Steinbrenner, the Last Lion Of Baseball (2010)

by Madden, Bill

  “That’s a thought,” Steinbrenner mused. “I think I’d much rather fade away than go out with a big splash.”

  As I got up to leave, I told him it was nice to see that he was still in control of his kingdom and that it had been a fun bull session.

  “I really enjoyed this,” he said to me. “We’ll have to do this more often.”

  We never did. It was my last face-to-face interview with him. The next day, I was having lunch in Max’s Café with Max Margulis, who told me, “The Boss really babies himself now. I don’t think he likes to stray too far from his doctor. He keeps in this little triangle: his home to the office and to the IHOP [three miles south of Legends Field], now that Malio’s has closed. He seldom if ever goes to the farm in Ocala anymore.”

  It was three months later that Steinbrenner agreed to his first (and last) interview for the YES Network. The taped CenterStage interview was supposed to be a sort of retrospective in which Michael Kay, the Yankees’ play-by-play broadcaster for YES, asked Steinbrenner questions about his 32 years as owner of the Yankees. It was a disaster. Steinbrenner seemed nervous and frightened and incapable of answering Kay’s questions. In many cases throughout the interview he merely repeated the question.

  “Was it overwhelming [to realize] you own the Yankees?” Kay asked.

  “It was overwhelming,” Steinbrenner replied.

  When Kay asked what he was thinking as he watched Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin fighting in the dugout in Boston in 1977, Steinbrenner said, “I didn’t like that at all.”

  “Were you watching on TV?” Kay asked.

  “I was watching on TV.”

  Desperately prodding on, Kay asked: “Did you go, ‘Oh, my God?’ ”

  “I said he [Martin] lost it,” Steinbrenner answered.

  “Was it hard?”

  “It was a very hard moment.”

  At the end of the interview, Kay, hoping to draw Steinbrenner out by switching to a non-baseball subject, asked him to name his favorite song.

  “Anything by Sinatra.”

  The day after the interview aired, Daily News TV sports columnist Bob Raissman wrote that Steinbrenner had been exposed as being a shell of the old Boss. “The steely stare has given way to hollow eyes. Arrogance and bluster replaced by the tinny-toned voice of a grandfather suddenly awakened from a nap. No energy. No animation. Steinbrenner was not registering.”

  Kay remembered feeling extremely depressed at the conclusion of the interview. Here was this dynamic and powerful man, unable to respond to the most softball of questions, nervously clutching his eyeglasses throughout. “I felt terribly sorry for him,” Kay told me in 2009. “He kept repeating the questions, and he gripped those glasses as if they represented dear life. Eight questions in, I knew we were in real trouble.”

  At one point, according to Kay, YES president of production John Filippelli ordered the camera stopped and told him, “You’re making him nervous by asking the questions too fast. Let it breathe.”

  It turned out to be the highest-rated YES CenterStage ever. And it never aired again.

  Steinbrenner remained just as reclusive throughout the 2005 season, in which the Yankees ended the season tied with the Red Sox in the American League East. The Yankees took the division title by virtue of winning the season series between the teams, only to be knocked out of the postseason in the first round by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. On the occasion of Steinbrenner’s 75th birthday, the Times’ Murray Chass called Howard Rubenstein to inquire about speaking with Steinbrenner and was told, “Mr. Steinbrenner is declining all interviews now.” Rubenstein also sought to dispel the speculation that Steinbrenner was seriously ill, saying that “he lifts weights every day.”

  Nevertheless, Chass wrote, “Where is the Steinbrenner who said of Ken Clay, ‘he spit the bit’; of Jim Beattie, ‘he looked scared stiff’; of Dave Winfield, ‘we need a Mr. October or a Mr. September. Winfield is Mr. May’? That Steinbrenner no longer exists. Little wonder the Yankees are having difficulty winning with the highest payroll in sports history. It’s just money; there’s no passion behind it.”

  Steinbrenner’s appearances at Yankee Stadium were limited to the Red Sox series, and then the only sightings of him were when he arrived and departed through the Yankees offices, where a small group of reporters kept vigil in hopes of gleaning any sort of a quote from him. “Get out of here, guys—leave me alone!” was all they got as two security guards escorted him from the Stadium after a 9–2 drubbing by the Red Sox on September 11.

  Steinbrenner was home in Tampa when the Angels evicted the Yankees from the postseason for the second time in four years, knocking out Mike Mussina in the third inning of the deciding game five in Anaheim. It wasn’t until the next day that Steinbrenner issued a statement through Rubinstein praising Angels manager Mike Scioscia while taking what was perceived as a shot at Joe Torre. “I congratulate the Angels and their manager on the great job they’ve done. Our team played hard, but we let our fans down.”

  According to those who communicated with Steinbrenner on a semi-regular basis, that Division Series loss to the Angels was the beginning of his disenchantment with Torre. “He had just given Torre that $7 million-per-year contract and taken the payroll over $200 million and felt he was getting cheated,” one of his friends told me. “Plus, he saw that Torre had changed. This was no longer the guy who was on the balls of his ass in debt when George first hired him. He’d become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, started his own foundation and had essentially become ‘Joe Torre Inc.,’ who was bigger than the Yankees. George resented that.”

  On the other hand, Brian Cashman, whose contract as general manager was due to expire at the end of 2005, had become disenchanted with Steinbrenner—or at least the way the Boss continued to allow the Tampa-based minor league execs to have more influence and authority than the GM in New York. In a meeting with team president Randy Levine and general partner Swindal right after the ’05 season, Cashman broke down in tears, telling them he loved the Yankees but could not stay on the job under these circumstances. “You need a general manager you can trust,” he said, “but ultimately it’s got to be one guy. We run the draft out of Tampa, we make pitching decisions out of Tampa. We make trade decisions out of Tampa. I mean, what the fuck am I responsible for?”

  After Levine and Swindal relayed Cashman’s feelings to Steinbrenner, the next day he called the GM, imploring him to stay.

  “I’m told you’re leaving me,” Steinbrenner said.

  “I’m thinking about it, yes, sir,” Cashman said.

  “Why?”

  “Because the job is not the job I thought it would be. I’m like a caretaker. We’re on the verge of collapse here, and I don’t want to be a part of that. You’re a military guy. There’s got to be a chain of command from the owner to the general manager to the manager with nobody in between. It’s got to be that way or it won’t work. The players, the press and the fans all have to know that.”

  “Well, I want you back,” said Steinbrenner. “We’ll just do it that way.”

  And in yet another sign that Steinbrenner was gradually relinquishing control and phasing himself out, he gave Cashman a three-year contract for $1.6, $1.8 and $2 million, making him the highest-paid GM in the game. Cashman also got full authority over all Yankees baseball operations, including the minor leagues and the draft.

  WHILE STEINBRENNER’S HEALTH and mental well-being were clearly in decline, Randy Levine and the other Yankees executives continued to work with New York City and State officials to build a new stadium for the Yankees. Steinbrenner had been lobbying the city to build him a new stadium since the 1980s, preferably in Manhattan, while also implying that he could take the Yankees across the river to New Jersey if the city did not accommodate him.

  In 1993, New York governor Mario Cuomo had announced that he was exploring a plan to redevelop a 30-acre railyard along the Hudson River between 30th and 33rd streets, on the West Side of Manhattan, for a
n entertainment center and possible site for a new Yankee Stadium.

  Cuomo’s proposal met with immediate resistance from environmentalists and Manhattan residents, as did Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 1996 plan to build a new Yankee Stadium on the site to serve as the centerpiece of New York’s bid for the 2008 Olympics. By then, however, Steinbrenner had all but given up on the idea of moving the Yankees out of the Bronx, because of two remarkable developments: First, crime in New York had decreased immensely under Giuliani and his police commissioner, William Bratton, making the Bronx a much more attractive location for the team. This, plus the fact that the Yankees were now regular contenders for the World Series, meant the team was suddenly selling out Yankee Stadium almost every game. After Torre’s first world championship year, 1996, in which the Yankees drew 2.25 million fans to Yankee Stadium, attendance grew substantially each succeeding year, eclipsing the four million mark in 2005.

  Still, there was no getting around the fact that Yankee Stadium was nearly 80 years old and was going to require hundreds of millions of dollars in annual infrastructure maintenance. And, with a mere 18 luxury suites, it was outmoded compared with the 16 state-of-the-art ballparks that had sprung up across the major league landscape since 1991. Just days before leaving office in December 2001, Giuliani announced tentative agreements between the city and both the Yankees and the Mets for $1.6 billion in construction funds for new stadiums for each of the teams, with taxpayers footing half the tab. However, not long after taking office, Giuliani’s successor, Michael Bloomberg, pulled the plug on the stadium deals, calling them “corporate welfare.”

  With these plans going nowhere, Steinbrenner’s executive team turned to Major League Baseball’s revenue-sharing agreement—which included a provision allowing teams to deduct stadium construction and operating and maintenance expenses against their revenues—as an avenue to building a new stadium. Instead of that sizable chunk of Yankees money going to the other clubs, it could be used as a sort of “tax shelter” that would enable Steinbrenner, over 40 years, to pay for the cost of a new stadium. Subsidizing this would be $1.2 billion in bonds issued by the city, agreed to by Bloomberg.

  On January 18, 2006, Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, announced the details of the new Yankee Stadium area revitalization plan. In addition to the new five-level stadium, with a capacity of 50,000 plus 57 luxury suites, which would be constructed across 161st Street from the old stadium, the city would erect four new garages, providing 4,735 additional parking spaces, along with a new Metro North railroad stop. A few months later, Forbes magazine, citing the new Yankee Stadium revenue-sharing deal as a primary factor, reported the Yankees to be the first sports franchise in history to be valued at $1 billion.

  The day the Forbes story hit newsstands, I placed a call to Steinbrenner’s office in Tampa. To my surprise, Joanne Nastal put me right through to him.

  “I was just calling for your comment about Forbes valuing the Yankees at a billion dollars, George,” I said. “Could you ever in your wildest imagination have envisioned this?”

  “I’m truly humbled,” he said. “I’ve been very lucky in life. . . . I’ve had a lot of good people with me the whole time.”

  When I asked him what he thought his father would have said about his original $168,000 investment now being worth $1 billion, his voice began to tremble.

  “Oh . . . I don’t know,” he said. “I think . . . he’d be very happy.”

  Around the same time that spring, Steinbrenner had lunch with Lou Piniella and Malio Iavarone at Fleming’s Steakhouse in Tampa. Piniella was sitting out the 2006 season after being released from the final year of his managing contract by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and Steinbrenner was making a final pitch to get him back.

  “I want you with the Yankees, Lou,” Steinbrenner said. “I need you to manage the team.”

  “You’ve got a good manager in Torre,” Piniella said, “and, besides, I’m still under contract with the Devil Rays. I can’t manage for anyone until next year.”

  “Well, then just come to work for me in the front office for the year,” Steinbrenner persisted.

  “I can’t, George,” Piniella said. “It’s in my contract I can’t work for any team. If you want to talk to me, it’ll have to be after the season.”

  “All right,” said Steinbrenner. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  THE 2006 YANKEES won a ninth-straight American League East title, but they were once again eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, this time by the Detroit Tigers. Throughout the year, Steinbrenner had been even more reclusive, avoiding contact with the media and making even fewer appearances at Yankee Stadium. Only because, at his request, I had been providing him with updates on the condition of our mutual friend Frank Dolson, who was dying of cancer, was I able to occasionally get through to him by phone. Dolson, the former sports editor and lead columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, was a lifelong Yankee fan who had met Steinbrenner while covering the Penn Relays, and after his retirement from sportswriting he’d been hired by the Boss as a special advisor. It was after the Yankees lost game three of the Division Series in Detroit to go down two games to one that I called Steinbrenner. Our friend was at the end. After thanking me for filling him in with this distressing news about Dolson, Steinbrenner suddenly launched into a rambling criticism of Torre.

  “I don’t know why you guys keep giving Torre a pass,” he said. “He’s managing us right out of the playoffs again, but nobody writes that. You’re all waiting for me to criticize him. I’ve stayed out of this all year, just like he asked. . . . He’s spending too much time with all his other things, his charity, his commercials, and not paying attention to detail with the Yan-kees. . . . He thinks he’s bigger than the Yankees. . . . Why doesn’t anybody write that?”

  I didn’t know what to say, especially since I assumed that Steinbrenner didn’t want to be quoted directly. But after the Yankees’ next game, an 8–3 trouncing that ended their season, Torre came under heavy media criticism for playing Gary Sheffield at first base, waiting too long to get hot-hitting rookie Melky Cabrera’s youthful energy into the lineup, and embarrassing Alex Rodriguez by batting him eighth. I wrote a column that channeled what Steinbrenner had said to me.

  “You can make the case that they didn’t have enough pitching to get back to the World Series, but I can assure you George Steinbrenner doesn’t want to hear it. He may walk a little slower, talk in shorter sentences and seem somewhat detached from the operation he used to rule with an iron hand from the Stadium’s boardroom to the bathrooms, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be repercussions from the Boss in the face of yet another humiliating early playoff exit by the $200 million Yankees.

  “Believe it. Faster than you can say ‘Goodbye Joe, welcome back Lou,’ there will be.”

  Although I had no knowledge of that lunch conversation they’d had back in April, Lou Piniella’s contract with the Devil Rays had now expired, making him a free agent, and it wasn’t at all a leap to assume that Steinbrenner would want to bring him back into the Yankee fold, either as the manager immediately or as a manager-in-waiting for the last season of Torre’s contract. What I did know was that Steinbrenner was furious at Torre.

  “If George wants Lou back, he’d better move fast,” Alan Nero, Piniella’s agent, told me that day.

  I have no doubt that the old, audacious, self-assured George would have. But this Steinbrenner was no longer capable of making this kind of decision without seeking counsel and consensus from the new Yankees hierarchy, comprising Levine, Trost, Swindal and Cashman. The day after the Division Series ended, Steinbrenner had a conference call with the four of them to discuss Torre. Swindal was the first to speak, making a persuasive plea to Steinbrenner to allow Torre to finish out the final $7 million year of the contract he’d negotiated with the manager. Then Cashman noted that firing Torre after he’d taken the Yankees to the playoffs 11 straight years was bound to prompt a seve
re backlash in the media and from fans. Steinbrenner listened to their arguments but said he needed time to think it over. It was then that Cashman called Torre to tell him he wasn’t sure which way it was going to go with the old man.

  “If I were you,” he told Torre, “and if you want to come back, I’d call him yourself.”

  Torre did, telling Steinbrenner, “All I ever wanted to do was to make you proud, Boss. I’ve got a year left on my contract and I’d like to work for it and not just sit at home collecting my money. But if you feel in your heart you want to make a change, that’s what you should do.”

  Again, Steinbrenner said he needed to think it over. Finally, on October 11, four days after the Yankees lost the Division Series, Torre held a delayed season wrap-up session with the media at Yankee Stadium. Minutes before the press conference was set to begin, Torre was in his office in the clubhouse when the phone rang. It was Cashman, with Levine and Trost, calling from upstairs, and Steinbrenner on the line from Tampa. “We want you to manage next year,” Steinbrenner said, adding that he expected Torre to get the team to play with more energy and enthusiasm than they’d shown against Detroit.

  In the accompanying press release handed out to the media, Steinbrenner was quoted as saying, “I expect a great deal from you and the entire team. I have high expectations, and I want to see enthusiasm, a fighting spirit and a team that works together.” It sounded as much an indictment of Torre as an endorsement from the Boss. Six days later, the Chicago Cubs introduced Lou Piniella as their new manager.

  Nearly three weeks after Torre’s press conference, Steinbrenner made a rare trip out of Tampa to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where his granddaughter Haley, a drama student at the University of North Carolina, was performing in the play Cabaret on the afternoon of Sunday, October 29. Steinbrenner was accompanied by his wife, Joan, and his daughters, Jessica and Jennifer (Haley’s mother), and midway through the performance he was suddenly stricken with chest pains and breathing problems and began to black out. The performance was cut short as paramedics were summoned to the theater.