'A Unique, Utterly American Character'

Workers clean seats as a memorial for former Yankee's Owner George Steinbrenner is displayed on the large screen July 13, 2010 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

Image: Eric Thayer/Getty Images

George Steinbrenner was a larger-than-life, complicated figure who came to symbolize baseball almost as much as some of the players who donned the pinstripes of the team he bought for a song and turned into the most valuable franchise in baseball, Ken Burns, the great documentary film director and student of baseball, told Portfolio.com.

Beyond being a baseball great, Steinbrenner was also a hard-driving entrepreneur, willing to spend vast sums of money to build a baseball dynasty. And he was a man who—in contradiction of the image he projected as an upholder of conservative values—was twice suspended from the game, once for shady campaign contributions to Richard Nixon and once for hiring a lowlife to spy on his star batter Dave Winfield.

Burns, who has already chronicled baseball in one acclaimed PBS series and who has another coming up in September about the game, The Tenth Inning, had tough things to say about Steinbrenner. But he also said, “I think we’ll miss him.”

Steinbrenner, 80, died of a heart attack this morning—the same day as the All-Star game, with his New York Yankees leading the American League East, as they so often did in his more than three decades of ownership.

Known as “The Boss,” Steinbrenner and a group of limited partners bought the Yankees in 1973 for $10 million from CBS Corp. At the time, Steinbrenner said he wouldn’t be involved in day-to-day operations. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Today, the club is worth as much as $1.6 billion, the most in baseball. And Steinbrenner, who turned 80 July 4, left the Yankees in the hands of his sons.

“That’s pretty good appreciation,” Burns observed.

But then it took a lot of moxie, money and business sense to build that franchise. It also took winning, which is what Steinbrenner always said motivated him most. During his time as owner of the Yankees, the club from the Bronx had the highest winning percentage in baseball, .566, and won more world championships, seven, than any other team.

“His over-weaning drive to win blotted out all other concerns,” said Burns. “In his own way, Steinbrenner is this unique, utterly American character who realized that money talked. He spent like no one else did. That’s certainly representative of the money aspect that is a huge part of baseball.”

That was evident from the very early days of his tenure at the top of the club from the Bronx, Burns said, when Steinbrenner laid out lavish amounts of cash to lure Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson to New York, and it continued as the Yankees led the league in payroll as they did in winning throughout his time as owner.

As for his skills as an entrepreneur, Burns said there were contradictions, as in everything else about the man.

“He led by fear,” Burns said. “For the large majority of people, we realize that life is too short.”

The passion for winning led Steinbrenner to spend lavishly to put the best product on the field possible. But his terroristic management style sometimes undermined his success as a businessman and baseball owner. Steinbrenner’s tirades were well-known—his repeated hiring and firing of Billy Martin, his feud with Yogi Berra, his dismissal of Joe Torre after Torre failed to deliver a fifth World Series title as manager. Steinbrenner’s blustery manner was even lampooned on the sitcom Seinfeld. That passion for winning was more suited, perhaps, to football than to the long baseball season, where losing from time to time is inevitable.

“His methods of achieving that success often ran against the nature of the sport itself,” Burns said. “You can’t really sit back and say this man’s a genius. In the last 37.5 years they won seven World Series. That means there were another 30 World Series that were won by people who didn’t behave the way Steinbrenner did.”

Still, there are lessons for entrepreneurs in Steinbrenner’s life. For Burns, perhaps the biggest one entrepreneurs should take from it is: Be lucky, and know what you have when you get it.

“Luck is a big part of it,” Burns said. “The genius was buying the New York Yankees and then holding on.”