The Chris Moeller Archives

Steinbrenner: Gone, but not soon forgotten

America loves it its capitalists.

George Steinbrenner's death this week has allowed us to reflect on the man's rarefied, fascinating, and presumably much-envied life. Television and the internet have been offering up so many of the "other side of George Steinbrenner" stories, in reference to his supposedly frequent but quiet gestures of charity and generosity, that it's hard to wade through them to find any of the "side that's not the other side of George Steinbrenner" stories. Even the friggin' Yankees batboys are getting their cherished remembrances published online-- and at non-sports-related websites to boot. For its part, ESPN lost its mind completely Tuesday.

But the truth is out there.

The man who came to be known as "the Boss" throughout the professional baseball world made his money the old fashioned way. His father, Henry, a shipping magnate in Cleveland, gave it to him as part of the boy's membership in the Lucky Sperm Club. It was a cousin that gave young George his first front office job, one in the shipping business in the mid-1950s, and when the young tycoon moved into the sporting world during the early '60s, as owner of the American Basketball League's Cleveland Pipers, he lost his shirt.

Quite famously now, Steinbrenner and a group of minority partners purchased the New York Yankees from CBS in 1973 for a net cost of only $8.8 million. Today, the franchise is thought by Forbes Magazine to be worth an estimated $1.6 billion. I would calculate that return on George's investment for you but my pocket calculator only has eight digits.

"The Boss" quickly became a well-known baseball figure-- and persona-- as a tyrant. The ridiculous team policy on facial hair, the disruptive bids for media attention during and between seasons, and the constant firings of his field manager became rather comical attributes of George's leadership style. He fired Billy Martin as Yankees' manager five times, and changed his skipper a grand total of 20 times during his first 23 years as owner. His general managers fared slightly better. They were replaced only 11 times during his first 30 seasons.

We're told that these employee casualties came about due to Steinbrenner's unmatched desire to win. He once said, "I don't have heart attacks, I cause them" (oh, the schadenfreude), but even if we look past all of his shameless bullying and his sort of complete indifference to the humanity of his employees (and incidentally, four of his replaced managers during those years-- Ralph Houk, Dick Howser, Lou Piniella, and Dallas Green-- had won or went on to win World Championships as managers under different teams or ownership groups), many of "the Boss's" tactics were not so much comical as they were unethical, illegal, even felonious.

In 1974, three days before Hank Aaron passed the original Bronx Bomber, Babe Ruth, as the all-time home run king, the Yankees' team owner was indicted on 14 criminal counts related to illegal campaign contributions to Dick Nixon's presidential campaign. An additional felony charge came later in the year in the form and terminology of "obstruction of justice." Steinbrenner paid only a small fine for his rich man's crime, and commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended him from the game and the Yankees for two years, though the suspension was later reduced to 15 months. Friends in high places helped out again when Ronald Reagan eventually pardoned him for his political dirty tricks in 1989.

Ironically, the presidential pardon came about just before an arbitrator (in October of '89) ruled that Steinbrenner and every one of his fellow MLB club owners had conspired to hold down players' salaries for three consecutive years during the mid-'80s, refusing to sign free agents and to field their best teams. This ruling made the conspiracy the worst proven subversion of competitive fairness in the sport's history. A year later, in a final settlement, the owners agreed to pay $280 million to the players in return for what they had stolen from them (still a good deal for owners as it was only pay-back on lost salaries, and not any penalty).

I feel safe in calling this "the worst proven subversion," as I did. Even the "Black Sox" players, accused of taking money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series, were acquitted in court, and their accused crimes, anyway, came in the immediate wake of the first recorded collusion case, when the owners systematically released all players that were not in guaranteed contracts at the conclusion of the 1918 season, with a "gentleman's agreement" in place not to re-sign each others' players. (Historical note: I'm referring to that 1918 collusion case incorrectly as the first one, as there was already a long-time "gentleman's agreement" in place by 1918 not to hire non-white players for any of the 16 clubs.)

Steinbrenner's two-year sentence in '74 paled in comparison to the lifetime ban (though this one wouldn't last long either) that he received from commissioner Fay Vincent in 1990 after it was uncovered that George had paid a "small-time gambler" named Howard Spira $40,000 to "dig up dirt" on Yankees' outfielder Dave Winfield, a player with whom Steinbrenner had been publicly and legally feuding after the All-Star sued his "Boss" for violation of his playing agreement. Steinbrenner had reneged on a contracted $300,000 contribution to the player's charity. Considering this long-forgotten story, it's funny to see how many times the word "charity" is being bandied about in Steinbrenner obits this week.

Charity has shit to do with George Steinbrenner. Bestowing personal kindnesses upon colleagues, underlings, and reporters, and jobs upon players, managers, broadcasters, bat boys, and stadium employees are what baseball bosses are supposed to do. Steinbrenner didn't give. He took. He had money handed to him from the cradle to the grave. It came first from Papa Steinbrenner, then from hardworking employees that kept the turnstiles spinning by either deed or diamond exploit. He accepted money as political graft from even the most disinterested taxpayers, and that money got shoveled up into his coffers right until the very end. The new stadium that opened in the Bronx last year cost New York taxpayers $1.2 billion in subsidies. Even after he's been embalmed-- thanks to some luck in timing, and to another dickhead former baseball owner, the one who became President of the United States-- the Steinbrenner children get all of their inheritance without that pesky estate tax. Even if you support this type of ludicrous and hopefully-temporary federal tax policy, the last thing you can call it is "charitable" when you keep for yourself everything but the crumbs.

No, Steinbrenner succeeded because he had all the face cards given to him from the start. He "fell up" in business and baseball despite decades of baffoonery, and he was given many, many more opportunities to succeed than he ever afforded his underlings. George Steinbrenner would have been out of baseball twenty years ago, and prior to four Yankees' World Championships that came under his watch, if his lifetime ban from the game had stuck for him the way it has for Pete Rose.

The irony of that particular parallel, of course, is that although MLB employees have been forbidden from associating with gamblers for going on almost a century, Steinbrenner was allowed to operate a multimillion-dollar horse racing stable during his entire Yankees tenure. (In fact, he was longer-serving in the horse racing arena than in baseball if you factor out the suspensions.) He wasn't just in the horses, either-- he had a financial stake in multiple racetracks until his death, and worked successfully as power broker at getting key industry-friendly political legislation passed. A number of baseball players and managers are still banned from the game long after their deaths not for game-fixing, but for merely associating with gamblers. Not George Steinbrenner. He gets a moment of silence in his honor at the All-Star Game and a ticket punched to Cooperstown.

From an on-the-field standpoint, Steinbrenner is indeed going to cruise into the Hall of Fame. He can point to a host of championships under his watch, yet the New York Yankees, as even the Queen of England could probably tell you, boast all the financial, regional, and cultural resources in the game. The franchise did, after all, when 20 World Titles during the 40 years spanning 1923 and 1962, during which time George was still either learning to tie his shoes in Cleveland or not yet born.

George added six championships for the organization during his 36 years in charge, and six is a dandy number to be sure, but four of those came after the dictator drastically scaled back his "dictating." The Cincinnati Reds, as just another example, won three during the same time period, but all of their home games were played in not the most-populous, but now the 24th most-populous U.S. city. All were played without Steinbrenner's $417 million a year in revenue from local cable television; without an annual payroll of players that doubles each other team in the league save one, and which has not included the not one, not two, not three, but four highest-paid players in the game. Most importantly, they played them without the free network, cable television, internet-- even league-- promotion that overwhelmingly favors the Steinbrenner family team. Hell, the death of the Yankees' public address announcer got more national media attention last week than did, say, the death of Hall of Famer Robin Roberts (a longtime Phillies pitcher) back in May.

You can stuff the Steinbrenner whitewash between a pair of pinstripes. There were misdeeds a-plenty that took place between those colorful moments of personality and professional ambition. The track record of George Steinbrenner's life paints a son-of-a-bitch, a man who often dehumanized his employees. A more heinous "boss" possibly never set foot inside a baseball stadium office. I've heard that whole "camel/eye of a needle" thing at the Heavenly Entrance can be a bitch though, and here's hoping that St. Peter's password question for George at the gate is for the names of Dave Winfield's wife and children.

posted by CM @ 6:23 PM