Steinbrenner and A Little Perspective

George Steinbrenner passed away at 6:30 this morning. 

He lived 80 years and nine days.  During that time from 1930 through 2010 baseball was played every year.  Guess what?  It will be played for the next 80 years and nine days.

Did he have some influence during his time as the Yankee owner?  Yes.  But lets not deify him as the network machines go into typical overhype.

He was born to wealthy parents in Cleveland.  He did not invent the game.  He did not "save" the Yankees and as famed New York columnist and all around realist, Jimmy Breslin, pointed out, "He did not play firstbase."

All day long, the networks (ESPN, Fox) made the claim that Steinbrenner turned the Yankees around.  Let's look at it.  From 1956 to 1964 the Yankees finished first in nine of 10 seasons.  Then they had eight subpar years from 1964 to 1973 when he was part of a group that bought the Yankees.

They were a middle of the road team for four years then the draft (beginning in 1966) began to show results through the Yankee farm system.  The 1970 Yankees won 93 games.  Steinbrenner had nothing to do with it.  They hovered around the 80 win mark for three seasons with players he inherited and the team broke through in 1976, too early for him to affect the team much.

Here is where he caught his big break, free agency.  Curt Flood and Marvin Miller had a larger influence on the game by pushing free agency through.  It was a break for Steinbrenner, yet he presided over 12 full season of mediocrity before the Yankees started to take advantage of its built in financial advantages, like the largest TV market in the world. 

Steinbrenner was given credit for the $500 million TV deal with MSG Network.  The truth is that any one of us could have closed that deal with that market in our pockets.  It was like having oil discovered in your backyard just at the time car sales boomed.  He was in the right place at the right time.  Still it took him over a decade to find a way to make it payoff.

It is a no brainer to spend your way to championships, if you have a full billion dollars more in revenue to work with than your nearest competitor.

As Jim Bouton, accurately said in his book, Ball Four, "Steinbrenner was born on thirdbase and thought he hit a triple."  He did nothing that any of us couldn't have done, given the same resources.

At least Pete Rose, had to earn his way into a position to become a convicted felon.  Steinbrenner was born with the financial where withall to become a convicted felon by shear inherited wealth.

Let's not pretend that he was larger than life because he did goofy things to get himself ink and camera time in the media capital of the world.  He had his some success in the last 20 years sure, but he did not invent the system.  He was just in a unique position to take advantage of events that he did not control.