George Steinbrenner, Yankees' Boss, Dies

[classicman]

Love 'em or hate 'em ....

George Steinbrenner, the mercurial and free-spending owner of the New York Yankees who presided over the restoration of one of the great franchises in professional sports after turning it into baseball's version of a soap opera, has died. He was 80.

He died today in Tampa, Florida, according to a statement by his family. He suffered a heart attack, the Associated Press reported. Major League Baseball is in the midst of its annual midseason break for the All-Star Game, being played tonight in Anaheim, California.

The man known as "The Boss" took baseball by storm in his 37-year tenure, helping to usher in free agency and multimillion-dollar contracts, changing managers 24 times and serving two suspensions.

"We'd be winning games and he'd be semi-embarrassed because we'd win on a squeeze bunt or a base hit," recalled Joe Torre, who spent 12 seasons as manager through 2007. "He wanted to mutilate people."

Steinbrenner's Yankees won two early championships, followed by a 13-year playoff drought during which his combustible personality overshadowed the team's performance. The franchise regained its footing in the 1990s, fueled by Steinbrenner's prodigious spending, and won four World Series in a five-year span through 2000, inviting comparisons to previous sports dynasties.

Seven Titles

In all, the Yankees won seven of their record 27 world championships during Steinbrenner's reign, most recently in 2009, the first season after he turned over day-to-day operations to his youngest son, Hal.

Steinbrenner's Yankees lured the game's top players with blockbuster contracts funded by the team's league-leading attendance, global popularity and regional sports network. His aggressive business tactics widened the Yankees' lead as baseball's richest team while irking other owners.

"I'm going to miss him," Marvin Miller, the former head of Major League Baseball's players union, said in a telephone interview. "I don't mean he was pro-union in any sense of the word, but he was clearly not of the school of the hard-line owners that felt the unions were treasonous."

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[SteveDallas]

Well, now he's somewhere where he can fire Billy Martin again.

(Courtesy some random person on Twitter)