The Boss: Part Satan, Part "Big Stein"

The first column I wrote was about George Steinbrenner, the Yankee owner and baseball icon who died Tuesday of a heart attack. It was 1985, and I was living in Brooklyn. Steinbrenner had just fired Yogi Berra as Yankee skipper after the team had sputtered in April, losing 10 of its first 16 games. I was not long out of college and working in advertising, and I sent roughly 600 vitriolic words to The New York Post. The sports editor liked it, but they had more than enough sportswriters to...