George Steinbrenner made baseball the game it is today.
There’s your nut graph, as we call it in the newspaper business – a single thought to sum up the New York Yankees’ boorish, brilliant, bombastic, beloved (at least by Pinstripe Nation) Boss, who died Tuesday at the age of 80.
If it’s true that the legacies of most great men can be framed by one statement – Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves … Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War … Michael Jackson was one strange dude – then Steinbrenner should be forever remembered for turning America’s pastime into money ball.
Feel free to argue over whether this is a good thing. It also is important to remember that Curt Flood and Marvin Miller were the parents of free agency, not Georgie Boy.
But Steinbrenner was the first to fully embrace its power. Over the last 20 years of his life he spent $1.8 billion on the curiously labeled “free” agents, which was more than twice as much as any other team.