One of the more subtly depressing stories of the last half-decade of baseball has been Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's fall from relevance. Once one of the most simultaneously respected, derided and feared men in the sport, Steinbrenner's obvious and rapid submitting to the ravages of age delighted not even his biggest detractors. Bill Simmons, one-time Red Sox Nation presidential candidate, wrote in an article after Game Six of the 2004 ALCS that he couldn't wait to see "Steinbrenner's potential reaction to the biggest choke in sports history," but upon revisiting the column in his Now I Can Die in Peace compendium, he admitted that "George's reaction was wildly disappointing, and here's why: Suddenly, he's really, REALLY old." Regardless of your opinion of the man, seeing him operate at anything less than his outrageously, blustery 100% just felt wrong.
Which is why it doesn't feel quite as shocking as it might have five years ago to hear that Steinbrenner passed away yesterday from a heart attack at the age of 80. Conspicuously absent from most of the big moments in recent Yankees history, even at the 2009 World Series parade, and long since succeeded in power and position by son Hank in the Yanks' front office, the man already felt like something of a ghost to baseball followers. Still, the man was a titan of the sport, and the finality of his demise is an unmistakable bummer.
Throughout ESPN's due diligence of lionizing Steinbrenner's life and legacy nearly all day yesterday--seven World Series titles, countless business innovations, a fair deal of under-reported charity work--I was disappointed that they couldn't/wouldn't find one guy to come on and just lay into George for being one of baseball's all time sons of bitches. Most of the current and former Yankees interviewed about him spoke of him in unenthusiastically reverential terms, like they were still afraid he might be listening somewhere, and kept their criticisms to pithy, anecdotal, "But that was The Boss for you..." terms. Even Dave Winfield, who Steinbrenner caustically referred to as "Mr. May" and once famously paid a gambler $40,000 to dig up dirt on to use as leverage in a contract-related dispute, talked about the guy like a great-uncle.
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I dunno, I feel like it's sort of disrespectful to the guy to refuse to acknowledge his shenanigans after the fact, to use words like "controversial" and "driven" instead of actually citing examples of his often tempestuous, bratty nature. He was a great man who did a lot of great things, and that's obviously what we should be focusing on after his death, but I think it's patronizing to his memory to try to whitewash all the other stuff. George himself might have called them out on it, were he still around. Or maybe he would have still claimed that he was being portrayed unfairly and demanded all the tapes be burned, who knows.
Anyway, there's no doubt that baseball will forever be a less entertaining place without The Boss around--lord knows that Hank ain't playing himself on SNL anytime soon. And with that, we can celebrate George Steinbrenner's longest-lasting cultural legacy: