Bummer -- Hal Steinbrenner sez his family is not selling the Yankees

Hal (Rip Van Winkle) Steinbrenner has finally woken up from his winter snooze to talk to the press. Specifically, ESPN New York's Wally Matthews. And specifically, to say that he and his siblings are not selling the team, and will keep the team for the next generation of Steinbrenners. Oh goody -- another generation of people who were born on third base and think that they hit a triple running the team! I can't wait! (That's sarcasm, kidddies!)

Matthews talked to Prince Hal for an hour, and said at the end of his piece that he "can't help but like" Hal "and feel for" him. Feel for what, exactly? Because Steinbrenner had a tough father? Many people out there had tough fathers, but didn't inherit multi-billion dollar baseball teams, either. Boo bleeding hoo. This sounds like how the media gave Brian Cashman a pass for so many years because George yelled at him. Good grief.

There is no talk about the Yankees' ticket debacle (shocker!), but Matthews asked Steinbrenner about other things. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from the story, and the questions I would like to ask Hal if I could:

"I'm not trying to be George," he says. "I never walked into this with the concept of trying to act like George, trying to be everything that George was, 'cause I can't."

No $#%^. Sherlock. Hey, Hal, we don't need you to be George. But we don't need you to be the exact opposite of George, either, where you won't do anything like hold people accountable for fear that somebody will think that you look like your father. Get over your childhood already. We'd all be a lot better off.

"George accomplished all this through his hard work. But for me, this is a privilege. It's a privilege in that I don't feel that I deserve to be the managing general partner of the New York Yankees."

That makes two of us, Hal!

And if my last name wasn't Steinbrenner, I wouldn't be managing general partner of the New York Yankees."

 Well, you do have at least *some* self-awareness!

He is strident, if not exactly passionate, about his role as managing general partner of the Yankees -- that is the description he uses, never "owner," and certainly never Boss -- but nowhere near as wound up as he gets when he talks about flying his airplanes, a GTO single-engine aircraft and a Cessna high-wing that he says he can land anywhere. It is a hobby he only took up in 2000. "That's what I do to get away from this," he said, pointing at his iPhone. "Go up to 2,000 feet and practice takeoffs and landings."...."It scared the hell out of my dad. He was always worried about it. But you know, there's nothing safe about driving on the interstate, either. You minimize the risk, you make sure your plane is in good shape, and you don't make poor choices, and it's a fairly safe thing to do." 

1. Can you go be general partner of a plane company, instead of a baseball team, the job you so desperately wants to "get away from"? We'd all be better off!

2. Paging Dr. Freud, but considering your father lost Thurman Munson when the Yankee captain died doing takeoffs and landing on his private plane, and considering your father then had clauses in Yankee players' contracts banning them from flying planes, you have to wonder how much your hobby has to do with sticking it to your dad.

He said he's never going to react to a loss, or a losing season, by firing someone. He understands his natural reserve tends to make fans believe he doesn't really care about the Yankees, at least not as much as his father did. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't do that," he said. "I'm not going to try to be something that I'm not. I don't pretend to be as good as him in this role, and I wouldn't even try."

Hey Hal: You know, firing people when they fail at their jobs, year after year, is not only a George thing. It's kind of how the rest of baseball -- and the rest of the world -- works. But you're too busy playing Peter Pan to actually hold people accountable.

On who is ultimately to blame for the Yankees' recent failures: "Nothing is going to happen or not happen without me. So you can say it's [GM Brian] Cashman but I can tell you that Cash and I talk, and Hank and I talk, but again, the decision still falls on me. So if anyone wants to blame anybody they should throw me in there with Cashman, for goodness sakes."

Well, that's great, Hal. You won't fire Cashman. And we can't fire you. But we should keep on sucking it up and buying tickets, just because.

 On whether the Yankees will pay A-Rod the $6 million bonus for tying Babe Ruth's 714 home runs: "We'll see. We'll see. I think we have a much better relationship at this point in time to try to work something out. We'll figure something out. I wouldn't worry too much about that. I think it's going to be a different story this time around." 

Hal, given that 90% of your team's current marketing campaign that features today's players is about A-Rod, it would be kind of hard to avoid giving him this money. But I doubt you even know that, since you show about as much interest in the Yankees as I do in watching "Doctor Who." Oy.