Steinbrenner Was a Bully With a Fat Wallet
By Mike Silva ~ November 21st, 2008. Filed under: Mike Silva.
Sportswriter Steve Jacobson made a guest appearance in today’s Newsday to discuss his thoughts on George Steinbrenner. With the official “passing of the baton” there will be many fond memories of Steinbrenner conjured up over the ensuing days. Jacobson’s piece will not be one of them.
The modern day Yankees fan knows George Steinbrenner as the “mastermind” behind the Yankees nineties dynasty. Their impression is even more enhanced by the satirical character Larry David played on Seinfeld. These same fans can’t understand why the rest of baseball could think bad thoughts about an owner “who just wants his team to win”. Those from another generation, like me, know a different Steinbrenner.
I still remember driving home late one summer night in 1995 and hearing the following statement from Joe Benigno during the overnight: “The Yankees will never make the playoffs as long as George Steinbrenner is running the team”. This was during a time the Yankees were floundering under .500 and Jack McDowell was throwing up his middle finger. We all know how wrong, once again, Benigno was with that prediction. What we don’t discuss is why Joe so readily made that statement about the Yankees principal owner.
Jacobson brings you back to reasons why George might not have been the great owner history will paint. There is the flippant firing of Yankee employees, the Reggie Jackson saga, and calling Dave Winfield “Mr. May”. Many forget that George was suspended twice. Once for illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon and another time for hiring gambler Howard Spira to frame “Mr. May”. What’s more, he turned the Yankees into a modern day fantasy baseball team during the eighties. You have multiple managers, Bill Martin reruns, the Yogi Berra feud, and misfit roster construction. He obsessed over the eighties Mets so much that he couldn’t wait to give Darryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden a second chance in pinstripes. Sometimes you wonder if he really wanted to help the troubled duo, or stick it to the Mets. His obsession ran so deep he even wrote a NY Post column about the Mets during their 86′ playoff run.
George deserves credit for turning a 10 million dollar investment into billions. He saw the value of a brand name and stole it from a bumbling corporate empire (CBS). What history should remember is that it was the baseball people, not Steinbrenner, that built the Yankees into a winner. You could argue that Howard Spira has as much to do with the nineties Yankees as Gene Michael. If George was around Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte could have easily been jettisoned for the next fading star.
So when you remember the era that was George, all I ask is for a little balance. For every World Series there was a Ken Phelps. For every charitable donation there was a employee outburts or scandel. If not for Gene Michael New York might be celebrating the transfer of power, not mourning over it. In the end perhaps Steinbrenner was what the title of Jacobson’s article implies: “a bully with a fat wallet”.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:42 pm
The George of the ’70s was a visionary who understood that you had to spend money to make money.
Did he sometimes allow his psychological conflicts to infect his interpersonal relations? Of course, however, a lot of people are similarly afflicted, but it only impacts their small circle of friends, relatives, and co-workers.
The larger point is: so what? As fans, we didn’t have to deal with the man on an interpersonal level.
The bottom line is that the man delivered more memorable victories and more rings than almost any other owner in modern professional sports history.
For that, I am grateful.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Bravo Mike, Jacobson’s book on the 70′s Highlanders The Best Team Money Can But is a must read if you want a feel of what Steinbrenner was like in his heyday.
I have stories from friends of mine who worked for the Highlanders and needless to say, the “Boss” was gentleman