Via Chris Smith’s feature “Après George le Déluge” in New York Magazine (with a hat tip to BBTF) -

So a question that for 30 years had a laughably simple answer—who’s running the Yankees?— is instead more complicated than it was seven months ago, at the start of the season. What’s clear is that life after George is going to be very different for the Yankees—and, in some ways, far more difficult.

Hal Steinbrenner appears to have bought into Cashman’s long-term rebuilding program, but his own ambitions aren’t so transparent. For a decade, he was content to live in Florida and oversee the family’s hotel properties, staying out of the way of his domineering dad. As this season began, he seemed most interested in watching over the family’s investment, and in joking to reporters that he wanted them to use a good picture of him to help him get dates. Now, though, Hal has had his first real taste of the joys and pain of a pennant race, and the ego thrill of manipulating a ball club. Though he also lives in Tampa, not far from the three children he shares with his ex-wife, it’s Hal who flies frequently to New York to talk about players with Girardi and Cashman. Hal has slowly become more visible, allowing himself to be caught by reporters for short interviews while exiting Girardi’s office. “Hank doesn’t want to be there, but Hal does,” says a person who’s done business with the family. “And he’s not gonna want to share that limelight.”

Yet the Yankees remain a family business—a splintered-family business. The fear is gone from the front office, but the tension between Hal and Hank, and their conflicting management styles, may not end up providing anything near the leadership that George did.

Bloodless corporate ownership would be even worse, but that may be where the Yankees are inevitably headed. The gilded new stadium, with its martini bars and seats priced as high as $2,500 per game, is coming online in the middle of an economic downturn. Last year, Goldman Sachs quietly shopped the YES network, one pillar of the team’s financial success. Selling the cable channel, which could bring in as much as $3 billion, might be one strategy for the Steinbrenner family to pump cash into the team and maintain control. Or, more likely, it could have been a test of how much they could cash in by selling the team entirely when George is gone.

The way things are going, maybe we should stop calling this franchise the “Bronx Bombers” and start calling them the “Bronx Bluth Frozen Bananas“?