Michael Riedel

Michael Riedel

Theater

George Steinbrenner — the play! — is in the works

Tom Hanks and Nora Ephron came up winners this year with “Lucky Guy,” a play about a larger-than-life New York character, columnist Mike McAlary.

Now comes word that another larger-than-life New York character is making his way to the stage — George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees.

The Roundabout produced a reading last week of “Steinbrenner!” that sportswriter Bill Madden adapted from his 2010 book, “Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball.”

Madden co-wrote the play with his friend and fellow sportswriter Ira Berkow.

Richard Kind read the part of Steinbrenner and was “terrific,” says Berkow. Patrick Page played Billy Martin and Daniel Davis tripled (to use a baseball expression) as Steinbrenner’s father, Henry; his friend Jimmy Nederlander, the theater producer, and Fay Vincent, the commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Randal Myler, who’s staged such autobiographical shows as “Dusty” (Dusty Springfield) and “Lost Highway” (Hank Williams), directed the reading.

Berkow says his model for Steinbrenner is the Lyndon Johnson of Robert Caro’s celebrated biographies.

“I’ve been reading the books, and on one page you can’t stand Johnson and on the next page you admire him,” he says. “Steinbrenner was like that. He could be batty and he could be brilliant. He fired a lot of people, but he always kept them on the payroll.”

The play opens with a scene between Steinbrenner and his father, who made a fortune in shipping. Steinbrenner was never able to please his father, and that theme runs through the play.

“We don’t hammer the audience with it,” says Berkow. “But it was a big part of his life.”

Most of the play covers Steinbrenner’s purchase of the Yankees from CBS in 1973 until his death in 2010.

Many of his famous feuds are portrayed, including the endless battles with Martin, which culminated in Martin’s infamous line about Reggie Jackson and Steinbrenner: “The two were meant for each other. One’s a born liar, the other’s convicted.”

That was a reference to Steinbrenner’s conviction for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon, which led to Steinbrenner’s suspension from baseball for two years.

The conviction was always a sore spot for him, and the play tackles his enduring prickliness about it. (Ronald Reagan pardoned him in 1989.)

Steinbrenner, by the way, was also a Broadway producer, with one big hit, “Applause,” and one legendary flop, “Legs Diamond,” to his credit.

Berkow, who won a Pulitzer for reporting in 2001, has also dabbled in the theater. He’s written a musical — “Daley to Daley” — about the Daley family of Chicago, and a play, “The Shakespeare of the Press Box,” about sports writer Red Smith.

In one of the most effective scenes in “Steinbrenner!,” the title character shows up at Yankee Stadium in the early afternoon, when no one is there, and plays the organ.

“His father made him take lessons, and whenever he was depressed, he would go and play the organ,” Berkow says.

The play also deals with the final, sad years of Steinbrenner’s life, when he suffered from
Alzheimer’s. He was seldom seen then, and the Yankees took great pains to hide his illness.

He died, of a heart attack, in Tampa, Fla., in 2010.

“For a columnist, Steinbrenner was a lot of fun,” says Berkow. “He would say outrageous things. I once had Freud psychoanalyze him in a column. Steinbrenner sent me a note saying, ‘We’ll never exchange Christmas gifts, but that was a good column.’

“And when he was suspended from baseball, I went to a psychiatrist, laid down on the couch and said, ‘I miss George Steinbrenner!’ ”