(-nury hernandez)
(charles wenzelberg)
Soon after George Steinbrenner fainted at Otto Graham’s funeral in 2003, word circulated that this was not heat or emotion that had felled Steinbrenner but something more sinister to his overall health. His public forays and proclamations became rarer, and his physical appearance grew more wan and feeble.
He stopped being The Boss in all the ways that earned him that nickname. And as Steinbrenner completed a cycle from character to caricature to ghost, his family and the organization used his public silence to go into rewrite: To turn his twilight reputation into benevolent elder statesman. And to whitewash a past of cruelty, bluster and rule-breaking. The Yankees owner was a winner, instead, and winners sometimes commit minor transgressions in order to win.
However, the transgressions were often far from minor, unless — for example — owning the record for being thrown out of your sport (twice) is minor. As for the winning, there is that sizeable chunk from 1982-94 of playoff-less years inspired mainly by Steinbrenner’s impetuous, foolhardy decision making.
Life today would be easier to mindlessly accept the myth and ignore decades of reporting that show Steinbrenner was hardly the family man or friend refashioned in recent years. Who wants to write the truth on the day of a man’s death, that Steinbrenner’s life was not all champagne, parades and genius accompanied by the background music of a “Yankeeography?”
Except I think it is more disrespectful now to Steinbrenner’s legacy to offer a sanitized version of his story. Because he does not become The Boss without the messiness and the ego and the hair-trigger fury. And in becoming The Boss, he changed sports more than any men since Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson.
Steinbrenner belongs in the Hall of Fame. Not because he was perfect. But because he was transcendent. The power of his personality — good and bad — created free agency as we know it, the modern sports owner, and a money pump known as a team-owned network. So there is no LeBron James, Mark Cuban or SNY without Steinbrenner.
It is hard to appreciate today what a force of nature he was. He chilled employees by simply showing up: “The eagle has landed” was the pre-cell phone heads-up that would crackle across the walkie-talkies to signal his anything-could-happen arrival.
In later years, “Seinfeld” episodes would reinvent his firing, mean-natured temperament as zaniness. But there was nothing madcap if you were really on the wrong end; if you were tied to a desk or a hotel room and ordered to await a devastating call, or if you were the person Steinbrenner decided to publicly assault. Wackiness was not the word when Steinbrenner would go after a manager or general manager out of favor by firing a favored coach or secretary, failing to see the inhumanity in the act.
One-time Yankees general counsel/executive VP David Sussman once told me, “The quality that is missing [when understanding George] is the relentlessness George has when he fastens on something that has gotten under his skin. … If he had to call every 15 minutes to get his point across, so be it.”
Yes, he would often — with the passing of time — try to ameliorate heartlessness with charity, as if that made the balance sheet even in the human-being department. He used his checkbook to make the Yankees a powerhouse and to try to get into heaven by correcting wrongs. Steinbrenner reveled more in negative information than positive, using it as both fuel for his insatiable stamina and a weapon to go after his revolving enemies. He had the patience of a cobra among mice. He thought rules were for others, and he dealed, double-dealed and side-dealed.
Worst of all, he was a bully who seized on a spineless employee or an out-of-favor player and did not have the compassion to know when he had crossed the line from tough owner to outright indecency.
In hundreds of times in his company over the past two-plus decades, I watched the dichotomy of his personality in which he could charm and appall you in a sentence or two. He was ruthless and sentimental, capable of breaking out in screams or tears, especially in his later years. He loved the pep talk and redemption, and in later years did find a more unbreakable tether back to employees from his past.
He accepted one goal — a championship — and the day after winning one he could be dismissive and disrespectful of the accomplishment as he galvanized on winning again the next year.
Somehow it all formed a person who spilled out from the boundaries to affect sports beyond baseball. He became a public figure. His organization — through fear or motivation or addiction to Steinbrenner’s boundless energy — worked tirelessly to create the behemoth the Yankees have become.
Ignore the editing that has occurred in recent years. The George his minions would like you to eulogize could not become an icon, could not turn an organization into an empire. The myth is not just wrong, it is disrespectful of both history and the titan that was George Steinbrenner, a force of nature who only changed the world.
joel.sherman@nypost.com