By Bob Markus



I think I understand now. I think I know what they mean when they speak of six degrees of separation. They mean that if you take two people, any two people, you can link them together through a chain of association comprising no more than six links. For example: I know Tony LaRussa through covering the White Sox when he was their manager. Tony is good friends with rocker Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boys. Wilson undoubtedly has played before someone who knows someone who knows someone who has bought milk from a goat herder in Afghanistan. Therefore there is a link between me and said goatherd, although I've never been to Afghanistan and most certainly never will.



In the past week there have been four men in the news who are separated from me by far fewer than six degrees. It's even easier to connect the dots among the four of them. Don Coryell. Dan Gilbert. Bob Sheppard. George Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner, who was The Boss when Bruce Springsteen had only gotten as far as D Street, died this morning, just a few days after Sheppard, the elegant voice of the Yankees for more than a half century, passed away at the age of 99. Coryell, whom I knew as coach of the St. Louis football Cardinals long before he brought Air Coryell to the San Diego Chargers, died last week. Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is still with us, but may have committed professional suicide with his impassioned diatribe against the "disloyal" Lebron James. The letter played well in Cleveland, but it might not play so well among future free agent prospects or in a court of law should James decide to sue over allegations he laid down against the Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs. It's unlikely James will go to court, but Gilbert's wallet is already $100,000 lighter, courtesy of NBA Commissioner David Stern.

Steinbrenner is the most obvious link to the other three. He may or may not have known Gilbert, but they had this in common: Steinbrenner once owned a professional basketball team in Cleveland. Unlike Gilbert's Cavaliers, Steinbrenner's Cleveland Pipers won the ABL championship in their lone season in the league before it folded. Tellingly, the Pipers changed coaches in midseason, although John McClendon was not fired, but resigned. Bill Sharman ended up coaching the team for the rest of that championship season. Steinbrenner grew up in Cleveland, earned his first million in Cleveland, and tried to buy the Indians before ending up purchasing the Yankees for a reported $10 million in 1973. The franchise is said to be worth $1 billion today. Steinbrenner was known as a demanding owner, who fired managers and general managers more often than Reggie Jackson uses the first person singular when discussing great players. In his first 23 years, The Boss hired and fired 20 managers, including Billy Martin five times. In 1981 he replaced Gene Michaels with Bob Lemon and won the American league pennant. The next year the Yankees got off to a bad start and Steinbrenner canned Lemon--and brought back Michaels.

I covered the '81 world series and have two memories of it. Most vivid was Goose Gossage drilling Dodgers' third baseman Ron Cey on the helmet and Cey living to tell about it. The second was sitting in front of Steinbrenner in the press box and listening to the Yankees owner berating right fielder Dave Winfield, whom he had signed to a then-record 10-year $23 million contract. Winfield went 1-for-22 in his first world series, eventually causing Steinbrenner to complain: "We need a Mr. October. Winfield is Mr. May." Nor did relations between the two get any better. Winfield eventually sued Steinbrenner for breach of contract and The Boss responded by paying a petty crook $40,000 to "dig up some dirt" on the outfielder. That earned Steinbrenner a "lifetime" suspension, which was later rescinded. It was the second time the Yankees owner had been suspended, the first coming after he pleaded guilty to making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign.

Managers and GMs were not the only ones to feel the boss's wrath when things went wrong. Only a handful of employees stayed the whole course with the demanding Steinbrenner. One of them, of course, was Sheppard, he of the cultivated voice who added a touch of class to the Yankee Stadium scene. His classic call: Now batting for the Yankees, number 2, the shortstop, Derek Jeter. Number 2. Jeter was so taken with the presentation that he asked to have it recorded and used whenever he comes to bat.

Steinbrenner's relationship to Coryell is a little more tenuous, but only a little. Steinbrenner spent three seasons as an assistant football coach in the Big 10 before going back to Cleveland to take over the family business, which was shipbuilding. He was a graduate assistant under Woody Hayes at Ohio State, coached alongside B0 Schembechler as an assistant at Northwestern under Lou Saban, and was an assistant in Jack Mollenkopf's first year at Purdue. He may not have known Coryell, but he most certainly knew some people who knew Coryell. I don't remember much about Coryell as coach of the Cardinals, but I do recall that he picked Jim Hart to be the quarterback and I was pretty tight with Hart, having interviewed him in his rookie year when he was a complete unknown. I covered quite a few Cardinals games in those years and they generally put on a good show. Covering the Cardinals in December or January was always a challenge because Busch stadium had an open air press box. This was partly due to Joe Pollack, the Cards' p.r. man who went around in shirt sleeves on the coldest days. I finally learned how to avoid frozen fingers. I would book a room in the Marriott across the street, watch the game on television and beat my feet to the locker room when the game ended. It worked. Pollack was a good friend, having been my sports editor on the Columbia Missourian when I was at the University of Missouri. My beat was Missouri football and Joe and I would travel to road games in his car. I recall a trip to Nebraska where we stopped off to see an old Indian scout who had been recommended by one of my professors. The scout was acquainted with Black Elk, a storied chief and, who knows, somewhere down the road was an intersection with Sitting Bull and therefore Gen. George Armstrong Custer and you can take that as far as you care to, take it to Appomattix and Robert E. Lee or take it to Washington and Abe Lincoln. Six degrees of separation. Get it?