Hank Steinbrenner: Baseball's Bond Bad Guy

The bad guys made Bond.

Not Barry.

No. Bond. James Bond. Shaken not stirred. That guy.

And the baddies made Bond. The vile Villains. Ernst Stavero Blodfeld of SPECTRE. Goldfinger. The great Robert Shaw as Red Grant sent from Russia with Love.

Haughty Hank Steinbrenner has the aura of an old Bond villain. Not the soft Roger Moore Bond type villains nor the latter day nifty, narco terrorists. No the good, old Cold War bad boys bent on world domination.

The ones the Scotsmen Sean Connery used to dispatch.

Hank has the hair—that mean looking crew cut. He has that sixties smoking habit. Just like the hard drinking, heavy smoking, slightly seedy salesmen from the show "Madmen".

He has the rants, the gruff scowl, the angry look of a man with much on his mind. The epitome of the eternal Bond villain. And, of course, the unquenchable lust for world domination.

Well at least a bent for world baseball domination.

Yankees  are the SPECTRE of sports. Or perhaps SMERSH. Goldfinger was the treasurer of Bond's nemesis

Google Goldfinger. Google Gert Frobe. The resemblance is a bit eerie. Though Hank has to age a bit. Gert was a great German actor who also played  Baron Bomburst in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". Along with Rasputin, he also played an angry Colonel Steinhager in Triple Cross? Sound close, eh?

And he did a turn as German General Dietrich von Choltitz in the  underrated "Is Paris Burning?"

Sometimes Hank combines all of the above characters, and of course Goldfinger's maniac obsessions, in a single sentence. Or maybe a single interview. Maybe they all live unhappily in his head. At once.

Goldfinger. General Choltitz. Colonel Steinhager. And Rasputin. Don't forget the mad Monk

Dancing, drinking, smoking and fighting madly with one another.

In Hank's Head.

Me bets his burly bodyguard looks a bit like the mean mute Odd Job. Or maybe old Odd Job would make the perfect Hank manager. An abrupt bye bye to a failed free agent with the briefest toss of a bowler baseball cap.

Isn't it just a matter of time until Brian Cashman meets the dire fate of Helmut M. Springer, Goldfinger's unlucky underling who mismanages a key part of Operation Grandslam and then fatally tried to back out?

Off to see Manager Odd Job.

Goldfinger, like Steinbrenner, bred horses. His operation to knock off Knox was named Operation Grand Slam. Goldfinger craved gold. Hank craves gold and will get it with his new stadium deal.

Does Hank have a white cat?

Does he have a Pussy Galore?

Are the Boston Red Soxs going to be his Bond?

Will he find his Odd Job to take the full time job of running the team? A mean, mute manager to control the giant egos, over sized wallets, and fragile personalities that populate the New York Yankee roster?

Hank is young and the movie of his life is unfolding.

Perhaps sometime the dazzling days of George Steinbrenner's bouts with Billy Martin, battles with Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield tirades, mysterious elevator fist fights with fans, and furious verbal fights with numerous players, managers, and reporters, the stomping of Yogi and the lashing out at Lou will be viewed as the good, old days. Happy days.

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