Steinbrenner left business model with Yankees for all to study

Among those rising to applaud the legacy of George Steinbrenner is New York University sports management professor Wayne McDonnell.

"When you look at the business of baseball over the last 30 years," said McDonnell, a former financial analyst and accountant for Madison Square Garden, "only two people should immediately come to mind: Marvin Miller and George Steinbrenner. Miller brought down the doors to free agency and Steinbrenner ran through them. Steinbrenner should have been in the Hall of Fame years ago."

The whole, complicated Steinbrenner package -- extravagant spender, bad loser, dictatorial boss, villainous face of the Yankees evil empire -- ultimately was good for all of baseball, McDonnell argued.

While the Steinbrenner business model had the Yankees, according to one payroll efficiency analysis, spending $2.3 million per victory from 2006 through 2008 -- reinforcing their identity as "the best team money can buy" -- McDonnell said, "The argument that the Yankees are bad for baseball, I scoff at."

"Just in luxury taxes alone, between 2003 and 2009," McDonnell said of the penalty for overspending on their roster, "the Yankees have contributed an estimated $175 million of the $190 million Major League Baseball has collected. If you go to an Orioles game, it's Yankee Stadium South. From the attendance standpoint, from the way the team travels, the luxury tax standpoint, global merchandising standpoint, TV ratings, the Yankees are a juggernaut for Major League Baseball, and you bring that all back to George Steinbrenner."

An alternative view is offered by Long Island University history professor Joe Dorinson, who has written extensively on Jackie Robinson but describes himself as a Yankees fan. Dorinson believes that Steinbrenner "destroyed the fabric of modern baseball with his excesses. With his monumental ego and unlimited cash, he has driven small-market teams into precipitous decline if not near bankruptcy."

Dorinson said he would prefer Steinbrenner be in a Hall of Shame, but McDonnell noted that the Yankees, of all the world's professional sports franchises, rank no worse than third, in the mix with England's Manchester United soccer club and the Dallas Cowboys. From the $8.7 million Steinbrenner paid to buy the team from CBS in 1973, the Yankees now are worth $1.6 billion.

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"It's because of brand loyalty," McDonnell said, "brand recognition, the fact they own their own facility, they have a regional sports network, 27 world championships, their attendance trends. The example I always use, when you're walking the streets of Tokyo and you see someone wearing a New York Yankees cap, you know they bought that on MLB.com. That's an advantage to baseball. We know who the Yankees are and their value in sports and all of society.

"George Steinbrenner intended to corner the market and build an empire," McDonnell said. "And he did."

As Orioles owner Peter Angelos put it, Steinbrenner's name is "synonymous with that franchise."

In the NYU classes he teaches on the business of baseball and leadership, McDonnell said, "a class doesn't go by where there isn't a reference to Steinbrenner. He changed the playing field for years to come, so that we shouldn't think, 'Ohmygod, what will happen to the Yankees now?' He left the franchise and his legacy in the hands of his children."

More than his sometimes harsh treatment of employees during most of his tenure, Steinbrenner will be remembered - especially by Yankees fans -- for his willingness to purchase stars (and, by extension, victories), no matter the price. "He relished being the villain," said McDonnell, though he cited Steinbrenner's lesser-known philanthropy. Along the way, "the Yankees turned into a corporation.

"They're an institution. And that's what Steinbrenner was, an American institution. We'll be talking about George Steinbrenner for 100 years."