The Book Of Stein
Via Cindy Adams…yeah…Cindy Adams…I know…
Coming at us from HarperCollins — although they might not even have bound copies yet — is an unauthorized biography of our adored, beloved, king of the hill G. Steinbrenner. Title: “George Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball.”
Starts with his early days in Cleveland, years as a shipping magnate and the fact that he was and is a champion horse breeder. Pokes into his politics, like the few pages on his being a Nixon fund-raiser.
And then come the Yankee years. He bought the team in 1973 for $10 mil. Today The House That Ruth may have begun but that George built is valued at, according to this biography, a billion bucks — give or take a few — and its payroll has been $200 mil. It’s the team his father tried to discourage him from buying, saying that to own a sports franchise is “just a hobby.”
Author Bill Madden’s a sportswriter who’s covered major league baseball 30 years, calls the Boss “irascible” and, as usual, cites “hundreds of sources,” including personal interviews with anyone who had a love/hate relationship for his subject. That includes locker-room types, fired bat boys, front office personnel.
He cites the “epic” battles with Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield. He writes that George’s “ruthless free-spending tactics” made him a “lightning rod for controversy,” but they sure as hell paid off. The New York Yankees? The Gold Standard in baseball. In all of sports. In all the world.
Should be a good one.
Half of these stories are going to be recycled from the “Damned Yankees” book he and Moss Klein wrote back in 1991.
It’s like when a band puts out a “greatest hits” CD – they have to put one new song on it to convince their fans who already have the other 23 to buy it.
I was planning to start a bookcase for my biographies of Baseball owners. Four shelves. The top three shelves would be books about Steinbrenner. the bottom shelf would be books about all the others.
Tresh Fan wrote:
Yeah, really – Dick Schaap did a book about Steinbrenner years ago – so did Ed Linn. Peter Golenbock had a Steinbrenner biography last year. (which Bill Madden trashed in his Sunday column btw – no ulterior motive there, eh?)
@ 77yankees:
Not always..maybe this info has been “digitally remastered”! All you have to do is put those words on to an album (book) and people will buy. Trust me because Led Zeppelin has done it for years minus John Bonham and I keep buying away!!
@ mondoas:
Well, I could listen to Kashmir on a continuous loop until the end of time and not get tired of it, but that’s neither here nor there.
Some more on this book:
http://tinyurl.com/239dqm5
[...] in Manhattan, my wife and kids presented me with some Father’s Day gifts. Among those were Madden’s book on Big Stein – hooray, hints did not go wasted! – and one of those 2010 Stars & Stripes Welcome [...]