Whether you love them or hate them, the one thing you can never take away from Yankees fans is the fact that they can be the most confident fans in all of professional sports. Of course, winning as many titles as they have will allow for that, but George Steinbrenner and his “win-at-all-costs” attitude allowed them to be confident in knowing that even after a losing season, the team would do everything in its power to be on top the very next season.
The enormous amount of press is not surprising as everyone seems to have a personal memory of George Steinbrenner and is willing to share. Of course, some may believe that it’s a little bit too much attention for one man, especially those who despised the Yankees and despised the free-spending ways in which Steinbrenner depended on to make the Yankees so great. But it’s a very simple explanation as to why the passing of Mr. Steinbrenner impacts the lives of many other fans, besides Yankee fans.
The reason is simple: As much as non-Yankee fans either tried to ignore the Yankees or hated the Yankees for their super-teams altogether, there was always a little part of those people that envied the franchise.
They envied the idea of having so many championships, they envied the fact that the franchise had so much money to spend to bolster their team every year, but most importantly, the aspect they envied the most was the owner that was willing to sacrifice just about everything he had for the better of the team, and in turn, for the better of Yankee fans.
Non-Yankee fans don’t know what that’s like because the owner of the team they cheer for will usually do enough to make the team competitive, but will make sure that he gets profits out of the franchise above all else. I get the business side of it, but I get the feelings of the common fan as well. There’s an obvious disconnect between fan and owner because the fan will sacrifice money out of his pocket to support the team, but the owner won’t necessarily sacrifice money out of his in order to support the fan.
Yankee fan never felt that disconnect with George Steinbrenner. Don’t get me wrong, Steinbrenner was out to make a buck of his team as much as anyone else was, but you never got the sense from him that he was in the baseball business just to make a dollar. You always felt that out of the 30 owners in baseball, he was the one guy that was looking to win first and make a dollar second.
Yankee fan never felt betrayed by George Steinbrenner. Yankee fan never felt like their owner could have done a little bit more or invested a little bit more into the team. Simply put, he was the owner that everyone wanted for their team, but only Yankee fans were lucky enough to have him.
RIP Mr. Steinbrenner