As a lifelong Dodger fan and a certified Yankee hater, I always considered their team owner, George Steinbrenner, to be an ego-driven, colossal jerk.
And that opinion never changed.
I even softened on the players — with no apologies to Giancarlo Stanton — and realized my frustration was mostly directed at arrogant Yankee fans who felt it was important to remind me “We’ve won 27 World Series.”
“Who’s ‘we’ and what position did you play?” I’d always ask and follow it up with “I forget, ‘When was the last time the Yankees won a World Series? Oh that’s right, 2009, 17 years ago.”
Anyway my old pal Mike Vaccaro just released his fourth book, “The Bosses of the Bronx” the story of Steinbrenner, the late Yankees owner and his family.
Mike covered the Bonnies for me at the Olean Times Herald during two of the three dismal seasons under Tom Chapman. Currrently he’s the lead sports columnist at the New York Post a position that followed stops at the Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.), Kansas City (Mo.) Star, Times Herald Record (Middledtown, N.Y.) and the Northwest Arkansas Times (Fayetteville) … yep, Arkansas.
IT WAS at the Post that Vaccaro felt the urge to write a book. To him, the obvious subject was the rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox. Thus came Emperors and Idiots. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. This was 2004 and the Yankees led the ALCS 3-0 and were up on Boston in the ninth inning of the American League Championship Series before the Red Sox rallied and became the first team to win a series after trailing 3-0. Boston then swept the Cardinals to win their first World Series in 86 years.
The Red Sox win ruined Vaccaro’s residuals as a Yankees victory would likely have earned him a much more generous pay day.
Subsequently he wrote 1941, the Greatest Year in Sports, then The First Fall Classic (Red Sox and Giants).
Last month he debuted Bosses of the Bronx and hosted discussions and book signings, first on the St. Bonaventure campus — his alma mater — then at Olean’s Untold Stories book store.
The book starts a little slowly recounting the early days of the Yankees, but once Steinbrenner joins the narrative it’s non-stop anecdotes and story-telling.
In 1973, Steinbrenner was part of a consortium which bought the Yankees for $10 million … George’s contribution was a modest $168,000 a figure that today would buy him a fully-loaded Chevrolet Corvette.
STEINBRENNER was best-known for firing employees on a whim.
One year, a late-night TV host opined, “The Yankees are playing so well George doesn’t know who to fire.”
Vaccaro makes it clear, early in the book, “this isn’t a biography” and it’s not … more a collection of stories and word pictures that paint Steinbrenner’s good and bad sides in equal doses.
For instance, these are the men who managed Steinbrenner’s team from the time his group bought the Yankees in 1973:
Ralph Houk (1973)
Bill Virdon (1974-75)
Billy Martin (1975-78)
Dick Howser (1978)
Bon Lemon (1978-79)
Billy Martin (1979)
Dick Howser (1980)
Gene Michael (1981)
Bob Lemon (1981-82)
Gene Michael (1982)
Clyde King (1982)
Billy Martin (1983)
Yogi Berra (1984-85)
Billy Martin (1985)
Lou Piniella (1986-87)
Billy Martin (1988)
Lou Piniella (1988)
Dallas Green (1989)
Bucky Dent (1989)
Stump Merrill (1990-91)
Buck Showalter (1992-95)
Joe Torre (1996-2007)
Joe Girardi (2008-17)
Aaron Boone (2018-present)
You will note Martin appears on that list five times (hence he dominates a big part of the book), Lemon is there for two stints as are Howser and Piniella.
All were fired by Steinbrenner … then rehired.
George’s list of general managers is even less modest: Lee MacPhail (1973), Gabe Paul (1973-77), Cedric Tallis (1977-79), Gene Michael (1979-80), Tallis and Bill Bergesch (1980-83), Murray Cook (1983-84) , Bergesch and Clyde King (1984), King (1984-86), Woody Woodward (1986-87), Lou Piniella I(1987-88), Bob Quinn (1988-89), Syd Thrift (1989), Quinn (1989), Harding Peterson and George Bradley (1989-90), Michael (1990-95), Bob Watson (1995-98) and Brian Cashman (1998-present).
That list includes 11 managers (four of them hired multiple times) and 15 GMs, six of whom were fired twice.
ONE ASPECT of the book that I particularly enjoyed was the mention of players I’d long-since forgotten.
In that group were Matty Alou, Tim Belcher, Johnny Callison, Pat Dobson, Dock Ellis, Rollie Fingers, Ken Holtzman, Ferguson Jenkins, Chuck Knoblauch, Fred Lynn, Doc Medich, Phil Niekro, David Ortiz, Jeff Torborg, Bob Welch and Butch Wynegar.
Vaccaro wove them and many others into the sketches that were Steinbrenner’s life, a characterization of a controversial and extraordinary man whose story needed to be told.
(Boss of Bosses, published by HarperCollins, is now a New York Times bestseller and available by clicking HERE)
(Chuck Pollock, a Wellsville Sun and Olean Star senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@wnynet.net.)
