I-95 Exclusive: SNY’s Andy Martino Says Colleagues Think Yankee GM Brian Cashman is The GOAT

SNY Analyst Andy Martino has been covering Major League Baseball for over a decade and now he's pulling back the curtain on the secrets of the greatest franchise in pro sports with his book "The Yankee Way: The Untold Inside Story of the Brian Cashman Era."

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Martino joined us on the Thursday (08/01/24) edition of the I-95 Morning Show to chat about the book, Cashman, Steinbrenner and a whole lot more. These are some of our favorite moments from our talk with Martino.

Lou: You mentioned George Steinbrenner and I always find it funny how forgetful people are about George's history and the lack of success he had with some of the 80s teams and some of the things that went on. He's given a lot more credit for the late 90s, early 2000's run than I think people should be giving him. 

Andy: "100 percent. The Yankees had two dynasty eras during Steinbrenner's ownership. One was in the late 70s, it's not that this is a mystery but the core of that 70s team other than Reggie Jackson was acquired by CBS ownership before Steinbrenner got there. He did a great, I don't mean to take credit away, he knows how to recruit and sign free agents and finish off a winning team. Then of course it's more well-known in the late 90s, he was suspended in the early 90s and Gene Michael the GM and Brian Cashman an Assistant GM in that group were allowed to assemble a team sort of without George's daily, I mean he was around in a way but he was suspended. Those were the two dynasties that the Yankees had during his time. One of the more surprising little quotes in the book to me was Hal Steinbrenner told me that people forget that my father was not liked at all in the 80s, like at all. It was pretty blunt and very true and another person told me in an interview for the book, people threw these bouquets at George in his older age because of the success he had at the end but when he was suspended in 1990 it was like ding-dong the witch is dead so, you're right."  

Lou: How would you rate Brian Cashman? His tenure has been so long and he had so much early success but I feel like Yankee fans, every year are asking how long are we going to do this? How would you judge him? 

Andy: "You know people ask me that and I defer to his colleagues who would know better than I would. Obviously, I won't dodge the question, if I thought he was worth 300 pages, I think he knows what he's doing, and has an interesting history and deserves to have his story told. When I ask people like Billy Beane, probably the most famous GM considering he's played by Brad Pitt in the movies and he has the Moneyball book or Brian Sabean who won three World Series with the Giants, they are so insistent that Cashman is not just the greatest GM now but the greatest in the history of the sport that I have to listen to that because these are the guys that are doing it, these are the guys that are competing against him year in, year out and trying to do trades with him and watching the success. I'm aware that this is a shocking difference between how your average Yankee fan calling in to a radio show would see him. I think it's about, if you do the job you recognize how impossibly hard it is to have a good team every year, in Tampa let alone the cauldron on New York City. It's a fact that every great GM takes a couple of years, rebuilds, has a losing record and builds it back up and Cashman has literally never overseen a losing season. That is really remarkable, objectively and the World Series drought drives him crazy as much as it drives any fan crazy but having a winning team year-in, year-out makes people like Billy Beane say this guy is going to the Hall of Fame as the greatest GM ever." 

"The Yankee Way: The Untold Inside Story of the Brian Cashman Era" is available now on Amazon.

Check out our complete two-part interview with SNY's Andy Martino below.

Part 1 - Andy spoke about the exhaustive research that went into his book, the Bombers "Bronx Zoo" reputation and how Brian Cashman started out as a security intern in the team. 

Part 2 - Andy chooses his favorite baseball movie, shares his opinion on MLB efforts to attract younger fans and talks about his early days growing up at the minor league baseball games in Rochester, NY. 

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