Golenbock To Write Steinbrenner Biography

Celebrated baseball writer Peter Golenbock, author of Dynasty: The New York Yankees 1949-64, has signed a contract with John Wiley & Sons to write a biography of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, it was announced today. The book will be called The Boss, and it is scheduled for publication in spring 2009.

Unclear whether Mr. Steinbrenner will cooperate with the project, or whether Mr. Golenbock, who currently resides in Florida, will relocate to New York to do his research.

One wonders, also, whether Mr. Golenbock's controversial 2007 novel 7, in which he portrayed Mickey Mantle as something of a sex-crazed boozehound, will make it harder for him to get access to the famously cagey Yankees.

Mr. Golenbock’s literary agent, Paul Fedorko of the Trident Media Group, said the book is still in its very early stages, and that Mr. Golenbock has not yet reached out to Mr. Steinbrenner or any other officials in the Yankees organization. “Peter’s been working on this stuff for a while,” he said. “A lot of what he has now is Yankees stuff. We’re hoping it’ll become Steinbrenner stuff.”

Mr. Golenbock did not respond to a request for comment. Hana Lane, his editor at Wiley, referred all questions to Mr. Fedorko, noting that it is still “very early in the book’s development.”