Essay: The Lessons of Steinbrennerism

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Leo Rosten casts Lipshitz as a husband. Steinbrenner is more like an archetypal father. When he is up for the role, he is a perfect family tyrant: overbearing, insufferable, unembarrassable, the kind of man who makes scenes in public and mortifies his children. The Pittsburgh Pirates used to describe themselves as "family." That was sentimentality. The Yankees are more like a grimly real family: sullen and bruised by grievances and quarrelsome and full of parricidal silences. Presiding over the drama is the militaristic alldaddy, Steinbrenner as the Great Santini. He thunders, and acquires a certain force of nature. He has the qualities of a local Aztec volcano. He behaves as if he expected the Yankees to sacrifice virgins to appease him.

There are many, of course, who say that the Yankees and Steinbrenner deserve each other. In any case, the Steinbrenner method sometimes works. When he bought the team from CBS in 1973, the Yankees were a second-division mediocrity living on memories, like faded aristocrats. With his fierce, admirable though slightly crazed will to win, Steinbrenner brought the Yankees out of their trance. In the new era of the free agent, he spent handsomely for Reggie Jackson and other stars. Steinbrenner's Yankees took five pennants and two world championships.

But Steinbrenner's money and methods have quickened a lot of the standard prejudices about the Yankees. They were always the Romans of baseball: triumphal, imperial. They were dynastic; they cherished a memory of the Ruth and the DiMaggio and the Mantle days. But there was rarely much charm or color or heart in rooting for them. The Yankees never appealed much to that side of the American character that likes to root for the underdog.

Do Steinbrenner's Yankees now display certain characteristics of Rome's later days? Does the owner rant like Caligula? Will he select his horse to be the next manager? One drives up the Major Deegan Expressway in The Bronx, and in the summer dusk one may see a few blazes set by arsonists burning down the ghetto for the insurance. There in the distance Yankee Stadium glows with its wonderful radioactive light: a gem in a slum. One comes early for the batting practice; Frank Sinatra sings New York, New York over the p.a. system. Up in the broadcast booth, Phil Rizzuto is exclaiming, "Holy cow!" and "Huckleberry!" It is momentarily lovely.

Baseball, as Bill Veeck said, is meant to be fun. The trouble with Steinbrenner is that he manages to turn it into an Oedipal brawl that reduces his athletes to twitching depressives. Baseball reflects the surrounding culture, of course. Americans may get the sport they deserve: corporate, grandiose, soulless. To say that, however, might be to say that we are all responsible for Steinbrenner. That is going much too far.