OWNING IT
Time has a way of healing wounds from bad decisions
O
AKLAND, Calif — There are few things that drive me battier than this, and it happens every baseball season now, at some point, so regularly, so frequently you can set your watch by it. It always happens in three stages.
1. A Yankee says/does/ doesn’t do something worthy of discussion.
2. The Yankees respond to this a certain way.
3. Yankees fans respond, “George is rolling over in his grave!!!!!”
My favorite example of this was when Alex Rodriguez was banned for a year, and the whole world — including a few Yankees execs — took shots at him, and the people growled, “George never would have done that to A-Rod!”
No. He would have hired Howie Spira to dig up dirt on him. Oh, I’m sorry, you’re too young to remember Howie Spira? You’re too young to remember the night George was thrown out of baseball for the second time and Yankee Stadium was transformed into a symphony of “Stein
brenner sucks!” chants? You’re too young, or simply too much of a fan to want to remember the years when Yankees fans lived in terror of Steinbrenner doing something to sandbag the season? Because he sandbagged
every season? I’ve told this story before: I told James Dolan this one time, and he shook his head, because he certainly saw how hated Steinbrenner was during most of his tenure as the Yankees owner and how beloved he became in the last 15 years or so.
“See!” he said, maybe halfjoking, maybe less. “They’ll love me when I’m dead!”
I’ve thought of Steinbrenner a lot this week, as John Mara has endured one more round of public floggings. I’ve made no secret of the admiration I hold Mara in: I think he’s one of the smartest and most decent owners in all of sports, especially New York sports.
He is not, however, perfect.
This week has reminded us of that. The past few years have reminded us of that. If we are going to extol the fact the first 10 years of his tenure as Giants president were awfully good — two Super Bowls in those years of 2005-15, a newly constructed stadium, an extension of the “Giants Way” that Giants fans have long embraced — then it’s just as fair to point out the time since 2015 has been one long, unending fiasco.
Exiling Tom Coughlin, retaining Jerry Reese, hiring Ben McAdoo, the haunting three-headed decision. The constant enabling and nondisciplining of Odell Beckham Jr. The signing and ultimate release (but only after a harsh public shaming) of Josh Brown. This week’s Eli Manning Fiasco. And the 2-9 mark the Giants drag into the Black Hole on Sunday.
Mara looked shaken Wednesday, when he took questions about Manning, and it’s understandable because he is not one of these benignly clueless owners who doesn’t get it. He does suffer. He does bleed. He knows what people are saying.
Here’s one thing that people are saying:
“If only Wellington Mara could see what’s happened …”
And that’s just as funny as the Steinbrenner handwringing, and I tell you that as someone who thought Wellington Mara was just about the nicest man I’ve ever met who also happened to own a sports franchise.
John Mara turned 63 years old Friday. Wellington Mara was 63 in 1979, a year the Giants went 6-10 for the second year in a row. He was 16 years into an 18-year playoff drought, much of that time when he had final say over all football moves. He was one year removed from seeing his fans hire airplanes to drag banners to voice their disgust. He was six months removed from Pete Rozelle all but forcing him to hire a real GM.
He was still vilified in many circles for having moved the Giants out of New York. Larry Merchant, in the pages of this newspaper, sneered that he was “The son of a bookmaker ... what else can you expect from an Irishman named Wellington?”
That was 1979. By 1987, the Giants were champions again, by 1997 he was voted into the Hall of Fame, by his death in 2005, he was among the most beloved figures the city had ever seen. Nobody knows this more than John Mara, who also knows you don’t have to necessarily resort to his fellow scion Dolan’s formula.