Yankee/Tampa legend, George Steinbrenner has left us. No doubt the local and national media will give the proper and respectful historical retrospectives with everything you may or may not have known about the man, the maverick, the philanthropist. So it would seem unnecessary for me to echo what most of us already know by writers better than I. So I'll just reflect on my own brief personal experiences with Mr. Steinbrenner.
The first was when he came to speak at my high school (Berkeley) in 1986. I forget the occasion, not that we needed one. The gym was silent. He spoke of hard work, dedication, family, winning. He said second place was like kissing your sister, and later that a real man should never be ashamed to kiss his father. Win at all cost, except that of your honor, was what I took away from that speech. I left the gym ready to chew iron. He became one of my favorite people that day.
Later that year I ran into him again at Christmas time. I know this because I was at a party across the street from his house in Carrollwood and some drunk jackass (possibly me) suggested we sing Christmas Carols in front of Steinbrenner's place. Brilliant. So there we were, not a chaperone in sight, filled with "Christmas spirit" that may have been purchased with something resembling a drivers license, singing Jingle Bells. Badly. There may have been a few "Batman smells" thrown in, I'm not sure. The first one to appear on the lawn was a security guy. Not pleased but never said a word. He knew the threat level was slim to none. Then the front door opened and there he was.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2010.