“I’m not trying to beat him,” he said of his father as he sat in the conference room. “I’m not trying to be better than he was, because he was absolutely great at what he did. I can only be what I am, and the things I think are important, I will pursue.”

It was never easy being a son of George Steinbrenner, despite the obvious material benefits. Hal Steinbrenner has spent half his life working for the Yankees, a sometimes hazardous and often stressful occupation for anyone working for his father, but even more so for him.

“They took their share enough that they thought I didn’t get any worse,” Steinbrenner said of his colleagues. “But I did. The one thing I joke about is that we could have a horrible, horrible day at work here with him, but the one thing they don’t have to deal with is he doesn’t show up at their house to play with their kids that night. We would get home and I’d be like, ‘I love him to death and my kids love him, but not tonight.’ It’s definitely different what I went through than what they did.”

Which is where the flying came in. Ever since he was a child, Hal Steinbrenner loved just about everything connected to aviation. He would construct model airplanes of World War II vintage, or make replicas of more modern aircraft like the F-14 Tomcat, his favorite plane. The test pilot Chuck Yeager was his hero, and “The Right Stuff” was one of his favorite movies.

In 2001, he was living on Davis Islands in Tampa when he began taking flying lessons. He learned on a Cessna 172 and now flies a 182, a four-seater with a range of about 800 miles. But Steinbrenner does not use the plane for travel. It is a way for him to relax and escape.

He likes that his cellphone does not work at 5,000 feet. Similarly, when he first learned to fly, he relished the fact that his father would never go up with him, that it was the perfect escape from all that bluster and thunder.

“I’m sure others felt that way, too,” he said with a laugh. “They just can’t fly. They ran. He was a tough boss, no doubt about it.”