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The death of George Steinbrenner this week elicited a lot of response from the country. A good deal of it skewed a bit more positive than you might expect for a man who was disliked by a good chunk of the American public. The Red Sox even had a moment of silence in his memory on Thursday night. One person who isn't willing to whitewash things is former Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee. Lee, known as "Spaceman" for his habit of making outrageous comments and his love of marijuana, spoke to WMUR-TV in New Hampshire after the death of the Yankee owner.
"As far as Steinbrenner's passing? Good," Lee said. "Trust me, if hell freezes over, he'll be skating. ... He may have been good for the Yankees organization, but he was definitely a thorn in my side. ... He said I was an incompetent and I was bad for the game of baseball. Well, I'm not a convicted felon like George Steinbrenner, and he'll take that to his grave. ... I have no sadness. I'm Irish, I'm Catholic, and when you're gone, you're gone."
There's some incongruity there between the "when you're gone, you're gone" and the comments about hell, but Lee's feelings about Steinbrenner couldn't be much clearer. The battles between the Sox and Yankees were heated during the late-1970s heyday of Lee's career and, obviously, the wounds haven't completely healed.
Share Simply dying isn't enough to absolve a man of who he was when he was alive. It's more than fair to point out Steinbrenner's many foilbles; it's probably a requirement for anyone trying to sum up his life in an obituary. Tell the good, tell the bad and paint the picture of the man in full. Far too often, death is used as a way to cover up the sins of the departed and only tell half the story.
That said, it's important to remember that he was still a man with a family that loved him and cared about him. Celebrating his death, as Lee did during this interview, is in extremely poor taste.
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