PUT BOSS IN THE HALL!
He was a bully ... he was convicted ... he was suspended ... so what ...
On Dec. 9, baseball gets its third chance to get it right. On that date, George Steinbrenner should be voted into the Hall of Fame. On Monday, it was announced that Steinbrenner was among the 10 men who will be considered for induction into the Hall by what was once called the Veterans Committee and is now known as the Today’s Game Era Committee.
The other nine are Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Joe Carter, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser, Davey Johnson, Charlie Manuel, Lou Piniella and Lee Smith.
All nine have their attributes, and I suppose a case can be made for any one of them.
But not one had nearly the same impact on the game as George M. Steinbrenner III. Not even close.
That is not to say Steinbrenner was a saint; far from it. But if sainthood was a requirement to get into Cooperstown, the Hall would be a very barren place indeed.
What used to be a space reserved for the true greats of the game has evolved into more of a museum of baseball history, especially as more and more players from the Steroid Era – which really should have its own wing – become eligible for induction.
And like any good museum, the Hall should include exhibits commemorating each of its most influential figures.
Whether you loved him or hated him, there is no way anyone could deny that Steinbrenner was one of the most influential figures in baseball history, and probably the most influential figure of the nearly 40 years between the day he bought the Yankees – January 3, 1973 – and the day he died, July 13, 2010.
The owners owe him a debt the same way the players owe a debt to Marvin Miller, another revolutionary figure who should be in the Hall but has been passed over, time and again.
And now that Bud Selig has been enshrined, despite presiding over an era in which chemically-enhanced players rendered meaningless many of the game’s most revered records, there is no longer any legitimate reason to keep anyone out.
That means Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez all belong in. And so does George Steinbrenner. To be sure, Steinbrenner did some horrendous things as the Yankees owner. He bullied everyone, from superstar to office clerk. He was a convicted felon, later pardoned, for illegal campaign contributions. He was twice suspended from baseball, the second time for hiring a lowlife named Howie Spira to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield.
Those actions would seem to be in violation of the “character, integrity and sportsmanship’’ clause included in the criteria for player inductions. But clearly, that clause has been ignored many times, most recently in the case of Selig, and no doubt will be again when some player who used PEDs during his career but managed to escape detection winds up getting elected.
So once we have dispensed with the moral judgements of who does and does not belong in Cooperstown, there is no reason to keep Steinbrenner out. And a multitude of reasons to put him in.
In the case of Steinbrenner, most of those are the same reasons Selig is in: the generation of wealth for the game, the owners, and most importantly, the players, the reason you go watch the games in the first place.
Steinbrenner was the first owner to recognize free agency for what it was, an opportunity for owners to vastly improve their teams, and in the process, make them fabulously profitable. He also, with the help of others such as Bob Gutkowski of the MSG Network and later, Leon Hindery, a visionary who pioneered revenue streams every other team in every sport came to imitate and profit from. such as exclusive cable television deals and the creation of his own regional network.
The YES Network, a gamble Steinbrenner took in 2002 when he al-
ready had a nearly half-billion dollar cable deal with MSG, is the model that everyone else is working from now, the model that has caused team values to skyrocket over the past 15 years.
And most importantly to Yankee fans, he took a franchise that was in the toilet under the ownership of CBS and rebuilt it into the premier franchise in all of professional sports. And for better or worse, he created the modern culture of the Yankees and their fan base, with its passion, its sometimes maddening impatience and its win-orfailure mindset.
In that way, he was as important to the history of the Yankees in the 70s, 80s and 90s as Babe Ruth was in the 20s, Gehrig in the 30s. DiMaggio in the 40s and Mantle in the 50s and 60s, and every bit as much a larger-than-life figure. This year would be the perfect year to right that wrong, with Mariano Rivera, a shoo-in for first-ballot election, eligible for the first time. What could be more appropriate than for both Boss and closer to be inducted together?
And yet, the odds are that once again, Steinbrenner will be shut out of the Hall.
The last two times his name appeared on the ballot, he apparently garnered zero support. The Hall of Fame does not release vote totals for any but the top three finishers, and Steinbrenner has never been among them. In fact, in 2013, the last time he came up for consideration, he failed to get a single vote despite the presence of five of his fellow owners on the committee.
Maybe they are envious of the public profile Steinbrenner achieved. In many cases, he was more famous than any of his players. Maybe they are resentful of how his free spending forced them to open their own checkbooks in order to compete. Maybe they simply disliked him personally.
But whatever the reasons are, they are wrong.
You can’t tell the true history of baseball without telling the story of the New York Yankees, and you can’t tell the true story of the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.
Baseball has had two previous chances to recognize that, and the third strike is on the way. Now is not the time to go down looking.