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 …

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If Bud Selig is sincere about his plan to retire as commissioner when his current term expires next January, where is the search committee interviewing candidates and seeking his successor? In similar circumstances previously, search committees were in place and working at this equivalent time.

Isn’t the absence of a search committee a dead giveaway that Selig intends to stay on for another term, whether it’s a year or two years or even longer? Not necessarily. There is another scenario, and this is the one, I am told, that will play.

No search committee is needed, in this scenario, because …

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When it comes to signing free agents, the New York Yankees don’t have to be geniuses. If you and I had the money, we could have signed CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett for $423.5 million in 2008. If we had the money, we could have signed Masahiro Tanaka, Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran and Brian McCann for $438 million this off-season.

We didn’t even have to know they were good players. Plenty of people could have told us they were. We wouldn’t have had to sign the checks either. We would have had Hal Steinbrenner to do that.

So what does the Yankees’ general manager have to do?

One thing Brian Cashman could have done in his 16 years as general manager – he celebrated his 16th anniversary the day after the Super Bowl – is …

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