Steinbrenner, the Last Lion Of Baseball (2010)

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by Madden, Bill


  “We’ve got a major announcement to make tomorrow,” Fishel said. “The team is being sold. Let’s just hope we can get to tomorrow without it leaking out.”

  “It had to be the best-kept secret in history,” recalled Appel. “Imagine something this big—CBS selling the Yankees—and nobody had even an inkling of it until the day of the announcement!”

  When asked to prepare the press announcement, Fishel was told only that the buyer was a syndicate headed by Burke and a shipbuilding executive from Cleveland named George Steinbrenner. There were other investors, Fishel was told, but their identities weren’t necessary for the initial announcement. Fishel, who had served as the Yankees’ public relations director since 1954, was relieved that Burke was going to remain as part of the new ownership group.

  “There’s always a lot of uncertainty when a team changes ownership,” he said, “and we don’t know anything about these people Mike has aligned with.”

  OTHER THAN THEIR mutual interest in running the Yankees, Mike Burke and George Steinbrenner had almost nothing in common. Steinbrenner, the buttoned-up businessman and proud patriot whose close-cropped, perfectly coiffed hair was the product of almost daily trips to the barber, showed up at the office every day in a navy blue suit or sports coat, American designer dress shirt and striped tie—the same attire his father, Henry, had insisted he wear to grade school. Back then, as the only kid in the class wearing a jacket and tie, it had been cause for embarrassment and ridicule, but in the 1970s, Penthouse magazine called him the “best-dressed businessman in America.”

  By contrast, Mike Burke, with his flowing, shoulder-length white hair, fancied himself a ’70s renaissance man in that he embraced the hippie movement of the day and had initiated a series of promotions at Yankee Stadium—Bat Day, Ball Day, etc.—directed toward the young fans, which the previous Yankee ownership would have never considered. (Indeed, Steinbrenner must have been shocked to learn that Burke was actually a war hero, serving with the United States Office of Strategic Services, where his activities took him behind enemy lines in Italy and France in World War II. In France he joined the Resistance in preparation for the D-Day invasion and was later awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Cross and the French Médaille de la Résistance.) There is a picture in the 1973 Yankee yearbook that defines the contrasting styles and demeanors of Burke and Steinbrenner. Side by side at spring training, Burke looks relaxed in a pair of slightly yellowed white flannel jeans and a faded blue denim shirt, unbuttoned almost to his navel, a warm smile on his face, while Steinbrenner, appearing stiff in a blue blazer with a golf shirt buttoned to the top, scowls at something in the distance.

  Prior to joining CBS in 1956, Burke had managed the Ringling Brothers Circus and was responsible for taking the circus out of the tents and into large indoor arenas. In 1968, a few of the American League owners, citing this flair for promotion, had nominated him to replace the fired William D. Eckert as baseball’s commissioner. After none of the proposed candidates, including Burke, National League president Chub Feeney, Yankees general manager Lee MacPhail and Montreal Expos president John McHale, was able to garner the necessary three-fourths votes from each league, the owners settled on National League attorney Bowie Kuhn as a compromise candidate. Though the Yankees had sunk to their lowest depths under CBS, most baseball officials felt that it was due more to the neglect by the previous owners, Topping and Webb. Burke was regarded as an able leader of the major leagues’ signature franchise with a style and personality perfectly suited for New York. Paley’s esteem for him was evident. But would Steinbrenner be able to see past their outwardly differing styles?

  ON THE MORNING of January 3, 1973, Bob Fishel and Marty Appel were frantically working their rotary phones, dialing the Associated Press and United Press International, all the New York and suburban newspapers and the radio and TV stations, alerting them to a “major” press conference that would be taking place at noon in the Yankee Stadium club. The night before, while sitting at his desk writing the release, Fishel had turned to Appel and repeated his sentiments of the day before: “I’m really glad Mike is still going to be part of this so it won’t be such a dramatic transition.”

  Shortly before noon, they met Steinbrenner for the first time when he strolled into their office and asked to look at the press release. Upon giving it a cursory reading, he turned to Fishel and said, “Nice job,” before heading upstairs to the stadium club.

  In his opening statements to the reporters assembled in the stadium club, Fishel read the release and then turned the proceedings over to Burke, who, in keeping with his pledge to Paley, made a point of saying, “CBS substantially broke even on the deal, taking into account player-contracts depreciation and things like that. Some years were profitable, some were not. The first half of last season was disastrous, but in the second half our attendance doubled.”

  Unfortunately, Burke’s effort to portray the sale as a good deal for both sides was immediately undermined by the enthusiasm of the new owner.

  “It’s the best buy in sports today,” Steinbrenner crowed. “I think it’s a bargain! But they feel the chemistry is right—they feel they haven’t taken a loss on the team.”

  Burke was stunned and enraged at Steinbrenner’s remarks.

  “How could he?” he fumed to himself. “He was told of Mr. Paley’s desires.”

  Years later, Burke said that Steinbrenner’s “bargain” statement “in a stroke destroyed my relationship with Mr. Paley. The damage was irreparable. Explanation was pointless. Everyone knows you never erase from the mind the first impression of a newspaper story, and subsequently I learned that Paley held me responsible for Steinbrenner’s boast and felt I had not been faithful to his request.”

  When asked later in the press conference about his future involvement with the team, Steinbrenner reiterated what he had said to Paley: “We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees. We’re not going to pretend we’re something we aren’t. I’ll stick to building ships.”

  In the days following the January 3 press conference, arrangements were made for a second press conference to introduce the rest of Steinbrenner’s investment group to the New York media. Paul had the trickiest job: divesting himself of his interest in the Indians before he could officially announce his involvement with Steinbrenner. In that respect, Paul’s trade of Indians star third baseman Graig Nettles to the Yankees on November 17, 1972—at a time when he was working behind the scenes to help Steinbrenner with the CBS sale—later raised questions from the media and other baseball officials about a conflict of interest on his part. Whenever he was asked, Paul defended the trade by pointing out that, in outfielder Charlie Spikes, the Indians had received the Yankees’ top prospect. In addition, he noted that in Buddy Bell, then a top minor league prospect who would go on to play in five All-Star Games, the Indians had a third baseman they considered to be potentially as good as or better than Nettles. In retrospect, the deal did make sense at the time for the Indians, who used an increasingly expensive but expendable commodity in Nettles to secure a highly regarded outfield prospect—and only began to call into question Paul’s integrity when Nettles emerged as a third base force for the Yankees and Spikes failed to pan out for the Indians.

  On January 9, Paul met in Cleveland with the new Indians owner, Nick Mileti, who had bought the team from Stouffer for $10 million, $1.4 million more than Steinbrenner’s bid. They agreed to an amicable parting, with Paul, as his final act, signing a proxy authorizing the vote of his Indians stock for the ownership’s latest reorganization. Later that afternoon, Paul flew to New York and met with Steinbrenner’s freelance public relations man, Marsh Samuel, and Bob Fishel in the dining room of the Carlyle Hotel to go over the press release for the investors’ press conference, which had been scheduled for the next day in a private room upstairs at the “21” Club.

  Paul was dismayed to see that the press release Fishel presented him at the Carlyle listed him as one of the investors and mad
e no mention of his being named team president. Steinbrenner had obviously still not clarified his front office alignment plans to Burke.

  “What’s this?” Paul asked Fishel.

  “Well, we have to do it this way for internal reasons,” Fishel replied. “Mike doesn’t want to announce that just yet.”

  The next morning Steinbrenner called Paul in his hotel room and attempted to placate him over the confusion as to his role.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s the way we said it was. You’re the president. Mike’s the chief operating officer. He’ll deal with the business stuff and the stadium renovation. I want you running the baseball operation.”

  “Will you tell that to Mike in front of me?” Paul asked.

  “Absolutely,” said Steinbrenner. “We’ll talk it all over on the car ride over to ‘21’.”

  After the three of them climbed into the limo, Steinbrenner in the front seat, Paul and Burke went at it in the backseat.

  According to Paul in his recorded notes, Burke complained that, in their December 29 meeting in which Steinbrenner had laid out his planned front office structure, “it didn’t seem all that definitive.”

  Steinbrenner said nothing, allowing Paul to make his case in this clash of egos.

  Pointing his finger at Burke in the backseat of the car, Paul said angrily: “Do you understand it now?”

  “Yes,” said Burke. “I’ll simply say you’re coming on in a very selective position.”

  “Fine,” said Paul, “as long as you make it understood I’m coming aboard in a major executive capacity.”

  But at the press conference, Burke was seemingly deliberately nebulous in his reference to Paul’s role in the organization. “Gabe is 63 and has a nice home in Florida where he and his wife, Mary, will retire in a few years,” he said. “This is a nice swan song for him to end his baseball career.” But as he later admitted in his 1984 memoir: “The New York sportswriters smelled a rat and duplicity added itself to my perception of Steinbrenner’s emerging character. It was apparent that he and Gabe had reached an understanding about Gabe’s role different from that described to me. It was a clear warning.”

  Paul’s role, once it finally became known, didn’t sit well with Burke’s right-hand men in the front office, general manager Lee MacPhail and vice president of administration Howard Berk (who’d come over with Burke from CBS in 1964). MacPhail was driving Berk from the “21” press conference back to Yankee Stadium when he stopped at a red light and turned to Berk, his face flushed with uncharacteristic anger.

  “Why did Mike play things so close to the vest?” MacPhail said. “Why didn’t he let me in on this? If only I’d known, we could have put a group together and made this thing work!”

  “I was as much in the dark as you were, Lee,” said Berk. “I didn’t know anything about it until the day after New Year’s. He called me at home and said CBS had just sold the club to a fellow from Cleveland. I asked him who the guy was and he replied, ‘His name doesn’t matter. He’s a terrific fellow, but he’s going to be totally absentee.’ ”

  For the next two months, Burke struggled in vain to get Steinbrenner to define his own role with the team in regard to just which areas he was in charge of—to no avail. His only recourse now was to get his lawyers involved, and discussions between them and Steinbrenner’s attorneys dragged on into 1973 spring training. In the meantime, Steinbrenner was careful not to show any overt signs of exercising his authority, as the sale of the team had still not been formally approved by the American League owners. However, on one occasion Steinbrenner happened to be walking through the offices at Yankee Stadium when he spotted a vase of fresh yellow chrysanthemums on the coffee table outside Burke’s office.

  “What’s this?” he snapped at one of the secretaries.

  “Oh, sir, those are fresh flowers Mr. Burke always has in the office.”

  “Fresh flowers?” Steinbrenner thought. “That’s the way this guy spends money? There’s no way I’m letting him run my ball club.”

  One Saturday morning in early March, Berk’s wife, Phyllis, was having breakfast by the pool at Fort Lauderdale’s Schrafft’s Hotel, where the Yankees were staying for spring training, when she overheard Steinbrenner, dining with two male friends, launch into a diatribe about Burke.

  “He thinks he’s gonna run this team?” Steinbrenner howled. “Him and his fucking fresh flowers and long hair? Wait till we take over this club! Then you’ll see some discipline and some fiscal responsibility around here! I’ll make that long-haired Irish sonofabitch dance to my tune.”

  Phyllis Berk was aghast at Steinbrenner’s rant and immediately found her husband in the hotel lobby. After having the conversation relayed to him, Berk dialed Burke on the house phone and said it was urgent that he meet him in the lobby. A few minutes later, Burke got off the elevator and Howard and Phyllis Berk intercepted him as he was coming down the corridor.

  “Looking around for a place for us to huddle, Mike opened a door to a broom closet, which we all crammed into,” Berk recalled. “It was like a scene out of a bad spy movie.”

  Phyllis repeated what Steinbrenner had said. Burke looked at her husband and said firmly, “Don’t worry, Howard. I’ll take care of this.”

  By Monday Berk had returned to New York, where he got a call from his boss. Mike Burke told him that he’d spoken with Steinbrenner and that he was satisfied Steinbrenner wasn’t looking to push him out. Again, he assured Berk that everything was okay.

  “I couldn’t believe Mike still didn’t get it,” Berk said. “He was a very bright and incisive guy, but in many ways he was also very naïve.”

  Burke used that meeting with Steinbrenner to work out the details of a formal agreement on his position with the team, with lawyers from both sides present. At the end of the session, Burke shook hands with Steinbrenner, satisfied that they had a firm agreement, and the lawyers—Bruce Haims for Burke and George Martin for Steinbrenner—drew up the long-negotiated contract on the flight back to New York. A couple of days later, however, Burke got a call from Haims with disconcerting news.

  “Steinbrenner has repudiated the deal,” Haims said. “All of it!”

  “He what?” Burke exclaimed. “We shook hands on it!”

  “He says the paper we drafted on the plane back from Fort Lauderdale is not what we agreed to at the meeting.”

  “Well, doesn’t it?”

  “Of course it does. As long as I’ve been practicing law, I’ve never experienced anything quite like this.”

  Burke was crushed.

  “Okay,” he said. “That wraps it for me. The man’s word is worthless.”

  Years later, Haims ran into George Martin at a cocktail party in New York where the two men discussed the broken agreement and his long-ago adversary revealed the story behind the story.

  “He told me that plane ride back to New York had been one of the most miserable experiences of his life,” Haims said. “It seemed that after we’d concluded our meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Steinbrenner called Martin back into the room and told him: ‘Everything we talked about here, forget it. We’re not doing any of that. Just don’t say anything to them.’ That whole process of putting the contract together on the plane was a sham.”

  Burke would endure Steinbrenner’s plotting and carping for another month, including a particularly rancorous exchange over the $100,000 contract he’d given the Yankees’ star player, Bobby Murcer. A few days after that yearbook picture of Burke and Steinbrenner was taken, the owner telephoned Burke from Cleveland with another of his attorneys, Thomas Evans, patched in from New York.

  Steinbrenner was furious about the Murcer contract.

  “What did he make last year?” he demanded.

  “Eighty-five thousand,” Burke replied.

  “So why would you give him a hundred?” Steinbrenner ranted. “What do you think this is, a money tree?”

  Burke went on to explain that Murcer had led the Yankees in batting i
n 1972, that he had hit a career-high 33 home runs and was a fan favorite, one of the few the Yankees had. He went on to explain that Murcer was viewed as the second coming of Yankee legend and fellow Oklahoman Mickey Mantle, and that the six-figure contract would serve as a terrific psychological boost for him.

  Steinbrenner was only mildly mollified by the explanation and ended the conversation by saying that Murcer had better live up to it. When, on Opening Day, Murcer struck out in the ninth inning with the tying and winning runs on base, Steinbrenner stormed into Burke’s office immediately after the game and bellowed: “There’s your goddamned $100,000 ballplayer!”

  By now, though, Burke was immune to Steinbrenner’s rages. This had been the case ever since that phone call from Haims, informing him that Steinbrenner had reneged on everything the two of them had agreed upon at their summit meeting in Fort Lauderdale only days before. So on April 25, barely more than four months after Steinbrenner had pledged his allegiance to him in William Paley’s office, Mike Burke sat down at his desk in Yankee Stadium and put pen to paper on a letter of resignation as general partner of the Yankees.

  Chapter 2

  Cleveland

  HE WAS BORN ON the Fourth of July, 1930, in Rocky River, Ohio, a red-white-and-blue circumstance of fate he trumpeted so often and so proudly, it prompted skeptics to suggest that perhaps George Steinbrenner made up his Independence Day birth in order to further enhance his credentials as a genuine American patriot. Could it be a fiction, like the article published in the Columbus Citizen in 1954, headlined THE AMAZING MISTER STEINBRENNER? According to the Citizen, a panel of New York sportswriters had named Steinbrenner one of the 25 most outstanding athletes in the country in 1952, and he had played defensive halfback for the New York Giants, signing as a free agent upon graduating from Williams. It’s likely Steinbrenner was not the source of that completely fictionalized article—in interviews through the years he talked about only his hurdling successes, hardly ever mentioning his brief flirtation with football during his senior year at Williams—and his birth certificate bears out July 4, 1930, as the official date of his entry into the world.

 

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