Yankee thoughts

With about a third of the season gone, it is instructive to consider a few Yankee issues:

1. Roger Clemens was never coming back, and it was foolish to think he was. There is no way the Rocket comes back without a go-his-own-way deal, and the Yankees, with four first-ballot Hall-of-Famers (Jeter, A-Rod, Unit, Mo) plus a few outliers (Moose, Giambi) simply could not tolerate special preference for a hired gun.

2. Joel Sherman, as evidenced in this NY Post column, is becoming the last word on all things pinstriped. With the Boss headed into clover, GM Brian Cashman is becoming the man, and I say bully. Randy Johnson stands as the last player this decade the Yankees will pick up with the thought of, "If we only had him, the Series would be a lock." The Yankees keep winning their division, so comparisons to the mid-eighties teams that kept falling one pitcher short, despite three perennial MVP candidates (Rickey, Donnie, Winfield) are bogus. But the Yankees need to know that whatever ails them, Dontrelle Willis, Barry Zito or Bobby Abreu are hardly the answer, any more than Jeff Weaver or Raul Mondesi were.

3. What the Yankees have in bushels--what they will always have enough of--is money. So the task will be for Brian Cashman to pick up players on the margins, players that last-place teams can't get away from soon enough. Sean Chacon was the prototype last year; for a serious championship run the Yankees are probably one starter and one corner outfielder away. We shall see.