Steinbrenner

    The death of George Michael Steinbrenner III was announced July 13 to the accompaniment of a tsunami of editorials, memorials, and encomiums from sports luminaries, sportswriters, ballplayers, and assorted ignoramuses. (Note that I have used the passive phrase "was announced" rather than the active "occurred," lest Van Helsing neglected to drive a wooden stake through the heart of this megalomaniacal blowhard thus risking his re-emergence, vampire-like, to resume his career of bluster, intimidation, and self-aggrandizement )

                        
                                         Steinbrenner (Andy Rash, New York Times, 7/16/10)

    The proximal cause of Steinbrenner’s trip to the nether regions was said to be a massive heart attack, but the underlying cause was Alzheimer’s disease. Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston among others faced the grim reality of this terrible sickness like men. But Steinbrenner, the bullying despot who ran the New York Yankees for three decades, covered up his medical condition. Apparently the Great Leader thought it shameful to admit to dementia, and since he couldn’t buy off God with his millions or scapegoat Billy Martin or Dave Winfield or Hideki Irabu or Ken Holtzman, his only recourse was to crawl into a hole while awaiting the inevitable hour.
    The Yankees, Baseball, New York City, New York State, America, and the planet are all better off without this inflated, mean-spirited, windbag at the helm of the world’s most famous sports franchise. And, happily, I can now end my one-man boycott of Yankee Stadium and once again cheer for the team I grew up with and lived and died with as a boy.
    Unlike the media sycophants who feel it’s their duty to canonize every obnoxious bastard who kicks the bucket (see Teddy Kennedy), I refuse to forget or excuse the long sorry reign of the man whose main glory in life was to be called "The Boss" by those weak enough to kowtow to his bluster or hypocritical enough to prostitute themselves to his money.
    For 18 long years of squandered millions, disastrous trades, and absurd free agent acquisitions, the New York Yankees wallowed in boring mediocrity while their Führer preened and screamed and sloughed off his own failures onto his ballplayers and front office employees. Never once was this person brave enough to own up to his own errors; never once did he refrain from laying blame on others; never once did he apologize for ─ or even acknowledge ─ his own intemperance and lies and posturing and bellowing and knife-in-the-back attacks.
    Here was a man who believed that everyone had a price, that everyone could be bought; that everyone could be controlled, used, abused, and dominated by bribing them with enough money.
    Here was an individual without the manhood to accept responsibility for his own actions, whose cowardice and inner fears and Freudian obsessions led him to blame anybody and everybody for his own failures.
    And now that he’s dead? Why now we’re being treated to a media spectacle of gutless editorial writers, most of whom never went to a ballgame in their effete lives, falling over themselves to give this third-rate Hitler credit for the resurgence of the Yankees while excusing his excesses with mealy-mouthed adjectives from their Gucci handbags of journalistic clichés ─ "Controversial," "Innovative," "Passionate," "Demanding," "Impulsive." What they should have done is visited Roget’s Thesaurus and culled a few dozen synonyms for "Obnoxious," "Tyrannical," "Pig-Headed," and "Paranoid."
    Just to set the record straight, the true rebirth of the Yankee franchise began in 1990, 17 years after Steinbrenner took over the helm, when he was suspended from baseball for hiring a known gambler to "dig up dirt" on Dave Winfield, a grossly overpaid outfielder whom Steinbrenner had pursued with maniacal passion as one would pursue a choice slave at an ante-bellum slave auction. With Steinbrenner out of the way, baseball professionals like Gene Michael had a free hand to run the team in a businesslike manner, make shrewd trades like the acquisition of Paul O’Neill, nurture young talent like Bernie Williams, and halt the giveaway of budding stars like Jay Buhner in exchange for washed-up, overpaid, over-the-hill "names" that Steinbrenner coveted so he could wallow in the borrowed glory of their former fame.
    An epitaph for Steinbrenner‘s grave?
    How about, "GOOD RIDDANCE" chiseled in caps?

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

 

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