{"id":192259,"date":"2026-04-10T14:51:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/192259\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T14:51:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:51:44","slug":"bosses-of-the-bronx-author-mike-vaccaro-regales-yankees-fans-at-sbu-book-signing-olean-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/192259\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBosses of the Bronx\u201d author Mike Vaccaro regales Yankees fans at SBU book signing \u2013 Olean Star"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">By RICK MILLER<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Olean Star<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">ST. BONAVENTURE \u2014 New York Post Lead Sports Columnist Mike Vaccaro regaled Yankees fans with stories of the Steinbrenner dynasty of the 1980s and 90s during a stop at St. Bonaventure University Wednesday on his book tour promoting \u201cThe Bosses of the Bronx.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The \u201889 St. Bonaventure alumnus joined retired ESPM executive and longtime friend Chris LaPlaca, a 1979 graduate of St. Bonaventure is a question and answer session at Walsh Auditorium.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Vaccaro, who once covered the Bonnies for the Olean Times Herald, has been lead sports columnist for the Post since 2002.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He told LaPlaca that he decided to write the book because there are many people alive today who don\u2019t remember George Steinbrenner, the Yankees owner who was banned from daily operation of the team from 1990-93 for hiring a gambler to dig up dirt on player Dave Winfield.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">After his reinstatement by Major League Baseball, Steinbrenner became less involved with daily operations, but remained a principal owner. In 2008, he transferred his interests to his sons Hal and Hank Steinbrenner. He died in 2010<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">LaPlaca wondered if Steinbrenner could pull off in modern times what he accomplished with the Yankees and his battles with New York media.<\/p>\n<p> <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/oleanstar.com\/ads\/closes\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"350\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Closes.jpg\" class=\"no-lazy-load wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"  \/><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"350\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Closes.jpg\" class=\"lazyload no-lazy-load wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"  data-\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The controversial Steinbrenner \u201cwould be a consumer of social media to get his message out quicker,\u201d Vaccaro opined.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Social media today is the equivalent of the New York media wars of the 1980s, which still exists between the Post and New York Daily News.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">In other years before cellphones, Vaccaro said, sports reporters who telephoned and left messages for Steinbrenner had to wait for the call to be returned. He said his first call from the Yankees owner came at 3:30 a.m.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Good, bad or crazy, Steinbrenner \u201cwas usually pretty truthful with me,\u201d he said. \u201cHe never lied to me. Toward the end, he started handing things off to his sons.\u201d Vaccaro interviewed Hal Steinbrenner for the book. Hank Steinbrenner died in 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Among the stories Vaccaro related to the audience of more than 50 mostly Yankees fans, was the relationship between Steinbrenner and manager Billy Martin who was fired four times by the Yankees owner. Once Martin was fired in 1978 just before he and Steinbrenner\u00a0 appeared in a Miller Lite commercial.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Just before the first time Martin was fired, the Daily News published a poll that showed 99% of respondents wanted Steinbrenner to hit the bricks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Vaccaro said in response to one question from the audience that while it can be \u201cvery intimidating,\u201d sifting through all the information you\u2019ve gathered from interviews and research, \u201cyou do a little bit every day. It\u2019s what I do for a living. I\u2019m pretty confident everything in the book happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Another audience question involved discrimination of women sportswriters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Vaccaro said \u201d Women sportswriters \u201care more commonplace\u201d today and \u201cmost of the original battles have been won.\u201d Most athletes these days \u201cgrew up with women sportswriters,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople are more used to it now.\u201d He said he was particularly impressed with his \u201colder friends in the business who stood up for female writers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Vaccaro said he doesn\u2019t come across a lot of that kind of discrimination these days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">After the audience question and answer session was over, Vaccaro met with audience members who had bought the book and talked to them while he signed their books.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Later in the afternoon, Vaccaro held another book signing at Untold Stories bookstore, 700 W. State St.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Published by HarperCollins, \u201cThe Bosses of the Bronx\u201d debuted at No. 14 last week on the New York Times Best Seller list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By RICK MILLER Olean Star ST. BONAVENTURE \u2014 New York Post Lead Sports Columnist Mike Vaccaro regaled Yankees&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-192259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-the-bronx","13":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","14":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}