Ralph Houk was the first to see the imminent danger of working for the Yankees under George Steinbrenner. His first clue came on opening day at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees’ first home game with Steinbrenner as principal owner.

During the pre-game introductions, as the Yankees’ players lined up along the first base line, Steinbrenner took an envelope from his jacket pocket and jotted down about half a dozen uniform numbers. After the game he handed Houk the envelope and told the manager to tell those players to get their hair cut.

This was nothing Houk had ever experienced in his many years in baseball, and that was only the beginning. More such nonsense would follow, and Houk, the veteran baseball man, resigned on the last day of the season.

Most other managers who left Steinbrenner’s employ would not leave voluntarily. The owner became infamous for firing them. He also recycled them and fired them again. He fired general managers, too.

Steinbrenner was a tough man to work for, whether the employee was a secretary or the club president.

Al Rosen, who was the Yankees’ president in the latter 1970s, told of the vacation he took one winter to a Caribbean island during which he was besieged by telephone calls from Steinbrenner.

“There was one telephone on the island, and George found the number,” Rosen related. After several annoying calls, Rosen abandoned his vacation and went home. “I figured if I was going to have to spend my vacation on the phone with George,” Rosen said, “I might as well not be on vacation.”

Steinbrenner died of a heart attack on Tuesday only nine days after his 80th birthday. His reign of terror, however, had ended several years earlier when a series of stroke-like episodes reduced his ability to function physically and mentally.

Steinbrenner was a man of conflicting personalities. Though he treated his employees brutally, believing that was the way to get the most out of them – “creative tension,” the system is called – Steinbrenner was a benefactor of many young men and women of college age and also made generous contributions to colleges.

To people, especially women, who did not work for him, Steinbrenner could be charming.

But there was the secretary who brought the owner a document he had requested as he met with several reporters in his office. Seeing that it was the wrong document, Steinbrenner harshly barked at the secretary, “Just get what I want.”

I observed that incident and others, but I did not have first-hand knowledge of his generosity to college students because he performed those acts quietly.

I covered Steinbrenner from the day in 1973, Jan. 3, that he was announced as the Yankees’ new owner. No one else who was there that day continues to write about baseball actively.

It has been a well told tale, but on that first day Steinbrenner said he would not “be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all.” He would be too busy running his American Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland. “I’ll stick to building ships,” he said.

That intention lasted about 5 minutes, probably until he discovered that Michael Burke, the team president, was placing a fresh flower on every secretary’s desk each day.

I had an often stormy relationship with Steinbrenner. In his very first season something I wrote angered him and he threatened to bar me from the Yankees’ clubhouse. However, the team’s excellent public relations man, Bob Fishel (who like Houk would also exit early), explained to Steinbrenner that he didn’t have to talk to me, but he couldn’t keep me out of the clubhouse.

Later in his career Steinbrenner again was upset with something I wrote and this time told me to “save my nickel.” That was his way of telling me not to bother calling him (pay phones once cost 5 cents) because he wasn’t talking to me.

But shortly afterward the Yankees were in Kansas City and had an unusual meeting at their hotel the afternoon of one of the games. Steinbrenner attended the meeting, and when he emerged I approached him to ask a question. He not only answered that question but several others as well, and it didn’t even cost me a nickel.

Calling Steinbrenner, which was a frequent requirement of the job, could be an adventure. When he would call back, he would not identify himself. He would just start speaking.

My favorite callback story was the day the owner returned calls to reporters throughout the day, but in calls earlier in the day he advised reporters that his comments were not to be attributed to him but made no such stipulation later in the day.

Thus, in the next day’s newspapers some of them had comments from a high-ranking Yankees’ executive and others had the exact same comments from Steinbrenner.

Steinbrenner played New York’s tabloids against each other. If one of the tabloids ran a story that Steinbrenner wanted in the paper, he would reward the reporter by leaking an exclusive story to him. If a paper declined to run a story Steinbrenner wanted in the paper, he would respond by giving a story to the other tabloid.

His game most often wound up working in his favor. The tabloids usually did his bidding.

Sometimes Steinbrenner tried to avoid reporters. Bud Selig enjoys telling about the day the Yankees were playing the Brewers in Milwaukee and Steinbrenner was sitting in Selig’s glass-enclosed box on the press level.

Mickey Morabito, the Yankees’ public relations director, came into the box, Selig related, and told Steinbrenner the reporters were asking to see him.

“Tell them I’m not here,” said the owner, who was sitting in full view of them.

Steinbrenner was the subject of my three favorite comments that I have reported in my career.

In 1978 Billy Martin said of Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson, “The two of them deserve each other. One’s a born liar; the other’s convicted.”

In 1979 John McMullen, who became owner of the Houston Astros after being a limited partner of Steinbrenner, said, “There’s nothing more limited than a limited partner in the Yankees.”

In 2002, after the Yankees beat Boston to Jose Contreras, a Cuban defector, Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox president, remarked, “The evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America.”

Steinbrenner has received credit for returning the Yankees to baseball prominence, and he deserves a lot of that credit but not all of it. His willingness to spend money to win was critical, of course. But the Yankees went from 1981 to 1995 without reaching the post-season. Steinbrenner made a lot of mistakes in the ‘80s, particularly overreaching on free agents.

But after Commissioner Fay Vincent suspended Steinbrenner in 1990, general manager Gene Michael assumed command of the baseball operation and changed its culture.

Steinbrenner always traded good young prospects for questionable veterans, but Michael kept the youngsters and let them develop. The result: Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada. When Steinbrenner returned in 1993, he saw that Michael’s way worked. World Series championships soon followed.

Despite the difficulty of our relationship, I had hoped to have a last conversation with Steinbrenner. Until his problems in recent years, he had never forgotten that I tracked him down during Thanksgiving dinner in 1976. Earlier in the day I heard that the Yankees were close to signing Reggie Jackson, and I needed to try to confirm it with Steinbrenner.

I couldn’t reach him anywhere, but I learned that he was visiting his son Hank at Culver Military Academy, and calls to the school led to the school’s restaurant or cafeteria known as the Shack. When I called the Shack, I asked for Steinbrenner. When he got on the phone a minute or two later, he was stunned to hear who was on the other end.

“How in the heck did you find me?” he blurted, completely shocked.

I would like to have been able to recall that telephone call and other moments with George, but either he or his aides never allowed the meeting. One day I was at Yankee Stadium and was told he was there and would meet with me, but the game went by and the call never came. Now it never will.