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Steinbrenner says he's out to win for the common man

There was a different September feel Monday to Yankee Stadium with the Red Sox gone, New York City schools open and the crowd sparse. The race was on, though. In the cool breezes of the dying summer, the heat was on the Yankees, like the condemnatory eyes of their capricious owner.

Four American League teams were still in the hunt for three postseason positions, creating the threat of the ultimate embarrassment, no October at all. And this has meant a large dose of unfamiliar prefall fear, of Steinbrennerian dysfunction, the Boss inviting one reporter after another into his office to clarify or contradict his ramblings of the previous day.

"This team is important to the city," he said in his latest round Sunday. "There are doormen and people like that, every day it's important to them."

And if you believe that concern for the "people like that" was why George Steinbrenner couldn't stay quiet as the Red Sox cut mercilessly into the Yankees' lead last week, then you must be one of those Hideki Matsui bobbleheads handed out Monday before Mike Mussina and the Yankees beat the Blue Jays, 9-3.

The odds of wanting to nod in agreement have always increased exponentially when the audience is granted with someone in pinstripes, as opposed to a blazer and turtleneck. So whereas Steinbrenner could see only the potential calamity of September challenge, Derek Jeter considered the events of the past week and the coming days as perhaps the Yankees' best, last chance to develop a core stoutness they haven't had, and won't win in October without.

"With this group here, I think it could be good -- beneficial -- to play big games at the end of the regular season," he said Monday morning, in the quiet of the clubhouse. "There are a lot of new faces and you have to go through some things. Good things and, more importantly, bad things. It's good to win, but you have to be tested to see how you'll react."

When Jeter and the few Yankees remaining from their last World Series team in 2001 look around the room, they have no idea what or whom they are looking at. If you blinked this summer, you missed a Yankee transaction. You went to use a Stadium lavatory and you could purchase an updated program on the way back to your seat. From Raul Mondesi to Karim Garcia, Sterling Hitchcock to Felix Heredia, 49 men of various size and standing have checked into the Yankee clubhouse, which most days felt like the Hilton.

"Things are always changing, especially nowadays," Jeter said.

He was the first Yankee to admit last year that the championship chemistry, the dynamic so difficult to define, had gone with the wind. Most of his teammates have never won a playoff series, here or anywhere.

"Our group that won all those championships, that was just unusual to have guys together that long," he said, a bit wistfully. Then he added, "As long as the philosophy is the same, as long as we're on the same page, I think we'll be all right."

He hopes, anyway. Steinbrenner has spent almost US$200 million on his team, and it is flawed and graying. These Yankees have fattened up on the inferior, on Jack Cust falling down between third and home, on Carlos Beltran being thrown out rounding second. Monday, Kelvim Escobar, the Blue Jays' starter, couldn't execute a soft toss home on a Jason Giambi roller with the bases loaded in the first inning. There would be none of Sunday's sweating out the face-saving victory over the Red Sox.
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