Considering the poor health of George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, it comes as no shock that he died of a heart attack earlier this morning. Mr. Steinbrenner will be remembered as one of the most controversial and passionate owners in the history of sports. He took a crumbling empire that CBS cared little about and restored it to prominence. All of this is easy to learn about simply by looking up any biography. What is harder to find is the personal stories that seem to be spilling in from sportscasters and journalists across the country.
As a high school student growing up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium its impossible to not know someone that wasn’t touched by the team or its owner. A classic story that made the rounds during lunch period was that of a kid who defaced the wall at Yankee Stadium. Obviously he was caught. However, this is where the story took a different turn. George Steinbrenner contacted the police demanding to know who had done it. He met with the kid personally, wanting to know why he had defaced a symbol of his own community. The kid’s response was “Because I’ve got nothing else to do.” George’s response was swift. He threw him a shirt and said, “Well now you’ve got a job.” Needless to say that kid’s first job was to clean the graffiti off of the stadium walls.
Where most men of power wouldn’t have cared or prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, George Steinbrenner showed compassion to the fans and the community around his franchise. He understood the state of the South Bronx and gave back as often as he could. While we don’t know what the future of the Yankees will hold, all we can do is hope that the same passion and stubbornness held by its deceased owner carries on to the next generation.
R.I.P. George Steinbrenner (1930 – 2010)