Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, is battling to preserve one shining piece of sports memorabilia in the family as his life is being dismantled to satisfy a $148 million defamation verdict: the Yankees World Series rings that the team’s late owner, George Steinbrenner, gave him.
Giuliani has been a lifelong supporter of the Bronx Bombers and believes that his son Andrew should have the rings, which are adorned giants that honor the team’s four titles in five years during his tenure as mayor.
Ahead of two significant court appearances, Giuliani testified under oath this week, characterizing the 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000 World Series rings as a sort of Yankees good-luck charm and family heritage.
For “a special Yankee occasion,” like as the team’s most recent World Series victory in 2009, he recalled that he and Andrew would each put one on.
Giuliani said that he informed the owner, “These are for Andrew,” and demanded payment when Steinbrenner gave him the rings in 2002. He claimed that after that, he asked his son, who was a teenager at the time, to retain the others for himself.
Giuliani claimed that he gave the remainder to Andrew at a birthday celebration in 2018 after seeing he wasn’t wearing them as much as the Yankees’ fortunes declined. He calculated that the rings, which were identical to those given to the players, were valued at roughly $27,000.
“They are now yours,” Giuliani recalled saying. “These are your rings. I don’t know what I’m keeping them for. They belong to you.”
The ex-mayor took his swings at a Dec. 27 deposition, a week before the start of a courtroom doubleheader in a tug-of-war over assets sought by the two former Georgia election workers who sued him over his lies about them in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss. A transcript was posted to the court docket on Monday.
Up first is Giuliani’s contempt hearing in Manhattan federal court Friday over what lawyers for the Georgia women say was his failure to turn over property in a timely fashion, such as his New York City apartment lease.
Then, on Jan. 16, Judge Lewis J. Liman will hear a trial to decide what happens not just to Giuliani’s World Series rings but also his condominium in Palm Beach, Florida. Giuliani argues the condo, believed to be worth more than $3 million, is his principal house and should be excluded.
It’s the legal equivalent of Giuliani, who was hailed as “America’s Mayor” for his leadership after 9/11, losing in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Giuliani has allegedly engaged in a “consistent pattern of willful defiance” of court orders to turn over items, according to the attorneys representing the former election workers, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman, mother and daughter.
Attorney Aaron Nathan claimed in a document on Monday that Giuliani’s compliance has been inconsistent, pointing out that even though he eventually turned over a Mercedes that had belonged to actress Lauren Bacall, he neglected to produce the title of the car.
Nathan stated, “Giuliani now claims without explanation that 18 watches he turned over to Freeman and Moss are all he has, after listing 26 watches in a bankruptcy filing.” He went on to say that Giuliani also says he has no idea where a garment signed by Yankees great Joe DiMaggio or a picture signed by Reggie Jackson are.
Freeman and Moss asked the judge in August to award them the World Series rings, but the judge demurred and scheduled a trial after Andrew Giuliani, now 38, said they belong to him.
Giuliani’s eight hours of deposition testimony offered a vivid portrait of a still-proud, combative and downtrodden man who has lost almost everything and remains convinced that it has been unjustly taken.
Recalling his days as a two-term Republican mayor, he boasted that he “cured” homelessness in the city while acknowledging that he is now rejected by most clubs he would like to join, except for two.
Questioned by Nathan, he spoke at length about the rings, his ties to Trump and the Yankees, and his dismay over his once-beloved Big Apple’s liberal politics — a factor he said drove him to relocate to Florida and register to vote there last May.
“Frankly, I wanted my vote to count,” Giuliani testified.
Asked why it was important to him to cast a vote for president, Giuliani replied: “Because I am a very, very strong supporter of Donald Trump, which is the reason why you are doing all of this to me.”
Before Trump, it was the Yankees. Giuliani, who saw them win 10 titles during his childhood and college years, regularly cheered the team as mayor, often sitting next to the dugout.
“I was a very ardent Yankee fan,” he testified. “When I was the mayor, I was described as New York’s No. 1 Yankee fan.”
After the team triumphed in 1996 to snap a 15-year drought, Steinbrenner thought “New York’s No. 1 Yankee fan” deserved a World Series ring — but Giuliani wasn’t having it.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate that a mayor get a ring,” Giuliani testified.
By the time he left office in 2002, the Yankees had three more championships.
At spring training that year in Tampa, Florida, Steinbrenner presented him with a plaque and three World Series rings, Giuliani testified, each engraved with his name.
“I was very touched and moved by that,” he said.
The Yankees also gave him the 1996 ring that he turned down, he said. He recalled showing all four rings to his son and telling him: “These are going to be yours.”
Each ring was bigger and more extravagant than the last, Giuliani testified, so much so that “you’d look crazy wearing it.”
Giuliani lamented that his rings didn’t bring the Yankees more success, noting their 2003 World Series loss to the Marlins and 2004 playoff collapse against the hated Red Sox.
“I stopped wearing them after the Yankees stopped winning because it was no longer working,” he said. “And then I wasn’t using them anymore.”
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