George Steinbrenner VIII, the Yanks' principal owner, sought Little League Championships as singlemindedly as World Series Championships and, as a child, sources say, was as ruthless in his pursuits as he's been as an adult.

Steinbrenner, at age 8, bought his first Little League team for a small sum saved from his allowances, and immediately assembled the most talented roster the Little League had ever seen. Steinbrenner lured a young Bob Feller and Warren Spahn to anchor his pitching staff; soon after, he added Rocky Colavito, Joe DiMaggio, and a reserved 2nd grader, Roger Maris. The following year he coaxed a 9-year old Stan Musial to join the emerging juggernaut.

It is believed that Steinbrenner first met Don Zimmer in the third grade, at which time Zimmer was just discovering his own pitching talent, and already chewing wads of tobacco. Steinbrenner made Zimmer his "closer," a now-familiar baseball term and a concept, sources say, that Steinbrenner conceived.

Zimmer even then, old friends say, was a fat boy with a pot-belly who liked to chew boluses and spit a lot.

Steinbrenner apparently honed his controlling management style before he hit the fourth grade, establishing a Little League "farm system" that somewhat lesser talented players competed to enter.

Sources say that Steinbrenner thought nothing of raiding other teams' talent and enticing them his way. In such a fashion he convinced a raw but prodigiously gifted outfielder, Hank Aaron, to play catcher, even though Aaron was already playing right field for a team in the Negro Little Leagues, and later would distinguish himself as the greatest right fielder in baseball history.

"He was just as much an asshole back then as he is today," said an old friend, Jimmy Goldenberger, whom Steinbrenner made his Little League General Manager. "I was the putative GM, but George hovered over me and called the shots. You couldn't disagree with him. And you didn't."