08:30 AM EDT on Thursday, September 2, 2004

The Yankees are done.

Through. Kaput. Fini.

Limping to the end of their great run like some old dowager who no longer has enough makeup to hide time's unrelenting cruelty.

Don't believe me?

You don't have to.

Listen to Buster Olney, who covered the club for four years for The New York Times and now writes for ESPN.com.

His new book is called The Last Night of the Yankee Empire, and no one can say it's not timely. Not with the Yankees no longer in a cakewalk in the American League East. Not with starting pitching that seems more suited to the Detroit Tigers than the Yankees of old. Not with a team that more and more seems ill-suited for the playoffs. Not with the Yankees being embarrassed Tuesday night by the Indians, 22-0, the largest loss in their history.

Then again, Olney would say we shouldn't be surprised.

He writes that this is a franchise that's been running on fumes for a while now, still talented, obviously, but no longer what they once were, getting by on memory and money now when once it was with pitching and consummate professionalism. That we are seeing the last days of the dynasty, the party already moved to some other house, with only the drunks and late-night stragglers left standing in the debris wondering where it went.

It's his premise that the Yankee dynasty actually ended three years ago, on that October night in 2001 when they lost to the Diamondbacks.

It's an interesting one.

The Yankees already had won three straight world titles on that night in 2001, four in the last five years. They had done this with great pitching and a core of veterans who not only knew how to win, but how to win in New York, no insignificant thing with a martinet of an owner and a fan base spoiled enough to view anything less than winning the World Series as failure. Derek Jeter. Paul O'Neill. Tino Martinez. Scott Brosius. Bernie Williams. Jorge Posada.

This was the everyday core of the Yankees, and if they weren't the best players in the game individually, they were collectively. Coupled with great starting pitching, the best closer in the game, and managed by a man who both trusted them and had earned their undying respect.

For that was always the irony about the Yankees. Yes, they had the biggest payroll in the game. Yes, they played a fly ball away from the glamour of the Great White Way. Yes, they played in the middle of the media microscope, one whose lens made them seem almost larger than life. But at their heart they were a blue collar team, best exemplified by Posada's remark at one of their victory celebrations: "We grind it."

Most of all, they were ultimate professionals.

"They never bullied anybody," former Royals manager Tony Muser says in The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. "They were never pompous. They came to beat you, and you knew that, but they never played the role of the neighborhood bully."

Muser came to defend the Yankees, even when people said they merely bought championships. Don't overlook their efforts, Muser would say. That is their inner heart.

But nothing ever stays the same, not even a great baseball team. After that loss to the Diamondbacks in 2001, both O'Neill and Brosius retired. Tino Martinez was pushed out the door in favor of Jason Giambi, who signed a $120 million deal. David Cone, one of the true leaders in the clubhouse, was allowed to leave. The farm system was drying up. Things were changing.

It's Olney's contention that the new strategy was to throw money at free agents, some of whom bought into the Yankee ethos and some of whom didn't. It was a change in philosophy, more of a scramble mode, more of an all-star team than the kind of team that had had grown up together and had learned to win together.

"The Yankees dynasty of 1996-2001 had been achieved in part because of the players' shared history," Olney writes. "This was not something that could be purchased . . . The patience within the organization was all gone, and the farm system was close to barren. The dynasty was over, and Steinbrenner was desperate, reverting to old habits."

In Olney's mind, those old habits were the Boss at his worse. Browbeating his staff. Racheting up the pressure. The payroll spinning out of control.

Now only four players -- Jeter, Williams, Posada, and Mariano Rivera -- remain from the championhsip years. These Yankees don't just seem like a different team than the one four years ago. They are different.

"The others in the Yankees' clubhouse had inherited the legacy, and like second-generation scions, they found that everything they did was held up against the daunting standards of years before," Olney writes. "The burden of those expectations weighed on the team, especially the newcomers."

Ultimately, The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty contends that no matter how much more the Yankees spend, or how many new stars they acquire, it's impossible to replicate those Yankees teams that won four World Series in five years. That those teams belong to a certain time and place, and what we see here is the dynasty's last gasp, an attempt to cling to something that's already gone.