George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner died on July 13. He drove some of the major changes in sports over the last four decades. He meddled with his team’s chemistry, bringing in high-priced players and calling out stars in the press. His Yankees teams won 7 titles between 1973 and 2010, which is remarkable by almost any standard except the one Steinbrenner demanded. Sports franchise owners like Mark Cuban (NBA), Dan Snyder (NFL), and Jerry Jones (NFL) are in the same mold. The following are my favorite six Steinbrenner factoids.

1. Infamously, he fired and hired Billy Martin five times separate times.
2. In 1990, Steinbrenner was banned “for life” from major league baseball by former Commissioner Fay Vincent. The penalty was levied because Steinbrenner had paid almost $50,000 for “dirt” on a former player. The “life” banishment lasted three years.
3. Steinbrenner’s first franchise, the Cleveland Pipers of the American Basketball League, lasted a single season, as did the entire league.
4. While an assistant coach under Woody Hayes at Ohio State, Steinbrenner won a national championship.
5. After buying the Yankees franchise in 1973, for only $8.8 million, Steinbrenner instituted a policy regulating the length of player’s hair. All-Star players like Don Mattingly and David Wells have received fines or even suspensions for “hair offenses.”
6. Actors that have played Steinbrenner include Larry David (on “Seinfeld”) and Oliver Platt (“Bronx is Burning”).

First Entry: The Great Sports Debates

I was reading an archived Slate.com review of Buzz Bissinger’s Three Nights in August. I haven’t actually gotten to Bissinger’s book, an account of a three-game series between the Cardinals and the Cubs from the eyes of manager Tony LaRussa, but the review fascinated me. The article, whose author skewered Joe Girardi, was brimming with contempt for Kissinger’s anti-Moneyball, old-school ranting. This got me thinking about some of the great ongoing sports debates. (It also doesn’t hurt that I’m still working on Bill Simmons’s tome, The Book of Basketball, which seems to have a list for every miniscule interest: Top Ten Freeloading Point Guards, Top Fifty Centers From Southern Idaho, etc. I mean that as a deep compliment, by the way.) I think I’m going to put together a list, with one entry per day of the ten greatest sports debates, and then rank them at the end. So here’s the first entry:

The Moneyball Crew vs. Traditionalists

Since Michael Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game in 2003, a theoretical divide has cut through most baseball fans. There’s the school of thought (that Lewis, in fact, shortchanged) that managers have a larger role in producing a winner than a general manager and that RBI, steals, and batting average are high-value stats. Lewis, and Oakland general manager Billy Beane, went on to criticize these “traditionalists” by foregrounding their subjective biases, prizing on-base percentage, and seem to minimize the importance of in-game player management. Frankly, I admire Lewis’s book, but its influence on me has less to do with my thinking on baseball and more to do with my thinking on “group think” and player evaluation. In the intervening conversations between the sides, traditionalists have pointed out Beane’s shortcomings in wins and losses, while the Moneyball crew have pointed out the success of his proteges (including Epstein of the Red Sox).