On Monday night, a plaque in honor of longtime owner George Steinbrenner was unveiled at Yankee Stadium's Monument Field. And the immediate consensus was that it's really big. At seven feet by five feet, the Boss' tribute looms over the monuments to, oh, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and other legendary Yankees. While one Gothamist commenter said, "Hideous -- looks like something they would have done on Seinfeld!" there's a method to this madness.
Yankees president Randy Levine told the NY Times, "It represents George. He was a force. He built the stadium. He took the Yankee brand to places nobody else did. We don’t look at it in comparison to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle or Joe DiMaggio. They were unbelievable Yankees, but George was larger than life, and you needed something that represented that spirit."
ESPN.com's Rob Neyer writes, "I thought the Yankees were supposed to be bigger than just one man. I thought George Steinbrenner was just another in a line of owners who's made the Yankees the greatest franchise in American sports history, just as Derek Jeter is just another in a line of players, and Joe Torre was just another in a line of managers." Still, it could be worse.
