Coward Voters Once Again Refuse To Elect George Steinbrenner Into The Baseball Hall of Fame
To be honest, I didn’t know the Eras Committee (formerly the Veterans Committee) was voting yesterday for the Hall of Fame, but I found an easy way to get upset over their decisions because I find fun in that. What they do is ever few years vote in a few people who are no longer eligible through the normal voting process with the Baseball Writers Association of America. On the ballot this year were Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Joe Carter, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser, Davey Johnson, Charlie Manuel, Lou Piniella, Lee Smith and George Steinbrenner. You need to receiver 75 percent of the vote from a 16 person committee to get in.
The committee decided to vote in Lee Smith and Harold Baines which is whatever. I’m not here on Monday afternoon to tell you Harold Baines should not be in the HOF, but I am here to tell you George M. Steinbrenner should be and it’s fucking insane they refuse to vote for him.
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Steinbrenner took over a struggling New York Yankees team in 1973 when he bought them for $8.8 million. When his time was done on this Earth, the team had won seven championships, eleven pennants, and became the Evil Empire that we know them to be today worth just under a shade of $4 billion. Before his tenure in New York, the Yankees were not the big bad spenders that they are known to be today (or at least as of a few years ago). George changed baseball economics by opening the checkbook, famously for Dave Winfield when he gave him a 10 year $23 million contract in 1980. This was the biggest contract ever given in baseball history at the time and sort of opened pandora’s box.
What I loved most about George was his dedication to winning. He famously said winning was the most important thing in the world next to breathing. He still ranked breathing number one, which probably explains why the Yankees don’t have more than 27 world championships to their name, but I’ll let it slide. He issued an apology to the city of New York after losing in the 1981 World Series to LA. He benched Don Mattingly for refusing to get his haircut. He was such a preposterous no non-sense human being that I loved every part of him.
To say this man did not have a big enough impact on the game of baseball to warrant a spot in the Hall of Fame is flat-out incorrect. The Yankees are not THE YANKEES without Steinbrenner. Writers will probably bitch and moan that Steinbrenner got in trouble a few times. Boo hoo! So what if he paid someone to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield and maybe got in a little trouble with Richard Nixon, big deal. You can’t tell me George Steinbrenner did not have a MASSIVE impact on the game of baseball.
He also was great in his Seinfeld cameo.