As exciting as the George Steinbrenner years were, they were also full of tension and impetuousness. George may have added six championships to the Yankees’ total, but he also presided over the longest string of trophy-free seasons since before Babe Ruth. And those years, which consumed the entire decade of the 80s, were marked by some of the worst front-office decisions the game has ever seen. It’s hard to lose year after year with the highest payroll in the game, but the Boss did just that for nearly 15 years.

So hearing a Steinbrenner say that this may take a year or two hasn’t been met by hoots and howls. The fans saw young pitchers of promise last year. They know the farm system is loaded for the first time in decades. And they remember that the last period of Yankee supremacy from 1996-2000 were the result of the same sort of home-grown talent coming up to the majors together. And the reason they weren’t traded away for over-the-hill superstars is because George Steinbrenner was banned from the game while the team was being built.

Hank wasn’t a presence in those days; he acted as if he didn’t even like baseball that much. But it looks as if he either took notes on what happened in the early 1990s or at least got some history lessons before he took charge.

And now he’s applying those lessons in a way that with few exceptions has been such a model of professionalism even New York’s picky columnists can’t find any reason to attack him.

That could change, of course, the first time the Yankees go on a four-game losing binge in April. That will be when all the flaws we aren’t seeing now will be discovered — or, if times are desperate, invented.

But for the moment, Hank Steinbrenner has brought a sense of direction and purpose to the Yankees that his father never managed to achieve. The goal is the same — to build the most powerful team in baseball — but unlike George, Hank actually has a plan that goes beyond “pay exorbitant salaries to every available superstar on the market, and double that if he’s substantially past his prime.”

This happens to be the same plan that Boston has used to clamber over the Yankees in baseball’s pecking order, which is kind of ironic. For a long time, the Yankees’ dysfunctional business model was the on everybody copied, and now he’s the one doing the copying.

And that might be the smartest move of them all.

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