NEW YORK – Back in July 1987, a teenaged member of the New York Yankees support staff happened to be in the room when Woody Woodward received a call from George Steinbrenner.

About two weeks earlier, Woodward, the Yankees general manager, had carried out The Boss’ order to trade Joe Niekro, the 42-year-old knuckleballer who had just finished his second season as a Yankee. And now, as a starter for the Minnesota Twins, Niekro had baffled the Yankees for seven innings. The Yankees wound up winning the game, but the Boss was fuming.

From the speakerphone on Woodward’s desk, the voice of Steinbrenner blared out loud and clear: “Now, Woody, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to go down to the clubhouse and you’re going to take full responsibility for this move. You’re going to make sure the press knows I had nothing to do with this.”

All Woodward could say was, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

And the 19-year-old staffer, working a summer job between semesters at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., thought to himself as he listened in, “Man, I would never want that job.”

That 19-year-old’s name was Brian Cashman, and for the past 21 years, “that job” — the job that ate up Clyde King, and eventually Woodward, who succeeded him the following season, and Lou Piniella and Gene Michael and Gabe Paul and Bob Watson and in fact, all 11 men who held it during Steinbrenner’s stormy first 25 years as owner of the Yankees — has belonged to him.

And now it seems like there’s virtually nothing he could do to lose it.

“As long as I’m a general partner of this team,” said Hank Steinbrenner, the older of George Steinbrenner’s two sons, “Brian Cashman will be the general manager.”

That is remarkable considering that when he was hired as a 31-year-old to replace Watson, Cashman was the 12th general manager hired by Steinbrenner, a man who seemed to change GMs as often as he changed his socks.

The Yankees revolving door

Only one of Cashman’s predecessors held the job for as many as seven years, and that was Michael, who required two stints, with a stormy managerial stint in-between. Every other one of George’s GMs lasted one or two seasons at most before either being pushed off the ledge, or jumping first.

Working for Steinbrenner was “a very difficult, demanding job,” says Joe Torre, who endured his own remarkable 12-year run as the Yankees manager. “You always have to live up to being part of the Yankees. It keeps you on edge.”

And yet, Cashman has worked in that pressure cooker for nearly twice as long as Torre. Longer, in fact, than all but one of his 18 predecessors, Ed Barrow, who held the post for 24 years and benefited greatly from having players named Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio and an owner not named Steinbrenner.

The recent firing of Dave Dombrowksi by the Boston Red Sox less than a year after the team he built won 108 regular-season games and the World Series, only serves to remind us of how mind-boggling Cashman’s longevity is.

When you add in the fact that the Yankees have not won a World Series in 10 years, an eye blink for most franchises but an eternity for this one, Cashman’s record of steady employment borders on the surreal.

But what may be even more incredible is that, over the past 10 years in which Hal Steinbrenner assumed the reins from his aging dad, Brian Cashman has become the official voice of the Yankees. In his own quiet way, Cashman has relegated the Yankees owner to the background, a situation that would have been unthinkable when George was alive but seems to be exactly the way Hal wants it.

View photos George Steinbrenner, right, named Brian Cashman, left, as Yankees general manager in 1998. (AP) More

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