Association With Spira Brings Trouble by George

A self-described gambler, Howard Spira, not only threatened New York Yankees baseball owner George Steinbrenner but promised to go public with private details about club personnel, including former manager Lou Piniella, according to a high-placed source in the Yankees organization.

“Spira said he had information on all (Yankees) players and that he was going to expose Lou Piniella,” the source said. Piniella, who now manages the Cincinnati Reds, said Spira’s information apparently concerned Piniella’s presence at Florida dog and horse tracks. “I’ve talked to Steinbrenner, and he said there’s nothing to even worry about,” Piniella said Thursday.

Concerning Spira, Piniella added: “I don’t even know the man. I don’t know why he’d be talking about me.”

Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent has opened an investigation that will examine Spira’s relationship with Steinbrenner and other figures in the sport. Spira was indicted last Friday by a federal grand jury in Tampa on charges he threatened Steinbrenner and tried to extort money from Steinbrenner and Dave Winfield, a star Yankees outfielder. Spira will plead not guilty to all charges, according to Roland Thau, a New York City-based public defender who is representing Spira until his arraignment next Thursday in Tampa.

Thau said he is unaware of any threats made by Spira and said he has advised his client not to make any public comments. In an interview this week, Thau characterized the 31-year-old Bronx resident as a “groupie” and “sports nut” and “pathetic young man” who was exploited by Steinbrenner.

Spira provided information to Steinbrenner during the Yankees owner’s long-running feud with Winfield over contributions to a Winfield charitable foundation. Spira has told New York writers that Steinbrenner was intent on discrediting Winfield.

Steinbrenner made a $40,000 payment to Spira in January. The Yankees owner has said the payment was made “out of the goodness of my heart ... because I cared about this guy” and not because of information Spira provided. Spira has alleged that Steinbrenner offered him $150,000, free lodging and a $50,000-a-year job in Tampa “to help bring down Dave.” Steinbrenner has said he did not promise Spira anything.

Under baseball rules, major league club personnel, including owners, can be disciplined, even permanently suspended, if their conduct is found to be detrimental to the sport. Club owners and employees are forbidden from associating with gamblers.

The commissioner’s investigation apparently is being headed by Washington lawyer John Dowd, who conducted last year’s inquiry of Pete Rose. The investigation will likely examine the nature and extent of Spira’s association with Steinbrenner and Winfield and the purpose of the Yankees owner’s payment to Spira.

Steinbrenner and Winfield declined through their respective representatives to be interviewed for this story. But as baseball’s investigation geared up this week, Steinbrenner was insisting he never had more than a smattering of personal dealings with Spira, according to the Yankees source, who asked not to be identified.

Over a three-year period, the source said, Steinbrenner had only two brief meetings and five phone conversations with Spira. “The two meetings lasted a total of 20 minutes,” said the source, adding that Steinbrenner deliberately “shielded” himself from Spira by referring most of his calls to lawyers and security officers.

Steinbrenner’s differences with Winfield began in the mid-1980s when the owner suspected improprieties in the David Winfield Foundation for Children. Under terms of the 10-year, $20 million contract he signed with Winfield, Steinbrenner made an annual contribution to the foundation. Winfield later alleged that Steinbrenner failed to make $450,000 in contributions to the foundation. A lawyer for Steinbrenner said that money was placed in escrow.

Spira worked at various times as a stringer for a New York City radio station and an aide to Winfield’s former agent, Al Frohman. Spira’s work took him at various times to the Yankees clubhouse and, more frequently, to Frohman’s sports agency, which was located in the same Fort Lee, N.J., office building as the Winfield Foundation.

Thau said his client’s association with Winfield “gave rise to certain hopes (by Spira) that he might want to hitch his star to the ‘Great Winfield.’ ... In a very real sense I consider Howard a bit of a groupie. I see them around movie stars and rock stars and athletes ... and these guys use (groupies) unmercifully and sometimes in very humiliating ways.”

Spira told the New York Daily News that Winfield lent him $15,000 in December 1981 to pay off gambling debts but forced him to pay back $18,500. Spira said Winfield later threatened to kill him if he didn’t repay the money within two weeks, according to published reports.

Jeffrey Klein, the New York lawyer who now represents Winfield, said allegations that Winfield threatened Spira and charged him a usurous rate of interest are untrue. Klein said Winfield loaned money to Spira at the direction of Frohman, who died in 1987. “(Spira) was a friend of David’s agent, and David trusted his agent,” Klein said this week.

Klein said Winfield did not know Spira was a gambler at the time he lent him the money. “David does not condone gambling and he certainly has never associated himself with gamblers,” Klein said. “David disassociated himself from Spira when he heard he was a gambler.”

The Spira-Steinbrenner relationship began in December 1986 when Spira phoned the Yankees owner in Tampa, where he lives and directs the American Shipbuilding Co. In subsequent calls to Steinbrenner and his associates, Spira offered to produce information related to the Winfield Foundation. Steinbrenner was intrigued.

“Spira said he had material that would prove that Winfield and Frohman had misused foundation funds and that he was intent on getting Dave Winfield one way or the other,” said the Yankees source. “ ... Spira also asked (Steinbrenner) for help. He said, ‘If I do this for you, I expect help.’ ”

On Dec. 29, 1986, Spira accepted an invitation to meet in Tampa with Steinbrenner’s security staff, headed by former FBI agent Phillip McNiff. Before leaving Tampa, Spira had a 15-minute conference with Steinbrenner, the Yankees source said. They met again in Tampa-for five minutes-in April 1987, the source said.

Over the next 2 1/2 years Spira spoke with Steinbrenner and his associates by phone, giving them information about Winfield, Frohman and the Winfield Foundation. “Very little of it was of any help to us,” the Yankees source said. “He did substantiate one or two minor problems (concerning the foundation). But much of the information we either knew or it wasn’t material to the foundation (dispute).”

Spira frequently pressed Steinbrenner’s associates for money, the source said. Thau declined to discuss specifics of Spira’s relationship with Steinbrenner but said his client was a “despondent, frustrated young man who may have been strung along for a long time and to whom promises had been made which weren’t being fulfilled.”

In a May 9, 1989 letter Spira allegedly wrote McNiff: “ ... My mother didn’t get to work this week, she’s getting sicker and sicker. Between the stress and my behavior she’s falling apart. I swear if anything happens to my mother George and Dave better hire a lot of extra security because then I will really go out of control.”

The letter would later be attached to the Spira indictment. Thau said he cannot confirm whether Spira wrote the letter. In 1989 the Winfield Foundation sued Steinbrenner for nonpayment of foundation contributions. Steinbrenner countersued, charging Winfield and the foundation with misuse of funds. The parties reached an out-of-court settlement last September.

Spira became “more aggressive” in his calls to Steinbrenner associates last fall, the Yankees source said. “He was constantly pleading for assistance, saying he had been the reason (for the settlement) and we couldn’t have done it without him,” the source said.

“He was harassing people and calling people all the time. He called friends of (Steinbrenner’s) and harassed their wives. Spira claimed he could get any telephone number he wanted even though it was unlisted -- and he did, absolutely did.” Spira once obtained an unlisted home number that Steinbrenner had given only to members of his family and security staff, the Yankees source said.

On Jan. 8 of this year lawyers for Steinbrenner agreed to meet Spira in a New York City law office. According to the Yankees source, Spira asked for some money, and the lawyers refused. Spira demanded to speak to Steinbrenner, and in a phone conversation he asked the Yankees owner for $50,000.

“Spira said he had two old parents and a mother who’s sick with cancer,” the source said. “He said he had borrowed money from all over the place to satisfy gambling debts and he needed money for him to live and for his parents to live.”

Against the advice of his lawyers, Steinbrenner agreed to give Spira $40,000 “so he could put his life together and we could get him out of our hair,” the source said. “He’s not our kind of guy.”

Spira asked for the $40,000 in cash but Steinbrenner directed his lawyers to pay by check, the source said. At the insistence of Steinbrenner’s lawyers Spira signed a contract agreeing never to disclose the payment. “It was done so the payment would be legal,” the Yankees source said. “It was a shush agreement,” Thau said.

Steinbrenner soon learned that Spira was not satisfied with the $40,000 payment. “Now he started really harassing (Steinbrenner’s associates and friends),” the Yankees source said. “He started to bother people with ... pure extortion and threats ... It sounded serious and dangerous.”

Thau said of the harassment allegations: “Look, harassment is very often in the mind of the beholder. Clearly, if this captain of industry and of shipping and of baseball -- a fat cat, if you like -- has a relationship with a pathetic young man, and he -- the fat cat -- makes or implies certain benefits to squeeze whatever he can out of the pathetic creature, he’s going to feel harassed if the other guy occasionally comes hat-in-hand and says, ‘George, remember me?’ ”

Steinbrenner’s associates, led by McNiff, notified the FBI’s Tampa office of Spira’s alleged conduct. On March 23 a federal grand jury handed up an eight-count indictment. If found guilty of all counts, Spira would face 25 years in prison and $2 million in fines.

For now, it is the commissioner’s investigation that has the attention of the baseball world. Steinbrenner has said he will cooperate with baseball investigators; so will Winfield.

“If somebody were looking at this story, I don’t know what you’d call it,” Klein, Winfield’s lawyer, said this week. “It’s sad and pathetic and in many ways disgusting.”