Major League Baseball

The Boss is Dead

Published Jul. 13, 2010 10:47 p.m. ET

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The Boss is dead. No, not Bruce, the OTHER Boss, the one across the Hudson. Never again will the icon that is George Steinbrenner barrel through the Yankee offices following the smell of his beloved calzones.

Love him or hate him, you have to concede that few others had as big an influence over shaping the pro sports landscape of the last 25 years than Steinbrenner did.

When he assumed ownership of the Yankees in 1973 along with general partner Mike Burke, small market sports teams could still compete and win on a regular basis.

Sure, George brought NYC a couple of World Series titles in '77 and '78, but franchises from towns like Pittsburgh and Cincinnati were still very much in the mix back then.

But as the years rolled on, everything Steinbrenner did with the Yankees he did on a grand scale: the big contracts, the championships and those massive payrolls.

In building his empire in the Bronx, Steinbrenner widened the moat between the large market behemoths and their smaller market brethren. When was the last time Cincinnati or Pittsburgh were relevant in the game of professional baseball? Thank (or curse) George for that.

Now all professional sports leagues wrestle with how to keep their smaller market teams both competitive and profitable. That's especially true in the NBA, where last week Cleveland lost LeBron James to the brighter lights of Miami.

In many ways, the Cavalier franchise is now the poster child for the disadvantaged small market franchises of the world. When push comes to shove, these Davids can't find a way to overcome the Goliaths.

But Steinbrenner has much more to do with the basketball history of Cleveland than having helped create a pro sports environment in which the Cavs had little hope of holding on to the NBA's biggest star.

You see, the Yankees were not Steinbrenner's first foray into pro sports ownership. That came 50 years ago when he owned the Cleveland Pipers basketball team.

No, not the Pittsburgh Pipers, the CLEVELAND Pipers.

Here's a little back story on how Big Stein came to own a hoops team along the shores of Lake Erie. In the summer of 1960, the Lakers pulled up stakes and moved from Minneapolis (you see, the nickname made sense back then) to Los Angeles.

Fair enough, but this really got the goat of Harlem Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein. Not happy with simply owning his own successful team of hoops barnstormers, Saperstein longed to own an NBA franchise.

Back then, his Trotters frequently served as an opening game for NBA franchises to help boost attendance. In his frequent dealings with the NBA, he became convinced that he would be given the league's franchise in Los Angeles.

So you can understand how upset he must have been when the Lakers made the move west. He was so upset that he started his own rival league, the American Basketball League, in 1961.

That's where Steinbrenner enters the picture. In the late 1950's he had become treasurer of the family business, Kinsman Marine Transit Company. But he wasn't satisfied just being an executive in the shipping business.

When Saperstein's league was formed, Steinbrenner jumped at the opportunity. He and a group of investors came up with $25,000, bought the Piper franchise of the National Industrial Basketball League and moved it over to the ABL.

Steinbrenner hired a 24-year old named Mike Cleary to be the general manager of the club, and together they had a hand in making sports history right off the bat.

Big Stein gave the green light to Cleary's hiring of former Tennessee A&I coach John McClendon. With that, McClendon became the first African-American head coach in pro basketball history.

But this wouldn't be a Steinbrenner story if it didn't involved a coaching change, and sure enough, McClendon resigned halfway through the 1961-62 season because the team was experiencing financial troubles. Cleary himself wouldn't last the season, becoming the Boss's first pro sports firing.

McClendon was replaced on the Piper bench by former Celtics star Bill Sharman, who went on to lead the team to the ABL's first (and only) championship.

With his first firing and his first coaching change under his belt, Steinbrenner would then perform another move that he would eventually become known for with the Yankees: big spending.

In the offseason following Cleveland’s championship run, he signed Ohio State star Jerry Lucas to a two-year, $50,000 contract. The move got the NBA's attention, so much so that they opened up talks with the ABL in the summer of 1962 about a possible merger.

When those talks fell through, the NBA next turned its attention to adding Steinbrenner's team. For an expansion fee of $400,000 ($100,000 of which would go to compensate the Cincinnati Royals, the NBA team that had the rights to Lucas), the Pipers would become the league's 10th franchise.

The ABL filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block Cleveland from joining the NBA, but it wasn't needed. In those days, Steinbrenner wasn't exactly flush with cash and was unable to meet the NBA's price.

With that, he folded the franchise and his days as a pro basketball owner were done. The rest of the ABL would implode before the conclusion of its 1962-63 season.

Even though he was operating in a cash strapped league with little hope of succeeding, Steinbrenner showed the same ownership traits that he would go on to display in New York. He wasn't Big Stein yet, but he was getting his act together.

It's fascinating to think how different the sports world would be if Steinbrenner had been able to become an NBA owner. I'm certain of one thing, though: if LeBron James had played for Big Stein, he would have been surrounded with a lot more talent than Dan Gilbert provided.