Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Let’s hear it for the Steinbrenner boys for not having heard from the Steinbrenner boys.

Not a peep. Not about on-field matters, anyway. Overpriced tickets, yes. Underperforming players, no.

It’s hard to recall the last time the New York Yankees completed a season without an eruption from the owner’s suite. Or, at the very least, a let’s-get-going missive issued through Howard Rubenstein, George Steinbrenner’s conduit to the clubhouse.

Rubenstein declined to comment on not having to comment.

You can make a decent argument for any number of team Most Valuable Players this season for the Yankees, who open the postseason tonight at home.

Jeter. A-Rod. Teixeira. Rivera. Allow me to fatten the list with the surname Steinbrenner, both Hal and Hank, who, unlike their Patton-loving pop, seem to understand that the emotional toll of a 162-game season calls more for finesse than fire.

Ownership kept quiet, even on June 9, when pitcher A.J. Burnett allowed three runs on five hits and five walks in 2 2/3 innings against the rival Red Sox. There was no carping the next day, either, when Boston improved to 7-0 for the season against the Yankees. Surely, I thought, we would hear from one of the Steinbrenners on June 11, when Boston made it eight wins in eight tries with a late-inning rally against C.C. Sabathia.

Nope. Just silence.

Steinbrenner’s Day

The task of governing the Yankees was left to General Manager Brian Cashman, who changed travel plans and met the team in Atlanta, where the club awoke from its lumber slumber after manager Joe Girardi was ejected for arguing a call.

You have to know that in his heyday George Steinbrenner, who ceded day-to-day control of the club some time ago, would’ve ripped his newest underperforming multimillionaires, using words like pathetic, unacceptable and embarrassing.

Steinbrenner’s sons, in a welcome change, left baseball matters to the baseball people. Their father, after all, once trashed pitcher Hideki Irabu for failing to cover first base on a ground ball. And that was during an exhibition game. Don’t tell the pinstripe patriarch about games not counting. To him, they all count.

So who would have guessed that Hal, who last year was named the team’s controlling partner, and his older brother Hank, placed in charge of baseball operations, would eschew bombast for a more Warren Buffett-like approach?

“There’s a key to the way Warren does it,” says my colleague Alice Schroeder, author of “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.” “He gives people complete rein on the front end. But he holds them very accountable for results.”

Edict, Agita

About the only things Steinbrenner, the elder, ever gave his baseball folks -- either front end or back -- were edicts, agita and pink slips.

The Boss, as he is known, was an incessant micromanager, regularly inserting himself into the clubhouse, not to mention dugout. He was a cauldron unfamiliar with the notion of personal restraint. Former manager Joe Torre’s tea-sipping, flat-line demeanor was the perfect counterbalance to his boss’s cannon fire.

Steinbrenner represented the antithesis of Buffett. That’s true of all his business interests, including his minor-league baseball team.

Buffett is part owner of the Omaha Royals, Kansas City’s Triple-A affiliate. While the world’s second-richest man keeps tabs on the club’s attendance (highest since 2000), revenue (up) and plans for a new stadium, he doesn’t meddle in the day-to-day operations.

Buffett Bobbleheads

Those duties are entrusted to team President Alan Stein and General Manager Martie Cordaro, who says management engages Buffett three or four times a year in meetings, including the one where they hatched the idea for Buffett bobblehead night.

But that’s it.

Buffett doesn’t make irate post-game telephone calls demanding an explanation for losing streaks or sloppy play. Nor does he issue ultimatums.

“He lets managers manage,” Stein said over the telephone the other day.

It’s hard enough for players in New York, where their every hiccup, miscue or dalliance is splashed across the back pages of the city’s tabloids, where every gaffe is endless fodder for sports talk-radio blowhards.

Mark Teixeira, for example, started the season slowly at the plate after signing an eight-year, $180 million contract. The last thing he or any player needs is an owner publicly demanding better return on his investment.

The Boss Speaks

George Steinbrenner, as it happens, earlier this week did issue a statement through Rubenstein. It was praiseworthy, not prickly.

“The New York Yankees are proud of our rich history of outstanding players and this year’s team has worked hard to prove that they are worthy of the great distinction of calling themselves Yankees,” it said.

Rest easy, Yankees fans. The team belongs to Hal and Hank now. And they recognize these players distinguished themselves without any backbiting from ownership.

Ask any veteran of the George Steinbrenner years just how valuable that is.

(Scott Soshnick is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Scott Soshnick in New York at ssoshnick@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 6, 2009 21:00 EDT