George Michael Steinbrenner III was an American businessman who was the principal owner and managing partner of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees from 1973 until his death in 2010.
63 Facts About George Steinbrenner
2.
George Steinbrenner was the longest-serving owner in club history, and the Yankees won seven World Series championships and 11 American League pennants under his ownership.
3.
George Steinbrenner had a tendency to meddle in daily on-field decisions, and to hire and fire managers.
4.
George Steinbrenner died after suffering a heart attack in his Tampa home on the morning of July 13,2010, the day of the 81st All-Star Game.
5.
George Steinbrenner's mother was an Irish immigrant who had changed her name from O'Haley to Haley.
6.
George Steinbrenner's father was of German descent, and had been a world-class track and field hurdler while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in engineering in 1927, first in his class and a distinguished scholar in Naval architecture.
7.
The elder George Steinbrenner later became a wealthy shipping magnate who ran the family firm operating freight ships hauling ore and grain on the Great Lakes.
8.
In 1944, George Steinbrenner entered Culver Military Academy in Northern Indiana, graduating in 1948.
9.
George Steinbrenner was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
10.
George Steinbrenner was an accomplished hurdler on the varsity track and field team, and served as sports editor of The Williams Record, played piano in the band, and played halfback on the football team in his senior year.
11.
George Steinbrenner joined the United States Air Force after graduation, was commissioned a second lieutenant and was stationed at Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio.
12.
George Steinbrenner met his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Joan Zieg, in Columbus, and married her on May 12,1956.
13.
George Steinbrenner served as an assistant football coach at Northwestern University in 1955, and at Purdue University from 1956 to 1957.
14.
George Steinbrenner joined Kinsman Marine Transit Company in 1957, the Great Lakes shipping company that his great-grandfather Henry had purchased in 1901 from The Minch Transit Company, which was owned by a family relation, and renamed.
15.
George Steinbrenner worked hard to successfully revitalize the company, which was suffering hardship during difficult market conditions.
16.
George Steinbrenner later became part of a group that purchased the American Shipbuilding Company, and, in 1967, he became its chairman and chief executive officer.
17.
In 1960, against his father's wishes, George Steinbrenner entered the sports franchise business for the first time with basketball's Cleveland Pipers, of the National Industrial Basketball League.
18.
George Steinbrenner had hired John McClendon, who became the first African American coach in professional basketball and persuaded Jerry Lucas to join his team instead of the rival National Basketball Association.
19.
Whereas Nederlander threw himself into his family's business full-time, George Steinbrenner invested in a mere half-dozen shows, including the 1974 Tony Award nominee for Best Musical, Seesaw, and the 1988 Peter Allen flop, Legs Diamond.
20.
George Steinbrenner, who had participated in a failed attempt to buy the Cleveland Indians from Vernon Stouffer one year earlier, and who had been an investor in Buffalo's failed 1969 Major League Baseball expansion bid, was brought together with Burke by veteran baseball executive Gabe Paul.
21.
George Steinbrenner was criticized heartily by players and press alike for doing so, as most people felt losing in the World Series was not something requiring an apology.
22.
George Steinbrenner enforced a military-style grooming code: All players, coaches, and male executives were forbidden to display any facial hair other than mustaches, and scalp hair could not be grown below the collar.
23.
In 1985, George Steinbrenner derided Winfield's poor performance in a key September series against the Toronto Blue Jays:.
24.
George Steinbrenner left day-to-day baseball matters in the hands of Gene Michael and other executives and allowed promising farm-system players such as Bernie Williams to develop instead of trading them for established players.
25.
George Steinbrenner's having "got religion" paid off.
26.
George Steinbrenner named Steve Swindal, his son-in-law, to be his successor in June 2005.
27.
When Swindal and Jennifer George Steinbrenner divorced in 2007, the Yankees bought Swindal out of his financial stake in the team, with Hal George Steinbrenner succeeding Swindal as chairman of Yankee Global Enterprises.
28.
From 2006 to his death, George Steinbrenner spent most of his time in Tampa, Florida.
29.
George Steinbrenner's body is bloated; his jawline has slackened into a triple chin; his skin looks as if a dry-cleaner bag has been stretched over it.
30.
George Steinbrenner's features seem frozen in a permanent rictus of careworn disbelief.
31.
George Steinbrenner made a rare appearance in the Bronx on the field for the 79th All-Star Game on July 15,2008.
32.
George Steinbrenner later was driven out on to the field along with his son Hal at the end of the lengthy pre-game ceremony in which the All-Stars were introduced at their fielding positions along with 49 of the 63 living Hall of Famers.
33.
George Steinbrenner was the first owner of a baseball team to sell cable TV rights.
34.
On July 13,2010, the morning of the 2010 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, George Steinbrenner died of a heart attack at St Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida.
35.
George Steinbrenner's death came nine days after his 80th birthday, two days after the death of longtime Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard, and eight days before that of former Yankee manager Ralph Houk.
36.
The George Steinbrenner family added a monument to Monument Park on September 20,2010, to honor George Steinbrenner.
37.
George Steinbrenner is buried at Trinity Memorial Gardens in Trinity, Florida.
38.
George Steinbrenner died in 2010, the one year in which there were not any estate taxes due, thereby allowing the fortune that he amassed to pass tax-free to his heirs.
39.
George Steinbrenner usually kept his complaints about the team broadcasters he approved of out of the newspapers.
40.
The 1986 World Series was called "George Steinbrenner's nightmare", because it was a showdown between two of the Yankees' biggest rivals, their cross-town rival the New York Mets and their most hated rival, the Boston Red Sox.
41.
George Steinbrenner was involved with thoroughbred horse racing from the early 1970s.
42.
George Steinbrenner owned Kinsman Stud Farm in Ocala, Florida and raced under the name Kinsman Stable.
43.
In 1982, George Steinbrenner, "while attending the funeral of a police officer killed in the line of duty, was deeply moved by the ceremony in which the American flag was folded military-style and presented to the officer's surviving spouse and young children".
44.
George Steinbrenner often donated to the families of fallen police officers in the Tampa Police Department and the New York City Police Department in addition to college scholarships for many poor children.
45.
At his residence in Tampa, George Steinbrenner supported numerous individuals and charities including the Boys and Girls Club as well as the Salvation Army.
46.
George Steinbrenner quickly became famous for his rapid turnover of management personnel.
47.
David Wells recalled that he and George Steinbrenner almost got into a fight during a heated argument.
48.
Wells later apologized to George Steinbrenner for threatening to fight him.
49.
George Steinbrenner originally said he would fight the charges in court, but in August 1974, two weeks after Nixon resigned, George Steinbrenner pleaded guilty to two charges in the case.
50.
George Steinbrenner was personally fined $15,000 and his company American Shipbuilding was assessed an additional $20,000.
51.
On July 30,1990, George Steinbrenner was banned permanently from day-to-day management of the Yankees by MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent for paying a gambler named Howard Spira $40,000 to dig up "dirt" on Winfield.
52.
Vincent proposed a two-year suspension, but George Steinbrenner wanted to have it worded as an "agreement" that had him leave baseball rather than a suspension in order to protect his reputation with the US Olympic Committee.
53.
Two years later, George Steinbrenner asked to be reinstated.
54.
George Steinbrenner hosted Saturday Night Live on October 20,1990, at the same time his former outfielder and Yankee manager, Lou Piniella, led the Cincinnati Reds to a World Series victory.
55.
George Steinbrenner appeared as himself in the Albert Brooks comedy The Scout.
56.
George Steinbrenner wrote the foreword of the 2005 Dusty Rhodes autobiography and was a regular at old Tampa Armory cards in the 1970s and 1980s.
57.
In December 1990, George Steinbrenner made another appearance on WWF TV in the front row during a Superstars of Wrestling taping held in Tampa's SunDome.
58.
George Steinbrenner was present in the front row of an edition of WCW Monday Nitro in 1996, and in the front row of another edition as well early 1998, when the event took place in Tampa.
59.
At the funeral of his long-time friend Otto Graham in December 2003, George Steinbrenner fainted, leading to extensive media speculation that he was in ill health.
60.
George Steinbrenner appeared as a character in the situation comedy Seinfeld, when George Costanza worked for the Yankees for several seasons.
61.
The owner was still angry about the unauthorized pennant, and knew so little about the show that after reading the script he believed George Steinbrenner Costanza had been named after him as an insult.
62.
George Steinbrenner refused to permit the uniform's use unless the character was renamed.
63.
George Steinbrenner filmed three scenes for the Seinfeld season 7 finale, "The Invitations", but they were edited out when the time of the episode ran longer than allowed.