Last-place Yankees showing their age

The Yankees come to town today, sweeping in with all the grandeur of an off-Broadway show playing one of the Twin Cities' nicer bowling alleys.

These are not your grandfather's Yankees, who dominated the sports world. These are not your father's Yankees, who helped revitalize baseball's popularity.

This graying 2008 edition is the reincarnation of the mid-'70s Yankees of Horace Clarke and the early '90s Yankees of Danny Tartabull, who represented poorly-spent riches and who played with such lifelessness that the East Coast media elite was fooled into thinking that the entire sport was dying, when in fact it was only Yankee Pride going dormant.

The Yanks have made the playoffs every season since 1995, but all streaks must end, and this could be the season the Bronx Bombers' run takes its inevitable dirt nap.

Joe Torre's calm is gone, replaced by Joe Girardi, last seen playing egomaniac in Florida. George Steinbrenner is gone, replaced by his excitable son, Hankerin' Hank, who declared Red Sox Nation fraudulent even as his Rome burns.

Brian Cashman remains in place as general manager, but he could have made a career-altering mistake this winter, when he decided not to trade for Johan Santana. Gone but regrettably not forgotten is Roger Clemens, who has embarrassed his sport almost as much as he has embarrassed himself.

The real problem for these last-place Yankees is who remains. Only four players on the roster have won World Series titles with the Yankees -- Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, the injured Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte. The rest are a testament to what happens when you substitute Geritol for steroids in your daily regimen.

What has made the Yankees daunting but unaccomplished by their standards for most of this decade has been veteran talent, older players with the experience to weather the regular season but lacking the athletic ability, the verve, the sense of team to win in the postseason. Now, in the post-steroids era, the veteran position players who are bloating their roster are less likely to be productive into their late 30s.

Bobby Abreu and Johnny Damon are 34. Alex Rodriguez is 32. Hideki Matsui is 33. Derek Jeter is 33. Jason Giambi is 37. Posada is 36. Rivera is 38. Mike Mussina is 39.

Since their dynasty died in Arizona in 2001, the Yankees have been eclipsed as the most feared and respected franchise in the game by the Red Sox, and now the Pinstripers are looking up at an intriguing list of challengers in the AL East.

The Sox, in the midst of a mini-slump, remain the best-constructed team in ball. The Blue Jays trump the Yankees in the category they once dominated -- starting pitching depth. The Tampa Bay Rays ditched two of the best young talents in the game -- Delmon Young and Elijah Dukes -- and have thrived because their remaining young talent cares about winning more than batting averages.

Cashman declined to trade for Santana because a portion of the Yankees braintrust believed in following the Red Sox blueprint of building with young prospects -- in this case pitchers Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy. That would have been a sensible approach for most franchises; for the Yankees it was lunacy.

With an old, overpaid roster that will become only more ancient and overpaid each year, the Yankees should be trying to win this year. And while Santana is helping keep the struggling team in Queens afloat, the Yankees have suffered while trying to force-feed Kennedy and Hughes into the starting rotation.

Both could become good big-league pitchers, but the Yankees might have done the Twins a favor by bailing out of the Santana sweepstakes, because Carlos Gomez, acquired from the Mets in an underwhelming deal, already has become one of the most electrifying players in Twins history.

Electrifying is not a word you would associate with these Yankees. "Stultifying'' fits. They have scored fewer runs than the struggling Twins lineup, and they rank ahead of only the White Sox and Tigers in steals.

This edition of the Yankees is old, slow, and, with only a few aging exceptions, unaccomplished. They miss Torre's class and, strangely, King George's forced urgency, and there are now children in elementary school who were not alive the last time the Yankees ruled the baseball world.

Jim Souhan can be heard Sundays from 10 a.m.-noon on AM-1500 KSTP.