COMMENTARY : Yankees Give Buechele the Old Two-Step

Do you hear what I hear? It’s from the remake “Baseballbusters.� You know the symbol, the interlocked NY with the slash through it. And the observant, “Listen. Do you smell something?�

Yeah. It’s the Yankees. But who?

It’s like the story my friend Steve Lekowski tells about how his father tossed Limburger cheese into the classroom light, and when it got warm, everybody was driven out by the smell. And everybody had to stay after school while they searched for the culprit.

Are the smelly fingers here really Steinbrenner’s? Has he set this whole thing up to guarantee that baseball’s showcase theater is such a stinker that he is brought back to save the show? Could he really be that devious?

Answer that yourself. We’ve been throwing the idea back and forth among ourselves in press boxes across this great land for months now. And would the New York Yankees be better off if George Steinbrenner were back?

What the New York Mets are doing and trying to do only shows the Yankees as more repugnant: Don’t just do something, stand there! To them all ridicule is due.

I mean, look at the Steve Buechele business.

Robert Nederlander never wanted to run a baseball team, so he doesn’t. Leonard Kleinman has no baseball background, and reveals it. These are not incompetent people in other fields. Gene Michael has baseball background and wants to run the baseball team, but he was ridiculed relentlessly by Steinbrenner the last time around and has done little to reverse his image.

“I just think we need a little more time right now,� Nederlander said in blowing out the candle in the window. Now why would a player with choice want to submit himself to that kind of indecision? Word gets around.

Michael says everybody knew he was interested in Buechele, which was why the third baseman was invited to look around the Bergen County suburbs. And then Kleinman phoned Buechele’s agent and took back the invitation. He said the Yankees were pursuing other possibilities, and even if Buechele came to look at New Jersey, he couldn’t see Nederlander.

Good grief! Buechele could even have been shown the wonderful only-in-New York street scene of blowing up the balloons for Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. There’s no measuring that magnetism.

If an agent were making the rounds with “Fiddler on the Roof� the first time around, would theater mogul Nederlander say, “Later?� That’s not how he got rich. So Buechele isn’t any smash hit. He is available, he does have some credentials and the Yankees do have this need.

Surely those people must know better, or are they doing what they’re told? The movie was “The Manchurian Candidate.� Or maybe it was “The Stepford Wives.�

“The Mr. Dithers File� sounds about right. What else could it be?

If Steinbrenner were out-in-the-open in charge, we know the Yankees would be full of energy insteed of asleep. But then he did leave those people in charge.

It isn’t as if the Yankees were fighting free-agent inflation for the sake of the fans when they have less money. Economists maintain that players’ salaries don’t determine ticket prices, even if the Mets try to give that impression. Clubs charge what they think people will pay.

People don’t go to bad movies because tickets are cheap, do they?

The Mets fear loss of revenue, so they invested in Eddie Murray, perhaps more than he’s worth, and are trying to invest more than Bobby Bonilla appears to be worth. They’re trying to make something people will pay to see.

In any case, the Mets already have increased ticket prices. So have the do-nothing Yankees.

If the Yankee position was that they didn’t think Buechele was worth the price and were putting the money into the farm system or something, that might make sense. But they have that $43 million cable TV annuity. They are crying fiscal wolf.

Could it be that Mr. Dithers, in the face of his suspension, has deliberately manipulated the Yankees into a position in which his partners cry that they need him to save their assets, that other owners want him pardoned for the greater good, and Yankee fans cry out that they were better served when that man was in office? Has he knowingly put mismatches at the switches to make that happen?

Remember that Steinbrenner was suspended by baseball and sentenced by the courts for making illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign, and causing his shipbuilding employees to lie about it.

Steve Greenberg of the commissioner’s office says there’s no evidence. He says he believes Nederlander when he says there’s been no sneaky communications.

Mr. Dithers always tried to claim the sweet smell of success, and when things turned bad, it was the fault of the baseball people he outvoted 1-5.

Steinbrenner did land the two most important players of the free-market era in Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson. It was his energy. The baseball mind that assembled the best team money could buy, however, was Gabe Paul.

When Paul left, Al Rosen made the baseball judgments until Mr. Dithers threatened to run his little finger in the pencil sharpener too often. The Yankees won their last three division titles with Rosen’s revisions.

Rosen since has won division titles with Houston and San Francisco. Steinbrenner, on his own, has won nothing in 10 seasons since.

So the commissioner’s office hasn’t seen evidence that Steinbrenner is manipulating the Yankees. Don’t think for a minute that he wouldn’t. I’m not convinced he isn’t.

Listen, don’t you smell the cheese in the Bronx?