Yankee Stadium was filled with electricity again on Friday night.
It was the last regular-season series between Boston and the Yankees, with the Red Sox trying to cut into the Yankees' three-and-a-half-game lead.
In the grand scheme of things, Boston is irrelevant to the Yankees' larger concerns. When you play for posterity, as the Yankees do, you always have larger concerns.
The Yankees are unlike any other sports organization, with the exception of Notre Dame football. They play two games, two seasons, simultaneously: They play in the present and in the past, and they have a foot in the future, as well. They are a national franchise; Notre Dame may be the only other one in the US.
The Yankees have established themselves as the American championship franchise. Notre Dame begins the football season as one of a number of teams in quest of a national championship, but the Yankees have put themselves in a World Series box: they have to win the Series or the season is considered lost.
This is fine when things are rolling, as they have been the last few seasons. But when the rolling stops, the misery begins.
How do they avoid the World Series appearance droughts they endured from 1965 to 1975, and again from 1982 to 1995? For one, they have to heed Branch Rickey's advice and unload veteran talent before the talent breaks down -- trade a player too soon, rather than too late.
This may mean trading Bernie Williams and letting Andy Pettitte walk as a free agent. The Yankees need stronger, younger arms. How do they get them? The Yankee way is often to buy them. But there is another way: trade for them, develop them.
There's a larger issue confronting the Yankees, one they've avoided the last few seasons but that is looming larger: who will succeed Joe Torre as manager?
This is not a question Yankee fans have had to think about for the last eight seasons and, frankly, it is not a question anyone wants to deal with because it brings us face to face with the Willie Randolph conundrum.
Now the question becomes relevant because, well, because it's time. For all the complaints about this season, the reality is that the Yankees are in a subtle downward spiral, a spiral that began in November 2001 when Mariano Rivera allowed three hits and Arizona won the World Series.
A year later, the Yankees were pummeled out of the playoffs by the Anaheim Angels.
How many more aborted World Series quests will George Steinbrenner tolerate?
This year the Yankees have maintained a season-long lead over the Red Sox, toying with them, as usual, allowing them to get close enough to get a sniff, then pulling away.
One of the tightest playoff races in years is winding down, and if the Yankees stumble, there's a chance they might not make the playoffs. The mere idea of this is making the organization crazy.
Earlier this week Torre told a reporter from The New York Post that this season hasn't been fun. It's always difficult, he said, but this season hasn't been fun.
Asked to elaborate, he said that he had grown weary of the second-guessing.
Before the season started, Steinbrenner had already challenged Torre's coaching staff -- and that includes Randolph -- to work harder this year. Is this a team Randolph wants to manage?
Before Friday's game, Randolph played the good soldier and said he wanted to focus on this season and on Boston.
Randolph has been waving Yankees runners around third base for nearly a decade. Now he's waiting to be given the green light by the only person with the authority to wave him home.
Steinbrenner made Lou Piniella a manager with no experience, and has obliquely suggested to Randolph that he would not make that mistake again.
But Randolph has experience. Coaching at third for these Yankees, with four World Series championships, is worth a couple of years of minor league experience.
Randolph played 18 years in the majors, 13 with the Yankees. He was a Yankees co-captain and he played more games at second base than any other player in team history. But can he manage?
The Yankees have hinted that Randolph should do a stint with one of the club's minor league teams. If I were Randolph, I would not get out of the loop to manage, taking a pay cut with the hope -- the hope -- of getting the Yankees job, or any other managing position.
Randolph is in a difficult position. He wants to manage the Yankees, but does he really want to be the one who follows Joe Torre on a team with championship expectations but not championship talent?
Who should be the next Yankees manager? The question is like a difficult physics problem. The answer is Willie Randolph; the challenge is devising a formula to justify the answer.
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