From Joe Posnanski:
Every city in the country, I suppose, has its own relationship with New York City — you know, much the same way that every college basketball team in the old ACC had a rivalry with North Carolina. The City is just omnipresent in American life. Everyone knows about Boston’s rivalry with New York and the friction between Philadelphia and New York and the long-distance relationship between Los Angeles and New York. Chicago calls itself “Second City” — and while technically this is because of the way it rebuilt itself after the Great Chicago Fire, I know many people in Chicago who believe it is in some way a reference to New York and its entrenched role as the First City. Kansas City* has a chip on its shoulder about New York...
...Cleveland’s relationship with New York, though, always seemed just a little bit different to me, it always seemed that of a little brother or sister who wanted to wear the same clothes. Growing up, I can remember hearing about New York every week in one way or another. Someone would mention that, for many years, the Terminal Tower was the tallest building in America* … you know, outside of New York. Playhouse Square was (and is) the second largest performance arts center … after Lincoln Center in New York. There’s a big fashion week in Cleveland, one of the biggest in the country, probably THE biggest outside of, well, New York. The Cleveland Orchestra has always been one of the best in America, right there with the New York Philharmonic. Little Italy in Cleveland had food about as good as you could find outside of Little Italy in New York. And I cannot even tell you how many times I heard growing up that the collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art was as good as anything you might see in New York City.
*It was actually the tallest buillding outside of New York until the year I was born, 1967. Then Chicago started building skyscrapers.
Yes, the New York comparisons were all-consuming, but the weird part is I just never felt the same bitterness from Cleveland toward New York. Sure, Clevelanders hate the Yankees because, well, you HAVE to hate the Yankees, it’s a law. But beyond that, Cleveland always seemed perfectly content to be sort of a little New York, to have good things that were just about New York quality, to dream about moving to New York for a business deal someday...
...I remember when I was a kid, when everything in Cleveland was going to hell, there was a semi-bizarre tourism campaign to start calling Cleveland a “Plum.” Radio and television commercials were played. Only it wasn’t bizarre really — it was another chance for the city to try and connect with New York. T-shirts were made: “New York may be the Big Apple but Cleveland’s a Plum.” I don’t recall that the T-shirts sent Cleveland tourism skyrocketing, but I’m not sure it was the point. The point might have been to have a T-shirt with New York and Cleveland on it.
And it seems to me that Cleveland-New York relationship is close to the heart of the story of George Steinbrenner. He grew up in Cleveland. And in a way I’ve always thought that defined him. He has to be the most famous New Yorker who never really lived in New York. It’s the Cleveland in him.
The story of King George is fascinating to me because, at the end of the day, the story goes wherever the narrator wants it to go. Do you want a hero? Do you want a scoundrel? Do you want a tyrant? Do you want a heart of gold? Steinbrenner is what you make him.
Read the rest of King George here.
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