We wanna look to the future, we gotta tear down the past. Babe
Ruth was nothing more than a fat old man, with little-girl legs. And here’s
something I just found out recently. He wasn’t really a sultan. Ah, what d’you
make of that? Hey, check this out. (he stands to reveal he’s wearing baseball
pants) Lou Gehrig’s pants. Not a bad fit. (a thought occurs) Hey, you don’t
think that nerve disease of his was contagious, do you? Uh, I better take ‘em
off. I’m too important to this team. (removes the pants to reveal his boxers)
Big Stein can’t be flopping and twitching.

Capturing both sides of the Boss. Too often when a polarizing figure dies, people tend to forget some of the less appealing parts of him.

While I admire his passion and dedication to winning, I can’t respect some of the other actions Steinbrenner was responsible for, highlighted by his trying to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield.

But I can’t help but think about how he grew the Yankees into the billion dollar enterprise it is today and what the franchise’s future would be. There can be no doubt that if he were a young man today who purchased the club, he would return more and more profits into the payroll thanks to his dedication to winning - a scary thought considering how (reportedly) profitable the club is.

But the best thing that happened to the Yankees during his tenure was his suspension.

When I was a teen and a “long-suffering” Yankees fan, I hated him as much as you could hate a stranger. But he learned. Not everyone does, especially after they’ve been a huge success doing things the old way.

The man was a convicted felon and was banned for life until his buddy Selig got him off the hook. I’m not shedding a tear for SiAS.

Two personal (sort of) stories about The Boss, which seem to highlight his many sides:

In 1992 or 1993, when I was 12 or 13, my father took me to Cooperstown for Reggie Jackson’s induction, despite us not being Yankees fans. We stayed in Oneonta, about an hour from Cooperstown, if I recall. Maybe an hour or so prior to attending an Oneonta Yankees game at Damaschke Field the night before the induction ceremony, my father and I were having a catch behind the stadium when a group of well-dressed men walked past us on their way to the stadium. My father recognized Steinbrenner in the group and waved to him. Being 13 and living in New York, I had an idea who Steinbrenner was from the papers. He owned the Yankees, had a short temper and had recently gotten into trouble. I actually thought he might yell at us, based on the image I had of him in my head. Instead, he smiled and waved back. He walked the short distance over to us and shook my hand. He asked a few questions before wishing me luck and continuing on into the ballpark, and generally seemed like a nice, warm guy, not the monster image the media had created.

Of course, there are two sides to every story, and individual. A few years later, in 1999, Bob Watson gave a guest lecture at my college. He had been a GM under Steinbrenner. I think the topic of his lecture was race relations in baseball, but what I remember most was the Q&A session after the lecture when someone asked what it was like working for Steinbrenner. Watson responded with a story about how Steinbrenner would run meetings with 12 team executives and that he was a big proponent of making decisions democratically, based on everyone’s input. He would then inform everyone that they all had a vote, except Steinbrenner himself, who had 13 votes.