Smell of Excess

Oh, why not?

They’re the New York Yankees, after all, for whom perfection is always another $30 million away.

The farm system that once gave us Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte is gone.

The wonderful old ballpark is as familiar for its 50-man restroom lines as for its center fielders, and someday it will be gone.

The Curse? Gone too, in the cool mist of an October night when a reliable pitcher could not be found anywhere on a $190-million roster.

The Oakland Raiders once had a habit of signing the previous season’s Super Bowl MVP, a clever scouting tool.

So the Yankees, forever trading in George Steinbrenner’s money and their own sport’s credibility, added Randy Johnson to a tradition that by the hour becomes less about baseball and more about being the Yankees.

Johnson is 41. He’s cranky and a little creepy and he throws a 98-mph fastball, all of which should fit quite well in the Bronx, assuming that the Yankees are well-stocked in security guards to keep the photographers away and in the bone lubricant they’ll be routinely shooting into his knee.

He threw a perfect game in May and when his jubilant catcher reached the mound, Johnson stuck out his hand as if he’d just been introduced to the night manager at Taco Bell.

“I’m Randy. Thanks for not screwing that up.”

It’ll play in New York, where Yankee players generally seize up on their way to work, stiffening against the sea of media and the storm of expectations. Or is it storm of media and sea of expectations?

Either way....

They lower their heads and trudge to their jobs, and on a good day, Kevin Brown, Johnson’s new teammate, rams into only the reporters he really despises.

The Yankees will play into October, because that’s what they do. And Johnson might someday stand where Brown did, with nothing but his number and the weight of a city on his back, and these days that’s a long way from the Diamondbacks and Paradise Valley, Ariz.

This is what he wanted. Demanded, actually. He surrendered his no-trade protection for the Yankees alone, even as his cash-light former club spent another $80 million on a No. 2 pitcher -- to him -- and a third baseman who everyone is pretty sure can throw a baseball all the way across a diamond. And now the Diamondbacks have Shawn Green and a few dollars of his salary.

The Yankee payroll will swell to something like $210 million, give or take the occasional Womack. And if Carlos Beltran has so much as a hit in the Subway Series, you can bet the nearest public relations intern will pay with his job.

And why not?

Doesn’t baseball need the Yankees to be the Yankees? And don’t the Yankees need Johnson to be the Yankees? From first base the man even looks like a pinstripe.

They needed Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown, Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui. Needed them, as the Boss himself needs organizational subservience.

Agent Scott Boras talks about the Yankees, and halfway through it’s a wonder he doesn’t take a moment to compose himself.

“It’s good business for the Yankees to spend a huge amount of dollars on the premium players, because when you go to see Goliath, you want to see Goliath,” he said recently. “The great thing about our game, I think Goliaths are wonderful. Because for the last four years, we get to say what? David beat Goliath!”

There’s that. Nobody wants to be the NFL, where they measure dynasties in weeks.

In an off-season in which the market was flooded with middle-of-the-rotation pitchers -- the Yankees got two of them -- they wanted Johnson, followed by Mussina, followed by Carl Pavano, followed by Brown, followed by Jaret Wright, followed by whatever shiny trinket they uncover by spring training.

They want excess, piled to the top of Steinbrenner’s fancy turtleneck. They want a pitcher whose fastball once turned a curious dove to fluff, a pitcher who nearly won another Cy Young Award despite playing for an alarmingly awful team, a pitcher who couldn’t be better if Warren Spahn and Satchel Paige themselves came down and picked up the occasional inning for him.

His perfect game ended amid a chorus of “Rand-DEE! Rand-DEE!” -- not at home but at Atlanta’s Turner Field. He struck out 13 Braves. He pointed to the sky in memory of his late father.

He hadn’t yet turned 41, hadn’t yet gone to the Yankees, hadn’t yet raced off to pitch to the most expansive left-center field in the game, but you know Steinbrenner was watching.

Johnson said then, “You guys keep saying I’m old; and maybe someday I will be.”

He will be 44 when his contract expires. Undoubtedly, he will be surrounded by men he’ll hardly know but for the uniforms, the next wave of power hitters who will have outgrown their small markets, if not their boyish attraction to the Bronx’s storied baseball franchise.

It is the game’s wealth, and its indigence, and it undoubtedly has room for another 6-foot-10 left-hander. He’ll win 20 games, be loved, go to the Hall of Fame and be out of Arizona. Best of all, the Yankees will be the Yankees.

Nice of everybody to play along.