ON THE FOURTH day of 1998, New York’s newspapers all run stories about the unknown shipbuilder from Cleveland who, 25 years ago to the day, was introduced as the new owner of the New York Yankees. “I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all,” George Steinbrenner, now the longest-tenured Yankees owner, promised that day. “I can’t spread myself so thin. I’ve got enough headaches with my shipping company.”
George has a good laugh as he’s repeatedly reminded of the biggest understatement of his career. Sure he meant what he said all those years ago, but he didn’t understand how bad things were. “There were things that needed fixing,” he tells one reporter after another.
One month later, Steinbrenner is sitting in a booth at the Regency Bar & Grill on Park Avenue, waiting for Brian Cashman. If all goes well, the 30-year-old Cashman will become his 13th general manager. Gene Michael, who hired the serious, hardworking Cashman as his assistant GM four years ago, says he is ready. So does Bob Watson, who told George just last night that he should promote his young assistant. That was just moments after Watson quit, ending two successful but stormy years as the team’s GM.
It’s no surprise that Watson resigned, not after he told people at a public seminar a few weeks back that the baseball people George listens to are “little people that run around in his head.” Steinbrenner knew Watson had been upset since last fall, when George picked up the option on the GM’s contract without giving him a raise. Watson was voted Executive of the Year in 1996, and the Yankees won 96 games last season. But George thought Watson took too long to get things done, and felt he had to get into the middle of trade talks to bail out his GM—which he often did without telling Watson.
George had desperately wanted the Expos’ Pedro Martinez, and blamed Watson when Montreal dealt the ace right-hander to Boston for two minor leaguers. He somehow forgot that Expos GM Jim Beattie, who Steinbrenner publicly ridiculed when Beattie was a rookie pitcher for the Yankees two decades ago, swore he’d never do a deal with the Boss if he could help it.
Now the Twins have put Chuck Knoblauch on the market, and George wants the All-Star second baseman. Badly. So on the first weekend in February, the Boss, in town for the annual Baseball Writers’ Association of America award banquet, called Watson and ordered his GM to offer Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte for Knoblauch.
“I’m not making that deal,” Watson said.
“Are you defying me?” George roared back from his hotel suite.
“Yes,” Watson answered. “Bottom line, you cannot trade Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte for Chuck Knoblauch. I’m not going to hurt the team.”
By now, George was furious. “If you don’t do it, you’re fired.”
“You don’t have to go that far,” Watson said. “Instead of you firing me, I quit.”
Steinbrenner shot right back. “I’ll ask Stick to do it, then.”
Now Watson was angry, too. “You do that, I am leaving,” he told Steinbrenner. “I suggest you hear this. Here are the keys hitting the table.” And Watson dropped his keys on his desk.
“Here is my cell phone and my pager hitting the desk.”
Bang, bang.
“This is going to hurt me because these are the keys to the House That Ruth Built,” said Watson, who then stood up and walked out of the room. He made it official when he told George he was quitting in person at the Baseball Writers dinner last night.
It was early Monday morning when Watson slipped into Cashman’s office and told him the news: I’ve resigned for health reasons, he told Cashman. And I’ve told George to give the job to you.
“George is going to give you a call later today,” Watson said. “You’ve got a lot to think about, buddy.”
George made that call, and now he is sitting impatiently in his booth at the Regency, waiting for Cashman to arrive. But naming a new GM may not be the most important thing on Steinbrenner’s mind today. Cable magnate Chuck Dolan, his old friend from Cleveland, is preparing a bid for the Yankees. It was a few months back when Dolan told Steinbrenner that Cablevision, which airs as many as 150 Yankees games a season to its 2.9 million customers, wanted to buy the team rather than pay for the TV rights, which expire after the 2000 season. “You’ll have an offer in March,” Dolan told him, and the Boss didn’t reject the idea out of hand.
Now 67, George would much prefer to hand the reins of the franchise to one of the younger Steinbrenner men, especially 28-year-old Hal, who occupies the office down the hall from his at Legends Field. But Steinbrenner knows his relationship with his younger son has never been rockier. The more George pushes, the more time his son spends working on the family hotel business. Hal bristles every time his father mocks his suggestions or reverses his decisions, but George can’t help himself. Damn it, Steinbrenner thinks, what he dishes out is nothing compared to the grief his father put on him, and look where he is now.
But Hal doesn’t respond the same way. Working for George makes Hal dread the days when his father comes to visit Hal’s daughters, and he doesn’t want that. Keeping his distance is the only way he sees to keep their relationship sane. Expecting Hal to take a bigger role with the Yankees is not going to happen any time soon.
Son-in-law Joe Molloy was filling the void, but he asked for a year off last August. By January, Molloy and George’s younger daughter Jessica decided to separate, and they will file for divorce next month. Steinbrenner has now turned to Steve Swindal, husband of his older daughter Jennifer, to help him manage the team.
Jennifer married Steve in 1983, and told her husband he was free to work for any of her father’s companies that interested him—except the Yankees. She didn’t want that kind of pressure to be part of their new marriage. Swindal ran the family’s tugboat company for 11 years, until Steinbrenner sold it last September. George then asked Steve to join the Yankees as a general partner, and Jenny gave her blessing. Intelligent, genial, and sixth-generation Tampa, Swindal quickly won the respect of the Yankees’ front office and is the family’s new representative in the team’s day-to-day operations.
The future of the franchise is weighing on George’s mind, but he knows he will have to hear Chuck Dolan’s Cablevision offer before he makes any decisions for the long term. The short term is taxing enough.
And now Cashman is walking into the Regency, dressed in a suit and clearly nervous. Cashman wears glasses, is five feet nine with thinning hair, and the guys around the office call him Costanza, befitting his resemblance to the character who works for the Yankees on Seinfeld. Steinbrenner has watched Cashman grow up since giving him an internship 12 years ago as a favor to Brian’s father John, a fellow horseman and a longtime friend. The nickname aside, Steinbrenner knows there’s a toughness about the kid who played second base and set a single-season-hits record at Catholic University.
The question is, will he be tough enough?
“I’ve talked to a lot of people about you, and they say you’re capable of doing this job,” Steinbrenner tells Cashman. “I can go outside the organization and recycle somebody else, someone who has done this job before, but I’ve been told you can do it.
“So, what do you think?” George says. “Do you want this job?”
Cashman stares at the bear of a man he’s witnessed berating Yankees employees more times than he’d like to remember. It was not long ago when Steinbrenner looked at Watson and him and called them office clerks. “You’re clerk one,” he told Watson, then turned to Cashman. “And you’re clerk two.” He’s seen seven general managers during his time with the Yankees, each one of them crushed and humiliated before they left, and Cashman’s always told himself he never wanted this job.
Now Steinbrenner wants an answer.
“Yes, sir,” Cashman says. “I’m your man.”
“Good, let’s talk about your contract,” says Steinbrenner, looking satisfied but impatient. “What do you want?”
What do I want? Well, Cashman thinks, it would be great if I could stop shaking. Steinbrenner seems ready to give him a two-year deal, maybe three. But is that really a good idea? He’s not even sure he can do this job. The fans are going to wonder who he is, and the media’s going to kill him.
Cashman has a better idea. “Let’s just do a handshake,” he tells Steinbrenner. “I guarantee you that I will work hard. Let’s see how it goes.”
“Deal!” George shouts, reaching over to shake Cashman’s hand, never for a moment thinking he’s just hired his last general manager as owner of the New York Yankees.
Cashman wants to make one thing perfectly clear. “If someone wants to reach out to the Yankees, and they’re wondering who to reach out to, that man is me.”
That’s what Cashman tells the media at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, February 3, right after Watson told them he had resigned and introduced Brian as George’s next GM. And if anyone thinks Cashman’s statement is naive, he wants to clear that up, too.
“I’m going into this with my eyes wide open,” Cashman says. “I know there will be phone calls when I don’t want them. I understand this is one of the most difficult jobs in sports, if not the most difficult. I understand what George wants.”
And he knows George wants Knoblauch, so the next day Cashman kisses his still-stunned wife Mary good-bye, hops on a plane for Tampa, and joins negotiations to land the Twins star. Two days later, Cashman completes his first trade, sending Eric Milton—the team’s top pitching prospect—three more minor leaguers, and $3 million of Steinbrenner’s cash to the Twins for the four-time All-Star second baseman. George is already feeling good about the kid GM he’s paying just $130,000.
George stays happy as spring training gets under way and his team—and business—only gets better. Hideki Irabu, a disappointment last season, shows up with a trim build and a live fastball. He strikes out seven of 12 Braves in a mid-March outing, never reaching a three-ball count. “You can’t get any better than that,” Joe Torre says.
On March 20, the Yankees sign Cuban star pitcher Orlando Hernandez, who escaped his homeland on a flimsy raft in December and now owns a four-year, $6.6 million contract. The pitcher they call El Duque throws in the low 90s, has an array of pitches rivaling that of new teammate David Cone, and should be ready by midseason. Cone is rebounding nicely from his shoulder surgery and will take his place in the rotation by Opening Day. Knoblauch pleases Steinbrenner by reaching base in all 24 preseason games, batting leadoff in a lineup that hit .314 in spring training and may be the best in baseball.
A lineup like this costs plenty, too. The Yankees head into the season with a $66.8 million payroll, second only to Baltimore’s $72.5 million. Add in his revenue sharing and luxury tax bills, and this season will cost Steinbrenner close to $100 million.
But George still maintains you have to spend money to make money, and Chuck Dolan proves him right in late March when he offers George $500 million for his team. Steinbrenner, who owns 60 percent of the franchise and controls its fate, releases a statement that boils down to one key sentence: “I don’t ever intend to get out of the Yankees.”
The Adidas case is also breaking his way. Sure, when MLB’s decision is announced in April, Bud insists that George pay all the legal fees—about $500,000 once the two sides settle and the suit is dropped.
But Steinbrenner gets to keep his 10-year, $95 million deal, and Adidas will have a licensing and advertising agreement with MLB, adding more money to baseball’s coffers.
“In the long run, George could be right—it could be very good for baseball,” says baseball’s COO Paul Beeston, who’s moved into the Regency two floors below Steinbrenner. “He sometimes goes to the brink, but I disagree with people. I think he can be reasoned with.”
With Opening Day at hand, Steinbrenner has every reason to feel good. His Yankees are the consensus team to beat and the value of the franchise has never been higher. He has a bright young general manager and, he has to admit, even his business executives are doing a good job. But when it suddenly comes crashing down—some of it literally—the Boss does what he always does: he looks for someone to blame.
The team is the first to stumble, starting out 0–3, including a 10–2 blowout in Anaheim in the season’s second game. Every beat reporter is writing about 1985, when George fired Yogi Berra after a 6–10 start. “If I start worrying about that,” Torre says, “I’ll manage scared and distracted, and I can’t do that.” The Yankees get their first win, beating the A’s 9–7, but when the Mariners crush his team 8–0 to open a three-game series, Torre is worried. He calls a team meeting and reaches out to Cone and Paul O’Neill.
“If you’ve got anything to say,” he tells them, “say it now.”
Cone loves playing for Torre, and he sees real concern etched on Joe’s face, a look that says if his team doesn’t turn things around soon, people could lose their jobs. Starting with the manager.
So Cone stands up in the clubhouse and talks about how devastated he was when they lost to the Mariners in ’95, how he hates the Kingdome, and how angry he was last night to watch Seattle celebrate after each of its eight runs. “They’re rubbing our noses in it,” Cone says, his face getting flushed. “We need to get some payback now.”
Cone and his teammates get their payback, taking the next two games and the series. The Yankees even their record with a win in their home opener, but the papers are still filled with stories that Steinbrenner is unhappy and might make a move. Not happening, says George. “As far as being impatient with my manager, no way,” he says. “The same with the staff. It is not even in my psyche.”
But it is in his psyche. He’s worried about his team, and second-guessing his decision to make the untested Cashman his GM. “Stick, I’m not sure the kid can handle this job,” Steinbrenner tells Gene Michael. “I need you to take over as general manager.”
Michael lets the Boss vent, then calms him down. “George, I’m telling you, the kid can do this job,” Michael says. “Just give Brian a chance. He’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Steinbrenner mutters, “but it’s on you if this doesn’t work.”
Steinbrenner has something tangible to worry about before his team can play its next game. It’s 3 p.m. on April 13, and the Yankees and Angels are ready to leave their clubhouses for batting practice when a loud boom reverberates around Yankee Stadium. The cause: an 18-inch long, 500-pound beam of concrete and steel came loose from the upper deck, crushing Seat 7 in Section 22 and punching a hole in the concrete right below it. Had the beam fallen 24 hours earlier, it would have come crashing down in the 7th inning of the A’s-Yankees game.
“If someone were sitting there at the time that the beam came down, that person would now be dead,” Mayor Rudy Giuliani says at a Stadium news conference. Steinbrenner, reached at his home in Tampa, says, “We’ll overcome this one, but we’ve got to be sure it doesn’t happen again. If that means a new stadium, we’ll have to see.”
Steinbrenner and Giuliani have been talking for several years about a new stadium to replace the 75-year-old landmark when the Yankees’ lease runs out in 2002, and this can only strengthen George’s hand. He wants out of the Bronx, blaming the sad state of the borough for the team’s mediocre attendance. Everyone knows George’s long-held wish is a new stadium on Manhattan’s West Side. Talks that have been dormant are sure to heat up soon.
But there are more immediate concerns. Engineers will have to do a thorough inspection, which will take days, so the Yankees play their next game at the Mets’ Shea Stadium, beating the Angels, 6–3. Steinbrenner calls Tigers owner Mike Illitch and persuades him to swap series dates, and the Yankees head to Detroit for the weekend. Meanwhile, talk radio and late-night shows are abuzz with suggestions that the Boss had the bolts loosened or even did it himself. Giuliani concedes the Yankees deserve a new stadium, then says a study commissioned by the city, state, and the team set the price of a West Side stadium at $1.06 billion.
Overlooked in all the turmoil: Torre and his players have turned things around. They take two of three in Detroit, then sweep three in Toronto. They return to the Stadium on April 24, and Steinbrenner is sitting in Seat 7, Section 22, to watch Darryl Strawberry hit his fifth home run and Cone beat the Tigers, 8–4. They win four of their next five, running their record to 17–6, and finish April atop the AL East for the first time this season.
What happens over the next four weeks tells Steinbrenner and every Yankees fan that this could be a special season. The Yankees win 20 of their first 25 games in May, and when Cone beats the Red Sox on May 29, the Yankees are 37–11, hold a 9½-game lead over second-place Boston, and look all but unbeatable.
The lineup is so deep newcomer Scott Brosius is hitting a team-high .346—batting ninth. Cone and David Wells are both 7–1, with the beefy Wells tossing a perfect game against the Twins on May 17. Rivera is now automatic, and Jeff Nelson and Mike Stanton form a terrific bridge to the star closer.
“The 1996 season was very special, and we have the chance to do that again,” Rivera says. “And this year we have more talent.”
Bud Selig can’t help but chuckle as he walks out the door of the ballroom in Chicago’s O’Hare Hilton. Neither can most of the men and the handful of women who asked Selig to leave the room so they could vote on whether to appoint him the ninth Commissioner of baseball. In 2,130 days as Acting Commissioner, Selig has rarely allowed a vote before knowing the outcome. And the outcome of this vote was decided a very long time ago.
It’s July 9, exactly three weeks before Selig’s 64th birthday, and as he walks up and down the hallway—Bud’s a pacer, in good times and bad—he can’t help but marvel that a kid from Milwaukee could become the most important man in baseball. It will feel good to finally make it official, to go from an owner serving a role to the man everyone will now call Mr. Commissioner. And to be paid accordingly—that will be satisfying, too.
The final drumbeat began in late February from an important place. “This search for a Commissioner is a charade—put the game in the hands of Selig and Beeston, and let’s get on with it!” Steinbrenner told the New York Times. “Selig’s a great consensus builder. I grow impatient with him at times, but he’s the ideal guy.”
Steinbrenner’s clearly forgotten that Selig is the same man he blasted for mismanagement in the lawsuit he filed against baseball last May. Back then George wondered if Selig was listening to big market teams like his. And now? “Selig’s the most impartial guy in the world when it comes to his team,” Steinbrenner said.
A month later, Braves chairman Bill Bartholomay, the leader of the first Commissioner search-charade, weighed in. “I’ve known nine Commissioners, and he’s the best we’ve had,” said the 69-year-old Bartholomay.
Then it was Beeston who hinted that Selig was “finally” listening to the owners who keep begging him to take the job. “Maybe that’s what will happen,” he told MSG Network on Opening Day.
By June, Selig shared his intentions with so many people that New York Times baseball columnist Murray Chass reported it was already a done deal. “The search for a baseball Commissioner is over,” wrote Chass, a frequent Selig critic. “It did not stray an inch from where it began.”
And that result, said Selig’s sparring partner Don Fehr, should not surprise anyone. Or change anything. “It was increasingly likely that the owners would ask him to take the job permanently,” Fehr told reporters on June 27. “I don’t think Selig being named Commissioner will change the way we conduct business. We now have an office to deal with on a daily basis. We won’t treat this as a significant change.”
It was two days later that Selig announced he’d hold the vote that’s now taking place behind closed doors. And his timing could not be better. Baseball is so hot it’s almost impossible for ESPN’s SportsCenter to get to all the players turning heads and turnstiles: Roger Clemens notched his 3,000th strikeout of his 15-year career four days ago and is on his way to another Cy Young Award.
Cleveland’s Manny Ramirez has 71 RBI and will finish with a career-high 145. Seattle’s Alex Rodriguez will be only the third player to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases.
But no one has dazzled like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, whose mano a mano home run battle has practically everyone—even non–baseball fans—checking St. Louis and Chicago box scores. Sosa hit a record 20 home runs in June and has 33 for the season. McGwire hit 11 by the end of April, 16 more in May, and has a game-high 37. Both men—plus Ken Griffey—have Roger Maris and his single-season home run record of 61 in their sights.
The Yankees are winning, often in spectacular fashion, and while every other owner is loath to admit it, everyone makes more money when the game’s flagship franchise is flying high. And these aren’t the brawling Yankees of the Bronx Zoo, this is a team filled with marketable players. Is there anyone more wholesome than Derek Jeter?
Selig can boast that seven teams are on pace to go over the 3 million mark in attendance, and revenues will hit $2.5 billion—more than double what they were when Selig took over in September of ’92. Rupert Murdoch paid a record $314 million for the Dodgers in March, and last month Tom Hicks bought the Rangers for $250 million. Five new baseball-only stadiums have been built in the last four years, with three more under way, all but one funded primarily by local taxpayers.
By any measure, Selig’s time as “Acting” Commissioner has been a success. And no one’s pushing Bud to move to New York now that Beeston has settled in. Beeston fired Greg Murphy last fall (Selig left that unpleasant task for him) and now he’s ready to bring in Bob DuPuy, Rob Manfred, and Sandy Alderson—all sharp executives and Selig loyalists—to change the way the game is run. In the months ahead Selig will announce plans to fold the two leagues’ business operations into one and call it Central Baseball, with everything and everyone reporting to the new Commissioner.
“Bud sets policy, and I implement it,” Beeston tells everyone.
That’s the same arrangement Bud has had with his daughter, with whom he has run the Brewers for the past six years. And while Selig will soon move out of County Stadium and into an office tower downtown, their relationship will change in appearance only. Selig is resigning from the Brewers Board and putting his 30 percent share of the team in a trust. He’s also giving up the president’s title—which will soon belong to Wendy—and his $450,000 Brewers salary, now that baseball will pay him $3 million—plus perks and bonuses—for each of the next five years.
Bud has always been the big-picture half of their partnership, Wendy has always handled the day-to-day, and that won’t change. Bud has almost jealously guarded their relationship, never letting anyone come between them, and people who know them well understand that if one of them is in favor of something, so is the other.
Not a day goes by when father and daughter don’t speak, and Bud doesn’t have to ask to know it’s already been a hectic year for his 38-year-old daughter. She’s served as the team’s chief operating officer, chief legal officer, and new stadium coordinator, all while pregnant with her first child, who was born on May 25.
Wendy’s well regarded within the game, and she does have help close by. Her husband Laurel Prieb is the team’s vice president of corporate affairs, and he’s there for her at the ballpark and at home. And Bud trusts his good friend and general manager Sal Bando to take care of his team, despite the five straight losing seasons on Bando’s watch. So does Wendy, who thinks of Bando as her uncle.
And now Selig’s wait outside the ballroom is over. He walks back into the meeting room and his peers stand and clap. The applause lasts for several minutes, long enough for Selig’s entire family—his wife and her parents, his three daughters and their husbands, his five granddaughters—to come in and take their places. Selig is then told what he already knows: he was elected unanimously. Now it’s time to make his first address as The Commissioner.
He starts with a story about the late John Fetzer, the former Tigers owner he’s talked about many times before. “John Fetzer was my mentor,” Selig says, full of emotion. “He probably had more influence on me than any man other than my father. He taught me the basic lesson that so many in baseball never learn: the sport transcends all of us. He told me the only way you should ever decide anything is based on what’s in the best interests of baseball.”
Selig talks about ending the animosity that has plagued their relationship with the players and with each other. He thanks them all, his family included, for the support they’ve given him the past six years—“Has it really been that long?”—and tells them he wants to be judged—and paid—on how much the value of their franchises rises.
And he makes them a promise. “From this day forward,” Selig says, “you’ll have every ounce of energy in my body as we move the greatest game in the world along.”
When their meeting ends, Selig and his family meet with reporters for a media conference that often feels like a celebration. “In the end, I think he knew it was the right thing to do,” says Sue Selig, who’s known for almost six years that this day would come. “This is a great day for our family, for baseball, and for the city of Milwaukee. It won’t say ‘Commissioner’s Office, New York,’ now. It’ll say, ‘Commissioner’s Office, Milwaukee!’ ”
Selig addresses his working arrangement, saying he’ll split time between Milwaukee and New York—though Beeston knows getting Bud to Manhattan will be a chore. He outlines how he’ll work with Beeston (“I’ll do more global things”), when he’ll officially take office (“August 1”), and how tough it will be to leave the team he brought to Milwaukee 28 years ago (“Very tough, but it’s time”).
He’s growing tired as the questions begin to repeat, and he’s eager to end the questions and hug his wife, daughters, and all the grandkids. But there is one thing he wants on the record before he leaves the media.
The game still has a payroll-disparity problem, he says, and it’s getting worse. His highest priority will be fixing a system in which the Orioles can afford a $70 million payroll and the Expos can afford only $9 million. He concedes their current revenue sharing plan helps, but he insists more help is needed for fans in every city to have “hope and faith” their teams can compete at the start of every season.
“If you remove hope and faith from two-thirds or three-quarters of your franchises,” the new official Commissioner says, “you’ve hurt the game badly.”