Yesterday there were two reports spinning out of FOIA requests related to George Steinbrenner. One dealing with his criminal conviction for campaign finance law violations and one related to his pardon request, which was supported by multiple instances of Steinbrenner assisting the FBI.
Today the New York Times has more details about those things, including the assertions by Steinbrenner’s lawyer at the time -- corroborated, it seems, by the FBI -- that Steinbrenner put himself at some degree of risk in helping the FBI. The upshot: the cases involved terrorism and organized crime and there was some concern that there could be retaliation against Steinbrenner’s family if things went sideways.
Maybe this was overstated. After all, a lot of these documents appear to be from Steinbrenner’s lawyer in the course of advocating for a pardon for his client, so they’re going to naturally make things seem a bit more dire than they really were. But think how history could have changed if someone did go after The Boss’ family and, say, took out Hal instead of Hank, leaving the latter to run the Yankees by himself. I shudder at the very prospect.
In other news, the article in the New York Times is accompanied by the below picture, which is pure money, made all the more money because it was taken at Billy Martin’s funeral. If they could have somehow gotten Martin in there -- or if they could have panned the crowd for some other rake or scoundrel -- it could be the Mount Rushmore of vice:
(Associated Press)