Squared Up: Not The Same As The Old Boss
Roberto Kelly was up in the bottom of the fourth against Detroit when a murmur began circling through Yankee Stadium. The scoreboard read: July 30, 1990, 8:26 P.M. The murmur built steadily, and suddenly a guy in the upper deck behind home plate screamed, “It’s over! It’s over! Yes!” Fans began turning on portable radios. The murmur turned into a roar and the roar reached a crescendo as twenty-six thousand people became aware of the incredible news — George M. Steinbrenner III had been kicked out of baseball.
… Not since the resignation of President Nixon* had there been such unabashed glee at the fall of a public figure.
* Steinbrenner pleaded guilty in 1974 to fourteen felony counts of illegal contributions to Nixon’s reelection campaign, as well as obstruction of justice. He was fined $15,000 and suspended from baseball for two years. Just before leaving office in 1989, President Ronald Reagan pardoned him.
“King George” died this morning at the age of 80 after suffering a massive heart attack. My first reaction to the reports, aside from thinking that perhaps someone ought to send a nurse over to Yogi Berra’s house juuuuust in case these things really do happen in threes, was to think of the passage I’ve quoted above from Dan Gutman’s essential Baseball Babylon.
That’s the Steinbrenner I grew up with, the Steinbrenner anyone who lived in the New York tri-state area had to endure in the ’70s and ’80s — not the daffy, almost cuddly version from Seinfeld, but the imperious, deluded, unsportsmanlike blowhard ejected from the game by then-commissioner Fay Vincent for bribing a gambler to get dirt on Dave Winfield. Everyone loathed him — everyone. I grew up in a Mets household and didn’t even get into baseball until the age of 12, but I loathed him too. He behaved loathsomely.
In recent years, as health problems beset him, Steinbrenner withdrew from public view, and his reputation as a peerless horse’s ass receded along with him, fading into lavender-evening respect for an aging warrior. This is the way of things, but the hale and hostile Steinbrenner of 30 years ago formed part of the fabric of my childhood, along with Rudy Giuliani’s grim Mafia-busting, the ongoing saga of Bernie Goetz, and inexplicable fires near the 16 exits on the Turnpike. And that Steinbrenner, obsessed with proving his power at any opportunity, unable to share credit for or control over the franchise’s fortunes, died a decade ago.
In the next few days, we will hear a great deal about The Boss’s contributions to baseball, his leadership, his business savvy. Out of respect for his family, or because nobody wants to piss off the YES Network, much of the rhetoric will have an as-his-ice-floe-meets-the-great-horizon tinge to it, and that too is the way of things. Some of that sadness is genuine, of course.
Sadder, to me, were his last valiant appearances a few years ago: the confusion and fatigue in his eyes, and then the terror that the confusion and fatigue would be perceived. The long-held loathing became, for many, punch-pulled pity, and Steinbrenner no doubt sensed it.
I would prefer to remember the man I and so many others detested, because I will say this for that man: he wanted to run a baseball team, and he ran the hell out of it and didn’t give a damn. He loved it and he did it a hundred percent, and I hope people say the same about me come the day. Maybe without the felonies and the white turtlenecks, though.
I also hope that, wherever George goes, he finds Billy Martin and they have a beer together and podcast the conversation. …Right?
Tags: Billy Martin Bob Sheppard books Dan Gutman Dave Winfield Fay Vincent George M. Steinbrenner III Roberto Kelly Rudy Giuliani Squared Up Yogi Berra
Hee! I was just thinking, “I wonder if Billy Martin’s waiting for him with a Miller Lite.”
Great article, wonderfully expressing what so many of those in our age group, who grew up around The Madness of King George, are probably thinking and feeling now. I said over on Twitter that I can’t believe he was only 80. I feel like he was a Mean Old Man 30 years ago. Which, I guess he was, but damn. Hell of a legacy.
Cue Jay Leno feigning shock that a heartless bastard died of a heart attack. Yuck yuck.
Word. So much word, Sars. As usual. (From a “Man I’m so over the Yankees, I’m moving on the the Mets or even the Sox standpoint…”)
As always, well said. When I read the headline I actually gasped and then came right over here to see your take. Nice job and boy wouldn’t that podcast be SOMETHING.
Agreed on all of the above. I didn’t grow up with mean George (got into baseball in the 90s), but I have heard maaany stories. But the thing I always liked/respected/dug is exactly what you said: come hell or high water, he wanted his team to win, and would do whatever it took (including felonies) if he thought it would help. In the current era of sports, when so many are out for the dollar they can make today, even if it means having a crappy team, I like that. I truly believe that if you’d told George that if he cut out his heart and buried it under the mound, the Yankees would win every World Series for the next ten years, he would have grabbed the sharpest object at hand and gone to town.
Ha-ha-ha! Remember that time he fired Billy Martin? Ha-ha! So funny!
Everything you say is dead-on. I think Steinbrenner would prefer to be remembered as the dude I HATED, not as a sad “Oh, how he’s lost it” old man.
Many of these YES-style tributes will ignore the fact that the restoration of the Yankees dynasty in the mid 90s came directly from Steinbrenner’s suspension from running the team. It allowed the Yankees a few years of not having their prospects raided (Jeter, Pettite, Rivera, etc.) from King George’s meddling “I MUST HAVE THAT MIDDLE RELIEVER NOW” syndrome that cost them players like Fred McGriff earlier on.
Nonetheless, you can’t say Steinbrenner wasn’t willing to put his own money out there for the team to win and you can’t say he didn’t learn from the team having been successful precisely because he WASN’T dictating every move. While he wasn’t ever going to be warm and fuzzy guy or even a smart baseball operator, he really did learn to let go to some degree, and the team was better off for it.
In a week that’s given us Dan Gilbert’s unintentionally comic (sans) rantings, it’s hard to stomp on Steinbrenner’s grave and mean it.
First the Voice of God, then the Devil. Who else has a title in the Yankees cosmology?
I mean, I guess Yogi is a Zen master (what are his sayings if not koans?) but that’s not quite the same.
I wonder what Zimmer will have to say….
Rough week for the pinstripes. Also, am I the only one who thinks it’s ironic that he went out on the day of the All-Star Game?
Heh. The way you describe Steinbrenner makes him sound like the Richard Milhous Nixon of baseball…
I am old enough to remember those times of mean George, and every time I start to feel maybe he had truly mellowed, I would pull down my copy of “The Bronx Zoo” by Sparky Lyle, or Billy Martin’s “Number 1,” or Graig Nettles’ “Balls,” all of which paint a brutal but, I feel, accurate of Steinbrenner during those years. I do admit he genuinely loved the game, that he wasn’t afraid to spend to win, and that he wasn’t above making fun of himself, but I can’t be the only one who stopped rooting for the Yankees because of what he was doing to the team.
@ Shay: Well put. I’ve always felt that the Yankees’ success over the past 15 years occurred in spite of The Boss, rather than because of him. Dave Winfield was being quoted on ESPN last night/this morning glowing about how Steinbrenner revived a franchise that was an “also-ran” when he bought it, which I guess is true, but seems to skip over a rather large period of the team’s history (including, coincidentally or not, Winfield’s entire tenure with them).
After the Bronx Zoo teams of ’77-’78 and the loss to the Dodgers in the ’81 Series, The Boss’ constant meddling of firing 9 squillion managers and fighting with his players in the press drove them right back to being also-rans, and they stayed that way for for 13 years before making the playoffs again, a period nearly as long as their more recent success. It was only when Steinbrenner was suspended that the team started making the draft choices that formed the core of their successful 90s/00s teams. With the exception of last season, his “I Must Out-Bid Every Other Team for Every Carl Pavano on the Market” strategy never actually worked. The best Yankee teams under his ownership were the homegrown ones, not the ones he bought.
Perhaps it is the haziness of memory, but I don’t consider the 1980s such a wholly empty era in Yankee history. Sure there were some bad teams, but they were above .500 for all but 2 years in the ’80s and won over 90 games in 4 seasons.
My own memory of those seasons were competitive Yankee teams that faded down the stretch or just didn’t have enough to overcome the eventual AL Champs. I have many fond memories of those teams. The Pine Tar Game (my first trip to the Stadium), the Mattingly/Boggs batting title chases, Righetti’s July 4th no hitter, Rickey setting the Yankee steals record. They were a fun team to watch for a 8-12 year old fan.
I have similar impressions of Steinbrenner and Reagan for that era. At the time, I was too young to have any nuance in my feelings about them. Steinbrenner owned my favorite team and brought in big names to win a World Series, therefore: good guy. Reagan fought the commies and rebuilt American pride, therefore: good guy.
I think Fay Vincent (in all the interviews he gave today) used the most accurate term for the Boss: complicated. The guy was a horse’s ass, a tyrant, and often sleazy. But he was also driven to win and willing to give second chances to almost anyone (Billy Martin, Steve Howe, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, etc).
I’ll miss him for the excellence he demanded and the occasional craziness he brought to my favorite team.
The man was never boring.
Down here in the Tampa Bay area we’re remembering him a little differently. Here where he made his home he’s remembered for starting foundations for children of fallen police officers, seeing a kid with bad teeth and arranging for him to get braces, calling the mayor when he heard about a house burning down and asking what he could do for the family and more. For the Tampa area there was a completely different side of the man, a side he often kept hidden from public view, arranging aid and charity behind the scenes.
I don’t disagree with anything in your article, and it was perfectly written as usual. I just wanted to share what perhaps was a lesser known side of The Boss. This is a great story: http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/the-boss-and-the-boy-with-the-braces/1108769 and tampabay.com is full of many more just like that this week. He will be very missed here.
It was this era or Steinbrenner that turned me from a Yankees fan to a Red Sox fan. No joke.
“of”, not or.
“Sarah Bunting runs Tomato Nation, and she runs the hell out of it and doesn’t give a fuck. She loves it and she does it a hundred percent. And if you don’t like it, eat a bee.”
I think it was Michael Ian Black who tweeted this week “Somewhere in heaven, Billy Martin just got fired.”
I was just reading the post and linked story from TampaBeeAtch and wanted to add on. As the article notes, “He liked horse racing — he had some very good horses that won some big races.” One of my dad’s best friends, Tom, was Steinbrenner’s horse partner/ trainer on and off for years (he was fired and rehired for that position way more times that Billy Martin ever was). My dad is also Tom’s accountant, so we would meet Steinbrenner every once in a while. My brother, Barney, was 10 or so the first time Steinbrenner saw him at the paddock in Florida duering spring training. That evening, my parents got a call from Steinbrenner’s secretary asking what they were doing the next day because, if they were available and it was ok with them, Barney was going to be the bat boy for the Yankees. There was nothing in it for Steinbrenner to make the effort; it was just something nice to do for a kid he ran across. For all of his antics and being a general a*shat, he was always very well regarded in my family for going out of his way for a random kid. Maybe he was just nicer in Florida.
Ack! “during” not “duering.”
As a lifelong Yankee hater (sorry) and baseball lover (hi!) I think the old coot would want me to continue hating his guts even after death.
I’m old enough to remember a lot of his more, erm, colorful exploits and the guy was ruthless and corrupt. People do forget, perhaps because it is too painful to watch such figures prosper year after year.
Great post.