There is no soap opera in sports quite like the New York Yankees.
Think about it: Is there anyplace else where you can wake up on a beautiful October morning and learn that, with his team one game from elimination, the owner is threatening to fire his Hall of Fame manager, trying to fire an umpire and making predictions about future events over which he may have no control.
Love him, hate him or laugh at him, George Steinbrenner is a true sports icon if only in the sense that all lunatic owners past, present or future will always be compared to him. There are Babe Ruth-like feats in sports, Patrick Henry-like moments of oratory, Bobby Knight-like coaching temper tantrums and Richard Nixon-like acts of paranoia, lying and cheating. (See Bush, George W. for continuing comparisons).
Then there are acts of lunacy in sports ownership that can only be equated with George M. Steinbrenner.
For a while, it looked as if we had seen -- or, more significantly, heard -- the last of Steinbrenner. In recent years, virtually all of his contact with the public had come through carefully crafted "statements" put out by a private public relations firm on his behalf. Public sightings became more and more rare. When he showed up at spring training one day this past February, the stadium was virtually sealed off and reporters were pointedly kept away from him. He was at Yankee Stadium on opening day, but hadn't been seen there since.
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