Essay: The Lessons of Steinbrennerism

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The beauty of baseball is essentially an illusion. It demands a suspension of certain disbeliefs. The love of baseball depends quite crucially, for example, upon the illusion of loyalty: of fans to their team, of players to their team, of the team to its city. All nonsense, of course. Franchises tear loose from Brooklyn or Philadelphia when the owners see money to be made in newer cities. Players show up in the uniform of last week's enemy. But to remain a baseball fan, one must drop a light green scrim of nostalgia across such details, the necessary treacheries. One must give oneself over to the illusion, the precisions and geometries and statistics and characters and lore of the game. In his autocratic passion, Steinbrenner, alas, exaggerates the worst traits of modern baseball: its crassness and faithlessness and shallow nastiness. He will not collaborate in the illusion, a form of American mysticism, really, that is baseball's most precious accomplishment. George is a regular walking sermon on the pointlessness of everything once the joy has vanished.

— By Lance Morrow