RIP George Steinbrenner

The Boss (the other The Boss) looms large as a figure in my nascent sports fandom; as a kid in Ft. Lauderdale we had season tickets to Yankees spring training games. This is probably from 76-79, pretty good years to be seeing the Yankees. You could wait by the players' parking lot, surrounded by a flimsy chain-link fence, and get Mickey Rivers' (favorite Yankee) or Willie Randolph's autograph after the game. I read the box scores in the paper each morning, and remember where i was when i watched Bucky Dent beat the Red Sox in the one-game playoff one afternoon after school. During this time period Steinbrenner was in the news almost as much as the players it seemed, and my dad thought the back and forth between him and Billy Martin, with the hirings and firings, was hilarious. He seemed to soften in his old age (Torre managed there forever, compared to his predecessors), maybe he just wasn't around as much. But he was such a character that despite the fact that he was such a hot-head and a meddling jerk of an owner much of the time, it was hard not to feel some affection for someone so emotionally involved in owning a baseball team. Then again, i never had to play for him.