The Yankees are in the midst of a 4-game losing, including a sweep at the hands of the rival Boston Red Sox, and are in third place in the AL East, a game under .500. Their biggest free agent acquisitions, C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira, have both been awful. Yet, all is quiet in Yankee-land.

Where is George Steinbrenner? Where is his voice resounding through the media and plastered all over ESPN? Where are the threats that heads will roll and the attacks on Yankees’ manager Joe Girardi?

I want an explosion. I want the Yankees’ players to be trembling in every at bat, worried that if they strikeout, they will walk back to the dugout and find out that they have been demoted to AAA. 

Those were the good old days. Now the Yankees fall apart in silence. The glorified New York Yankees, the Evil Empire and 26-time World Series Champions, are no longer the king of baseball. Steinbrenner no longer owns the sport.

I for one miss the roar of The Boss. Can I even call Steinbrenner “The Boss” or is he now just a boss? The Yankees don’t have the pressure of New York anymore. Yes, the media is still coming down hard on the Bronx Bombers, but the fear of Steinbrenner’s wrath is not in the new Yankee Stadium.

And that is why the Yankees are going to find themselves out of the playoffs come October. George Steinbrenner expected a win every single night and though that belief still exists within the organization, it is not being shown in the media and thus the power of it has disappeared. So Teixeira, Sabathia, and others don’t feel the fear that others have felt before them. I know that many argue that Steinbrenner just increased tensions and hurt the team. They are wrong.

He fuels that team and without his constant fire-breathing rage circulating through the Yankees’ clubhouse, the Yanks are going to continue to fall apart. His anger doesn’t add more pressure, it evokes a fear that gets players going. Hank Steinbrenner doesn’t do that. He lets things go easy and allows the Yankees to ride out their troubles. As a Red Sox fan, the Yankees struggles are great to see, but as someone who loves the intensity of the rivalry, I want Steinbrenner to light a fire under them, revamp this rivalry (maybe with a little fighting….I’m just saying), and bring the Yankees back to respectability.