Farewell to "The Voice" and "The Boss"

If you're any fan of baseball, then you know that baseball lost two greats this week with the passing of Bob Sheppard, "The Voice of Yankee Stadium," and George M. Steinbrenner III, "The Boss." Both of these men were icons with both professional baseball in general and the New York Yankees in specific, and the Yankees will be forever changed because of them.

If you ever had the pleasure of attending a game at Yankee Stadium sometime after 1950 as I did, then you had the honor and pleasure of hearing the classiest, most professional announcer in organized baseball. Bob Sheppard was the public address announcer at "The House That Ruth Built" from 1950 until 2008, a career that spanned nearly 60 years. He refused to holler and shout while announcing the lineup as the other announcers in baseball did, instead sticking to his personal motto of "clear, concise, and consistent." He announced each and every player, no matter what uniform they wore, with the same amount of professionalism and dignity, something that cannot be said about any other announcer in baseball. He gave a special quality to the games played at Yankee Stadium, and I personally think it only fitting that his last season of announcing the games should also be the last season of the original Yankee Stadium. His dignity and professionalism set the gold standard for every announcer in baseball, and he will be sorely missed.

Like him or hate him, there's no denying that George Steinbrenner was THE motivating factor behind the Yankees becoming the baseball dynasty that they are. He was tough, he was demanding, he was a perfectionist, but he was GOOD at what he did. His nearly-insatiable drive to win was legendary, and when asked about it during a post-World Series game celebration after having won the title, he said that the only thing he cherished more than winning was "breathing." He insisted upon a strict set of rules for his players, and it gave a sense of class to the organization at a time (late '70s and early '80s) when baseball needed it. NO long hair, NO beards, NO goatees, NO outlandish behavior on the field - these were George's rules, and you either followed them or you got your ass traded. In an age where it was common to see the players on a baseball team looking like a bunch of back-alley thugs (the Phillies, for example) with the scraggly beards and long hair, when the Yankees took the field you knew you were looking at a professional baseball team in every sense of the word. And they won games - boy, did they win games. And titles, World Series titles - they won a hell of a lot of them as well under The Boss's leadership. Not everyone, including the players, liked him but to a man everyone respected him. And you just can't argue with that.

So the world of baseball has lost two of its greatest, much to our sadness and dismay. The sport will go on, the Yankees will go on, but the void left by these two great men will somehow never be filled.

IHC