George Michael Steinbrenner III was principal owner and managing partner of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees. During Steinbrenner's 37-year ownership from 1973 to his death in July 2010, the longest in club history, the Yankees earned 7 World Series titles and 11 pennants. His outspokenness and role in driving up player salaries made him one of the sport's most controversial figures. Steinbrenner was also involved in the Great Lakes shipping industry. Known as a hands-on baseball executive, he earned the nickname "The Boss." He had a tendency to meddle in daily on-field decisions, and to hire and fire (and sometimes re-hire) managers. Former Yankees manager Dallas Green gave him the derisive nickname "Manager George."[1]
He died after suffering a heart attack in his Tampa home on the morning of July 13, 2010, the day of the 81st All-Star Game.[2][3]
| (July 4, 1930 – July 13, 2010) |
Early life and education
Steinbrenner was born in Rocky River, Ohio, the only son of Rita (née Haley) and Henry George Steinbrenner II, who had been a world-class track and field hurdler while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in engineering in 1927, first in his class.[4] The elder Steinbrenner later became a wealthy shipping magnate who ran the family firm operating freight ships hauling ore and grain on the Great Lakes. George III was named after his paternal grandfather, George Michael Steinbrenner II.[4] Steinbrenner has two younger sisters, Susan and Judy.[4]
Steinbrenner entered Culver Military Academy, in Northern Indiana, in 1944, and graduated in 1948. He received his B.A. from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1952. While at Williams, George was an average student who led an active extracurricular life. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He was an accomplished hurdler on the varsity track and field team, and served as sports editor of The Williams Record, played piano in the band, and played halfback on the football team in his senior year.[5] He joined the United States Air Force after graduation, was commissioned a second lieutenant and was stationed at Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio. Following honorable discharge in 1954, he did post-graduate study at Ohio State University (1954–55), earning his master's degree in physical education.
He met his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Joan (pronounced Jo-Ann) Zieg, in Columbus, and married her on May 12, 1956.[5] The couple had two sons Hank Steinbrenner and Hal Steinbrenner, and two daughters Jessica Steinbrenner and Jennifer Steinbrenner-Swindal.
Pre-Yankees career
While studying at Ohio State, he served as a graduate assistant to legendary Buckeye football coach Woody Hayes. The Buckeyes were undefeated national champions that year, and won the Rose Bowl. Steinbrenner served as an assistant football coach at Northwestern University in 1955, and at Purdue University from 1956-1957.
In 1957, Steinbrenner joined Kinsman Marine Transit Company, the Great Lakes shipping company that his great-grandfather Henry had purchased in 1901 from The Minch Transit Company, which was owned by a family relation, and renamed.[6] Steinbrenner worked hard to successfully revitalize the company, which was suffering hardship during difficult market conditions. In its return to profitability, Kinsman emphasized grain shipments over ore.[5] A few years later, with the help of a loan from a New York bank, Steinbrenner purchased the company from his family. He later became part of a group that purchased the American Shipbuilding Company, and, in 1967, he became its chairman and chief executive officer. By 1972, the company's gross sales were more than $100 million annually.[7]
In 1960, against his father's wishes, Steinbrenner entered the sports franchise business for the first time with basketball's Cleveland Pipers, of the ABL. The Pipers were coached by John McClendon, who became the first African American coach in professional basketball. McClendon had led Tennessee A&I University to three straight NAIA small college championships in the late 1950s. The Pipers switched to the new professional American Basketball League in 1961; the new circuit was founded by Abe Saperstein, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters. The league and team experienced financial problems, and McClendon resigned in protest halfway through the season; however, the Pipers had won the first half of a split season. Steinbrenner replaced McClendon with former Boston Celtics star Bill Sharman, and the Pipers won the ABL championship in 1961-62. The ABL folded in December 1962, just months into its second season. Steinbrenner and his partners lost significant money on the venture, but Steinbrenner paid off all of his creditors and partners over the next few years.[5]
With his burgeoning sports aspirations put on hold, Steinbrenner turned his attention to the theatre. His involvement with Broadway began with a short-lived 1967 play, The Ninety Day Mistress, in which he partnered with another rookie producer, James Nederlander. Whereas Nederlander threw himself into his family's business full-time, Steinbrenner invested in a mere half-dozen shows, including the 1974 Tony Award nominee for Best Musical, Seesaw, and the 1988 Peter Allen flop, Legs Diamond.[8]
New York Yankees career
The Yankees had been struggling during their years under CBS ownership, which had acquired the team in 1965. In 1972, CBS Chairman William S. Paley told team president E. Michael Burke the media company intended to sell the club. As Burke later told writer Roger Kahn, Paley offered to sell the franchise to Burke if he could find financial backing. Steinbrenner, who had participated in a failed attempt to buy the Cleveland Indians from Vernon Stouffer one year earlier,[9] was brought together with Burke by veteran baseball executive Gabe Paul.
On January 3, 1973, Steinbrenner and minority partner Burke led a group of investors, which included Lester Crown, John DeLorean and Nelson Bunker Hunt, in purchasing the Yankees from CBS.[10] For years, the selling price was reported to be $10 million. However, Steinbrenner later revealed that the deal included two parking garages that CBS had bought from the city, and soon after the deal closed, CBS bought back the garages for $1.2 million. The net cost to the group for the Yankees was therefore $8.8 million.[11]
The announced intention was that Burke would continue to run the team as club president. But Burke later became angry when he found out that Paul had been brought in as a senior Yankee executive, crowding his authority, and quit the team presidency in April 1973. (Burke remained a minority owner of the club into the following decade.) Paul was officially named president of the club on April 19. It would be the first of many high-profile departures with employees who crossed paths with "The Boss." At the conclusion of the 1973 season, two more prominent names departed: manager Ralph Houk, who resigned and took a similar position with the Detroit Tigers; and general manager Lee MacPhail, who became president of the American League.
The 1973 off-season would continue to be controversial when Steinbrenner and Paul sought to hire former Oakland Athletics manager Dick Williams, who had resigned immediately after leading the team to its second straight World Series title. However, because Williams was still under contract to Oakland, the subsequent legal wrangling prevented the Yankees from hiring him. On the first anniversary of the team's ownership change, the Yankees hired former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Bill Virdon to lead the team on the field.
Steinbrenner quickly became famous for his rapid turnover of management personnel. In his first 23 seasons, he changed managers 20 times (Billy Martin alone was fired and rehired five times). He also employed 11 general managers over 30 years. He was equally famous for pursuing high-priced free agents and then feuding with them. In July 1978, Billy Martin famously said of Steinbrenner and his $3 million outfielder Reggie Jackson, "The two were meant for each other. One's a born liar, and the other's convicted." The comment resulted in Martin's first departure, though officially he resigned (tearfully), before Yankees President Al Rosen could carry out Steinbrenner's dictum to fire him.
Another notable Steinbrenner policy was his military-style grooming code: All players, coaches, and male executives were forbidden to display any facial hair other than mustaches (except for religious reasons), and scalp hair could not be grown below the collar. (Long sideburns and "mutton chops" were not specifically banned.) The policy led to some unusual and comical incidents.
During the 1973 home opener against the Cleveland Indians, as the Yankees, caps removed, were standing at attention for the National Anthem, Steinbrenner, in the owner's box next to the New York dugout, noticed that several players' hair was too long for his standards. As he did not yet know the players' names, he wrote down the uniform numbers of the offenders (Thurman Munson, Bobby Murcer, and Sparky Lyle), and had the list, along with the demand that their hair be trimmed immediately, delivered to Houk. The order was reluctantly relayed to the players.[12]
In 1983, at Steinbrenner's behest, Yankee coach Yogi Berra ordered Goose Gossage to remove a beard he was growing. Gossage responded by shaving away the beard but leaving a thick exaggerated mustache extending down the upper lip to the jaw line, a look Gossage still sports to this day.
The most infamous incident involving facial hair occurred in 1991. Although Steinbrenner was suspended, the Yankee management ordered Don Mattingly, who was then sporting a mullet-like hair style, to get a hair cut. When Mattingly refused he was benched. This led to a huge media frenzy with reporters and talk radio repeatedly mocking the team. The WPIX broadcasting crew of Phil Rizzuto, Bobby Murcer, and Tom Seaver lampooned the policy on a pregame show with Rizzuto playing the role of a barber sent to enforce the rule. Mattingly would eventually be reinstated. Coincidentally, The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat", which was filmed earlier that year, included Mattingly as a guest star who is suspended from play by Mr. Burns for his sideburns being too long, despite shaving the area of his head above where side burns grow. In 1995, Mattingly again ran afoul of the policy when he grew a goatee. Steinbrenner publicly criticized him for it and Mattingly eventually trimmed it to a mustache. Mattingly was clean-shaven later as a coach with the Yankees.
David Wells occasionally wore a goatee and informed the media he would be willing to pay any fine to do so.
During the 1981 World Series, Steinbrenner provided a colorful backdrop to the Yankees' loss of the series. After a Game 3 loss in Los Angeles, Steinbrenner called a press conference in his hotel room, showing off his left hand in a cast and various other injuries that he claimed were earned in a fight with two Dodgers fans in the hotel elevator. Nobody came forward about the fight, leading to the belief that he had made up the story of the fight in order to light a fire under the Yankees.[citation needed] After the series, he issued a public apology to the City of New York for his team's performance, while at the same time assuring the fans that plans to put the team together for 1982 would begin immediately.[13] He was criticized heartily by players and press alike for doing so, as most people felt losing in the World Series was not something requiring an apology.[14]
Campaign contributions to Nixon and pardon
The "convicted" part of Billy Martin's famous 1978 "liar and convicted" comment referred to Steinbrenner's connection to Richard Nixon: in 1974 Steinbrenner pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to Nixon's re-election campaign, and to a felony charge of obstruction of justice. He was personally fined $15,000 and his company was assessed an additional $20,000. On November 27, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended him for two years, but later reduced it to fifteen months. Ronald Reagan pardoned Steinbrenner in January 1989, one of the final acts of his presidency.
Dave Winfield controversy
After the 1980 season, Steinbrenner made headlines by signing Dave Winfield to a 10-year, $23 million contract, making Winfield baseball's highest-paid player. In 1985, Steinbrenner derided Winfield's poor performance in a key September series against the Toronto Blue Jays:
Where is Reggie Jackson? We need a Mr. October or a Mr. September. Winfield is Mr. May. My big guys are not coming through. The guys who are supposed to carry the team are not carrying the team. They aren't producing. If I don't get big performances out of Winfield, Griffey and Baylor, we can't win.—Steinbrenner to New York Times sportswriter Murray Chass.
This criticism eventually became somewhat of an anachronism, as many believed Steinbrenner made the statement following the 1981 World Series.[15] Part of that comment later led Ken Griffey Jr. to list the Yankees as one team he would never play for.[citation needed]
On July 30, 1990 Steinbrenner was banned permanently from day-to-day management (but not ownership) of the Yankees by MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent for paying a gambler named Howie Spira $40,000 to dig up "dirt" on Winfield. Winfield had sued the Yankees for failing to contribute $300,000 to his foundation, a guaranteed stipulation in his contract.[16] (Vincent originally proposed a 2-year suspension, but Steinbrenner wanted it worded as an "agreement" rather than a "suspension" to protect his relationship with the U.S. Olympic Committee; in exchange for that concession, Vincent made the "agreement" permanent.) After considerable negotiation with Vincent's office, Robert E. Nederlander, one of Steinbrenner's theatre partners and a limited partner in the Yankees organization, became the managing general partner.[17]
In 2001 Winfield cited the Steinbrenner animosity as a factor in his decision to enter the Hall of Fame as a representative of his first team, the San Diego Padres, rather than the team that brought him national recognition, the Yankees.[18]
Reinstatement and championship years
Steinbrenner was reinstated in 1993. Unlike past years, he was somewhat less inclined to interfere in the Yankees' baseball operations. He left day-to-day baseball matters in the hands of Gene Michael and other executives, and allowed promising farm-system players such as Bernie Williams to develop instead of trading them for established players. Steinbrenner's having "got religion" (in the words of New York Daily News reporter Bill Madden) paid off. After contending only briefly two years earlier, the '93 Yankees were in the American League East race with the eventual champion Toronto Blue Jays until September.
The 1994 Yankees were the American League East leaders when a players' strike wiped out the rest of the season. Similarly, a players' strike had cut short their 1981 playoff effort.
The team returned to the playoffs in 1995 (their first visit since 1981) and won the World Series in 1996. The Yankees went on to win the World Series in 1998, 1999 and 2000. The Yankees lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001.
The Yankees made the playoffs every season through 2007, winning the AL Pennant in seven games over the 2003 Boston Red Sox. In 2003, they won the ALCS but lost the World Series to the Florida Marlins, which denied Steinbrenner, who had won the Stanley Cup in June of that year as part-owner of the New Jersey Devils, the distinction of winning championships in two major sports leagues in the same year.[19]
The Yankees' demise was furthered by the postseason collapse of 2004. While leading the eventual World Champion Boston Red Sox three games to none (3-0) and 3 outs away from winning Game 4, the Red Sox stunned the Yankees and the baseball world by coming back to win Game 4 and then the next three games and sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. In 2008, the Yankees ended their post-season run with a third place finish in the American League East. However, in 2009, the Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series to win a 27th championship.
Retirement
From 2006 to his death, George Steinbrenner spent most of his time in Tampa, Florida, leaving the Yankees to be run by his sons Hank and Hal Steinbrenner. Hank in particular shows similar traits to his father.[20]
After ceding day-to-day control of the team, Steinbrenner made few public appearances and gave no interviews. Associates and family members refused to comment on rampant speculation concerning his declining health, specifically rumors that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The Yankees went to great lengths to prevent anyone outside Steinbrenner's immediate family and closest business associates from speaking to him, or even getting a glimpse of him on the rare occasions when he made an appearance at Yankee Stadium. Temporary curtains were set up to block views of his entry and exit routes, and no one was allowed near the vehicles transporting him. The press elevator carrying media members downstairs to the interview areas were shut down before he arrived, and again toward the end of the game while he departed.[21]
Steinbrenner made a rare appearance in the Bronx on the field for the 79th All-Star Game on July 15, 2008. Wearing dark glasses, he walked slowly into the stadium's media entrance with the aid of several companions, leaning upon one of them for support. He later was driven out on to the field along with his son Hal at the end of the lengthy pre-game ceremony in which the All-Stars were introduced at their fielding positions along with 49 of the 63 living Hall of Famers.[22]
In subsequent occasional visits to spring training, regular-season games, and other outings, he was apparently confined to a wheelchair.[23]
On April 13, 2010, Derek Jeter and Joe Girardi privately presented the first 2009 World Series Championship ring to Steinbrenner in his stadium suite. He was "almost speechless", according to reports.[24]
George Steinbrenner's estimated net worth was $1.15 billion USD in 2009 according to the Forbes 400 List in Forbes magazine issued in September 2009.[25]
Baseball innovation
George Steinbrenner helped to revolutionize the business of baseball by being the first owner to sell TV cable rights (to MSG Network).[26]
In 1997, the Yankees signed a 10-year, $97 million deal with Adidas. A dispute with MSG over the cable rights fee ended with the creation of the Yankees' own YES Network. George Steinbrenner has been able to grow the Yankees from a $10 million franchise to a $1.2 billion heavyweight. In 2005, the Yankees became the first American professional sports franchise to be conservatively estimated as being worth over one billion dollars. If one adds up the revenue of $1.2 billion valuation of the 36% Yankees owned YES Network to the team revenue (the other 64% is owned by Goldman Sachs and the former New Jersey Nets owner which is also a minority owner of the ballclub), they far surpass even the Dallas Cowboys in total estimated value.
Off the field
In addition to being an intense boss to his on-field employees, Steinbrenner was also known for pressuring and changing off-field employees (including various publicity directors), sometimes chewing them out in public. Longtime Cardinals announcer Jack Buck once quipped that he had seen Steinbrenner's yacht and that, "It was a beautiful thing to observe, with all 36 oars working in unison." Former sportscaster Hank Greenwald, who called Yankee games on WABC radio for two years, once said he knew when Steinbrenner was in town by how tense the office staff was.
He usually kept his complaints about the team broadcasters he approved of (except for the YES Network crew, who have generally not been his direct employees) out of the newspapers. However, he was known to be upset with the sometimes blunt commentary of former broadcaster Jim Kaat and former analyst Tony Kubek.
The 1986 World Series was called "Steinbrenner's nightmare,"[27] because it was a showdown between two of the Yankees' rivals, their cross-town rival New York Mets and their most hated rival, Boston Red Sox. As a result, Steinbrenner wrote articles in The New York Post on the World Series.[28][29]
Only three Yankee employees have been continuously employed from 1973 and Steinbrenner's ownership.[clarification needed] One of those is long time Head Athletic Trainer Gene Monahan, who recently missed his first spring training in 48 years after being diagnosed with cancer.[30]
George Steinbrenner was involved with thoroughbred horse racing from the early 1970s. He owned Kinsman Stud Farm in Ocala, Florida and raced under the name Kinsman Stable.
In the media
Despite Steinbrenner's controversial status he poked fun at himself in the media. His frequent firings and rehirings of manager Billy Martin were lampooned in a '70s Miller Lite beer commercial in which Steinbrenner tells Martin "You're fired!" to which Martin replies "Oh, no, not again!" After one of Martin's real-life rehirings, the commercial was resurrected, only with Steinbrenner's line redubbed to say "You're hired!"
He hosted Saturday Night Live on October 20, 1990 at the same time his former outfielder and Yankee manager, Lou Piniella, led the Cincinnati Reds to a World Championship. In the opening sketch, he dreamt of a Yankees team managed, coached, and entirely played by himself. In other sketches, he chews out the SNL "writing staff" (notably including Al Franken) for featuring him in a mock Slim Fast commercial with other ruthless leaders such as Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin and plays a folksy convenience store manager whose business ethic is divergent from that of Steinbrenner.
In The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat", Mr. Burns fires Don Mattingly for refusing to shave sideburns only Burns could see. It is often assumed that this was a parody of an argument Steinbrenner and Mattingly had in real life with regards to Mattingly's hair length. However, the episode was actually recorded a year before the suspension actually occurred, and was nothing more than a coincidence.[31] As Mattingly walks off the baseball field, he states, "I still like him [Burns] better than Steinbrenner."
He appeared as himself in the Albert Brooks comedy The Scout.
In the 1994 computer game Superhero League of Hoboken, one of the schemes of the primary antagonist, Dr. Entropy, is to resurrect George Steinbrenner.
After a public chastising of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter for "partying too much," the two appeared in a Visa commercial club-hopping. A 2004 Visa commercial depicted Steinbrenner in the trainer's room at Yankee Stadium, suffering from an arm injury, unable to sign any checks, including that of his then-current manager Joe Torre, who spends most of the commercial treating Steinbrenner as if he were an important player.
George Will once described Steinbrenner as an "error machine" and a "baseball dumb-o-meter."[32]
Steinbrenner also was a fan of professional wrestling. He wrote the foreword of the 2005 Dusty Rhodes autobiography and was a regular at old Tampa Armory cards in the 1970s and 1980s. In March 1989, he appeared in the front row of the WWF's Saturday Night's Main Event broadcast, even interacting with manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan at one point (Heenan remarked about the guy he managed in the ring at the time to Steinbrenner "I've got a ring full of Winfield"). At WWF WrestleMania 7, Steinbrenner, WWF owner Vince McMahon, and NFL announcer Paul Maguire filmed a skit with the trio debating instant replay. He was also present in the front row of an edition of WCW Monday Nitro in early 1998 when the event took place in Tampa.
At the funeral of his long time friend Otto Graham in December 2003, Steinbrenner fainted, leading to extensive media speculation that he was in ill health.
New York Daily News cartoonist Bill Gallo often cites Steinbrenner's German heritage by drawing him in a Prussian military uniform, complete with spiked helmet, gold epaulettes and medals, calling him "General von Steingrabber."
In ESPN's miniseries The Bronx is Burning, he is portrayed by Oliver Platt.
Seinfeld caricature
Steinbrenner appeared as a character in the situation comedy Seinfeld, when George Costanza worked for the Yankees for several seasons. Lee Bear portrayed the character, and Larry David provided voice-over performances whenever the character spoke. Steinbrenner's face was never shown, and the character was always viewed from the back in scenes set in his office at Yankee Stadium. The character appeared in the following episodes: "The Opposite", "The Secretary", "The Race", "The Jimmy", "The Wink", "The Hot Tub", "The Caddy", "The Calzone", "The Bottle Deposit", "The Nap", "The Millennium", "The Muffin Tops", and "The Finale".
The fictional Steinbrenner talked nonstop, regardless of whether anyone was listening, and sometimes referred to himself as "Big Stein". The team owner was known for eccentric decisions, such as cooking jerseys, threatening to move the team to New Jersey "just to upset people", scalping his owner's box tickets, wearing Lou Gehrig's uniform pants (and panicking about "that nerve disease" being contagious), trading several players to Frank Costanza's dismay, and canceling a meeting because he wanted George Costanza to get him an eggplant calzone. Costanza describes Steinbrenner by saying, "No one knows what this guy's capable of; he fires people like it's a bodily function!" In "The Wink", the Steinbrenner character mentions all of the people he fired, saying Billy Martin four times, and mentions then-current manager Buck Showalter, but then quickly swears Costanza to silence. Though intended as a joke, the comment proved prophetic: A few weeks after the episode aired, Steinbrenner replaced Showalter as manager with Joe Torre.
Steinbrenner's involvement with Seinfeld began when he refused a request to make a cameo appearance and permit a Yankees pennant to appear; the show nonetheless used the pennant. A year later, Steinbrenner was asked to permit a Yankees uniform to appear on the sixth-season "The Chaperone". The owner was still angry about the unauthorized pennant, and knew so little about the show that after reading the script he believed George Costanza had been named after him as an insult. He refused to permit the uniform's use unless the character was renamed. After watching the show and enjoying both it and the Costanza character, however, Steinbrenner approved the uniform,[33] and later maintained that he was a fan of the show and that "Costanza is always welcome back." He filmed three scenes for the Seinfeld season 7 finale, "The Invitations", but they were edited out when the time of the original episode ran longer than the allowed time. They are on the Seinfeld Season 7 DVD Disc 4.
Seinfeld said after Steinbrenner's death: “Who else could be a memorable character on a television show without actually appearing on the show? You felt George even though he wasn’t there. That’s how huge a force of personality he was."[34]
Honors
Steinbrenner was awarded The Flying Wedge Award, one of the NCAA’s highest honors.
In 2000, Steinbrenner was honored as Grand Marshal at the German-American Steuben Parade on Fifth Avenue in New York City. At this largest German-American event in the country, he was greeted by tens of thousands who celebrated him as an outstanding American of German heritage.
The Steinbrenner Band Hall at the University of Florida was made possible by a gift from George and Joan Steinbrenner in 2002. The facility was completed in 2008 and serves as The Pride of the Sunshine's rehearsal hall and houses offices, instrument storage, the band library and an instrument issue room.[35]
A new high school in Lutz, Florida, which opened for about 1600 students in August 2009, is named George Steinbrenner High School.[36] Steinbrenner was a generous contributor to the Tampa Bay area.[37]
Legends Field, the Yankees' Spring Training facility in Tampa, was renamed Steinbrenner Field in March 2008 in his honor by his two sons, with the blessing of the Hillsborough County Commission and the Tampa City Council. The entrance to the new Bryson Field at Boshamer Stadium at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has also been named for Steinbrenner and his family.[38]
Death
On Tuesday, July 13, 2010, the morning of the 2010 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, George Steinbrenner died of a heart attack at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida.[39] His death came 9 days after his eightieth birthday, and two days after the passing of long time Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard.[40]
On July 14, 2010, the Yankees announced that players and coaches will begin wearing a Steinbrenner commemorative patch on the left breast of their home and road uniforms (along with a Bob Sheppard commemorative patch on the left arm.)[41]
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