structure with all the big high priced free agents that you want but the essence of baseball has nothing to do with money but has to do with character, talent, teamwork, and cooperation. and i think a good deal of what george steinbrenner was about was the antithesis of those secret ingredients, the secret sauce that s very much a part of winning. i did a rough bit of research in i think 1998 when they made one of those trades for chuck knoblauch and i don t know exactly what the numbers were but i do look at the 20 trades made in the steinbrenner, the height of his folly, where they traded something like 200 wins by pitchers and 4,000 home runs and got ten wins and 25 home runs and, yet, as you say, the yankees success went from these crazy deals, the throw away future hall of famers for nothing and he did finally calm down and listen to people say, okay, work from within. how did he make that obviously he was coming back from a supposed lifetime
we ve all heard that before. but he always cast such a huge shadow that whether you loved him or hated him you certainly paid attention to him, and he did make major league baseball better because of the money he spent. and everybody hated him for it, but they all jumped in. clearly, he had mellowed to some degree by the time you got to new york, joe, or back to new york i should say. but he hadn t mellowed all that much. what about him enabled you to interact so well with him? well, i think, keith, was the fact that i was ready to do it. you know, i think we all knew george steinbrenner the bully, we all watched it, got to know him a little bit when i managed the mets. in fact, he was instrumental in getting me super bowl tickets on a regular basis. he never said no. you know, of course i had never worked for him. so when i went in there, i just
documentary requests baseball premieres this sunday, september 28th. and there is a lot of steinbrenner in it. thank you for coming in. thank you for having me. where does he fit in baseball? listening to all of the reports, this need to balance and put in this stuff is so hard to do and with steinbrenner nearly impossible. there s the generosity that you talked about, the intense loyalty, the delivery of the victories, which is what people want, and yet there is a sense that baseball s great lesson about loss was lost on him. and the idea that money could be thrown at you, you could fire people, treat people this way and on the other hand be so generous and kind and loyal to people. torre is an amazing example. yes. of somebody who rose above it, who came in. tom says in our film playing with house s money. he had been a loser most of his life as a player and manager too and he came into this place where the price was winning or you lost your head. and he kept his head and
come to the realization that maybe we misjudged some people. maybe there are some guys that aren t as good as we thought they were and definitely aren t as good as they thought they were. thus, the atmosphere of the 70s and 80s was almost war like and the manager in this famous in-game fight, billy martin was hired and fired five times. by the third time it had already turned into a comedy act. i ll be handling all the trades. what do you mean? there will be no phone calls in the dugout. what do you mean? that s not right. i m handling the trades. that isn t the way we said it, george. i have the right to call you any time i want to. that isn t the way we said it, george. damn right it is. if you don t like it, you re fired. you haven t hired me yet! and yet there was another george steinbrenner. he signed ex-met greats darryl strawberry and dwight gooden because he could thumb his nose at his crosstown rivals but even when drugs interfered in their lives he gav
$168,000. within two years he would be spending more on players than he had on the team. his exploitation of the new system of free agency rebuilt the yankees almost overnight. that which others thought would destroy the sport, a player s right to work for the employer of his choice, instead amplified the game to unimaginable heights, and george steinbrenner primed the pump that became the money-making machine. but incredibly, he did not do it just for the money. this was a man who from the beginning insisted on controlling, not just control of a process, but trying to control all outcomes. the belief that if his players just tried harder they really could win every game. and 21 managerial firings in 34 years resulted. this was me interviewing him after one of them in 1982. for george steinbrenner, his ninth managerial change in nine years of running the ball club. i made the move because i felt in my inner gut reaction was that i had to do something or we weren t going to be able