hand has
host
inside this one at truly positively give another round of applause and thank you
to busboys and poets
alligator
absolutely indispensable
i want to give a big big thank you to teaching for change
big thanks to the sports fan coalition which is sponsoring this event everybody
should sign up
with s_s_c_ tonight
big thank you to haymarket books as well there's someone at that over their name
amanda we do book events throughout the city of people want information
stack
that house
and i want to thank them cider
up
but it's really with his work column
dance nighter is of course the owner of
you are assessing his washington redskins
and
over the land you really did inspire this book because over the time of live
in washington d_c_ i've watched him
take one of the most tight relationships between
of fan base and eighteen in the united states
and basically treated the way ababy treats and diaper
and that made me once and i've allot of experience it bahar what that looks like
an
is what really inspired me to write this book also thank you i guess it also go
to james dolan that he is the owner of the new york and it see made his money
the old-fashioned way he inherited it
his father
is charles dole in the founder of cablevision james dillon was a new year
do well who
had a as he puts it kinds of youthful indiscretions
of course they lasted two he was forty eight
which is actually that's true
it sound like a former president lee
we just that
very similar
and uh... james dolan i mean my got stupendous line from the same sense of
what was once said the homer that in any other country you would starve to death
here's a guy that's
james going in in any other family he would've abit absolutely starve to death
or at least be serving out a mandatory minimum somewhere instead
his version of parental boot camp is running his daddy's team
the new york mix running into the ground the team i grew up loving
so i really want to bank to installing
for inspiring me to write bad sports how owners are ruining
the games we love
now i don't want to seem like i'm just here to demon eyes
all right a little bit there's little demon is a shame
but that's because
they have so much power
and so little accountability
means they have para lover
our culture and how it's shaping it's not just about sports
if power over our organist gauge they have power
over what
doesn't doesn't get funded through a particular city counselor municipality
they have so much power
and yet as they could
largely from sports fans to citizens we are still oblivious they aren't in that
way it's really starts with a guy who
just dot actually just in time for the book released a
detail about the name of george steinbrenner
steinbrenner he once said idon't have heart attacks i give them he died of a
heart attack
panoramic
creek last evening making fun at the album
but but let's talk about his steinbrenner was for a second because
steinbrenner was coming and we should talk about it because i don't think read
some of the obituaries about george steinbrenner but they make them sound
like
the love child of dorothy day in yellow dot
it's in
that's not
who he wants
at all
and he was somebody who was like a bridge between old style of ownership
like this kind of very sort of patriarchal
and the big man in charge where's my cigar i looked out for the little guy
a bridge from that too
the new owner that we see today the people who holed up our cities for funds
into and all the rest of it
azerbaidzhan inside and that all george steinbrenner was his title story about
it in people hear it
historic
picture it
mid nineteen eighties new york city
paris terrible the food
this terrific that music is awesome
man i was twelve years old i would wear one of those run d_m_c_ bowlers just
hats to school it made me look like ah...
pierce brosnan the thomas pan affair though i didn't look very cool
and um...
ac that that was the mid nineteen eighties and in the eighties this is
before the internet of course uh...
hard to imagine
and now of course we have one million columnist sports columnist you find
sports column all over the interwebs you have all this
access to every type of commentary could possibly want
back then
really to newspapers that people read in new york ano was in the new york times
at the new york posted the daily news
each paper had four columnist the changed about as often as polls
and these guys had tons of power
and whether you love them or whether you hated them you read them
and the new york post at a columnist named dick young
and i needed that young dick young was was a big eighty
uh... i was a total races user reactionary but you read that young
because well
you like sports and that's one of the only people talking about sports
woman a days that young guys
and that the new york post announces that there's going to be in open funeral
for him on the swank upper east side of manhattan
and so it's a saturday in the city i'm living on the west side with my mom and
you know she was wherever so
i've gotten my bar mitzvah soon
that's true actually was a size too big was bought for me for when i'd be
thirteen
uh... and therefore her man
and
i got on the cross-town bus
and went to the funeral
and i figured i'd be going there there'd be tons of fans there would be a whole
scene i just thought i'd be cool to check out
and so i show up to date young's funeral in twelve years old
and i realized that i wasn't the only person who didn't like that young
like there were no fans there
there was none of the general public their i walked in
and who's there instead but it's no who's who of the new york
sports scene all the famous
t_v_ commentators warner wolfe people might know that name the c_b_s_ sports
guy
was there let's go to the videotape aloo karna sector the coach of saint john's
was their walking around shaking hands and it was a who's who think i walked in
there and yuck i fit in like like grandpa lenin double a_c_p_ meeting i
was like
what am i doing here
and everybody's staring at me and my
truth is this for in a little after all what some might knows i
like sell-off corrigan twelve and
i'm just about this link away
when i feel this
huge media palm on the back of my neck
seeking the right this
an idea
here's the gap
and here's the guy and now we can get this party started
party was a funeral
i looked up and it's george steinbrenner
and the first thing i think is
holy crap it's george steinbrenner
and the second thing i think is what the hell's wrong with his head
the had this huge today
like ted kennedy had nothing on this guy
but that's terrible i don't know what he was taking a look like a charm slide
boxes that was so big
and others like wow you've got a big ahead and he's initiating my neck
event name
pushes me inside the funeral home
and then just turns around and laughs and walks away
and you know this is park avenue so at that point people start coming up to me
and they like and who are you
and i'm like well
i'm the guy who just got harassed by george steinbrenner
and they got sat down was part of the service in
and left in it
it was this experience where if you just kind of x
special oversee the need to be awkward kid who was there at the funeral in that
is part of who he was i only tell that story because it's a bucket of other
stories that people
tell about him
but there was another george steinbrenner as well of course the
bridge to owners of the future