I don’t think sports is important in general or that it says much about “our times” or anything like that. But it does indeed say a lot about our times that a egomaniacal felon owner is getting into the baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot while labor leader Marvin Miller may never get in.
Our society loves rich people, for all the occasional carping about bankers. Professional athletes are greedy for wanting their share of the revenues from the entertainment they provide, while the owners are great civic leaders. It’s the same with everything else, whether it’s the Koch brothers versus environmentalists, or some other captain of industry versus unions.
I don’t know how it got to be this way, but it is this way. And when people wonder why Democrats can’t pass more progressive legislation, this has to be counted as one of the reasons.
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
He’s not getting in on the first ballot, Jim Palmer, who will be voting, already said as much.
But that aside, it’s okay to be rich if ya a republican. If ya a Dem with a few bucks, then you’re an “elitist”.
Let me end by saying Meg Whitman and Carly were really really disliked in California, in part because they were rich, and the Yankees are despised because they’re rich, so there’s hope.
JPL
Steinbrenner should be despised because he changed the game. It was possible for middle class families to bring their family to see a game, thanks to George, not so much anymore.
Yutsano
@Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter):
Umm, no. The Yankees are despised because Steinbrenner wouldn’t develop his minor league talent, instead going out and buying up the promising young guns other teams spent years and resources developing. And his sons are, if anything, worse. Plus the general arrogance the man developed about owning a team in a state he didn’t live in was unsufferable.
General Stuck
Yes they do, or have. But all that is about to change in the next few years. Our society loves rich people because they see them as examples of maybe what they, their children, their friends could possibly be one day. Successful, earned by hard work done on a level playing field in the land of opportunity.
When our living standard starts slipping and the playing field tilts to the point they fall off the edge, even the white picket fencsters will come out of their middle class bliss and start asking questions about what the fuck is going on. They will begin to learn they have been taken for a ride down the yellow brick road to Oz, and the man behind the curtain is a banker, or a broker, or their local elected official. And when they ask those questions, the pretty words of the promised land will ring hollow, like their bank accounts, and junior’s college fund.
If they are lucky enough to own a home, someone will drop by one day, and tell them they don’t, because somebody somewhere changed the rules because they could. And the Chevy Tahoe will disappear one Sunday morn, having been repossessed because they were a payment late, or two.
I know a lot of people think Americans are compliant fools, and they are, until the money and jobs dries up long enough. Then the waking coma of the American dream will turn into bewilderment, that will turn into rage, and someone will get the blame.
It may well be too late to do anything about it, then they will have to make their way, like the rest of us, to the armed camp they feel most comfortable in.
JWL
I’d like to see a player turn thumbs down on his induction ceremony, until a time when he would be so honored standing alongside Miller.
I also wish I had X-ray vision.
Lolis
The problem is us. Only one side knows it is fighting a war. Not our side.
Mike G
@General Stuck:
And then you get teabaggers, whose conformist little brains may have briefly had an inkling of who was shafting them, but quickly had their nascent anger manipulated by Fux into blame directed at Pelosi, the stimulus, health care reform, George Soros and the KenyanMooslimTerrist.
Mark S.
Ugh, Rick Reilly, the P.J. O’Rourke of sports journalism.
And I don’t know, if you’re going to put owners in the Hall of Fame, Steinbrenner deserves it about as much as anyone. The Yankees won what, 7 World Series since he took over? Sure he was an asshole, but so was Ty Cobb.
BR
That’s why International Bank Mutiny Day, which is scheduled for December 7th, might be somewhat important. (Summary: withdraw your money as cash by or on December 7th.)
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
Insufferable arrogance. A trait that explains why a lot of rich people are disliked.
Why we follow them and “love” them is because they are rich and we’d all like to be that way. And until middle age, around 50, we think we still might be some day. But then it slowly dawns on us that we are screwed and will at best stay in the socioeconomic position we occupy or at worst we will nose dive ever downward as we age. And some will forget or never know that this is just life. And they will be bitter, looking for someone to blame because it can never be their fault.
Hunter Gathers
When Steinbrenner gets put into the Hall, he won’t even be the biggest asshole enshrined there. That honor goes to Ty Cobb. Closely followed by Ted Williams.
BruceFromOhio
There are occasions where that can actually occur. Just like the opposite can actually occur. Professional sports is not a monolith, although it *is* a business.
@JWL:
I wish I could figure out why My New Pony can’t make a decent martini. Maybe its the lack of opposable thumbs.
Yutsano
@BR: Apparently whoever set this up isn’t aware of where banks make the vast majority of their profits. If everyone withdrew their money from their bank it would make a dent sure, but most banks earn far more from loans and other financial implements than straight deposits any more. Sounds too much like hollow moral victory to me.
snarkyspice
@Mark S.:
Agreed. I get where this analogy was coming from but it was a stretch. Steinbrenner deserves to be in the HoF. Not because he was rich, just because he deserves it.
Yutsano
@snarkyspice:
Why? Make your case. Because as far as I’m concerned Steinbrenner was a huge cancer on the game.
BR
@Yutsano:
I don’t think the goal is to immediately hit the banks’ profits, but impact confidence in them. Most of the money banks have is virtual – just numbers in a database. Withdrawals would cause problems since they have requirements on how much cash / real assets they have to have on hand. (The rules vary by locale but the idea is the same.)
Anya
DougJ, I don’t mean to hijack the thread but I’ve been meaning to ask you what you think of our Governor-Elect Andrew Cuomo choosing Rudy Giuliani to co-chair his transition committee on public safety? I didn’t have a chance to read much about it since I was in and out of the country these three weeks but I thought the selection is very strange.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
There’s more to it than just Steinbrenner’s riches. Keep in mind that this is a Hall of Fame. There are plenty of people already in the Hall who have little to recommend them other than they are/were famous. But having said that, yes, class is very much an issue in how journalists view professional athletes and owners.
MattR
@BR: I am willing to bet that those rules would be immediately, “temporarily” suspended in the event of a run on the banking system.
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
@Anya: keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.
rageahol
steal a bunch of money, and you’re a thief.
steal a bunch of money, and give 10% of it to charity, and you’re a philanthropist.
BR
@MattR:
You’re right, they probably would be, but the impact would be huge in the meantime.
My strategy right now is to withdraw a few hundred dollars every couple of days, so I draw down my account by early December.
Anya
@Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter): Giuliani is an offensive race-baiting asshole who should be shunned not rewarded. Also, by giving him this post, Cuomo is saying that only Republicans have credibility on public safety. Not to mention it implies embrace of Giuliani’s stand on issues relating to terrorism.
DougJ
@Anya:
I’m not sure what to think of it. Believe it or not, I think Giuliani can be very effective in certain situations. For his first two years as mayor, he did a terrific job with the police force. Then he went crazy and fired everyone and so on.
This isn’t like appointing Sarah Palin or something, Giuliani may know something about this issue.
LongHairedWeirdo
1) The powerful are in charge of spreading messages
2) Therefore, the messages that tend to spread are those that favor the powerful.
3) Therefore, without very careful cynicism, and someone to help spread another message, ideas will tend to favor the powerful over time.
Graeme
I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Americans do worship the rich. I don’t think that’s going to change, despite the fact the recession will go on for a few more years, at best.
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
@Anya: this is all true. lyndon johnson used to say, “I rather have [insert the blank] inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”
But that said, one hands scratches the other. remember giulianni endorsed papa cuomo for governor in 1994 over the republican nominee, pataki.
BruceFromOhio
@Anya:
Cuomo is no slouch. If he’s throwing this bone to Rudy, it’s calculated to Cuomo’s benefit, not Giuliani’s. Rudy is a one-trick pony, and his trick is serving a purpose here that’s not easily deciphered.
And I agree, Mr. 911 is to be shunned, not rewarded, the fvcking twerp.
BruceFromOhio
@Graeme:
I disagree. The fvcking soulless rich ratfvck sonsabitches that run every Gaia-damned thing worship themselves, and the rest of us have to watch. It’s like Eccentric Uncle Martin and his Gaia-damned home movies of his vacation in Hawai’i. We’re stuck in his house with no way to leave.
My family is middle-class in a fairly wealthy community, and most of the people we encounter with more goods have half the sense, and it’s painfully, pitifully obvious. Worship them? Pity is the most likely posture, if not outright disdain.
alwhite
Some parts of the media have always sided with owners against players. There is a local ass-kisser here (Sid Hartman) that has been writing a column for 50 years or so that always tells you how great the owners are & how ungrateful the players are. He considered Stienbrenner a “close personal friend” and wrote endlessly about what a great guy he was. My nickname for him is Scud” because he is loud, does some damage but is not very accurate.
dino
.
laughable. the yankees are despised because they win. thats all. George is a “no doubt about it” first ballot hall of famer solely because of 7 titles in 37 years, more than double any other team in that period (not to mention the creation and rise of the regional sports network). The charge of buying talent and not developing any is truly hilarious. The best run of the Steinbrenner’s era was led by Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettite, all home grown talent . In recent years the rise of Robinson Cano, Phil Hughes, Brett Gardner, Joba Chamberlain, and the myriad of top prospects knocking on the door (Montero, Brackman, Romine, Banuelos, Betances, Nunez, Adams, Laird) proves that the yanks can develop their own talent. They have developed one of the better farm systems in the league the last few years. The Steinbrenner’s don’t even have the most money in baseball, they just choose to invest every dollar the team makes back into it. They are not conservative at all with their cash because they don’t care about anything else but winning. They are in the business of winning. Certainly George has done something right since the team is worth over one billion dollars. Clearly, I am a yankee fan, but I’d rather the team I root for dump every resource they can into putting a championship club on the field than what the now deceased Carl Pohlad did with the Twins. Pohlad, and his heirs will continue to do with the Twins what they have done for years, not invest anything into that team, yet the Pohlad’s have personal wealth the Steinbrenner’s could never imagine. The Pohlad’s are billionaires who’s teams are always competitive. What stops them from yankee like success is maintaining a payroll of around 85-90 million dollars. Imagine if he dipped into his pocket to spend just a little cash. The comparison of the two owner shows the difference between wanting to simply own a successful baseball franchise, and wanting to own THE BEST baseball franchise and win the world series every year.
West of the Cascades
Something I’ve been struck with the last week is the difference between some of the people who are rich in the US and in the UK. I’m not sure where I’m going with this (+4) but I was reading A.O. Scott’s review of the new Harry Potter movie and clicked on a link to a youtube video of Daniel Radcliffe reciting Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs
He was just having fun, as a 21-year old guy with a fortune that could buy Sierra Leone. It made me check out his entry on Wikipedia and it seems that, unlike virtually any U.S. citizen who has been adulated for nearly half of his life and is worth $60 million, he is NOT an asshole. Seemingly the opposite.
Whatever we think of rich people in this country, why can’t they be more like Daniel Radcliffe and less like douchebags like George Steinbrenner?
Also, the Yankees suck.
Ailuridae
@dino:
As a childhood Yankees’ fan I am actually pretty sympathetic to this view. Of course choosing the Pohlads as the object of derision seems pretty out there. While the Pohlads aren’t dumping their personal fortune into winning World Series they have built an excellent team and, by all measures, are willing to spend the vast majority of money that comes to the team in revenue every year. There aren’t a lot of owners of any professional sports team that are willing to, with any consistency, lose money year to year on their team. Jerry Reinsdorf does it with the White Sox by all measures but after that….
If you are looking for the “hoard money rather than win” that is indisputably The
Tribsterserr Cubs. The Cubs organization is simply everything that is wrong with professional sports ownership whether it is the decade long practice of scalping their own tickets or their completely bull shit bankruptcy proceedings before the sale or their new attempt to get the State of Illinois to cover their risk while renovating the antiquated tinderbox of a stadium they play in.Bruuuuce
@Yutsano: No doubt about it, George Steinbrenner had some enormous bad effects on the game (particularly in terms of raising prices as a consequence of raising salaries — though I could make a case that salaries are as strongly affected by the “arbitration” process that 3-5 year veteran players go through, which raises salaries by an average of eight times, as by what George brought to free agency).
He also brought some enormous positive changes to the game. Among other things, he raised its profile in an era when football was becoming the national sport due to how easy it is to bet on it; he pioneered the use of free agency to build teams (and as noted above, the Yankees HAVE built their teams largely through their farm system, as well, including trading talented youngsters who later became stars for other teams; the best example this year was Ian Kennedy, who went to the Arizona Diamondbacks); he created the concept of a team’s own cable channel; and he won seven World Series as owner.
George is a Hall of Famer — and so is Marvin Miller. They each changed the game, which is practically the definition of who belongs in the HoF.
Bill Murray
@dino:
Of course those players were developed while Steinbrenner was banned from day-to-day management so he couldn’t trade them for veteran’s
timb
@dino: yeah, Steinbrenner put that team together when he was on suspension. Stick Michaels and Buck Showalter put that team together, dino. The Yankees need more Steinbrenner suspension to develop anything now
timb
@dino: Maybe if the Pohlad folks could bring in Sabathia and Cliff Lee, they would be more successful. I mean, developing the great Joba Chanmberlain says something about their farm system’s ability to produce competent middle relievers, but comparing them to the Twins is ridiculous.
Yutsano
@timb:
Did you seriously just type that with a straight face? Or is my snark detector off again?
dino
@Ailuridae:
Completely agree on the cubs. Look, I’m a big time yankee fan, but I’m not delusional to the fact that Steinbrenner was vein glorious beyond measure. Nothing againt Pohlad, I am a huge fan of the way the twins run their baseball development/scouting operations, its just a clear example of an owner not willing to raise payroll. The twins have a solid foundation of young core players and an outstanding scouting department and if the last few years they had increased payroll by about 20-25 million, one could envision them being a perennial power . Pohlad is just not willing to do that. The Stienbrenner’s are. Further, the argument about the yankees inability to develop their own players is false and a lot more has to go right than just what happens in free agency to win a world series. Free agency is a tactic, one of many tactics, strategies, and such like teams employ. It’s just not the reason the yankee’s are hated. People wouldn’t hate them if they didn’t win
dino
@Bill Murray: What owners run their scouting departments
Triassic Sands
@JPL:
In the Reilly clip, he makes the case for inducting Marvin Miller into the Hall of Fame. But if Miller invented “free agency” isn’t he at least as guilty of the high price of going to a game as Steinbrenner? And probably more so.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Steinbrenner should ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Long after I quit following or caring about MLB, I despised Steinbrenner and pretty much everything he stood for. And I don’t care at all about Miller (or most anyone else) getting in or not.
Linkmeister
@Ailuridae: I’ll see your Tribune and raise you the McCourts in LA. They have jacked ticket and parking prices to the skies for Dodgers games while taking as much out of the revenue stream as they can. We laughed at McCain’s seven houses, but Frank and Jamie McCourt have exactly the same number in LA, purchased in just four or five years after they moved there from Boston.
Yutsano
@dino:
LOLwut? Steinbrenner was INFAMOUS for his control of every aspect of the team, including overruling managers, coaches, scouts, whoever, to get exactly what he wanted. He didn’t just sit back and sign checks, he interfered with the operations of the team on every level he could. And he threw around a shit ton of money, ran through managers like cheap whores, and demanded more and more from players. And if you didn’t perform to his exact standards, you were done. He made sure of that. Yankee homers make me ill sometimes.
Resident Firebagger
Actually, from 1980 on, the Yankees had their greatest successes when Steinbrenner was the least involved. Of course he did change the entire nature of sports ownership — for the worst, but he did change it.
With Bowie Kuhn in and Buck O’Neill not in the Hall, there really is no standard. Steinbrenner deserves his place with the other self-serving assholes…
Triassic Sands
For tried and true Yankee haters the difference may not exist, but I see a difference between the pre- and post-Steinbrenner Yankees. George was poison.
annamissed
People go along with this rich man (good) poor man (bad) thing because they are easily taught to identify with being the rich man – because the rich man is the authority man, and the authority man like rich man, is like preacher man or military man – and by implication family man – because he is perceived to have the instruments of power (irregardless of how tiny they actually might be) directly in his own individual hands.
Anything that could be seen to erode this personal relationship to power, like government, the collective well being, moderation, or empathy are seen as signs of nameless pedestrian ordinariness, if not weakness or ultimately, the enemy of success.
As long as there is still one rich man to make an example of, there will be a million fools that will risk everything to be like him.
Linkmeister
They say that Richard Cory
Owns one-half of this here town
With political connections
Spread his wealth around
Born into society, a banker’s only child
He had everything a man could want
Power, grace and style
[snip]
He freely gave to charity
And had that common touch
They were grateful for his patronage
And thanked him very much
So my mind was filled with wonder
When the evenin’ headlines read
That Richard Cory went home last night
And put a bullet through his head.
Richard Cory, S&G
drew42
Or, it could just be that it’s called the Hall of Fame — and George Steinbrenner is really famous.
Marc McKenzie
@General Stuck:
I hope you are right…because it seems to me that, more and more, instead of us actually taking aim at the right targets (the Repubs) and informing the people about what has been going on for 30+ years, we’re more interested in knee-capping Obama and whining about not getting our ponies and other such nonsense.