George Steinbrenner … devoid of humility and class. Photograph: Chris O'Meara/AP
George Steinbrenner was a loser. While insisting that nothing less than wining was acceptable, Steinbrenner owned the New York Yankees during the team's longest World Series drought since its first appearance in 1921, a dry spell directly attributable to Steinbrenner's insistent mismanagement.
Steinbrenner, who died on Tuesday at age 80, was a bully and a brat, devoid of humility, class, and civility, born on third base, deluded that he'd hit a triple, and convinced he had to tell the whole world how he'd done it. Famed for his bombast and for making himself bigger than his players and team, tolerated only because he had money and power, this Yankee Doodle Dandy born on the Fourth of July paved the way for America to become a loser by his example.
Just about every bit of praise eulogising Steinbrenner is 180 degrees wrong. The city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, called him "a quintessential New Yorker" despite Steinbrenner hailing from Cleveland (Bloomberg's from Boston, weekends in Bermuda), living in Tampa, and blackmailing New Yorkers with threats to move the Yankees out of town to get a new $1.5bn (£1m) stadium that embodies his penchant for vulgar excess. He was a terrific businessman, a daring capitalist who insisted he needed public handouts for his billion-dollar family company; taxpayers underwrote the bonds for that new Yankee stadium and renovated the previous one, and have been rewarded with ticket prices that top out at $2,500.
Steinbrenner was a laughable figure in the comedy series Seinfeld with nothing funny about him. He was a generous man whose many donations we never heard about – as anyone who follows baseball has heard about constantly for the past 35 years – who was breathtakingly cruel and petty. He was a great sportsman, suspended twice from baseball for breaking the rules and convicted for breaking the law. He was a great Yankee who infuriated and alienated the team's players and fans and insulted the Yankees' traditions and greatest legends.
Days before Steinbrenner, the beloved Yankee Stadium announcer Bob Sheppard died. Yankee fan websites are abuzz with variants on the theme that Steinbrenner had clung to life to wait for Sheppard to announce his arrival in heaven. Believe me, if there is a heaven, George Steinbrenner won't be there.
I covered the Yankees as a wire service reporter during the 1980s at the height – or depth – of Steinbrenner's reign of error. He spent lavishly, as always thanks to lavish team income, to assemble the best team money could buy, but the Yankees didn't win any titles.
With his American football mentality – if he hadn't gotten rich from the family business, he would have become an itinerant assistant coach, wearing out his welcome at high schools across America after a year or two – Steinbrenner couldn't understand that baseball is a marathon, with a season of 162 games, not 16, and that no team can win every day.
Steinbrenner's impatience led to bad choices, and his megalomania forbade him from taking responsibility for them. So he fired managers, general managers and even public relations directors, with comic frequency. He dismissed the Yankees Hall of Famer Yogi Berra 16 games into the 1985 season, breaking an explicit promise that Berra had demanded before accepting the thankless manager's job. Berra, who played on a record 10 Yankee championship teams, refused to associate with the team until Steinbrenner apologised. He did – 14 years later.
Leading baseball's salary explosion, Steinbrenner believed that paying players like supermen would make them play that way. When they failed – and even the best hitters fail more than 60% of the time – Steinbrenner assumed the right to berate and humiliate them. One late afternoon in the Yankee clubhouse in 1988, the captain, Don Mattingly, the quiet centre of team turbulence, launched a spontaneous outburst against Steinbrenner. "All they give you here is money," he said, bemoaning the lack of respect, courtesy and dignity on offer
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
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