We here at Umpbump got an e-mail yesterday from a reader named Evan who works for the magazine Conde Nast Portfolio and its website, Portfolio.com, in response to our post concerning the potential sale of the YES Network, within which we mention the failing health of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Evan sent us a link to an article that Conde Nast is publishing in its September issue chronicling a visit to Steinbrenner’s home in Tampa by George’s longtime friend and a reporter from the magazine.

We won’t get into the details here because, quite frankly, it’s not very upbeat. But in the interest of fairness, I will point you to an article in this morning’s New York Daily News in which PR-man Howard Rubenstein makes his retort, claiming that the visit by the Conde Nast journalist was under “false pretenses” and that Steinbrenner had no idea that one of the men in his home was a reporter. He attempts to assuage the questions regarding the Boss’s health:

“I’m not going to go beyond saying that I talk to George almost every day….He’s OK and he’s still an active participant in every decision.”

Most baseball fans at least have some opinion on George Steinbrenner, whether we consider him an evil tyrant or a true competitor or anything in-between. I happen to think that he made baseball more entertaining and personable, so I’m holding out hope that he’s doing better than the reports seem to indicate.  Besides, I’d like to see him host Saturday Night Live one more time. That “Ultra Sim-Fast” sketch still amuses me.

Fortune Magazine is reporting that the cable network that helps feed the Yankees’ machine, the YES Network, is being shopped around for potential buyers, fueling speculation that the team itself may be next.

It has become a pretty poorly kept secret that the health of current owner George Steinbrenner has been failing for quite some time. In 2003, the Yankee owner fainted while attending the funeral of his friend and football great, Otto Graham. A similar incident happened  in 2006 when he ”fell ill“, this time while attending his granddaughter’s stage performance at the University of North Carolina. Earlier this year,  New Yorker Magazine ran a piece about P.R. man extra-ordinaire and Yankee spokesman, Howard J. Rubenstein, in which Rubenstein casually mentions that Steinbrenner is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, the planned line of ownership succession was broken soon after that New Yorker issue hit the newsstands, when his daughter Jennifer filed for divorce from Steve Swindal, chairman of Yankee Global Enterprises and Steinbrenner’s annointed heir-apparent, in March 2007.

With the new Yankee Stadium scheduled to open in 2009 and with it the promise of additional revenue, this revelation that the YES Network is potentially for sale seems odd. While Yankees President Randy Levine refused to acknowledge that YES is being shopped, another Yankee Board member, Gerry Cardinale, has confirmed the rumor saying, “We’re testing the waters with a limited universe of quality buyers… We would consider selling only if we receive a full and fair price.”

So what does this mean? Fortune is giving a rough evaluation of a “full and fair price” for YES at $3 billion, which is worth far more than the franchise itself, which was estimated by Forbes Magazine at $1.2 billion in April. There is the hypothesis that this potential sale could give the Steinbrenner family the necessary capital to maintain control of the team after George. But speculation regarding a sale of the team is much louder today than it was yesterday. In the Fortune article, an unnamed minority owner of the organization states, “If I were handicapping it, I think we’re looking at a sale of the team within three or four years.”

This could get very interesting…