Happy Big Stein Day!
Posted by Steve L. on January 3rd, 2013 · Comments (4)
On January 3rd, 1973, George Steinbrenner and a group of partners bought the Yankees for $10 million from CBS.
“I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all,” Steinbrenner said at that time. “I can’t spread myself so thin. I’ve got enough headaches with my shipping company.”
And, forty years later, here we are today…with the Big Stein’s kids, along with Randy Levine, Lonn Trost and Brian Cashman running the Yankees show.
I wonder where the Yankees will be ten years from now? What do you think?
Have to admit, Stein did a pretty good job building the Yankee label during his time. The Adidas & MSG deals stand out, but the YES Network is icing on the cake. I do wonder what he would’ve said or done about the moat seats, though.
Raf wrote:
Someone would have been fired after the first season where that bombed…and then kept on the payroll for the rest of his life…like the Boss was prone to do…
@ Raf:
@ Steve L.:
I’m supposed to believe that George Steinbrenner would’ve objected to the exclusiveness of the “moat seats” when everything else about the Yankees has always been about premium this and premium that?
That’s revisionist history right there. The “moat seats” are just the 21st century extension of all the other exclusivity deals he engineered, including the aforementioned Adidas, MSG and YES Network stuff. Boss was a businessman and he loved rolling in piles of money.
MJ Recanati wrote:
Not so much the exclusiveness, but the fact that it looked (looks?) bad on camera. He loved rolling in piles of money, but just as much, he loved keeping up appearances. I don’t think he’d sit a bunch of orphans for free behind home plate, but I think the pricing would have come down a bit.