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- This is One-On-One.

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- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- I mean what other country sends comedians over to embedded military to make them feel better.

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_ It’s not all about memorizing and getting information, it’s what you do with that information.

- (slowly) Start talking right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hey, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

Everything you ever wanted or needed to know about Yankees management, you're gonna find out right now from our good friend, Mike Vaccaro.

He's the author of this incredibly powerful book called, "The Bosses of the Bronx," subtitle, "The Endless Drama of the Yankees Under the House of Steinbrenner."

Good to see you, my friend.

- Good to see you, Steve.

How are you doing today?

- I am doing great.

We should say, listen, we always have to disclose when we're recording, particularly when we're doing sports because things change, we're taping on the 19th of May.

The New York Knicks are starting a huge series to win, potentially the conference title, right?

And the Yankees look good in certain games, but they have a bullpen that has a lot of issues.

That being said, the title of the book and the subtitle, why, Mike?

- I'll tell you what, Steve, I talked to a lot of fans, younger fans, but even fans of our generation who either don't know or don't remember George, when he was in his prime, which is the 70s, the 80s, into the 90s.

You know, a lot of what people remember, or what they choose to remember is the older version of George, the kindly old man who would get cheered beyond belief whenever he'd walk in the Yankee Stadium.

And of course, guys like you and me remember that it was about 10 years before that, that he'd walk into the same ballpark and get an entirely different reaction, an entirely different reception with an entirely different set of words.

But the fans are chanting at him.

And I think that's what makes him such a fascinating subject.

That's what makes the Steinbrenner family so fascinating, because the standard was the team now, how, was so different than George was in so many ways.

And then to me, I mean, that's why you wanna, you know, capture an era over time, or a slice of time between the covers of a book.

And that's why this book seems so irresistible to me.

- And by the way, check out Mike Vaccaro every day in The New York Post.

I do, and I learn something new every day.

He's a great columnist.

He used to be with The Star Ledger, a paper that both of us wrote for and does not exist any longer.

And it's the form that it was in.

- Yep.

- Yeah, you're right.

I feel the same way, Mike.

Hey, listen.

Let's play word association.

- Okay.

- From the book, George Steinbrenner, by the way, a quote from Steinbrenner.

Just give this to you and then I'll do word association.

George, the late, great, and always controversial George Steinbrenner, "I'm not a win at all costs guy.

Winning isn't everything.

It's second to breathing."

Winning meant a lot to him.

Now word association, George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, go.

- Tempestuous.

You know, I mean, you could write an entire book, just on the two of them because you yell out the secondary and tertiary characters that, you know, connect because of that.

But obviously, he was the single most loudest, largest lightning rod of George's tenure.

Maybe Reggie Jackson was a close second, but thinking it was somebody he hired and fired five different times, and almost certainly would've hired a sixth time if not for Billy's untimely death, like Christmas Day in 1989.

- Did they use each other, Mike?

- A hundred percent.

Look, I mean, they saw a lot of each other in each other, I think, which is amazing because if you have one guy who's a poor kid in Berkeley, California, who never knew his father, the other one's a rich son of a prominent man from Cleveland, Ohio.

- A shipping magnate.

- A shipping magnate.

You know, maybe they weren't the closest father then, but they had a very strong relationship.

As much as George wanted to be a football coach, his father made it clear.

After a couple of years doing that, it was time to join the family business.

So they couldn't have come from more different backgrounds, but they needed each other because they both hated losing more than they liked winning.

And you have those two personalities, you're gonna wind up with a lot of interesting stories, a lot of pretty good baseball teams, which they did.

And one, you know, that they collaborated on that won a World Series.

And, you know, without the other, I think the other stories would've been incomplete.

- How about this one?

I had the honor of interviewing Joe Torre several times, and I would ask him about his relationship with George Steinbrenner.

Number six, retired, right?

- He is retired.

The number's retired.

- No, I meant their numbers retired.

How about Joe Torre and George Steinbrenner?

- Yeah, no, no, I knew you meant the number.

I had to do a little calculation there for a second, but yeah, that's retired.

- I know that Roy White wore it as well, but it wasn't retired for that reason.

But go ahead.

- And it was Billy Martin's first, Mickey Mantle's first number too.

- Oh, that's right.

When he went from six to seven.

- That's right.

Well look, Joe Torre is the guy who basically allowed George to collect four more, you know, five more championships after the first two, 'cause they'd been in a long drought, as we both know, 18 years without a World Series.

Joe was the exact perfect guy to deal with George, coming out of suspension the second time, dealing with all the stuff that George puts on managers that used to drive Billy Martin to crazy behavior.

He drove a lot of other managers, just a distraction.

Used to drive Lou Pinella crazy.

Lou Pinella and George Steinbrenner used to be best friends, but he said, "I just can't work for the man."

Joe Torre, one the other end.

You know, he had the perfect way to work with George.

He said, "You can't kill me, you can't take my family away.

Worst you could do is fire me, but I've been fired before."

You know, Joe had been fired three times before he came to the Yankees.

So that was the perfect leadership, perfect way to deal with George, especially in those years.

And look, I mean, yeah, look, they had a lot of great players.

They had a lot of great teams.

That's why they won all those World Series.

It helped that he wasn't always being George'd, which is a term that teams in the 70s and 80s used to talk about whenever George would get too involved, and all of a sudden the prospect would be traded or a manager would get fired and, you know, bad things would generally follow.

But it didn't happen that way when Joe was there because Joe guarded his team (indistinct), and was more than happy to deal with George one-on-one, whenever George wanted to deal with him one-on-one.

- Reggie Jackson.

He brings Reggie Jackson in.

Reggie Jackson is a superstar.

He hits home runs, he's controversial, and he's going to be the center of attention.

Why did Steinbrenner bring in Reggie Jackson?

And did he, on some level, want all the chaos that came with Jackson and Thurman Munson and the team and et cetera?

- Steve, the day after the Yankees got swept by the Reds in the 1976 World Series, a result that George found wholly unacceptable, he gathered his new talents, including Billy Martin, including Dave Paul, the GM, including a bunch of scouts.

What are we gonna do next year?

And so he listened to everybody else talk about, well, you know, Billy Martin loved Joe Rudi.

We should get Joe Rudi a five two player.

Joe Rudi, who was playing, I believe third base for Oakland?

- Left field.

- Left field for Oakland.

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

- Yep, that's okay.

- Bando was the third base.

- Sal Bando was the third base.

- I'm sorry.

- No, it's all good.

That was a great team.

- People are like, "What are Adubato and Vaccaro talking about?"

These old school players whose names I don't even remember.

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

- Right.

- But that also kind of underlines, I mean, you know, Billy Martin wanted Joe Rudi, they're kind of a noncontroversial, very dependable player.

I think Gabe Paul saying, "Well, what about Bobby Grich?"

- Paul was the GM?

- Was the GM.

And Bobby Grich was a very dependable second baseman for the Orioles.

He can also play shortstop.

He thought that would be a great move.

One of the people threw out names like Don Gullett.

But George said, "Okay, when about Reggie Jackson?"

And of course, once he said that, the other guys in the room realized what he was talking about.

And then George followed up with one of his Bartletts level quotations, which is, you know, Reggie puts fannies in the seats, and the other guys don't put fannies in the seats.

And to him, that was the big priority.

That was the only thing that mattered, put fannies in the seats.

And at that moment in Yankee history, they still hadn't surpassed the Mets who had overtaken the Yankees before George's stewardship.

But by acquiring Reggie, they became the biggest player in town.

They became the biggest team in town, and almost immediately, they surpassed the match and held that for a great number of years and have held it, really, with a small exception for a couple years in the 80s, really for the last 50 years because of that move, acquired Reggie Jackson.

- Derek Jeter, to what degree, do you believe George Steinbrenner appreciated and understood how incredibly important Derek Jeter was, and still is to those of us who are obsessed by the Yankees, with the Yankees?

How did he treat Jeter?

- Like a son, and to the point where sometimes I think Jeter, if there was anything that really bothered him about the boss, maybe he thought the boss got a little bit too involved in things.

There was a famous incident just before George, he was gonna celebrate his anniversary in 2003.

And he talked about, maybe Derek shouldn't go out so much.

Maybe he shouldn't go on the town as much as he does.

Like, maybe he might be suffering for that.

And of course, Jeter kind of brushed off and laughed and said, "Well, you know, I like to have a good time, but I don't think I'm Dennis Rodman or anything."

But the message got across, but of course, George, the way, so it still often happened with him.

He wound up turning that into a beautiful pile of money because they did a credit card commercial about a year and a half.

- They did.

- You know, the residuals off that, they could probably still, you know, they could probably send all the junior kids to college, and that's just how George was.

Well, and it's funny because that was really the only incident of those later years that resembled vintage George in the 70s, when he was always going on the back page on the attack against Reggie or against Goose Gossage, or against Dave Winfield.

And it's funny, you know, I think he might've enjoyed that earlier version, only because he liked a good fight and he liked players who had yelled back at him.

And let's face it, on those later day Yankees, as good as they were, weren't gonna get into a lot of backpage wars with Andy Pennant or Bernie Williams or guys like that.

And I think he missed that.

And I think that was one of these reasons why he enjoyed Jeter is that he would go back at him a little far more respectfully than Reggie or Thurman or Goose would in their day.

- Could you do this real quick?

You're not a political guy at all, and I don't wanna get into politics.

George Steinbrenner had a relationship with Donald Trump.

- Sure did.

- Close?

- You know, close enough to where he was, you know, Donald Trump was in George's box for just about every important game the Yankees played.

Trump staying 1982 on.

But not only that, but you can tell that Donald Trump studied every move George Steinbrenner made in terms of, you know, how he believed in New York, how he believed in his product.

- How about leadership style?

Sorry for interrupting.

Leadership style similar?

- For sure.

And look, I mean, the thing of it is, and I found this fascinating when I was writing the book, you know, some of these Steinbrenner quotes from the 70s, early in the 80s, you can tell, I mean, you close your eyes and you just like, imagine those quotes again, you can hear it in Donald Trump's voice, in Donald Trump's cadence.

It sounds very similar to what we hear a lot of times, every day now.

And, you know, there's no question that Donald Trump studies George Steinbrenner's playbook to the letter, and took a lot of the things that he learned from George into his own life.

- Okay.

Hey, listen, there's a bunch of other things I wanna talk to you about.

And by the way, the book is, "The Bosses of the Bronx: The Endless Drama of the Yankees under the House of Steinbrenner."

Tell me about Hal Steinbrenner, and how much different he is from his father.

- Look, you know, my father could fix everything, whether there was a car, whether there was a light, whether there was the electrical system in the house, and I can barely turn my car on.

So it's not the first example of a father and a son being very different from each other.

But these guys are very different from each other.

I mean, the one thing they have in common is a respect for the leadership that they have in this beloved franchise.

Hal has never called it a burden.

He always calls it a privilege, but he also knows that he's not his father.

And more to the point, his father absolutely understood that Hal was not him.

And in fact, I think one of the reasons why George was very comfortable in the way that it turned out that Hal was gonna wind up winning the Yankees forward, is that he wasn't like him, 'cause he saw the way the game was changing.

He saw that he needed a guy in charge who was probably a little more patient, probably not too prone to fly off the handle.

And you know, the one thing that drives Hal crazy was when people think that he doesn't wanna win, like his father won.

Look, a lot of people, you know, the Yankees went on a losing streak, right?

My inbox got filled, I'm sure yours did too, with people just, you know, what if George were still alive?

You know, they (indistinct) him.

They fired this guy.

They traded this guy, they do this, they do that.

Well, I like to remind people that, you know, the Yankees went 18 years without winning a championship, one time under George, because of that very behavior, because he was so impatient, so impetuous.

Look, the way that Hal summarizes it to me is perfect.

He says, Look, I'll watch a game on TV and the Yankees will, you know, blow a tough game in the night, bidding, like they did against the Mets the other day, and I'll throw my shoe against the TV.

You bet I will.

I'll be angry.

Difference is, my father would see the same game.

He'd throw his shoe against the TV, then he'd pick up the phone and they call the Daily News and the Post and say, "Guess what I did?

I just threw my shoe into the TV," and he'd have four days to hang on the back pages.

And, you know, George loved that.

He lived for that.

And certainly Hal couldn't be more different because he absolutely does not move for all that.

- Yeah.

Last one on this.

Why are so many of us, this is one of the last times I was at the stadium, back in the day, my Derek Jeter cup.

Why are so many of us, Mike, obsessive Yankee fans, meaning ridiculous stuff back like as a kid, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, like, I was too young to really know about 1961 when they, going back and forth for the home run battle.

But so many others, Elston Howard.

By the way, check out an entire week I did with our president at WNET, Neil Shapiro.

We did an entire Yankee week.

Check it out.

That's how obsessed both of us are.

What's the deal with the Yankees, for some of us that makes them more than a baseball team?

- Well, blame baseball, or credit baseball for one, because baseball is like that.

Baseball, you can be a big football fan, a big basketball fan.

I don't know a lot of basketball or football fans who have all kinds of records and numbers related to memory, the way baseball fans do.

So baseball is part of it.

But look, the Yankees are a generational thing.

You know, generally speaking, if your grandfather was a fan, then your father was a fan.

If your father was a fan, he probably brought you to your first game.

You're probably bringing your son to a game or your daughter to a game.

You're probably bringing your grandkids to games, and they're gonna do the same thing.

It's a very generational, institutional thing that gets into your blood.

And you know, I always find it funny, whenever a fan goes online and tries to make a name for himself and says, "I'm gonna auction my fandom to the highest bidder," can't do it.

You can do it if you want to and see if anybody will believe you, but fandom is hard to explain.

It's hard to understand unless you're a fan yourself.

And then it matters more than it probably should.

But you like the fact that it matters so much to you because the highs are so high, and they offset maybe once in a while, the lows that can be so long.

- Okay, I'm gonna push you one more time.

Scarlyn, and this is for you behind the camera, Scarlyn, he's a Met fan.

I can't talk to him.

And it's the 19th of May, I know they won a couple games over at that Shea Stadium Citi-field thing.

Mike, you see the line that Jeter had in the Jeter documentary, called The Captain, in which they beat the Mets in the World Series pretty handily and they asked him, and then he goes, "It's the Mets."

Now, will the Mets never, just never, no matter what they do, will they just never be the Yankees?

- Well, they never can be the Yankees because the Yankees are born 61 years before they were.

- I got that.

- They don't have all the history.

- Cache and brand, cache, brand, reputation.

And Chris Christie, I know you're watching.

You got an issue.

I get it.

You're a Met guy.

Go ahead.

- Well, I'll throw this at you also.

Look, from 1964 right up until 1976, the Mets owned New York to the point where the Yankees almost moved out of town because by 1973, the Mets are out-doing the Yankees, two and a half to one.

And while the Yankees took it back in the late 70s, early 80s, and around 1984 until 1991, it was a Mets town again.

So it's happened.

Now, and that's a long time ago.

I mean, and the fact that 34, 35, 36 years have passed since it's been a decidedly Mets town might mean that it's just permanently pinstriped now.

And that might be the case, you know?

But it's different.

I still think there's a larger portion of Mets fans than any other of the secondary teams.

Certainly more than the Devils or the Islanders, compared to the Rangers, certainly more the Nets compared to the Knicks.

And probably more like when you talk about the Jets compared to the Giants.

- Got it.

Real quick, got about five, six minutes left, check out Mike Vaccaro every day in the Post.

The book is, "The Bosses of the Bronx."

All right, look, we're gonna date ourselves because this will be seen later, Mike.

The Knicks are going into the conference championship against Cleveland.

If you are predicting on the 16th, I saw your prediction in the post this morning, Knicks in six.

Do you believe that when this is seen at the end of June, a repeat, that the Knicks will be NBA champs?

- Probably not.

But I think it's gonna be a heck of a way to get there.

- Come on, Mike.

- Yeah, I also saw a game one (indistinct) last night.

- No, don't tell me about Wemby.

Can he be stopped?

Can he be stopped?

- I mean, if you're allowed to use a mop to help guard him, probably maybe.

If you can put one of the players on the other player's shoulder, maybe.

Chet Holmgren is 7'2".

And I guess the rest of the NBA, he is hard to miss.

And against Wemby, he looks like Spud Webb.

That's hard to do.

- Spud Webb, 5'6".

- Yeah.

Spud Webb, 5'6".

And look, I mean, he also has to be tremendous.

Look, I mean, in game what I'm talking about, he had 41 and 22, so he's not gonna do that every game.

And that's the team that's still probably, you know, the underdog of that series.

So I do think it's gonna be a hard task to beat whoever comes outta the west.

But look, if the Knicks, you know, we haven't seen the Knicks as we sit here with you today, we haven't seen the Knicks play in nine games.

If they can resume what they were doing against the Sixers and the last three games against the Hawks, then I'll certainly put them to play against the Cavaliers.

And look, I mean, I don't think it's gonna be any kind of sweep or gentleman sweep for the west no matter who comes out of there.

I just think that after a while after a seven game series, usually the cream rises to the top.

And I just think that's a difficult about a cream to keep it tied on.

- We just dated ourselves, 'cause it'll be known by then.

Hey Mike, I'm gonna do this, a couple minutes left.

Please tell me that you can appreciate my point of view that I want to watch games on normal channels, and I don't want to be streaming and I don't want to, oh, WiFi's out.

What is the deal, and why can't I watch the Yankees on a regular basis?

Why can't I watch the Knicks, one day they're on ESPN, the other day, they're on a normal channel.

Then they're on, God knows what, Prime, whatever.

Mike, what's up?

- Yeah, I mean the problem is, it's the oldest problem in our world, right, which is money rules everything.

And money, you know, speaks and, you know, there's a reason why none of these games have been on MSG this year.

So people have been deprived of listening to Clyde Frazier talk about the teams.

Why, a couple days ago, I talked to Clyde for a column because I know people wanted to hear from him, and they did.

And that's the problem.

And then look, I mean all cards in the deal, people like to, they'll go back at me.

"Yeah, well, you're stuffing the Post behind the paywall."

I'm like, right.

If we don't charge for our product, we're gonna go out of business.

You know, the NBA is still gonna make plenty of money.

And all of these sports, they're still gonna be millionaires and millionaires, even if they don't try and squeeze every nickel, which is what these screening ratings do.

And that's the problem.

And you know, there's gonna come a point where there's gonna be a point of diminishing returns here.

I mean, the NBA keeps throwing all these numbers at us, and more people are watching the playoffs now than ever before.

Okay, but you know what?

I have a bunch of readers, you know, who are retired or just, you know, are in a fixed income and they just can't buy six streaming services.

And those should be at least a part of the priority for these leagues because these are fans that have been with you for 40, 50, 60, 70 years.

- Where's the loyalty?

- Now you've iced them out.

And look, I also understand the argument that, look, when you and I are growing up, you know, we didn't get to see every Yankees game on TV.

You know, half of 'em were on the radio.

Not all of 'em are on TV.

But that was different then.

It just was.

The thing of it is, we've all been baited and switched because of the technology and because of the capacity to be able to watch games whenever we want to, we got that little taste of it and now's been taken away, but you can get it back if you're willing to spend long 9.99 here and 10.99 there, and, well, not everybody can do it.

Not everybody can do it.

- I got a minute left, Mike.

You've been writing for how long?

- This is my 38th year writing for sports for a living, believe it or not.

Yep.

- All right.

I gotta ask you this.

I've been at this for not that long, but close.

You're still passionate about writing about sports, because?

- Because every day is different.

You know, every game is different.

The people you talk to when you're doing columns and stories on these guys, they all change year to year, generation to generation.

I always expect that I'm gonna go into a ballpark and see something I never saw before.

And more often than not, that happens.

You know, I'm not saying you're gonna see four home runs in a game, but you'll see something that you've never seen before.

Maybe you won't even write about it, but it's there.

And the (indistinct) is always there.

And the fact of the matter is that I understand fans.

I know why these games matter to them.

I mean, maybe I can't scientifically explain why it's so, but I know that it's so, because I hear from them regularly.

And so to me, it's a responsibility and it's one that I take great joy in, as a privilege to tell people, "What was it like at the game last night?

Here's what it was like in the game last night.

What was your takeaway from the game last night?

This is what my takeaway was from the game last night."

And I think that's really at the end of the day, why I enjoyed it so much, even after 36, 37 years in the business, which is another great privilege I've been able to have.

- Hey Mike, I'm honored to call you a colleague in the media, even though what you do and how you do it every day is much more impactful than anything I've ever done.

I cannot thank you enough for the book, for countless columns, for your insight for Vac's Wax.

We should let people know.

Think that's where Mike gets to share his views in snippets.

- Yep.

- And people share their views back.

You are an honor to our profession, and I cannot thank you for all your important work.

Mike Vaccaro, good stuff.

Thanks buddy.

- Steve, my friend, this has been really fun.

We're used to doing this a bunch back in the day.

It's great to do it again.

Thank you.

- Absolutely.

That's Mike Vaccaro.

He is simply the best.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Adubado Center for Media Leadership.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

PSE&G.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

NJM Insurance Group.

The Burke Foundation Holy Name.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

And by NJ Transit.

Promotional support provided by Meadowlands Media.

And by New Jersey Globe.

- (Narration) Healing is never just about medicine and technology.

It has to go further than that.

It has to combine science with humanity.

It has to be our best medicine, combined with large doses of empathy, kindness, dignity and respect.

It has to be delivered by people who love what they do and who they do it for.

Holy Name.

Great medicine, soul purpose.