Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball » (Large Print)

For more than 30 years Bill Madden has covered the New York Yankees and Major League Baseball for the Daily News. The author of several books about the Yankees, Madden is also the 2010 recipient of the Baseball Hall of Fame's J. G. Taylor Spink Award. He lives in New Jersey.

No owner has changed the landscape of sports more than New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. From the moment he bought the team in 1973 for $10 million, Steinbrenner's monomaniacal pursuit was to restore the most fabled franchise in baseball history to its former glory. Today the New York Yankees are worth more than $1 billion and are once again world champions.

Award-winning sportswriter Bill Madden traces Steinbrenner from his early days in Cleveland through his years as a shipping magnate, a Nixon fund-raiser, and a champion horse breeder to the fateful moment when he bought the Yankees, even though his father disparaged George's desire to own a professional sports team as a "hobby." Over the next four decades, Steinbrenner's tumultuous reign included his epic battles with Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, even beloved Yankee captain Derek Jeter. His ruthless and free-spending tactics made him a lightning rod for controversy but they also paid off: Steinbrenner's Yankees have won seven championships and remain the gold standard in all sports. In the last few years, with his health declining, the Boss ceded control of the team to his sons, but not before lording over the team's historic transition from the House That Ruth Built to the House That George Built.

Throughout his three decades of covering the Yankees, Bill Madden has cultivated hundreds of sources at every level in the organization, from the many managers and front-office personnel Steinbrenner has fired to the bat boys who are ever present in the locker room. All of them have colorful stories about the man with whom they have enjoyed a love-hate relationship, but it is the Boss himself whose voice rises above the rest. And when Steinbrenner decided to give his final print interview, he spoke to Madden to set the record straight on his extraordinary life and career.

The New York Times - Michael Shapiro

…riveting…Reading the book feels like the literary equivalent of passing a traffic accident; it is all but impossible to turn away.

Introduction ix

1 The Coming Storm 1

2 Cleveland 36

3 "Lead, Follow, or Get the Hell Out of the Way" 80

4 Watergate and Catfish 105

5 Three for the Tabloids 144

6 Turmoil and Triumph 187

7 Days of Whine and Rosen 226

8 From Here to Eternity 265

9 Howser and Horses 301

10 Passages 331

11 Chaos: Reggie's Revenge, Umpire Wars and Pine Tar Follies 371

12 An Icon Scorned 415

13 A "Favorite Son" Exiled 445

14 Tale of the Tapes 495

15 Banished! 537

16 The Comeback 560

17 The Buck Stops Here 602

18 Torre Glory 639

19 Billionaire George 677

20 The Lion in Winter 710

Notes and Acknowledgments 755

Bibliography 761