St. Louis Cardinal’s Albert Pujols despite suiting up for the rival National League heard the long cheers of Anaheim fans. Everyone knows Pujols is one of the players of this era that is likable, fun to watch, and a sure Hall of Famer the day he retires. People like Albert.

Also ex-Los Angeles Angel Vladimir Guerrero despite now wearing the Texas uniform also got quite an ovation upon his introduction.

The fans of Southern California appreciate how consistent a player Guerrero has always been. Even though he now plays for the team that will probably take a playoff spot away from their beloved Angels he will always be one of those guys that the average baseball fan appreciates because he has always performed as the best player wherever he has played – even off camera.

Of course, there was the usual emphasized scattering of boos for any Boston Red Sox or New York Yankee players introduced that Tuesday.

Probably because there were just too many of them signed up for the game and the Yankees in particular are the epitome of the best baseball team that money could buy. They also are defending champs and got to send the manager for the American League team.

Yet for still a few players from New York, Derek Jeter the most noteworthy, there is still decent respect across baseball and that goes noticed at parties like this.

Jeter is the player that really is the face of baseball for this millennium.

We do not discuss this much, but in fifty years after his day in the game is long over, and he is still alive, Jeter will be considered the greatest shortstop to play in the two hundred year history of the game, and probably be considered the greatest Yankee – and that is saying a lot.

Frankly today, if you go back over the last 15 years to look at what Jeter has accomplished (all-time hits leader among shortstops, .317 career average is fifth on active list in baseball) he is in position to supplant many Yankee records with his name. Jeter is well liked, and for me every bit a current version of Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig.

As the All-Star game broadcasters, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver alluded to during one of his at bats it is impossible to imagine Jeter ending his career with any other organization than the Yankees.

Jeter and three of his teammates that all began their careers at about the same time in the New York system through the draft or signing as amateurs are probably headed to that special place in Yankee Stadium reserved for the “greats”, Monument Park.

Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettite, the “Yankee Four”, have been the foundation of an organization that has won more than any other since they arrived together on the Yankees.

They are the spine of the current greatest era of Yankeedom that has won five World Championships in this challenging modern day having graced seven World Series during that span.

Since they arrived for half of the time the Yankees have been pennant winners in American League.

Rivera likely will go down as the greatest reliever in baseball history, what other team has ever had the same closer stay effective for so long?

Pettite has been a consistent starting pitcher, and despite three years away from New York (2006-08) has 100 more wins than losses in his career.

These are things to think about at all-star time because the event is really about showcasing players which baseball does well, but it was another non-playing Yankee who’s death the day of the game grabbed most of the extra appreciation this year - the 80 year old owner of the Yankees, George Steinbrenner.

Yankee players and ex-players were forced to comment on Steinbrenner and felt compelled to say nice things about him.

Steinbrenner was positively remembered in many ways for his contribution to the game of baseball, and building the Yankees.

In all the tributes the good, the benefactor Steinbrenner, had to be measured somewhat with the more ruthless boss man Steinbrenner who put wanting to win before everything else.

Steinbrenner who once said “winning is the most important thing, second only to breathing” was a Yankee owner for almost forty years.

He bought the team for a little over $8 million and grew the organization to be worth well over $1.5 billion.

Steinbrenner was not afraid to buy a chance at winning.

Steinbrenner purchased players in bulk and changed the way the economics of the game worked by embracing player free agency when other owners that did not want to spend to buy players and championships resisted it.

If anyone benefited from Steinbrenner being involved in baseball it was the players – not just Yankees players but all players – because Steinbrenner’s team drove up the salaries of everyone in the game by overbidding.

The ideal of winning and to be associated with winners should be something fans of any team would want their ownership to be most focused upon. Steinbrenner was not the only owner to want that, others failed at with consistency, but he stood out as the most visible attempting to attain it.

Most of the time the complaining fan, with wild ideas of how to dramatically change his team, does not have an ear in the owner’s box. Yet Steinbrenner was himself that fan, and for the first twenty years that he owned the Yanks he was a hands-on owner, in fact, too much hands-on.

For the final sixteen years Steinbrenner took a backseat and let his baseball people run the show.

The last four years he did not even live in New York and was deemed not in well enough health to be involved. Steinbrenner gave the day to day running of the Yankees over to his two sons Hal and Hank. Perhaps that buffer of years without reading about George made people’s opinions about him around baseball soften some.

Now some people think Steinbrenner should be honoured in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But I think the day that somebody dies people tend to have way more nice things to say about their life and contributions than they really mean.

Steinbrenner did not help the Yankees to win.

For most of twenty years they were a terrible organization.

Players did not want to play there. Players (Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, Goose Gossage, and Thurman Munson of note) got in feuds with the owner. The owner would berate players and belittle the team’s efforts.

One time Steinbrenner berated his team after they were swept by the Cincinnati “Big Red Machine” in the 1976 World Series. So at times even when an extra word could do no extra good Steinbrenner still had too much to say.

The stories about how average Yankee employees were treated by the boss were even spoofed by television’s hit series Seinfeld. Yet those stories were based somewhat on truth and interviews of real Yankee employees.

For most of the 1980s players did not want to play for Steinbrenner and the Yankees. He could afford them but some big names resisted going to New York because of his reputation.

In the 1980s the New York Mets were New York’s favourite team and not the Yankees.

Under Steinbrenner’s direct hand of tutelage the Yankees were the least popular team, and the second baseball team in New York. The Yankees were the laughingstocks. Steinbrenner made them that.

Over the first twenty years Steinbrenner hired 23 field managers and 10 general managers. He would hire them but rarely let them do their job. His interference created the reasons for him to fire people.

He was suspended twice by baseball, and in one instance banned from baseball for life by Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent, because he paid a gambler named Howard Spira $40000 to find dirt on former Yankee Dave Winfield who was in a legal battle against his ex-team over moneys the Yankees did not pay to his charity.

(This suspension came about 18 months after Steinbrenner received a Presidential pardon for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon in 1973)

The day the lifetime ban was announced, July 30, 1990, it is said that fans in the stands for the Yankees home game that night cheered the decision.

So for the first twenty years Steinbrenner was in many ways considered what was holding the Yankees back from any serious winning. That’s what fans thought and players/managers knew.

Somehow baseball decided to forgive and reinstate Steinbrenner in 1993 and allowed him to be involved in his team again.

However, Steinbrenner actually changed his style to be more relational and less involved in the day to day running of the Yankees. He simply wrote the checks and made the organization stronger financially by building the media empire that now is all part of the big Yankee family.

Not surprisingly that is when the Yankees started winning.

Without the meddling George, the Yankees drafted, and didn’t have to buy, the four star players that are now future Yankee greats playing today.

The Yankee Four are the complete opposite of the talented players from the Steinbrenner heyday. Steinbrenner would have traded away talent like that or hired proven veterans or guys that could step in for big money to be the core of his teams.

It used to be different guys from year to year. During the late 90s and into the 2000s however, the Yankees still brought in free agents but they also had home grown players that stayed.

So though the media fawns when trying to do a piece on a man the day after he passes, and not for me to diminish Steinbrenner’s impact on New York and the economics of sports in big markets, but Steinbrenner did his best work for the Yankees when he did nothing, as an owner should.