25 AND COUNTING

Just before the start of exhibition games this spring, George Steinbrenner walked by a batting cage and saw a bubble gum wrapper. In his batting cage!

Immediately, an edict went out: No more gum wrappers on the ground.

His players responded with a surprise the next day. Not one wrapper, but dozens, maybe hundreds.

Imperious and bombastic, loved and loathed, imitated and lampooned, George Michael Steinbrenner III certainly has revolutionized the way to run a baseball team in his 25 years as The Boss of the New York Yankees.

Yes, he is a control freak. Yes, he is demanding. But then there’s the other side of Steinbrenner, the gracious host, the person who makes large charitable contributions, the one who helps people in need.

“I think he gets more ink for baseball than any other living person, including any commissioner or any player,” former commissioner Peter Ueberroth said. “That’s a positive. He keeps baseball in the headlines.”

But there’s also the dark side, the one Yankees workers see far too frequently.

“He can be very demeaning to people, particularly punishing to little people,” Ueberroth said. “He tends to be abusive to employees at times.”

He has owned baseball’s most famous franchise since Jan. 3, 1973, longer than any other person has headed the team.

On the day he completed the $10 million purchase from CBS Inc., Steinbrenner uttered a phrase that is cited often and giggled at even more.

“We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned,” he said. “We’re not going to pretend we’re something we aren’t. I’ll stick to building ships.”

Well, American Ship Building Co. ceased operations in 1995. As for baseball, Steinbrenner has been involved in almost every facet of the team, from trades to ballpark bathrooms to parking spots.

He feuded in public with Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield. He showed other owners how free agents can turn teams around. He’s grounded general managers from traveling, ordered employees to cut short vacations, personally handled seating assignments for postseason games -- even ordered a plane carrying one general manager to turn around.

And he’s won -- World Series titles in 1977, 1978 and 1996. No other team has won more during the quarter century.

Most other owners refuse to comment publicly about Steinbrenner, some because they don’t like him, some because they don’t take him seriously.

“There is nothing quite so limited as being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner’s,” said New Jersey Devils owner John McMullen, who purchased a share of the Yankees in 1974 and admitted last week he still detests The Boss.

Through it all, Steinbrenner has fought to dominate the back pages of New York’s tabloids. He’s often the “unidentified Yankees official” commenting on player moves, trying to motivate through headlines. Some of those players have opted to leave, others have begged for trades.

Steinbrenner declined to be interviewed for this story despite repeated requests to his baseball and personal PR people. But in the past, he said he’s never going to change.

“It’s tough working for me. I know that,” he once said. “I admit I’m tough on my people. I’m tough on myself.”

His behavior appears influenced by the discipline he learned at Culver Military Academy and as an assistant football coach at Northwestern and Purdue. Steinbrenner also has talked about learning from his father that pressuring people makes them perform better.

As a result of his impatience, he’s changed managers 20 times in 25 years, general managers 15 times, pitching coaches 37 times and chief spokesmen 12 times. One team president, Gene Legatt, lasted less than a week. He started work Sept. 19, 1988, was berated by Steinbrenner three days later and quit within 24 hours.

After Steinbrenner fired Hall of Famer Yogi Berra as manager, the Hall of Famer vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium. In 13 years, Berra hasn’t gone back for a game or public event.

Yet, Steinbrenner can be overwhelmingly generous. After the father of Ron Karnaugh died during the opening ceremonies of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Steinbrenner -- a U.S. Olympic Committee vice president for part of this decade -- paid the swimmer’s medical school expenses.

In 1975, when Tony Fossas couldn’t afford to go to college, Steinbrenner arranged to pay for a four-year scholarship at the University of South Florida. Today, Fossas is a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.

“Mr. Steinbrenner has done a lot of things in Florida. He’s done a lot to promote sports and you never hear about that,” Fossas said. “I’ve heard stories about him driving around (and) he sees people who need jobs and he said, ‘You want to work? I’ll put you to work. I’m not giving you any money, but I’ll pay you to work.’ Those are the things that I think America needs to hear.”

In Tampa, Steinbrenner is a civic hero. Devil Rays owner Vince Naimoli recalled when Steinbrenner drove past a broken-down school bus on a Florida highway, arranged for a repair and paid for all the kids to have lunch at McDonald’s.

But even in Florida, his control-freak tendencies break through. In 1995, he pledged $1 million to the Florida Orchestra. A year later, he insisted $265,000 of the money go to a pops series.

“If they’re putting my name on pops concerts, I want to be sure they’re big attractions,” he said. “I like Tchaikovsky as much as the next guy, but in this area I think people would rather hear pops concerts, and good ones.”

Tampa was the big beneficiary of Steinbrenner’s decision in 1972 to move American Ship Building from Lorain, Ohio. That move angered Howard Metzenbaum, once hired by Steinbrenner to represent him in a divorce proceeding that eventually was abandoned.

“There was some legislation having to do with his shipyards,” said Metzenbaum, who went on to become a U.S. senator from Ohio. “He assured me that if it were passed or defeated, I forget which, he would keep the shipyards there. Well, they ain’t in Lorain anymore. If you give your word, you keep your word. He wasn’t a man of his word.”

Steinbrenner’s great-grandfather, Peter Minch, founded Cleveland Ship Building Co. in 1885 and it merged with nine Great Lakes yards at the turn of the century to form American Ship Building.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 1993; two years later, Steinbrenner sold Tampa Shipyards to Delphi American Maritime Inc. for $5 million in cash and $18 million in debt assumption and other considerations. American Ship Building is no longer in operation, according to Denise Mackey, spokeswoman for the Tampa Port Authority.

His baseball record is better. With 2,131 wins and 1,788 losses since Steinbrenner bought the team, the Yankees’ .544 winning percentage is the best in baseball over the quarter century.

“The only thing that interests me is winning for New York,” Steinbrenner said at a January dinner honoring his anniversary. “I wouldn’t be in it if I didn’t think that winning was important for this city.”

Gene Michael, a former manager (twice) and general manager (twice), thinks The Boss, now 67, “has mellowed a bit.” He’s had lots of intervals to reflect on his baseball behavior. First, he was suspended from Nov. 27, 1974, to March 1, 1976, after pleading guilty to conspiring to make illegal contributions to President Nixon’s re-election campaign in 1972. Then, he was suspended from Aug. 20, 1990, to March 1, 1993, for his dealings with and $40,000 payment to self-described gambler Howard Spira.

After he sued baseball, claiming the sport interfered with the team’s $95 million, 10-year marketing agreement with Adidas, he was suspended from the ruling executive council last May 13.

The personnel shifts have slowed, though. While he hired Martin as manager five times in the 1970s and ‘80, Joe Torre is just his fourth manager of the ‘90s.

At times, Steinbrenner has talked about selling his family’s controlling interest in the team, which is about 55 percent, or lessening his involvement, perhaps to spend more times with the thoroughbred horses he owns.