Transcript Excerpts From Steinbrenner’s Hearing

Excerpts from the transcript of New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner’s hearing on July 5 and July 6 before Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent. The full transcript was released Wednesday by the commissioner’s office after The National obtained a copy and ran excerpts in Wednesday’s editions:

On the matter of Steinbrenner’s $40,000 payment to gambler Howard Spira:

Vincent: Let me turn to the $40,000 payment to Mr. Spira. . . . Your testimony is that you made this payment out of a mixture of motivations. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Part of it was concern for your safety and for the safety of your family. Part of it was a hope that if you made the payment, this man would go his own way and never trouble you again. Part of it was out of a feeling of compassion for him--his mother had cancer I think you testified--a variety of factors. Am I correct that there was no single factor that led you to make this payment? That it was a mixture of these and any others which I may have overlooked?

Steinbrenner: Let me, if I could, to help you on this, let me rate them for you. Which one is the most. I’m not making any bones about the fact that this guy was a bad guy.

Vincent: We will stipulate that.

Steinbrenner: And that he scared me and he really scared my children, particularly my one daughter. And I didn’t know what to expect. Safety of my family had a lot to do with it. Security increased, as I said, around the clock, with my kids, they were frantic. They didn’t understand why this stuff was happening.

And when there was the matter about the Kelly-Weidler situation (former Yankee employees Pat Kelly, longtime Yankee Stadium manager, and David Weidler, former controller and chief operating officer) and the Lou Piniella situation. The Piniella family is very close to me. And I think the world of Lou Piniella. But when he (Spira) said that he threatened to sell information, as I recall he told me, on Lou Piniella and his sports betting habits, I didn’t want to see baseball or Lou Piniella dragged through something the way it would have been sensationalized. We couldn’t take it. It was a judgment on my part.

Vincent: But you believe, what I’m having trouble with is, let’s focus on Spira. You dealt with this fellow for a long period of time. We developed information and you’ve confirmed that some of the things which Spira told you as they were investigated you found out were not true. Spira’s a liar. Your materials make that clear. He may not lie on everything, but we all concede that he lies a lot. So here he comes and says, ‘Lou Piniella. I have allegations about Lou Piniella.’ And am I correct that this late in the game you believe that what he told you about Lou Piniella was true?

Steinbrenner: Commissioner, I don’t know what to believe because as McNiff (Phil McNiff, head of security for Steinbrenner’s American Shipbuilding Co.) told me, much of what he told me was corroborated by another witness and that there were polygraph tests taken and that these things were proven right. I don’t know that an awful lot of what he told us was proven to be totally false.

Vincent: That’s your testimony. In other words, you are saying to me that at the time you paid him, you believed that much--you said not much of it was proven false. It’s fair to say much, if not most, of what he told you was accurate?

Steinbrenner: And that a lot of things he told me were accurate.

Vincent: And therefore that putting it in your terms, if he would sell information regarding Kelly and Weidler and Lou Piniella betting on sports, that those were items or factors which you would like not to come out, and therefore by paying him you believed that these statements would not be made public. That was part of the motivation?

Steinbrenner: All part of the ball of wax. You don’t know what I went through. I just wanted to get him away. I wanted to get him the hell out of my life and my family’s life. You don’t know what it’s like when you’ve got a guy out there calling and threatening to kill people in your family or other people’s family.

Vincent: This is really the guts of it, from where I’m sitting. I’m putting myself in your shoes and I’m saying here is a guy whom I have not promised to give any money to, I have no commitments to him. I don’t owe him a thing. I’m sitting in Tampa and I’m talking to my advisers, as I assume you were. Indeed you’ve testified that they told you . . .

Steinbrenner: Not do it.

Vincent: Not do it?

Steinbrenner: Absolutely.

Vincent: And they are telling me not to do it. And I’m a smart fellow and have been around baseball. And here is a guy we know has been involved in some bad things. We know he’s gambler or a former gambler. We know, to put it in your terms, that he may be involved in extorting money from me. I’m taking your definition now.

Steinbrenner: Threatening me.

Vincent: Yes. Why didn’t you behave differently? Why didn’t you call authorities? Why didn’t you surround yourself with people who could protect you, both physically and legally? You might have called me. . . . My question to you, cutting through it all is, why didn’t you do what I suggest?

Steinbrenner: No. 1, talk about physical protection. The little guy with a club in his hand. I mean they shot the president of the United States. They shot the Pope. With all the security that you could ever want around anybody, they still managed. If somebody wants to shoot you, they are going to shoot you.

Vincent: You testified, I believe--again, I’m not putting words in your mouth--that Kelly, Weidler and Piniella were people you wanted to protect.

Steinbrenner: I didn’t want him (Spira) talking about it.

Vincent: How did you think the payment protected them?

Steinbrenner: Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was a judgment call. I felt that if this guy had this money, he would go away.

Vincent: Did anybody tell you that it might be a problem within baseball?

Steinbrenner: They didn’t say it was illegal to me.

Vincent: So you never thought as you were doing this that you would be here with anybody in baseball asking why you paid under these circumstances? . . . Did that occur to you?

Steinbrenner: No. It didn’t. Maybe you are smarter than I am. You are a lawyer and I’m not. But it didn’t.

Vincent: Didn’t it occur to your advisers? Weren’t they saying to you, ‘George, look, when this is all over and you pay him $40,000, it’s going to look as if we brought this information about Winfield?’

Steinbrenner: Never mentioned by any adversary to me, Fay. And never--and I didn’t think about it. I had so many things going through my mind at that time about the things that I have told you, never occurred to me and nobody told me.

Vincent: Did anybody say to you, ‘George, suppose this guy takes the money and pays off gambling debts. You are now an owner in baseball financing a gambler?

Steinbrenner: Well, I didn’t--I never thought of that. Nobody ever mentioned that to me, Commissioner.

Steinbrenner: I think you know how I feel about you and maybe I should have . . . come to you as a friend.

Vincent: Not as a friend. As commissioner.

Steinbrenner: As commissioner. All right, as commissioner. Not as a friend, as commissioner. I knew that when I talked to the government that I had been lied to by the guy and maybe that’s my stupidity in doing it. I could have kept paying him. I could have sent him somewhere and given him a job and do all that if it cost me $100,000 a year. That’s an easy thing for me to do.

Vincent: You testified earlier when he told you about Piniella, you believed him because you felt his accuracy or his veracity had been pretty good. I’m having trouble with the difference between believing him . . .

Steinbrenner: I never believed that Piniella was a gambler. I mean I saw him at horse races. I didn’t know what this guy had or knew. I had no way of knowing. Some of what he told us was proven to be true.

I didn’t come to you. I don’t know why I didn’t come to you. I can’t answer you.

Vincent: What I would like to do, I would like to be able to go up to the Cape with as much information as I can have and really sit and think hard about this. I tell you this is a matter of a soul. And it’s hard. And I really find it anguishing.

I have no interest in this process being other than resolved in what you and I in the perfect world would agree is in the interest of baseball. And I find it difficult and I am struggling with it.