He is not a blood relative, so this wasn’t an inherited trait. And Brian Cashman is neither the bully nor the greedy back-page raconteur George Steinbrenner was in the prime of his career, a man willing to say and do just about anything to land that prime acreage of New York journalistic real estate.
But in some very real, and very important ways, Cashman has become the living legacy of the Best of the Boss.
It was Steinbrenner, after all, who authored the Yankees’ mission statement and crystallized the team’s vision, and who believed a team concluded seasons either one of two ways:
As champion.
Or as a failure.
“I don’t believe in consolation prizes,” Steinbrenner said a few years ago. “I don’t believe in handing out medals for trying. This isn’t kindergarten, this is professional sports. If you aren’t in it to win and win big, why be in it at all?”
That was precisely Cashman’s message in the immediate aftermath of the Yankees’ crushing ALCS loss to the Rangers — the word he used, more than once, was “manhandled” — and that was the sentiment the Yankees general manager delivered yesterday, even after three days had passed allowing for a measure of softening if Cashman was inclined to soften.
If anything, he sounded angrier. He announced the firing of pitching coach Dave Eiland yesterday, not an unexpected decision but one that came wrapped in the same cold, methodical way so many of Steinbrenner’s transactions occurred.
But it was the way he described his team — and its shortcomings against the Rangers — that really recalled the Boss.
“Texas,” Cashman said, “made us look old.”
“We had a championship-caliber team,” he said, “and the fact that we didn’t win a championship with it is disappointing and is something we’re going to have to live with.
“The ALCS,” he said, “looked like we were hit by a locomotive.
“Our pitching wasn’t good,” he said, “and then our bats went south too.”
It went on like that for a while, but there was something else, too, something that tells you that while Cashman does summon Steinbrenner when it comes to keeping the Yankees’ acceptable minimum standards impossibly high, he is also willing to add another target to his collection of slings and arrows.
His own back.
Ultimately, that was Steinbrenner’s fatal flaw, an unwillingness to hold himself accountable even while insisting everyone who worked under him be held continually liable.
Cashman? Blunt as he was about the other aspects of his team, he was just as frank about his own job performance.
“I didn’t have a good winter last year,” he said. “A lot of things could have been better if some of the moves I made in the offseason had turned out better.”
Pressed to elaborate, Cashman pointed to the two easiest targets, Javier Vazquez and Nick Johnson. Vazquez imploded his second time around in pinstripes and ultimately watched the playoffs in street clothes.
Johnson, a walking copy of the disabled list, landed there in May and never came off, and even when he was healthy could barely hit the ball in play.
Cashman could have added Chan Ho Park and Randy Winn if he wanted to, but the point was already made.
“Those are on me,” Cashman said. “I deserve a good portion of the blame for everything that happened to us.”
But he also merits much of the credit. Kerry Wood was a terrific deadline pick-up, and while Lance Berkman was barely a rumor of his younger self, he did help make the lineup deeper against right-handed pitching. And what always promised to be his smartest non-move blossomed across the season, too, as Johan Santana endured a third surgery in three years while the pitcher Cashman didn’t want to trade for him, Phil Hughes, won 18 games. In essence, the GM had the same kind of year the team did — good.
Just not good enough.
Not graded against the harshest curve in professional sports, championed by Steinbrenner, channeled by Cashman.
“We had a good year,” Cashman said. “Just not a great one.”
The Boss couldn’t have said it better himself. Probably wouldn’t have tried to.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com