Steinbrenner, from a fan

Sometimes, we meet individuals that just define certain characteristics in our lives.  I know a person that exemplified the definition of ‘stupidity’ much more than a video, shot through the unsteady hand of some mid-teen boy, detailing some fanatic idiot’s attempts at feats that defy the laws of physics, can.  I have had the glorious opportunity to meet (and take a class from!) a professor who either was the source of inspiration for Rowling’s Umbridge or whose highest desire in life was to imitate her, right down to the act of inflicting physical abuse on her students*.

*Alright, I’m showing my age here.  But as we would say, whatever.

    When I meet those with such vivid personalities such as these, I cannot help but create mental relations between the name of the character and his or her complexion, individuality, psyche, or makeup.  Let me throw out an example. 

    When I switched cities from the vibrant and lovely surroundings of Oak Park, in Illinois, to the dank and dusty slum that was Mesquite, Nevada, I met a few new people.  Unlike the colorful and rich, honest and charismatic individuals I had found in the refined city of the North, I ended up finding a culture of machoism and excessive, and often times, aggressive independence of the Southwest*.  My heart was with Oak Park.  Where there were parks, there was active and alive wood and fragrant grass, along with perfectly manicured baseball fields where a grain of sand was not out of place.  Where there were buildings, their foundation lay on bare stone and they overarched the onlooking streets with grim and stony faces.  Where there was a school, it was an institute of learning on one side, a cross-roads for the gathering of personalities on other sides, and a monument to school spirit and history on the football field and basketball court. 
   
    But in Nevada, everything was disgusting and attacking.  When you wished to waft in the  scent of running water and tread the grass, you were met with a stagnant pool and dying grass.  The buildings were shacks painted with contrasting hues, with chunks and parts of the wall missing in places.  If there was any progress on one side of the avenue, with chiseled masonry what was pleasing to the eye, there was sure to be a crumbling, peeling Dostoyevsky shade of yellow on the other side.  But alas, this was the contrast between the people, also.

    Where Chicagoans sought to meet you in your passions and goals, aiming to give you what you wanted, Nevadans were ready to tear you down, criticize your differences while ignoring your similarities with them.  I met one of these sort of individuals in a boy named Houston.  Houston embodied Nevada.  He was not the smartest kid in the class, nor was he the most athletic, nor the kindest (definitely not the kindest), nor the most popular.  All he sought to do was to break you down.  That is what he was best at- taking qualities away from you and giving nothing but pain and disappointment in return. 

*One of the formative memories I had of my time in this filth-ridden corner of the world occurred when I made a trip for football up to Dixie High School, in St. George, Utah.  Ultimately, I made many friends from that town, and even from that school, but I rolled my eyes at the first experience.  Everybody in St. George; not just students and parents and faculty and boosters of Dixie, but also of Pineview and Snow Canyon, flew Confederate flags.  It was the motif of that town, and it was disgusting.  You are not in the South, where there are beautiful forests, the trees are actually dark green and do not consist of pasty-colored branches that are two days away from death, two-foot wide pools of water are not considered ‘rivers’, and the opportunity to ski on weekends is not an event that occurs very often.  Also, you fought on the side of the Union during the American Civil War.  That should be more than enough.

    Now that I have lead you on enough of a tangent, let me make my point.  I hated Houston.  I was more than a match for him physically, and it once got to that.  But I hated his smirk, I hated his arrogance, and I hated his tinted glasses.  His name embodied that hate for me.  The next part is stupid- I could, for the life of me, bring myself to root for the Houston Astros, not when they were playing the Mets, nor the Phillies, nor the Fish.  I could not cheer for that team, or even have a sense of forgiveness ever time they beat a division rival.  My hate of a person- their qualities, mannerisms, and their disposition made me hate a name, which made me dislike a city. 

    You might be telling yourself that my emotions were stupid.  They were.  There was no logic behind them.  But look into your own lives, and ask yourself if even at the basest and lowest level, if you have been guilty of this.  Ask yourself if you had a tendency to dislike Ryan Howard from the television show ‘The Office’ even before you properly learned the mannerisms of his character.  I think that it is a common sin, especially for a middle-schooler. 

    Now where does the Boss play into all of this?  He had an aura, akin to (yet different in nature from) the one I had with Houston.  Because I have not had the opportunity (and I doubt many of us have) to meet the man in person, I have to confess that most, if not all, conclusions I make about the man have been reached from secondhand information about his life.  But even if I had met the man once, or once a day for a month, I do not think that I would have been able to extrapolate enough from the experiences to give a reader the general value of the man.

    But from all I have heard and read, I find that George Steinbrenner was, on the whole, a nice person, at least as a friend.  He was a philanthropist who, by most accounts, was gracious and receiving to whomever he hosted.  He treated you as if you were a clean and clear member of the public from whom he had made his riches and fortune (whether from the shipping industry in Cleveland or Yankee Nation or whatever).  I feel that the right word to describe Steinbrenner was this: he was the manager, and you were the customer.

    Which may explain why he was what he was to his employees.  By most, if not all accounts, he was ruthless in his search for perfection and success from those who worked under him.  I think that this is probably the most important facet to understand about his life.  As a manager, he was working for the customer- you.  And through his history, he did all he could possibly do for the customer, especially when it came to his Major League Baseball Club.  He gave meaning, form, shape, and function to the concept of free agency by developing a history of giving the hired arms and bats what ever they wanted.  He made sure that his institution was the pinnacle of whatever business he was in, and he did it in a manner never seen before in a sport.  He held himself accountable to immediately create the premium product on the market, and he did in the only manner that he could do with the constraint (in his mind) of time: through throwing money at whatever he could.
   
    Which explains why he wanted perfection from his employees.  He paid them.  He paid them absurd amounts of money.  He paid them absurd amounts of money out of his pocket, money that he could have kept for his own uses.  He paid them because he wished to uphold his end of the bargain to the customer:  you.
   
    But even men that wish to provide unparalleled experience only go so far.  They keep their personal feelings away from their business; they understand profit and loss and efficiency and proficiency as sets of numbers.  So here was the kicker:  George was his own customer.  George was a Yankee through and through, which is why it pained him when the team only made the playoffs or the championship series or the World Series.  He seemed to look at profit or loss with an utter disregard, and only with the results- to be the transcendent, unrivaled, and unsurpassed.
   
    This is why George loved Reggie. This is why George hated Winfield.  This is why he expected so much from his employees:  he looked at the level to which he held himself, and expected that others hold themselves to the exact same standard.  Which of course, none could do.
   
    George Steinbrenner made the Yankees.  George Steinbrenner was the Yankees.  And in that way, George Steinbrenner became New York.  New York was never the way the same way that it was before Steinbrenner came to to town.  New York, before the resurgence of the Yankees, was a crumbling tower, through which only a small ray of the illuminated glory still shone.  The Miracle Mets had won it all, but the sentiment remains, even today, that their nemesis in the ’69 series was still vastly superior than them.  And before, they had finished only ninth or tenth in their league, and even after, they were nothing glorious.  The Rangers were nothing.  The Knicks were waning.  The Giants were playing, but to no avail. 

    It may have taken him twenty years, but Steinbrenner changed the attitude of that town toward their sports teams.  He took a town that believed in their players and coaches and mascots, and he turned their belief towards something else- a God given Right, not privilege, but Right, to win, at all costs. 

    I started following baseball properly in the late glory years of Atlanta, around the same time the Yankees had marched their juggernaut out of the gates of Yankee Stadium II- around 1997.  To me, even to this day, the aura of the Yankees was not derived from Ruth, or Mantle, or Gehrig.  They were the Steinbrenner Yankees.  They would beat you, and they would want you to know that they beat you with fuel left to spare in the tank. 

    Posnanski wrote about the Big Red Machine.  This was, and still is, much more than any machine.  The Yankees, the Steinbrenner Yankees, have their gears and their cogs and wheels, but they have an untamable, driving spirit directly injected into them by the legacy of their Boss, the Boss. 

    New York did not mold Steinbrenner.  Steinbrenner shaped New York, and he leaves his telltale aura through his one great creation:  His Yankees.