Furious George, Howie Spira, And A Yank-Cranking Gambling Debt

Historically speaking, the New York Mets have been a disaster — although to a Seattle Mariners fan (like me), two World Series titles (or just making it to the World Series, period) in 60-some seasons sounds pretty dang sweet.

But Seattleites can do other things — ski a slope, climb a rock, take a ferry — without someone standing next to them loudly voicing a reminder that their team, situated in a stadium less than 30 miles away, is the most decorated franchise in the history of Major League Baseball. 

Except in 1990.

In that year, the New York Yankees were a disaster to end all disasters and finished with a cellar-dwelling record of 67-95. One of their pitchers threw a no-hitter — and the team still lost. They signed Neon Deion Sanders, who sucked at baseball. Their best outfielder, Mel Hall, once brought two live cougar cubs into the locker room, one of which soiled the carpet with cat urine, and would go on to serve decades in prison for sexually assaulting minors. Hall’s prom picture with his 16-year-old girlfriend made it into the team yearbook in 1990. 

Most critically, however, the team’s owner — that’d be George Steinbrenner — got banished from baseball for a few years for paying a Mob-indebted gambling addict, Howie Spira, to dish dirt on franchise cornerstone Dave Winfield.

This is all chronicled in the excellent three-part Peacock docu-series,  Bronx Zoo ’90: Crime, Chaos and Baseball.

Public feuds set the mood

Steinbrenner’s years-long feud with Winfield — a player whom the Boss instantly felt was grossly overpaid, even though he was the one who agreed to pay him — is well-known, but it’s still eye-opening to be reminded of just how publicly vitriolic their feud was.

And Winfield wasn’t the only player who trashed Steinbrenner in the press. When the Boss waffled on giving Don Mattingly a contract extension, the first baseman let it be known he’d take his talents elsewhere at the first opportunity if he wasn’t properly compensated. (He eventually signed a multi-year extension with the Yanks.)

It’s the feud with Winfield that’s at the center of this story, but let’s briefly pause our regularly scheduled programming to highlight his similarities with Kawhi Leonard. Winfield, like Leonard, was approximately 6’6” and 220 pounds. Each athlete played a lone season in Toronto, performed superbly, and led that city’s franchise to its first professional title.

Before Winfield landed in Toronto, Steinbrenner traded him to the California Angels in May of 1990 for Mike Witt, who was three wins away from retirement. Winfield would cast a long shadow, however, as his revenge would soon come in absentia.

Betting both sides and losing twice

Spira gambled incessantly, and he was really bad at it. 

Remember the George Brett pine tar incident? Take it away, Deadspin …

“He (Spira) could bet both sides of a game and lose twice. Howie had money on the Royals in the Pine Tar Game. George Brett homered in the top of the ninth to give them the lead, but Yankees manager Billy Martin got the umpires to disallow the home run because of excess pine tar on Brett’s bat. Howie lost that bet. A month later, after a successful protest by the Royals, MLB ordered the home run reinstated and the game restarted at that point. This time, Howie bet the Yankees. He lost again.”

Somehow, at some point, Spira secured a press pass to cover the Yankees as a stringer. That coverage consisted of schmoozing his way into Winfield’s inner circle and becoming a publicist for the slugger’s charitable foundation.

That foundation, which was pretty close to a sham, led to litigation between Winfield and Steinbrenner, with the former claiming the latter didn’t make good on his promise to contribute a certain dollar amount. Steinbrenner, who didn’t like Winfield from jump, was now dead set on smearing him.

Enter Spira. With mountains of gambling debt owed to Gotham’s crime families, he offered to dish major dirt on Winfield in exchange for $150,000 from Steinbrenner. And dish he did, regaling the Boss with, among other things, a tale of a fake death threat manufactured by a Winfield associate to generate sympathy for the hulking Minnesotan.

Spira thought Steinbrenner would act fast with this sort of information, but the Boss sat on it for a few years. And while he eventually forked over $40,000, Spira never got all that he asked for and was none too pleased about it.

So nonplussed was Spira that he hectored Steinbrenner mercilessly, to the point where he was ultimately convicted of extortion and served two years in prison. And after an MLB investigation, Steinbrenner was sidelined from the sport for approximately the same amount of time, clearing the way for Gene Michael to build the Bronx Bombers into the dynasty they’d become later that decade. 

Steinbrenner being Steinbrenner, he fired Michael shortly after being reinstated.