As you probably know by now, the stadium in which the Yanks play during Spring Training, Legends Field, has been
renamed in honor of Big Stein. The newly christened
George M. Steinbrenner Field was unveiled yesterday and joins a street and a high school as places in Tampa bearing Big Stein's name.
That's right, there is a
high school named after Big Stein opening its doors in 2009. PSA: Yankees Chick University opens in 2010 offering an extensive list of majors, including Making Up Nicknames for Baseball Players and Making Fun of Carl Pavano.
Back to the matter at hand: Peter Abraham brought up a
good point yesterday regarding Big Stein's character. The man is a bit of an enigma (Stein, not PA). He's impressed me with his generosity many times - just in the last year he has paid for the funerals of the unfortunate folks who died in a fire near Yankee Stadium,
donated money to Virgina Tech, and played an exhibition game to boost the spirit at the aforementioned school.
On the other hand, he's also a confirmed jackass. There's the firings, the threats of firings, his complete lack of internal filter when it comes to saying the often mean things on his mind, the unwarranted and super sketchy investigation of Dave Winfield, the campaign donation to NIXON... it makes it hard to focus on the generosity. The
Nixon donation alone is enough to turn YC off.
What do you think? Should he be honored? Despite the jackassery,
I'm leaning towards yes, but not just because of the nice things he's done for the community. Strictly based on his Yankees-related work, I think he deserves such an honor. His team has been an overall success over the years, and without him at the helm they wouldn't have had all the money to expend on improvements. And by "improvements," I mean Raul Mondesi.
Add to RSS
Posted on Big Stein and his place in history at Bugs & Cranks the other day. Ran a poll, and interestingly most folks think The Boss is a Hall of Famer.