Article from The Tampa Tribune

Yankee owner made Tampa what it is now today. Great read:

By STEVE OTTO Steve Otto

Published: July 14, 2010

There are too many stories today. You wonder how George Steinbrenner could have crammed so many of them into one lifetime that began one Fourth of July, 80 years ago.

We all knew there was more than one George Steinbrenner. We knew about "The Boss," that autocratic, get-out-of-my-way owner of the New York Yankees.

We also came to know the other Steinbrenner, the one who gave so much to our community - more than most of us knew. Much of it was through his family's foundation, but there were the almost accidental moments when he would see something that stirred his passion and the next day there would be a check.

More than once I would write a column about some person or organization in crisis, only to hear later about an anonymous gift. The first time was a column about a day care center for children of people with AIDS and how they had no transportation. Two days later they had a van from Bill Currie Ford.

"I think (Steinbrenner) was afraid people might mistake his kindness and generosity as a weakness," said former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco, a friend. "I can't tell you how many times we talked about the needs of some child or a funeral that couldn't be paid for, and he was always there, insisting nobody know about it."

I didn't really know Steinbrenner the first few years. He kept calling me Jim, thinking I was a former NFL football player, and I didn't want to discourage that.

Then came the day my occasional tennis partner Phil McNiff asked if I would come over to Steinbrenner's home to play some doubles. McNiff, the former regional FBI director, was Steinbrenner's man in Tampa. Everything went through McNiff, from getting tickets to showing up at jail in pre-dawn hours to deal with a player in trouble. I asked Phil if Steinbrenner was any good at tennis.

"Just don't let him think you aren't trying your best," he said. "He hates to lose, but if (he) thinks you're letting up, you won't be back."

Game, set and adios

It turned out that Steinbrenner wasn't very good, but he was an athlete and he relished every point he won with a little too much joy.

At the end of the match, bruised on both knees from falls on the asphalt court, beet red and dripping sweat, he called me Steve for the first time, took a swig of lemonade and said he had to run - probably to buy a horse or fire a manager.

That was the odd side of the man. Greco remembered going to a football game with Steinbrenner.

"We sat on the east side of the field in the sun. One of the players dropped a pass and ran off the field, where the coach patted him on the back. George went berserk, saying the coach should have kicked him in the rear.

"Twenty minutes later the sun began to go down and George whispered over to me, 'Look at that. Why would anyone want to live anyplace else than here?'

"He's the most competitive man I know," Greco added, recalling a fishing trip with Phil Alessi of bakery fame, former Tampa Tribune sports editor Tom McEwen and Steinbrenner. "We had a guide who was showing us how to string the line, and George had never done it before. After five minutes, he chased the guide away and went to work fishing. He didn't take a break or stop to eat; he just fished. At the end of the day he held up his string, gloating that he had the most and the biggest. I've never seen anyone as happy as he was at that moment."

That was Steinbrenner, who could be tough and at times cruel, and still be a pussycat.

A twinkle in the eye

You know about the holiday programs Steinbrenner put on for years both in St. Petersburg and Tampa, bringing thousands of less fortunate kids to what's now called the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa and the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. For almost all of them it would be the first and maybe only time they would be exposed to a live symphony, along with ballet dancers and even wrestler Randy "Macho Man" Savage reading "The Night Before Christmas."

I remember sitting there at one performance - as all the kids were singing a Christmas carol - catching Steinbrenner's eyes glistening as he sang along with the children.

I asked Steinbrenner once how he happened to pick Tampa for a home. The truth is it should have been Jacksonville. He had come to Jacksonville to check out its port as a possible site for his American Shipbuilding Co.

While he was in Florida he drove to Ocala to look at a horse owned by former Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay. Steinbrenner loved horses, maybe more than baseball. From there he decided to stop in Tampa at the invitation of Chester Ferguson, a lawyer who represented the Lykes family.

Steinbrenner liked what he saw - not so much the town as the leadership of people like Ferguson and then-Mayor Greco. It seemed to be a community on the move as well as a good place to make a home.

'Yankee Doodle Dandy'

"I don't think that we realized that he was not only going to be a neighbor. He was going to be a friend," Greco said. "He will be missed most, I think, by the children and police and the firefighters. He would - and did - so much for all of them, from the Boys and Girls Clubs to the Gold Shield (Foundation) for the children of fallen police and firefighters."

That was George Steinbrenner, our own Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the Fourth of July and a friend we won't see the likes of again anytime soon.