New York Yankees Baseball Team

Two and a half million dollars a season. That was the difference between what the Angels offered Mark Teixeira last winter to stay in Anaheim and what the New York Yankees paid him to move to the Bronx. Chump change in baseball's high-rent district, where Teixeira lives. He'll pay three times that much just in taxes. In reality, however, the two sides were much further apart. Like 2,100 miles apart.

This should have been the first month of the rest of Joe Torre's life. He could have treated his wife to Sunday brunch, or cheered his 13-year-old daughter at her softball game. He might have joined his fellow New York Yankees' legends for the first weekend of the new Yankee Stadium, or offered expert analysis from a broadcast booth. He should be enjoying retirement today, not managing the home team at Dodger Stadium. That was the way he planned it.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Derek Jeter trudged into the Yankees clubhouse during the sixth inning of a recent exhibition game, his face streaked with sweat and his uniform caked with dirt. In most years and in most spring training camps, Jeter's day would have been done. But not this year. Not in this camp. "Gotta go do my running," Jeter said as he tossed a half-empty water bottle into his locker before following teammates Melky Cabrera and Robinson Cano to a back field for another conditioning session.

They had quite a run together, the kindly old manager and his kid boss -- that's boss with a small "b." Joe Torre and Brian Cashman ran the New York Yankees together for a decade, smiling in World Series championship parades, shrugging off bellicose challenges issued in statements under the name of Boss George Steinbrenner. Cashman was 31 when Steinbrenner tapped him as the Yankees' general manager in 1998.

A FTER acquiring Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox before the 1920 season, the New York Yankees set out to build a stadium. They bought 10 acres of land in the Bronx in 1921 from the estate of William Waldorf Astor for $675,000. Two years and $2.5 million later, Yankee Stadium opened. Next season, the Yankees will open a $1.2-billion stadium and tear down the old one.

In New York, this would be heresy: The playoffs without the Yankees. "I think the logo doesn't allow that," Larry Bowa said. Bowa coached for the Yankees last season, then followed Manager Joe Torre to the Dodgers. Torre led the Yankees into October every year he managed there -- 12 in all -- and he has a pretty good idea of how New York would react if the Yankees missed the playoffs. "It's going to be horrible if the Red Sox make it," Torre said.

Scott Boras, who holds the winter fate of the Dodgers and Angels in his hands, stepped off the elevator and into the hallway of the Bellagio Hotel. Reporters surrounded him by the dozens, so crowding the hallway that hotel security ordered baseball's most powerful agent to move along, and to take his entourage with him. Boras found his way into a ballroom and onto a stage, saying a lot, revealing a little.

Covering, as it does, 3.7 million square miles, China ought to be big enough for the Dodgers \o7and \f7the New York Yankees. Populated, as it is, by more than 1.3 billion people, the country should provide ample opportunity for more than one team to teach baseball and, perhaps, someday reap the benefit of developing a major league player.

The New York Yankees failed to win the World Series again last season, for the sixth consecutive year. It was a great thing for baseball. The St. Louis Cardinals won, and yet another city shouted itself hoarse at an October victory parade. Perhaps autumn screams will be heard this year in Cleveland or Philadelphia, in Toronto or San Diego.