George Steinbrenner, R.I.P.

In the winter of 1982 I was a wide-eyed young man working in Washington DC, and lucky enough to have my esteemed boss Bob Schmidt introduce me to the notorious owner of the New York Yankees club, George Steinbrenner.

Bob and I had attended a Paul Kagan Pay TV Sports conference that day. MLB teams were all joining with basketball and hockey franchises and local cable companies, forming regional TV networks (SportsVision, NESN, Box Seat, Prime Ticket & Home Team Sports all emerged at this time), and our little firm CTM represented the Yankees organization in its negotiations with Cablevision-owned SportsChannel. At 5:00pm we sat in the atrium bar of the Omni Shoreham hotel – the same Shoreham immortalized by Jim Bouton in Ball Four as a locus of Yankee debauchery in the Mickey Mantle 1960’s. Over an hour we three had a couple of drinks apiece and I sat rapt, listening as these two jocks shot the breeze about the Yankees’ prospects for 1983 (it would be third place, 7 games in back of the Orioles but still ahead of the Red Sox, 20 games out), how Washington had fared since the Senators departed for Arlington TX, and the competitive, brutal personal disdain in which the ballclub owners held one another. I admired the World Series ring on his notably delicate fingers.

Mr. Steinbrenner then shared a fresh anecdote: during the preceding weekend, he had been visiting his daughter Jessica, then a student at Sweetbriar College in Lynchburg VA, 3 ½ hours south of Washington. This interested me because at the time I was dating a lovely French girl who’d have been Sweetbriar class of 1983 but had been invited to leave the institution due to misbehavior early in her career. In any case George, while in a restaurant “trying to enjoy a soda with my daughter,” was approached by a woman patron who smiled and politely said “I’m so sorry to interrupt you - but I hope you won’t be too insulted by this: has anyone ever told you how much you look like that awful George Steinbrenner?” I hooted at his response – “In fact I have heard that a couple of times before, Ma’am, and I always try to take it as a compliment!”

Before settling down to business the next time I am at Fenway Park, I shall try to enjoy a soda, in his honor. This Red Sox fan found Mr. Steinbrenner to be a humble and charming man. I’m glad that I met him.