Farewell George

As you know if you have been reading my blog, I am a die-hard Yankees fan. Today is a sad day in the world of Yankees fandom. The controversial Yankees owner George Steinbrenner passed away today at the age of 80. Mr. Steinbrenner had been in ill health for quite a while, so it was not a big surprise that he passed, but it is still devastating loss to both the Yankees and the Steinbrenner family. Mr. Steinbrenner was born on July 4, 1930. He grew up in Cleveland as the son of a shipping tycoon. George tried his hand in numerous adventures and was a successful football and basketball coach before venturing into the world of baseball. He bought the Yankees in 1973 for around 10 million dollars. He was known to have a volatile temper and be over-involved with his team, as Billy Martin could attest to. Martin was hired and fired five different times by Steinbrenner during his tumultuous tenure in the ‘70’s. The two had infamous arguments, but they could not seem to get away from one another. Steinbrenner hired seventeen managers in his first seventeen seasons with the Yankees. His success in the early years lay in landing “Catfish” Hunter and Reggie Jackson who became known as Mr. October. His Yankees won back-to-back World Series in 1977 and 1978, but then, the Yankees World Series winning streak went dormant until 1996. The Yankees won the Series again in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2009. All of those titles mean that the Yankees won the World Series seven times under George Steinbrenner’s ownership. That equals about one World Series every five years. While those statistics are more impressive than any other team in Major League Baseball, they do show that the major argument against Steinbrenner may not hold water. Steinbrenner was often accused of spending too much money and making it impossible for smaller market teams to be able to compete with the Yankees. If you check recent payrolls, which you can here, you’ll discover that the Yankees have the highest payroll by a landslide. However, all of that money does not necessarily translate into winning titles. The Yankees didn’t win a single World Series from 1978 to 1996. That’s a twenty year dry spell. Twenty years that Steinbrenner was pouring money into a franchise and not seeing the results he wanted. As much as people want to criticize Steinbrenner for using his money to dominate the game, it is simply not true. He had twenty years in which he felt that he was basically flushing his money down the toilet. Even recently, he had to stand back and watch the Tampa Bay Rays make it to the World Series in 2008 while his prized Yankees sat at home. The Rays who have the tenth lowest payroll in the MLB managed to surpass his beloved Yankees who come in first in payroll. At the end of the day, Steinbrenner may be overzealous and passionate, but who wouldn’t want that in an owner? What players wouldn’t want to play for a team where the owner was willing to go out every year and get the best players, no matter what the cost? No one I know would protest against that owner. The only people who I know who would protest that owner would be the teams that have to play against his team, and I believe anger drives competition anyway, so if those teams are upset, then it’s good for baseball. So as we look at Mr. Steinbrenner’s legacy, I hope we can put aside the controversy and just focus on his passion. He meant a lot to the game of baseball, and he will be missed.