Bring Back George

As the Yankees were drifting over the weekend toward the magical 14 games they fell behind the Red Sox in 1978, for a moment I couldn't remember who managed the team during its epic comeback that season. I knew it wasn't Billy Martin, who had resigned in midsummer around the nadir. But was it Dick Howser? Bob Lemon? Was it possible I had forgotten someone?

That summer, I was 15 and at the peak of a Yankees infatuation that had begun during the Horace Clarke Era. Two autumns earlier, I cried in front of the TV as Chris Chambliss hit the bottom-of-the-ninth home run off of Kansas City's Mark Littell for the 7-6 win and first pennant of my sentient life. My immigrant father, smoking a cigar in his white imitation-leather chair, didn't understand. A few days later, from a mezzanine box in the Bronx, I witnessed the only Yankees home run—the hitter: Jim Mason—in the dismal World Series sweep by Cincinnati. The next October, I was present for Reggie's three homers against the Dodgers. Present for the first one, that is. In the tunnel beneath the third-base stands for the second. In a River Avenue parking garage for the third. The family friend who took me to the game wanted to beat the traffic back to Westchester. My 25-year-old brother didn't think to have me stay overnight with him in Manhattan. I'm still pissed.

My memory lapse—the manager was Lemon, of course—is less about the fog of years than the glorious turbulence of those times. Who could keep track? Reggie fighting Billy in the dugout. Billy suspending Reggie for ignoring a sign. Billy ``quitting. " George announcing five days later that Billy would be back. Billy punching the marshmallow salesman. George calling Dave Winfield ``Mr. May.'' I looked up the rotation of managers under Steinbrenner from the skipper of my preadolescence, Ralph Houk, the old baseball man George inherited when he bought the team in 1973, through Martin's final Bronx exit, in 1988. (His earthly exit followed shortly thereafter.) It's a staggering list: Houk, Bill Virdon, Martin, Howser, Lemon, Martin (2), Howser (2), Gene Michael, Lemon (2), Michael (2), Clyde King, Martin (3), Yogi Berra, Martin (4), Lou Piniella, Martin (5).

The chaos could be embarrassing and infuriating, and players described it as maddening. But there was a vitality to Steinbrenner's autocracy. He spent money in ways that not only began redressing the players' 100 years of servitude but transformed the backward, parsimonious lords of baseball—plantation owners before the Civil War isn't a terrible analogy—into progressive, if not judicious, freespenders. George was batshit, yes, and his codependent relationship with Martin was perverse. But his look-at-me behavior, coupled with his determination to assemble the talent that produced the first winning Yankees team in a generation—and not by ``buying'' pennants; the free-agent imbalances of today's baseball marketplace didn't exist in the late '70s and early '80s—made baseball in New York essential. There was an urgency to those championship years, and not because the Bronx was burning or because winning was predictable. Steinbrenner was irrational, impulsive and irredeemable, but damn if he didn't make you care. George performed the neat trick of allowing New York to say fuck you to the rest of baseball while also saying fuck you to him.

Steinbrenner began losing it, and many of us, with his absurdist signings and paranoiac behavior of the '80s. When he was banned from baseball, supposedly for life, it was a relief. When he returned, baseball was changing. Success was determined, mostly, by the size of your cable contract. George hired recidivist managing failure Joe Torre, the Yankees inevitably won and the team became fashionable. But the winning, regular season and otherwise, has not only become anticipated but uncompelling. In the years between Mickey Rivers and Johnny Damon—how's that for a contrast of eras—all sports have been corporatized, homogenized and overtelevised. But it's been sad to watch the Bombers become (as in the similarly unmeritocratic 1950s) another drab megabusiness. The all-id Yankees of George, Billy and Reggie defined my childhood. What defines my middle age? The empty press releases of Howard Rubenstein. The forced march of ``God Bless America.'' The lame, scripted, earnest announcement that a pitcher older than I will return to play part-time. As if.

This doesn't mean I'd like to see Torre fired if the Yanks lose to Boston tonight and tomorrow night just because George can fire him, the way he fired Billy because he could. This isn't about nostalgia. It's about living in a sports world in which, I, fan, am made to care. It's about making sports, especially New York sports, indispensable. To win and make money, the 21st century Yankees don't need to be spontaneous or dramatic. But it was a lot more fun when they were. It would be comforting to know that, 30 years from now, some kid won't be able to remember whether it was Joe Torre or Don Mattingly or Joe Girardi who led the Yankees back from double digits down in the summer of 2007. At the very least, let's hope Steinbrenner is dictating his memoirs now, and plans to go out with a bang.

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When he isn't hanging out with Sparky Lyle or imitating the swings of Horace Clarke and Bobby Murcer, Stefan Fatsis is writing a book about his Plimptonesque summer as a kicker for the Denver Broncos, which will be published next year by Houghton Mifflin. He's also the author of the bestselling Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and a sports commentator for National Public Radio's ``All Things Considered.'' We are extremely proud to have him on No Mas.