Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball
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- ISBN13: 9780061690310
- Condition: New
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Product Description
No owner has changed the landscape of sports more than New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. From the moment he bought the team in 1973 for $10 million, Steinbrenner’s monomaniacal pursuit was to restore the most fabled franchise in baseball history to its ex- glory. Today the New York Yankees are worth more than $1 billion and are once again world champions.
Award-winning sportswriter Bill Madden traces Steinbrenner from his early days in Cleveland through his years as a shipping magnate, a Nixon fund-raiser, and a champion horse breeder to the fateful moment when he bought the Yankees, even though his father disparaged George’s desire to own a professional sports team as a “leisure activity.” Over the next four decades, Steinbrenner’s tumultuous reign included his epic battles with Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, even beloved Yankee captain Derek Jeter. His ruthless and free-spending tactics made him a lightning rod for controversy but they also paid off: Steinbrenner’s Yankees have won seven championships and remain the gold standard in all sports. In the last few years, with his health declining, the Boss ceded control of the team to his sons, but not before lording over the team’s historic transition from the House That Ruth Built to the House That George Built.
Throughout his three decades of covering the Yankees, Bill Madden has cultivated hundreds of sources at every level in the organization, from the many managers and front-office personnel Steinbrenner has fired to the bat boys who are ever present in the locker room. All of them have colorful tales about the man with whom they have loved a like-despise relationship, but it is the Boss himself whose voice rises above the rest. And when Steinbrenner chose to give his final print interview, he spoke to Madden to set the record straight on his extraordinary life and career.
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I want to rate your service, but I still have not received the book. Manner of language was to be from 6/4/10 to 6/21/10. It is now 6/28/10 and I am still waiting. If I do not receive the book I have already paid in a few more days, I will demand a refund and I will buy the book from a local book store.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Being from Tampa and meeting Mr. Steinbrenner on several occasions, I establish this to be a very excellent read. Like him or despise him, he was a community man. He was permanently there for people and organizations. It is well written tale, about a very appealing man. And My Mother Danced with Chesty Puller: Adventures of a Marine in the rear, to combat in Vietnam
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
It was ironic that I bought this book just weeks before George Steinbrenner died. It’s a excellent read with lots of appealing information and anecdotes, but I took off a star because the fact-checker didn’t do his/her job properly. I caught one error just by chance, and it makes me marvel if there are others.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
I’m a bit surprised by the overall positive reviews that “Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball” has received from the sports media. It’s not a terrible book, but it’s certainly not anything groundbreaking and doesn’t add much to what has been written in the tabloids about Steinbrenner for the past generation. Perhaps the reviews are from friends of Bill Madden who aren’t going to knock a book from a member of their fraternity.
Here’s what we know about Steinbrenner as a businessman:
-He took over his father’s shipping business (Kinsman) as it was in decline, converting it from ore to grain cargo, a go that returned the company to profitability, substantially improved the bottom line and the fortunes of the business for reasonably some time. He eventually bought his father out entirely, and then negotiated an acquisition by American Shipbuilding, the dominant builder in the country, eventually being elected president and then chairman of the company. Under Steinbrenner, the business prospered momentously, which is how he built the chance he used to go into owning sports teams. American Shipbuilding would eventually hit tough times a quarter century later based on the shifting markets, but it thrived for reasonably some time under Steinbrenner’s leadership.
-He lobbied Congress successfully to change a number of regulations that ultimately benefitted his business as well as all shippers on the Fantastic Lakes. (I mention these first two items since it is regularly incorrectly noted that he was a failure in the shipping business. That’s incorrect.)
-He helped revolutionize the business of baseball by being the first owner to sell TV cable rights (to MSG) in a go that was soon to be hackneyed by additional MLB teams, momentously increasing the fortunes of all teams.
-He further revolutionized the baseball business when he made YES, which is now worth more than the NY Yankees baseball team. All MLB teams have worked, or are effective, toward making their own regional networks.
-He served as chairman of the Olympic Overview Commission, where his leadership resulted in changes that he implemented that are credited with momentously increasing the competitiveness of the U.S. Olympic teams to this day.
-And, of course, he led an investment group that bought the Yankees, where he personally negotiated the buy from CBS for the modest sum of $8 million, putting barely more than $100,000 of his own money into the buy. He revived the team’s fortunes, winning 11 American League Championships and seven World Series titles, ultimately buying out the additional investors, turning his six-figure investment into a $1.2 billion franchise, the richest team is all of sports.
-He is now regularly listed by Forbes as one of the 400 richest Americans.
I’m not here to sing the praises of Steinbrenner. He is a flawed man, which is why I had such high hopes for this book. I was hoping, finally, a name would paint a portrait that went beyond the caricature or Steinbrenner’s public persona. It is obvious by his resume that this is a very successful man. Yet you’ll get small flavor for this reading Madden’s book, who seems to want to attribute any success Steinbrenner had to additional people. Yes, he mentions Steinbrenner’s successes in passing, but he focuses on the negatives from his personality, never placing the entire picture of Steinbrenner in context. He’ll spend chapter after chapter on the failures of the 1980s to early 90s teams, but then glosses over the period teams of the next decade in a few pages. Sure, we know Steinbrenner has a bi-polar approach to his managers and GMs, yet we never learn anything about why Steinbrenner succeeded in spite of, or because of, his manic, boorish approach and personality. We learn nearly nothing about the humane and charitable side of Steinbrenner or the legion of people — some might call outcasts — that he has kept with him and protected from the beginning. These are all pieced to the puzzle that Madden never reasonably was able to snap together.
I’d give this book 2 1/2 stars if Amazon allowed 1/2 stars because I did read it all the way through and I did learn some (although not many) new things. I had a greater understanding of Steinbrenner’s suspensions, especially the second one where it was clear Fay Vincent came down too hard on Steinbrenner out of spite, and Dave Winfield was not as clean in this incident as most people judge. In this case, Madden did Steinbrenner a favor.
Overall, this is a rehash of NY Daily News columns on the worst of George lacking the best. It’s simple to find people who worked with and around Steinbrenner to say negative things. He was a pain to work for, and he bullied and bruised the additional owners, beating them at their own game. The definitive bio covering both sides of Steinbrenner has yet to be written.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I’m not a huge Yankee fan and never was a Steinbrenner fan, but this book is fantastic! I highly recommend reading it! It’s so much fun to read and is so simple to read! What an entertaining tale about Steinbrenner’s years in charge of the Yankees, including some hilarious Billy Martin tales! The ending is very, very sad but I have to say that earlier in the book I regularly wondered if Steinbrenner had some kind of split personality. He was so grave and so mean to so many people that it’s hard to judge he was as successful as he was! Who would want to be around him? But then he was so nice to certain people and helped persons who no one else would help. Even though he had this “split” personality, he truly is an incredible man who accomplished a lot of things. He knows how to make and spend money, that is for sure. I wish this book was even longer because I did not want to stop reading it! You’ll like it!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5