Meet the new Boss, not nearly the same as the old Boss

In what has become something of a Yankee Spring Training rite of passage these days, Hall Steinbrenner met with manager Joe Girardi yesterday, and the meeting was a very quite and cordial one. As Bryan Hoch reports, Hal didn’t stop to say much to the media and simply stopped by to talk to his manager. Then, he left. “When Hal comes down, the conversations are very meaningful. They’re right to the point and we talk a lot of baseball. It’s great,” Girardi said. “I feel like we’re always on the same page. He’s very open. The conversations are usually very constructive.”

The media still picks up these stories because, even though George has been out of the picture for a while now, it’s such a radical change from the way the Yanks operated from the early 1970s through the mid-2000s. Hal lets his baseball people run baseball ops and his business people run the business side of the franchise. He doesn’t overstep his bounds, and his employees don’t manage or play with the threat of the Boss looming over them. It is no coincidence that the team has improved as George has ceded power. The Yankee U, meanwhile, today pondered whether or not the Steinbrenner family would sell the team after George passes and if it would matter — interesting questions, indeed.