George Steinbrenner: the Bridge from Baseball's Past to Future

E of S Nation: Steinbrenner is also the topic of a chapter in Bad Sports, out on July 20th!

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Sports-Owners-Ruining-Games/dp/1416554750/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275851445&sr=8-1

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/dave_zirin/07/13/zirin.steinbrenner/index.html

George Steinbrenner: the Bridge from Baseball's Past to Future
by Dave Zirin
7-13-10

With the death of George Steinbrenner, we will undoubtedly hear endless stories about the imperious nature of the man who called himself The Boss. He was in the words of one writer, "every worker's nightmare, the satanic CEO, a fanatically controlling overlord who borrows his warmed-over rhetoric from Vince Lombardi and his managerial style from Stalin." One of Steinbrenner's favorite lines was, "I don't get heart attacks. I give them."

There was another side to this bombastic man as well: a side that even his detractors acknowledge was always there. When I was 11 years old, the legendary columnist from the New York Daily News and later the Post, Dick Young passed away. Young wore his prejudices on his sleeve, and wrote in a pugnacious style that made you gnash your teeth.

It was announced in the morning paper that the service would be open to the public. I couldn't help but notice that the Manhattan-based funeral home was a mere 10-minute bus ride from my house. Like any normal 12-year-old in New York City, I dressed up in a blue blazer and tie and went to Young's funeral. Everyone from the New York sports scene was present, from St. John's basketball coach Lou Carnesecca to the local sports anchors, perhaps straight from the television stations, the pancake makeup still streaked on their cheeks. I was out of my element. Also for an open service, there were no fans there that I saw, and certainly no unaccompanied minors, both of which made people's stares feel like daggers and the room's soft recessed lighting feel like a spotlight.

As I shuffled my feet, feeling more like a voyeur than a mourner, unsure whether I should make a break for the exit, a meaty hand clamped on my shoulder and started to rub the back of the head. "This guy's here. Now we can get started," he said as he guided me inside. I looked up and it was George Steinbrenner. He then pushed me inside roughly and turned his back to me, resuming his conversation with a big smile and a laugh. Several people then asked me, "Who are you?" I was more than grateful. Steinbrenner was doing what he told sportswriter Ira Berkow he loved most: "Inflicting some joy." As the late sports writer Dick Schaap noted, "that is a rather bizarre phrase: to inflict joy." But that day, upon me, he inflicted a little bit of mercy, if not joy.

It's remarkable how seamlessly this story fits with the Steinbrenner people remember: the kind of guy who would reach out to an awkward kid like some kind of Daddy Warbucks, and then shove him inside. He was a part of that last group of the paternalistic owners, the people who felt like it was their duty in ownership to plow profits back into the team, creating a brand that could change the way a city saw itself.

But before we wax nostalgic, we should remember that Steinbrenner, while being a bridge to the past with his larger than life personality, was also a bridge to the future. This was the kind of man who was the model for owners from coast to coast on how to hold cities hostage for an endless flow of municipal funds. He was the kind of man who demanded costly stadium renovations in the 1970s, when the city was already enduring a fiscal nightmare. He claimed that he needed just $48 million to bring the stadium up to code. It ended up, according to Baseball Statistics, costing $160 million. He periodically threatened to move the Bronx Bombers to New Jersey, Connecticut, and most jarringly, next to Manhattan's West Side highway. He hired a 21-year-old clubhouse gofer with gambling debts by the name of Howie Spira and paid him $40,000 to dig up dirt on Yankees star slugger Dave Winfield.

Steinbrenner justified all his misdeeds by saying, "The reason baseball has its problems is that owners weren't involved 20 years ago. ... I'm an involved owner. I'm like Archie Bunker. I get mad as hell when we blow one." But Archie Bunker never was known as anyone's Boss. He never fired secretaries by the carload. He felt tossed around by a world changing too fast, in his mind, for its own good. George Steinbrenner created that world. Now, we live with the results.

If anyone ever seemed too big for New York, for better and certainly for worse, it was this man. They will say that his death signals the end of an era. But his life signaled the beginning of one.

Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

A classy reunion

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/baseball/red_sox/view.bg?articleid=1078176

A classy reunion
Boundaries gone as Tito greets Torre
By Jeff Horrigan
Thursday, March 6, 2008

FORT MYERS - Terry Francona is looking forward to greeting Joe Torre behind the batting cage at City of Palms Park today and putting his arm around his longtime friend.

The best part about it for the Red Sox [team stats] manager is that he can do it without causing a major controversy in the Northeast. There will be no talk-radio phone lines melting because of the volume of angry callers complaining about consorting with the enemy, no stories making far too much of the gesture, and no taunts from the stands.

With Torre safely removed from the hyper-intensity of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry, Francona said he can embrace the new Los Angeles Dodgers manager and publicly demonstrate just how much he admires him. Francona also will express his empathy for the nonsense Torre was forced to endure throughout his humiliating departure from New York after 12 successful seasons.

“Joe and I actually talked about this, and it just gets so out of whack, the whole (Boston-New York) thing,” Francona said. “I like Joe so much. I’m glad he’s in the National League. I feel I can go put my arm around him (today) and nobody’s going to start yelling.”

Francona has known and admired Torre since he was 8 years old. Back then, his father, Tito, was a teammate of Torre’s with the Milwaukee Brewers.

“My dad said he was kind of a player’s player, and that was good enough for me,” Francona said.

The relationship strengthened during Francona’s playing days and underwent a transformation when he was named Sox manager after the 2003 season. During the next four years, the two found a sympathetic ear in each other as the rivalry heightened to all-consuming levels, particularly among the clubs’ impassioned fans.

“I never went out to the batting cage because I didn’t want to put him in that position,” Francona explained. “People don’t want to see that.”

The on-field memories they shared, however, are unforgettable.

“I don’t think anything affects (Torre),” Francona said. “There are so many good players, and the games end up being so interesting, for the most part, that stuff that happens before and after doesn’t matter.

“The games are so good. That game in 2004 when (Derek) Jeter went (diving) into the stands, it’s hard to find games that good. We could have won, but it’s hard to find games better than that. Then the game at our place (in 2004) and the Bill Mueller walkoff (homer), that’s pretty good baseball.”

Francona said it was difficult to watch from a distance last year as the Yankees pushed Torre away, despite four World Series titles and postseason appearances in each of his 12 years. George Steinbrenner said on Oct. 6 that Torre would not be rehired if the team didn’t make it past the first round of the playoffs, but after the Yankees fell to Cleveland in the AL Division Series, the Boss still made a transparent effort to sign the manager to a one-year contract at a massive pay cut.

Torre, demonstrating that dignity means far more to him than a paycheck, walked away on Oct. 18 and was scooped up by the Dodgers shortly thereafter.

“I just want him to be happy,” Francona said. “I thought of what he’s done for the game, and I felt bad he was living through it and everything was so out there. I felt really bad.”

Francona, 48, emulates Torre in many of the ways he runs his team. However, the Sox skipper said he likely will not be managing when he reaches Torre’s age (67).

“The thing I worry about is losing energy,” Francona said. “I don’t know how well you can do this job without energy and how you feel health-wise because this job wears on you.”

Torre walked: Good for him

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AvjAnVPTCVV0B7dztUTngogRvLYF?slug=ti-torre101807&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Torre walked: Good for him
By Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports
October 18, 2007

CLEVELAND – George Steinbrenner's men in Tampa, his various sons, lawyers and allies, had neither the evidence nor the conviction to expel Joe Torre.

So it was better, perhaps, to insult a 12-year employee in the privacy of a conference room than to risk their fan base, their clubhouse and what little is left of their organizational reputation.

Better, in the end, to announce that Torre refused to remain the highest-paid manager in the game, because they all agreed – "Unanimous," president Randy Levine emphasized – that Torre was absolutely the right man to manage the Yankees next season. But, apparently, only next season, or less.

Better to have Torre walk than to explain why they pushed, when the next manager cannot match Torre's baseball and interpersonal sophistication.

That was no contract offer. That was no negotiation.

That was an invitation to be fired, to be humiliated again, to have Steinbrenner awake one afternoon with eyes for Don Mattingly or Joe Girardi or Tony La Russa, to open a lame-duck season possibly lacking his MVP third baseman, his legendary closer, his All-Star catcher and two-fifths of his starting rotation.

To his credit, Torre returned to the airport and boarded a plane bound for the rest of his life.

He left $5 million in Tampa, along with his Yankees No. 6, along with 25 players and a coaching staff he adored. He left behind the job of his life and vacated his seat at the center of the baseball universe.

Good for him.

Those men in Tampa believe no more in Joe Torre than they do Carl Pavano.

First, they cut his base salary, from $7 million to $5 million. Then they promised him $1 million if the Yankees went to the playoffs, another $1 million if they advanced to the American League championship series, and $1 million more if they went to the World Series, at which point his option for 2009 – worth $8 million – would vest.

"Joe Torre," Levine said, "turned that offer down today."

Well, of course he did.

After 12 consecutive seasons in the playoffs (the 12 seasons before Torre netted one postseason appearance – under seven different managers), he turned that offer down. He turned down a pay cut, an interim standing, the daily temperature readings from Tampa and the opportunity to be fired when Kei Igawa made his rotation out of spring training.

"It's nobody's fault," Levine said. "All of us are in it together."

Except at the end of the day, all of them were still in that conference room, staring at the contract Torre had pushed back across the table.

"We respect his decision," Levine said. "We appreciate everything he's done, but it's now time for the New York Yankees to move forward."

Judging from the offer, they not only respect it, but applaud it.

The Yankees are now seven years without a World Series championship. If, in their opinion, Torre was at fault, they could have saved him the trip to Tampa, acted on Steinbrenner's ALDS ultimatum, and hired the next guy.

Instead, the men who spent the past week working up Torre's performance review rode both sides, covering themselves in case this decision lands in the same heap as their decisions on Pavano, Igawa, Kyle Farnsworth and Roger Clemens.

"All I can tell you," Levine said, "is that the Yankees made the decision based on what's best for the Yankees. … We obviously wanted Joe Torre to come back. That's why we made the offer. We thought it was a fair offer. If we didn't think it was fair, we wouldn't have made it."

Torre was the final arbiter on that, it appears. As a result, Torre becomes something other than a Yankee, and the Yankees likely become more vulnerable at the dawn of a critical offseason.

It appeared the division series loss was the end for Torre, as Steinbrenner had threatened. In Torre's final game, fans chanted his name. Players lined up behind him. Columnists railed against an organization that no longer recognized Torre's touch. Chien-Ming Wang pitched poorly twice, and the Yankees were done, and Torre got a flimsy one-year offer.

That's how it went. Steinbrenner's son, Hal, said the contract's terms were based not on the division series flameout, but the body of Torre's work.

"We spent two long days analyzing this," Hal Steinbrenner said. "It was not about the last month or the last two months. We analyzed a lot of factors."

He listed none of them.

So, Torre is gone for the moment. He said last week that he might think over other managing jobs as they come up, but didn't really want to move anywhere. That leaves … the Mets?

But, not the Yankees.

"With what he's accomplished, I think that he should manage as long as he wants to manage," Cleveland Indians manager Eric Wedge said. "I know there's a business side of it, but from what I understand, for him to look at that [contract] and say no, good for him. You know what? He's earned and deserves to do whatever the hell he wants to do."

He didn't want to go home. It's how it worked out. Yes, good for him.

"I guess I hope that however it came down – and nobody knows but Joe and whoever he was dealing with – I hope Joe is happy," Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. "I think he deserves the respect. And I think you're going to hear people in baseball, every area of baseball, say probably very, very kind, respectful things about Joe. … And they're all deserved. I just hope he's happy."

Tim Brown is a national baseball writer for Yahoo! Sports.