oldguy wrote:
dean moriarty wrote:Steinbrenner went to Williams College, but I think he did do track. Hurdles sounds about right.
George's father, who built the family fortune, was a national hurdles champion when he was an undergraduate at M.I.T. In 1978, with money donated by George, M.I.T.'s outdoor track facility was built, and the venue was named "Steinbrenner Stadium" after George's father. As I recall, George himself was a so-so hurdler at Williams.
My favorite Steinbrenner story:
King George the convicted felon visited Williams in the early '90s to watch his son Hal run the 400H at one of our few home meets. The runners settle into the blocks, the gun goes off, BUT Hal false-starts. What with the draconian "one and done" rule in effect for HS and college meets, Hal is out of the race, and the starter tells him so. Dejected, the poor guy starts walking off the track. Before he can do so, George has flown out of the bleachers and is up in the face of the starter, yelling at him (paraphrasing just a bit here) "you can't do that, that's not the rule! I'm the president of the United States Olympic Committee and I know the false-start rule, he gets two false-starts." Had it been open competition, George would have been in the right, but of course he wasn't and so he looked like a total fool mouthing off like that. Eventually one of the Williams coaches had the unenviable task of explaining things to him sotto voce and escorting him off the track.
How do I know all this? I was working the accutrack camera, and sitting in that rickety tower on the finish line, had a perfect view of the entire scene.