Lose Remerswaal said:
George was alot of things we like to make fun of here, but he was also a successful businessman and an extremely charitable man, including huge donations to the Jimmy Fund, and a naming donation for the football field at MIT.
An awful lot of misinformation about SiAS and his business acumen.
Steinbrenner's ancestors built the shipping business. Most specifically, his father is the one who built their family business to a point where it could be merged with American Shipbuilding and allow them to take control of that company. George inherited that business from his father.
Steinbrenner's most notable accomplishment at the helm of American Shipbuilding was when he used it as a vehicle to launder illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon. He was later caught lying to investigators and setting up a scheme to suborn perjury from his employees. As a business executive, Steinbrenner was a failure and after three decades of his management American Shipbuilding declared bankruptcy and eventually was scrapped (literally) in an asset sale.
As to what a great human being he was, it's instructive to note that Steinbrenner avoided jail in the 70s only because his lawyer at the time (Edward Bennett Williams) performed a legal miracle by arranging a plea agreement for a single count of obstruction. Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski was so appalled at the outcome that he personally argued against it in court, to no avail.
If Steinbrenner had been caught doing the same thing today, he'd go away for a decade or more because American Shipbuilding was a public company. Steinbrenner showed his appreciation for Williams by refusing to pay his legal bill and later attempting to have Williams blocked from acquiring the Baltimore Orioles.
Through luck and perseverance, the Yankees became a successful franchise under Steinbrenner. But the business side of it was almost completely luck, as he tried for decades to move the Yankees to the Meadowlands or (later) to build a domed multipurpose stadium elsewhere in NY. Either move would have destroyed much of the value of the franchise.
He has contributed a lot to charity in order to rehabilitate his image as a humanitarian.
End of rant.