Posted by
Bill Crawford on Friday, July 16, 2010 12:05:32 PM
The baseball world that George stepped into in 1973 was still a few steps away from whirlwind. The legal steps that became free agency were still playing out, and the Yankees were living their Horace Clarke days of obscurity. What became obvious was that George was going to be very good at becoming a large part of the whirlwind himself.
His aggressive use of free agency not only rapidly built the team into a power, but upped the ante for everybody else. The Yankees from that era became "The Bronx Zoo", a wild, talented ragtag bunch that fought like crazy but managed to put it together on the field.
After many others developed a taste for free agency too, the Yankees came back to the pack, and George's football management style became more obviously a handicap. He went through managers and general managers very quickly, and his own baseball judgement weaknesses became more obvious with each passing year. During this time, he infuriated many of the Yankee family, and many started pulling back from events and oldtimer's games. Yogi Berra's angry exodus was the last straw for many of them.
Then came his second suspension from baseball, for his actions in his great feud with Dave Winfield. During his absence, Bob Watson and Gene Michael scouted, recruited and built the major components of the great Yankee dynasty that started in '96. That was all in place before George was reinstated.
And then 1998 happened. I have never seen, before or since, a team that had every roster spot filled before spring training even started. That team had no truly dominant player, but was composed from stem to stern of really good players who fed off each other and approached the game with professional aggression. Before they went into a September coast, they were winning games at a rate that hadn't been seen since the 19th century. And when you watched the dugout, the odd couple running things would always be the same: Joe Torre the manager looking like he was falling asleep, and Don Zimmer the bench coach, looking like he was about to run onto the field and kill somebody.
That team was the best I have ever seen, and easily one of the best of all time. I am not a Yankee fan, and I certainly have no love for the pansy ways of the American League, but I have an autographed baseball from that team. That team accomplished so much that it was the x-factor that finally mellowed old George and gave Yogi and all the other exiles an excuse to come back into the Yankee family. It was touching to watch it all happen when it did.
George was not a baseball man. But he provided enough money to find some really good ones, and he finally learned to step out of the way and let them build teams that would keep the seats full and the TV's on. The players, workers and beat writers would all say that he ran a first class operation. The problem was, it was all funded by proprietary broadcasting practices, and stratospheric ticket prices. Those who grew up in New York experience a sense of shock when experiencing major league baseball in other cities, and how accessible it is. Charging a family over $200 a game for tickets, parking and food is not a path for keeping the game alive for the next generation.
That I can't forgive him for, even with the great teams he gave us all to watch. But he was what he was, and there never were any apologies coming from his office for what he did- which I can't help but admire. May he rest in peace.