I never met Harvey Pekar. However, I mourn his passing. I never met George Steinbrenner either though I can’t say the same for him.
I do remember a telephone conversation with Pekar. He wanted me to write about something, as I remember it, which was out of the range of my local newsletter, Point of View. Harvey wasn’t please, I remember, and he showed it.
Harvey was Cleveland personified. So was Steinbrenner. If different ways naturally.
Steinbrenner was a man on the make in the 1960s. He started one of those young executive groups called Group 66. Its aim supposedly was to help the city. Mostly, they’re made up of strivers who want to grab some power. As these types do they try to ingratiate themselves with the media as you’ll see below.
In June 1973 I wrote about a poll that the Plain Dealer played big on Page one as a “Democratic poll.” It turned out the Steinbrenner, supposedly a Democrat, secretly paid for the poll. The poll said that Mayor Ralph Perk was unbeatable. Steinbrenner had built a relationship with Richard Nixon to get the U. S. Justice Department off his back at his shipping company. A Democratic bigwig said at the time that the leaked poll “looks like some of the methods used by the Committee to Re-Elect the President,” Nixon’s fated campaign group.
Steinbrenner – who I described then as someone “with the appearance of an overstuffed chair about to pop”- was part of a nasty nest of business characters that had too much power over city officials and wanted more. Some are still here.
It was Steinbrenner’s “report” that led to Browns owner Art Modell obtaining a 25 year city lease on the Cleveland Stadium. Steinbrenner’s reported, “We recognize that these improvements would be costly but they would result in a stadium facility of which both the city and tenants could be proud. The involvement of private management and capital would relieve the taxpayer of the burden (ha!) – present and future – and, at the same time, assure them of a first class facility.” The (ha!) was in my original report. For years I showed how Modell made out very well in the stadium deal.
Steinbrenner and Modell also were partners in a tennis resort development in Ft. Lauderdale at the time. No conflict, right?
Anyone wanting to read the entire story of the rat’s nest’s participants at that time could consult Vol. 5, No. 23 of Point of View.
Perk also at the time named Al Bernstein, a Steinbrenner associate, to the Port Authority where he became chairman. Steinbrenner, of course, was in the shipping business.
Then as now there’s business to be done at the Port.
But the most disturbing Steinbrenner episode I reported was his payment of $10,000 to Cleveland journalists in 1974. Both newspapers were on strike.
Here’s how I reported it in 1975 when Steinbrenner was still keeping a hand in Cleveland:
“Convicted conspirator George M. Steinbrenner, III, who channeled illegal campaign contributions to former President Richard M. Nixon, recently arranged with Supt. Of Schools Paul Briggs to funnel $10,000 from his Amship Corp. to pay 10 striking Cleveland reporters and editors to speak about journalism to high school English classes for up to two weeks at $500 a week.
“The Steinbrenner fund was apparently to be kept secret from the public.
“Asked if the students knew that Watergate figure Steinbrenner had arranged for his corporation’s money to be used to finance the PD and Press journalism speakers, Clifford said, “I’m not sure.” (Clifford headed the English Department at the schools.)
Of course, Steinbrenner shuffled the $500 a week to reporters who might at some point be able to give him a favor or protect him. They included the Press business editor, a Plain Dealer sports columnist, the PD theater critic and others who had connection to possible Steinbrenner businesses.
The only two journalists to refuse the $500 a week gift were sports editor Bob August and Norm Mlachak, labor writer, both of the Cleveland Press. A show of journalistic integrity and that some refuse to be bought.
At the time I called Steinbrenner “a blustering corruptor.” He had pled guilty of arranging and then covering up illegal campaign gifts to Nixon and various Democrats and Republicans. He also pled guilty to influencing and intimidating his employees to lie to the FBI and a federal grand jury.
Why Steinbrenner wasn’t spending time in jail only proves that justice can be denied if you have enough money and the well-placed friends.
That’s what Steinbrenner’s $10,000 gift to out-of-work reporters and editors was all about – buying friends.
Ironically or maybe not so, Steinbrenner was the Press Club “Man of the Year” in 1968. The standards were pretty low.
You can read about the $10,000 gift and its recipients in Vol. 7, Number 13 of Point of View.
And so it goes. And still does unfortunately.
Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.
He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.