Remembering “The Boss”

I hear a lot of people saying a lot of very kind and wonderful things about George Steinbrenner over the course of the past day.  It reminds me of when I was a kid and a particularly unlikable person died and I asked my dad why everyone was saying good things about this person.  “They always say good shit about you when you croak,” he said.  That has stuck with me my entire life and it feels especially applicable to this situation.

It does seem right to focus on the good that someone has done over the course of his life after they pass, but it hardly seems right to canonize a person that has been a symbol of sports greed and egocentricity for almost 40 years.

To me Steinbrenner will be the guy who tried to bribe a gambler to find out dirt on Dave Winfield.  It was the first thing I every knew about him because the Yankees never won shit until I was 12.  Now don’t get me wrong, Winfield was a son of a bitch too (while playing hoops for Univ. of Minnesota in 1972 he was involved in a baskeball brawl that featured him sucker punching an opponent and subsequently punching him in the face 4 more times) but I guess people won’t talk about that after he passes away.

In my adolescent and adult life, Steinbrenner has always been the guy with the deepest pockets in the league,  running the Yankees similar to Mr. Burns’ power plant team full of ringers.  Over the past decade I’ve said:
“Fuck they signed Mussina!”
“Fuck they signed Giambi!”
“Fuck they traded for A-Rod!”
“Fuck they signed Sheffield!”
“Fuck they traded for Randy Johnson!”
“Fuck they signed Teixeira!”
“Fuck they signed CC!”
“Fuck they signed Burnett!”

I don’t know the man personally, but I do know that I don’t have much to good to say about him.  Hopefully when the dust settles, his legacy will become more clearly defined.