Metro

Steinbrenner goes out as a champion

Bye, George.

George Steinbrenner, whose winning-is-everything mantra transformed the Yankees from a faded franchise to a billion-dollar baseball powerhouse, died after suffering a massive heart attack in his Tampa, Fla., home early yesterday. He was 80.

He’d been in poor health for the last several years, appearing only a few times at the new Yankee Stadium, but his sudden surprised friends and enemies alike.

Hall of Famer Yogi Berra — who famously feuded with Steinbrenner for 14 years before the two buried the hatchet — said he’d last spoken to The Boss a little over a week ago.

“He sounded great. He didn’t seem sick,” Berra said.

THE POST’S TRIBUTE TO GEORGE


FANS REMEMBER THE BOSS

PHOTOS: GEORGE STEINBRENNER

PHOTOS: POST HAD BOSS COVERED

The loss of probably the most bombastic, beloved, reviled and respected team owner in professional sports shook foundations far beyond Yankee Stadium.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs paid tribute to Steinbrenner, making special note of “the charities that he worked with over a long and storied career” — often quietly and behind the scenes.

The baseball icon, who turned 80 on July 4, fittingly died on the day the sport’s best gathered in Anaheim for the All-Star Game.

VACCARO: HE ALWAYS SWUNG FOR THE FENCES

SHERMAN: THE BARE TRUTH ABOUT THE BOSS

Major League Baseball paid tribute to Steinbrenner with a moment of silence before the game and a video tribute at the start of the telecast.

“His unbridled passion for family, charity, and winning with his New York Yankees marked the cornerstone of a great American life,” Fox broadcaster Joe Buck said during the memorial.

The sizable Yankees contingent at the game wore black armbands on their left sleeves in his memory.

When the team returns to the Stadium on Friday, they’ll wear his initials on their uniforms.

In Boston, where Steinbrenner would often sit in the stands and mix it up with Red Sox fans, team officials planned a moment of silence for their respected rival.

“I knew George as a competitor, and today Red Sox Nation lost a person who truly relished the prospect of facing the Red Sox and doing all he could to make sure his beloved Yankees would come out victorious,” said Sox Chairman Tom Werner.

Even Boston team President Larry Lucchino — who had previously dubbed Steinbrenner’s squad “the Evil Empire” — said The Boss “was one of the most important people in the history of the game, and his impact touched all aspects of the business of baseball.”

Mets owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz said the sport had lost a giant.

“The passing of George Steinbrenner marks the end of an era in New York City baseball history,” they said. “George was a larger-than-life figure and a force in the industry.”

In Tampa, where Steinbrenner lived for most of the past decade, his children gathered at the family mansion, and well-wishers left flowers outside the gates. A flag there flew at half-staff, as it did at the minor-league Legends Field — and at New York’s City Hall.

Funeral and memorial arrangements were unclear last night.

Steinbrenner’s death wasn’t expected to set off any power struggle, since he had already handed day-to-day operations of the $1.6 billion franchise to his son Hal.

“He was an incredible and charitable man,” his family said in a statement. “He was a visionary and a giant in the world of sports. He took a great but struggling franchise and turned it into a champion again.”

In The Bronx, fans paid their respects in the rain, leaving flowers on the Yankees’ emblem outside the billion-dollar stadium that had long been Steinbrenner’s dream. It has come to be known as “The House that George Built.”

“It’s very sad, almost like a family member has passed away,” said one fan at the scene, Steve Campo, 42.

He took the subway up from his sales job in Midtown to pay his respects.

“Thirty-seven years of great memories. What his legacy is going to leave is bringing the Yankees back to prominence,” Campo said.

Mayor Bloomberg called Steinbrenner, “a great New Yorker, a great sportsman, just an all-around good guy. He wanted to win and he took great pride in the Yankees, the tradition of the Yankees and he had great pride in New York City.”

Steinbrenner, the mayor said, “was a winner for this country and New York City. He will be missed.”

The team’s skipper, Joe Girardi, who played on Yankee championship teams between 1996 and 1999 and led them to a World Series win last year, said the hot-tempered owner was his kind of boss.

“I never really felt that his expectations were overbearing,” he said at a pre-All-Star Game press conference. “I felt he just wanted what all of us wanted — to win. He was a pleasure to play for; he’s been a pleasure to work for.”

Steinbrenner continued his gift for dramatics to the end — his passing came on the same day that a Long Island wake was held for Bob Sheppard, the team’s revered public-address announcer, who died Sunday at 99.

“They had a great relationship with each other,” said Sheppard’s son, Paul.

Former Yankee manager Joe Torre noted something else about the timing of Steinbrenner’s death. “It’s only fitting that he went out as a world champ,” said Torre, now manager of the LA Dodgers.

Berra said he was still in disbelief.

“We went through some bad times, just like everyone else did, but he’s a wonderful man,” he said. “I’m going to miss him.

“George was ‘The Boss,’ make no mistake . . . He built the Yankees into champions, and that’s something nobody can ever deny.

“I don’t know where baseball or the Yankees would be without him.”

Additional reporting by Selim Algar, Carolyn Salazar, Perry Chiaramonte and Shari Logan

erin.calabrese@nypost.com