sportsnetny: The Village Voice’s Allen Barra spoke with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns at the George Steinbrener monument unveiling last week: Barra: Are you here, we asked Burns, because you’re an admirer of The Boss? Burns: Oh, puh-leese, [Burns shot back.] Springsteen is The Boss. Steinbrenner was Darth Vader. Barra: But what about his transformation of the Yankees from a second-division, second-rate organization to a world champion, multibillion-dollar corporation. Burns: Give me a break. Steinbrenner is the guy who woke up at third base and thought he hit a triple. It’s amazing how all this guy’s sleaze is suddenly forgotten. Who else would have hired a shady gambler [Howie Spira, pictured above] to follow one of his players around just to get dirt on them? (As Steinbrenner did to Dave Winfield.) Barra added: Well, I wanted to reply, how about previous Yankee owners who hired private detectives to follow Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin around — but I let that one pass. Continue reading… TheVillageVoice h/t CantStopTheBleeding for the link and the Spira pic

sportsnetny:

The Village Voice’s Allen Barra spoke with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns at the George Steinbrener monument unveiling last week:

Barra: Are you here, we asked Burns, because you’re an admirer of The Boss?

Burns: Oh, puh-leese, [Burns shot back.] Springsteen is The Boss. Steinbrenner was Darth Vader.

Barra: But what about his transformation of the Yankees from a second-division, second-rate organization to a world champion, multibillion-dollar corporation.

Burns: Give me a break. Steinbrenner is the guy who woke up at third base and thought he hit a triple. It’s amazing how all this guy’s sleaze is suddenly forgotten. Who else would have hired a shady gambler [Howie Spira, pictured above] to follow one of his players around just to get dirt on them? (As Steinbrenner did to Dave Winfield.)

Barra added: Well, I wanted to reply, how about previous Yankee owners who hired private detectives to follow Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin around — but I let that one pass.

Continue reading… TheVillageVoice

h/t CantStopTheBleeding for the link and the Spira pic

“TBS pays tribute to George Steinbrenner, principal owner of the New York Yankees, who died on Tuesday, with five nights of back-to-back episodes in which George Costanza (Jason Alexander) works for the team. The celebration gets rolling with “The Opposite,” in which George convinces Steinbrenner (voiced by Larry David and portrayed by Lee Bear, above, who is seen only from behind) to hire him. In “The Secretary,” at 7:30, George discovers that Steinbrenner’s assistant makes more than he does.”

SEINFELD on TBS - 7 P.M. 

- NYTimes 

Boss too hard to root for …But when he recruited a pathetic, 26-year-old, mentally ill soul, Howard Spira, to his secret police force, well, that was the endgame. If, given 60 seconds to select the delusional, emotionally troubled person from a crowded room, you’d have selected Spira — in 30 seconds. Any right-headed businessman would never have indulged Spira beyond giving him 10 bucks for carfare, then sending him on his way. Steinbrenner paid Spira $40,000 in exchange for all the dirt he could dig on Dave Winfield. Then, after Steinbrenner was caught, he relied on his milk-fed friendly forces in media and law enforcement (need tickets?) to get the word out that he, George Steinbrenner, had been the victim of a shake-down artist. To this day, history identifies Spira as a “a gambler,” as if he was a hood, a sharp, tough street guy. An online archived Sports Illustrated story from October 1990 identifies Spira as “a gambler with mob connections. If he’d been connected to “the mob,” there would be no mob — a school crossing guard would have busted it up. He was a profoundly delusional and childlike misfit with folders of clinical diagnoses to prove it. Spira was no more a criminal threat to Steinbrenner than he was to steal home. That’s the episode that did it for me, no more rationalizing, forgiving or forgetting. There was no doubt in my mind that Steinbrenner and his pals in the Tampa FBI — that division’s former top man, Phil McNiff, was a special assistant to Steinbrenner — had a mentally ill man arrested, then sentenced to two years in a penitentiary.  continue reading… Phil Mushnick - NYPost

Boss too hard to root for

…But when he recruited a pathetic, 26-year-old, mentally ill soul, Howard Spira, to his secret police force, well, that was the endgame.

If, given 60 seconds to select the delusional, emotionally troubled person from a crowded room, you’d have selected Spira — in 30 seconds. Any right-headed businessman would never have indulged Spira beyond giving him 10 bucks for carfare, then sending him on his way.

Steinbrenner paid Spira $40,000 in exchange for all the dirt he could dig on Dave Winfield. Then, after Steinbrenner was caught, he relied on his milk-fed friendly forces in media and law enforcement (need tickets?) to get the word out that he, George Steinbrenner, had been the victim of a shake-down artist.

To this day, history identifies Spira as a “a gambler,” as if he was a hood, a sharp, tough street guy. An online archived Sports Illustrated story from October 1990 identifies Spira as “a gambler with mob connections.

If he’d been connected to “the mob,” there would be no mob — a school crossing guard would have busted it up. He was a profoundly delusional and childlike misfit with folders of clinical diagnoses to prove it. Spira was no more a criminal threat to Steinbrenner than he was to steal home.

That’s the episode that did it for me, no more rationalizing, forgiving or forgetting. There was no doubt in my mind that Steinbrenner and his pals in the Tampa FBI — that division’s former top man, Phil McNiff, was a special assistant to Steinbrenner — had a mentally ill man arrested, then sentenced to two years in a penitentiary.
 

continue reading… Phil Mushnick - NYPost

“

“Then,” Steinbrenner demanded, “what are all of these references to ‘George’ in the script?”

Sussman [Yankees’ general counsel] was stunned but tried to explain: “ ‘George’ is George Costanza. He is a character on the show. He is a friend of Seinfeld’s, and he plays the role of one of your employees.”

Steinbrenner acted incredulous, intoning: “I thought you were smarter than that. Don’t you see? This is how they are trying to get at me. They have named their character after me.”

”

The Seinfeld - George Steinbrenner Story - NYTimes’ Maureen Dowd 

“

…if you worked for Steinbrenner in the three decades before his health deteriorated several years ago, as any Yankees employee of that era would confirm, you were an almost daily victim of his impatient bluster and bombast. He fired managers and public-relations directors and anybody who didn’t get his lunch order correct.

When the 1980 Yankees, who had won 103 games under Manager Dick Howser, were swept in three games by the Kansas City Royals in the American League Champion Series, Steinbrenner invited 14 reporters and columnists to a rare news conference in his Stadium office.

…when Howser was asked why he didn’t want to continue as manager, he said, “I have to be cautious here.” When he was asked if he had been fired, he said, “I’m not going to comment on that.”

“I didn’t fire the man,” Steinbrenner barked.

This was an execution, not a news conference, and when it was over, as everybody was walking out of his office, the principal owner looked around and said, “Nobody ate any sandwiches.”

”

Dave Anderson - Employees Got the Worst of Steinbrenner

- NYTimes