Steinbrenner Passes

Legendary New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's passing has owned the sports headlines for the vast majority of the day. The Boss's passing brings to a close one of the most controversial, illustrious onwership reigns the sporting world has known. 37 years, 11 American league championships, 7 World Championships, and countless headlining big free agent signings.

Fans of the Yankees and fans of Steinbrenner can oftentimes be seen as one in the same. Which, of course, means Yankees haters don't find soft spots in their hearts for The Boss. While hating someone who could seemingly buy any player he wanted over the course of the last 2 decades isn't a ridiculous sentiment, to discount the historic changes Steinbrenner brought to Major League Baseball would be an injustice to the legacy of the man as well as the game.

Catfish Hunter was MLB's first huge major free agent signing. Of course, Steinbrenner was the one to make the deal (who else would it be). In 1980, he signed Dave Winfield to the largest contract in the history of the game, paving the way for the outlandish contracts today's players enjoy (many of whom are Yankees as well). Steinbrenner made it OK for teams to pay guys like Alex Rodriguez 25 million per year, forever changing the economics of the game.

He was also an innovator when it comes to television. The recent hub-bub for the Texas Longhorns sports network is a direct decendent of The Boss's YES network, which originally was slated to show only Yankees material, but has since expanded into other New York sports programming. Going further back, he was the first major sports owner to sell television rights, paving the way for huge increases in team income, as well as creating the current sports market we live in now, where nearly every major sporting team has each game played on the local market.

So while we often have chastised Steinbrenner for his dated grooming policy, his petty interference with the team (he had 11 GMs over his 37 year ownership, and over 20 managers), his Darth Vader dominance status, and his ability to buy whatever player he wanted, there are 2 things that are indisputable: his affect on the game and the entire professional sports landscape, and his desire to win at any cost (literally).