George Steinbrenner, RIP

The beloved and be-hated longtime Yankee owner is dead of a heart attack at age 80, after years of sharp decline.

He was the Queen Bee of corporate welfare, an illegal campaign contributor to Richard Nixon, and certainly a well-deserving member of Dickipedia, but one thing I'll always like more about The Boss than his detractors is that he understood the job of a baseball owner was to win baseball games by any means necessary, even if that meant–horrors!–giving formerly indentured employees gobsmacking amounts of money. That, and his '70s commercials were pretty awesome.

Or maybe you had to be there.

Bonus trivia: According to James Pethokoukis, "Steinbrenner signed first black coach of a pro sports team, John McClendon of the Cleveland Pipers of the American Basketball League."