January 3 Was A Great Day For The Kids of the Bronx
By Ray Negron, Yankees Executive
January 4, 2024
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NOTE - Ray Negron shared this article with our editor-in-chief Dr. Paul Semendinger and it is being shared with permission. Ray Negron's articles on the Yankees, baseball, and more can be found at https://nyctastemakers.com/.
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January 3rd of 1973 the Bronx was already burning. Graffiti was all over the walls of the buildings in the neighborhoods as well as the subway trains.
In those days all us kids would play in the middle of the streets. Playing games like skellies (which was a bottle top game) flip’s which was played with baseball cards. Stick ball, punch ball and naturally the hundreds of street fights when you lost.
It also was a year when the Mets owned New York and the biggest baseball star was the Mets centerfielder Willie Mays.
As big time baseball fans in the Bronx after many years we finally had something to finally look forward to. A new ownership group was buying the Yankees and some shipbuilder promised that the Yankees would be on top of the baseball world in the next five years. That shipbuilder was a man named George Steinbrenner. His image was tough and sometimes scary. Passionate and sometimes daring.
He seemed to be the perfect person to take over the fabled Yankees because he seemed to understand the importance of its legacy. He understood how important the Yankees of the past were. Players like Ruth and Gehrig were names that had to live forever. He also understood that players that he would nurture in the future like Munson and Jeter had to be just as important in order to keep the brand going for future Yankee fans.
I wouldn’t get to meet him until June of that year and his presence scared me because he was just bigger than life. His presence made all his workers jump. You didn’t ask how high because your head would automatically hit the ceiling.
For whatever the reason he was actually extremely kind to me. He always asked if I was ok or did I need anything. However he was never afraid to tell me that if I was not doing my job or messing up in school that I would be out.
For whatever the reason he was actually very kind to many of my friends and actually gave jobs to some of them including Hector Pagan who would go from there to become a D. E. A. Agent and Sam Carey who would actually leave the Yankees to join Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. I remember when the Boss asked me where Sam was… He started to laugh like crazy when I told him what Sam did. The Boss said that he was Laughing because Sam didn’t know that with the Yankees he was already in the Circus.I could write a whole book about this man however the history of Steinbrenner’s Yankees is still going on.
Hal, Jenny, and Jessica Steinbrenner are doing just fine and the legend of the Yankees will go on as long as man is still breathing!
The Yankees will always be owned by a Steinbrenner because as the Boss always said Owning the Yankees is just like owning the Mona Lisa.
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