Steinbrenner, the Last Lion Of Baseball (2010)

by Madden, Bill

  AIMING HIGH: Steinbrenner was a high hurdler at Culver Military Academy and Williams College (pictured here). George won his share of races, but wasn’t the world-class hurdler his father was, and Henry Steinbrenner never let his son forget it. (Williams College)

  “YOU’RE FIRED”: In 1955, Steinbrenner (second from right) got a taste of the medicine he’d be famous for. As an assistant football coach at Northwestern, Steinbrenner would be canned along with head coach Lou Saban (far left) and the rest of the staff after the team went 0-8-1. Years later, Saban would work for George as president of the Yankees. (Northwestern University)

  WHAT A BARGAIN: On January 4, 1973, the New York papers reported the sale of the Yankees for $10 million from CBS. Not only was Steinbrenner left out of the headline, he had to share the back page with hockey. Nearly 40 years later, the Yankees were valued at over $1 billion. (Daily News)

  MEET THE NEW BOSS: At the January 1973 press conference to announce Gabe Paul (center) as the new Yankees president, George Steinbrenner (left) and Mike Burke (right) are all smiles. But it wouldn’t be long before Burke discovered that Paul had been brought in by Steinbrenner to replace him in running the baseball operations. On April 25, 1973, Burke resigned as Yankees general partner. (Daily News)

  A NOSE FOR WINNERS: George Steinbrenner’s second passion after baseball was horses. Even before owning the Yankees, he had bought an 860-acre farm in Ocala, Florida, where he raised Thoroughbred horses. Over the years, he produced more than 35 stakes winners, including the 2005 Wood Memorial winner, Bellamy Road. (Daily News)

  DO YOU KNOW “TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME”? An accomplished pianist and organist, Steinbrenner performed frequently at Williams College, and in May 1987 was a guest conductor of the New York Pops. (Daily News)

  MR. AND MRS. BOSS: Cheering on the Yankees at a 2006 spring training game. For the first 30 years that he owned the Yankees, George Steinbrenner and his wife, Joan (left), were rarely seen, much less photographed, together at games, and it was no secret that their relationship was strained. Standing in the center is Norma King, wife of longtime advisor Clyde King. (Daily News)

  THE CLEVELAND CONNECTION: Growing up an Indians fan in Cleveland, George Steinbrenner idolized Al Rosen (right), the Indians third baseman and 1953 American League MVP. Rosen would later work for Steinbrenner as Yankees president, but after just a year and half (1978–79) he quit, turning down a lifetime contract. (Daily News)

  BUYING A LEMON: Though he enjoyed the occasional laugh with Bob Lemon, Steinbrenner mostly harangued the Yankees manager and his coaches until he fired Lemon 14 games into the ’82 season. It was the second time Steinbrenner had fired Lemon as Yankees manager, but unlike Al Rosen, Lemon accepted a lifetime contract as a scout. (Daily News)

  ON TOP OF THE WORLD AGAIN: In 1977, Steinbrenner celebrated the first Yankees championship since 1962, with Yogi Berra (left) and manager Billy Martin (right). (Daily News)

  TASTES GREAT, LESS FILLING: In the summer of 1978, George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin shot a beer commercial in which they spoofed their rocky relationship. After they argued over the merits of Miller Lite, the commercial ended with George telling Billy, “You’re fired!” and Billy saying, “Oh, no, not again!” Three weeks later, George fired Billy for real. (Daily News)

  HERE WE GO AGAIN: Steinbrenner fired Martin for a second time in 1979. There would be three more firings, but their tumultuous relationship would end on Christmas Day 1989, when Billy Martin died in a car crash.

  IN THE LINE OF FIRING: Steinbrenner fired Dick Howser (right) even after the Yankees had won 103 games in 1980, and then tried to convince reporters that Howser had quit to pursue a real estate deal in Florida. Gene Michael (left) replaced Howser in the dugout in 1981, but was himself fired halfway through the season. (Daily News)

  THE MELEE IN L.A.: Following the Yankees’ loss to the Dodgers in the 1981 World Series, Steinbrenner got into a fight with two Dodgers fans in a hotel elevator in Los Angeles, injuring his left hand. Daily News columnist Dick Young dictated the story (as recounted to him by Steinbrenner) over the phone in time to make the front page of the final edition (Daily News)

  BACK TO THE FUTURE: In January 1985, The Sporting News arranged a photo shoot to display the uniform collection of Yankees limited partner Barry Halper (far left). Rickey Henderson is wearing (appropriately) Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers uniform (front row, left), while Steinbrenner (front, center) is dressed as legendary Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, with Yogi Berra to his left and John Montefusco, Mike Armstrong and Jeff Torborg standing behind them. (Rich Pilling)

  MUSICAL BENCHES. In 1987, Steinbrenner fired Lou Piniella (right) as manager, moved him upstairs as general manager, and then replaced him with Billy Martin (left). Halfway through 1988, he fired Martin for the fifth time and replaced him with Piniella, whom he fired when the season was over. (Daily News)

  WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . . : George Steinbrenner and Dave Winfield smiling broadly after announcing in September 1989 the end of their long-standing feud over the Winfield Foundation. An arbitrator had agreed with most of Steinbrenner’s charges about the foundation’s wasteful spending, and the dispute was resolved with Winfield cutting a check for $30,000 in reimbursement and another $229,000 in delinquent payments to the foundation. (Daily News)

  HE RUINED MY LIFE! Howie Spira, who was paid $40,000 by George Steinbrenner for providing dirt on outfielder Dave Winfield, was later accused of extortion by the Yankees owner. He was found guilty and sentenced to 30 months in a federal penitentiary. (Daily News)

  YER OUT! Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent (above, right) declared a lifetime sentence on Steinbrenner for associating with Howie Spira, an admitted gambler. The papers saw this as the end of the Steinbrenner era, but ultimately the Boss got himself reinstated to baseball, and Vincent was fired by the owners. (Alan Solomon)

  THE EGOS HAVE LANDED: Reggie Jackson claimed that a candy bar would be named after him if he played in New York. He was right. Despite their contentious relationship, in the late 1990s Steinbrenner eventually brought Mr. October into his inner circle of Yankees advisors. (Daily News)

  WELCOME HOME, YOGI: When Steinbrenner fired Yogi Berra (right) as Yankees manager after only 16 games of the 1985 season, Berra vowed he would never come back to Yankee Stadium unless Steinbrenner sold the team. For 14 years he kept that vow, until January 5, 1999, when a peace accord was brokered at Yogi’s museum in Montclair, New Jersey. (Daily News)

  BACK IN THE SADDLE: Despite advice from Yankees president Jack Lawn to “come back humble,” Steinbrenner posed for the cover of Sports Illustrated as Napoleon returning from exile. (Getty Images)

  SHORTSTOP ON A SHORT LEASH: In December 2005, Steinbrenner complained about Yankees captain Derek Jeter (left) staying out “until 3 A.M. in New York City, going to a birthday party. . . . That doesn’t sit well with me.” Steinbrenner and Jeter would later tape a Visa commercial, which ended with the Boss and the star shortstop dancing together in a conga line. (Daily News)

  LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S THE BOSS: Steinbrenner hosted Saturday Night Live in October 1990. In one scene, he appeared with his pants down in front of a female sportswriter. The same night Steinbrenner appeared on the show, Lou Piniella won the World Series as manager of the Cincinnati Reds. (Daily News)

  TRUE DIVAS: George Steinbrenner’s love of music extended to the opera; two of his close friends, Beverly Sills and Robert Merrill, were icons of the Metropolitan Opera. Merrill regularly performed the national anthem at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day and Old-Timers’ Day and during the postseason wearing a Yankees jersey with the number ½ on the back. (Daily News)

  THREE AMIGOS: Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, two of George Steinbrenner’s closest friends were New York limousine mogul Bill Fugazy (center) and the legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell (right). (Daily News)

  THE GODFATHER OF TAMPA: In his adopted south Florida hometown, George was a regular at Malio’s, where the Boss held court with his friends an
d Yankees officials. Malio Iavarone (left) even named a room for Steinbrenner and reserved it for him, as well as a separate phone line. It was in this room in February 1999 that Steinbrenner and the Yankees consummated the David Wells–for–Roger Clemens trade. (Malio Iavarone)

  GEORGE’S GIRLS: Iconic TV journalist Barbara Walters (above) first met George Steinbrenner in Cuba during the 1970s. She was there to interview Premier Fidel Castro, and Steinbrenner was there on a secret mission to scout Cuban baseball players. (Daily News) New York restaurateur Elaine Kauffman (below) befriended Steinbrenner in 1973, when he first came to New York. He spent many a night in her restaurant wooing free agents such as Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield, and celebrating championships.

  THE HOUSE THAT GEORGE BUILT: Steinbrenner often complained about Yankee Stadium, built in 1923. Finally, in 2006, New York City issued $1.2 billion in bonds to construct a new Yankee Stadium across 161st Street from the old stadium. In August 2006, a frail Steinbrenner took part in the groundbreaking with Mayor Michael Bloomberg (right) and other city officials. (Daily News)

  LEAVING HOME: In its final season the old Yankee Stadium hosted the 2008 All-Star Game. It was also an occasion for Yankees fans to pay tribute to George Steinbrenner, who had presided there as the team’s owner over six world championships. Prior to the game, Steinbrenner toured the stadium in a golf cart with his family, including his older daughter, Jennifer (right). (Daily News)

  WHO’S THE BOSS? For the first six years, George Steinbrenner had a better relationship with Joe Torre (right) than with any of his 13 previous managers, helped considerably by the fact that Torre had won four world championships from 1996 to 2000. But when Torre stopped winning championships, the relationship soured, and in 2008 it ended badly, like all the others. (Daily News)

  KINGS OF NEW YORK: After winning back-to-back world championships in 1977 and 1978, George Steinbrenner had to wait 18 years for another. But once Joe Torre (right) won in 1996, the parade down New York City’s Canyon of Heroes became a yearly event, as the Yankees repeated their victory in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Here Steinbrenner and Torre celebrate with the team’s self-proclaimed number one fan, Mayor Rudy Giuliani (center). (Daily News)

  YES MAN: Forming his Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network and building a new Yankee Stadium helped George Steinbrenner turn his initial 1973 investment of $168,000 into a business worth more than $1 billion, and enabled him to amass the highest payroll in baseball.

  STEINBRENNER: THE NEXT GENERATION: As Steinbrenner’s health continued to fail after 2006, it became necessary for him to relinquish control of the Yankees and “let the young elephants into the tent,” as he was fond of saying. In 2008, Steinbrenner’s youngest son, Hal (right), took over as managing general partner of the Yankees, joining team president Randy Levine (center) and CEO Lonn Trost (left) as the brain trust of operations. (Daily News)

  THE PROUDEST YANKEE: Steinbrenner strolls the grounds of the Yankees’ spring training complex in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Linda Catafo/Daily News)

  “Well, I wasn’t going to take that,” Steinbrenner told Szen. “I said something back, and one of them slugged me with a beer bottle. I hit him back and knocked out a couple of his teeth. Then I got into it with the other guy. I left ’em both on the seventh floor. I’m okay, but we’re gonna have to round up the press. They’ll need to know the story.”

  As soon as he had sat down in the hotel dining room, Steinbrenner’s hand started to throb. He went back to his suite and called Monahan and the team physician, Dr. Jack Bonamo. Upon cursory examination, Bonamo determined that Steinbrenner had broken a bone in his right hand and would have to go to the hospital to have it put in a cast.

  “No way,” Steinbrenner had protested. “You can do it here, Doc. I’m not going to the hospital.”

  “But I don’t have any of the materials here,” Bonamo said.

  “Well, just tell Gene here what you need and he’ll go to the hospital and bring everything back here.”

  Armed with a list of medical supplies, Monahan and his assistant Barry Weinberg took a cab to a nearby hospital, where they were met with unexpected resistance from an emergency room receptionist.

  “This woman flat out refused to let us have anything we needed,”

  Monahan recalled in a 2008 interview. “So I finally told Barry: ‘Do whatever you can to distract her, even if you have to get into a big argument with her’—which he did. While they were arguing, I ran behind the desk and grabbed all the materials off the shelf and we dashed out of the hospital with them.”

  It took Bonamo about 30 minutes to patch Steinbrenner up and wrap his wrist, after which the owner called Szen to summon all the reporters to his suite. By the time they arrived, it was nearly 2 A.M. New York time, past most of their newspapers’ final deadlines.

  As Steinbrenner, his hand heavily bandaged in a makeshift cast, began recounting his tale to the stunned reporters, Dick Young suddenly got up from his chair, walked across the room, picked up the phone from the desk and began dialing. It was apparent that Young, wearing a bathrobe, was still groggy from being woken up after having indulged in a few red wines at the hotel bar. He hollered into the phone, “This is Young; get me rewrite right now! I’m out here at the World Series and Steinbrenner’s been in a fight. I gotta dictate something.”

  “Wait a minute, Dick!” Steinbrenner exclaimed. “What are you doing? I told you this is just a briefing for you guys. It’s not to be written!”

  “This is news,” Young shot back. “A thing like this you don’t keep out of the newspaper.”

  As Steinbrenner and the rest of the reporters looked on helplessly, Young began dictating:

  “Yankee president George Steinbrenner was attacked—”

  “Wait a minute, Dick,” Steinbrenner said, “I’m not the president of the Yankees. I’m the owner of the Yankees!”

  “Oh, yeah,” Young muttered. “Change that to say ‘Yankee owner George Steinbrenner . . . was attacked in the elevator of the Los Angeles hotel where the Dodgers are staying, by two men—”

  “The Dodgers?” Steinbrenner said. “The Dodgers aren’t staying here. We’re staying here!”

  All of a sudden Steinbrenner, who had insisted the story not be written, was now serving as Young’s editor as the 63-year-old veteran baseball scribe continued to dictate details of the elevator incident to the Daily News. When Young described Steinbrenner as using “a left-right combo, sending the guy sailing out of the elevator onto the corridor floor,” everyone in the room began giggling at the absurdity of the situation.

  “Then Steinbrenner said he picked up the first man, who was slumped against the elevator wall, and threw him on top of his companion.”

  Young’s story appeared on the front page of the next day’s Daily News under the headline STEINBRENNER KOS 2 IN BRAWL.

  The team was sitting on the bus outside the hotel the next morning, waiting to go to the Los Angeles airport for the trip home, when the owner himself got on, sporting his heavily wrapped hand and the Band-Aid on his forehead where he’d been wounded by the beer bottle. They’d heard about the scuffle and tried to conceal their smiles. Nettles slunk down in his seat, hoping the owner wouldn’t see him. Too late. Steinbrenner strode down the aisle, stopping at the third baseman’s seat, and demanded, “Where the hell were you when I needed you last night?”

  Given that opening, the quick-witted Nettles replied: “I was in bed, George. Don’t you remember you told us we all had to be in by ten o’clock!”

  In the years that followed, Steinbrenner’s elevator fight became legend. Ever-skeptical reporters, convinced Steinbrenner had made up the whole tale—neither of the two fans ever threatened to sue—would speculate endlessly as to what really happened: Steinbrenner punched a wall after the game five loss; he got in a fight with his wife; he made up the story to inspire his team. Whether he cleaned the floor with his two assailants, as Young so colorfully described, is subject to conjecture. But Dave Szen remember
ed hearing one of the two fans, identified only as “John M.,” being interviewed on the sports talk radio station KABC in Los Angeles the next day. His story was similar to the one Steinbrenner told, except the fan said Steinbrenner must have hurt his hand when his punch landed on the elevator door as his friend ducked.

  In a 2008 interview, Jack Bonamo told me, “George’s right hand was swollen around the knuckles with abrasions on the fourth and fifth metacarpals, consistent with having been in a fight.”

  Unfortunately for Steinbrenner, the fight did not inspire the Yankees to a World Series comeback over the Dodgers. Nor did it alleviate any of the tension and unrest plaguing the team that year, much of it the result of Steinbrenner’s incessant criticism and manic behavior. All it did was set the stage for the final indignity of the 1981 season: the apology.

  Upon returning home to Yankee Stadium and sitting out a day of rain, the Yankees were thrashed 9–2 in game six. In only the fourth inning, Lemon pinch-hit Bobby Murcer for his starting pitcher, Tommy John, with the score tied 1–1. John was astounded by the decision and could be seen waving his arms in disgust in the Yankee dugout when Murcer flied out, leaving runners at first and second. The next inning the Dodgers scored three runs off reliever George Frazier and tacked on four more in the sixth.