Yankees Managing General Partner HAL STEINBRENNER is "the man who for nearly the past decade has held the destiny of the Yankees in his hands and in his family's checkbook," though to the team's fans, he "has remained a cipher, largely out of the public eye," according to a profile by Wallace Matthews of ESPN N.Y. When Steinbrenner does occasionally make a public appearance, it is often "when issuing what has seemingly turned into an annual ritual, the October apology of another season ended too soon." Steinbrenner can come off as "smart, vulnerable, funny, at times profane and always immensely likable." He "does bristle slightly at the perception that Hal's Yankees are cheap" -- last year's payroll was $240M -- or "that he is not nearly as willing to spend for free agents as his father had been." The Yankees twice during Steinbrenner's tenure "have spent upward" of $400M in an offseason, a sum "not even GEORGE STEINBRENNER ever spent." Hal Steinbrenner said that when MLB and the union agree on a new CBA, he "will try once again to pare the Yankees' payroll below the threshold to avoid paying the luxury tax, as he tried to do" in '13. But Steinbrenner pointed out that "even though he had trimmed the payroll" to $190M, he "scrapped it all" to sign P MASAHIRO TANAKA. While Steinbrenner said that the Yankees "will no longer carry such a bloated payroll," he left "little doubt that under similar circumstances, he would do the same thing again" (ESPNNY.com, 3/2).
