Steinbrenner Is Not Content on Sideline

In the first month of the rest of his life without baseball bossdom, a wounded George Steinbrenner misses the clubhouse and the “player talk” and is bitter about the commissioner who took it all away from him.

“My heart was not cut out by this, no way,” Steinbrenner said in an interview with The Associated Press last week in Tampa and aboard his private jet to New York. “No man, and certainly not Fay Vincent, is ever going to be able to do that.”

Nevertheless, Steinbrenner still bristles over Vincent’s announcement that the New York Yankees owner had accepted a lifetime ban from day-to-day management of the team. He says he did nothing to justify even a suspension and volunteered to step aside only because Vincent was going to suspend him for two years regardless.

“There was no ban, no suspension, no probation,” Steinbrenner insists. And while he accepts the consequences, he adds, “I’m not happy with the way the agreement is turning out.”

However it came about, the bottom line is that Friday marks one month since Steinbrenner resigned as managing partner of the Yankees after baseball’s investigation into his association with a Bronx gambler.

The 60-year-old Steinbrenner, who usually plays his personal feelings close to the vest, said he has been hurt by the whole experience and is embarrassed, particularly when people approach him and forlornly ask how he’s holding up.

“I was not kicked out of baseball,” Steinbrenner states emphatically. He notes that his family still owns controlling interest in the team and expects 21-year-old son Hal, a senior at Williams College, to follow in his father’s footsteps and run the club.

“I stepped down from the day-to-day operation of the team under an agreement with the baseball commissioner,” Steinbrenner said. “It was not a punishment; it was an agreement, pure and simple.”

Vincent ruled on July 30 that Steinbrenner had violated the rules of baseball in conducting his own investigation of Dave Winfield, now with the California Angels, and in paying $40,000 to gambler Howard Spira, a former employee of Winfield’s charitable foundation, to get dirt on the outfielder.

Steinbrenner said he signed the agreement to resign by Aug. 20 because the suspension Vincent was about to slap on him, while “totally unwarranted, totally,” might have cost him his vice presidency with the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“Outside of my family,” he said, “my involvement in the U.S. Olympics has meant more to me than anything else. I didn’t want to jeopardize that.

“The Olympics thrills me. It makes me proud of America and proud of our young people. That doesn’t mean I’m not proud of our athletes that play major league baseball, but they have strong agents and an effective union to take care of them. Our Olympians don’t.”

The USOC didn’t ask him to resign, but he was placed on inactive status.

That says a lot about Steinbrenner’s last month.

It has been a month when his beloved Yankees, who already were having their losingest season since 1912, have been even worse (50-70 before he left, 10-18 since) and he hasn’t been able to anything about it, least of all fire or trade anyone.

It has been a month of watching games on television and perusing the boxscores but never stepping foot in Yankee Stadium.

Steinbrenner, wearing a World Series championship ring and impeccably dressed in beige slacks and a pink monogrammed shirt, appeared rested and relaxed as he sat on a sofa in a suite of his hotel overlooking Tampa Bay, not far from the offices of his American Shipbuilding Company.

He’s been spending a lot of time at his 760-acre Kinsman horse farm in Ocala, Fla., with his son, Hank, who runs the family’s thoroughbred interests.

He says he doesn’t miss the spotlight, but does miss being around the excitement of the game.

“I’d love to be back up at the stadium,” he said. “I miss my players, and the player-talk.”

Under the agreement, Steinbrenner can attend Yankee home games but can’t sit in the owner’s box or the press box. He hasn’t gone to a game since his resignation and doesn’t plan to the rest of the season.

He has returned to New York on other business and said he has been uplifted by the warm response from some of the fans.

He recalls one trip two weeks ago, while walking down Manhattan’s posh Park Avenue late at night, a patrol car pulled over and began trolling alongside the curb for several minutes.

Steinbrenner said he asked the officers what they wanted, and they replied: “We just want to make sure you get home OK, Mr. Steinbrenner.”

“Nobody says, ‘Get ... out of New York, you no good bum,’ but you’d think that to read the New York papers,” Steinbrenner said. “Sure, there are some fans at the stadium that reporters interview who attack me. But they interview three guys wearing T-shirts that say ‘Kill George.’ What do you think they are going to say about me?”

Steinbrenner prides himself on being tough, but he admits to being offended the night the fans stood at Yankee Stadium and applauded when they learned he was out as managing partner.

“Hey, nobody likes getting booed or being torn apart in the New York tabloids, but I can handle it,” he said. “I’m mentally tough. You have to be if you are going to be anything in sports. I look at it as a moment of great testing.”

Steinbrenner found solace during the most turbulent days of his life in the movie “Hoosiers” about a small Midwestern town high school basketball that overcame insurmountable odds to win the state championship.

He has watched it more than 40 times, often as he shuttled between Tampa, New York and Cleveland in the midst of the baseball season.

Steinbrenner closely identifies with the coach, played by Gene Hackman, who triumphs despite opposition from parents and school officials who want him fired because of his unorthodoxed methods.

“Here is a guy who had his own way of doing things,” Steinbrenner said. “The guy stuck to his beliefs despite all the criticism and the team ends up winning. It’s my favorite. It makes me feel real good inside.”

Steinbrenner certainly had his own way of doing things with the Yankees, and now that he has had a chance to step back and reflect, he acknowledges some bad decisions.

“There’s plenty of dents in my armour,” he said. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Maybe there were too many managerial changes.”

He can’t resist justifying them, though, pointing out that five of the 19 changes in 17 years involved the same man -- Billy Martin.

“I loved the guy,” Steinbrenner said. “Billy Martin was one of the dearest friends I ever had, and one of the greatest managers I’ve ever seen in the game. ... He had a drinking problem and would self-destruct.”

Some might argue that Steinbrenner self-destructed, too, that the feud with Winfield that was his undoing was part of the constant chaos created by none other than Steinbrenner, “The Boss” or “Patton in Pinstripes.”

“When you win, you’re a hero, when you lose, you’re a bum,” he said, pointing out that HIS Yankees won two World Series, four American League pennants and five divisional championships, even if none were after 1981.

He declares that he will never sell the franchise which he purchased in 1973 along with 10 limited partners for $10 million and which now is valued at better than 20 times that much.

And as he soars toward New York in his eight-passenger jet, always stocked with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and his favorite movie videos, he can’t help but raise the idea:

“Maybe I’ll look for another team to buy -- a football or basketball team,” he suggests with an angelic grin, “that’s if an owner would have me.”