Steinbrenner

NEW YORK -- The long-awaited but anticlimactic announcement on George Steinbrenner's baseball future is scheduled for today. Barring a last-minute snag -- the Steinbrenner saga has been filled with snags -- commissioner Fay Vincent will announce that the owner can return to active duty with the New York Yankees on March 1.Steinbrenner has known since June 1 that Vincent would modify their agreement under which he was ousted as the Yankees' managing partner...

Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox expressed "extreme interest" in a 1970s criminal investigation of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for illegal campaign contributions, according to documents released Thursday. Then-FBI Director Clarence Kelley relayed Cox's concern in a memo on Aug. 16, 1973, to the bureau's Cleveland office, saying agents needed to make sure the probe received "the same, immediate and preferred handling" as other criminal cases then growing from the Watergate scandal.

NEW YORK -- An admittedly stunned George Steinbrenner adamantly denied yesterday having talked to New York Yankees officials about baseball business during his banishment from the game."

Gillick best choice Juan Carlos Rodriguez Sun Sentinel Neither Marvin Miller nor George Steinbrenner was a better choice for the Hall of Fame. Were they as deserving as Pat Gillick? Absolutely. This discussion is not about the merits of Gillick's candidacy as a longtime general manager. His record as one of the game's preeminent team architects is well founded. Why the Veterans Committee did not give Miller or Steinbrenner the necessary votes is the issue.

Twenty-one months of litigation caused by George Steinbrenner's removal from control of the New York Yankees came to an end yesterday when the third and final lawsuit was dropped.Leonard Kleinman, the team's former chief operating officer, dropped the suit in U.S. District Court after receiving a $1.05 million payment from Steinbrenner. Commissioner Fay Vincent had said he would not entertain a request for Steinbrenner's instatement until the lawsuits disappeared.Vincent was prepared to suspend Steinbrenner for two years on July 30, 1990, after the owner's association with and $40,000 payment to gambler Howard Spira, who had provided information about former Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield.

CHICAGO -- Forcing George Steinbrenner to resign as managing general partner of the New York Yankees is one thing. Making him into a silent partner is a horse of a different color.Blessed with many pulpits and obsessed with speaking his mind, Steinbrenner was in Chicago over the weekend.Saturday afternoon he saw Purdue defeat Northwestern in a football game involving two schools where he once was an assistant coach.Saturday night he was at Maywood Park, checking out the harness track his children bought into last month to expand their Chicago racing holdings that already included co-ownership of Balmoral Park.

The day after Peter Angelos bought the Orioles, an old friend of mine, Frank Daily, approached me at the local supermarket."I go way back with Pete Angelos, even before he was on the City Council," said Daily, who for many years was involved in local politics. "I know Pete real good."You mark my word -- before it's all over, Pete's going to make George Steinbrenner look like a priest."I remembered that not because I believed it but because it was a funny line.Imagine another owner making the controversial New York Yankees boss look like a priest.

NEW YORK -- The Boss finally got some respect.A jury believed George Steinbrenner's story of extortion and convicted Howard Spira yesterday of attempting to squeeze $110,000 out of the ousted Yankee chief with threats to ruin his reputation.The verdict was a measure of vindication for Steinbrenner, whose explanation of his relationship with Spira was deemed "not credible" by baseball commissioner Fay Vincent last summer.On the witness stand, Steinbrenner choked back tears, telling how Spira had placed him and his family in fear through harassment and threats.

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner testified yesterday that he paid Howard Spira $40,000 because he was fearful of the admitted gambler's many demands."

Commissioner Fay Vincent said yesterday that George Steinbrenner might have hurt his reinstatement effort by writing a letter to his fellow club owners four weeks ago.Steinbrenner has been trying for the last three months to set up a meeting with Vincent so they could discuss his possible return as New York Yankees managing partner. But the commissioner has told the owner that there would be no meeting until two lawsuits that Steinbrenner instigated were dropped.Asked yesterday if the ground rules were the same, Vincent said, "I'm not going to get into that, but I don't think the letter was helpful."

I met George Steinbrenner when I was a Yankee fan and he went to Cleveland Indians games and he was not The Boss. He was a Williams College kid from Cleveland, but bubbling with high-pitched enthusiasm even then more than a half century ago. He ran track and helped edit a college newspaper in my hometown in Massachusetts. I was the sports editor of our high school paper, The Spirit, with my own cliché-stuffed column called "Toeing the Rubber." This all came back when I learned that Mr. Steinbrenner, the man who made the New York Yankees great once again — and then again — died at 80 of a heart attack last week at his home in Tampa.

One imagines that the owner of the Baltimore Orioles reads with keen interest the various adjectives that appear in the obituaries and elegies for George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, who died Tuesday. One imagines that a man looks upon the life of a peer — in age, ego and experience — and compares the deceased's accomplishments with his own. One imagines that the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who appears to be either impervious or oblivious to criticism about the management of his tarnished franchise, would find in this occasion an opportunity for the deepest kind of late-life soul-searching and contemplations about legacy.

George Steinbrenner's 35-year reign as boss of the New York Yankees ended yesterday when he passed control of baseball's most famous team to his youngest son, Hal. The elder Steinbrenner has gradually withdrawn from the Yankees' day-to-day operations in recent years, and Hal and his brother Hank were appointed co-chairmen in April. "I realize it's a great responsibility," said Hal Steinbrenner, who turns 40 on Dec. 3. "My dad is, needless to say, a tough act to follow." George Steinbrenner, now 78, headed a group that bought the club in January 1973 for an $8.7 million net price and became one of the most high-profile owners in all of sports.

It's time to add another item to the growing list of things that point toward a new competitive era for the Orioles: Hank Steinbrenner. There apparently is a little-known rule in the American League East that requires at least one of the division's managing general partners to act like a fruitcake at all times, and -- since Peter Angelos seems to have come to his senses and Vince Naimoli has left the building -- it appears to be Hank's turn. I realize Hank is technically the "co-chairman" with his brother Hal, but he's running the franchise and doing such a bang-up job that New York magazine already has a Web page titled "Hank's Greatest Hits."

It's a little early for the Reign of Terror to begin up in the Bronx, but I'll take my chuckles where I can find them. Steinbrenner the Lesser, the chip off the old block known as Hank, is in full-throttle Robespierre mode now that the Yankees are just 10-10 and 3 1/2 games out of first in the American League East (we can all hope that losing two of three to the Orioles also helped). Team co-chairman Hank is especially upset that Joba Chamberlain is still working out of the Yankees' bullpen rather than starting.

When the Yankees dropped that insulting one-year offer in front of longtime manager Joe Torre and made it obvious they wanted him to walk away from his string of 12 straight postseason appearances, there was nothing to do around here but find a way to put the whole sorry episode in a Baltimore-centric context. Here goes: Clearly, new Orioles president Andy MacPhail is a genius. He'll never admit it, but his long-range plan to get the Orioles back in contention in the American League East depended in large part on the Yankees eventually getting stupid again, and it looks like they have obliged.

MIAMI -- "It doesn't bother me," New York Yankees manager Buck Showalter said when asked about George Steinbrenner's possible reinstatement as Boss. "Why would that bother me?"Oh, Buck. Buck. Buckbuckbuckbuckbuck."Why would that bother me?"That's what the Romans said at the report of approaching Huns.That's what the buffalo said when William Cody rode out onto the plains for a look-see.That's what the buggy manufacturers said when the first primitive automobile chugged by.That's what the silent screen star with the lisp said when he heard about talkies.

The idea that there should be a national horse racing czar has a new advocate.George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees who also owns stables of thoroughbred and harness horses and who used to race greyhounds, told a group of executives assembled in Baltimore for a pari-mutuel gambling conference yesterday that the industry needs a centralized national office headed by a person with "guts, vision and persistency" to bring the ailing sport out...

When Joe Torre was named Yankee manager in 1995, the news was not greeted with universal applause. Indeed, this very paper ran a headline calling him "Clueless Joe." Long ago, we learned how very wrong we were. And now, in this autumn, as Major League Baseball 2007 moves on without the Yankees, we can only look back upon the season, and each of the dozen in which Joe Torre has led the Bronx Bombers, and say: Thank you. You did good, Mr. Torre, real good. After the Yanks' heart-wrenching loss to the Indians, George Steinbrenner walked in silence to his waiting car. But, as we all know, silence speaks volumes.