"You might as well be a mensch."

 

I was going to write this post about how Hal Steinbrenner defacing the pinstripes with an advertising patch was something that would, ultimately, hurt the Yankees' brand. That he doesn't understand, and never has understood, that what Yankees fans—enduring Yankees fans, at least—love about this team is its legacy, its history of sustained excellence and class.

The Yankees don't have silly mascots running around the field. Their stadium has not been renamed for a hedge fund or a bank. They are still playing in the Bronx, where they have been for a hundred years now. Their players aren't allowed to cosplay that they are wild mountain men, just come down for the game.

For all the times they have diverged from this legacy—and they have done so far too often under the reign of Hal and his family—the Yankees have still hung on to most of the trappings, at least, of being a class act. It's what keeps many of us coming back, and tuning in.

The trouble is, though, that once you've started talking about "brand," you've already lost. You have already made the conversation about money, and then the discussion is only about how much. And the answer is never enough.

Unless you're desperately hustling to provide for your family—a situation no Steinbrenner has faced in at least 150 years—your life cannot, should not be only about money. In fact, not even then.

You should do class things because they are classy. You should recognize beauty and style and tradition, and honor them, because they are beauty and style and tradition. 

When you've been lucky enough to live your whole life without having to worry about money, you should wake up every day thinking, "How can I make this world better? How can I improve things for my family, the people who work for me, the people who have shelled out all this cash for us? How can I bring a little more joy and beauty into this life?"

As the author Calvin Trillin wrote, quoting his father's favorite phrase, "You might as well be a mensch."

Speaking of fathers. I get it that Hal Steinbrenner probably has a very different perspective on all this because of who he grew up with.

He never seems to smile or laugh, and in almost every picture taken of him you can see the dread, the uncertainty. It must have been no picnic growing up with George Steinbrenner—or the Yankees, George's main toy and obsession. 

You must have very mixed feelings—to say the least—about having inherited this team. A desire to outdo your dad and not repeat his mistakes, in one compartment of your brain; a wish that you could just chuck the whole stupid thing, in another. 

In fact, I question whether any of this is really about money at all.

Some of Hal's most enraging and baffling decisions—his making us chase all over the television and the internet for Yankees games, his voting against raising the salary cap; this very decision to plaster a cheap advertising patch on the Yanks' beloved uniforms—were instigated by that merry band of thieves that call themselves MLB.

The inescapable conclusion is that Hal Steinbrenner would like to have some friends. (A need that could account for the longevity of Brian Cashman, as well.)

Again, that's completely understandable, for someone who grew up under George Steinbrenner. And old George, it sounds like, was bullied and terrorized by his father as well, who I'm sure was terrorized by his father, and on and on, back to the beginning of all Steinbrenner's. Such is the story of the world.

Sooner or later, you have to break the chain. Sooner or later, you have to put aside childhood terrors, and do the right thing, and if keeping the Yankee pinstripe free of commercials is not a big right thing, well, it's a start. 

Sooner or later, you might as well be a mensch.