In other pony news

With the re-embrace of Joe Torre and now this, the Yankees may just get their dynasty back.

Brian Cashman was 19 years old when he took his first job with the Yankees, the organization he rejoined for three years and roughly $5.5 million yesterday. That was in 1986, and three years later he started a full-time career that will now take him past his 40th birthday.

In all those years, Cashman said yesterday, he could not remember the Yankees' ever holding the first organizational meeting of the winter in New York. It was always in Tampa, Fla., home to the principal owner George Steinbrenner and his many advisers. Not anymore.

It may be a symbolic gesture, but what it symbolizes means everything to Cashman. Though it is not spelled out in his contract, Cashman said that he received an understanding that he, and only he, would sit atop the chain of command in the Yankees' fractured baseball operations department.

"I'm the general manager, and everybody within the baseball operations department reports to me," he said. "That's not how it has operated recently."

Cashman said that Steinbrenner and the rest of the Yankees' upper management - including the general partner Steve Swindal, the president Randy Levine and the chief operating officer Lonn Trost - supported him.

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Some of the names on the Yankees' roster were players Cashman acquired. Others are on the team because of decisions Cashman did not endorse. He preferred Vladimir Guerrero to Gary Sheffield, for example, and Miguel Cairo to Tony Womack.

With a clearer chain of command, the Yankees would theoretically have a team with parts that fit better. In recent years, the Yankees have sometimes seemed to be a jumble, with several players better suited to be designated hitters.

"I'm not sure how you can translate that," Swindal said. "But in the end, if you don't talk in one clear voice, there's a lot of finger-pointing, and that's not helpful. If you're operating more efficiently, that should translate into better decisions."

Cashman said he told Steinbrenner and Swindal that Gene Michael, a vice president and special adviser who has fallen out of favor with Steinbrenner, should be back in the inner circle, which would give Cashman another ally in the New York office.

The Tony Womack mystery has been solved! As suspected, a Tampa, not a New York decision (Tony should be playing for Tampa).

Last year's off-season was, as Steve Goldman reminds us again and agin, a true disaster for the Yankees. The signs and portents coming from the Evil Empire these otherwise bleak October days are that this year some salvaging may be accomplished.