A short story...

Here is a story, make of it what you will

Let me tell you about George Steinbrenner, the man who owned the New York Yankees from 1973 to 2010. New York newspapers called him “The Boss” because of his overly hands-on approach to team ownership and one former Yankees manager called him “Manager George” because of his tendency to meddle in the team’s on-field decision-making.

When he bought the Yankees, Steinbrenner swore to the media that he wouldn’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all and reneged on that declaration on the Yankees’ first match of the 1973 season. While sitting in the box, he noticed that most of the players’ hair was longer than he liked. As he did not yet know the players' names, he wrote down the uniform numbers of the offenders and had the list, along with the demand that their hair be trimmed immediately, delivered to the team manager.

Throughout his reign, Steinbrenner enforced a military-style grooming code: All players, coaches, and male executives were forbidden to display any facial hair other than moustaches (except for religious reasons), and scalp hair could not be grown below the collar.

Steinbrenner took his micro-management to a new level when he placed a phone linked to his office in the team’s dugout, and he had no qualms in telling the manager what to do with the team and how to do it.

In 1990, Steinbrenner was banned from participating in baseball operations after he hired a known gambler to spy on a player who was suing him for failing to honour a contract. It got messy and brought the game into disrepute. With Steinbrenner’s hands tied, his baseball people were allowed to run the franchise and make sound baseball decisions. Something Steinbrenner didn’t know how to do. Gene Michael began building the farm system with an emphasis on homegrown talent – and on-base percentage.

In 2021, something happened that made me think of George Steinbrenner. I wrote about it in this article. Around that time, I heard a rumour from reliable sources that Temba Bavuma had tried to sit out a match or matches at the T20 World Cup in the UAE so that an in-form player could play. It was alleged that a message was relayed, Steinbrenner style, to the Proteas that the captain had to play all games.

Hearing Bavuma confess to not being 100% fit moments before the semi-final clash against Australia made me think of Steinbrenner again. I am not saying a message was relayed as was alleged to have happened in 2022, but, I am saying when a player chooses to share that information with the world, one is prone to reading between the lines and reaching conclusions.

There are good and hardworking people working towards the 2027 ODI World Cup, and it is likely that their efforts might be in vain if they are not allowed the space to do what they are good at. Anyway, there is an article coming, and it’s not on this subject…

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Thanks for reading. Until next time… - CS