| Scott Essman. 20th June, 2005 - 10:22 pm
 George Steinbrenner can't stand the Mets. He really can't. The man can't bear the thought of that National League team doing ANYTHING to better him and his beloved Yankees. Just a few days ago, he announced a plan to completely rebuild Yankee Stadium, this coming less than three days after the Mets had announced their plan for a new ballpark to coincide with the 2012 Olympic bid by the city of New York.
This Met-Yankee rivalry has been going on for 40 years.
Way back in the mid-1960s, George Steinbrenner was a mild-mannered shipping magnate, giving no more a thought to baseball than to wiping his butt (which he reputedly did with $100 bills). Then, something wonderful happened to the city of New York. Mickey Mantle, bad knees and all, prematurely retired from the Yankees, and crosstown rivals the Metropolitans began to get top draft picks. Perennial losers, the Mets had amassed the worst record in baseball history in their debut season of 1962, but by 1967, they featured a pitcher named Tom Seaver who would revolutionize New York baseball forever. Seaver WAS the Mets, and he brought New York a title just two years later. The Yankees, now floundering in the American League, were suddenly the second best team in the city - something it had suffered a scant few times in the decades-old history of New York baseball.
The 1969 "miracle" year for the Mets stuck in Steinbrenner's craw, and by the time of the Mets'
second World Series appearance in 1973, the "boss" was principal owner of the Yankees. Immediately, he sought to re-establish the Yankees as the powerhouse of the American League, and he did so the ONLY way he knew how - to open his checkbook. He signed renegade Oakland Athletics Jim "Catfish" Hunter (before the
1975 season) and Reginald Martinez Jackson (before
1977) and around them, he built back-to-back championships in 1977-78. At the same time, the Mets were making their most absurd moves ever - they traded Seaver on the infamous date of June 15, 1977 for five guys who would barely make their mark on baseball.
That same day, they traded slugger Dave Kingman for a couple of scrubs (one of whom, Bobby Valentine, ironically became a future Mets manager). Alas, George was thrilled. The Yankees were at the top of their game again, and the Mets looked like the early 1960s losers that they were supposed to be.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Bronx:
instead of building around prospects and making clever trades, the Yankees tried to re-capitalize on their late-1970s success by constantly signing new free agents and trading budding young players for established stars. The only true Yankee prospect to make the cut was Don Mattingly, while future All-Stars such as Fred McGriff and Jose Rijo were let go. This led to a very dry 1980s in the Bronx as often good-hitting Yankee teams were sunk by a poor pitching staff that was often over-the-hill or just plain bad.
Steinbrenner picked a terrible time to gut his team of young players - in the mid-1980s the Mets again ascended, building around the tandem of Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry with key trades that brought Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter to Queens. From 1983 to 1986, the Mets got better and better, finally winning the title in '86 and getting to the playoffs again in 1988. This drove Steinbrenner mad. Not only did the Mets win without driving salaries to the moon, they did so with a proper balance of clever trades, player development, and role players. While Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield fetched millions in pinstripes, the Mets were the toast of New York.
By the 1990s, both the AL and NL baseball programs were in a state of disarray. The Mets sold off or traded most of their best players - the last from the glory years to go was David Cone, a 20-game-winner in
'88 who the Mets unceremoniously dumped in 1992. Over in Yankee stadium, it was a very quiet time, with not much else happening than watching superior Blue Jay and Red Sox teams climb the hill of the AL East.
However, Steinbrenner wasn't resting on any laurels.
Perhaps sensing that free agency was no longer the ONLY way to do business, at last, he began to develop talent in the minor leagues. Andy Pettite, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, and Bernie Williams, the cornerstones of the four World Series that the Yankees would go on to win, were all developed in-house. Add to that a very key personnel move when the Yankees acquired struggling hitter Paul O'Neill from the Reds (straight up for Roberto Kelly), and the Yankees were starting to look like... the 1980s Mets!!!
But this wasn't enough for King George. As if to underscore his loathing of the Mets' 1980s success, Steinbrenner made it a mission to acquire former Mets to round out his mid-1990s teams. Both Gooden and Strawberry were brought over, followed by Cone, all before the first championship in 1996. To boot, the Boss brought in Joe Torre, former Mets player and manager, to see through the final step in the process.
Where were Carter and Hernandez? Too old, probably, or they would have also been in a Yankee uniform.
Steinbrenner and company must have been sitting on their hands during the 2000 World Series when the Mets finally got a crack at the Yankees, and the former were sitting pretty in game one, with a bottom-of-the-ninth lead. However, it was too good to be true as Paul O'Neill worked out a very difficult at-bat to gain a walk against Met closer (and former Yankee nemesis) Armando Benitez. O'Neill's at-bat lead to the tying run, the Yanks won the game and the series in five, and the Yankee faithful could all breathe easily again.
That was until the recent ballpark announcements.
Could George have announced his new ballpark SOONER than the Mets announced theirs? Of course. Could they have waited perhaps a week or two after the Mets announcement, out of pure courtesy? Of course. Would Steinbrenner ever do anything of the kind? Of course not. The man has a serious problem with competition.
He can't stand losing on any level. He must buy a winner, copy the style of a winner, or just plain overrun his competitors to survive. This latest act is not one of fairness, decency, or the joy of competition. It's one of undefinable anger at the thought of anyone stealing the man's thunder. Of course, it's hard to say how the new ballparks will stack up, but the first word is that the Mets' park, if approved, will debut in 2009. Oh, and that was also the year that Steinbrenner named as the debut for the new Yankee park. Is anyone surprised?
Scott Essman can be reached at scottessman2005@yahoo.com |
