Overheard and Understood: 'The Boss' Set Unreachable Bar for Yankees

At one point during Friday's pregame memorial to George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard at Yankee Stadium, the fans began chanting, "Let's! Go! Yan-kees!" It was as if they were saying, "It's nice to remember the recently deceased, but we need a win."

Steinbrenner would have been chanting along with them.

As much as seven World Series and a new palace in the Bronx, Steinbrenner's legacy is a culture. Not necessarily a healthy one.

"He had a football mentality," Derek Jeter said last week of Steinbrenner, who long before buying the Yankees was an assistant football coach at Northwestern and Purdue. "He feels as though you should win every single game. You try to tell him, we play 162 games, and it's a little bit difficult to win every single game. But he really expected that."

Immersed in the game for more than three decades, Steinbrenner never figured out baseball is a game of failure. You lose four of every 10, you're a playoff team. You make an out six of every 10 at-bats, you're Ted Williams.

Meanwhile, the fans bought into the culture, and much of the media as well. It was "what have you done for me lately" to its extreme.

If a Hall of Famer made a key out or allowed a homer, he was booed. Every loss was dissected to divine a goat, just as The Boss was doing upstairs or in Tampa.

"He thought getting to the playoffs wasn't good enough," manager Joe Girardi said. "He thought getting to the World Series wasn't good enough."



Spending to win is great. Expecting to win is fine. But demanding a win every night, and considering anything a short of a championship a failure, crosses the line into unreasonable -- and unhealthy.

"He expected perfection," Jeter and Mariano Rivera said in separate interviews.

That should be a goal, not an expectation.

Joe Torre tells a story that describes what it's like to operate in that environment. In the 2001 World Series, the Yankees had come as close as they possibly could to winning a fourth straight title, sending the best postseason closer ever to the mound with a lead in Game 7. But they lost.

The next spring training, a fan told Torre, "We'll do better this year."

The point being, how much better could they do? Only slightly, only two outs better. But that's what Steinbrenner wrought: the need to always do better.

Torre, rightly, gained a reputation for burning out set-up men. Why? Because he had to use his best relievers not only when ahead by a small margin, but when the game was tied, or the Yankees were slightly behind.

With Steinbrenner's high-priced lineups, the Yankees always had a chance to come back. But if resting a reliever cost them that chance, Torre would have to answer for it.

In baseball, sometimes you lose a game today so you win multiple games down the line. Steinbrenner never understood that, so Torre used Tanyon Sturtze or Scott Proctor until they had to face a scalpel instead of the Red Sox.

With Steinbrenner out of the picture the past few years, and Girardi reporting only to the reasonable Brian Cashman, that urgency has been replaced with a better balance between short- and long-term -- although the annual goal of winning the World Series remains the same.

(If anyone wants to be reminded what it looks like when a manager feels he has to win every day, just check the crosstown Mets, where Jerry Manuel changes his setup roles every four days, his lineup every week and his rotation every month.)

But even at Yankee Stadium, the fans and some media continue to adhere to the Steinbrenner philosophy. They may not realize that demanding nothing less than perfection means always falling short -- and never really enjoying success.

Girardi recalled that after the Yankees won the 1996 World Series, ending a 15-year title drought, Steinbrenner started discussing how to improve in 1997 before the team even got its ticker-tape parade.

Because only winning mattered to Steinbrenner, he has been remembered fondly these past days for winning. Thus he created the only kind of culture in which his monomania could be celebrated.

Around the Majors

• The Mariners' journey from trendy preseason pick to cellar-dweller -- with 19 losses in the opponent's final at-bat -- seems to have created some tension between manager Don Wakamatsu and general manager Jack Zduriencik, one source said. If so, Wakamatsu could be the sufferer of, shall we say, Bob Melvin Syndrome.

Seattle last year outplayed its talent level -- and won more than it should have, given its runs scored and runs allowed. Wakamatsu gets some credit for that, but the 2009 record led to exaggerated expectations in 2010. So Wakamatsu becomes the victim of his own success.

It's reminiscent of the 2007 Diamondbacks, who made the playoffs despite being outscored, then fell back to earth the next season, and Melvin was fired early in 2009.

(Those '07 Diamondbacks were 32-20 in one-run games. The '09 Mariners were 35-20 in one-run games.)

• Prince Fielder may not have the ideal body, but he has played in 279 straight games, the longest current streak in the majors and a Brewers record. (He passed Robin Yount, 274 games in 1987-89, last week.) Fielder can't break Cal Ripken's record of 2,632 until early in the 2025 season -- around Fielder's 41st birthday.

• Omar Infante's selection to the All-Star Game was roundly mocked, but an official of an NL team who scouted the Braves this month said Infante and outfielder Gregor Blanco deserve credit as unsung heroes for Atlanta.

Infante has played six positions and leads all right-handed hitters with a .373 batting average against right-handed pitching (minimum 35 at-bats vs. righties). Blanco has made up for the loss of Nate McLouth by hitting .310.

• According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Tampa Bay's Reid Brignac on Saturday became just the third rookie to have two homers and five RBI against the Yankees in the Bronx, after Harry Davis of the 1932 Tigers and Jason Varitek of the 1998 Red Sox.

• The latest industry rumor had Buck Showalter taking over as Orioles manager in early August. As the search drags on, speculation is that owner Peter Angelos has overruled president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail for the first time since MacPhail was hired, with MacPhail liking Eric Wedge over Showalter.

• He was a throw-in in the Cliff Lee deal, but Mark Lowe could eventually be a nice pickup for the Rangers. One scout who has seen Lowe frequently said Lowe has the mental makeup to come back from back surgery, and considering he was throwing 97-100 mph in 2009, Texas "could catch lightning in a bottle." If Lowe can be a dominant reliever, it would allow the Rangers to let Frank Francisco go as a free agent after the season.

• Of the Mets' final 70 games -- starting Monday -- 29 are against Arizona (six), Houston (seven), Pittsburgh (seven), Washington (six) and the Cubs (three).

• When the Giants consider adding a bat, they prefer pull hitters because it's so hard to homer at AT&T Park anywhere other than down the lines. So while the Cubs' Derrek Lee might seem like a target on the surface, San Francisco isn't sure. "Our ballpark isn't an easy fit," one Giants official said.

• David Ortiz is auctioning off his winning bat and batting gloves from the Home Run Derby, with proceeds going to the David Ortiz Children's Fund. Bidding goes on another week at at www.davidortizchildrensfund.org.

• The honor of going to the All-Star Game has been devalued. While it makes sense to replace pitchers who start two days before, adding that to the expanded rosters, and the rash of players begging out with minor injuries, we ended up with 82 All-Stars this year.

In other words, one out of every six players who had 125 or more plate appearances in the first half wound up an All-Star. And one of every 12 pitchers who appeared in 10 or more games.