The Death of the Yankees
The ‘Voice of God’ called George Steinbrenner home to heaven Tuesday, July 13th, 2010. The same voice who announced 70 Hall of Fame ballplayers and countless more who are yet to be elected or retire, across a 57 year career, from the first day of Mickey Mantle, till late in 2007. Bob Sheppard, dubbed the ’Voice of God’ by Reggie Jackson, passed just a few days earlier, just three months short of his hundredth birthday. It’s hard to imagine it happened any other way, than Sheppard standing at the pearly gates and announcing the arrival of Mr. George Steinbrenner (undoubtedly a surprise to many in hell as well as in Cooperstown and Boston) to join Ruth and Gehrig, in the Yankees’ own pearly gates.
Perhaps it’s fitting that George Steinbrenner would die the day of the All Star game. Setting my personal opinions aside (as a Red Sox fan), no matter what you think of ‘The Boss’, he was one of the sport’s true All Stars, putting together teams during his reign as owner that would win more games than any other team in baseball (3,364), more division championships (11), and more world series championships (7), than any other team during his nearly thirty seven year tenure. Perhaps it was also fitting that the American League would lose that All Star game, for the first time since 1996.
Though their bodies have passed, their lives and legends live on. In the baseball team which Steinbrenner created, the Stadium he built, the countless New Yorkers who, unknown to most people, he helped, from firefighters and NYPD officers wounded in the service to the city that made him, to the children of those whose fathers were killed in the line of duty. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, to see ‘The Boss’ up there in Heaven, as much as my Red Sox allegiance pains me to say it. Yes, the ‘Voice of the Yankees’ is fading, to be heard only in the echoes of a recording, his ghost announcing Derek Jeter, his last Hall of Famer, before every at bat before the fans of Jeter and Sheppard, of Steinbrenner and Mantle. God rest ye both, the boss, and the voice.
“Farewell, old Yankee Stadium, farewell / What a wonderful story you can tell / DiMaggio, Mantle, Gehrig and Ruth / A baseball cathedral in truth.”
Bob Sheppard
1910-2010
“They always say, what would you like to be on your tombstone, what would you like people to say? I’d just like them to say: ‘He never stopped trying.’ That would be good enough for me.”
George Steinbrenner
1930-2010