How George Steinbrenner ran himself out of Major League Baseball

The Boss.

When I was growing up in Connecticut, George Steinbrenner was a colossal figure.

He was the face — for better and worse — of my favorite team: The New York Yankees. The Boss was a larger-than-life figure. He owned the most famous sports team in the country. He was mercurial. He was unpredictable. He was irresistible.

Steinbrenner had bought the Yankees for a paltry $10.3 million in 1973. (He was part of a 12-person team that purchased the team; his initial contribution was just $168,000!)

Within a year of buying the team, Steinbrenner was in trouble. He pled guilty in 1974 to making illegal donations to Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign. Steinbrenner paid a $15,000 fine and was banned from baseball until 1976.

Steinbrenner was eventually pardoned of that crime by President Ronald Reagan, one of the last official acts by Reagan before leaving office in 1989.

We later learned that Steinbrenner had aided the FBI on two matters in the months leading up to his pardon. As the Associated Press reported in 2011:

The [FBI] memo disclosed Monday described one probe in which Steinbrenner assisted in "an undercover operation" that ultimately led to an arrest, prosecution and conviction. The FBI described the other investigation simply as "a sensitive security matter." The FBI deleted all specifics about the probes before releasing the bureau's file on Steinbrenner, who died last year.

A separate FBI document identifies the cases as "two national security matters" and says Steinbrenner assisted the bureau from 1978 to 1983.

A 1987 letter by Steinbrenner's lawyers about his assistance to the FBI says that the Yankees owner "knows that he placed the lives of his family and himself in jeopardy through being involved in a terrorist matter."

Which, CRAZY!

But, while Reagan pardoned Steinbrenner for the illegal Nixon contributions, the Boss couldn’t stay out of trouble.

And much of it had to do with star outfielder Dave Winfield. Winfield had signed a massive 10-year deal with the Yankees in 1980. And even though Winfield performed at an All-Star level for much of the deal, Steinbrenner was never happy with him.

“I let Mr. October get away, and I got Mr. May, Dave Winfield,” Steinbrenner said at one point, referring to Reggie Jackson. “He gets his numbers when it doesn't count.”

In 1985, Steinbrenner let loose with this quote: “Winfield is a loser. The Yankees are losers. We’ll finish third with him, we’ll finish third without him.”

Why did Steinbrenner hate Winfield? The outfielder and his agent had slipped a cost of living increase into his contract that raised its value from $15 million to $23 million!

In that same contract, there was a clause that Steinbrenner would contribute to Winfield’s charity. Instead Steinbrenner sued the charity — alleging misappropriation of funds. Winfield countersued, alleging that Steinbrenner had refused to make the promised donations.

Then Steinbrenner went truly rogue. He paid a known gambler named Howard Spira, who was loosely affiliated with Winfield’s charity, $40,000 to find negative information on the outfielder to be used in a public relations campaign to tarnish him.

The payment went public and MLB Commissioner Faye Vincent moved in to suspend Steinbrenner.

“Spira really set up George to be in trouble with baseball,” Vincent said many years later. “It was a pretty sordid and unattractive story of George trying to destroy Dave Winfield. It was not Steinbrenner at his best.”

Vincent was planning to suspend Steinbrenner for two years. But Steinbrenner was worried how that might impact his role on the United States Olympic Committee where he was then vice president.

So, instead, Steinbrenner agreed to permanently step away from baseball — an agreement inked in July 1990.

As the New York Times wrote at the time:

Although neither Steinbrenner's associate nor his public-relations spokesman discussed the meaning of suspension to the owner, Steinbrenner appeared to want desperately to avoid being penalized with a literal suspension a second time. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended Steinbrenner for two years in 1974 after Steinbrenner pleaded guilty in a case involving illegal campaign contributions.

''There was something about the earlier suspension,'' a lawyer close to the case said. ''He must recall something about that which I don't fully comprehend.'' Tie to U.S.O.C.? Another person familiar with the developments suggested that by avoiding the label of ''suspended,'' Steinbrenner would more easily be able to retain his coveted position of vice president of the United States Olympic Committee.

The Steinbrenner associate said that by accepting the penalty he did, Steinbrenner guaranteed that his son Hank would be permitted to replace him as general partner. But the major league source said that nothing in the suspension would have precluded the 33-year-old son from taking charge of the Yankees' operation.

Vincent let him back into baseball in March 1993 — so much for the lifetime ban! — but within a few years, Steinbrenner was in trouble again.

On this day in 1997, he was banned from baseball’s executive council after he had sued all of the other major league teams for alleged monopolistic business practices after the league balked when the Yankees and adidas signed a marketing and promotion deal worth upwards of $90 million.

As the Washington Post wrote at the time:

While baseball lawyers concluded there was nothing specific in the deal that violated the sport's national licensing agreements, they asked the Yankees and adidas to clear all joint projects in advance.

After baseball ordered the team to stop selling T-shirts with adidas logos at Yankee Stadium and told the Yankees to stop outfitting their grounds crew in adidas gear, the team and the sportswear company sued in federal court in Tampa.

Steinbrenner ultimately relinquished control of the Yankees to his sons in 2008. He died of a heart attack two years later. His obituary in the New York Times is a masterpiece — this passage in particular:

Even in his earliest days running the Yankees, Mr. Steinbrenner acknowledged that he seemed to rule through fear. “Some guys can lead through real, genuine respect,” he told Cleveland magazine in 1974, “ but I’m not that kind of a leader.”

Know thyself.