The Boss, R.I.P.

I hate to interrupt my travel stories again for another sports commentary, but I can't help myself. The fact is, no stranger brought me more direct joy in my life than George Steinbrenner.

I never met the man, and I do not mourn his death as I would that of a friend or loved one. He was in many ways a bad person: he illegally funneled cash to Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, once paid a lowlife to dig up dirt on his star outfielder in an attempt to embarrass him, and treated the vast majority of his employees like dogs (from his managers and GM's right down to his secretaries). His meddling with the Yankees probably cost them a handful of more championships. He rapidly priced working-class and middle-class families out of Yankee Stadium after the mid-1990's, threatened to move the team out of the Bronx for decades, and then plowed over a neighborhood park - a beloved piece of greenery in the South Bronx - in order to build the new stadium for his billion-dollar franchise. His obsession with winning was as much motivated by personal shortcomings as by his devotion to Yankee fans.

But he did win. 7 championships and 11 pennants since 1976, for a franchise that was in its Dark Ages when he took over three years earlier. He poured the teams profits right back into it. For him, the Yankees weren't a cool toy or a status symbol or a business; they were his passion. Ticket prices may have been raised over time, but much more of that money went to payroll and his charities than to lining his own pockets, even after his shipping business went under and the team became his only source of revenue. He seemed to sense the happiness and unity the team could bring to the many people who called New York home, from the Wall Street executive to the South Bronx bus driver to the 8 year old little leaguer on Long Island, and he did everything in his power to chase it. He may have been a ferocious, angry, and arrogant man, but he also had a soft spot for children and working people and the disadvantaged.

More than anything else, though, I think he just wanted to be loved. By all accounts his father was a good but tough man. Some say he bought the Yankees because they offered him celebrity he would have never had in Cleveland. At the end of his life, when his years of tumultuous ownership were forgiven by his legions of fans and they gave him standing ovations upon his increasingly rare stadium appearances, he was often moved to tears by the outpouring of affection for him.

At the end of the day, he was a flawed man, by moral, financial, and baseball standards. But he cared more about the happiness of his fans than about the size of his bank account, and whatever his motivations were that is a fact worth acknowledging. These days, few athletes and owners care about anything else. A man of many contradictions, that is an environment Steinbrenner himself helped to create and foster. The truth is, though, that any fan-base in sports would kill for an owner like him.

As a Yankee fan, I had him. For me, his death isn't worth mourning. But his colorful, controversial, contradictory life? Definitely worth celebrating.

(Thanks to Talk of New York Sports for the photo)