The life of George Steinbrenner is a ramp across modern New York, a bridge that spans the whirlpool of one man’s spinning psyche and the transformation of America’s biggest, baddest city. He raged. He wept. He won. He brought back prodigals, forgave them their urine tests. He broke laws, promises, lives. He did charity. He grafted his ego onto the back pages of newspapers. He blasted Frank Sinatra through stadium loudspeakers. He championed ordinary New Yorkers, then took them for every last penny.
He has been a part of the city’s landscape since 1973, making a vast fortune with winning teams and by threatening to leave.
“He calls up the next day,” Edward I. Koch said Tuesday, remembering the end of a long negotiation in 1987 that had concluded — or so Mr. Koch thought — with a firm deal to extend the Yankees’ lease on the old stadium. Mr. Koch, then the mayor, had no interest in sports but wanted to make sure that the Yankees did not leave, and so the city agreed to improve parking and road access if the team would sign an extension of its lease.
The mayor was relieved to have the haggling and threats brought to an end. One provision that would continue from the old deal was the city’s 10 percent share of cable television revenue.
“He said, ‘I need two weeks to decide’ on an option on some obscure matter that really didn’t affect the city, and we didn’t care which option he chose,” Mr. Koch said. “So fine. It didn’t matter to the city which one he chose. We had shaken hands.”
Two weeks later, the phone rang. “He called and said he was not going to sign the contract, that the options were not acceptable,” Mr. Koch said. “The reason, we found out, was that in the two-week period, he had negotiated an increase in his cable television contract from $50 million to $500 million, and he didn’t want the city to get 10 percent of $500 million.”
Had there been an actual handshake? “We really had shaken hands,” Mr. Koch said. “It wasn’t a metaphorical handshake. He was a very good businessman. There was also a ruthless quality, and that was a demonstration of it.”
After the Sept. 11 attack, the Yankees began playing “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch; the song is still played at every game.
But members of the Giuliani administration recalled that a few weeks after 9/11, the Yankees balked at using the stadium for a memorial service. Mr. Steinbrenner was reported to have said the field would be damaged by the musicians and choirs. Rudolph W. Giuliani, a frequent guest at the ballpark, exploded, an aide recalled.
“Rudy said, ‘It’s our stadium; send 20 cops up there, get the keys and figure out how the lights work,’ ” the aide said.
The matter was amicably resolved.
AT some point in the 1980s, Mr. Steinbrenner began floating the notion that the Bronx was too wicked a place for a sports franchise to survive. Unless, possibly, someone built the team a new stadium. He made these pronouncements as the team was entering an era of prosperity unmatched in its spangled history.
During the 1950s, in the golden light of Mickey Mantle, the team never drew two million fans. Even in 1961, when Roger Maris hit 61 home runs and the Yankees won the World Series, attendance was just 1.7 million.
It was not until 1976, when the Bronx was on the verge of burning, that the team drew two million spectators. The more homicides in the Bronx, the higher the attendance at Yankee Stadium. Of course, good left-handed relief pitching also helped. Still, Mr. Steinbrenner eventually won the day: one of the wealthiest sports teams on earth would get around $1 billion in public subsidies for a new stadium.
As his health declined, Mr. Steinbrenner existed behind a scrim of bland quotes in news releases. “They should have let him pass from being part of the notoriety into the obscurity of old age,” Mr. Koch said.
He remembered the elation of the city when the Yankees won the World Series in 1978, a troubled time. “We put the trophy in the rotunda at City Hall,” Mr. Koch said. “I knew, as the Romans knew, that the people require circuses and theatrics.”
George Steinbrenner knew it better than anyone.
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