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George Steinbrenner

 
Biography: George Steinbrenner
 

George Steinbrenner (born 1930), the Cleveland shipbuilding magnate who purchased the New York Yankees in 1973, has been one of professional sportsmost controversial and quotable figures. Twice suspended by baseball for legal and ethical violations, Steinbrenner nevertheless earned the respect of his fellow owners for his record of success on the field. The Yankees won multiple championships under Steinbrenner's aggressive style of leadership.

George Steinbrenner was born on July 4, 1930, in Rocky River, Ohio. His father, Henry Steinbrenner, owned a Great Lakes shipping company. His mother, Rita, managed their home in Bay Village, the suburb of Cleveland where Steinbrenner spent his formative years. As a child, Steinbrenner delivered eggs to earn spending money. His father, a former collegiate track and field star, instructed him to work hard and urged him to try competitive athletics.

At age twelve, Steinbrenner took up hurdling. Whenever he finished second in a track meet, his father appeared instantly at his side, demanding to know: "What the hell happened? How'd you let that guy beat you?" These scoldings instilled a perfectionist streak in the young Steinbrenner that he often cited as the key to his later success.

Education and Early Career

Steinbrenner was educated at the Culver Military Academy in Indiana. He then went on to Williams College in Massachusetts where he continued to run track and edited the sports section of the campus newspaper. In the glee club, he stood directly behind future Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim and-by his own account-outsang him. After earning his bachelor's degree in 1952, Steinbrenner joined the United States Air Force. There he took charge of a succession of successful projects that showed his emerging leadership skills. He established a sports program and set up his own food service business on the base.

After three years in the military, Steinbrenner got a job coaching high school football in Columbus, Ohio. He later moved on to the college level, becoming an assistant at Northwestern and then at Purdue, but his Big Ten coaching career was to be short-lived. In 1957, at the request of his father, Steinbrenner returned to the shipyard, where he was put to work counting rivets in crawl spaces. He married the former Elizabeth Zweig on May 12, 1956, and seemed set to take over his father's business. The lure of big-time sports proved too powerful, however, and Steinbrenner invested a considerable sum of money into his first pro franchise, basketball's Cleveland Pipers. The team failed, and Steinbrenner lost all his savings.

Builds Fortune

Urged to file for bankruptcy, Steinbrenner instead worked to pay off his debt. When his father retired in 1963, he took control of the family shipping business and helped turn around its sagging fortunes. With the money he made, he formed a partnership with a group of investors and bought into the American Ship Building Company. Elected to the company's presidency in 1967, Steinbrenner fetched his father out of retirement to help him run the operation. American Shipbuilding flourished under Steinbrenner's leadership and made him a multimillionaire.

In the late 1960s, Steinbrenner began to exert his new-found influence on the national level. He used his political connections to become the chief fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, raising nearly $2 million over a two-year period. The election of Republican Richard Nixon to the presidency in 1968 made Steinbrenner fear reprisals against himself or his business. In order to hedge his bets, the shipbuilder contributed to Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. Unfortunately for Steinbrenner, his donations violated several campaign finance laws. He eventually pleaded guilty to all counts and was fined a total of $35,000.

Yankee Owner

These charges came just as Steinbrenner was embarking on a new career as a major league baseball owner. In January 1973, Steinbrenner joined with a group of investors to purchase the New York Yankees for $10 million. Once baseball's hallmark franchise, the Yankees had slipped to second-division status in recent years under the ownership of CBS, and a management team headed by Mike Burke. Steinbrenner, who at first announced he would "stick to building ships" and let others run the team, promptly forced Burke out and hired Cleveland Indians' general manager Gabe Paul to supervise the rebuilding process.

In November 1974, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn did briefly return Steinbrenner to the shipyards when he issued him a two-year suspension for his campaign finance transgressions. In Steinbrenner's absence, Paul made a series of shrewd trades and personnel decisions that laid the groundwork for the Yankees return to prominence. By the time Steinbrenner returned from exile in 1976, the Yankees had a top-flight club poised to contend for a world title. The team won its division going away that season, then relied on a clutch ninth-inning, game-winning home run by Chris Chambliss to secure the American League pennant in a five-game playoff against the Kansas City Royals. Only a four-game sweep at the hands of the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series dampened the spirit of rejuvenation surrounding the Yankees.

Championship Seasons

In 1977, Steinbrenner opened his checkbook to bring in free agent slugger Reggie Jackson, the former star of the Oakland Athletics. Jackson added considerable star power and clutch hitting to the team, but also heightened dissension in the clubhouse. He had a stormy relationship with manager Billy Martin and was considered selfish by his teammates. Nevertheless, the talented, if volatile, team survived these distractions to make it to the World Series for a second year in a row. This time they were victorious, ousting the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games. Steinbrenner had fulfilled his promise to bring a championship to New York.

He brought a second world title in 1978, though again at a high cost in terms of hostility. The simmering Martin-Jackson feud bubbled over in mid-season, prompting Steinbrenner to fire his manager. On his way out the door, Martin took a few parting shots at both Jackson and the team's owner. "One's a born liar, the other's convicted," Martin observed-an apparent reference to Steinbrenner's campaign finance activity. Relations between the two men would forever be colored by this ugly incident.

Controversial Figure

Over the next few years, the Yankees continued to contend for the American League pennant. Steinbrenner's increasingly meddlesome management style was blamed for a lack of stability that doomed the team's best efforts. He hired Billy Martin back as manager again in 1979-only to fire him at season's end. It was the first of four instances in which the erratic Martin was invited back to take control of the club, only to be let go with assurances that he would never be hired again. In 1980, the Yankees won 103 games under manager Dick Howser, but Steinbrenner fired him after the team was beaten in the playoffs.

In 1981, the Yankees returned to the World Series. However, after beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first two games, the Yankees dropped the next three. Following Game Five, Steinbrenner called a late-night press conference to hold up a flimsily bandaged hand and announce that he had defended the Yankee honor by beating up two Dodger fans in an elevator. The Yankees failed to take a "get tough" cue from their owner and lost the sixth and deciding game. Before the game was even completed, Steinbrenner ordered the Yankee publicity department to issue an apology to the people of New York City for the club's lackluster performance.

Decline and Exile

The rest of the 1980s proved to be a bleak period for the Yankees and their fans. Steinbrenner signed many high-priced players, but with seemingly little regard for their adaptability to the pressures of playing in New York. Managers were put under intense pressure to succeed, subject to dismissal at any time according to the owner's whims. Three men were hired and fired during the 1982 season alone. Steinbrenner engaged in protracted contract squabbles with one star player, Don Mattingly, and publicly belittled another, Dave Winfield, by comparing him unfavorably to the departed Reggie Jackson. By 1990, the Yankees were one of the worst teams in baseball-thanks in large part to the instability wrought on the club by its owner.

By that time, Steinbrenner's relationship with Winfield had deteriorated to the point where he reportedly hired a known gambler to dig up information that would destroy the slugger's reputation. Acting on evidence of this plot, baseball commissioner Fay Vincent suspended Steinbrenner from baseball on July 30, 1990. Control of the Yankees was handed over to limited partner Robert Nederlander for an indefinite period. Yankee management used this period of "exile" to rebuild the team's shattered minor league system and make a few judicious trades. When Steinbrenner was allowed to regain control of the team in 1994, it was once again ready to contend for a world championship.

Successful Return

Many observers expected Steinbrenner to return to his imperious ways and jeopardize the club's progress, but banishment seemed to have mellowed Steinbrenner. He changed his management style, showing a renewed willingness to let his "baseball people" run the team. Other than ousting manager Buck Showalter after the 1995 season, he made few personnel changes and largely avoided making the kind of public comments that had generated controversy in the past. Under new manager Joe Torre, the team capped a stellar 1996 season with a come-from-behind upset victory over the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. Two years later, the Yankees posted the best record in American League history, going 114-48. They then completed an impressive playoff run by sweeping the San Diego Padres in four games in the World Series.

During this period of success, Steinbrenner turned his attention more frequently toward the future of the Yankees. He lobbied city and state officials in New York for the construction of a new stadium, or at least the refurbishing of the old one. He engaged in negotiations to sell the team to a local cable company, but the talks broke down when the potential buyers would not agree to let him continue to run the team. In early 1999, Steinbrenner did reach a deal with the National Basketball Association's New Jersey Nets to merge business operations with the Yankees. The agreement would allow Steinbrenner to investigate the possibility of creating his own regional sports programming network, something that could generate the revenues necessary to keep meeting the Yankees' high payroll. Steinbrenner has repeatedly said that, no matter what ownership arrangement is struck, he will continue running baseball's premier franchise into the foreseeable future.

Further Reading

Frommer, Harvey, The New York Yankee Encyclopedia, Macmillan, 1997.

Gallagher, Mark, The Yankee Encyclopedia, Sagamore Publishing, 1996.

Madden, Bill, Damned Yankees, Warner, 1991.

Schaap, Dick, Steinbrenner! Putnam, 1982.

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Wikipedia: George Steinbrenner
 
George Steinbrenner
Born July 4, 1930 (1930-07-04) (age 78)
Rocky River, Ohio
Occupation Owner of New York Yankees (MLB), businessman, CEO, entrepreneur
Spouse(s) Elizabeth Joan Zieg
Children Hank Steinbrenner
Hal Steinbrenner
Jessica Steinbrenner
Jennifer Steinbrenner-Swindal
Parents Henry G. Steinbrenner II
Rita Haley

George Michael Steinbrenner III (born July 4, 1930 in Rocky River, Ohio) is an American billionaire businessman, and owner and the former principal executive of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees. His outspokenness and role in driving up player salaries have made him one of the sport's most controversial figures. His willingness to freely spend money in an effort to win championships has allowed for the Yankees' erratic post-season success since 1976, yet has earned him begrudging respect from some baseball executives, while at the same time earning him contempt from some fans.

Steinbrenner is known as a hands-on executive, earning the nickname "The Boss". His tendency to meddle in daily on-field decisions, and to hire and fire (and occasionally re-hire) managers led then-Yankees skipper Dallas Green to give him the derisive nickname "Manager George".[1]

During Steinbrenner's ownership, from 1973–2008, the longest in club history, the Yankees have earned 10 pennants and six World Series titles.

Contents

Early years

Steinbrenner is the son of Henry G. Steinbrenner II and Rita Haley. Henry G. Steinbrenner II had been a track and field star, a world-class hurdler, while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in engineering in 1927; he became a wealthy shipping businessman who ran the family firm, Kinsman Shipping, operating freight ships hauling ore and grain on the Great Lakes. George entered Culver Military Academy in northern Indiana in 1944, and graduated in 1948.

College

Steinbrenner received his B.A. in English Literature from Williams College in 1952. While at Williams, George was an average student who led an active extracurricular life. A member of Delta Kappa Epsilon (Epsilon chapter), he was an excellent hurdler on the varsity track and field team, he was able to work with multiple personalities, served as sports editor of the student paper, played piano in the band, and played halfback on the football team in his senior year.[2]

Air Force, marriage, football coach

Steinbrenner joined the United States Air Force after graduation, was commissioned a second lieutenant and was posted to Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio. Following honorable discharge in 1954, he did post-graduate study at Ohio State University (1954–55), earning his master's degree in physical education. He served as a graduate assistant to legendary Buckeye football coach Woody Hayes; the Buckeyes were undefeated national champions that year, and won the Rose Bowl. He met his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Joan Zieg, in Columbus, and married her on May 12, 1956.[3] The couple have been married ever since, and have two sons Hank Steinbrenner and Hal Steinbrenner, and two daughters Jessica Steinbrenner and Jennifer Steinbrenner-Swindal. Steinbrenner served as an assistant football coach at Northwestern University from 1955 to 56, and at Purdue University from 1956 to 57.

Enters family business

In 1957, Steinbrenner joined Kinsman Marine Transit Company, his father's Great Lakes shipping company, and worked hard to successfully revitalize the company, which was suffering through difficult market conditions. In its return to profitability, Kinsman emphasized grain shipments over ore.[4] Steinbrenner made his money as chairman of the Cleveland-based firm known as the American Shipbuilding Company.[5]

Pro basketball franchise

In 1960, against his father's wishes, Steinbrenner entered the sports franchise business for the first time with basketball's Cleveland Pipers, of the AAU. The Pipers were coached by John McClendon, who became the first African American coach in professional basketball. McClendon had led Tennessee A&I University to three straight NAIA small college championships in the late 1950s. The Pipers switched to the new professional American Basketball League in 1961; the new circuit was founded by Abe Saperstein, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters. The league and team experienced financial problems, and McClendon resigned in protest halfway through the season; however, the Pipers had won the first half of a split season. Steinbrenner replaced McClendon with former Boston Celtics star Bill Sharman, and the Pipers won the ABL championship in 1961-62. The ABL folded in December 1962, just months into its second season. Steinbrenner and his partners lost significant money on the venture, but Steinbrenner paid off all of his creditors and partners over the next few years.[6]

Excursions into theatre

With his burgeoning sports aspirations put on hold, Steinbrenner turned his attention to the theatre. His involvement with Broadway began with a short-lived 1967 play, The Ninety Day Mistress, in which he partnered with another rookie producer, James Nederlander. Whereas Nederlander threw himself into his family's business full-time, Steinbrenner invested in a mere half-dozen shows, including the 1974 Tony Award nominee for Best Musical, Seesaw, and the 1988 Peter Allen flop, Legs Diamond. [7]

Purchase of the New York Yankees

The Yankees had been struggling during their years under CBS ownership, which had acquired the team in 1965. In 1972, CBS Chairman William S. Paley told team president E. Michael Burke the media company intended to sell the club. As Burke later told writer Roger Kahn, Paley offered to sell the franchise to Burke if he could find financial backing. Steinbrenner, who had participated in a failed attempt to buy the Cleveland Indians from Vernon Stouffer one year earlier,[8] was brought together with Burke by veteran baseball executive Gabe Paul.

On January 3, 1973, Steinbrenner and minority partner Burke led a group of investors, which included Lester Crown, John DeLorean and Nelson Bunker Hunt, in purchasing the Yankees from CBS for $10 million.[9]

The announced intention was that Burke would continue to run the team as club president. But Burke later became angry when he found out that Paul had been brought in as a senior Yankee executive, crowding his authority, and quit the team presidency in April 1973. (Burke remained a minority owner of the club into the following decade.) Paul was officially named president of the club on April 19. It would be the first of many high-profile departures with employees who crossed paths with "The Boss." At the conclusion of the 1973 season, two more prominent names departed: manager Ralph Houk, who resigned and took a similar position with the Detroit Tigers; and general manager Lee MacPhail, who became president of the American League.

The 1973 off-season would continue to be controversial when Steinbrenner and Paul sought to hire former Oakland Athletics manager Dick Williams, who had resigned immediately after leading the team to its second straight World Series title. However, because Williams was still under contract to Oakland, the subsequent legal wrangling prevented the Yankees from hiring him. On the first anniversary of the team's ownership change, the Yankees hired former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Bill Virdon to lead the team on the field.

Controversies

Steinbrenner is famous for both his pursuit of high-priced free agents and, in some cases, infamous for feuding with them. In his first 23 seasons, he changed managers 20 times (including dismissing Billy Martin on five separate occasions), and general managers 11 times in 30 years. In July 1978, Martin said of Steinbrenner and his $3 million outfielder Reggie Jackson, "The two were meant for each other. One's a born liar, and the other's convicted." The comment resulted in Martin's first departure, though technically Martin resigned (tearfully), before Yankees President Al Rosen followed through on Steinbrenner's dictum to release the manager.

Campaign contributions to Nixon and pardon

The "convicted" part of Martin's comment referred to Steinbrenner's connection to U.S. President Richard Nixon: he was indicted on 14 criminal counts on April 5, 1974, then pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to Nixon's re-election campaign and a felony charge of obstruction of justice on August 23. Steinbrenner was personally fined $15,000, while his firm was assessed $20,000 for the offense. On November 27, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended him for two years, but later reduced that amount to fifteen months, with Steinbrenner returning to the Yankees in 1976. U.S. President Ronald Reagan pardoned Steinbrenner on January 19, 1989, in one of the final acts of his presidency.

Grooming policy

Another notable policy instituted by Steinbrenner is a strict grooming policy for males for professionalism-based reasons. Ostensibly modeled after the policies of the U.S. military, police and fire departments, unless for religious reasons, a male player, coach, or executive may not wear any facial hair except for a mustache and hair may not be worn below the collar. (However, a Yankee player presumably can wear long sideburns or mutton chops). This policy has led to some unusual, sometimes comical incidents.

The first such occurrence happened during the 1973 home opener against the Indians. When the Yankees players, caps removed, were standing at attention for the National Anthem, Steinbrenner, in the owner's box next to the New York dugout, noticed that the hair on several of them was too long for his standards. Not knowing the players' names, he wrote down the uniform numbers of the offenders, who included Thurman Munson, Bobby Murcer, Sparky Lyle and Roy White, and had the list, along with the demand that their hair be trimmed immediately, delivered to Houk. The order was reluctantly relayed to the players.[10]

In 1983, at Steinbrenner’s behest, Yogi Berra ordered Goose Gossage to remove a beard he was growing. Gossage responded by shaving away the beard but leaving a thick exaggerated mustache extending down the upper lip to the jaw line, a look Gossage still sports to this day.

The most infamous incident involving facial hair occurred in 1991. Although Steinbrenner was suspended, the Yankee management ordered Don Mattingly, who was then sporting a longish or mullet-like hair style, to get a hair cut. When Mattingly refused he was benched. This led to a huge media frenzy with reporters and talk radio repeatedly mocking the team. The WPIX broadcasting crew of Phil Rizzuto, Bobby Murcer, and Tom Seaver lampooned the policy on a pregame show with Rizzuto playing the role of a barber sent to enforce the rule. Mattingly would eventually be reinstated. Coincidentally, The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat," which was filmed earlier that year, included Mattingly as a guest star who is suspended from play by Mr Burns for his side burns being too long, despite shaving the area of his head above where side burns grow. In 1995, Mattingly again ran afoul of the policy when he grew a goatee. Steinbrenner publicly criticized him for it and Mattingly eventually trimmed it to a mustache. Mattingly is now clean-shaven as a coach with the Los Angeles Dodgers although the Dodgers do not have a facial hair policy.

David Wells occasionally wore a goatee and informed the media he would be willing to pay any fine to do so.

1981 World Series

During the 1981 World Series, Steinbrenner provided a colorful backdrop to the Yankees' loss of the series. After a Game 3 loss in Los Angeles, Steinbrenner called a press conference in his hotel room, showing off his left hand in a cast and various other injuries that he claimed were earned in a fight with two Dodgers fans in the hotel elevator. Nobody came forward about the fight, leading to the belief that he had made up the story of the fight in order to light a fire under the Yankees.

Dave Winfield

After the 1980 season, Steinbrenner made headlines by signing Dave Winfield to a 10-year, $23 million contract, making Winfield baseball's highest-paid player. Steinbrenner later derisively referred to Winfield as "Mr. May" to local media, an obvious negative comparison to Reggie Jackson, who was nicknamed "Mr. October." This criticism has become somewhat of an anachronism as many cite the statement to Steinbrenner after the 1981 World Series. Rather, Steinbrenner made it in September 1985 when Winfield was struggling, with the Yankees eventually losing the American League East to Toronto on the second to last day of the season.

On July 30, 1990, Commissioner Fay Vincent banned Steinbrenner from baseball for life after he paid Howie Spira, a small-time gambler, $40,000 for "dirt" after Winfield sued him for failing to pay his foundation the $300,000[11] guaranteed in his contract. Subsequently Winfield chose to enter the Hall of Fame as a San Diego Padre.

Steinbrenner's connection with the theatre-owning Nederlander clan was tapped when Robert E. Nederlander was chosen to run the team during Steinbrenner's exile from baseball.[12]

Reinstatement and championships

Steinbrenner was reinstated in 1993. Unlike past years, he was somewhat less inclined to interfere in the Yankees' baseball operations. He left day-to-day baseball matters in the hands of Gene Michael and other executives, and to let promising farm-system players such as Bernie Williams develop instead of trading them for established players. Steinbrenner's having "got religion" (in the words of New York Daily News reporter Bill Madden) paid off. After contending briefly two years earlier, the '93 Yankees were in the American League East race with the eventual champion Toronto Blue Jays until September.

The 1994 Yankees were the American League East leaders when a strike wiped out the rest of the season. Interestingly, the last time the Yankees were in the playoffs, there was a significant players' strike. The strike shook the Yankees and their fans to their core because their star player then, Don Mattingly had never been to the playoffs at all during his career and he was on the verge of making it for the first time. The strike wiped out his best chances at the postseason and possibly, a World Series.

The team returned to the playoffs in 1995 (their first visit since 1981) and won the World Series in 1996. The modern Yankee Dynasty was born during the 1996 World Series. The Yankees went on to win the World Series in 1998, 1999 and 2000. The Yankees lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001, ending their dynasty. However, the dynasty may or may not have happened if there had not been a strike in 1994.[13][14]

Though they have not won a World Series since, the Yankees made the playoffs every season through 2007, most notably winning the AL Pennant in seven games from the 2003 Boston Red Sox. In 2003, their ALCS success was followed by losing the World Series to the Florida Marlins. Their demise was furthered by the worst collapse in baseball postseason history in 2004. While leading the eventual World Champion Red Sox three games to none (3-0) and 3 outs away from winning game 4, the Red Sox stunned the Yankees and the baseball world by coming back to win game 4 and then the next three games and sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. In 2008 the Yankees ended their post-season run with a third place finish in the American League East. During that time, Steinbrenner won another championship, winning the Stanley Cup in 2003, as YankeeNets owned both the Yankees and the New Jersey Devils.

Possible retirement

Since 2006, George Steinbrenner has spent most of his time in Tampa, Florida, leaving the Yankees to be run by his sons Hal Steinbrenner and Hank Steinbrenner. Hank in particular shows similar traits to his father.[15]

George made a rare appearance in the Bronx on the field for the 79th All-Star Game. Wearing dark glasses, Steinbrenner walked slowly into the stadium's media entrance with the aid of several companions, using one of them to lean on as he hobbled through the media entrance.

He later was driven out on to the field along with his son Hal at the end of the lengthy pregame ceremony in which this year's All-Stars were introduced at their fielding positions along with 49 of the 63 living Hall of Famers.[16]

George Steinbrenner's estimated net worth is $1.3 billion USD in 2007 according to the Forbes 400 List in Forbes magazine issued in September 2007. [17]

In a recent interview with journalist S.L. Chandler, Steinbrenner shared his views on reading, a hobby he has always enjoyed (excerpt):

It’s no surprise to admirers (and some detractors) that New York Yankees’ boss, George Steinbrenner, a strong man, would have an affinity for books written by or about decisive men. When Mr. Steinbrenner responded to us, he was reading General George S. Patton’s personal copy of Tattered Banners by Talcott Powell. As the General read, he wrote his thoughts and feelings on the margins, and Steinbrenner says, “It’s interesting comparing views on the same book.”

New Yankee Stadium

George Steinbrenner has wanted a new stadium for years. It was rumored that he even went as far as to consider New Jersey a possible site for a new stadium. He finally got his new stadium in 2005. Yankee Stadium was built right next to the former Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. It opened in time for the 2009 season.

Baseball innovation

George Steinbrenner helped to revolutionize the business of baseball by being the first owner to sell TV cable rights (to MSG Network).[18]

In 1997, the Yankees signed a 10-year, $97 million deal with Adidas. A dispute with MSG over the cable rights fee ended with the creation of the Yankees' own YES Network. George Steinbrenner has been able to grow the Yankees from a $10 million franchise to a $1.2 billion heavyweight. In 2005, the NY Yankees were established as the first professional sports franchise to be conservatively estimated as being worth over one billion dollars. However, if one adds up the revenue of $1.2 billion valuation of the 36% Yankees owned YES Network to the team revenue (the other 64% is owned by Goldman Sachs and the former New Jersey Nets owner which is also a minority owner of the ballclub), they far surpass the Dallas Cowboys in total estimated value.

Off the field

In addition to being an intense boss to his on-field employees, Steinbrenner is also known for pressuring and changing off-field employees (including various publicity directors), sometimes chewing them out in public. Longtime Cardinals announcer Jack Buck once quipped that he had seen Steinbrenner's yacht and that, "It was a beautiful thing to observe, with all 36 oars working in unison." Former sportscaster Hank Greenwald, who called Yankee games on WABC radio for two years, once said he knew when Steinbrenner was in town by how tense the office staff was.

He usually kept his complaints about the team broadcasters he approves of (except for the YES Network crew, who have generally not been his direct employees) out of the newspapers. However, he has been known to be upset with the sometimes blunt commentary of former broadcaster Jim Kaat and former analyst Tony Kubek.

Steinbrenner's one publicly aired gripe with a team announcer came when he accused respected Yankee broadcaster Bill White of low-keying his WMCA radio call of Chris Chambliss' pennant-winning home run in the 1976 American League Championship Series. The actual aircheck of the live broadcast (on the Major League Baseball website) finds an unusually emotional White calling the home run and its aftermath — so excited as the ball was in flight that his voice broke.

Thoroughbred horse racing

George Steinbrenner has been involved with thoroughbred horse racing since the early 1970s. He owns Kinsman Stud Farm in Ocala, Florida and races under the name, Kinsman Stable.

The Boss in the media

Despite Steinbrenner's controversial status (or perhaps, because of it) he does appear to poke fun at himself in the media. He hosted Saturday Night Live on October 20, 1990 at the same time his former outfielder and Yankee manager, Lou Piniella, led the Cincinnati Reds to a World Championship. In the opening sketch, he dreamt of a Yankees team managed, coached, and entirely played by himself. In other sketches, "he" chews out the SNL "writing staff" (notably including Al Franken) for featuring him in a mock Slim Fast commercial with other ruthless leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin and plays a folksy convenience store manager whose business ethic is comically divergent from that of Steinbrenner.

He appeared as himself in the Albert Brooks comedy The Scout.

After a public chastising of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter for "partying too much," the two appeared in a recent Visa commercial club-hopping. A 2004 Visa commercial depicted Steinbrenner in the trainer's room at Yankee Stadium, suffering from an arm injury (presumably from overuse), unable to sign any checks, including that of his then-current manager Joe Torre, who spends most of the commercial treating Steinbrenner as if he were an important player.

His frequent firings and rehirings of manager Billy Martin were lampooned in a '70s Miller Lite beer commercial in which Steinbrenner tells Martin "You're fired!" to which Martin replies "Oh, no, not again!" After one of Martin's real-life rehirings, the commercial was resurrected, only with Steinbrenner's line redubbed to say "You're hired!"

George Will once described George Steinbrenner as an “error machine” and “dumb-o-meter.” In the 1980s, the New York owner’s penchant for pursuing free agents and trading for over-the-hill veterans while neglecting new player development ruined baseball’s premier franchise. [19]

Steinbrenner also is a fan of professional wrestling. He wrote the foreword of the 2005 Dusty Rhodes autobiography and was a regular at old Tampa Armory cards in the 1970s and 1980s. In March 1989, he appeared in the front row of the WWF's Saturday Night's Main Event broadcast, even interacting with manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan at one point (Heenan remarked about the guy he managed in the ring at the time to Steinbrenner "I've got a ring full of Winfield"). At WWF WrestleMania 7, Steinbrenner, WWF owner Vince McMahon, and NFL announcer Paul Maguire filmed a skit with the trio debating instant replay. He was also present in the front row of an edition of WCW Monday Nitro in early 1998 when the event took place in Tampa.

At the funeral of his long time friend Otto Graham in December 2003, Steinbrenner fainted, leading to extensive media speculation that he was in ill health.

In the 1994 computer game Superhero League of Hoboken, one of the schemes of the primary antagonist, Dr. Entropy, is to resurrect George Steinbrenner.

In The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat", Mr. Burns fires Don Mattingly for refusing to shave sideburns only Burns could see. It is often assumed that this was a parody of an argument Steinbrenner and Mattingly had in real life with regards to Mattingly's hair length. However, the episode was actually recorded a year before the suspension actually occurred, and was nothing more than a coincidence.[20] As Mattingly walks off the baseball field, he states, "I still like him (Burns) better than Steinbrenner."

New York Daily News cartoonist Bill Gallo often cites Steinbrenner's German heritage by drawing him in a Prussian military uniform, complete with spiked helmet, gold epaulettes and medals, calling him "General von Steingrabber."

In ESPN's miniseries The Bronx is Burning, he is portrayed by Oliver Platt.

Steinbrenner caricatured in Seinfeld

Steinbrenner appeared as a character in the situation comedy Seinfeld, when George Costanza worked for the Yankees for several seasons. Larry David voiced the character, who talked nonstop, regardless of whether anyone was listening, and sometimes referred to himself as "Big Stein." The character's face was never seen, and the character was always viewed from the back in scenes set in his office at Yankee Stadium. The Steinbrenner character was known for bad decisions, such as cooking jerseys, threatening to move the team to New Jersey "just to upset people", scalping his owner's box tickets, wearing Lou Gehrig's uniform pants (and panicking about "that nerve disease" being contagious), trading several players (much to Frank Costanza's dismay), and canceling a meeting because he wanted George to get him an eggplant calzone. At one point George describes Steinbrenner by saying, "No one knows what this guy's capable of; he fires people like it's a bodily function!" Nevertheless, the real Steinbrenner maintains that he is a fan of the show and that "Costanza is always welcome back." In one episode ("The Wink"), the Steinbrenner character mentions all of the people he fired and mentions then-current manager Buck Showalter, quickly becoming quiet afterwards. Though intended as a joke, the comment proved prophetic: just weeks after the episode aired, Steinbrenner did not bring back Showalter as Yankees manager and replaced him with Joe Torre.

The Steinbrenner character appeared in the following episodes: "The Opposite", "The Secretary", "The Race", "The Jimmy", "The Wink", "The Hot Tub", "The Caddy", "The Calzone", "The Bottle Deposit", "The Nap", "The Millennium", "The Muffin Tops", and "The Finale."

The real Steinbrenner had filmed three scenes for the Seinfeld season 7 finale, "The Invitations", but they were edited out when the time of the original episode ran higher than the allowed time, and when Steinbrenner expressed disapproval of the plot about Susan's death (they can be seen in full on the Seinfeld Season 7 DVD Disc 4).

Honors

Steinbrenner has also been awarded The Flying Wedge Award, one of the NCAA’s highest honors.

The Steinbrenner Band Hall at the University of Florida was made possible by a generous gift from George and Joan Steinbrenner in 2002. The facility was completed in 2008 and serves as The Pride of the Sunshine's rehearsal hall and houses offices, instrument storage, the band library and an instrument issue room.[21]

A new high school in Tampa, Florida, scheduled to open in 2009, will be named George Steinbrenner High School. Steinbrenner is a generous contributor to the Tampa Bay area.[22]

Legend's Field, the Yankees Spring Training facility in Tampa was renamed Steinbrenner Field in March 2008 in his honor by his two sons, with the blessing of the Hillsborough County Commission and the Tampa City Council. The entrance to the new Bryson Field at Boshamer Stadium at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has also been named for Steinbrenner and his family.[23]

References

Notes

  1. ^ http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Steinbrenner_George.html ESPN Classic, "'The Boss' made Yankees a dictatorship"
  2. ^ Steinbrenner!, by Dick Schaap, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1982, pp. 59-68.
  3. ^ Steinbrenner!, by Dick Schaap, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1982, pp. 68-72.
  4. ^ Steinbrenner!, by Dick Schaap, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1982, pp. 72-73.
  5. ^ http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/george_steinbrenner_biography.shtml.
  6. ^ Steinbrenner!, by Dick Schaap, New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1982, pp. 73-80.
  7. ^ http://ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=22055, Internet Broadway Database
  8. ^ Torry, Jack. Endless Summers: The Fall and Rise of the Cleveland Indians. South Bend, IN: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1996.
  9. ^ New York Yankees 1973 Yearbook.
  10. ^ Bashe, Philip. Dog Days: The New York Yankees' Fall from Grace and Return to Glory, 1964–1976. New York: Random House, Inc., 1994.
  11. ^ Sports Of The Times; Dave Winfield'S Rebuttal - New York Times
  12. ^ "From Broadway to the Bronx; Robert Nederlander Brings Low-Key Management Style to the Yankees", by Robert McG. Thomas Jr, New York Times, August 16, 1990
  13. ^ Costello, Brian (August 8, 2004). "'94 YANKS CUT SHORT". New York Post: p. 58. 
  14. ^ Amore, Dom (May 15, 2005). "IMAGINE: BUCK'S YANKEES, BUT NOT JETER'S". The Hartford Courant: p. E8. 
  15. ^ Steinbrenner relinquishes control of Yankees - Baseball - NBCSports.com
  16. ^ 'Boss' makes visit to Yankee Stadium | MLB.com: News
  17. ^ Forbes, "The Forbes 400" September 20, 2007.
  18. ^ BusinessWeek, "THE YANKEES: STEINBRENNER'S MONEY MACHINE" September 28, 1998.
  19. ^ RedSoxvYankees.com - Dumb-O-Meter
  20. ^ "Truth Mirrors 'Simpsons' Fiction". Chicago Tribune. 1992-02-23. p. 3. 
  21. ^ About Steinbrenner Band Hall
  22. ^ http://www.sptimes.com/2007/12/12/Hillsborough/School_honors_Yankees.shtml St. Petersburg Times "School honors Yankees owner"
  23. ^ "Boshamer courtyard to be named For Steinbrenner Family". UNC General Alumni Association. April 25, 2006. http://alumni.unc.edu/article.aspx?sid=3756. Retrieved on November 21, 2008. 

Further reading

External links


 
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