The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
September 20, 2010
This was a night the Boss would have loved. Brian Cashman was sure of that.
He would never have allowed a party for himself, even without the monument, which is about mortality. Even while he was making the old Yankee Stadium tremble with his presence, George M. Steinbrenner III would have shied away from any honor for himself.
“He was the master of ceremonies — for others,” said Cashman, who rose from intern to general manager under the Boss and no doubt was told on occasion that he could be busted right back to intern again.
Former New York Yankees manager Joe Torre walks past a monument of former Yankees owner George M. Steinbrenner in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium after an unveiling ceremony, before the Yankees' MLB American League Baseball game against the Tampa Bay Rays, in New York September 20, 2010. At rear is former Yankees pitcher David Wells. (Reuters)That was the Boss’s way. He would have appreciated this Monday night as the Yankees fended off their division rivals, the Tampa Bay Rays, from his adopted home area. How he hated to lose to the Rays — even in spring training. Made the regulars take the bus across the causeway to St. Pete. He would also have enjoyed watching Derek Jeter, the captain who was allowed to pour Champagne on Steinbrenner’s head in certain Octobers, drive in the go-ahead run in the sixth inning of an 8-6 victory.
On this night of nights, Cashman, one of his most successful protégés, the general manager since 1998, was reminiscing about the Boss.
“I can’t tell you how many people it takes to replace him,” Cashman said. “He was the ticket manager, the marketing director, the general manager, the manager in the dugout, the stadium manager.”
Cashman added, “His family runs it now, and they run it well, but everybody is trying to do what the Boss made happen.”
Cashman was really into it, in the interview room before the monument to Steinbrenner would be unveiled out behind center field.
The memorial to the Boss, who died July 13, nine days after his 80th birthday, is the seventh in Monument Park, joining commemorations of Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and the events of 9/11.
Grand Yankees like Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson were home for the evening, and so were Joe Torre and Don Mattingly, both of whom left the team with bruised feelings but were now drawn back out of loyalty and love and memories.
Just about everybody in the official party — family members surely included — had memories of a man who could weep in a winning locker room but fire a key employee, and sometimes actually go through with it.
As family members watched the five-minute video tribute to the Boss, one could imagine little cartoon balloons over their heads as they thought of the harsh words, angry accusations, strident challenges issued from the Boss to his intimates.
George Steinbrenner could be miserable, could order a venerable general manager, long before Cashman, to stay in his hotel room to think of something after losing a World Series game, could order an employee to travel on Christmas Day.
But Cashman was remembering the good times, or the somewhat good times, now that the Boss was a man of good karma. The ceremony had brought Torre and Mattingly back to the Bronx for the first time since their departures after the 2007 season. Cashman even sat behind closed doors with Torre and discussed their hard feelings over the breakup. The spirit of the Boss — did you hear that, the spirit of the Boss? — was bringing people together.
Asked what it was like to work for the Boss, Cashman recalled what it was like, in those prehistoric days before e-mails and text messages and the BlackBerry, to arrive in the employee parking lot and sense that everybody was furiously attending to details.
Is the Boss here? “You’d ask the question,” he said, “but you already knew the answer. It would permeate your soul.”
Cashman recalled the meetings, how the Boss had an uncanny ability to ask the one question he could not answer — the vague item in the budget, the blurry sentence. You couldn’t shake him — certainly not in contract negotiations.
Cashman recalled the year when he and George agreed on everything, but there was something else. There was always something else.
“He told me, ‘You’ve got to give me more,’ ” Cashman recalled. And Cashman said he could not promise that because he had nothing more to give. But the Boss persisted. He wanted more this time.
And Cashman pointed out that if he said he would give the Boss more, it would mean he had not given enough the last year, and that was not the kind of talk that pleased George M. Steinbrenner III.
“It was an Abbott-and-Costello routine,” Cashman said. Finally the Boss signed off on the contract, but he ordered Cashman to give more of himself the next time around.
Who was right? “I was right,” Cashman said, but softly, lest the Boss hear him.
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Soon it was time to head out to the field, where the Steinbrenner family was driven out to center field, trailed by the players in uniform and then by grand old Yankees, including Torre and Mattingly.
As the monument was unveiled — it seems bigger than the other ones — I could envision the Boss up in his box, squawking into a walkie-talkie because his sons, Hal and Hank, were not wearing ties. Enough to make the old man want to come back and fire them both.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com
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