It’s right after death that it feels like a person is most alive.
This is especially true of great and famous men and women. We are surrounded by the recently departed, by their photos, their videos, their actions and their words as we try so drastically to try to create their essence just as the real thing is no longer available.
In this world, the true magnitude of a passing doesn’t hit until much later on, at some point in time in which we would normally consider a said person in a situation, only to find that he or she is no longer there.
Such is the case with George Steinbrenner.
Most likely, if you are reading this, you are like me–you never met him, or, if you did, it was only for a moment. In his life, he was busy running the Yankees; you and I were busy being fans, applauding and criticizing his decisions as they seemed relevant to the common cause of yet another World Series title.
We live our lives, he lived his, and if not for the vehicle of a baseball team, the probability is that they would have never intersected.
And yet, here we are now, if not necessarily blindsided, than at least stunned by the passing of a man who truly was a lion in his realm. In our remembrances, we bring him to life again.
We remember him, figurative warts and all, because his character so often made an appearance in our pastime, and even for some of us, our jobs. We will remember him not because he was perfect, but because he was human. His goal–that of winning–was human, as was the manner in which he set out to do it, a manner that could sometimes blur the lines between what was acceptable and what was not.
It does seem fitting–after all, ideals don’t play baseball; people do. Yes, people that we hail as near saints, but also people that can err–sometimes quite grievously–but people all the same.
The videos, the obituaries, the tributes will fade with the passage of time.
Yet it is because of his legacy, because of what he did, good and ill, for the baseball team we like to call our own even if we never paid a cent nor swung a bat, that his memory will not just live on, but prosper.
Some cultures pose that no one is truly dead until the last that remembers has gone as well; if this is the case, then Mr. Steinbrenner will live for a little while longer…
