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I read this article in the Bergen Record (newspaper in NJ) and I thought this was interesting. It must have been a slow newsday for Adrian to write this idea. I told Adrian that he was nuts. I doubt Lou is going to leave the NHL's New Jersey Devils anytime soon and Steinbrenner probably will hire someone else in the baseball industry or bring Gene Michael back as a GM eventually.
Needless to say, this is an very interesting idea. This would be a bright move if George ever thought about it. Lou would make the adjustment to baseball seamlessly. He has had experience with baseball with the Cape Cod league and as the AD for Providence. Lou has a great idea about how to get the players to play the right way and how players can lead. You know Lou would focus more into developing players and all. Yankees would be fun to watch that way. The one thing I liked about the Yankees during the Showalter years and the Torre years of the late nineties was that they won with role players and homegrown players. I respected them back then. I will be the first to tell you that I rooted for the 1996 Yankees to go all the way back then since they had lot of good guys in that team. Yankees has missed that magic since 2001.
I would follow the Yankees with lot of interest if Lou ever had an interest. As a Devils fan, I wouldn't worry though.
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Woj: Lamoriello perfect for Yanks
Thursday, May 5, 2005
By ADRIAN WOJNAROWSKI
SPORTS COLUMNIST
The beginning of stopping the Yankees' slide into a franchise resembling James Dolan's Knicks and Rangers could come with George Steinbrenner honoring his old infatuation with getting pro sports' brightest executive mind on his franchise masthead. For what these Yankees need, it's worth Steinbrenner's time to recruit an old Providence Friars catcher and Cape Cod League manager out in the Meadowlands, arming Lou Lamoriello with autonomy and a superstar's salary to do what the owner needs done now: save Steinbrenner from himself.
The Yankees don't need bigger salaries and bigger names, but the bald, sixtysomething superstar with a history of spending responsibility and managing with an iron will. Steinbrenner needs Lamoriello to do something as bold as offering a hockey president the throne to the Yankees' Kingdom as CEO: He needs Lamoriello to take the challenge of streamlining the most bloated franchise in sports.
If Steinbrenner cares about the future of the Yankees more than his own fruitless obsession with winning now, he'll stop trying to build teams and build a franchise again. And no one in sports has built better than Lamoriello. No one does a better job hiring the right people for the right jobs - from Rick Pitino at Providence, to drafting Martin Brodeur with the Devils - than Lamoriello.
Now, it's time he make a bid to get him running the Yankees as a CEO. Steinbrenner has called Lamoriello "the best executive in sports," and it's praise well-founded. His genius isn't simply with sticks and skates, but a structure centered on spending smart, scouting smarter and giving players a disciplined, winning environment. He's won three Stanley Cups with a moderate payroll, forever reinventing his roster and organization along the way.
There needs to be a Yankee way again, and Lamoriello can bring that to any franchise, in any sport. The best leaders in sports can do it anywhere.
When he was working with Steinbrenner under YankeeNets, there were whispers that Steinbrenner had designs of moving Lamoriello over to baseball operations, but the arrangement dissolved before he ever had the chance. Still, they spent a lot of time together. They became close. Even so, Lamoriello always dismissed that possibility of working for Steinbrenner exclusively, but if there was ever a time to test his devotion to the Devils, this is it. The NHL lockout is dragging with no end in sight, and the Devils could be faced with a post-Scott Stevens era. This isn't a bad time to make a run at Lamoriello. Maybe, this is the best time of all.
When you visit with Lamoriello, he'll talk forever about the lessons learned from the old Canadiens and Celtics and Packers. For a New England boy, an old Sox fan, Lamoriello would have to be intrigued with lending his vision to bringing the New York Yankees back to dominance. Getting him to leave hockey behind wouldn't be easy, but if Phil Jackson is worth $10 million a season to coach the Lakers, Lamoriello is worth something close to revamp the Yankees' machinery with his CEO's eye, and championship formula.
When they were together, Steinbrenner was forever praising his style and substance. Lamoriello is Steinbrenner's kind of guy, bringing that old-school style that demands professionalism and respect, that forever finds a way to win. More than ever, Steinbrenner needs someone he trusts between the baseball executives and his baseball instincts, someone to stop him when he wants, say, Gary Sheffield over Vlad Guerrero.
Now, he is constantly reshuffling the order of the executives that he trusts with the Yankees, but there needs to be a constant. There needs to be an ultimate executive unburdened with Tampa and New York faction loyalties, unburdened with any agenda but winning.
When Nets president Rod Thorn needed Lamoriello to convince ownership to make the Stephon Marbury for Jason Kidd trade, it was done. If our basketball people believe it's best, let them do it, Lamoriello said. He didn't pretend to be a basketball genius, but he was smart enough about what works in sports to understand that a chance to get the best passer in any game is nothing that should be passed up.
What's more, the Yankees' organization has been pushed so far from the real-world realities of fiscal responsibility, it could stand for an education in the principles of doing more with less that drives championship franchises like the Devils. The Yankees' spending has to stop for the simplest reason of all: It's no longer working.
Once, it was the solution. Now, it's the problem. When the Yankees were winning world championships, there was a philosophy, a plan, a program. Lately, it's dissolved into the idea that throwing more money at a problem was always the answer.
When the Yankees were chasing a $100 million payroll, they were mostly re-signing the great young talent that they had drafted and nurtured within their system. Once Steinbrenner started chasing $200 million, he was chasing everyone else's players. That's where it's gone out of control, where it's started to collapse on him.
In defeat, Steinbrenner has surprised people in the past. In defeat, sometimes he gives you his most self-examined moments. In Mike Vaccaro's superb book, "Emperors and Idiots," he reports the story of Steinbrenner watching the Red Sox' players and fans celebrating long after the final out of Game 7 of the ALCS. When everyone expected he would be furious, he told underlings, "Keep the lights on for them as long as they want. They've earned it."
It is time for Steinbrenner to have one of those humbling epiphanies, to understand that he's getting buried under a collapsing infrastructure, that something has to change far more dramatically than firing Brian Cashman at the end of the season.
The good old days are gone for the Yankees. They need to think radically, if only to get themselves back to the fundamentals of what makes franchises: bold, visionary leadership. The executive in sports is sitting across the George Washington Bridge, a labor stoppage leaving him without a sport to call his own. Give him a game, George. Give him a call. For the future of the crumbling Yankees, give it a shot.
E-mail: wojnarowski@northjersey.com
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Originally Posted by Steak
