How exactly did Seinfeld's George Costanza wind up having calzones for lunch with the Larry David-voiced George Steinbrenner?

In an excerpt from his new book, The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the New York Yankees, Peter Botte of the New York Post gives the inside story -- straight from David.

Explaining that he needed to find a job for George -- who had been unemployed on the show the previous season -- Seinfeld dipped into his own Yankees fandom to come up with one.

"I was thinking, 'What's a cool job for George? What job would I want to have? Well, I always wanted to work for the Yankees," David told Botte. "So I said one day, 'Maybe he can work for the Yankees.' And that was it. You know, we didn't put as much thought into these things as people think. Everything was just a whim generally."

While with the Yankees -- first as the Assistant to the Traveling Secretary -- Costanza became close to Steinbrenner (who once thought he was dead in a ditch), changed the Yankees' uniforms, spearheaded a failed fitted cap giveaway at the ballpark, hung out with his Astros counterparts, and eventually tried to get fired in order to take a job with the Mets -- Jerry Seinfeld's favorite team.

Regarding how David wound up providing the voice of Steinbrenner on the show and how that voice developed...

"I turned him into a bit of a nut," David told Botte. "It was just my sense of what he sounded like. That's what he sounded like to me - that abrupt, staccato style he had. You know he would talk very quickly and very emphatically about things, just going on and on about different topics in different directions, kind of all over the place. I did my version of it for what we should be looking for, and Jerry said to me, 'You know, you should just do it. It's perfect.'"

THOMPSON: 5 most underappreciated Yankees of the last 20 years >> Read More

MARTINO'S MAILBAG: Will Yanks re-sign Paxton, LeMahieu, and Tanaka? >> Read More

Popular in the Community