Davidoff: Where did all the tension around Yankees go?

TAMPA, Fla.

He showed up only after his highly paid athletes left the premises, and if anything enraged George Steinbrenner yesterday, he did a superb job of hiding it.

At the ballpark named after him, with about 100 people in the stands, Steinbrenner sat with his family, Joe Girardi and a few other friends and watched his grandson, Robert Molloy, start at first base for Tampa Prep in a high school game against Berkeley Prep.

This is your 2010 Boss - slowed down, calmed down and absolutely beloved. At age 79, he entered and departed his luxury box riding a wheelchair, smiling both ways.

"Hiya, boys," he said to Newsday and The Associated Press after watching Tampa Prep drop a 4-0 game.

It's entirely different here without the Yankees' patriarch raising hell, and in many ways, it's arguably better.

Players and officials can go about their jobs quietly and not worry that a tough Grapefruit League loss will cause any earth-shaking moves. The organization operates vertically and logically; at no point will Brian Cashman drop beneath, say, Gary Sheffield on the organizational hierarchy.

Yet Steinbrenner's absence from the everyday operations has only enhanced his stature among those who matter most.

"He always motivated you. That's the way I took it," Mariano Rivera said. "All that I took was good things."

"For me, he never gave me a hard time," Andy Pettitte said. "He was always so supportive of me. I loved having him come around. It was almost inspiring for me.

"It's definitely different, just because when I came up, he'd make statements, and you'd see a lot of stuff in the papers. Stuff if he wasn't happy with guys. I felt there was kind of this edge around here. He'd kind of keep you on your toes."

I asked those two guys specifically because Pettitte endured a barrage of criticism from Steinbrenner during a trying first half of the 1999 season; the Yankees nearly traded Pettitte before Joe Torre and Mel Stottlemyre lobbied The Boss to keep him. And then, when Pettitte left the Yankees for Houston after the 2003 season, he held the sense that the organization never fully appreciated him.

Rivera? He never received much grief, given that the longest slump of his career lasted about a week and a half. But I recall hearing from a close friend of Rivera's, back in 2003, that the typically unshakeable closer was getting tired of the constant sniping among Steinbrenner, Torre and Don Zimmer.

Now? All ancient history.

Girardi concluded his day hanging out with The Boss - "Kinda neat," the manager said afterward - but he began it by chatting with Hal Steinbrenner (and Yogi Berra) in his office.

"I feel like we're very much on the same page," Girardi said of himself and his actual boss. "The conversations are very constructive."

It's difficult to digest that the Yankees have a manager in his walk year and that there's no tension surrounding him or his future. The Steinbrenners love Girardi, and they love Cashman, and Cashman loves Girardi. Really, unless Girardi plunges into some off-the-field scandal, he'll be back next year and beyond.

This is the Yankees universe that Cashman created when he agreed to return after the 2005 season and refined when he re-upped again after 2008.

There will be controversy - what, you think Alex Rodriguez will stay quiet forever? - but the system now smothers fires rather than lighting them.

Hal Steinbrenner, after all, took off through a side exit, avoiding the media pack that awaited him.

The Yankees are more of a threat to their opponents than ever. Speaking as a media member, though, it isn't only the players here who miss The Boss from days of yonder.