YANKEES owner George Steinbrenner is getting a 90-minute special tomor row on the network he owns, YES.
Awkward? Could be.
But network officials insist it is an honest look at “The Boss” and his 36-year tenure as one of baseball’s most controversial figures.
“We didn’t gloss over anything,” says John Filipelli, YES’s president of production and programming.
Some may nitpick that it doesn’t go into enough detail about Steinbrenner’s two suspensions from baseball — one in 1974 for illegal campaign contributions and the other in 1990 for paying a gambler $40,000 for “dirt” on Dave Winfield. Or his volcanic relationships with several managers, including the late Billy Martin (who he hired and fired five times) and players (including Reggie Jackson).
“That was the challenge,” Filipelli says, “to capture all the various and sundry aspects of who Mr. Steinbrenner is and what he’s about in 90 minutes.”
Steinbrenner was not interviewed for tomorrow’s special — the first non-player to be profiled in the channel’s well-regarded “Yankeeography” series.
Now 79, The Boss has made few public appearances in recent years — the last was at last year’s All-Star Game in the old Yankee Stadium — and hasn’t been interviewed on TV at length since a “CenterStage” chat with Michael Kay three years ago on YES.
The subject of Steinbrenner’s health is a delicate one with the Yankee organization — and it is difficult to get anyone who actually has contact with the team owner to talk about it.
Last year, Steinbrenner formally ceded control of the team to his sons, Hank and Hal.
“Let me put it to you this way,” Filipelli says. “The show discusses the transition, and there’s an aspect of the show where we discuss that transition coming on the heels of the Otto Graham funeral and Mr. Steinbrenner’s episode there,” alluding to Steinbrenner’s fainting spell at the football legend’s 2003 funeral.
“And George mentions at a couple of points the need to turn the team over to the ‘young elephants,’ as he calls them, and at what point he should step aside.”
A number of people are interviewed for the special, including former manager Joe Torre, who led the Yanks to four World Series titles before famously leaving after the 2007 season.
“He’s got his Dodgers cap on,” Filipelli says. “I’m so glad he wore that cap so everyone will see it’s a recent interview.”
So why are they doing the profile now?
Filipelli says that YES “probably” should have done Steinbrenner’s “Yankeeography” episode two or three years ago. But it was only the commitment to other TV profiles that caused the delay, he says.
“He’s as important to the history of the Yankees as any single player that’s ever played for them,” he says.
“It needed to be done. It was time.”