Athletes - George Steinbrenner

Home > Listing Index > Athletes > George Steinbrenner

	Athletes - George Steinbrenner

George Michael Steinbrenner III (born July 4, 1930 in Rocky River, Ohio), often known as "The Boss," is the principal owner of the New York Yankees. He used to own an interest in the New Jersey Nets and the New Jersey Devils. His outspokenness and role in driving up player salaries have made him one of baseball's more controversial figures, though his willingness to spend to build the club (and its postseason success since 1976) have earned him grudging respect from some baseball executives.

Background

Steinbrenner grew up in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. He ran track and played football at Culver Military Academy in Indiana and ran track at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1952.

After two years in the United States Air Force, Steinbrenner coached high school basketball and football at Aquinas High School (Columbus, Ohio), semi-pro football (Pope's Inn) under Ohio State University All-American Victor Marino, and attended Ohio State University. On March 1, 1955, he was named an assistant football coach at Northwestern University, but was dismissed along with Wildcat head coach Lou Saban on December 13 of that year, three days after the arrival of new athletic director Stu Holcomb. Saban soon resurfaced at Purdue University and took Steinbrenner along. After marrying Joan Zieg on May 12, 1956, Steinbrenner spent one season with the Boilermakers before joining his father's struggling company, the American Shipbuilding Company, the following year.

In 1960, he bought the Cleveland Pipers of the National Industrial Basketball League. The team joined the American Basketball League the next year, with Steinbrenner making history by hiring John McClendon as the first African-American head coach in professional sports. The team went on to win a championship, then pulled off a public relations coup during the offseason by signing Ohio State All-American Jerry Lucas. The signing led to the National Basketball Association admitting the team as its 10th team on July 10, 1962. However, since he was unable to raise $250,000 and the American Basketball League was threatening to sue the NBA because of the shift, the deal collapsed on July 30.

The Pipers soon went bankrupt, with Steinbrenner returning to the relative anonymity of the American Shipbuilding Company, before eventually buying the company. During much of the next decade, Steinbrenner invested in Broadway plays and later gained a small piece of ownership with an NBA team, the Chicago Bulls.

In 1971, Steinbrenner offered $9 million to buy the Cleveland Indians, but after agreeing in principle with Indians owner Vernon Stouffer, saw the deal fall apart at the last minute. Indians General Manager Gabe Paul had played a major role in brokering the deal, and when the New York Yankees became available the following year, he helped Steinbrenner achieve his dream of owning a baseball club. In gratitude, Steinbrenner offered him the opportunity to direct baseball operations for the Bronx Bombers.

Buying the Yankees

The Yankees had been floundering during their years under CBS ownership, a regime that started in 1965. In 1972, CBS Chairman William S. Paley told team president Michael Burke the media company intended to sell the club. As Burke later told writer Roger Kahn, Paley offered to sell the franchise to Burke if he could find financial backing. Burke ran across Steinbrenner's name, and Paul, a Cleveland-area acquaintance of Steinbrenner, helped bring the two men together.

On January 3, 1973, a group of investors led by Steinbrenner and minority partner Burke bought the Yankees from CBS for $8.7 million ($45.6 Mil. in 2005 dollars). "We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned," said Steinbrenner, according to an article in The New York Times reporting on the sale. "We're not going to pretend we're something we aren't. I'll stick to building ships."

The message was that Burke would continue to run the team as club president. But Burke later became angry when he found out that Paul had been brought in as a senior Yankee executive, crowding his authority, quitting the team presidency on April 29, 1973, but remaining a minority owner of the club into the following decade. It would be the first of many high-profile departures with employees who crossed paths with "The Boss." At the conclusion of the 1973 season, two more prominent names departed: manager Ralph Houk, who resigned and then signed to manage the Detroit Tigers; and general manager Lee MacPhail, who became president of the American League.

The 1973 offseason would prove to be controversial when Steinbrenner and Paul sought to hire former Oakland Athletics manager Dick Williams, who had resigned immediately after leading the team to its second straight World Series title. However, because Williams was still under contract to Oakland, the subsequent legal wrangling prevented the Yankees from hiring him. On the first anniversary of the team's ownership change, the Yankees hired former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Bill Virdon to lead the team on the field.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for George Steinbrenner ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article George Steinbrenner; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Athletes - George Steinbrenner

Background

Buying the Yankees

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay