Will Mount Hal erupt?

Let's start with the obvious. He's not cheap.

Cheap. Not.


The questions about Hal Steinbrenner are simple: Is he alive? Is he cognative? Aware? Does he rage against the night sky? Does he scream, does he holler, does he ever go bucktooth, sit-on-a-tack crazy, the way his blustering old man did?

Is he going to do something about this sorry Yankee team? (And - frankly - does it matter?)

Yesterday, old George would have punched an elevator. Didi Gregorious would still be bussing to Columbus with a necklace of garlic and a suitcase full of strangled kittens. For weeks, George would have been huffing about how Beltran's belt is obscured by his paunch. Yesterday's Bucknerian wickets replay in RF would have sent George over the precipice. As for Stephen Drew? Dear God, let's not think about what would have happened to him. We'll only be giving the CIA torture experts ideas.

To be sure, old George probably would be shredding the organization, by now. He was Isiah Thomas before Isiah Thomas became Isiah Thomas. We must be careful about assigning too much rose-colored nostalgia to the father. There was a lost decade in there, where George messed up everything so badly that, if MLB hadn't banned him - leaving Bob Watson and Stick Michaels to clean things up - the nineties might not have brought any Yankee redemption. 

Lately, I've been wondering if Hal isn't doomed to relive his dad's chronology - but in a shorter time frame. He wins a World Series, lets the team get old, and then wanders the darkness for several years. (Which is where we are now.) Maybe it's all fated to happen. Maybe we're in a time/destiny loop, something cooked up by George Lucas in one of his Yoda deliriums.

But another loss to the Rangers, another blowout at home, on national TV... well, if George's blood runs through the veins of his son, something has gotta give. Right?

He's not cheap.

The question is, does he feel embarrassment?