Yankee Fun ‘Seinfeld’ Bats A Hit With Viewers In Its Entertaining Portrayal Of Baseball Team Owner

Yankees fans may not always find George Steinbrenner a bundle of laughs, but a hefty slice of America does. For the past two years, a character in the guise of the Yankees’ principal owner has emerged as one of the funnier aspects of “Seinfeld,” the hit sitcom.

While the real George Steinbrenner - known as The Boss to his minions and to tabloid headline writers - spends most of his time barking orders from various command posts around the country, the “Seinfeld” Steinbrenner can usually be found behind a big desk in his imperial office in Yankee Stadium. He always sits with his back to a camera on the set on Stage Nine in the CBS Studio Center lot here, and neither the face nor the profile of the Top Banana is ever seen by viewers.

There is only his broad back, a large, graying head and the occasional manic flinging of arms and hands, like a man drowning. His speech pattern is arresting - a kind of tyrannical staccato. As observed in a recent run-through for the show to be aired April 25, The Boss describes to an underling, George Costanza, his lunch routine.

Costanza: “So tomorrow, Mr. Steinbrenner, I was thinking how ‘bout we try some corned beef.”

Steinbrenner: “Corned beef? Ah, it’s a little fatty, don’t you think?”

Costanza: “I love it. I could have it every day.”

Steinbrenner: “No, we’ll stick with the calzone.”

Costanza: “It’s just that a little variety might be nice.”

Steinbrenner: “Nope. I find something I like, I stick with it. From 1973 to 1982 I ate the exact same lunch every day: turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl, George. You’d eat the chili, then you’d eat the bowl. Nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and just seeing a table.”

Who is this Steinbrenner? It may come as no surprise to baseball followers to learn that the “Seinfeld” version has a dual personality; two people must play him simultaneously.

Steinbrenner, the body, doesn’t speak; he merely flails. Sitting a few feet behind him, in a slightly elevated director’s chair and out of camera range, is the prattling voice itself, contained in the slender body of Larry David, the show’s 47-year-old executive producer, co-creator, writer, onetime stand-up comic and passionate, lifelong Yankees fan.

“I grew up in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, and I’ve always loved the Yankees,” said David as he moved among the actors and camera crew on the set of the show recently. “It was a kid’s fantasy that if you couldn’t play center field for the Yankees - and I was a huge Mickey Mantle fan - well, maybe you could work for them in some capacity.”

And when the George Costanza character, who is based on David and played by Jason Alexander, needed a job after being unemployed for two years, David hit upon the Yankees.

“It’s a chaotic place, and I thought George would fit in perfectly,” he said.

Viewer response has been enthusiastic since Steinbrenner’s first appearance on the show. The Yankees even report that George Costanza gets fan mail delivered to Yankee Stadium. While the “Seinfeld” Steinbrenner may be impetuous, irascible and despotic, he can also be generous and warmhearted in his impetuous, irascible and despotic style.

The voice was inspired by Steinbrenner himself.

“I don’t know the man,” David said, “but from seeing him interviewed on television and seeing his quotes in newspaper stories, I came up with this version of the way he speaks, the going on and on, on subjects, and going from one topic to another almost without stopping for a breath.”

Jerry Seinfeld, leaning against the couch in his apartment on the set, said: “Larry wanted to get an actor to say the lines on the show, but when I heard his interpretation, I said: ‘This is great. It’s funny. You read the lines.’ And the guy who plays him now? Excellent. He has a very gifted back of the head. I guess all that is needed to play George Steinbrenner is the back half.”

Seinfeld and David had called Steinbrenner to ask permission to use his name and the Yankees for their show. “At first he was confused,” Seinfeld said. “He thought that the George character played by Jason was supposed to be him. I told him, no, that we’d had that character in the show for five years. But he gave us the permission, and I think it’s a credit to him.

“A lot of people take themselves so seriously that they have refused to allow us to portray them on the show.”