Steinbrenner was key to sports success in Tampa

Posted Jul 15, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jul 15, 2010 at 09:40 PM

Special report: Steinbrenner dies

We were sitting in Malio’s old restaurant on South Dale Mabry, George Steinbrenner and I, when four Tampa police officers walked by, nodded to us both and went to the other side of the main room for lunch. 

George asked me, “Do we in Tampa do anything for the survivors of police officers and firemen killed in the line of duty?” I replied no, not so far as I know, I will find out. I asked Malio to visit with the police and ask them, they said no. George said in New York City and Cleveland he started a program, to see that survivors were taken care of after deaths in the family. He asked me to find out if we could start a program in Tampa, he said he would sponsor it and call it the Gold Shield Foundation. We did with his help, of course, and it flourished here and around this part of the state. An annual luncheon, always a sellout, which Steinbrenner attended and spoke as a major fund producer. It is a hit now here, and around much of the state. That is the way George Steinbrenner, who died earlier this week at 80, worked. It is only symbolic of all of the other patriotic and symbolic projects he has supported have flourished. 

That is but one of the many such enterprises Steinbrenner began, and/or reported in this country. 

George played golf but not very well because he did not play enough. I could beat him but never did. I knew better. He always won on the last hole, which I always threw, as did Needles owner Bonnie Heath and Bay Harbor manager Fred Mathews.   

George fished, but not very well until captain Scott Moore and son, Justin, taught him, with unrecorded help from others on the boat, like Phil Alessi, Steve Yerrid, Jim Smith and Phil Alessi Jr., all quality fishermen. 

George hunted and was a natural good shot after Barbara Carlton and wife Linda worked with him some in Wauchula. 

George created success on Broadway with “Applause” and other smash hits. He took Broadway with the same splash he did horse racing, along with his wife, Joan, and her favorite thoroughbred, Sweet Little Lady.

George also swept up Tampa and took it for a ride.  When the Yankees were still training in Fort Lauderdale in the early 70s, I asked George, and he was already living in Tampa and had bought American Shipbuilding, why he did not bring the Yankees to Tampa for spring training. The Cincinnati Reds had already left Tampa. He said he had no particular ties to Lauderdale and not enough room to expand his Yankee complex there. I asked him if we could work on it for him, and he said go for it, I will be an investor, too. The idea was to move that portion of the correctional institute that was where the George M. Steinbrenner Field now stands. He cooperated fully in all of the political maneuvering that needed to be done.  The prison portion of the correctional institute was moved to South Hillsborough and the city of Tampa, Hillsborough County and an aggressive partisan group got done whatever had to be done with George’s input and financial cooperation to build that wonderful modern, minor-league complex that stands at the southwest corner of Dale Mabry and Martin Luther King Boulevard. It was one of the fastest, quickest-moving maneuvers of that time and the result now stands northwest of improved Raymond James Stadium, in addition to the Malcolm Glazer family complex that has arisen on the south side of Martin Luther King just east of Himes Avenue.  It is a modern, wonderful, admired sports center that is among the top five in the National Football League.

This city of Tampa, in this county of Hillsborough, in this state of Florida can be proud now of the progress made in sports here, fully aware that an absolutely key to this success has been the involvement of George M. Steinbrenner and the Steinbrenner family, which surely will carry on mightily.

We don’t thump our chest that much. But about all of this, we surely can.