Steinbrenner

by Bill Madden

  “Yeah,” said Lawn.

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Fuck him,” said Lawn.

  News of Vincent’s behavior touched off a swirl of outrage within baseball and in the media. New York Post columnist Mark Kriegel wrote, “More and more Steinbrenner and Vincent look like the same guy consumed with power. As Gene Michael found out yesterday, Francis T. Vincent could bully as well as the Boss.”

  “This is simply another example of how the Yankees are susceptible to being pushed around these days by the power factions in baseball,” Yankees limited partner Marvin Goldklang said to me after learning of the meeting. “I’ve got to believe this situation might have been handled differently if George were still running the team.”

  Reinsdorf, expressing what was now becoming a popular sentiment among the owners, told me, “I don’t know why Vincent didn’t just rescind the Bill of Rights while he was at it.”

  In a phone call to Steinbrenner right after hearing about the meeting from Michael and Lawn, Costello chortled, “Vincent has finally cooked his goose, George. This is going to get him out as commissioner and you back in.”

  “Let’s just see how it plays out,” said Steinbrenner.

  As soon as the Players Association was informed of Vincent’s threat to toss the three men out of baseball, it announced its intentions of filing an unfair-labor-practices suit, this time charging the commissioner with witness tampering. On July 3, Nicolau sternly warned Vincent not to take any disciplinary action against Lawn, Michael and Showalter. And on July 6,

  Vincent managed to alienate a whole new faction of owners when he

  attempted to force realignment of the National League by shifting four

  franchises, including the Chicago Cubs, to different divisions. On July 7, the Cubs sued the commissioner, seeking a preliminary injunction barring Vincent from enforcing his decision.

  With the walls now closing in, Vincent, aware that the executive council was preparing to act on Steinbrenner’s petition, called Arnold Burns to a meeting on July 23 at which he was ready to issue a reprieve for the Yankees owner. The next day, deputy commissioner Greenberg called Burns to inform him that Steinbrenner would be allowed to resume active control of the Yankees on March 1, 1993. “I know George would’ve preferred to come back right now,” Greenberg said, “but the year and a half of litigation probably had an effect on Fay’s ruling. Had it not been for the litigation, he probably could’ve come back in August.”

  Burns was elated. He immediately called in Randy Levine to tell him their mission had been accomplished. Now they had to find Steinbrenner, who was in Barcelona at the Summer Olympics, to give him the good news. It was almost midnight in Spain when Levine reached Steinbrenner in his room.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Steinbrenner growled.

  “Boss, I got great news!” Levine said. “We got you back! Vincent’s agreed to let you resume control of the Yankees next March 1.”

  After a strange moment of silence, Steinbrenner replied: “It should’ve been February 1st!” before hanging up, leaving Levine flabbergasted. The next day, however, an ebullient Steinbrenner called back, expressing his gratitude to Levine and Burns for their work.

  “From now on,” he said, “I want you guys with me.”

  But if Vincent’s decision to reinstate Steinbrenner was an effort to stop the bleeding, it was too late. The owners had become more and more united in their resolve against him and made that known in an 18–9 vote of no confidence at a meeting at the Chicago O’Hare Hilton on September 3. At first, Vincent refused to resign, “until the highest court in the land tells me otherwise,” as he wrote in a letter to the owners. But five days later, acknowledging the futility of a fight to stay in office, Vincent did just that.

  Not long after, Steinbrenner received a package in the mail at his office in Tampa. In it was a framed montage of four different New York tabloid back pages chronicling his saga with Vincent:

  July 21, 1990: Baseball Commish to George: Yer Out

  June 18, 1992: He’s Outta Here!—Vincent Bans Michael’s Attorney

  Sept. 1, 1992: Owners to Fay: Get Out!

  Sept. 8, 1992: He’s Out! Baseball Commish Fay Vincent Walks

  Underneath them was inscribed: “He who laughs last, laughs best—Bob Costello.”

  WITH FAY VINCENT no longer around, it was no surprise that Steinbrenner’s fingerprints showed up all over the Yankees’ high-profile signing of free-agent third baseman Wade Boggs in December 1992. Boggs, a Tampa native, had been a five-time batting champion with the Boston Red Sox, but now, at 34, he was coming off his worst season (in which he hit just .259) and was considered an average defender at third. As a result, he had received very little interest from other clubs, and a meeting was set up between his agent, Alan Nero, and Joe Molloy at the Bay Harbor Hotel. As he negotiated with Molloy, Nero could not help but notice Steinbrenner sitting at another table across the dining room. He was sure that the table where he and Molloy were sitting was somehow bugged.

  News of the Yankees’ interest in Boggs began to leak, along with word that Gene Michael and Buck Showalter had privately voiced their objections to signing him. Molloy sought to quell the speculation that Steinbrenner had been behind it.

  “Absolutely not!” Molloy said indignantly to reporters after the signing was announced. “My father-in-law would not jeopardize his coming back March 1. He’s waited too long to do something like that.”

  I happened to know different, however. I’d been sitting with Steinbrenner across the dining room conducting an interview about his imminent return to baseball, still three months away. Glancing over at Boggs, Steinbrenner said to me, “I like getting guys coming off a bad year. They have something to prove. Besides, Wade Boggs is a guy people might come out to see. We haven’t had any guys like that lately.”

  Sure enough, no sooner had Nero tossed his briefcase on the bed of his hotel room after the meeting with Molloy than the phone rang.

  “Alan?” said the voice on the other end. “This is George.”

  “George who?” Nero replied mischievously.

  “Steinbrenner, you idiot!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, George. What can I do for you?”

  “I just want to tell you: Be patient,” Steinbrenner said. “You’ll get what you want.”

  “How opportune is this?” Nero thought. Here was Steinbrenner undercutting his own son-in-law. Sure enough, when Nero went back downstairs to resume negotiations, Molloy informed him the Yankees were prepared to give Boggs a three-year deal for $11 million.

  Michael and Showalter had been concerned that Boggs, as a member of the hated Red Sox and Mattingly’s principal rival for the batting title from 1985 to ’88, would create chemistry problems within the Yankee clubhouse. As it turned out, however, he would play an integral role in the team’s improvement over the next four years, earning All-Star status in each of them.

  Even more important in that regard, however, was the trade Michael had made a month earlier with the Cincinnati Reds, in which he acquired Paul O’Neill, a 29-year-old left-handed-hitting right fielder, for Roberto Kelly, a 25-year-old Panamanian center fielder who had been an All-Star in 1990. At the time, the trade was roundly criticized. Kelly, a product of the Yankees farm system, was regarded as their best all-around player, while O’Neill was coming off a season in which he hit a career-low .246. But Michael believed that the right-handed-hitting Kelly was never going to develop into the kind of 25-homer-per-year power hitter the Yankees had envisioned, while O’Neill, he felt, would thrive in Yankee Stadium, with its inviting right-field fence. Michael would be proved right on both counts, and the deal would go down as one of the best in Yankees history. Michael’s other major acquisition that off-season was the signing of 31-year-old free agent left-hander Jimmy Key (who’d won 116 games for the Toronto Blue Jays from 1984 to ’92) at the December winter meetings in Louisville. Michael only signed Key after his first-choice pitcher on th
e free agent market, Greg Maddux, spurned him—or, more precisely, New York—to sign with the Atlanta Braves for $8 million less than the Yankees’ offer. Just the same, Key proved to be as important an addition to the vastly improved Yankees roster as O’Neill.

  As my interview with Steinbrenner that day in Tampa shifted from the impending Boggs signing to the state of baseball in his absence, he groused about the Toronto Blue Jays, who had just won the first of back-to-back world championships. The architect of those Blue Jays teams was Pat Gillick, Gabe Paul’s former assistant Yankees GM. In another touch of bitter irony, one of Gillick’s key acquisitions that year had been none other than Dave Winfield, who, after being signed as a free agent, batted .290 with 26 homers and 108 RBI at the age of 41. Winfield’s final act for the Blue Jays in 1992 was to double home the winning runs of the World Series in the 11th inning of game six against the Atlanta Braves.

  “You know, I keep hearing so much about how the Blue Jays did it the ‘right’ way,” Steinbrenner said to me. “Now, Pat Gillick is a sound baseball man. We trained him. But when I keep hearing and reading how he did it the ‘right’ way, I have to laugh. What was Winfield? A free agent! What was Jack Morris [the Blue Jays’ pitching ace who led the American League with 21 wins in ’92]? A free agent! And old free agents at that! And they had the highest payroll in baseball! So how come when I was doing it with free agents and had the highest payroll in baseball, they said I wasn’t doing it the ‘right’ way?”

  “Just the same, George,” I countered, “in your absence, Stick and your baseball people have started to put together a pretty decent farm system with some legitimate prospects you might want to think twice about trading away in your urgency to win right away.”

  In particular, I cited center fielder Bernie Williams, who had hit .308 and led the International League in triples in ’92.

  “I know, I know,” Steinbrenner said. “I’m looking forward to seeing all those kids next spring.”

  “You must really be looking forward to March 1,” I said.

  “It’s going to be a happening,” Steinbrenner said. “You know, there are times when I would rather be owner of the New York Yankees than president of the United States.”

  I left Tampa that day thinking he had hardly mellowed in his 27 months of exile. If anything, he seemed more determined than ever to resume being the owner with the loudest roar and the biggest clout in the game. Jack Lawn remembered how, a month or so later, Steinbrenner called him from Tampa to ask his advice about a request he’d gotten from Sports Illustrated.

  “They’re doing a big story on my return,” Steinbrenner said, “and they want to put me on the cover, sitting on a horse, dressed like Napoleon. What do you think, Jack? Should I do it?”

  “I think, George,” Lawn replied, “you need to come back humble. Otherwise you’re gonna piss off a lot of people again.”

  “You’re the only one who said that!” Steinbrenner sniffed.

  Steinbrenner did the shoot, and in the story, written by Jill Lieber, Jerry Reinsdorf is quoted as saying, “This is the most ballyhooed return since the Resurrection. Originally, I thought it was going to be a coronation in New York, but this is too massive. It’s a resurrection. Vincent nailed him to the cross. This is the biggest thing to happen in 2,000 years!”

  March 1 dawned sunny and seasonably warm at the Yankees’ spring training complex in Fort Lauderdale. Yankees public relations director Jeff Idelson, who’d been preparing for weeks for the big event, distributed buttons inscribed with THE BOSS IS BACK to some 240 newspaper, TV and radio reporters. Originally, Idelson had planned a more circus-like atmosphere with skydivers, trained dogs jumping through hoops and a helicopter carrying a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, but had toned down the program after terrorists bombed the World Trade Center three days earlier, killing 6 people and wounding 1,042 others.

  At 10:30 A.M., the 62-year-old Steinbrenner walked through the front gate of Fort Lauderdale Stadium, unannounced, and it took a few minutes before anyone even recognized him. Once they did, however, the mad stampede of TV cameras and reporters was on, following Steinbrenner as he made the rounds of the stadium during the Yankees’ workout, periodically stopping briefly to kibitz with the writers and ham for the TV cameras.

  Pointing at Showalter, who was standing by the batting cage observing the players taking their swings, Steinbrenner said, “This guy is a young star on the rise!” When asked if he’d changed during his 2½ years of exile, Steinbrenner said, “I’m not backing down on my commitment to winning, but I don’t think you’ll see me back in the swing of things like I used to be. I don’t think my stamp on the ball club will be as heavy as it used to be.”

  A week after his triumphant return, Steinbrenner flew from Fort Lauderdale to Phoenix for his first quarterly owners’ meeting in nearly two years, accompanied by Yankees in-house counsel David Sussman. As they walked into the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton on the first day for the American League session, Sussman couldn’t help but notice Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush (who a few years later would leave baseball for a higher calling) standing by the entrance, his finger over his mouth. As the 14 owners and their attorneys sat down at the long conference table in the middle of the room, Steinbrenner, oblivious to the smirks on the faces of his colleagues, began speaking with Detroit Tigers owner Mike Ilitch. After a few minutes, Steinbrenner noticed that Ilitch kept pointing to his tie. Then, as he glanced around the room, it dawned on him: With the exception of Jackie Autry of the California Angels (the only female owner), everyone was wearing Steinbrenner’s trademark outfit: navy blue blazers, gray slacks, white oxford shirts and identical red-white-and-blue-striped ties.

  Spotting Bush across the room, now convulsing with laughter, Steinbrenner shouted, “You son of a bitch! I know it was you who put them all up to this!”

  “We just wanted to make you feel at home and part of the club again, George,” said Bush. “Welcome back.”

  Chapter 17

  The Buck Stops Here

  AT THE DAWN OF the 1993 baseball season, the spotlight was once again beaming down on the South Bronx. On the field, Gene Michael’s team was significantly better than the one George Steinbrenner had left behind in July 1990. Off the field, Steinbrenner had returned as anything but a humbled and kinder, gentler owner.

  The day before the Yankees returned home from their opening six-game road trip to Cleveland and Chicago, I called Steinbrenner at the Regency Hotel and asked him if I could accompany him on his triumphant return to Yankee Stadium for the Yankees’ home opener against the Kansas City Royals on April 12. I figured it was a long shot, and was pleasantly surprised when he agreed.

  “Meet me at the Regency at 8:30 sharp, and don’t be late,” he said. “You can ride up with me in my car and we’ll talk.”

  I arrived at the Regency, at 61st and Park, at 8:15 A.M., and I immediately recognized Steinbrenner’s Lincoln Town Car with New York plates NYY parked in front, and his driver, John Gleeson, standing next to it. “He just finished breakfast,” Gleeson said. “He’ll be coming right out.”

  A few minutes later, Steinbrenner appeared, garbed in his familiar navy blue blazer and gray slacks, with a blue-and-white polka-dot tie. (It was a year or so later that Steinbrenner began wearing white turtlenecks to hide the wrinkles in his neck.) I followed Steinbrenner into the backseat, where he began fiddling with some slips of paper he’d pulled out of his pocket, finally plucking one that bore the phone number of his friend Howard Cosell, the legendary ABC sportscaster who was terminally ill with cancer. The night before, Cosell’s daughter, Hillary, had told Steinbrenner her father was simply too weak to attend Opening Day. But Steinbrenner wanted to give it one last try. He dialed the car phone.

  “You cannot possibly look out your window, Howard, and not want to go to the ballpark today,” Steinbrenner said. “Okay, okay. I understand, but we’ll be over to see you after the game.”

  Before going to the Stadium, Steinbrenner was sched
uled to make a guest appearance on the Live with Regis and Kathie Lee show with Regis Philbin, another close pal and Opening Day A-lister. During the course of his interview with Philbin, Steinbrenner was asked about baseball’s burgeoning labor dispute and the game’s related financial problems.

  “There’ll always be a $5 seat at Yankee Stadium,” Steinbrenner said.

  “For me?” said Philbin.

  “Especially for you, Regis,” Steinbrenner said. “That’s what I had in mind when I invited you to the game today. I wanted to put you in the bleachers, where you could catch the first homer!”

  Back in the limo to the Stadium, Gleeson pulled up at a red light, where a scalper was standing with a sign that said “I need tickets!”

  Steinbrenner rolled down the window. “Yeah,” he yelled, “you and about eight million other guys!”

  As we neared the Stadium, Steinbrenner glanced out the car window at the huge, decrepit brick warehouse that had stood, seemingly vacant, alongside the exit ramp from the Major Deegan Expressway for all the years he’d owned the team.

  “Look at that,” he grumbled. “A fucking blight. I can’t get this city to tear that damn thing down. All that wasted space. That could be the answer to our parking lot problems. They still owe us $7 million. They could use it to buy that and fix it up. I’ve got to get on them again about this.”

  At the front gate of Yankee Stadium, we were greeted by Jack Lawn, the VP and chief of operations, who, with his close-cropped sandy-gray hair, broad shoulders and dark blue suit with an American flag pin on his lapel, still looked like a high-ranking official in the Bush administration. Now, after nearly three years supervising the Yankees’ business operations in Steinbrenner’s absence, Lawn knew the drill for Opening Day.