MLB

Dick Schaap, Part 1: Patton in Pinstripes

A born winner who hated to lose. A businessman-turned-showman who attacked his work with a vengeance. Generous to the needy but tough on his ballplayers — he paid them a lot of money and expected a lot for it, both on and off the field. A complex and volatile man. You may have loved or loathed George Steinbrenner, but, in this town, whether it was April or October, you couldn’t ignore him.

Here, the late, legendary sportswriter Dick Schaap tells the inside story of the man who went from humble beginnings to quarterbacking a multi-million dollar shipbuilding company — and then to dominate the sports headlines year in and year out as the fiery owner of the Yankees.

Here, in the first of five exclusive excerpts, Schapp tells this tale of a New York titan:

George Steinbrenner has never pretended he was easy to work for.

“Some guys can lead through real, genuine respect,” he once said. “There are some guys whom people would walk through a wall for.

“Okay, but I’m not that kind of a leader. I wish I were. An Eisenhower, when he was in the Army, was that type of leader.

“Unfortunately, I’m probably more of a George Patton. He was a gruff son of a bitch and he led through fear. I hope I don’t lead through fear, and I would hope it was more love and respect, but maybe it isn’t.”

Another time, he said, “My employees know I’m rough on them, and I am. I demand more of them than they think they’re capable of. I don’t know any other way to lead. I can’t be responsible for how my people feel. I never demand more of an employee than I demand of myself.

“I’m not a tentative leader,” he continued. “I make a decision and then I’ve got to go hell bent for leather.

“People in this country don’t want tentative leaders. That’s why they voted Carter out of office — overwhelmingly. There are too many underachievers in this country. I want my guys to perform up to their abilities and beyond.

“And God knows they get enough money to do it.

“I can’t be a nice guy about it. Church choirs are filled with nice guys. This country was built on people with guts who wanted more than they had — like the people in those little covered wagons who went West and fought the weather and the Indians.”

The people around Steinbrenner couldn’t help recognizing his style, and some of them accepted it.

“George is an overbearing, arrogant, arbitrary, authoritarian son of a bitch,” Pete Smythe, his old friend, once said. “There’s no denying that. But I just love him. We all do. You ask yourself why he can’t be more like everybody else. Well, if he was, he wouldn’t be George Steinbrenner. A simple evaluation came from a man who worked for Steinbrenner and then quit.

“George Steinbrenner doesn’t want to be loved, and he doesn’t want to be hated,” the man said. “George Steinbrenner wants to be feared.”

Critics who paint Steinbrenner as an ogre often illustrate their thesis with a reference to how often he fires his secretaries.

Pearl Davis, who worked for the Yankees for 10 years, most of them pre-Steinbrenner, claimed that in his first five years with the team Steinbrenner went through 12 secretaries.

“He’s a direct, mean man,” Davis said. “He has no feelings for other people. He wants what he wants when he wants it.”

Her impressions might be correct, but her math could be wrong, judging by the stories that have been published detailing Steinbrenner’s passion for firing his secretary.

Steinbrenner makes no secret of the fact that he demands efficiency, extra effort and total dedication, but none of these traits is his top priority.

“We have found in searching for people,” Steinbrenner said before he ever got into the baseball business, “the people that have been most appealing to us have been people — number one and most important of all — that we knew we could count on for their loyalty.”

Another time, Steinbrenner told me: “The only good thing about having power is that you can use it to help other people.”

He mentioned, for instance, an acquaintance in Tampa who had called him the day before and said his daughter had been in New York for several weeks, searching unsuccessfully for a job.

“I made a call this morning,” George said, “and I got her a job.”

That’s what power is for, he suggested: to dispense favors and kindness and generosity.

He said he really doesn’t want to get credit for all the good things he does, but he admitted he is hurt when people write about him and fail to give him credit.

I told him I thought he often got credit. I could hardly remember a major article written about him in which the story wasn’t told of the little girl whose life he had helped save.

In some articles, he tells the story himself.

“On day I read in the papers that a 7-year-old girl had a piece of a board pierced through her head,” George told one writer, “and she had one operation which she owed $6,000 on, and she needs another operation to save her life, and her family doesn’t have the $6,000 the second operation costs. She’s going to die otherwise.

“I called up her home. They couldn’t believe it was me. I said, ‘Come to my office. I’ll send a check to pay for the two operations.’ Her parents later sent me a letter thanking me for saving their little girl’s life.”

Steinbrenner has helped many needy children attend college. He took a special interest in Glenville HS, one of Cleveland’s predominantly black inner-city schools.

In the early 1960s, Frank Perez was a student at Glenville High and a sprinter on the state championship track team. His father, who was blind, worked in a factory and earned $5,000 a year.

Frank was one of five children. His father certainly could not afford to send him to college, and neither his athletic skills nor his grades were spectacular enough to earn him a full scholarship.

Perez had two teammates at Glenville who were exceptional athletes, and Purdue University wanted Steinbrenner, who was recruiting for the school in the Cleveland area, to offer them scholarships.

Steinbrenner met the two track stars, and also met Perez and his family, and took a liking to them. Steinbrenner told Purdue that if it wanted the other two Glenville athletes, Frank Perez had to get a scholarship, too.

Purdue agreed to the package deal. “I got a $10,000 scholarship,” said Perez in 1981, when he was assistant principal of Bedford (Ohio) HS, “and as far as I’m concerned, George Steinbrenner gave me that $10,000. I never would have gone to college without him, never. And he never asked for anything in return.

“All he wanted was for me just to be successful and do well. I think that’s what he gets his jollies, his kicks, out of, seeing people he helped do well.”

Occasionally, as a teacher and coach in the Cleveland area, Perez would tell another teacher, or another coach, that George Steinbrenner had helped him get to college, and the other person would smile and shake his head and say, “That’s funny. He helped me too.”

*On Jan. 3, 1973, at Yankee Stadium, Mike Burke, the president of the Yankees, announced that a 12-man group headed by two “general partners,” himself and George M. Steinbrenner III of Cleveland, Ohio, had purchased the Yankees for $10 million in cash.

“It’s the best buy in sports today,” George Steinbrenner said. “They feel they haven’t taken a loss on the team.”

Steinbrenner himself had bought 20 percent of the Yankees, a share that would climb by 1981, as he bought out several of his partners, to 55 percent. By then, the team would be valued at $35 million.

In theory, Burke and Steinbrenner should have gotten along quite well — both charming (one most of the time, the other whenever he wanted to be), both with football backgrounds (Steinbrenner as a coach, Burke as a halfback at the University of Pennsylvania).

But somehow, late in April the two men announced that their marriage of convenience had failed, that Gabe Paul was replacing Burke as president and that the team was going to have just one “general partner,” George M. Steinbrenner III.

The Yankees soon reversed themselves on the field. After losing 10 of their first 16 games, they won 40 of their 46 and woke up on the morning of Steinbrenner’s 43rd birthday, July 4, in first place.

The team and its fans began dreaming about a pennant, perhaps even a subway series with the Mets.

But then the dream died.

The Yankees clung to first place for the rest of July, then plummeted straight down, winding up in fourth place, 17 games behind Baltimore.

Both the team and the stadium were remodeled during the 1974 season and the Yankees played their home games at Shea Stadium in Queens. They would not return to their newly refurbished Bronx home until 1976.

The first major personnel move came late in April when the team traded four pitchers to the Cleveland Indians — Steve Kline, Fred Beene, Tom Busky and Fritz Peterson — for two pitchers, Dick Tidrow and Cecil Upshaw, and a young first baseman, Chris Chambliss.

The trade was ridiculed at first by Yankee fans and cursed by Yankee players, but it was a brilliant move nevertheless. Tidrow, and especially Chambliss, played major roles in bringing Steinbrenner his first pennant in 1976 and his first World Series championship in 1977.

Manager Bill Virdon also made a bold and controversial move that paid off in 1974. He took Bobby Murcer, heir apparent to DiMaggio and Mantle, and moved him out of his hallowed turf of center field, replacing him in center with Elliot Maddox.

Maddox, who had come to the team weeks before the season began, responded by batting .303 and leading the Yankees into first place in early September. But the Yankees were narrowly eliminated in the last days of the season.

After the season ended, the team announced one of the most spectacular trades in its history, sending Murcer — a member of the All-Star team for four straight years — to San Francisco, for Bobby Bonds, another 28-year-old outfielder with enormous skill.

In 1973, in fact, Bobby Bonds had almost become the first major league baseball player to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in one season. He stole 43 bases, but fell one home run short. With his rare blend of speed and power, Bonds had the potential to become baseball’s dominant player.

At the end of the year, there was another dramatic development, and another new star. His name was James Augustus Hunter, and his nickname was “Catfish” or “Cat” among his teammates.

Catfish Hunter pitched for the Oakland A’s in the first half of the 1970s, and in those five years he won 106 games and lost only 49 during the regular seasons.

He also won four out of four World Series games while the A’s were wining three straight world championships.

In 1974, at the age of 28 — prime time for a pitcher — he won the Cy Young Award as the American League’s best hurler; he had the best earned-run average in the league (2.49), the most victories (25) and the most fortuitous contract. It provided Hunter with $100,000 for the year: $50,000 in straight salary and $50,000 to be paid on a deferred basis through an insurance company.

The owner of the Oakland A’s, Charles O. Finley, was obligated to pay the $50,000 to the insurance company by a specific date.

In 1974, Finley carelessly missed the deadline.

Hunter promptly filed a grievance, claiming that because Finley had breached the contract Hunter should be declared a free agent, free to negotiate a new contract with any team.

Peter Seitz, the arbitrator in the case, ruled in Hunter’s favor, making him suddenly the most coveted and available human being in baseball history.

Twenty-three of the 24 major league teams indicated an interest in signing Hunter — all except the San Francisco Giants. Commissioner [Bowie] Kuhn ruled that bidding could begin Dec. 18, 1974.

The auction was conducted by the law firm of Cherry, Cherry and Flythe in Ahoskie, N.C., a very small town some 60 miles from Hunter’s home in Hertford, an even smaller town.

At the time, the highest-paid baseball player was earning $250,000 a year, but it quickly became apparent that Hunter would shatter the record.

Eleven teams chased Hunter by telephone; 12 sent representatives to North Carolina. The Yankees dispatched their president, Gabe Paul, and a scout named Clyde Kluttz, who knew the target well.

Ten years earlier, Kluttz had signed Hunter for the A’s. But on Dec. 30, despite that relationship, Hunter and his attorneys informed Paul and Kluttz that they had decided to reject the Yankees’ handsome offer. Paul retreated to New York but he left Kluttz behind with instructions to change Hunter’s mind.

Somehow in the next day and a half, Kluttz succeeded, and on Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 31, 1974, Hunter and his lawyers agreed to a Yankee contract that promised the pitcher, for five years of work, a total of $3.35 million — $100,000 in salary for five years. $50,000 a year in deferred salary for five years, $100,000 as a signing bonus, $100,000 a year for 15 years (from 1980 through 1994) as a deferred bonus, $750,000 in life insurance, $25,000 in life insurance for each of his two children and $200,000 in lawyers’ fees.

Late that Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 31, 1974, Steinbrenner’s private jet carrying Edward Greenwald, a partner in the Yankees and a tax attorney, flew from Cleveland to Suffolk, Va., picked up Catfish Hunter, Clyde Kluttz and a lawyer from Ahoskie named J. Carlton Cherry — and transported then all to La Guardia Airport, not five minutes away from the Yankees’ temporary offices, site of a New Year’s Eve party celebrating the arrival of the new Yankee.

In 1975 Yankee fans had every reason to expect a great season.

After all, the 1974 team had come closer to a pennant than any Yankee team in a decade, and the addition of Hunter and Bonds had strengthened the lineup considerably.

The Yankees were supposed to win in 1975, but the Boston Red Sox moved into first place in June and stayed there the rest of the season.

But during this period the Yankees made three monumental moves. The first was the signing of Hunter, an event that altered the salary expectations of all baseball players.

The other two occurred on Aug. 2, 1975. With the Yankees out of the pennant race, manager Bill Virdon was fired and a fiery former Yankee named Billy Martin was hired to replace him.

Reprinted from “Steinbrenner!” by Dick Schaap by arrangement with G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., Copyright (c) 1982 by Dick Schaap.

TOMORROW: Clash of the titantic egos