I'll stick to building ships.

-- George Steinbrenner at his introductory press conference as owner, promising to stay away from the day-to-day operations of the Yankees in January 1973.

What kind of owner wins seven World Series and 11 pennants in 37 years? 

A better question, I guess, could be this: What kind of owner wins seven World Series and 11 pennants in 37 years and isn't in the Hall of Fame?

George Steinbrenner actually did it all while in charge of the most valuable piece of real estate in professional sports. As full a life as you'll ever see. He managed to get suspended twice, become involved in the most famous owner and employee relationship in sports history, buy and dump and buy and dump and buy and dump literally billions of dollars worth of free agents and traded players, feud with Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, Don Mattingly, Yogi Berra, Lou Pinella, become immortalized on "Seinfeld", start his own cable network, build a $1.5 billion stadium, and spend the last couple of years of his life as an almost beloved figure, the crotchety grandpa with the soft spot.

But make no mistake, for all the Visa ads with Jeter and cameos on SNL and public displays of emotion over the last decade or so there was a ruthless side to the Boss. Ask Dave Winfield. Steinbrenner paid Howie Spira-- at best a third-rate gambler-- $40,000 to dig up some dirt on Winfield. That earned George suspension No. 2 (the first was in 1974, when Bowie Kuhn slapped him with a two-year ban for making illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign. Yup, he was involved in that, too. See what I mean about a full life?) and actually allowed Gene Michael to build the core of what was the Yankees dynasty of the 1990s and 2000s. Or ask Yogi Berra -- George begged the Yankees legend to stay on as manager after the 1984 season, with assurances that he would be safe in 1985. Well, safe he was -- for 16 games. Berra did not speak to Steinbrenner or set foot in Yankee Stadium for nearly 15 years.

Ah, the managers. Just take a look at the list from 1979-1989. Almost hard to believe they didn't win a World Series during the decade with this kind of stability:

Billy Martin (1979)

Dick Howser (103 wins in 1980, fired in no small part due to the fact that he refused to obey Steinbrenner's order to fire third-base coach Mike Ferraro on the spot after Game 2 of the ALCS.)

Gene Michael (1981)

Bob Lemon (1981-82)

Michael (1982)

Clyde King (1982)

Martin (1983)

Berra (1984-85)

Martin (1985)

Lou Piniella (1986-87)

Martin (1988)

Pinella (1988)

Dallas Green (1989)

Bucky Dent (1989)

And Billy Martin was going to take over in 1990 (had already put together his coaching staff) but died on Christmas Day 1989. 

The madman stuff was mostly gone by the time George came back from the Spira suspension. Sure, Buck Showalter was fired after the first Yankees postseason in 14 years, but we've learned enough about Buck to know that it might just have been some of his doing. Steinbrenner's best move as owner might have been ignoring public sentiment -- which couldn't have been easy -- and hiring Joe Torre in 1996. Four World Series in five years and over a decade of 95-win seasons allowed George to, if not mellow, at least soften.

There were always reports of the occasional blowup (a dropped fly ball in right field by Enrique Wilson in June 2002 caused George to demand a trade for Raul Mondesi, which turned out to be a bust) but the Torre/Brian Cashman/ Steinbrenner union was on the whole as close to seamless as one could reasonably expect. Torre lasted 12 years as the skipper, or three times longer than any other Yankees manager. 

But it was the willingness to spend money that endeared George to Yankees fans (and made him Enemy No. 1 in every other city). Sure, there were a lot of misses over the years -- Dave Collins, Steve Kemp, Roy Smalley, Danny Tartabull, Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson and  Jose Contreras to name just a few -- but George would always do everything he could to put a winner on the field. Doesn't every fan want that first, second and 224th from an owner? And when he hit -- Reggie, Catfish Hunter, David Cone, David Wells, Roger Clemens, Jimmy Key-- championships usually followed. All this free-agent and trade-deadline craziness that we all love to watch and read about? Steinbrenner was the father of that stuff. For decades he was the absolute driving force behind the market. And because of what he built the Yankees will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

And while there was the "Evil Empire" back-and-forth with Larry Lucchino in 2002(which started over Contreras, who ironically turned out to be a flop), by the time the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry really got going Steinbrenner was more a background character. The hatred was focused on Clemens and A-Rod, not a 74-year-old who had been seen less and less over the years. Kind of shame that the wild and crazy George of the late 70s and early 80s wasn't still playing two shows a night in 2003 and 2004. The Lion in Winter just wasn't as much fun as the guy who yelled at Yankees president Al Rosen for calling heads instead of tails at the coin flip to decide which team would get to host the 1978 AL playoff game.

"Heads?" George screamed at Rosen. "You imbecile! How in the hell could you call heads when any dummy knows that tails come up 70 percent of the time? I can't believe it."

That story was in Bill Madden's superb bio of George that was released in May 2010. It's a warts and all job to be sure, but the two sides of Steinbrenner are well represented. The guy who berates low-level employees and the guy who started a foundation that has paid the entire college tuition for hundreds of children of police officers killed in the line of duty. 

But neither of those will be his legacy. No, ultimately his almost maniacal obsession with winning --or was is fear of losing?-- will be what is most remembered. That obsession, after all, was the trigger for all the big spending and hiring and firing and rage and fear and suspension and conviction. We could get into why -- his old man could be never be pleased -- but I don't think George was one for the shrink's chair. So in his honor we will leave it alone and just say this.

There will never be another George Steinbrenner. He will be missed.