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| Birth Name(s) : George Steinbrenner |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Public Figure |
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Full George Steinbrenner Biography
George Michael Steinbrenner III (born July 4, 1930 in Rocky River, Ohio), often known as "The Boss", is an American billionaire businessman and the principal owner of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees. George graduated from Culver Military Academy High School then got his B.A. from Williams College. Afterwards he did post graduate study at The Ohio State University (1954-55), where he met his wife, and served as a graduate assistant to legendary Buckeye football coach Woody Hayes.
Steinbrenner is famous for both his pursuit of high-priced free agents and, in some cases, infamous for feuding with them. In his first 23 seasons, he changed managers 20 times (including dismissing Billy Martin on five separate occasions) and general managers 11 times in 30 years. In July 1978, Martin said of Steinbrenner and his $3 million outfielder Reggie Jackson, "One's a born liar and the other's convicted." The comment resulted in Martin's first departure, though technically Martin resigned (tearfully) before Yankees President Al Rosen followed through on Steinbrenner's dictum to release the manager.
During the 1981 World Series, Steinbrenner provided a colorful backdrop to the Yankees' loss of the series. After a Game 3 loss in Los Angeles, Steinbrenner called a press conference in his hotel room, showing off his left hand in a cast and various other injuries that he claimed were earned in a fight with two Dodgers fans in the hotel elevator. Nobody came forward about the fight, leading most to believe that he had made up the story of the fight in order to light a fire under the Yankees. Additionally, after the series, Steinbrenner publicly apologized to Yankee fans for the team's defeat.
After the 1980 season, Steinbrenner made headlines by signing Dave Winfield to a 10-year, $23 million contract, making Winfield baseball's highest-paid player. Steinbrenner later derisively referred to Winfield as "Mr. May" to local media, criticizing his failure to produce in the postseason as did Reggie Jackson, who was nicknamed "Mr. October."
Steinbrenner was reinstated in 1993, the same time the Yankees regained momentum as a quality sports franchise — helped by Steinbrenner's willingness to delegate authority to executives such as Gene Michael, and to let promising farm-system players such as Bernie Williams develop instead of trading them for established players. Steinbrenner's having "got religion" (in the words of New York Daily News reporter Bill Madden) paid off. After contending briefly two years earlier, the '93 Yankees were in the American League East race with the eventual champion Toronto Blue Jays until September.
Despite Steinbrenner's controversial status (or perhaps, because of it) he does appear to poke fun at himself in the media. He hosted Saturday Night Live on October 20, 1990 at the same time his former outfielder and Yankee manager, Lou Piniella, led the Cincinnati Reds to a World Championship. In the opening sketch, he dreamt of a Yankees team managed, coached, and entirely played by himself. In other sketches, "he" chews out the SNL "writing staff" (notably including Al Franken) for featuring him in a mock Slim Fast commercial with pariahs such as Saddam Hussein, and plays a folksy convenience store manager whose business ethic is comically divergent from that of Steinbrenner.
In The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat", Mr. Burns fires Don Mattingly for refusing to shave sideburns only Burns could see. This was a parody of an argument Steinbrenner and Mattingly had in real life with regards to Mattingly's hair length. As Mattingly walks off the baseball field, he states, "I still like him (Burns) better than Steinbrenner."
Steinbrenner appeared as a character in the situation comedy Seinfeld, when George Costanza worked with the Yankees for several seasons. Larry David voiced the character, who talked nonstop, regardless of whether anyone was listening, and sometimes referred to himself as "Big Stein." The character's face was never seen, and the character was always viewed from the back in scenes set in his office at Yankee Stadium. The Steinbrenner character was known for bad decisions, such as cooking jerseys, threatening to move the team to New Jersey "just to upset people", scalping his owner's box tickets, wearing Lou Gehrig's uniform pants (and panicking about his nerve problems in the leg) and trading several players, much to Frank Costanza's dismay. At one point George describes Steinbrenner by saying, "No one knows what this guy's capable of; he fires people like it's a bodily function!" Nevertheless, Steinbrenner maintains that he is a fan of the show and that "Costanza is always welcome back." In one episode ("The Wink"), the Steinbrenner character mentions all of the people he fired and mentions then-current manager Buck Showalter, quickly becoming quiet afterwards. Though intended as a joke, the comment proved prophetic: just weeks after the episode aired, Steinbrenner did not bring back Showalter as Yankees manager and replaced him with Joe Torre. |
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