Justice Was Served Thanks to Boss’ Patience

When it comes to a New York frame of mind, Met General Manager Steve Phillips says the reality is that “profits and losses don’t matter. In this city it only matters if you win or lose.”

Who knows that better than George Steinbrenner? No one did more to create that thinking and sustain it than the Yankees’ principal owner. Seize the moment. Damn the cost.

Steinbrenner still burns to win--he has three World Series titles in the last four years to prove it--but experience counts as much in the owner’s box as the batter’s box, and Steinbrenner has shown a willingness in recent summers to listen to the recommendations of the people responsible for his baseball operation, recognizing the importance of the future as much as the present.

Steinbrenner did it in the negotiations for Juan Gonzalez and again in the negotiations for Sammy Sosa, ultimately trading for David Justice of the Cleveland Indians rather than giving up the five young players that the Chicago Cubs were demanding for Sosa or the $100 million it might have taken to extend his contract and get the outfielder’s approval on the trade.

If Sosa and his agents, Adam Katz and Tom Reich, weren’t happy about the way it played out, neither was Cub President Andy MacPhail.

And neither were some of the injury-wracked Indians, who wonder if the departure of their runs-batted-in leader is the start of a trade deadline housecleaning.

In New York, preoccupied with John Rocker’s appearance and the holiday weekend, Justice didn’t create the splash Sosa would have, but he was the more sensible acquisition--a playoff-proven left-handed hitter who is no stranger to Yankee Stadium’s right-field porch or the pressures there, having often been serenaded by the chant of “Hal-le Ber-ry, Hal-le Ber-ry,” his former wife.

Justice is owed about $18 million over the next two-plus seasons, which, compared to $100 million, won’t interfere with the megabucks signing of Derek Jeter and the other financial obligations of a team whose payroll is now $102 million and counting.

Steinbrenner loves star power, but he was talked off the Sosa precipice in a Thursday meeting with his baseball advisors in Tampa, who convinced him that this was both dollars and sense, preserving the cream of the Yankee farm system at a time when key position players may soon have to be replaced and the rotation rebuilt. In addition, the Yankees probably will trade for a pitcher before the July 31 deadline using as bait some of the five players MacPhail wanted.

“We might have made the deal for three players or four, but not five,” a Yankee official said, confirming that Steinbrenner’s advisors were also concerned about Sosa’s strikeout tendencies in a bat-control Yankee lineup, his defensive weaknesses and an entourage-oriented traveling style.

“Here’s their most popular player since Ernie Banks and the Cubs are unwilling to make a long-term commitment,” a baseball executive familiar with the Yankees’ thinking said. “That sent up some red flags.”

MacPhail told Chicago reporters that he believes the Yankees had serious interest but were on a “fishing expedition” in that they believed that “if they could create enough animosity between the player and his club,” or that “if enough animosity existed,” they could get that player for “little in return.”

When told of those remarks, the baseball executive familiar with the Yankee thinking expressed confusion and said, “If there was or is animosity between Sosa and the Cubs, it seems like it was Don Baylor who started it all by remarks he has made about Sosa’s defense and it was the Cubs who compounded it by creating the impression they were definitely going to trade him.”

Sosa is left with a rebuilding team that isn’t interested in re-signing him, playing for a manager with whom he has a tenuous relationship at best. MacPhail believes they can sit down, talk it out and make it work, a stance he’s compelled to take because there are no other trade options.

Can it work? Agent Katz, said partner Reich, “thinks it will be difficult, Sammy vacillates, and I think he’s entirely professional and will continue to do what he needs to do between the white lines. Having said that, [remaining with the Cubs] would not be his first choice.”

Katz added that the whole affair has been “unsettling and a little disappointing because the Yankees had led [MacPhail] and myself to believe that Sammy and the Cubs were the only game in town. However, it’s not a flagrant foul. They’re entitled to do what they did. It’s just that all of us had stopped pursuing other options.”

Amid the fallout in Cleveland, where the Indians have used 26 pitchers, including 11 starters, shortstop Omar Vizquel said he hoped the departure of Justice “isn’t one of those ‘we just quit’ things.”

Assistant General Manager Mark Shapiro insisted that it isn’t. However, with Manny Ramirez headed to free agency, a $7-million option decision due on Kenny Lofton, the pitching problems needing to be addressed and the Indians possibly trailing the Chicago White Sox by 10 games in the American League Central at the All-Star break, “we have to better position ourselves”--financially and otherwise--to either add a player before the deadline or “contend again next year,” Shapiro said.

Amid that New York frame of mind, Steinbrenner never gave much thought to next year. The Yankees are better positioned and served now that he does.