A recent column about Derek Jeter’s retirement announcement turned out to be more about Gene Michael than Jeter. The column gave Michael credit for changing the culture of the New York Yankees’ organization in the early 1990s when he was general manager and George Steinbrenner was suspended.

However, I have learned that Michael deserves even more credit than I have given him. I credited Michael with changing Steinbrenner’s thinking – and don’t think that was ever easy – about trading good young players for high-priced veterans instead of keeping the good young players and letting them develop into good major leaguers.

In that same column I mentioned Joe Torre’s hiring as the Yankees’ manager for the 1996 season, writing that Torre wasn’t Michael’s idea but that “Arthur Richman, a senior member of the media relations department, recommended Torre, with whom Richman had worked with the Mets.”

That story had prevailed for 18 years. For 18 years Richman had been given credit for the hiring of the man who managed the Yankees to four World Series championships in a five-year span. The only problem was it was a fairy tale.

Richman, who suffused himself in the acclaim he received for his contribution to the newest Yankee dynasty, never denied it, never set the record straight. No one did. Steinbrenner, who could have, didn’t. He was happy to have Richman get the credit rather than the man who should have.

“George already thought Michael got too much credit for things,” said a man familiar with Yankees’ developments in those years. “George was jealous of things he was getting credit for.”

Steinbrenner was thus willing to let Richman take credit for Torre to the point where even Torre supposedly believed he had Richman to thank for the job of his life.

“Even Joe thanks Arthur for telling George,” Michael said by phone from Tampa, Fla., Sunday. “I don’t know that Torre knew it.”

My attempts to reach Torre by phone and e-mail Monday were unsuccessful. But in response to my request to talk to Torre, John Blundell of the commissioner’s office said that Torre, executive vice president for baseball operations, had been tied up all day in spring training meetings in Arizona but told him that “it was both Arthur & Gene who endorsed him to George.”

Michael didn’t see it quite that way, and he’s the only one around to talk about it, and he did after years of silence on the matter. He wouldn’t acknowledge that he had become “increasingly annoyed,” as I was told, “that Arthur took credit – and was given credit by everyone, including George and Torre – for the hiring.”

But he said, “Arthur gave him the phone number because he had it; I didn’t have it. But I gave him his name.”

Richman, on the other hand, was said to have given Steinbrenner a list of several names, including Torre but also Tony La Russa and John McNamara. In other words, Torre wasn’t Richman’s sole suggestion.

This was the way it developed, according to Michael, now the Yankees’ 75-year-old senior vice president and special adviser. After the 1995 season, he and Steinbrenner agreed that he would step down as general manager. He was making more money than the owner wanted to pay him.

“I was making 450, I was going to 650,” Michael said.

Steinbrenner, though, wanted Michael to find his replacement.

“There were nine people I asked if they wanted the general manager’s job,” Michael recalled. “Eight of them said no. George didn’t believe me. Joe came in for an interview for the job. I told him the job was going to pay 350. I don’t think he wanted to be a g.m. at that time.”

Bob Watson became the new general manager but quickly learned that Michael never really left, at least not in Steinbrenner’s mind.

“When the manager’s job became available,” Michael said, referring to the owner’s dismissal of Buck Showalter, “George asked me who are we going to get to be manager. He wanted me but I turned it down. I told him we don’t get along; we fight too much.

“I had some knockout fights with him, swearing and yelling at him. Fugazy – Bill Fugazy, a Steinbrenner confidante – said once ‘I thought I was going to have to pull him off you.’”

Torre, Michael said he told Steinbrenner, “was the only one out there who has experience. I said he has experience and we need that. And he’s not going to panic. George could make a young guy panic.”

So Torre it was, except in one of the more bizarre moves of his 38-year baseball career, Steinbrenner tried to lure Showalter back to be the manager – after he had hired Torre. Showalter, however, had made a handshake agreement to manage the Arizona Diamondbacks and didn’t want to back out of that deal.

Lest anyone think that story is a fable – it is, after all, difficult to believe that an owner would do that – Michael said, “I was there. I know.”

While I’m giving Michael more credit, I should add one other matter. In today’s overabundance of statistics, the new-age guys make a big deal out of on-base percentage as if they invented it. They’re too young to know that Michael was an on-base enthusiast.

“Oh yes,” Michael said and recalled how the Yankees acquired Jim Spencer and then Watson to play first base in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s because of their on-base proficiency. “Everybody we acquired at that time had high on-base. When I came back as g.m. in ‘90, we had gotten away from high on-base. But we started doing it again.”

And they began keeping their young players, players like Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera. Steinbrenner barely dared to trade any of them.

“A couple names came up, but not strongly,” Michael recalled. “George talked to Watson about Fermin but he never would have gotten to that. George had mentioned it.”

That would have been a Jeter-for-Felix Fermin trade. It didn’t happen. It never would have happened. It’s darn fortunate for the Yankees that it never happened.

Not everyone was fascinated by Masahiro Tanaka’s means of transportation from Tokyo to New York last week for his introductory news conference upon joining the Yankees with his $155 million contract.

“It would be interesting,” an environmentally minded reader of this web site wrote, “to find out how many gallons of fuel it takes to send a giant jet round trip from Tokyo – more, I bet, than most of us use in a lifetime. And can you imagine all the pollution it caused.

“Perhaps someone will come up with an appropriate nickname for Tanaka – such as ‘200G-Jet Tanaka’ – so we don’t forget how he started out.”

Tanaka chartered a Japan Airlines Boeing 787 jet to bring him, his wife, their dog and three other passengers to New York before a series of snow storms struck the region. The Yankees’ newest pitcher was scheduled to attend an introductory news conference Tuesday at Yankee Stadium and didn’t want bad weather to delay his arrival.

Or he wanted to avoid the crush of a full flight, preferring to have a comfortable trip that would not have an impact on the start his first spring training in the major leagues. Whatever his reason, Tanaka chartered the plane, whose cost was estimated anywhere from $175,000 to $200,000. But it may cost Tanaka nothing.

“I’m sure Japan Airlines gave it to him, considering all the publicity they got,” a baseball official said.

If the airline writes off the cost to public relations, Tanaka won’t have to use one of the perks that the 25-year-old right-hander gained in his $155 million contract. He is entitled to four first-class round-trip plane tickets between New York and Tokyo each year of the seven years of the contract.

A Japan Airlines ticket agent said first-class fare for a one-way trip is around $13,390, depending on the time of the flight.

Such perks are common in contracts signed by top-ranked free agents. The first-class plane tickets are granted players even for cross-country flights. Certainly players with contracts of $155 million can pay for their own plane tickets, but every little bit counts in teams’ efforts to sign a popular free agent.

In Tanaka’s case, he was a torrid target of several teams, and the Yankees weren’t going to spare the expense of plane tickets and other perks. They agreed to give him $100,000 as a housing allowance, $35,000 as a moving allowance and $85,000 to pay the salary of a translator.

Looking at some other provisions in Yankees’ contracts, we find one in Alex Rodriguez’s contract that is topical. When Rodriguez opted out of his 10-year contract in 2007, the Yankees initially wished him farewell but suddenly changed their position and became desperate to re-sign him.

As if $275 million in signing bonus and salaries weren’t sufficient, they added a series of “marketing agreement” bonuses totaling $30 million – $6 million each for five home run milestones: 660 (Willie Mays’ career total), 714 (Babe Ruth), 755 (Hank Aaron), 762 (Barry Bonds’ record total) and 763.

When the contract was signed, Dec. 13, 2007, Rodriguez had 518 home runs and appeared on his way to earning those bonuses. Even two years ago he seemed to be in good position with 647. But two hips injuries and one suspension have intruded on his bonus quest.

Once viewed as the great clean hope to erase Bonds and his chemically aided homer total from the record book, Rodriguez has proved himself to be just another fraud. However, if he returns next year, he should be able to hit six home runs and tie Mays. How weird is it that he needs 60 to tie Ruth.

Look at what has happened to the only other hitter known to have milestone bonuses. When Albert Pujols signed a 10-year, $240 million contract with Anaheim two years ago, it included two bonuses worth $10 million – $3 million for attaining 3,000 hits and $7 million when he hit his 763^rd home run.

His seasons with the Angels, however, have not been kind to Pujols, who in 11 years with St. Louis had 10 terrific seasons and one good season. Injury and inefficiency the past two seasons have undermined his chances of achieving either bonus.

He begins the 2014 season, at the age of 34, needing 653 hits and 271 home runs. The hits maybe, the home runs unlikely.

Pujols has other bonuses, the kind I’ve always wondered about. He has bonuses if he is most valuable player for the season, the World Series or the league series. But isn’t that what the Angels are paying him $24 million a year for, to be good enough to be m.v.p.? He gets $50,000 if he’s on the All-Star team, but here again, don’t the Angels expect him to be an All-Star when they give him a $240 million contract?

And let’s not forget the old hotel suite on the road perk. Rodriguez has that perk, too, but he didn’t have it until he agreed to reduce the interest rate on deferred payments from 3 percent to 2 percent. This year, though, he won’t have it and will have to pay for his own suites if he travels.

CC Sabathia is another member of the Yankees with a hotel suite on road trips in his $161 million contract.

Jacoby Ellsbury, who joined the Yankees this off-season with a $153 million contract, and Mark Teixeira, who is working on a $180 million contract, have a different kind of perk. Center fielder Ellsbury has the right to purchase six Legends Suite tickets each year, and Teixeira can buy eight of the best available Yankees’ season tickets.

Carlos Beltran has none of these perks in his new $45 million contract with the Yankees, but when he accepted a $119 million deal with the Mets in 2005 he got a hotel suite on the road and a suite for 15 at Shea Stadium, though he had to buy tickets for post-season games.

So it was that Beltran’s guests watched him take strike three with the bases loaded for the final out that gave St. Louis the National League pennant in 2006.

But it was another perk far more unusual than tickets that the Mets gave Beltran in his contract. They agreed to lease an ocular enhancer machine, which is a device that fires multi-colored, numbered tennis balls at batters at 150 miles an hour.

No other player is known to have had such a contract clause.

“It must have helped because he’s still playing,” said Omar Minaya, the Mets’ general manager at the time. Minaya added that he never heard of any other player who asked for such a perk.

Bryce Harper’s bonus provision is not as rare as the ocular enhancer, but Harper had better reason than most to have it included in his contract with Washington because he was only 17 when he signed it. The Nationals agreed to pay for eight semesters of college

Scott Boras is Harper’s agent and was Beltran’s agent. “At the end of the contract negotiations,” said a club executive who has experience with Boras, “Scott always asks that something be put in the contract. He figures you’re worn out and will agree to it.”

Many players ask for and get no-trade clauses, though some clubs refuse to give them. Some players get limited no-trades, meaning they can list teams they can’t be traded to.

Alex Rios of Texas, for example, can veto trades to Arizona, Colorado, Houston, Kansas City, Oakland and the Yankees.

Carl Crawford of Los Angeles has a unique no-trade provision. He may veto trades to two teams, but that’s not the unique part. His contract, which he signed with Boston, stipulates that if he is traded, the team acquiring the outfielder may not trade him to the Yankees.

Many players have clauses that call for bonuses if they are named most valuable player in the World Series or the league championship series. Teams don’t mind putting that clause in multiple contracts because only one player on a team can win the award.

Some teams have also included provisions for bonuses for being named m.v.p. of the division series. The only problem there is m.v.p.’s are not named for the division series. Major League Baseball apparently decided not to have division series m.v.p.’s so that clubs wouldn’t have to spend more money.

My favorite bonus, I think, is the one the Baltimore Orioles included in Steve Stone’s contract when they signed him as a free agent in 1978. He had as 67-72 career record at the time, but the Orioles included a $10,000 bonus for winning the Cy Young award.

“A bonus for a winning season would have made more sense,” Stone had said en route to the award. “It was like an insurance salesman telling you, ‘We’ll give you $50,000 if an elephant falls on you,’ because he knows darn well an elephant isn’t going to fall on you.”

Hank Peters, then the Orioles’ general manager, offered the bonus provision to several of his pitchers, hoping it would serve as an inducement to perform more effectively.

Stone accepted the challenge and produced a magnificent season, winning the Cy Young award with a 25-7 record and 3.23 earned run average in 37 starts and 250 2/3 innings.

FREGOSI’S VERBAL COUP AGAINST DUSTY FAILED

Jim Fregosi was a popular and well liked baseball figure when he died last week after suffering a series of strokes, but my recollection of the former shortstop, manager and scout is of a man who wanted to throttle me in the spring of 1997 because I wrote something that was true.

Fregosi was a scout that spring for the San Francisco Giants. who had been struggling under manager Dusty Baker with losing records the previous three seasons

Fregosi had been fired as the Philadelphia Phillies manager after the 1996 season but wasn’t ready to give up on managing.

I heard from a scout for another team and wrote that Fregosi had been telling scouts that he was going to become the Giants’ manager by June 1.

Fregosi heard or read what I wrote and was irate, well, actually worse than irate. He found out where I was staying and called me, saying what I had written was not true and threatening to do bodily harm if he saw me.

Fortunately I didn’t encounter him that spring, actually for a long time after that. By the time I did see him, he had apologized to Baker for what he had boasted to the scouts. He never said anything to me and didn’t acknowledge my presence when we were in the same area.

FREE-AGENT PREDICTIONS FOOLISH AND WRONG

The headline said, “Top 5 free agents and where they’re heading” so I figured if I read the article I might learn something from this web site, I don’t know the site’s name so I can’t tell you. What I can tell you is the site was perfect, 5-for-5… all wrong.

It had Robinson Cano re-signing with the Yankees (Seattle), Jacoby Ellsbury signing with Texas (Yankees), Shin-Soo Choo joining the Yankees (Texas), Brian McCann going to Texas (Yankees) and Masahiro Tanaka signing with the Dodgers (Yankees).

The point of this exercise is to ask why do sports writers feel compelled to predict everything? Do they think readers want to read incorrect predictions/guesses? Are they trying to make themselves look good by guessing right? They can’t do that if they’re wrong. And the odds are great that they will be wrong.

The practice reminds me of a story I heard many years ago.

Peter Vecsey was a prominent NBA writer for the New York Post. He had a reputation, though, of writing creative fiction, that is, he either made up much of what he wrote or heard something and never bothered to check it out before writing it.

Two Post readers were talking about Vecsey. One said he really enjoyed reading his articles. But, the other reader said, 85 percent of what he writes is wrong. The first reader countered, “But I like reading it.”

Bringing this matter up to date and focusing on baseball, earlier this off-season, a Post baseball writer, Ken Davidoff, predicted in print where what he called the top 30 free agents would sign. With 5 of those 30 still unsigned, he was wrong on 20 of the 25 who have signed. That’s not a very good percentage – 20 percent right.

Bookies would go broke at that rate. Bookies are too smart to offer odds on where free agents are going to sign. Davidoff would have been just as accurate if he had predicted that all of the free agents would sign with the Yankees. Five signed with the Yankees, and he got five right.

If reporters know something is going to happen and their information is based on reliable information from reliable sources, write it. Otherwise, wait for it to happen, then report it.

Derek Jeter scooped everyone by reporting his own retirement. I applaud him for that. Maybe he could help some of those reporters get their reports right.

And then there were none. Or more accurately, then there will be none. Barring a change of Derek Jeter’s mind, when the Yankees open spring training for the 2015 season a year from now, none of the core four will be present. Jeter is the lone remaining member of that nucleus of five World Series championships and two other Series appearances in a 14-year span.

Actually, Jorge Posada missed the first of those World Series, and Andy Pettitte one-upped his fellow New York Yankees by sneaking in an extra World Series appearance during his brief hiatus with the Houston Astros. But let’s not quibble.

Bernie Williams, another child of the Yankees’ system, played in six of the World Series, but he preceded the others in the organization by five to seven years and retired five years before any of the others. In addition, if he had been included to make it a core five, it would not have rhymed and would not have been as catchy a phrase.

Williams, however, fits in with the others for the purpose of this column, whose primary subject is not Jeter but the man who doesn’t get enough credit for making the Yankees of the 1996-2009 period happen. That man is Gene Michael, and Jeter’s pending retirement gives us reason to recognize and acknowledge his contribution to the Yankees’ resurgence.

Player, coach and general manager in the Yankees’ organization, Michael assumed command of the Yankees when owner George Steinbrenner was suspended in 1990 for paying a two-bit gambler, Howard Spira, to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield, his star player with whom he was feuding.

Michael, who works for the Yankees as a front-office adviser and major league scout, is modest about what he accomplished in the early ‘90s, but the modesty is undeserved. Without Michael’s effort, Joe Torre would not be in the Hall of Fame.

“I didn’t sign any of those guys,” Michael was quick to say when I brought up the core four on the telephone Wednesday after Jeter had announced his retirement, effective following this season. But he conceded, “I think I had something to do with keeping them. We traded some young players, but we kept the right ones.”

Michael, 75, offered an example from nearly 20 years ago. With Don Mattingly having retired after the 1995 season, the Yankees needed a first baseman and were talking to the Seattle Mariners about Tino Martinez.

“Woody was demanding Hitchcock or Pettitte,” Michael recalled, referring to Woody Woodward, the Mariners’ general manager, and pitcher Sterling Hitchcock. “We needed a first baseman.”

The Mariners put pitchers Jeff Nelson and Jim Mecir in the deal, and the Yankees gave the Mariners Hitchcock and third baseman Russ Davis, who was 26 years old and in parts of two seasons with the Yankees had played in 44 games, hitting two homers and driving in 13 runs.

Davis spent four seasons with Seattle and two with San Francisco. The left-handed Hitchcock pitched for nine more seasons and finished his mediocre 13-year career with a 74-76 record while Pettitte had a sterling 19-year career, finishing 256-153.

Michael’s refusal to trade Pettitte, Posada, Rivera, Jeter or Williams had a simple explanation. Understanding far better than the owner the need to develop good young players and give them a chance to play, Michael convinced Steinbrenner to try that approach rather than trade good young players for veterans without giving them a chance to play for the Yankees.

I remember there were times I played it down to George,” Michael related, “saying we should keep these guys and give them a chance to fail for us. I think I taught George patience. It wasn’t easy, but he learned.”

Michael recalled a time when the Yankees and the Montreal Expos were talking about a possible swap of outfielders who weren’t hitting, Williams for Larry Walker. “But both started hitting, Bernie about .350 and Walker .290 or .300,” Michael recalled.

He suggested that Steinbrenner favored the deal, but his chief aide wasn’t eager to do it.

“He was tough,” Michael said, “but I learned if you went at him twice, three times for sure you had him.” He meant that was the way to dissuade Steinbrenner from wanting to trade a player.

A pivotal moment occurred, Michael said, when Steinbrenner returned from his suspension at the start of spring training in 1993.

“He came back and he knew the team had improved,” Michael said. “We added players along the way who were important. We made some moves. As it went on, George became more appreciative. He wasn’t as stubborn as he had been earlier in his career. When Torre came along he had it easy.”

Joe Torre wasn’t Michael’s idea or Steinbrenner’s. The Yankees needed a new manager – nothing new about that – when Buck Showalter was fired or resigned, depending on who was telling the story.

Steinbrenner had no manager in mind – Billy Martin was unavailable – and Arthur Richman, a senior member of the media relations department, recommended Torre, with whom Richman had worked with the Mets.

Torre’s arrival coincided with Jeter’s becoming the everyday shortstop. Jeter always referred to the manager as Mr. Torre. That respect, highly unusual in professional sports, apparently stemmed from Jeter’s upbringing. Given the way Jeter acts, Dorothy and Charles Jeter did a remarkable job raising him.

His 3,316 hits, however, he got on his own. He had only 12 of those hits last season, the result of a series of serious injuries that limited him to 17 games.

At the age of 39 going on 40 in June, the shortstop will not have an easy time coming back. The view among baseball people is the older a player is the harder it is for him to come back from a missed season.

I will say this, however. If anyone can overcome a year’s absence at his age, it’s Jeter. They don’t often come along like Jeter, and the Yankees have Michael to thank for changing Steinbrenner’s view of young players so that two decades later Jeter is still around and will retire next fall as a Yankee.