By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

So much about professional sports in the headlines these days smacks of Fantasyland. The out-of-this-world salaries. The huge egos. The ever-present hype.

So, in the infrequent instances when something happens in sports that strikes a chord with life in the real world, it is worth pondering for a moment.

And, thanks to George Steinbrenner, who is in a midseason lather over his underachieving Yankees, this is one of those times. For dealing with a fuming boss threatening wholesale employee turnover if production doesn't rise is something you don't have to be a member of the Major League Baseball Players Association or know anything about the infield fly rule to have experienced.

It is the kind of common ground somebody making $10 an hour and a utility infielder making $10 million a year can commiserate over. Well, maybe a small patch of it, anyway.

"The Boss," as the Yankees' mercurial owner is known, is just more public with his bellowings than most bosses, staring down his employees from the owner's box and making pronouncements in the New York tabloids.

This time he's on the warpath, and rightfully so you'd have to say, about having laid out enough money to run a small country and not having much to show for it in the standings. For $200 million in player salaries, he has a team that began the week 6 1/2 games back of the rival Boston Red Sox in the American League East and has lost to the low-budget Tampa Bay Devil Rays more often than a real big league team ought to.

The $100 million pitching staff has an earned run average that is rising like the price of oil. Its defense is surprisingly error-prone and the offense has stranded more people than a New York subway strike.

So, in the manner of owners and bosses everywhere, Steinbrenner is threatening his employees with his considerable and well-known wrath if the situation doesn't improve. Pronto.

"My patience is a little short by the fact that the team is not performing up to its great capabilities," Steinbrenner said in a statement to the media released through The Associated Press. "The players have to want to win as much as I do."

While they are not quite the words the owner of, say, a hardware store might use, you get the picture. With understandably nervous Yankee executives gathering around Steinbrenner today in Tampa, Fla., and baseball's trading deadline fast approaching, no doubt the players got the message, too.

Just like their counterparts in the real world.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.