George Steinbrenner and the Yankees: Personality and Sports Psychology (article)

Sports feel like a life and death affair to many fans because of the strong emotions they elicit. As I write these words in late July, I hear the Yankee baseball announcer declare “the hitter stays alive” as he foul tips a pitch rather than striking out. Yesterday’s the New York Times theadline on the Yankees declared, “Rogers [the pitcher] can’t cure what ails [the] Yankees,” who had lost four out of the last five games. Today’s headline reads, “Yankees and Gooden’s [the pitcher’s] arm come back to life.” The language is from illness to health and death to life. Sports feels good or bad. It is one arena of modern life where people can express themselves freely without worrying about being politically correct. At the moment over a billion people around the world are glued to their television sets watching the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

The New York Yankees, the “Bronx Bombers” (at least until Steinbrenner moves them to New Jersey or Manhattan!), are the most famous, richest, and most victorious baseball team in history. Yankee fans have fond memories of feeling like a single entity as 40 and 50 thousands of them in the stands of Yankee Stadium yelled “WE ARE NUMBER ONE” in unison after a great playoff victory. This loss of psychic boundaries, so often encountered in sports enthusiasms, is reminiscent of the nationalistic feelings evoked by war. No wonder that early in this century William James looked to sports, especially the Olympics, as the “moral equivalent of war.”

Today the Yankees, despite their fears of “ailing” and “death” precipitated by their recent losses, are leading the American League by a wide margin. Yet, only last fall I remember muttering for the thousandth time in the last ten years that the Yankees needed a new owner to be able to win the pennant and the World Series. Under 60-year-old George Steinbrenner, the principal owner of the Yankees since 1973, the team had some success for the first eight years and then became demoralized: the Yankees have had the most expensive players, the most frustration, and the fewest victories in their modern history. The principal owner of the New York franchise has a positive genius for antagonizing almost everyone including Yankee fans, managers, and players. The unconscious principles underlying Steinbrenner’s behavior, usually in opposition to his conscious desire to win at all costs, appear to me to be the need to re-enact scenarios involving acclaim, betrayal, control, grandiosity, humiliation, punishment, and the salvation of “losers.”

The situation last fall illustrates Stein-brenner at his worse. In his unique, indirect way, the owner forced out Buck Showalter. In 19 years with the Yankee organization, the only employer of his adult life, Buck had worked his way up from a minor league player to the status of a highly successful, well-respected, and beloved big league manager. In four years he built the Yankees into pennant contenders and took them to the playoffs (where they lost). Yet, Steinbrenner has a

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recurrent urge to change the personnel and punish anyone who loses — it was Buck’s turn. Steinbrenner’s idea was to replace the manager, but keep him around just in case the new one (Joe Torre) did not work out. The owner had done this five separate times with one manager (Billy Martin). It was a demoralizing scenario Yankee fans had watched many times. However, Showalter had too much dignity and too many options to twist and turn in the breeze while “the boss” played this dreary tune once again. Before he signed a contract, the manager wanted to know the status of such equally well-respected veterans as Don Mattingly (team captain and legendary player) and Wade Boggs, as well as the coaching staff he had nurtured. Steinbrenner’s response was to tell reporters he was inclined to fire the coaches (he likes to have his own “spies” in his manager’s office) and to continue his negotiations with another potential manager. When Steinbrenner undercuts his own staff and even sees them as his enemies, it reminds me of President Richard Nixon’s inclination to do the very same with his cabinet. It should be remembered that George Steinbrenner was the only person to be convicted, fined, and sentenced to community service for illegal contributions to President Nixon in 1972.

The fans were outraged by the confirmation that Showalter and Mattingly would not be leading the team in 1996. They felt talent, skill, intelligence, and an excellent record should have been rewarded — not punished. A typical caller to a sports radio station declared his desire to be able to root for the Yankees “without an absolute crazy man at the helm.” When I turned to the sports page of The Bergen Record after the playoffs, the words describing the owner were: “the Mad Shipbuilder … the bloated ego [Steinbrenner] … surreal standards … during the George Steinbrenner Era … mercurial owner … Steinbrenner’s act gets old…. George Steinbrenner as the lead huckster … It’s not funny anymore…. It’s pathetic.” The new manager was advised that “what every new Steinbrenner employee needs is eyes in the back of his head. Then at least he will see it coming when he gets stabbed in the back.” The anti-Steinbrenner mood remained strong throughout the rest of the year. When a tireless Yankee public relations worker was fired three days before Christmas, the headlines read: “The Boss [Steinbrenner] stole Christmas.” The New York Times’ coverage was almost as negative.

I was so discouraged by Steinbrenner’s antics of last fall that this spring, unlike the previous two, I did not join a psychoanalyst friend in going to the home opener. (I was lucky I stayed home because it was freezing and snowing, but unlucky because the Yankees won seven to three!) But hope springs eternal and the Yankees are playing league-leading baseball under a veteran manager who knows he must win games and worry as much about managing Steinbrenner as about any of his players.

There are certainly people who have had good things to say about Steinbrenner. He is a big spender (quite free with his checkbook) when it comes to hiring expensive players. He has a big heart since he appears to go out of the way to hire players who have had repeated illicit-drug convictions. He will give a minor league or little-known manager a chance. Obviously, I am not one of the people who say these things. I think Steinbrenner spends so much money on big contracts to make himself look and feel important. He prefers hiring unknowns and alcoholics as managers since he can feel superior to them. I worry about drug-addicted and/or self-destructive baseball players as role models for our young.

What is so infuriating to fans, players, and managers about Steinbrenner is his need to intrude into situations that would be better left alone. Baseball is a sport in which the best team is going to lose about 60 games a year. When the Yankees start losing, he complains publicly about his manager and players, undercutting and demoralizing them. The favorite targets of his chagrin are well known: slugging, black outfielders whom he declares to be lazy. This intrusion usually makes the players’ slumps deeper. He likes to be considered a “good guy” and spends much time, energy, and money justifying his actions and pinning the blame on others. The bottom line is that he can not trust the judgment of his players and managers since he does not trust his own judgement. He speaks and acts so inappropriately and rashly that he was banned from baseball for two-and-a-half years. This was a blessing for Buck Showalter who could build the team without meddling interference. Steinbrenner endlessly searches for a new slugger, a great pitcher, a winning manager — but he always ends up frustrated since he is unwilling to share the spotlight with men of great talent. The issue comes down to the following: Can the eternal loser Steinbrenner, while consciously doing everything he can think of to make the Yankees

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world class winners, unconsciously allow the Bronx Bombers to resume their winning tradition? This fall both the boy within me, who daydreamed of being a baseball hero, and the psychohistorian adult I have become will be listening or watching to see the outcome.

Group psychology, as well as the owner’s individual need “to reenact scenarios involving acclaim, betrayal, control, grandiosity, humiliation, punishment, and the salvation of ‘losers’,” should also be considered. There is a strange dance the fans, in conjunction with the sports reporters, do in looking to Steinbrenner when they are disappointed in or angry at the team, manager, or particular players. In the course of many seasons, I have been able to correlate increased references to the owner to fan discontent. Because of his own needs for acclaim Steinbrenner is a wonderful delegate of fan discontent. He acts out on feelings others have not even acknowledged. But he remains a delegate of the group. When he does less of this, as during this season to date (I am holding my breath!), I wonder if he has gotten some effective psychotherapy that frees him from falling into some of his same old, self-defeating patterns. Or has Steinbrenner been simply so focused on the Olympics (he is on the Olympic Committee) that he has had little time to play his old, self-defeating games with the Yankees?

The reader should note that in writing the article, in the spirit of this publication, I have sought to avoid psychopathological terminology in describing George Steinbrenner. When angered, the fans already do this in excess.

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