George Steinbrenner General's Aid
I’ve often wondered how different baseball — no, American sports as a whole — would be if Steinbrenner had been successful in buying the Indians. Imagine baseball history without the Bronx Zoo teams of the late 1970s. Imagine it without the Steinbrenner-Billy Martin tango. Imagine it without King George II spending all that money for the glorification of New York, the Yankees and, sure, yes, George Steinbrenner himself.
Imagine if he had bought the Indians. This alternative-history is not as simple (not even close to as simple) as just swapping the fates of the Indians and Yankees — I feel 100% certain that sort of swap would not have happened. Cleveland is not New York. And New York is not Cleveland. What would have been more likely to happen is that Steinbrenner, frustrated by his city’s limitations (and his own financial limitations) would have flamed out dramatically and probably ended up bitter and burned out, a Cleveland version of Charlie Finley. The Yankees probably would have sailed unsteadily through the next 40 years, not unlike the Los Angeles Dodgers, winning some and losing some, all depending on the motivations of ownership, the quirks of good luck and the direction of the wind.
But Steinbrenner did not buy the Indians. No. He bought the Yankees. He became the wind. And in the end, the line below the title of the Steinbrenner movie would probably go something like this: George Steinbrenner and New York City needed each other.
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We need two obituaries today. Nixon was like that too. We need an obituary to commemorate George Steinbrenner, the exhaustively generous man who would anonymously help those in need, the loyal man who stood by his friends, the competitor who wanted to win as much as the fans did, the sporting king who made the Yankees matter again.
We also need an obituary to commemorate George Steinbrenner, the convicted felon (and convicted liar, in the words of Billy Martin), the relentless self-promoter, the maker and destroyer of managers, the outrageous Seinfeld character.
George Steinbrenner: “Nice to meet you.”
George Costanza: “Well, I wish I could say the same, but I must say, with all due respect, I find it very hard to see the logic behind some of the moves you have made with this fine organization. In the past 20 years you have caused myself, and the city of New York, a good deal of distress, as we have watched you take our beloved Yankees and reduced them to a laughing stock, all for the glorification of your massive ego.
Steinbrenner: “Hire this man!”
We need two obituaries because when you try to sum up the 80 turbulent and triumphant years of George M. Steinbrenner III, you have no choice but to alienate half the people that are reading. You have no choice but to make some people shout, “How could you glorify THAT guy?” and make others scream, “How could you not appreciate him more?” They called him “The Boss” and The Boss did not just spark different emotions in people, he sparked wars. He was not just loved and hated, he was thought to be a giant by millions and a fraud by millions more. In many, those emotions shifted minute by minute, changed year to year.
“If I believed half the things said about me, I wouldn’t go home with myself,” Steinbrenner once said, but the thing is that he DID believe half the things people said about him. He just believed the other half.
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The greatest thing George Steinbrenner did in sports was built on faith: The Boss believed deeply in the power of the New York Yankees. He did not just want the Yankees to win. He did not just expect the Yankees to win. He did not even just NEED the Yankees to win. No, he believed that the Yankees should win, by divine right, by the strength of democracy, by the authority of the free market, by all that is good. He believed that America was only strong, justice was only served, and life was only sweet when the New York Yankees won. “Owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa,” he said, and, more than just saying it, he truly believed it.
Only an outsider could believe in the Yankees that much in 1973. There’s an old line that goes like this: the real New Yorkers are not from New York. Steinbrenner was the truest of New Yorker, and he never really lived there.
The Yankees looked like a shattered brand when Steinbrenner bought the team in January 1973 for $10 million.* Understand, the Yankees had not been in the World Series since 1964. And if this hardly seems like an exile in the desert, well, you have to remember that, since winning their first pennant in 1921, the Yankees had never even gone FOUR consecutive years without a pennant.
*Steinbrenner always — ALWAYS — made the point that the deal included two parking garages he sold back to the city for $1.2 million. It was important, vital even, for people to know that Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for $8.8 million and NOT $10 million.
Yankees fans simply did not know how to lose; it was as foreign to them as French. But by the time Steinbrenner came in with his bid, Yankees fans were learning a bit about the real world. In 1972, for the first time since the end of World War II, the Yankees drew fewer than a million fans. The Mets had outdrawn the Yankees — by a lot — every year since 1964. Yankees Stadium was crumbling. The “Death of the Yankees” story was a popular one in newspapers all across America. In 1973, Steinbrenner’s first year owning the team, the Yankees — led by the haunted Bobby Murcer and the medical student Doc Medich — lost more games than they won.
Only, that’s not at all how Steinbrenner saw them. He had watched the movie Pride of the Yankees more times than he remembered. And these were still the Yankees from the movie, Babe Ruth’s Yankees, Joe DiMaggio’s Yankees, Mickey Mantle’s Yankees, the Bronx Bombers, the Damn Yankees, the team everyone except the jealous loved, the team that made America’s engine go. He would have needed to win anyway because that’s what his father taught him, but the Yankee Way made it more vital. Losing was not an option. America was counting on him.
Steinbrenner was distracted in his early years — being indicted on 14 counts of making illegal contributions (to Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign) and obstructing justice will distract a man — but he had every intention of restoring the Yankees to their rightful throne. He was suspended for a while, but he still fired his president, nudged out his general manager, pushed out his manager, signed Catfish Hunter, tried to overturn commissioner Bowie Kuhn, hired Billy Martin, signed Reggie Jackson.
He was a whirlwind, a force of nature. The papers had a field day, which he either hated or loved (depending on which friend is telling the story). When he was asked if he was worried about getting a heart attack, he sneered: “I will never get a heart attack. I give them.”
Steinbrenner’s background was in football — he had worked under another legendary contradiction, Ohio State’s Woody Hayes — and like a good football coach he expected to win every game. He seemed to think that the only way to get better was to try harder and that losing was not a reflection of talent or luck or the opposing team’s brilliance but was, instead, a character flaw. Losers lose. Winners win. That sort of thing. He bowed to the power of halftime speeches, famous quotes, general’s orders — he would quote them in every interview, hang up signs of them in his office, rely on them when dressing down an employee who dared say “I can’t.”
“To thine own self be true,” he told interviewers, and he was true to whatever his self was feeling at that moment. He hired and fired and rehired and re-fired managers. He spent millions of dollars on players and then raged at them for not living up to the money. He stomped around Yankee Stadium, and people cowered, and the Yankees won big in the late 1970s — back-to-back World Series champs in 1977 and ’78 — and Steinbrenner was the biggest man in the biggest city, exactly what he wanted.
The Yankees and Steinbrenner then went into a long and agonizing lull — from 1982-1994 the Yankees didn’t reach the playoffs even once. It was during this time that Steinbrenner’s aura turned clownish. He raged and roared, threw money around like a Disney World tourist, raged and roared some more. Steinbrenner had long been a character on the edge, but in the 1980s he seemed to become unhinged by his team’s inability to win. In the late 1980s, Steinbrenner paid small-time gambler Howard Spira — he is always and forever “small-time gambler Howard Spira” in the stories, isn’t he? — some money to get some dirt on Yankees star Dave Winfield. The Boss felt Winfield had beaten him in contract negotiations (including a “cost-of-living clause” that made Winfield millions), and Steinbrenner never could tolerate getting beaten by anybody. Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball for a second time.
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