By 1990 the "Evil Empire" folded just like the old Soviet Union. It's 70 year reign of terror was over. The "Boss", George Steinbrenner not only ran the franchise into the ground, but he embarrassed the heck out of it. In a feeble attempt not to pay a few million to Dave Winfield's charity, Steinbrenner hired underworld thug Howie Spira to attest that Winny was a fraud. All it did was get Steinbrenner suspended and reiterate just how classy a guy Winfield was. Speaking of Winfield, at 38 years of age and with his best years behind him, he was shipped off to the Angels while attempting to comeback from offseason back surgery. Steinbrenner and his minions couldn't wait to get rid of the guy that they errantly labeled "Mr. May".
As if the Steinbrenner suspension and Winfield trade wasn't
enough ownership decided to feud with it's lone remaining star, Don Mattingly. The "Hit man" was unfortunately recovering from a major back ailment that would rob him of all of his power and shorten his career considerably. During this time, "Donnie Baseball" fought through the pain and gave the Yanks a gold glove presence at first, but little or no power at the plate. One of baseball's most dominant hitters during the mid to late 80's was reduced to being a slap hitter without any speed. This angered management, so they decided to attack him for growing his hair too long in the back. Donnie Baseball, the face of the Yankee franchise, was now being fined for having a mullet that touched just over the collar. This same franchise had no problem with Oscar Gamble’s mega-fro only 10 years earlier, yet attacked their team captain in the back pages of the NY Post and the Daily News.
For what it was worth those back page transgressions helped divert attention from the real fact that this team flat out stunk. For the past 5 or 6 seasons they were at least able to hit their way to victory even though they had mediocre pitching. In 1990 they couldn't hit and their mediocre pitching slipped to pitiful. With a staff ERA of 4.21 (12th place in AL) and a .241 batting average (14th) one could actually say their pitching carried their hitting. Of course one would be exercising sarcasm to the extreme with such a comment. The lone bright spots on the hill would be relievers Lee Guetterman (11-7, 3.39) and Dave Righetti (1-1, 3.57, 36 Saves). "Rags" was also in the process of feuding with management. He questioned why he was in the pen when this team had no ace and he grew up a starter who tossed a no-hitter on July 4th 1983 vs Boston. Granted he did save more than half of their wins, but how many more wins would he have added to the mix if he was their ace ? With this lineup one could probably surmise that he wouldn't have made much of a difference.
It eventually got so bad, Sports Illustrated had a cover article
asking "Whatever happened to the Yankees?". This hammered home just how far baseball's flagship franchise had fallen. Talk of moving to New Jersey, because they couldn't draw fans to the dangerous Bronx surfaced. Of course nobody looked at the fact that fans were avoiding the Bronx because the team flat out stunk and their was nothing there to watch. Late in the season Kevin Maas was called up from Columbus and the young man went on a tear with 21 homers in just 254 at bats. Fans hoping to cling to something anointed him the next Roger Maris. The following seasons he hit around .220 and struck out a ton and started looking more like the next Roger Repoz. Maas finished a distant second to Sandy Alomar Jr. in the Rookie of the Year balloting in what would be his one big season under the sun.
With Steinbrenner suspended the franchise would start building from the ground up by drafting young players like Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte. Gene Michael would run the front office and hold on to those valuable chips and not trade them for the likes of Ken Phelps like they did in the Jay Buhner deal. Even Seinfeld was making fun of the Yankees by this point as evidenced in the episode where Costanza's dad said to Steinbrenner, who was trying to tell him his son was thought dead, "how could you trade Jay Buhner...only an idiot would trade Jay Buhner". For the 15 seasons that the Yankees failed to make the post season it seemed like a lot of idiots were running the team. Heck their manager in '90 was named "Stump" Merrill. You don't get anymore clueless than that.
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