E-Mail This Article to a Friend If I were a Yankees fan, I wouldn’t be smiling right now BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

"Hey Clyde, there’s that ‘Sportin’ Eye’ fella writing about baseball again when it’s purty much near Christmastime and that there New England football team is 13-2 and headin’ for the playoffs. What ails that boy, anyways?"

"Don’t know, Verne. Seems to be that those ‘negative media types’ up in big-city Boston don’t want to concentrate on the feel-good story, and would rather dip into their inkwells for tales of controversy and, uh, what’s the word . . . intrigue. That’s gotta be it."

As we write this, the December 23 deadline imposed by Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks is 24 hours away. I feel that the long-discussed and much-agonized-over trade that could bring Alex Rodriguez to the Hub of Hardball and send Manny Ramirez, the monarch of the Island of Misfit Toys, to the Lone Star State will still happen somehow, some way. But it’s worth noting that even if it doesn’t, the team the Sox brass has assembled, which will step out onto the Fenway turf next April, is still a damn good one.

Sure, there probably are, and conceivably still will be some hurt feelings serving as remnants from the dissolved (?) blockbuster deal that dominated local headlines throughout December, but if you’re going to have guys with wounded pride, then Nomah and Manny are the ones you’d pick to inflict this kind of melancholy.

Why? Because Manny doesn’t seem to care one way or another, and he’ll still be making a heap o’ greenbacks and most likely produce the same numbers he’s served up during his first three seasons in Boston. He’s what one would call a happy-go-lucky fellow, and while he may be disappointed that he didn’t get picked up on waivers by the Yankees last month, he still probably prefers Boston to Texas, and will still have his pal David Ortiz on his own team and see Yankee buddy Enrique Wilson 19 times a season. Nope, Manny will continue to be Manny for better or worse, and that still translates into big power numbers for the already vaunted Red Sox hitting machine that established itself last season.

Garciaparra’s situation is a little different, but he too should be able to get over his disappointment in being viewed as a dispensable commodity, and move forward into perhaps the turning-point season in his career. Nomar, too, will see his return to Fenway Park as having dodged a bullet, since he almost ended up in Chicago — the South Side — had the A-Rod deal transpired. Instead, he’ll be back on familiar ground patrolling his customary shortstop patch, but now with a few other things to be thankful for. Number one is his career situation, which will offer him outright free agency at the end of this season, thus offering up the choice of either taking wads of cash to maintain the status of icon in Boston, or choosing his own new landing spot while also passing "Go" and collecting some serious moolah. Should he choose to sulk over a perceived lack of respect by Red Sox management, then his performance will likely suffer and his free-agent value will diminish. After all, people are still wondering what happened to Nomar’s ferocious bat in the season’s final two months, when he batted just .170 in September and just .241 against the Bombers in the ALCS. (In fact, if not for his standout four-for-five performance in Game Six against the Yanks, Garciaparra’s ALCS average would have been a dismal .125.) Some have floated the idea that perhaps having his betrothed, Mia Hamm, with him during the stretch run upset Nomar’s well-documented routine somewhat — plus the fact that wedding plans were undoubtedly taking shape in the months leading up to the couple’s November nuptials — but either way, by Opening Day 2004 Nomar and Mia will have been happily married for nearly six months, and he should come back with hunger and drive.

The Prodigal Son, Curt Schilling, has returned to the organization, and that automatically makes the team better. The AL’s top closer, Keith Foulke, is also coming to town to solidify a bullpen that had already honed itself into a solid unit in the final month of the season. And Pedro Martinez is coming up on his free-agent season, so he needs to put up big numbers to support his argument that he’s still a viable pitcher at the top of his game and is worthy of a multi-million-dollar investment in his future services.

Same goes for Derek Lowe. And Jason Varitek. And Trot Nixon.

Then you’ve got the team that’s finished ahead of the Red Sox the last six seasons. There is no such high-falutin’ optimism in the land of the pinstripes. Roger Clemens is gone, at least from the city that never sleeps. Andy Pettitte has skedaddled, too, after the Empire Staters handled his free-agent period shabbily: George Steinbrenner, or even manager Joe Torre, didn’t even bother to phone him about his return.

Sure, the Yanks did pick up Expos starter Javier Vazquez in trade, but he’s 64-68 lifetime with a career ERA of 4.16, and was just 13-12 last season on a pretty good Expos team. Add to that the fact that Vazquez has never pitched in any meaningful playoff race, much less in the pressure cooker that is Yankee Stadium, and that New York sacrificed its best hitter, Nick Johnson, to fulfill its end of the trade.

Yes, I’m aware that Gary Sheffield was picked up to offset Johnson’s offensive contributions, but has anyone down the hall from George Costanza’s office thought about team chemistry? Sheffield has never been viewed as a team player, and only during his recent stay in Atlanta was he viewed as anything but a malcontent. Changing teams seven times in a 15-season career is no way to establish goodwill, and the Bombers just committed nearly $40 million over the next three seasons for a guy who just turned 35.

Still, that addition looks pretty good in comparison to what the Yanks are getting with the oft-injured Kevin Brown, who is already on his sixth team and will celebrate his 39th birthday in spring training next March. Brown has not won more than 14 games since 1999, and when you’re getting that little productivity and paying $15 million a season, he may not be worth the risk. The New Yorkers, though, in response to the Schilling trade, felt it was an absolute necessity to take that gamble, but Brown’s never really been viewed as a good clubhouse guy either, especially when his co-workers see him taking off to Georgia for personal visits 12 times a year on a team-subsidized private jet (a perk written into his seven-year $105 million deal with the Dodgers, signed in 1999).

And then you’ve got Kenny Lofton, who will likely supplant all-around good guy Bernie Williams in center field. The Bronx will be the well-traveled Lofton’s ninth stop during his 13-year career, and sixth in the last four seasons. There is usually a reason why certain players bounce from team to team, and one of the primary factors usually revolves around a diminishing of talent. Lofton has certainly lost a step and is not the speedster he once was when he starred for the Indians, but since his numbers have been somewhat respectable over the years, he is changing uniforms on a regular basis more likely because he is a jerk.

Looking for another reason to hate the Yankees, Mr. Red Sox fan? Here he is, in all his sullen and selfish glory.

Additional rumblings in the Bronx? General Manager Brian Cashman is becoming more and more of a marionette for the master puppeteer, the bombastic Steinbrenner, and Don Zimmer headed out the door after a World Series season just to get away from the overbearing owner. Torre will probably not be far behind, since his contract is up at the end of this season and he’s got to know that the Yanks’ recent success story is unquestionably in its final chapters. Reports also have it that closer extraordinaire Mariano Rivera was so disgusted by the way Pettitte — arguably the heart and soul of the pinstripers’ rotation — was treated that Rivera too will bolt the team once his contract is up at the end of this season.

There’s chaos in Yankeeland, and the desperate measures the organization has taken in response to the Red Sox’ moves have only managed to escalate the team’s already spiraling payroll (to nearly $200 million), but the character and respect the franchise worked so hard to build up in the last decade are now decimated.

Sure, it’s still an all-star team on a nightly basis, but it’s certainly unlikely to be a personality-driven team that will mesh well and work together toward collecting world-championship trophy number 28. In-fighting, physical breakdowns, and management-versus-coaches standoffs are more likely to be the featured attraction this season in New York, with Mystique and Aura mysteriously absent. Like the three men Don McLean admired most in "American Pie" (the song), they probably "caught the last train for the coast."

For Yankee fans, it’s becoming fairly apparent that the music died a few years ago, and no amount of money is going to bring it back anytime soon.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com