George Steinbrenner loves to study military history. On his night table these days is a volume about Custer's Last Stand. That seems fitting enough, since Steinbrenner—the reviled Boss, the Steingrabber, the man so many love to loathe—could be facing his own Little Bighorn in the Bronx. Yes, his New York Yankees are having their worst summer since the Woodrow Wilson administration, but that's not his biggest problem. This week, after months of inquiry, Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent is expected to decide if Steinbrenner's association with a confessed gambler named Howard Spira means the owner and the game must part company. Everybody else, it seems, already wants a piece of George's scalp: the fans, the press, his fellow owners.
As usual, though, George doesn't quite get it. The war drums are beating, yet he sees no irony in his current choice of bedtime reading. "It's just the book I happened to pick up," he says. "I love to learn about battles and victors. Nothing more to read into it." When pressed a bit, Steinbrenner suggests that he feels no siege from his enemies; in fact, he's got them surrounded. "I'll win," he told NEWSWEEK during a two-hour interview last week in his Tampa office. "I always do."
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