George Steinbrenner
The famously volatile owner of the New York Yankees, Steinbrenner had been the terror of rivals and underlings for over three decades. He passed away in 2010.
After graduating from Williams and serving in the Air Force, shipbuilding heir Steinbrenner tried his hand at coaching football, first at Northwestern and later at Purdue. When that didn't work out, he joined the family business, Kinsman Shipping, and later took over the company. But his abiding passion for sports led him back soon enough. After a few false starts, in 1973 he organized a group to buy the then-ailing Yankees from CBS for bargain-basement price of $10 million. Intense, demanding, combative, temperamental, and, in his own way, brilliant, Steinbrenner has seen the Yankees earn seven World Series titles over the course of his three decades as owner. He was the first team owner to sell TV cable rights, and he was one of the first to negotiate endorsement deals with blue-chip advertisers, too. Of course, he'll also go down as one of the most difficult sports teams owners to work with in history: During his career, he's fired dozens of managers and general managers, lashed out at members of the media who dared criticize him, and caused an untold number of people to seek treatment for high blood pressure. After years of speculation when Steinbrenner would call it quits, he passed away the year after the new Yankees Stadium was built, in 2010. [Image via Getty]