The Yankees need one authentic voice

• And it's not named Randy Levine or Lonn Trost.

"This is no knock against Hal, a young guy who has come late to the big chair, like he got a battlefield commission. The baseball people to whom I spoke, ones who have dealt with him on the business of the Yankees, say Hal Steinbrenner is a good guy, doing the best he can while getting on-the-job training. And deciding whom he can trust.

• Running the Yankees right now is a handful, for anybody, because it is a bit like trying to run the various states of the old Soviet Union.

• You've got Randy Levine, out of the head-banging Giuliani administration, letting everybody know he's the president of the Yankees

pretty much every chance he gets,

• thinking everybody else in the organization ought to be reporting to him.

You've got Lonn Trost, chief operating officer, taking fire these days for everything that goes wrong at the new Yankee Stadium, including the wind.

• You will never find Levine and Trost in the same foxhole. First of all, each would want one for himself. And with their vision of the Yankees, they would have to be luxury foxholes at that.

Brian Cashman, who runs the baseball operation, gets along fine with Trost but has no use for Levine.

• The feeling is fabulously mutual. ...

You hear this from another baseball executive, one who thought he'd never miss Steinbrenner:

• "There's not one voice."

There isn't, and there isn't going to be, even though Hank Steinbrenner tried so darn hard. This isn't about having a voice to threaten the manager or the general manager in the newspapers or fire another PR man.

• This is about making sure the Yankees get run right. That is Hal's job now.

• Again: Levine and Trost and Cashman work for him....

The place is run by underbosses now. Easy to see. And hear."...from Mike Lupica column, 5/16/09, "With George Steinbrenner out of picture, Yankees need a Boss and a new Voice," NY Daily News

• Nature abhors a vacuum and will rush to fill it. With whatever happens to be standing around. And this doesn't begin to get into the
• rogue nation
• of the YES Network. sm

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