Steinbrenner's Obsession Was Yankee Victories

George M. Steinbrenner died early Tuesday morning, the very heart by which he owned and ruled and loved and, when necessary, bullied his New York Yankees giving out nine days after his 80th birthday.

If there is consolation to be had – he leaves a wife, four children and grandchildren – it is that George Steinbrenner the man spent those eight decades on a single determined path, and that George Steinbrenner the Yankee will spend eternity as a defending World Series champion.

George Steinbrenner reacts after the Yankees win the World Series in 2000.
(Jeff Zelevansky/AP Photo)

He’d raised a family, he’d built ships, he’d bred thoroughbreds and he’d tended to charities. He’d also raised, built, bred and tended to the Yankees, the planet’s most iconic sports franchise, with foresight and rage, with checkbooks and petulance, with humor and vengeance.

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Ultimately, he surely would say, with honor. His own. Whatever that meant to him, wherever that led him, whomever it pleased or trampled or horrified.

And with all men such as Steinbrenner, assuming there might be another like him, it depends on where you stood.

The broken child of a slain Tampa police officer would have a different view than the ravaged soul on the top step of the Yankee Stadium dugout.

So lay the legacy of the man they called The Boss, who tore through 20 managers (counting Billy Martin five times) in his first 23 seasons after becoming part – and foremost – owner of the club in 1973. He bought and paid for seven World Series champions and 11 American League pennant winners, some because of him, a few likely in spite of him, all reflective of him.

[Photos: George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)]

While he often hid his dark and menacing stare behind mirrored aviator sunglasses, he’d watched the Yankees’ 27th championship with tears in his eyes, his son, Hank, revealed in a Champagne-sodden clubhouse in November. He’d been wheelchair bound, in failing health for years, and had ceded operations of the club to his boys, Hank and Hal.

Yet, he’d seen to one final glorious fall.

I spent two seasons in the late 1990s covering Steinbrenner’s Yankees, both leading to World Series championships. Those seasons were spent sitting by the telephone, awaiting his decision to return a call or not, to gripe about manager Joe Torre or GM Brian Cashman or not, to air out his ballclub or not. They were spent chasing his golf cart around Legends Field in Tampa, and chasing his stride at Yankee Stadium from the back door to his waiting car, and chasing his words across time.

His words still stung, feuding then with coach Don Zimmer, branding pitcher Hideki Irabu as a “fat, puss-y toad,” calling for more warriors like outfielder Paul O’Neill, whipping Torre for every three-game losing streak. His voice crackled with assurance. Even then, this was the voice that had indelicately noted that pitcher Ken Clay had “spit the bit,” famously declared Dave Winfield, “Mr. May.” This was the spirit that had given rise to the Bronx Zoo, the days of Reggie and Billy and Yogi (as manager), that gave the what-for to a couple Los Angeles Dodgers fans in a hotel elevator during the 1981 World Series, that infamously hired the shady Howard Spira to dig up dirt on Winfield.

[Video: ‘Boss’ built Yankees into an empire]

Steinbrenner was, first, omnipresent. He had this way of being everywhere and nowhere. But, mostly, in those low-ceiling corridors of the old Yankee Stadium, and in the box hanging just slightly to the left of home plate, and in the manager’s office, and in the minds of Yankee fans, of being everywhere.

A few days after the voice of the Yankees, Bob Sheppard, passed away, so too did the heart of the Yankees. That big, gleaming ballpark in the Bronx will feel a little less sturdy. The game is a little less interesting, even if Steinbrenner had really gone away three years ago, when his ailing health had led to the rise of his sons.

Until Tuesday morning, out of sight was not out of mind. You simply figured he was building the strength to blast Mark Teixeira(notes), or to dismiss the Boston Red Sox, or to fire one more intern.

“George was The Boss, make no mistake,” Yogi Berra said in a midmorning statement. “He built the Yankees into champions, and that’s something nobody can ever deny. He was a very generous, caring, passionate man.”

Then, you could almost see a smile spreading across Yogi’s face. For all the skirmishes, and all the pettiness, and all the posturing, there was no mistaking Steinbrenner’s motivation. He had to win. He had to.

As much as it was in his words and in his payroll and in his deeds, it was in his heart. However misguided, and in his own genius, it was in his heart. And this is what they all knew about George.

“George and I had our differences,” Yogi wrote, “but who didn’t? We became great friends over the last decade and I will miss him very much.”

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