George Steinbrenner

Longtime Yankees owner George Steinbrenner died Tuesday of a heart attack at age 80. (AP)

You probably know that in 1971, George Steinbrenner put in a bid to buy the Cleveland Indians. Steinbrenner grew up in Cleveland and, even more, he was of Cleveland. The city’s charms and flaws, strengths and insecurities, outsized kindness and comical fury, all these gyrated inside Steinbrenner. The Indians were in desperate shape in the early 1970s — there were credible rumors that the team was going to split for New Orleans. This was a chance for Steinbrenner to save his hometown and, even more, become a legend. George Steinbrenner was one of those kids who grew up believing that somehow, some way, he would be great. Here was a chance.

I’ve often wondered how different baseball — no, American sports as a whole — would be if Steinbrenner had been successful in buying the Indians. Imagine baseball history without the Bronx Zoo teams of the late 1970s. Imagine it without the Steinbrenner-Billy Martin tango. Imagine it without King George II spending all that money for the glorification of New York, the Yankees and, sure, yes, George Steinbrenner himself.

Imagine if he had bought the Indians. This alternative-history is not as simple (not even close to as simple) as just swapping the fates of the Indians and Yankees — I feel 100% certain that sort of swap would not have happened. Cleveland is not New York. And New York is not Cleveland. What would have been more likely to happen is that Steinbrenner, frustrated by his city’s limitations (and his own financial limitations) would have flamed out dramatically and probably ended up bitter and burned out, a Cleveland version of Charlie Finley. The Yankees probably would have sailed unsteadily through the next 40 years, not unlike the Los Angeles Dodgers, winning some and losing some, all depending on the motivations of ownership, the quirks of good luck and the direction of the wind.

But Steinbrenner did not buy the Indians. No. He bought the Yankees. He became the wind. And in the end, the line below the title of the Steinbrenner movie would probably go something like this: George Steinbrenner and New York City needed each other.

* * *

We need two obituaries today. Nixon was like that too. We need an obituary to commemorate George Steinbrenner, the exhaustively generous man who would anonymously help those in need, the loyal man who stood by his friends, the competitor who wanted to win as much as the fans did, the sporting king who made the Yankees matter again.

We also need an obituary to commemorate George Steinbrenner, the convicted felon (and convicted liar, in the words of Billy Martin), the relentless self-promoter, the maker and destroyer of managers, the outrageous Seinfeld character.

George Steinbrenner: “Nice to meet you.”

George Costanza: “Well, I wish I could say the same, but I must say, with all due respect, I find it very hard to see the logic behind some of the moves you have made with this fine organization. In the past 20 years you have caused myself, and the city of New York, a good deal of distress, as we have watched you take our beloved Yankees and reduced them to a laughing stock, all for the glorification of your massive ego.

Steinbrenner: “Hire this man!”

We need two obituaries because when you try to sum up the 80 turbulent and triumphant years of George M. Steinbrenner III, you have no choice but to alienate half the people that are reading. You have no choice but to make some people shout, “How could you glorify THAT guy?” and make others scream, “How could you not appreciate him more?” They called him “The Boss” and The Boss did not just spark different emotions in people, he sparked wars. He was not just loved and hated, he was thought to be a giant by millions and a fraud by millions more. In many, those emotions shifted minute by minute, changed year to year.

“If I believed half the things said about me, I wouldn’t go home with myself,” Steinbrenner once said, but the thing is that he DID believe half the things people said about him. He just believed the other half.

* * *

The greatest thing George Steinbrenner did in sports was built on faith: The Boss believed deeply in the power of the New York Yankees. He did not just want the Yankees to win. He did not just expect the Yankees to win. He did not even just NEED the Yankees to win. No, he believed that the Yankees should win, by divine right, by the strength of democracy, by the authority of the free market, by all that is good. He believed that America was only strong, justice was only served, and life was only sweet when the New York Yankees won. “Owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa,” he said, and, more than just saying it, he truly believed it.

Only an outsider could believe in the Yankees that much in 1973. There’s an old line that goes like this: the real New Yorkers are not from New York. Steinbrenner was the truest of New Yorker, and he never really lived there.

The Yankees looked like a shattered brand when Steinbrenner bought the team in January 1973 for $10 million.* Understand, the Yankees had not been in the World Series since 1964. And if this hardly seems like an exile in the desert, well, you have to remember that, since winning their first pennant in 1921, the Yankees had never even gone FOUR consecutive years without a pennant.

*Steinbrenner always — ALWAYS — made the point that the deal included two parking garages he sold back to the city for $1.2 million. It was important, vital even, for people to know that Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for $8.8 million and NOT $10 million.

Yankees fans simply did not know how to lose; it was as foreign to them as French. But by the time Steinbrenner came in with his bid, Yankees fans were learning a bit about the real world. In 1972, for the first time since the end of World War II, the Yankees drew fewer than a million fans. The Mets had outdrawn the Yankees — by a lot — every year since 1964. Yankees Stadium was crumbling. The “Death of the Yankees” story was a popular one in newspapers all across America. In 1973, Steinbrenner’s first year owning the team, the Yankees — led by the haunted Bobby Murcer and the medical student Doc Medich — lost more games than they won.

Only, that’s not at all how Steinbrenner saw them. He had watched the movie Pride of the Yankees more times than he remembered. And these were still the Yankees from the movie, Babe Ruth’s Yankees, Joe DiMaggio’s Yankees, Mickey Mantle’s Yankees, the Bronx Bombers, the Damn Yankees, the team everyone except the jealous loved, the team that made America’s engine go. He would have needed to win anyway because that’s what his father taught him, but the Yankee Way made it more vital. Losing was not an option. America was counting on him.

Steinbrenner was distracted in his early years — being indicted on 14 counts of making illegal contributions (to Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign) and obstructing justice will distract a man — but he had every intention of restoring the Yankees to their rightful throne. He was suspended for a while, but he still fired his president, nudged out his general manager, pushed out his manager, signed Catfish Hunter, tried to overturn commissioner Bowie Kuhn, hired Billy Martin, signed Reggie Jackson.

He was a whirlwind, a force of nature. The papers had a field day, which he either hated or loved (depending on which friend is telling the story). When he was asked if he was worried about getting a heart attack, he sneered: “I will never get a heart attack. I give them.”

Steinbrenner’s background was in football — he had worked under another legendary contradiction, Ohio State’s Woody Hayes — and like a good football coach he expected to win every game. He seemed to think that the only way to get better was to try harder and that losing was not a reflection of talent or luck or the opposing team’s brilliance but was, instead, a character flaw. Losers lose. Winners win. That sort of thing. He bowed to the power of halftime speeches, famous quotes, general’s orders — he would quote them in every interview, hang up signs of them in his office, rely on them when dressing down an employee who dared say “I can’t.”

“To thine own self be true,” he told interviewers, and he was true to whatever his self was feeling at that moment. He hired and fired and rehired and re-fired managers. He spent millions of dollars on players and then raged at them for not living up to the money. He stomped around Yankee Stadium, and people cowered, and the Yankees won big in the late 1970s — back-to-back World Series champs in 1977 and ’78 — and Steinbrenner was the biggest man in the biggest city, exactly what he wanted.

The Yankees and Steinbrenner then went into a long and agonizing lull — from 1982-1994 the Yankees didn’t reach the playoffs even once. It was during this time that Steinbrenner’s aura turned clownish. He raged and roared, threw money around like a Disney World tourist, raged and roared some more. Steinbrenner had long been a character on the edge, but in the 1980s he seemed to become unhinged by his team’s inability to win. In the late 1980s, Steinbrenner paid small-time gambler Howard Spira — he is always and forever “small-time gambler Howard Spira” in the stories, isn’t he? — some money to get some dirt on Yankees star Dave Winfield. The Boss felt Winfield had beaten him in contract negotiations (including a “cost-of-living clause” that made Winfield millions), and Steinbrenner never could tolerate getting beaten by anybody. Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball for a second time.

The story goes that this was the time when — under the cover of Steinbrenner’s suspension — the Yankees rebuilt their farm system, let their own players develop, and built a dominant homegrown team, something Steinbrenner had never showed the patience or interest in doing. When Steinbrenner returned in 1993, he seemed to see the wisdom of it all and managed to contain himself long enough watch a brilliant team emerge, with Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and, of course, Derek Jeter playing the starring roles. Steinbrenner’s money paid for some high-priced extras, and the Yankees re-emerged as the most dominant team in American sports.

And in short order, Steinbrenner invented the $100 million payroll, the $150 million payroll and $200 million payroll to make sure the Yankees stayed there.

* * *

George Steinbrenner spent much of his life talking about his father — and trying to live up to him. Henry Steinbrenner was a hurdles champion in college and a shipping magnate in Cleveland, and he believed in three basic things: (1) The power of hard work; (2) The importance of winning; (3) The inadequacy of his son George. When George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees, his father said it was the first smart thing he had ever done.

“He never took ‘I can’t’ for an answer,” George would say of his father. And, of course, this became the motto the son. There were no excuses for failure. There were no reasons for defeat. There was no place on the team for losers. And George Steinbrenner was judge, jury and executioner when it came to determining losers.

But to the end, as he made clear, George never quite believed he was quite as tough as his father, not quite as smart, quite as successful, quite as forceful, quite as powerful. Yes, he created a baseball empire. He revolutionized sports television. He had been openly opposed to free agency but when it became a reality he thrived in it, paying whatever he needed to pay to get the players his team deserved. He did all that but often said he could not measure up. That kept him going at full force until he got sick at the end.

As a baseball owner, Steinbrenner was both a fan’s dream and a fan’s nightmare — a dream because he was he would invest everything he had to win, a nightmare because he seemed sure that he alone knew how to win. This was just another of the Steinbrenner clashes, just another reason why people always felt SOMETHING about him. Of all the millions and millions of things that people have said about George Steinbrenner, not one said: “I don’t really know how I feel about him.”

Here’s one thing that I think about today: Buck O’Neil, the great Negro Leagues spokesman, would not tolerate anyone insulting George Steinbrenner in his presence. To him, Steinbrenner was a great man who had spent millions to support the Grambling baseball team. To Buck, a lot of people talked about doing the right things. But, Buck said, George Steinbrenner really helped people.

There are countless stories like that, stories of kindness that Steinbrenner simply did not want reported. And there are countless other stories about Steinbrenner’s small cruelties and broken promises and psychological torture. He won and lost. He thrived and failed. He inspired and infuriated. His personality was impossibly big and impossible small. Two obituaries. Even two may not be enough for the sports titan of our time.