My "History" with George Steinbrenner

Although I am a Met fan, I was a bit sad when I heard the news of Steinbrenner's passing. As a kid, I was a big Yankee fan. In fact, I really got into baseball around 1976/1977 when the Yankees were on fire. But I was also a huge Billy Martin fan. When Steinbrenner fired Martin for the third time in 1983, I became a Met fan. My feeling was that you don't jump teams when they are down, but you can when the ownership lets you down. 

As I got older, I started to develop a new respect for "The Boss." I loved his commitment to winning and his business acumen is top-notch. He parlayed a small (I believe $168,000) personal investment into the Yankees into a stake reportedly currently worth over $1 billion. 

And he did so by breaking the rules.  

He had no problem investing in players who he paid lavishly and in doing so, generated great returns. This despite the fact that many told him that he was killing baseball. Sure, he did a lot of wrong things like the trying to blackmail Dave Winfield and getting way too involved with managing the team. But he clearly learned from his mistakes.

We all make mistakes like Steinbrenner did. He is a great example of moving on to success after errors in judgment.