George: The Poor Little Rich Boy Who Built the Yankee Empire
By Peter Golenbock
Wiley Publishing
SRP: $16.95 (Paperback)

Going into this book, I had the typical notion of George Steinbrenner – the guy who bought his team. I saw him as a rich guy that was destroying baseball.

Golenbock gives the full story of Steinbrenner – from his youth to his time coaching college football (I was shocked by this; he coached a year at Northwestern and a year at Purdue). George didn’t have the easiest life growing up, but it did shape the way he’s run his businesses – Kinsman Marine Transit, the Cleveland Pipers, and the New York Yankees. The Pipers information is particularly entertainings. The team was part of the ABA Basketball League; George was notorious for pestering his coach, fighting with referees, and conning the other owners into investing more money when he did not. The team went bankrupt right before they had an opportunity to join the NBA.

Golenbock spends a large portion of the book on George’s Yankees years. He bought the team from CBS, who decided they didn’t want to own the team; the original plan was to diversify their portfolio with other ventures outside of TV. Steinbrenner led a group of investors that bought the team for $10 Million. George turned the team into a winner with the help of manager Billy Martin and GM Gabe Paul; he was also responsible for running them off (Martin 4 more times). It was a trent that was familiar for George’s tenure as owner.

Golenbock gets most of his information from interviews and books of others (many he co-wrote, specifically Billy Martin and Sparky Lyle’s autobiographies. He gets all sides of the stories; the frustrated manager, the stressed GM, the less fortunate that were helped.

My only gripe with the book is there are times where events are explained multiple times; Golenbock also re-introduces people multiple times, which I found frustrating. He does say that he started the book in 1981, but 2 other authors also were writing books about George. He said that since he only had a year to write it and that he couldn’t get his out quicker than the other 2, so his contract was cancelled. He started working on it again in 2008 (when another George book was being written). I feel that this could be part of the reason the book seems this way; parts were written decades ago. The other reason could be he used interviews from his previous books, which were released a while ago.

Overall, the book was very enjoyable and I learned quite a bit about Steinbrenner. I feel I have a deeper appreciation for the man and the owner of the Yankees.