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Mike Vaccaro’s book, “The Bosses of the Bronx,” detailing the Yankees’ five-plus decades under the House of Steinbrenner, will be released by Harper Books March 24. You can pre-order here. Here is the third of three excerpts being shared with The Post:
His final captain would afford George Steinbrenner the last of his endless, priceless moments — and mementos — as Boss, even if he now went by Boss Emeritus. George Steinbrenner had, after all, made the unilateral decision to install Thurman Munson as captain 45 years after Lou Gehrig’s death.
Steinbrenner the erstwhile Big Ten coach never could shake his football instincts and viewed captains differently, and more fondly, all of them: Graig Nettles and Willie Randolph, Ron Guidry and Don Mattingly.
Now Derek Jeter.
One last time, Steinbrenner made the flight to New York. Once, as a young businessman crammed into a middle seat in coach, he’d sworn as his plane from Cleveland descended into LaGuardia Airport that he’d one day fly first class. Now, he’d made this trip thousands of times in his own jet.
Now he was three months shy of 80, and required a wheelchair. But he wasn’t going to miss the home opener of the 2010 season, April 13. By now, the Boss Watch — the gaggle of reporters assigned to his Stadium comings and goings — had been abandoned; he arrived in Box 44 comfortably.
Soon he was joined by two special guests.
Jeter and Joe Girardi walked the forty or so steps from the Yankees clubhouse to the VIP elevator, stepped in the Boss’ suite, and surprised him. They wanted to personally present his World Series ring. Jeter noticed the Boss was wearing two rings: one for the 2000 Yankees, and one an Ohio State ring.
Jeter looked into Steinbrenner’s eyes and laughed. “Boss, take off that Ohio State ring.”
Steinbrenner’s eyes brightened. He pointed at Jeter.
“Michigan,” he said to Jeter, a son of Kalamazoo and nearly a Michigan Wolverine before the Yankees signed him out of the 1992 draft. Jeter took the 2000 ring off instead, replaced it with the 2009 one, and everyone applauded. Later, in the bottom of the third, before Jeter stepped to the plate the scoreboard camera captured Steinbrenner wearing sunglasses in his box as “My Way” played over the public address system.
Jeter waited a respectful amount of time for the 49,293 to roar for the Boss.
Then swung at the first pitch and dunked one over the wall in right-center.
“None of us would be here, the stadium wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for him,” Jeter said. “He’ll always be The Boss.”
Ninety-one days later, sitting behind a podium at the All-Star Game, Jeter had this to say about that boss: “I was 18. Suddenly here he is, walking toward me, addressing me by name, and said, ‘We expect big things from you.’ I’ll always remember that.”
Jeter was stone-faced. The news he’d received he’d been dreading for a long while, same as everyone around the Yankees. It might not have been stunning that George Steinbrenner died earlier that day, July 13, 2010, of a heart attack at his home in Tampa, it was still hard to immediately calibrate. He’d turned 80 just nine days earlier.
After a few respectful days, it also became clear that the Boss left a remarkable legacy for his family, which you might call priceless except it absolutely had one. The federal estate tax expired the previous January, and that would’ve cost the family around a half-billion dollars had the Boss passed in 2009. Had he died in 2011, the renewed law was to be upped to 55 percent, so it would’ve siphoned $600 million. Without an inheritance tax the Yankees remained comfortably in the hands of his children.
It was a perfect bookend for an initial investment of $168,000.
“One of a kind,” Reggie Jackson said.
“A life almost impossible to imagine,” said his friend, Donald Trump.
“I still hate his guts,” said Howie Spira, who planned on holding his grudge long into the next life and beyond.
For a brief, colorful moment, Hank Steinbrenner, George’s eldest, happily morphed into his old man, into the biggest elephant in any room he walked in, trouncing those rooms with various opinions and observations before heading outside for a satisfying smoke.
Hank had a lot of thoughts on a lot of things. And what quickly became apparent was that Hank was every bit the back-page goldmine his father had been — maybe more so. He was happy to hand out his cell phone number to reporters, happier to take their calls, downright gleeful at returning calls he’d missed, and happiest still to fill empty notebooks with gold.
(Hank really was a columnist’s best friend. Once, searching for an idea on a random Tuesday, The Post’s former sports editor, Greg Gallo, reached out to me. “Call Hank,” he said. “See what he has to say.”
“About what?” I asked.
“About anything,” Gallo said.
I called Hank, he picked up right away, and for 25 minutes he provided me that day’s column, which became the next morning’s back page: “HANK UNPLUGGED!”
After we were done, as I was hammering my laptop to beat deadline, my phone rang. It was Hank. “And a few other things …” and by the time he was done I had about 15 minutes left to finish the column. It ran a little long that day.)
Hal Steinbrenner was not his brother. But Hank, who died in 2020, wearied of the spotlight’s glare and happily ceded control of the Yankees to his kid brother without much of a fight, joining his sisters Jennifer and Jessica in unanimously voting Hal managing general partner in 2008.
“My father was more about the back pages of the tabloids,” Hal said in 2013. “I’m more about a back room, away from prying eyes. Anyone who thinks I don’t want to win? Well, how does the saying go? ‘Show me you’ve never met me without telling me that you’ve never met me.’”
Hal knows that every time the Yankees go on a five-game losing streak the familiar chorus surfaces: “If only George were still alive …” He also understands that fans don’t want to hear about baseball’s ever-shifting economic realities (and was, in fact, excoriated in some circles when he seemed to cry poverty after the Dodgers spending spree in December).
Those realities happen to be true, though. When the elder Steinbrenner shocked the baseball world by authorizing (while serving the first of his two suspensions) a five-year, $3.75 million contract that temporarily made Catfish Hunter baseball’s wealthiest player on New Year’s Eve 1974, it felt like all the money in the world, especially for the time.
But in 2026 dollars that still translates to only $25 million, which is just $2 million less than what Hal paid in 2023 alone for the services of Carlos Rodón, a starting pitcher who went 3–8 with a 6.85 ERA and who never on his best day pitched as well as Hunter on his worst.
The 1977 team, dubbed “The Best Team Money Could Buy?” Total payroll: $3 million. In 2026 dollars: $16.1 million, or about what the Yankees will likely pay Gerrit Cole before he ever throws a pitch in a regular-season game this year.
There have been various times when people wonder why the family doesn’t just cash out, assuring prosperity for untold future generations of Steinbrenner, and it’s a subject that makes Hal Steinbrenner laugh.
“The Yankees,” he says incredulously, “is our family business.”
This, then, is a story about one American family business and one city’s fascination with the proprietors of that corner store.
English (US)