By Mike Kahn
CBS SportsLine Executive Editor
Aug. 19, 1998

No matter what, the New York Yankees remain the best story in baseball.

Regardless of the dramatic home run chase for 61 by Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr., or even the futile flirtation by Juan Gonzalez at the ridiculous record of 190 RBI by Hack Wilson, the Yankees are still playing .750 ball.

Should

With Andy Pettitte and company, who needs middle relief? (AP)

they continue, we're talking about some 120 victories -- just mutilating the AL record of 111 wins set by the Indians in 1954, featuring the year and city in which I was born. It's not a big deal, except conceding the Yankees to be the most intriguing story is no easy task.

OK, their hats and pinstripes are cool. They always have been. Now they're selling out. A Yankees hat in red is like a Reds hat in navy. What's the point?

THAT'S BESIDE THE point. This team is awesome in so many ways, and the great stories are numerous. Despite the always-odious George Steinbrenner (sad to say, also a native Clevelander), they are continuing to succeed. Word has it "The Boss" is calming down a bit anyway. Oh, he got into it with Reggie Jax ... but as usual, Reggie deserved it. No way Reggie could continuously exist with the Yankees in some obscure position. His ego wouldn't allow it, and Steinbrenner won't allow his ego to get out of hand, so the clash was inevitable.

And The Boss always wins.

Again, that's trivial, only part of the soap opera.

The real stories lie on the field and in the dugout. Joe Torre continues to prove what an exceptional manager he is. As a player, he was just a dangerous bat, average catcher and decent first baseman. He's had a tough time establishing himself as a manager, first with the Braves and then the Cardinals -- the two teams he called home as a player.

But he is New York. A pinstriped native if ever there was one. When he first won a World Series with the Yankees two years ago, he lost his father and his brother was deathly ill. It was another example of melodrama that always plays best on Broadway.

They were a disappointment last year, bowing out as a wild-card team to the Indians. It appeared to be a fluke. Your typical letdown from a World Series run.

THIS YEAR THEY'RE BACK, AND TAKE your pick over the reasons why -- Torre notwithstanding.

They have two of the best all-around position players in baseball when it comes to shortstop Derek Jeter and center fielder Bernie Williams, the American League's leading hitter.

Their starting pitchers -- David Cone, David Wells and Andy Pettitte -- have been even better as a group than the more ballyhooed staff of the Atlanta Braves.

More important, the Braves don't have Mariano Rivera. The Yankees do. The bullpen is always the difference in the postseason, as the Braves continue to stockpile regular-season victories and long faces in the World Series. Rivera, in many corners, is the best closer in the game.

And what takes the Yankees to an entirely different level is their depth. Seemingly every position player has been hurt at some time or another, and yet they march on. Winning 92 of their first 123 continues to be one of the remarkable single-season team feats of this generation -- and maybe any generation if they continue at this pace.

Should they roll through the regular season with 115 to 120 wins, then win the playoffs and World Series, this will go down in history as one of the great sports teams of all time. It will compare to the undefeated Dolphins of 1972 and any of the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees of 65-70 years ago.

MANY TIMES, DOMINANT TEAMS DURING the regular season fall short once the bell rings for the playoffs. It's a different approach. Once a team can focus on the slick gimmicks that work during the regular season, the flaws come clear.

But the chances of that happening seem very slim when it comes to the Yankees. Maybe their middle relief will fold -- and Rivera will get burned out. On the other hand, with Cone, Wells and Pettitte, who needs middle relief? And if Jeter and Williams slump? There's only Paul O'Neill, Chuck Knoblauch, Darryl Strawberry and Tino Martinez.

So there's little chance of any breaks in the dam, but somewhere, deep down, there remains this gut feeling of something going awry.

Or ... maybe that's just the ulcer of a native Clevelander.

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