, thought Dolan showed him up when Cablevision called off a proposed deal to buy the Yankees. So Steinbrenner went to the Nets to get much-needed capital, perhaps because The Money Store was closed that day.

Now he thought he was showing Dolan up.

Dolan said, Really? And picked up the phone and called the other baseball team in New York. The team that has always scared Steinbrenner to death, whether the Yankees were on top or not.

Nobody is saying Cablevision will buy the Mets for sure. The way nobody is sure the Yankees and Nets will ever do business together. Cablevision and the Mets have talked. Steinbrenner and the Nets have a letter of agreement. We go from there.

“No comment,” is all you hear from Wilpon, one of the Mets owners. People at Cablevision and at Madison Square Garden said pretty much the same thing yesterday.

All that is sure these days is that Dolan and Steinbrenner are having a big fight and an entertaining one, because it seems to touch about every team in town except Yeshiva. And it doesn’t mean they won’t get back together. Maybe Dolan will turn out to be bluffing with the Mets the way Steinbrenner may be bluffing with his adorable “YankeeNet” operation, trumpeted last week as the most inspired invention since the microchip. You never know. Maybe Dolan is using the Mets and Steinbrenner is using the Nets.

But for now, Cablevision moves ahead with the Mets as if the Yankee deal is dead. They talk, the Mets listen. If Dolan can’t get the baseball team that owns New York right now, maybe he will get the one that used to own New York.

Steinbrenner made his deal with the Nets and when he did, everybody said, Okay, he found a way to get what he wanted. He could get the money he needed and still be in charge. And if, in two years, he couldn’t get the television deal he wanted out of Cablevision, he would set himself up to form his own sports network with the Nets.

Fair enough. Only now it turns out Dolan has options, too. There is another ballclub in town, and a pretty good one. If the Mets aren’t as good as the Yankees right now, maybe soon. As hot as the Yankees are right now, as much as everybody talks about them, it was the same way with the Mets in the middle and late ‘80s, when the Mets could draw 3 million fans at home, something the Yankees have never done, all the way back to Babe Ruth.

“Maybe,” said one television executive I talked to yesterday, “Chuck (Dolan) just decided he wanted to be in the baseball business with somebody he could actually talk to.”

The guy meant Fred Wilpon. His team is no longer on top. The Mets have made mistakes over the years, some they were slow to correct. They blew a lot of money, and eventually handed the town back over to the Yankees. Wilpon still has managed to remain a gentleman. Even with stakes like the ones we have been talking about with the Mets and Yankees, that still counts for something. Wilpon wants a new stadium, same as Steinbrenner does. He just doesn’t act as if it is the civic duty of every New Yorker to build him one.

If Dolan does get a majority share in the Mets, Wilpon will still be some kind of managing general partner. It is the same title Steinbrenner would have kept with the Yankees. The difference is this: Wilpon won’t try to convince the world that he gets all the money and gets to hold on to all the power at Shea Stadium. Only Steinbrenner thinks he gets all the benefits of the bank without having to answer to the bank president.

Steinbrenner couldn’t wait to tell everybody that he not only would be cashing Dolan’s check, but also be a bigger boss than anybody on “The Sopranos.” Run the Yankees. Run the Knicks and Rangers in his spare time. People actually believed this. It was at this point that the Cablevision people told him to get lost. Now he is supposed to be getting somewhere between $200 million and $300 million from the owners of the Nets.

That is a nice bankroll for him. Not as big as the one Wilpon might get. Stay tuned, if you can still afford to.