Massive Heart Attack For Steinbrenner

[Guest Kong76]

Zvon wrote: I think he died last week, but had the time to tell one of his lieutenant's to sit on him til the All Star break.

That is really really funny.

[Zvon]

Kong76 wrote: Zvon wrote: I think he died last week, but had the time to tell one of his lieutenant's to sit on him til the All Star break. That is really really funny.

well, ya throw enough darts sooner or later one hits the board.

[ashie62]

Kong76 wrote: Zvon wrote: I think he died last week, but had the time to tell one of his lieutenant's to sit on him til the All Star break. That is really really funny.

Superior

[stevejrogers]

Frayed Knot wrote: The biggest sign of a bully - as JCL called him earlier - is that the lower down on the totem pole you were in the Yanx org the worse you were treated. It's going to be easy, particularly w/the ASG going on, to get quotes about what a 'tough but fair' guy he was from the group he gave multi-million dollar contracts to and whom he needed more than they needed him. Besides, they all still have to deal with his kids. And, yes, there are numerous Steiny stories - like Mole's - of spontaneous acts of charity. But the good journos* are going to be the ones who'll also track down those of the clubhouse boys he mercilessly mistreated simply because he could and because he had a childish temper which caused him to blame others for his failings, or for losses which were no one fault save for the fact that the other team was trying too, or for just plain bad luck. There's the one story which George told on himself frequently about how he has/had a secretary who he fired a dozen (or was it dozens?) times. The reason he was the one to relate the story is that he thinks the fact that he always re-hired her back makes him the good guy in the tale. No it doesn't George.

Quick hijack of this thread to further illustrate the point. Listening to Spencer Ross on WFAN one day refute a caller going off on Billy Martin (I forget why Martin was brought up, this was during WFAN's anniversary special day programming a couple of years ago) by telling a story about how Martin was nice to his kid or some shit. Well, I was thinking the same thing FK said here. Being occasionally nice to someone doesn't negate all the crap that you do in your life.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Kong76 wrote: Ya know, ya don't HAVE to be a Mets fan if it's that painful for yas ...

Sing it, brother Kong.

I stopped by to pick up a pizza tonight and some jarhead on TV was interviewing Jimmy Breslin by phone.

Firstly, I would have laid down some decent money on Breslin being dead himself.

Secondly --- and I'm going by the closed caption transcript so maybe I was missing a jocular tone --- Breslin didn't seem to be to with it, himself. Maybe he was kidding, but he was picking a fight with the interviewer and insisting that there was nothing wrong with the NYC enconomy in the seventies. He took the reporters to task for trying to make a saint out of George, but really couldn't say more himself than "Great guy... great guy."

Interview transcript can often make reasonably smart guys sound incoherent, but he really seemed to be smoking something.

[Frayed Knot]

That interview w/Breslin was one of the few things I've actually heard today via mass media (it was ESPN).
Breslin sounded even more out of it than the transcript probably made him sound, but the thing that took the interviewer back was that Breslin was likely the only guy interviewed today to go 'off script', telling the questioner to "STOP DEIFYIN' THE GUY! ... he was a good guy but he never hit a home-run, never caught a fly ball", etc.

And, yeah, he sounded more than a bit goofy claiming that NYC was NOT down in the early '70s - "Stop spreading that fiction!" - but that was Breslin's prime and a gritty, run-down city was right up his alley.

[DocTee]

Somewhere , Bobby Meachem is smiling.

[Piggiestomatoes]

It's pretty clear that in his heyday, he was a jerk-off as a boss but having lived in Tampa for nearly six year now, it's amazing the impact he's had on this community. He made tremendous charitable contributions; to schools, hospitals, the public and public servants. I'll never have a kind word for him as an owner but as a citizen (yeah, I'm aware of the Nixon thing), he was a good man.

[Frayed Knot]

Zvon wrote: If I ever had a brew with you, FK, I think I'd wanna just sit there and listen. And eat pretzels.

You're telling me I talk too much, right?

[Gwreck]

metirish wrote: Just finished watching CBS New with Katie Couric then the local CBS channel here in NY goes to a CBS Special " Remembering the Boss".....are you fucking kidding me.....

Shit like that scares me and makes me think Bruce has died. Attention George: he had the nickname first.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

It continues on the late news.

The local news reporters are taping in front of various locales-- MFY Stadium, Murray Hill bars, Midtown sidewalks. Why aren't they in front of his home in New York, I wonder?

[Zvon]

Frayed Knot wrote: Zvon wrote: If I ever had a brew with you, FK, I think I'd wanna just sit there and listen. And eat pretzels. You're telling me I talk too much, right?

Not at all.
I'm sayin that's its rare when I will sit there and listen.
Or read, I should say.
(I'm actually a very good listener.)
Esp when I see a post that size.
(main reason isn't my ADDs, its I hate PC screens. They bug my eyes out)

But I read all of that and did not regret it.
It was a fascinating read.

[G-Fafif]

metirish wrote: Just finished watching CBS New with Katie Couric then the local CBS channel here in NY goes to a CBS Special " Remembering the Boss".....are you fucking kidding me.....

This is shocking -- somebody still watches the network news?

[metirish]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: It continues on the late news. The local news reporters are taping in front of various locales-- MFY Stadium, Murray Hill bars, Midtown sidewalks. Why aren't they in front of his home in New York, I wonder?

LOLL......heard some tool on espn yesterday(Olney) talk about how George was a real New yorker even though he was from Ohio and lived in Tampa....

[Benjamin Grimm]

I got through the Daily News sports section in record time this morning. I flipped through the pages as if it was a December morning with no baseball news. It was wall-to-wall George and I had no interest in reliving his highs and lows.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Frayed Knot wrote: And, yeah, he sounded more than a bit goofy claiming that NYC was NOT down in the early '70s - "Stop spreading that fiction!" - but that was Breslin's prime and a gritty, run-down city was right up his alley.

This is amazing. He was serious?

Yes, New York has always been a wonderland with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly dancing in Columbus Circle, where even our mobsters were lovable shnooks in big-shouldered dapper suits eating cheesecake at Mindy's.

[metirish]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I got through the Daily News sports section in record time this morning. I flipped through the pages as if it was a December morning with no baseball news. It was wall-to-wall George and I had no interest in reliving his highs and lows.

Didn't even buy mate......

[metirish]

G-Fafif wrote: metirish wrote: Just finished watching CBS New with Katie Couric then the local CBS channel here in NY goes to a CBS Special " Remembering the Boss".....are you fucking kidding me..... This is shocking -- somebody still watches the network news?

Katie has grown on me, she's remade the Evening News for me, lately she has been taking questions for her on the spot reporters via twitter. One can imagine Dan Rather being asked to do that, or Brokaw.

[Frayed Knot]

Edgy DC wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: And, yeah, he sounded more than a bit goofy claiming that NYC was NOT down in the early '70s - "Stop spreading that fiction!" - but that was Breslin's prime and a gritty, run-down city was right up his alley. This is amazing. He was serious?

VERY serious.
It's like he was playing the local telling the clueless out-of-towner that the stories he's heard are nothing but tall tales that have mistakenly become accepted facts over time.

Yes, New York has always been a wonderland with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly dancing in Columbus Circle, where even our mobsters were lovable shnooks in big-shouldered dapper suits eating cheesecake at Mindy's.

I always thought Breslin was a bit of a phony. He could write, but writing about the gritty, crime-ridden parts of the city as long as you've got enough money and connections to hang in the high-living parts of it is a great way to claim 'aw it's not that bad' ... or, They can't say that about our city, only WE can say that about our city. NYC in the '70s was both broken & broke, not to mention filthy and averaging six murders a day.
But, hey, Son-of-Sam was good for HIS career.

[soupcan]

Zvon wrote: I think he died last week, but had the time to tell one of his lieutenant's to sit on him til the All Star break.

You know what's interesting about this? I do a lot of work with trusts and estates attornies. We provide a service for Guardianships and Administrations, Executors, etc. About 3 months ago I got a call from an attorney I deal with on a semi-regular basis. A big guy in those circles, he has lots of wealthy clients. He was talking about a client of his - in Florida - who had slipped into a coma. Again, this was maybe late April, early May. He didn't give us a name but told us that his client was 'extremely well-known' and a had a 'very substantial estate'. Sometimes we get calls like that and we play a little game around the office trying to figure out who the incapacitated person might be. In this case, the best guess we came up with was Steinbrenner. Knowing he was not in good health, was in Tampa, had a large estate and would have an attorney like this guy handling his affairs. So over the past few months I've been paying attention to any public appearences by George. I don't believe there have been any. Perhaps this attorney was/is representing the Steinbrenner family. I'm thinking Big George had been in a coma for a few months and finally succumbed. Or perhaps the family figured that this would be a good time to pull the plug. Who knows?

And interesting footnote here is that by expiring this calendar year, the family gets to take advantage of a loophole in the estate tax law and pay a significantly reduced amount of taxes.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Frayed Knot wrote: I always thought Breslin was a bit of a phony.

I always thought he was a lot of a phony but denying the existence urban environment that you made your name chronicling seems simply surreal. It's like Dickens saying there were no orphans in London or Clemens saying there were never steamboats on the Mississippi.

Except, of course, moreso.

"Next on ESPN is Jacob Riis to tell us about immigrant slums in the late 1800s."

"Slums! Those weren't slums! Those people had it made!"

[Frayed Knot]

Heard on ESPN this morning Buster Olney (then NYY beat writer for the NYTimes) and Keith Law (then a front office asst w/Toronto) talking about the events which led to Steinbrenner trading for Raul Mondesi.

Yanx were short of OFers for some reasons (injuries maybe) and were playing backup IF Enrique Wilson out in RF. He muffed several plays that day causing Tim McCarver to suggest up in the booth that the Yanx needed a guy like former RoY Raul Mondesi out there. George immediately got it into his head that Mondesi was the guy and had his people call Toronto where Mondesi was a shell of his former self but still earning some $7mil/yr for the next two seasons. Cashman wanted nothing to do with it and was cut out of the loop with George taking charge of an "owner to owner" deal. Of course the Jays owner was consulting with his GM JP Riccardi all along and Law was saying they would have sent Mondesi via Fed Ex just to get him off their hands (and off their payroll) but had to keep up the facade that this was a real trade. Eventually they settled on some low-level prospect in return.

I remember that situation because it was during a Met-Yanx game where Wilson was screwing up, but I didn't know that it all came about due to a McCarver comment in the booth.

[Frayed Knot]

Edgy DC wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: I always thought Breslin was a bit of a phony. I always thought he was a lot of a phony but denying the existence urban environment that you made your name chronicling seems simply surreal. It's like Dickens saying there were no orphans in London or Clemens saying there were never steamboats on the Mississippi. Except, of course, moreso. "Next on ESPN, is Jacob Riis to tell us about immigrant slums in the late 1800s." "Slums! Those weren't slums! Those people had it made!"

Then there was that incident a few years later where, after spending years decrying racism in the power structure of NYC, Breslin was caught disparaging a female Chinese-American reporter at the NYDN as "a yellow cur".

Way to stay classy Jimmy.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I probably have it all bassackwards, but Wilson bungled Roger Cedeno's fly ball into a triple and Cedeno then stole home off Pettitte.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Frayed Knot wrote: Then there was that incident a few years later where, after spending years decrying racism in the power structure of NYC, Breslin was caught disparaging a female Chinese-American reporter at the NYDN as "a yellow cur". Way to stay classy Jimmy.

Oh, that was the part that made the paper. The parts of the tirade that came out later included "slant-eyed ****" and "the fucking bitch doesn't know her place."

My brother gets points for this. At soon as the story broke, he said, "'Cur?' What the hell is 'cur'? I'll bet ten dollars that was a more polite version of the real word he used."

[metirish]

"all over the world people are feeling this loss , the champion of the little people is gone but his legacy lives"

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

The Breslin interview on Sportscenter.

[G-Fafif]

More idiocy, this time from the not usually idiotic Rob Parker.

We would never have been able to see Cone, Strawberry and Gooden finish their careers in New York and in style, had it not been for Steinbrenner.

Cone finished his career in New York...as a Met.

[Guest Edgy DC]

We would never have been able to see Ojeda, Swoboda, and Fernandez finish their careers in New York and in disgrace, had it not been for Steinbrenner.

[Guest Edgy DC]

We would never have been able to see Stengel, Mays, and Hodges finish their careers in New York and in style, had it not been for Payson.