STEINBRENNER! the Play Gets Reading at The Roundabout

Looks like The Roundabout Theatre Company is looking to 'play ball!' following a reading last week of a new play titled STEINBRENNER!, adapted from sportswriter Bill Madden's 2010 book, "Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball," according to the New York Post's Michael Riedel.

Madden co-wrote the play along with fellow sportswriter Ira Berkow which tells the story of legendary New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Funnyman Richard Kind read the part of Steinbrenner and according to Berkow, he was "terrific."

Also participating in the reading was Spider-man star Patrick Page, who played Billy Martin, Daniel Davis as Steinbrenner's father, Henry; his friend theater producer Jimmy Nederlander, and Fay Vincent, the commissioner of Major League Baseball. Randal Myler directed.

Berkow shared that he's been using Robert Caro's biography of LynDon Johnson as his inspiration for the play. "I've been reading the books, and on one page you can't stand Johnson and on the next page you admire him," he says. "Steinbrenner was like that. He could be batty and he could be brilliant. He fired a lot of people, but he always kept them on the payroll."

While the play begins with a scene depicting the rocky relationship between Steinbrenner and his father, the majority of the story takes place from 1973, the year Steinbrenner purchased the franchise, until his death in 2010. Featured in the play are the infamous fights between Steinbrenner and Martin as well as references to the team owner's illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon, which led to a two-year suspension from baseball.

In one dramatic scene in "Steinbrenner!," he arrives early to Yankee Stadium when no one is around and takes his turn at the organ. Explains Berkow, "His father made him take lessons, and whenever he was depressed, he would go and play the organ."

The story concludes with Steinbrenner's final years in which he suffered from Alzheimer's and disappeared from the public eye. He ultimately died of a heart attack in Tampa, Fla., in 2010.

"For a columnist, Steinbrenner was a lot of fun," says Berkow. "He would say outrageous things. I once had Freud psychoanalyze him in a column. Steinbrenner sent me a note saying, 'We'll never exchange Christmas gifts, but that was a good column.'

He adds, "And when he was suspended from baseball, I went to a psychiatrist, laid down on the couch and said, 'I Miss George Steinbrenner!' "

The play is not Berkow's first foray into theater. He penned a musical titled "Daley to Daley" about Chicago's Daley family, and a play, "The Shakespeare of the Press Box," about sports writer REd Smith.