OK. So it wasn’t his old man.
His old man would’ve bloviated longer and louder about what he expected out of this team. His old man would’ve issued a warning that they’d damn well better play well at Fenway Park this weekend, and, by God, had better string together another winning streak sometime soon.
Still, Hal Steinbrenner was willing to admit something Wednesday afternoon in Chicago, where Major League Baseball’s owners were conducting their quarterly meetings, and in spirit, at least, it seemed he was channeling his old man.
“If we don’t make the playoffs,” Steinbrenner said, “it’s a failure. Any year, any year. That’s just the mindset for us.”
There are times when this strict corporate mindset inspires eye-rolls across the sport, because it seems to suck every ounce of joy out of every season. In most baseball locales, the script the Yankees have followed this year — zero expectations, a hot start, increased expectations, first place, elevated expectations despite a losing streak — would all be defined by the first two words: zero expectations.
But the Yankees have their own expectations even when others may have hardly any for them. And at the end of the day is there really anything so terrible about that?
Contrast Steinbrenner’s words with Sandy Alderson’s, issued the same day at Citi Field before the third game of this year’s Subway Series. There, Alderson sat before a few dozen inquisitors and steadfastly defended the manner in which the team has conducted business in August — which has consisted mostly of slashing and burning and unloading and off-loading players.
“This was not a salary dump,” Alderson insisted, even though he was unable to find a workable euphemism for what it really was and admitted there was no guarantee money saved in August and September would be used to beef up the payroll in December and January.
So that’s how one New York team does business: always hedging its bets, the general manager forced to promise late-summer contingency fire sales in order to talk his bosses into handing over a few spare nickels and quarters when the time comes to build a club. You should have seen how proud Alderson looked as he described showing those bosses how much money he’d saved them these past few weeks.
This is how the other New York team does business:
“It was a great first 2 ¹/₂ months,” Steinbrenner said. “It’s been a tough last two months for the most part. But I think they’re coming out of it and the pitching additions we made at the deadline are already helping, and we’re going to have a strong last five, six weeks.”
And then, as if anyone really wondered:
“We can still go into the free-agent market,” he said.
The Mets had an almost perfect two-year run in 2015 and ’16, winning games, making postseasons, making some expenditures but nothing too crazy, nothing that actually would catapult them to the top-five payrolls in the sport despite playing in its No. 1 media market. It was perfect because as long as the good times rolled, they wouldn’t be constantly reminded of their parsimonious ways.
That, ultimately, is what separates the teams in both reality and in public perception. It drives the men who run the Mets crazy that they are forever taking bullets that seem to never get aimed at the Yankees. But there’s a reason for that: even in a time when Steinbrenner has tried (and failed) to get under the luxury-tax threshold, and spoken openly about that, there is never a question about his commitment.
And if ever there would be, there are always the six magic words: “That’s always the mindset for us.”
The Mets may not still be enmeshed as deeply in their Madoff problems, but there is still a sense, honestly earned, that they would prefer savings to winnings. And this year has done nothing to change the way people look at the Mets.
Or the Yankees too, for that matter. Good for them. Not so good for the Mets.