Who owns the yankees team

I tell him that I have come not so much to talk about his team but to learn about him. Who is Hal Steinbrenner? He knows, however, who he is not. Nobody can. We range through a variety of topics, beginning with his relationship with his father, a man he refers to almost always as George. So I was kind of out of Florida by age We had a good respectful relationship. It was never easy. He was a tough boss as everyone knows.

As you can imagine, he was a tough dad. That toughness left its scars. Hank Steinbrenner, the oldest, was the artistic one -- he plays the piano, guitar and saxophone. He's also the athletic one -- a champion hurdler like his dad and his grandfather, Henry. Hal Steinbrenner was the space and aviation geek, the kid immersed in math and science and psychology.

George and Hank got the right and the left side of the brain. I just got the left. I don't know what happened. What happened was young Hal became more like his mother, Joan. He describes himself as shy, an introvert who seemingly did not have all that much in common with his father, whom he describes as "boisterous.

Asked to describe the happiest memory he could think of with his dad, Hal went all the way back to , to a trip to Cape Canaveral that George had arranged to indulge his year-old son's fascination with aviation and spaceflight. It was a good day. Even though I was too young to remember any of it, I knew all about Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, I knew all the astronauts, I knew all the history at age 10 or So that was special.

Those guys were unbelievable pilots, and so courageous, going up on top of a ballistic missile in a pod the size of this table. In his excitement to describe the courage of the astronauts, he uses an expletive that surprises me. It goes against the image of the reserved, introverted second son of George Steinbrenner.

He is strident, if not exactly passionate, about his role as managing general partner of the Yankees -- that is the description he uses, never "owner," and certainly never Boss -- but nowhere near as wound up as he gets when he talks about flying his airplanes, a GTO single-engine aircraft and a Cessna high-wing that he says he can land anywhere. It is a hobby he only took up in His lifelong interest in aviation became an obsession when he lived on Davis Island, literally a minute from Peter O.

His lineup of investors included construction magnate Del Webb and sportsman Dan Topping. At the time Topping was having difficulty negotiating a lease renewal with Dodgers President Branch Rickey. Assuming he could get permission from the NFL to move to Manhattan the New York football Giants already played there , owning Yankee Stadium would give him a playing venue he could control. MacPhail first met Webb, a Phoenix-based millionaire in the construction business, in Washington during the war.

MacPhail worked as an assistant to Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson, while Webb frequently traveled to Washington to negotiate war-related construction work. When MacPhail contacted him regarding the Yankees opportunity, he quickly changed his focus.

The remaining 3. Barrow managed to delay the sale, most likely because the estate received another extension on its tax bill.

Commissioner Landis helped slow MacPhail down when he ruled Hertz, who was involved in horse racing, persona non grata in baseball ownership. His delay in hand, Barrow sought to drive up the price or find another buyer. But finding a willing buyer with available cash under the wartime circumstances was highly problematical. In one scheme, Barrow hoped to steer the franchise to his friend, Tom Yawkey. This plan suffered from several shortcomings, most notably that Yawkey would first have to find a buyer for his Red Sox.

Barrow also held out hope that James Farley could reformulate his syndicate, but that idea, too, came to nothing. With little hope of either an alternate buyer in the short term or a delay until the end of the war and a reinvigoration of the civilian economy — which still seemed a long way off — Manufacturers Trust was becoming impatient.

Furthermore, Webb and Topping, both now awakened to the availability of the team and their own interest in acquiring it, continued to pursue the club. They let him know that the estate might now be willing to sell at the original terms. The estate was also actively selling off some of its real-estate holdings, but the war depressed prices in real estate as well. Only a fraction of the tax burden could be raised through the liquidation of real-estate assets.

Independent of Webb, Topping learned through his society connections that Manufacturers Trust was getting antsy. In late , when Topping again encountered MacPhail in New York, he proposed that they try to revive the deal.

MacPhail needed little prompting, and the two decided that they would simplify their proposed ownership by narrowing the syndicate to include only Webb in their reformulated venture. Topping, through his numerous connections, took the lead in contacting Barrow. She acted as an intermediary and set up a meeting between Barrow and Topping.

Once Barrow realized the hurriedness with which Manufacturers Trust planned to dispose of the franchise, he merely hoped to preserve as much of his legacy as possible. He met one-on-one with both Topping and Webb. With both he stressed the importance of maintaining the status quo and running a first-class, well-respected, and championship organization. Both gave him enough assurance that he could sell without too much trepidation — although he had little choice, in any case.

In late January , MacPhail, Webb, and Topping finally purchased the team, split evenly so that each owned one-third. Webb and Topping supplied the majority of the capital, lending MacPhail much of his obligation, and MacPhail became president under a year contract. The final transfer of operational control occurred in late February. When MacPhail took over the Yankees, he was already famous within baseball circles, having run the Reds and Dodgers with some success.

His fame came from his game promotions and events, his installation of lights in both cities to allow night games, and his embrace of radio. He hired the unknown Red Barber to broadcast Reds games, and later brought him to Brooklyn. MacPhail and his two partners had clearly made a good buy.

Even in , the financial potential of the Yankees shined through. With even a normal uptick from a return to peacetime, revenues and profits should soar. Nearly all teams drew spectacularly in , led by the Yankees. And as with Ruppert, the Yankee triumvirate did not take any dividends — they reinvested all the profits into the ballclub. This amount increased every year for the remainder of the decade. The Yankees became the first major-league team to have the announcer travel with the team on the road, eliminating the campy recreations.

With Mel Allen as the lead announcer both home and away, the Yankees jumped to the forefront of capitalizing on the medium. Further modernizing the organization, MacPhail introduced lights and night baseball to Yankee Stadium as he had in Cincinnati and Brooklyn for the season. After three years of running the Yankees, the pressure and constant limelight began to unhinge MacPhail. Near the end of the season he arranged an initial public stock offering of shares of the Yankees franchise through a New York investment bank.

MacPhail and the bankers worked out an IPO that would make just under 50 percent of the club available to the public. MacPhail contrived the transaction to cash out part of his investment. Topping and Webb, however, had no desire to come under the scrutiny and reporting requirements of the public market. The two quickly resolved to buy out their partner. Despite selling his ownership interest, MacPhail would remain as president and de-facto general manager.

The agreement to sell did not calm MacPhail. He stumbled around the dining room, alternating between bouts of sentimental crying and irrational raging. We have all been drinking. I would like to wait until tomorrow and discuss this with you.

A shaken Weiss went outside to cool down and commiserate with top scout Paul Krichell. Topping finally seized control of the situation. After calming him down somewhat, Topping ushered MacPhail out a side door so he could gather himself. Topping and Webb accompanied Weiss up to his hotel room to reassure him of his position with the Yankees. MacPhail actually returned later, still combative, but no longer unglued. To run the club the duo promoted Weiss to general manager, Topping assumed the presidency, and Webb a key role on the ownership councils.

His maternal grandfather amassed a fortune in the tin-plate business, started the American Can Company and had interests in railroads, tobacco, and banks. His paternal grandfather was a longtime president of the Republic Iron and Steel Company.

His parents gave him the education befitting a young aristocrat. He attended the Hun School, an expensive boarding school in New Jersey, where he starred in football, baseball, and hockey. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and played both baseball and football. Topping took up golf and became a top-notch amateur, winning several tournaments. In the year-old Topping purchased a partial interest in the Brooklyn Dodgers of the fledgling National Football League. He soon acquired a majority ownership and spent some money to improve his club.

After he finally recovered ing from his illness, his doctor advised Webb to move to a dry climate. In Phoenix he began building grocery stores and when the Depression came, he managed to secure large government projects to keep his company afloat and even thrive.

Webb and Topping owned the Yankees equally. Both were wealthy and independent and neither liked or had experience with equal partners. Topping is the open, friendly type, the kind the headmaster tells you your boy will turn out to be when you enroll him in one of the more fashionable Eastern prep schools.

Webb detested Chandler and considered him rather a prude and prone to offer opinions and decisions without all the facts. Webb also had a more personal reason to dislike the commissioner. Webb and Topping proved adept at working the backrooms of baseball ownership. Despite initial support for Chandler among many of the owners, the Yankees duo, supported by St. Louis Cardinals owner Fred Saigh , maneuvered the vote away from Chandler.

The next year, helped by some behind-the-scenes politicking by Webb and Topping, Johnson bought the Philadelphia Athletics and moved them to Kansas City. After 50 years of franchise stability, many began to salivate over the potential huge payday in untapped metropolitan areas. Webb believed in realignment as opposed to expansion, as there were still plenty of struggling two-team cities that could no longer support two teams.

By the end of the s it was clear to most observers there were more major-league-ready cities than there were franchises to go around. Business interests and politicians in those cities were pressing baseball for expansion. The inherently conservative baseball owners, however, continued to resist growing beyond 16 franchises. Ironically, the greatest pressure came in New York. To rectify having only one team after the departure of the Giants and Dodgers, well-connected New York lawyer Bill Shea , with the support of New York politicians and the possibility of a new stadium in Queens, began canvassing the country for potential investors and cities in a new, third major league, dubbed the Continental League.

After fighting a cagey rear-guard action for a roughly a year, Webb eventually realized he had little choice but to accept a National League expansion team in Queens as the least bad option. He was also the driving force in directing American League expansion into Los Angeles. Although other cites appeared to have more support, Webb wanted an American League team in California, and if the National League was going to force a second team on his city, he could do the same in Los Angeles.

On the field the team dominated in the s like no other team in the history of the sport. But in the aftermath of the seven-game loss to the underdog Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series, Topping and Webb eased both manager Casey Stengel and Weiss out of their positions. We decided right then that we would never be put in that position again.

Topping quickly took to his activist role. In August the Yankees announced the sale of the franchise to CBS, which dragged on throughout the offseason, troubled by additional revelations and commentary. Webb and Topping had first seriously considered selling the team a couple of years earlier when Topping went through some health problems. Topping felt he could no longer run the team and sounded out Webb about buying him out.

Topping eventually rebounded but needed the money a sale could bring, and the two owners agreed to explore selling the team. The two initially reached an agreement with Lehman Brothers, then a large investment house. The sale was dependent on some complex tax angles, and while the lawyers and accountants were working them out, CBS chairman William Paley called his friend Topping to see if the team was available.

Topping told him they were already committed in another direction, but that if something changed, he would get back to him. When the sale fell through, Topping called Paley on July 1, , to see if he was still interested. Paley was, and the two began negotiations. Additionally, Topping would stay on as the operating partner. It is hard to overestimate the outcry generated by the sale of the Yankees to a television network. Up to this point baseball teams rarely had true corporate ownership.

More importantly, in television was rightly seen as a large and growing phenomenon in American life, and its ultimate impact was not yet fully understood. Many criticized the process as much as the substance. Fearing just this sort of reaction, Webb and Topping persuaded American League President Joe Cronin to get league approval by telephoning the league owners rather than calling a meeting.

Eventually Cronin felt compelled to call a league meeting to confirm the sale, but the vote remained the same, and the sale was finalized on November 2, Topping stayed on as team president. Topping was soon overmatched without a strong baseball executive as general manager. After a slow start in , with encouragement from CBS, Topping shook up his staff. Topping resigned on September 19, selling his remaining 10 percent share to CBS.

Topping publicly stated that he had resigned for personal reasons, but there can be little doubt that CBS wanted little to do with the men who had sold them a now struggling club for a record price. Not surprisingly, a large conglomerate like CBS, with vast business holdings in a variety of industries, turned to a versatile business executive like Burke to run the Yankees.

Burke, who wore tailored suits made in Rome, was a dashing figure, especially compared with the staid and conservative Yankees. His job now was to restore a legendary baseball team to its proper place of glory.

Nevertheless, despite several years of slowly improving talent, CBS decided to sell. Having purchased the most famous franchise in sports just eight years earlier, CBS was reportedly losing money on the Yankees, though that was not the primary motivation for selling. CBS had bought the team for its famous brand, in order to bring additional prestige to its hugely successful media company.

Instead, the team fell from glory and many fans tended to blame the largely unseen corporate managers for the change in fortune. Fans get worked up over great men, not great corporations. We came to the realization, I think, that sports franchises really flourish better with people owning them. Paley asked Burke to put together a group to buy the club, and Burke looked for a purchaser that would allow him to continue running the team. Steinbrenner, the year-old CEO of American Shipbuilding Company who had recently come very close to purchasing his hometown Indians.

A decade earlier Steinbrenner had taken over the small Great Lakes shipping company from his father, bought out most of his competitors, and built an empire. Although hardly a household name, Steinbrenner had been involved with sports teams for many years. Once a track star at Williams College, he was later a football graduate assistant to coach Woody Hayes at Ohio State and had held football coaching positions at Northwestern and Purdue.

The league soon folded, but a few years later Steinbrenner bought a stake in the Chicago Bulls and began acquiring racehorses. Burke and Steinbrenner came to a deal quickly, and the formal announcement was made on January 4, With the stadium about to be substantially renovated, a team coming into contention, decades of tradition to fall back on, and sitting in the biggest market in the country, it was an extraordinary deal. More importantly, Burke was led to believe he would continue to run the club as chief executive.

Just six days after the deal was announced, Steinbrenner held a press conference to introduce the other limited partners, including Gabe Paul , who had been running the Cleveland Indians. The news stunned Burke, who realized that Paul, with more than three decades of experience running baseball teams, would be no mere adviser.

Burke resigned a few months later, after it had become clear that his control would be much more limited than he anticipated. He would not be the last person to underestimate George Steinbrenner. Burke made his most lasting contribution to the future of New York and the Yankees when he came to a deal with Mayor John Lindsay for the city to thoroughly remodel Yankee Stadium. The most infamous incident involving the Yankees and facial hair happened in Yankee management ordered Don Mattingly to get a hair cut, who was sporting a mullet-like hair style.

Mattingly refused, and was effectively benched because of it. It created a bit of an uproar and the media mocked the team for doing so. Not only has the rule been looked at distastefully by the media and some in pinstripes, but also players on other teams and in free agency.

Believe it or not, the Yankees have actually passed up on players who would not shave. Take relief pitcher Brian Wilson in , for example. The Yankees needed some help in the bullpen and Wilson was on the radar for New York. When he told the team that he would not shave, they crossed him off the list. I understand both sides of the arguments.