Many around baseball directly give credit for the Yankee dynasty of the late 90s to Commissioner Fay Vincent for suspending George Stenibrenner for the whole Dave Winfield debacle. I was too young to remember, but apparently Georgie hired a PI to dig up dirt on Winfield and when Vincent found out about it he suspended George for life only to change his mind a few years later.
During this time is when the guys who were the backbone of all those championships (Jeter, Mo Rivera, Bernie, Posada, Pettite, etc.) were all top prospects in the Yankees organization. Some believe that if Steinbrenner were still in charge they all would have been dumped off for old spare parts in an attempt to satisfy George's appetite for winning. Who knows what really would have happened, but it's an interesting hypothetical scenario.
