WAYNE, N.J. (AP) – Brian Cashman and Theo Epstein share a friendship that belies the often acrimonious rivalry between their teams, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
Don’t worry, there’s no chance that the high esteem in which the two general managers hold each other will ever change the way they go about their business.
“I deal with all 28 teams,” the Yankees’ Cashman said with a wink when asked about his negotiating strategy, pointedly leaving out the 29th team, Boston. “Then, when I’m about to hang up with the 28th team, I say, ‘Hey, do you know what Boston’s up to?”’
A month after they appeared at a charity event in Boston hosted by Epstein, the two packed an auditorium at William Paterson University Friday night as part of a guest lecture series.
During a session with reporters before the event, Epstein brushed off a question about Boston’s interest in Minnesota left-hander Johan Santana and refused to make any predictions for the upcoming season.
“We’re just trying to build a team that can compete in the toughest division in baseball,” he said. “Baseball’s a long season and it’s fairly humbling, and once you start that kind of talk, bad things can happen.”
Cashman wasn’t nearly as reluctant to anoint the Red Sox the team to beat.
“Until someone takes that away from them, they’ll have that swagger,” he said. “When they step on the field in spring training, they’ll know what they can do because they’ve done it. That’s important.”
While baseball was the evening’s main topic, several parallels were drawn to football, and the Super Bowl in particular.
Cashman compared the New England Patriots’ recent dominance in the NFL with the Yankees’ rule over Major League Baseball in the mid- to late 1990s and called the latter feat “extremely rare and difficult” in the modern era.
Though he is friends with Patriots personnel director Scott Pioli, Cashman spoke of his relationships with former Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi and the Mara family, and revealed that one of his roommates when he was the Yankees’ assistant general manager in the mid-1990s was Giants coach Tom Coughlin’s son, Tim.
“He answered a few calls from ‘The Boss,”’ Cashman said. “He has some stories to tell.”
Epstein, meanwhile, sought advice from the Patriots’ organization after Boston was swept in the first round of the playoffs in 2005, a year after their historic World Series victory.
Their advice “wasn’t earthshaking, but it was meaningful hearing it from them,” he said.
The plans to have both men appear were made last year during the baseball season, according to university spokesman Stuart Goldstein. Previous guest lecturers at the university have included Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger, and Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim is scheduled to appear next month.
The evening figured to be a win-win proposition for the Kilpatrick family of nearby Little Falls. Walter Kilpatrick is a Yankees fan and wife Mary Ann and son Jay pull for the Red Sox. All wore the colors of their respective teams Friday.
“I’d love to ask (Cashman) what he said to Joe Torre,” Walter Kilpatrick said.
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