With Hank's "Toledo Mud Hens" crack, tabloids are back in business--NY Times

"When Hank Steinbrenner was not returning calls from reporters, he was initiating them. When he was not saying something rational, he was sounding a tad hysterical. Beginning with the tortured offer to Torre, he has presided over an organizational spectacle in the middle of baseball’s premier events....

• it’s like déjà vu all over again. We have no way of knowing when the Yankees will return to the World Series, but who would deny that they are back to having a very public owner who believes it is all about him and his team?

As Hank Steinbrenner said with regard to Rodriguez before the agent Scott Boras dropped the A-bomb: “Does he want to go into the Hall of Fame as a Yankee or a Toledo Mud Hen?” Rodriguez’s potential suitors should be pleased to hear that Hammerin’ Hank rates them no better than obscure minor leaguers.

• Here is the good news: There should be no more tasteless stakeouts of his father, no more Oz-like manipulations by the public-relations team to perpetuate the Boss’s legend.

The dawning of a new day and Don has brought a wealth of tabloid-friendly pronouncements and promises, just like the old days. The Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner said, will never again go 18 years without winning the World Series as they did from 1978 to 1996 in no small part because of his father’s unhelpful meddling.

• ....If Hank proves himself as combustible as George, Girardi should not get too comfortable in the dugout and Mattingly would be wise to not change his telephone number, even as he goes home, rejected and sad, to Evansville, Ind."

From NY Times column by Harvey Araton, "Biggest change May be at Top," 10/30/07

• P.S. DONNIE, DON'T CHANGE YOUR NUMBER, as the man said!

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