Curious what "Poz" would say about Steinbrenner, and here it is.
A rich read.
One of my favorite parts: “If I believed half the things said about me, I wouldn’t go home with myself,” Steinbrenner once said, but the thing is that he DID believe half the things people said about him. He just believed the other half.
Steinbrenner is Everyman, of course. We, each of us, have parts of ourselves we'd rather keep hidden. We spend an awful lot of energy (speaking autobiographically) hiding behind masks. And we rail against the flaws of such people often because we're projecting our worst selves, or similar selves, onto them.
But because Steinbrenner was Steinbrenner, the bad parts were all out there in full display. Did he catch a million breaks because of who he was? Of course. Did he often get a bad rap for being who he was? Yes.
The sad part of his "shadow side," though, was his incessant drive to live up to his father's expectations. You can do that even if your father's dead, you know. Always trying to meet approval. Always striving and competing. Little people be damned. I can't glorify that part of him, but the parts that were humble and kind and selfless? Play ball.
AP photo
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