Farewell to the Boss

Some eight years ago, when I was writing a Profile of George Steinbrenner, he showed me around the practice facility near Legends Field, the Yankees’ spring training stadium in Tampa, Florida, which was later named after him. The clubhouse, which was mainly used by young players the Yankees had hired out of football jersey school or college, was festooned with aphorisms about the importance of winning, which Steinbrenner held as the supreme sporting virtue, and, perhaps, the supreme virtue, period. (“Second place is really the first loser.”) But on this occasion what he wanted to show me were the new showering facilities and massage tables that he had recently had installed. “It’s very important to get a rub down after working out,” he said, opening the door to the shower area, where a young would-be Yankee, butt naked, suddenly found himself face-to-face with his employer. “It helps the muscles heal faster.” The youngster, apparently already familiar with Steinbrenner’s tendency to roam unannounced as he saw fit, wrapped a towel around his midriff and said, politely, “Hello, Boss.” Steinbrenner asked the boy how the practice sessions were going, to which he replied well, and Steinbrenner carried on out the door. He had some new turf specimens he wanted to show me.

In many ways, of course, Steinbrenner was a tyrant. His historical heroes were Winston Churchill and George Patton. From the former, he gained a love of overblown rhetoric; from the latter, he learned how to use intimidation as a management style. (Lou Piniella: “George is a great guy, unless you have to work for him.”) But unlike many of the billionaires who today buy sporting franchises and use them as playthings, he was a fanatical and punctilious tyrant, whose entire identity was suffused with his beloved Yankees. And he had a softer side. At Legends Field, he knew everybody from the parking attendants to the ticket collectors, some of nba jerseys whom he had kept on the payroll when they should have been in a retirement home or intensive-care unit. Although he fired people on a whim, he often regretted it and asked them back, most famously in the case of Billy Martin, who held the post of Yankees manager on five different occasions. When Steinbrenner recalled Christmas Day, 1989, the day Martin died in a car crash, tears would well up in his eyes.

What drove him, he told me, was a desire to impress his father, an aloof Cleveland shipbuilder who himself had been a college track and field star. After he had helped build up the family business and acquired a basketball franchise (the Cleveland Pipers), Steinbrenner and a group of investors bought the Yankees for ten million dollars in 1973. By the time he hired Brooklyn-born Joe Torre, in 1996, he had run through twenty managers in twenty-three seasons. The run of World Series victories that the team enjoyed under Torre brought him a measure of contentment, but he resented the adulatory media coverage that Torre received, pointing out to me (and others) that before he joined the Yankees Torre had enjoyed little success as a manager.

In recent years, Steinbrenner’s declining health forced him to soccer uniforms slow down and leave much of the running of the team to his sons, Hal and Hank. But during the first round of the 2007 playoffs, when the Yankees went two down to the Indians, the old Boss resurfaced, telling a reporter who reached him in his room at the Mayfair Regency that Torre would be fired if the Yankees failed to win the series. After the Indians triumphed 3-1, the Yankees asked Torre to take a pay cut, and he resigned.

Getting rid of Torre was Steinbrenner’s last hurrah. Today, the Yankees have a spiffy new stadium, a low-key skipper (Joe Girardi), a general partner who rarely talks to the press (Hal Steinbrenner), and a star-stocked lineup that has the best record in the majors. It’s all a bit boring. If Yankees fans were more well-balanced, they might hanker for the old days of soccer jerseys the Bronx Zoo, when George was busy conspiring against his best player (Dave Winfield), reaming out his managers (too many to list), feuding with his fellow owners, and getting banned from baseball. But Yankees fans don’t think like that. To them, as to their late owner, winning is what counts. And Steinbrenner, despite all his demons and his mistakes, ended up a winner.