Steinbrenner

by Bill Madden

  “You guys make me sick,” he bellowed. “You guys are supposed to be so damned good, and I pay you all this money, and then you go out and perform like that! You’re better than Kansas City, and you better show me something—or else!”

  Instead of firing up his team, however, Steinbrenner’s words had the opposite effect on the players. The veterans, in particular, seethed at the idea that he would question their commitment against a team they’d beaten three times before in the ALCS. “Screw him,” said one after Steinbrenner left the room.

  But it was the events of the next game that set Steinbrenner off in a classic rage.

  With two out in the eighth inning and the Royals leading 3–2, Willie Randolph was on first base when Bob Watson hit a liner into the left-field corner that looked certain to go for an extra base hit to tie the game. Except instead of rolling around on the artificial turf of Royals Stadium, the ball ricocheted off the wall and straight into the glove of Kansas City left fielder Willie Wilson. Randolph was chugging into third when Wilson fielded the ball, but the outfielder overthrew the cutoff man, shortstop U. L. Washington, prompting Yankees third-base coach Mike Ferraro to wave Randolph home. Since they were trailing by a run with only four outs left to them, it was the right call—except that, at the last second, Royals third baseman George Brett had alertly gone behind Washington, essentially acting as a second cutoff man, and caught the ball on the fly. Brett’s throw home beat Randolph by nearly 20 feet. At that moment, the television cameras caught an apoplectic Steinbrenner in the stands, cursing and waving his arms in disgust. As soon as the game ended, he stormed the section where the Yankees’ wives were sitting and screamed at Ferraro’s wife, Mary, “Your fucking husband cost us this game!”

  The Royals completed a three-game sweep of the series when the teams returned to New York the next night, and in the days immediately following, Steinbrenner was uncharacteristically silent in the press, leading to speculation that he was contemplating firing Howser. Or somebody. Soon after the end of the series, news leaked that the Yankees were about to hire Don Zimmer to be their new third-base coach. Zimmer was the former manager of the Red Sox, who’d lost the ’78 playoff game to the Yankees, and a St. Petersburg resident who hobnobbed with Steinbrenner at the Tampa racetracks. Reached for comment by reporters at his home in Tallahassee, Howser said, “I would think I should be given the courtesy of approving or disapproving the coaches that are added to the ball club. I have to work with these guys every day, and I should be able to say who’s going to coach and who’s not going to coach.”

  After reading these remarks, Steinbrenner called Michael and informed him he was going to fire Howser.

  “I’m making you the manager,” he said firmly to Michael. “I want you and Howser in Tampa tomorrow. We’ll settle everything up then.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this, George?” Michael pleaded. “I told you I don’t want to manage.”

  “Either you manage or I’m gonna pick the next one myself. I’m not gonna have another mess like this with this little wiseass.”

  Michael reluctantly agreed to take the job himself. At a meeting the next day at the Bay Harbor Hotel, in Tampa, Steinbrenner told Howser of the change. Both he and Michael were somewhat surprised at Howser’s reaction.

  “There was none,” Michael remembered. “Dick had no problem with it. He didn’t argue, nothing. I had the feeling Dick just felt whatever George wanted was OK with him. He was worn out.”

  Howser did ask for one thing in return for leaving without a fuss, and that was a small loan from Steinbrenner for a new house he was planning to buy. Steinbrenner agreed; in fact, at the press conference in New York the next day, he would tell reporters that Howser was leaving to pursue a lucrative real estate deal in Florida. After their meeting at the Bay Harbor concluded, Steinbrenner went home and Michael and Howser retired to the hotel bar. About 45 minutes later, the bartender informed Michael that Steinbrenner was on the phone. While driving home, Steinbrenner had once again had second thoughts about firing his manager and stopped at a pay phone.

  “Stick, this just isn’t right,” Steinbrenner said. “It’s just not coming off right. Go back and see if Dick can just have a little more discipline on the team and get on the umpires’ asses a little more. If he’ll just do those two things, he can come back.”

  “Really?” Michael said, elatedly. “We can keep him?”

  Michael hung up the phone and went back to Howser, telling him about Steinbrenner’s change of heart. “If you’ll just go out of the dugout once in a while . . . c’mon, Dick, you can do that! I want you as my manager!”

  Howser listened and then replied softly, “No, Stick. I think I like it the way it is. I’ll be honest: my stomach was churning all year long.”

  Steinbrenner knew the firing of Howser would not be popular with the fans or the media, which is why he concocted the story about the “lucrative real estate deal” to help sell it. In addition, he told his public relations director, Larry Wahl, that the press conference to announce Howser’s departure would be held in his office at Yankee Stadium, and that only the beat writers from local newspapers and selected columnists should be invited. Wahl told him that such an exclusive press conference would generate even more bad publicity, but Steinbrenner was adamant, and even went so far as to turn away reporters who showed up but were not on the list.

  The press conference, in which there were bite-size roast beef, turkey and ham sandwiches—along with a healthy serving of baloney—was a complete farce. Howser sat stiffly in a chair half-facing the window that looked out on the field, while Steinbrenner sat behind his big round desk at the other end of the room. He wanted Howser to stay, he told the 14 reporters present, “but Dick felt he just couldn’t pass up this real estate deal.”

  Silence.

  “Nobody wants a sandwich? A drink?”

  No one responded. Steinbrenner continued. “The door was open for Dick to return, but he chose to accept this business opportunity.”

  A reporter asked, “But could Dick still be the manager if he wanted to be?”

  “Yes,” said Steinbrenner.

  “Well, why don’t you want to be, Dick?” the reporter persisted.

  “I have to be careful here,” Howser said. “That’s hard to say.”

  “Were you fired, Dick?”

  “I’m not going to comment on that.”

  Steinbrenner broke in: “I didn’t fire the man!”

  Finally, a reporter asked Howser: “Dick, do you have any advice for Stick as the new manager?”

  “Yeah,” Howser said, “have a strong stomach and get a good contract.”

  The unconvinced reporters then filed out of Steinbrenner’s office, leaving the Yankees owner looking forlornly at the bartender.

  “Nobody ate any sandwiches,” Steinbrenner said glumly.

  Steinbrenner would not see or talk to Howser again until the following February, at the New York baseball writers’ 59th annual dinner, where Steinbrenner, Howser and Martin were all in attendance. Howser had won their “Good Guy” award, and the writers had arranged for Martin to fly in and present it to his successor and loyal former lieutenant. When Steinbrenner heard about this part of the program, he asked if he could give out his own award.

  After presenting Howser with his award, Martin said he would also like to give Steinbrenner a “Nice Man” award. “George is such a nice man,” he said, “and I never appreciated him while I was working for him. I only realized that after he fired me.” He then handed Steinbrenner, who was sitting next to him on the dais, an oversized gavel. In accepting his award, Steinbrenner noted that neither he nor Martin had ever won the “Good Guy” award from the writers. “I therefore feel it’s only right to present Billy with not one, but two awards,” he said, pulling out from beneath the dais a pair of oversized boxing gloves and a gigantic marshmallow on which he’d inscribed: “Roses are red, violets are blue, when I eat these I think of you.”

  Su
rprisingly, Dick Howser did not stay long in the real estate business. On August 31 of the following year, he was hired as manager of the Kansas City Royals, with whom he would win three division titles over the next five seasons and the World Series in 1985. But in July 1986, after managing the American League team in the All-Star Game, Howser was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. He died 11 months later, on June 17, 1987, at age 51. After a memorial service in Kansas City, Howser’s body was flown to Tallahassee for burial. As his widow, Nancy, got off the plane in Tallahassee, the first person to greet her was George Steinbrenner.

  IN DECEMBER 1980, Steinbrenner invited a group of sportswriters to a soiree at Tampa Bay Downs racetrack, in Oldsmar, Florida. He had purchased a 50 percent share of the run-down, 54-year-old track the previous March and immediately spent $3 million renovating it. Steinbrenner’s passion for Thoroughbred horse racing predated his purchase of the Yankees. Since 1969, he had bred horses at his 860-acre farm in Ocala, Florida. Over the years, Steinbrenner’s Kinsman Stable would produce more than 35 stakes champions, including 2005 Wood Memorial winner Bellamy Road, and Steve’s Friend, winner of the 1977 Hollywood Derby and the fifth-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby that year. With the purchase of Tampa Bay Downs, Steinbrenner now had his own track at which to showcase his horses.

  Sitting around the patio of the VIP lounge at Tampa Bay Downs that December afternoon, Steinbrenner was in a buoyant mood. “Horses are great,” he told the assembled sportswriters. “They never complain, and they can’t talk to sportswriters and tell them what a bum the owner is.” Maybe the horses couldn’t, but the employees at the track were more than capable. On opening day at the track, where the entertainment included a marching band, a fashion show, and skydivers dropping out of planes, Steinbrenner fired the general manager, Ed McKinsey, whom he had just hired away from Hialeah Park Race Track the previous May. A problem with the printing presses had caused a delay in getting the programs to the track, where they didn’t arrive until the second race. McKinsey told Sports Illustrated that he took full blame for the printing press snafu, and that, in a meeting afterward, he and Steinbrenner had almost come to blows. “He said, ‘If you were a little bigger I’d punch you out,’ ” McKinsey related. “I said, ‘You don’t have the heart to punch me out,’ and he gave me a check for $19,000 and said, ‘This is the least I can do.’ I had given my blood to the man and he tried to dehumanize me. If it wasn’t the printing press problem, it would have always been something else.”

  In 1983, the co-owner of the track, Chester Howell Ferguson, passed away and left his interest to his daughter, Stella Thayer, who turned out to be as headstrong in business matters as was Steinbrenner, with whom she clashed from the start. When Thayer refused to sign off on a multi-stakes deal Steinbrenner put together in 1986 with the financial backing of his friend Lee Iacocca, the CEO of Chrysler, they tried to buy each other out, finally agreeing to hold an auction between them to decide who would continue to own the track. Because Steinbrenner had invested his family’s money in the track, they all had a stake in how much more it was going to cost to own it all. Thayer, on the other hand, was determined to buy Steinbrenner out no matter the price. The auction was held at the track, and according to those who were present, when the bidding reached $16 million, Steinbrenner turned to his wife and kids and said, “What do you want to do?” The answer was unanimous: “Sell.”

  Steinbrenner continued to frequent Tampa Bay Downs over the next two decades, occasionally watching his own horses race, but only as a patron.

  Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of baseball, was not sorry to see Steinbrenner lose ownership of the racetrack. Since becoming commissioner in 1969, Kuhn had been especially vigilant about gambling in baseball, going so far as to ban Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle from the game for taking jobs as greeters in Atlantic City casinos. Because the Galbreath family, who owned the Pittsburgh Pirates, had long held an interest in Churchill Downs, Kuhn had reluctantly given his okay when Steinbrenner first mentioned purchasing Tampa Bay Downs in 1969. But at the end of 1980, Kuhn vowed to shut the door on any future owner involvements with racetracks—a decision that was tested when Edward DeBartolo, the Youngstown, Ohio, real estate developer who had helped spark Steinbrenner’s pursuit of the Cleveland Indians nine years earlier, attempted to buy the Chicago White Sox from Bill Veeck.

  Kuhn had two objections to DeBartolo: he wasn’t from Chicago, and he owned not one but three racetracks—Thistledown, in Cleveland; Balmoral, near Chicago; and Louisiana Downs, outside Shreveport. When Kuhn publicly expressed his opposition to the sale to DeBartolo, the multimillionaire developer accused him of being anti-Italian. An ugly spat played out in the press, and DeBartolo brought a team of lawyers with him to the winter meetings in Dallas, where the American League was to vote on the sale.

  As the meeting got under way, Edward Bennett Williams, the Baltimore Orioles owner and renowned attorney who had represented Steinbrenner in the Watergate scandal, set the tone.

  “Gentlemen, I’ve spent my life’s work defending scoundrels and reprobates,” he said, pausing for effect, and casting an impish wink at Steinbrenner across the table. “But this guy DeBartolo threatening us if he’s not approved is outrageous. I’m prepared to bring it on.”

  After a few more owners, similarly angered at DeBartolo’s veiled threat to sue them if he wasn’t approved, delivered speeches denouncing him, Steinbrenner got up to speak on behalf of his old Ohio business associate.

  “I’m here to say I’ve known Eddie DeBartolo for a long time and he’s an outstanding citizen and a great American,” Steinbrenner said. “His is a rags-to-riches story that is to be admired by us all. I know of no more honorable man.”

  Steinbrenner then sat down and, when it came time to cast his ballot, voted “nay” with Kuhn’s 11–3 majority.

  Chapter 10

  Passages

  BY THE FALL OF 1980, Steinbrenner was starting to become disenchanted with the 34-year-old Reggie Jackson, whose contract had one year remaining. He had tired of Jackson’s outspokenness, especially his periodic complaints of racism and his conflicts with his teammates and Billy Martin. Reggie’s heroics in the ’77 World Series were now three years past—a lifetime for a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately owner like Steinbrenner—and his failure to drive in a run in the three games against the Kansas City Royals in the 1980 American League Championship Series had taken a little more luster off his Mr. October image.

  Above all, with Thurman Munson gone, Steinbrenner didn’t want Jackson to be the face of the Yankees. He wanted that player to be more refined, more respectful and, on the field, a complete player. He wanted a new

  superstar to lead the Yankees in the ’80s, and with that in mind, he’d been keeping an eye on Dave Winfield since 1979.

  Two weeks after the Kansas City Royals completed their sweep of the Yankees in the 1980 ALCS, Steinbrenner convened a meeting of his baseball operations staff in his office at Yankee Stadium to discuss potential trades and free agent signings for the 1981 season. In particular, Steinbrenner was eager to hear from his chief scout, Birdie Tebbetts, who had spent much of the summer of 1980 on assignment in San Diego watching Winfield, the Padres’ 6-foot-6 right fielder. A four-time All-Star and National League RBI leader in 1979, the 29-year-old Winfield would be the premier player on the free-agent market and, as such, the object of Steinbrenner’s utmost attention.

  Winfield had always been good, signing for a $100,000 bonus with the Padres as the fourth player taken overall in the 1973 amateur draft and going directly to the major leagues without playing a game in the minors. He batted .284 with 154 homers over eight seasons for San Diego; in 1979 he batted .308 with 34 homers and 118 RBI, and became acclaimed as one of the best all-around players in the game. However, the small-market Padres knew they wouldn’t be able to afford him when his contract expired the following year, so they tried to deal him away, but each time negotiations broke down, causing more and more friction between the
m and Winfield’s hard-nosed, abrasive agent, Al Frohman. The son of a rabbi, Frohman was a retired caterer running a leisure apparel business when he first met Winfield in Los Angeles in the early ’70s. Frohman helped arrange some endorsement deals for Winfield, and in return, the player introduced him to wealthy professional athletes who bought apparel from him. In 1977 they created the David M. Winfield Foundation, a tax-exempt charitable organization that provided food, recreation and education programs for disadvantaged and handicapped children in San Diego County.

  “So what do you have, Birdie?” Steinbrenner asked.

  Sitting around the table in his office were Gene “Stick” Michael, Cedric Tallis, Bill Bergesch and scouting director Bobby Hofman.

  “Well, here’s my report, George,” Tebbetts said, pushing a manila envelope across the desk. “You wanted to know what kind of a player Winfield can be for us, and I would have to say he’s got great physical skills unlike any player we’ve had here. He has flaws, like all big-swingers. He can be had, but if he’s to be great, he will adjust. And even if he doesn’t, he’s still going to be an All-Star. He does too many things well. He’s got an above-average arm. He’s an excellent base runner once he gets going. He hustles and he hits with authority. Even though he’s right-handed, I think he’ll hit his share of homers in Yankee Stadium.

  “You asked me to find out everything I could about his personal life, and I couldn’t find anything other than an excessive room service bill he ran up on a Padres road trip in St. Louis. You probably know he’s got a foundation for kids and that he’s big in the community out there.”