Yankee Boss George Steinbrenner suffered another health scare when he collapsed Sunday while watching his granddaughter perform in a college play in North Carolina and was rushed to a hospital, it was disclosed yesterday.
“He was pale, and his eyes were closed – it looked like he had fainted,” witness Emily Riehl, who was two rows behind Steinbrenner, told the school newspaper at University of North Carolina.
What exactly happened to the 76-year-old baseball baron was unclear – but his spokesman said he was “examined head to toe” by doctors and is now “OK.”
“George Steinbrenner is well and raising hell,” Howard Rubenstein said yesterday. “George is just fine.”
And though a report from North Carolina said that whoever called 911 said Steinbrenner was suffering chest pains, Rubenstein downplayed any chance of cardiac distress.
“I asked him about pain in his heart and he said, ‘No heart pain whatsoever,’ ” Rubenstein said.
This latest medical emergency for the Boss comes nearly three years after he suffered a pair of highly publicized problems in 2003.
They included missing Game 3 of that year’s World Series due to illness and collapsing during a memorial service for football great Otto Graham in Sarasota, Fla., in December of that year.
This year Steinbrenner suffered a new series of health woes. On July 1, he stumbled on the stairs outside Yankee Stadium, and in August, during groundbreaking for the new stadium, he slumped over and had to be steadied by Bombers broadcaster John Sterling.
The Boss’ most recent trouble happened at around 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the Playmakers Theatre in Chapel Hill, where his granddaughter Haley Swindal was performing in “Cabaret.”
The Boss’ daughter was playing the starring role of Sally Bowles, which was made famous by Liza Minnelli in the 1972 movie version of the musical.
Witnesses said that Steinbrenner passed out at the performance’s first intermission – causing quite a commotion.
“I didn’t notice anything until intermission when people started going up to him,” Riehl told the Daily Tar Heel. “I didn’t know what was happening, and then I saw him and I froze in my seat.”
Paramedics were dispatched after someone called the school Department of Public Safety and said a man was having chest pains, the Tar Heel said.
Rubenstein said that the Yankees’ principal owner was overcome by the stuffy atmosphere in the college theater.
“George felt ill during the performance, which was held in a Revolutionary War [era] auditorium with no air conditioning and the windows closed tightly. It was very hot,” Rubenstein said.
Danny Coles, assistant music director for the production, told the Tar Heel that the heat in the theater had been on in the morning, but had been turned off shortly before the show.
Once the medics arrived, Steinbrenner was “conscious, alert and breathing,” the Tar Heel reported.
“An ambulance was called and it took George to the hospital where he was examined head to toe. George stayed overnight . . . and was released on Monday morning, at which time he flew home and was back working in Tampa Monday afternoon,” the paper said.
In a written statement, Steinbrenner said, “I was disappointed that I couldn’t watch Haley’s full performance on Sunday.”
The ruckus forced the play’s producers to cancel the performance and give refunds.
With Post Wire Services