George Michael Steinbrenner III (July 4, 1930 – July 13, 2010), nicknamed "the Boss", was an American businessman who was the principal owner and managing partner of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees from 1973 until his death in 2010. He was the longest-serving owner in club history, and the Yankees won seven World Series championships and 11 American League pennants under his ownership. His outspokenness and role in driving up player salaries made him one of the sport's most controversial figures. Steinbrenner was also involved in the Great Lakes and Gulf Coast shipping industry.
Originally known as a very hands-on owner, Steinbrenner earned the nickname "the Boss". He had a tendency to meddle in daily on-field decisions, and to hire and fire (and sometimes re-hire) managers. Former Yankees manager Dallas Green gave him the derisive nickname "Manager George". However, from the early 1990s onward, he mostly left the Yankees in the hands of the baseball operations staff and rarely interfered. He officially retired from day-to-day control of the team in 2008.
He died after suffering a heart attack in his Tampa home on the morning of July 13, 2010, the day of the 81st All-Star Game. The Yankees are now owned by Yankee Global Enterprises, for which Steinbrenner's four children have served as general partners.
Steinbrenner was born in Rocky River, Ohio, the only son of Rita (née Haley) and Henry George Steinbrenner II. His mother was an Irish immigrant who had changed her name from O'Haley to Haley. His father was of German descent and was a world-class track and field hurdler while at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in engineering in 1927, first in his class and a distinguished scholar in naval architecture. The elder Steinbrenner later became a wealthy shipping magnate who ran the family firm operating freight ships hauling ore and grain on the Great Lakes, inherited from his great-grandmother Sophia Steinbrenner and her mother Anna Minch. George III was named after his paternal grandfather, George Michael Steinbrenner II. Steinbrenner had two younger sisters, Susan and Judy. At age nine, the elder Steinbrenner staked George to a couple of hundred chickens, and he peddled hens and their eggs door to door. "I learned a lot about business from raising chickens," he told Sports Illustrated. "Half of my customers began buying because they were afraid of me."
In 1944, Steinbrenner entered Culver Military Academy in Northern Indiana, graduating in 1948. He received his B.A. from Williams College in 1952. While at Williams, George was an average student who led an active extracurricular life. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He was an accomplished hurdler on the varsity track and field team, and served as sports editor of The Williams Record, played piano in the band, and played halfback on the football team in his senior year. He joined the United States Air Force after graduation, was commissioned a second lieutenant and was stationed at Lockbourne Air Force Base in Columbus, Ohio. Following honorable discharge in 1954, he did post-graduate study at Ohio State University (1954–55), earning his master's degree in physical education.
He met his wife-to-be, Elizabeth Joan Zieg, in Columbus, and married her on May 12, 1956. The couple had two sons, Hank and Hal, and two daughters, Jessica Steinbrenner and Jennifer Steinbrenner-Swindal. The Steinbrenners also have numerous grandchildren. All four of the Steinbrenners' children eventually got divorced, some multiple times, resulting in several former-in-laws being removed from the Yankees' management.
While studying at Ohio State, he served as a graduate assistant to Buckeye football coach Woody Hayes. The Buckeyes were undefeated national champions that year, and won the Rose Bowl. Steinbrenner served as an assistant football coach at Northwestern University in 1955, and at Purdue University from 1956 to 1957.
Steinbrenner joined Kinsman Marine Transit Company in 1957, the Great Lakes shipping company that his great-grandfather Henry had purchased in 1901 from The Minch Transit Company, which was owned by a family relation, and renamed. Steinbrenner worked hard to successfully revitalize the company, which was suffering hardship during difficult market conditions. In its return to profitability, Kinsman emphasized grain shipments over ore. A few years later, with the help of a loan from a New York bank, Steinbrenner purchased the company from his family. He later became part of a group that purchased the American Shipbuilding Company, and, in 1967, he became its chairman and chief executive officer. By 1972, the company's gross sales were more than $100 million annually.
In 1960, against his father's wishes, Steinbrenner entered the sports franchise business for the first time with basketball's Cleveland Pipers, of the National Industrial Basketball League (NIBL). Steinbrenner had hired John McClendon, who became the first African American coach in professional basketball and persuaded Jerry Lucas to join his team instead of the rival National Basketball Association. The Pipers switched leagues, to the new professional ABL in 1961; the new circuit was founded by Abe Saperstein, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters. The league and its teams experienced financial problems, and McClendon resigned in protest halfway through the season. However, the Pipers had won the first half of a split season. Steinbrenner replaced McClendon with former Boston Celtics star Bill Sharman, and the Pipers won the ABL championship in 1961–62. The ABL folded in December 1962, just months into its second season. Steinbrenner and his partners lost significant money on the venture, but Steinbrenner paid off all of his creditors and partners over the next few years.
With his burgeoning sports aspirations put on hold, Steinbrenner turned his attention to the theatre. His involvement with Broadway began with a short-lived 1967 play, The Ninety Day Mistress, in which he partnered with another rookie producer, James M. Nederlander. Whereas Nederlander threw himself into his family's business full-time, Steinbrenner invested in a mere half-dozen shows, including the 1974 Tony Award nominee for Best Musical, Seesaw, and the 1988 Peter Allen flop, Legs Diamond.
Steinbrenner was part of an investment group led by Arthur M. Wirtz that purchased the Chicago Bulls on 25 July 1972 and sold controlling interest in the franchise to Jerry Reinsdorf on 8 February 1985. Among his fellow Bulls investors was Lester Crown and Cleveland-based businessmen Edward Ginsberg and Sheldon Guren, all four of whom would venture into purchasing a Major League Baseball (MLB) team just over five months later.
The Yankees had been struggling during their years under CBS ownership, which had acquired the team in 1965. In 1972, CBS chairman William S. Paley told team president E. Michael Burke the media company intended to sell the club. As Burke later told writer Roger Kahn, Paley offered to sell the franchise to Burke if he could find financial backing. Steinbrenner, who had participated in a failed attempt to buy the Cleveland Indians from Vernon Stouffer one year earlier, and who had been an investor in Buffalo's failed 1969 Major League Baseball expansion bid, was brought together with Burke by veteran baseball executive Gabe Paul.
On January 3, 1973, Steinbrenner and minority partner Burke led a group of investors which also included Nederlander, Crown, Ginsberg, Guren, John DeLorean, Nelson Bunker Hunt, and Marvin L. Warner in purchasing the Yankees from CBS. For years, the selling price was reported to be $10 million. However, Steinbrenner later revealed that the deal included two parking garages that CBS had bought from the city, and soon after the deal closed, CBS bought back the garages for $1.2 million. The net cost to the group for the Yankees was, therefore, $8.8 million.
The announced intention was that Burke would continue to run the team as club president. But Burke later became angry when he found out that Paul had been brought in as a senior Yankee executive, reducing his authority, and quit the team presidency in April 1973. (Burke remained a minority owner of the club into the following decade, but as fellow minority owner John McMullen stated, "There is nothing in life quite so limited as being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner.") Paul was officially named president of the club on April 19. It would be the first of many high-profile departures with employees who crossed paths with "The Boss". At the conclusion of the 1973 season, two more prominent names departed: manager Ralph Houk, who resigned and took a similar position with the Detroit Tigers; and general manager Lee MacPhail, who became president of the American League.