The Yankee Way: The Untold Inside Story of the Brian Cashman Era

Martino (Cheated), who covers Major League Baseball for SportsNet New York, delivers a winning chronicle of the recent history of the New York Yankees focused on the tenure of general manager Brian Cashman. Drawing on extensive interviews with his subject and other Yankee insiders, Martino recounts how Cashman first joined the team’s front office as a 19-year-old intern in 1986. The mercurial whims of owner George Steinbrenner caused no shortage of drama on and off the field, but Cashman was undeterred, rising to assistant general manager by 1992. After churning through six GMs in a little over a decade, Steinbrenner offered the position to Cashman, making him at age 30 the second-youngest GM in baseball history. In addition to charting Cashman’s leadership of the franchise through four World Series titles, Martino uses his subject’s reign to explore larger trends in the sport, detailing the transition from “gut feeling to analytics” by discussing how in the mid-aughts Cashman threatened to quit in order to force a reluctant Steinbrenner to hire an analyst. Martino also dishes out plenty of juicy behind-the-scenes details, describing the frequent ego clashes between Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, as well as how Cashman fell out with skipper Joe Torre over the latter’s handling of the team’s pitching program. A colorful portrait of a transformative era, this should be required reading for Yankees fans. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. (May)