Published July 13, 2010
Blog host Andrew Phelps here. Legendary Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is dead, and Boston owns a piece of that story. Intern and sports writer Jeremy Bernfeld looks back.
George Steinbrenner in March (AP)
Say what you want about George Steinbrenner, but the world was more interesting with him in it.
The flamboyant, outspoken, passionate Yankees owner died on Tuesday after being in poor health for years. He was 80.
It is a struggle to describe Steinbrenner. He built an empire (evil or not) and succeeded in bringing America’s game to a place no one thought possible: the world. An astute businessman, his Yankees grew to be worth more than a billion dollars under his watch while becoming the first baseball team with a stake in its own cable network, one of the largest revenue streams for today’s teams.
And yet Steinbrenner surely will be remembered for perplexing decisions and unbelievable outbursts. He feuded with managers and players, enforced rigid and sometimes unpopular policies and created a team that some charge with destroying baseball’s competitive balance.
Above all else, he most certainly won. Since Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973, New York brought home an incredible seven World Series titles. While the Yankees ascended and the Sox struggled, the New York-Boston rivalry intensified under Steinbrenner’s watch. He personified the rich, flashy, immoral winner that Red Sox fans hated and became the object of special (in)affection.
[pullquote]Beneath the venom, on sports talk radio, on the T, in the bahs and in the pahks, there was a jealousy.[/pullquote]
Beneath the venom, on sports talk radio, on the T, in the bahs and in the pahks, there was a jealousy. “Why can’t we get a free-spending, winning-obsessed guy in charge?” we all asked, breathlessly.
To many Sox fans, Steinbrenner was the devil incarnate, but the devil we would have sold our soul to for just one World Series title. Heck, he could have spared one.
Whatever he was, he was famous–presiding over one of the biggest sports franchises in the world’s biggest market will do that.
From the New York Times obituary:
Steinbrenner was the central figure in a syndicate that bought the Yankees from CBS for $10 million. When he arrived in New York on Jan. 3, 1973, he said he would not “be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all.” Having made his money as head of the Cleveland-based American Shipbuilding Company, he declared, “I’ll stick to building ships.”
Steinbrenner certainly did not stick to building ships. Famous for rapidly making changes within his organization, he didn’t stick to much.
He was the man most Bostonians loved to hate, and in that way, he’ll forever stick to Boston.