Owning the Yankees was like ゛owning the Mona Lisa゛, Mr Steinbrenner explained. Yet he could not resist interfering in every aspect of the day-to-day running of the team. Winning, he said, was second only to breathing - and the lack of success led to micromanagement often bordering on the tyrannical. He benched players for refusing to get haircuts or shaves. He publicly called one pitcher ゛a fat pussy toad゛for not hustling during a game. ゛You're fired,゛ was his de facto catchphrase long before it was Donald Trump's. He famously axed Billy Martin, a legendary player turned manager, no fewer than five times, rehiring him every time except the last (his tyranny came mixed with affection). He even feuded with the affable Yogi Berra, another Yankee great-turned-manager. He was satirised in ゛Seinfeld゛, and in the Onion, which marked his death with the headline：゛George Steinbrenner Dead After Firing Underperforming Hea
rt゛.
The 1990s started miserably, with both the city and Mr Steinbrenner embroiled in wrong doing. As the city fought back against mafia racketeering and financial fraud on Wall Street, Mr Steinbrenner was found to have paid a gambler to dig up some dirt on Dave Winfield, one of his star players, and was suspended from baseball for a second time. (His first suspension came after he admitted making illegal political contribution to the Nixon presidential re-election campaign. He was later pardoned by Ronald Reagan.) Yet for both the Yankees and New York, the 1990s were to become a decade of triumphant revival under the leadership of Mr Steinbrenner and a mayor, Rudy Giuliani, with a fierce micromanagement style uncannily similar to the Boss's. As Mr Giuliani transformed New York into the safest big city in America, Mr Steinbrenner turned the Yankees into the safest bet in baseball, at last finding a manager he could tolerate, Joe Torre, who brought home four World Series titles i
n five years.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, the combination of Mr Giuliani's bravado and the dramatic (though ultimately unsuccessful) pursuit of another World Series by the Yankees helped endear the city to the rest of America as never before. The patriotic Mr Steinbrenner, who made much of being born on the 4th of July, continued to have ゛God Bless America゛ played at every home game long after most other ball clubs had stopped.
Just as financial deregulation was crucial to New York's economic revival, the revival of the Yankees was built on the arrival of free agency in baseball. Mr Steinbrenner was quick to spot the potential to spend and make big money by building a team of players who had until recently been contractually bound to other teams for their whole playing careers. He signed expensive stars like Reggie ゛Mr October゛ Jackson, whose sole purpose was to win titles, changing the culture of not just the Yankees but of baseball. (That said, he also invested heavily in developing homegrown stars, including the core of the current team.) The Yankees' payroll has surpassed every other team's since 1989； in 2010, it was $207m.
