FOR one surreal second, no one knew what to do. No one knew what to say. The first lesson they teach you in New York Sportswriting 101 is this: “When The Boss is in the vicinity, drop what you’re doing at once.” George Steinbrenner had just rolled his golf cart past the lunch room at Legends Field. He was headed for the elevator.

Therefore, so were we.

These sessions rarely bear any real fruit anymore, of course. We’ll throw some questions at The Boss. He’ll throw a few answers back. Harmless stuff. Except every once in a while, The Boss will have something on his mind. And when that happens, it’s like throwing food at the dolphins at Sea World. You’d better bring a helmet.

This time, the subject happened to be Arn Tellem, an agent for whom The Boss has little regard. And this is what George Steinbrenner said on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 26, 2005: “[Bleep] the agent.”

Three words, one of which would need to be seriously reinterpreted in order to land in a family newspaper. There are few people in the United States for whom these three words would inspire the massive journalistic triage area that followed. The president. The vice president. Maybe the odd religious leader. And George Steinbrenner.

Because in that splendid moment, The Boss was back. He was blustery. He was defiant. He didn’t back off the words, not a bit, he went and ripped Tellem good, then ripped him some more, then ripped him a little extra, just in case anyone’s pen had run out of ink.

The writers who cover Steinbrenner now are mostly a younger crowd, mostly under 40, and hardly any of the regulars were around in the old days when this was as common a sight around the Yankees as Joe DiMaggio’s two-handed wave. This was like getting a live-action taste of the Classic Sports Network.

What we know now, of course, is that it was a one-shot deal, like Nicklaus winning the Masters at 46, like Elvis’ big NBC comeback show. The Steinbrenner of today is less inclined to act as the proprietor of the back page, more apt to play the role of kindly grandfather.

He gets emotional a lot. He issues a lot of press releases. And last year, on the night the Red Sox walked into Yankee Stadium and won Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, Steinbrenner ordered his underlings to keep the lights on for the celebrating Red Sox fans who’d taken over the stadium’s lower bowl. “They’ve earned it,” he said.

To appreciate just how shocking that is, you must remember what Steinbrenner has been across his 32 years as one of New York’s best characters. In some ways, it is an appropriate denouement, bookending the infamous nugget he offered on Jan. 3, 1973, the day he bought the Yankees: “I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all. I’ve got enough headaches with my shipping company.”

Yep. Full circle.

And, man, what a circle.

When Steinbrenner celebrates his 75th birthday on July 4, he can do it knowing that no matter what else the future holds for him, he has crafted one of the great New York lives, one of the signature New York stories. Which isn’t so bad for a guy who entered the world in a place called Rocky River, Ohio. New York stories aren’t always born in New York, after all. They just explode here. And few have exploded more colorfully, more colossally, more combustibly, more completely, than the story of George M. Steinbrenner III.

“I look at what my friend George Steinbrenner has done with the Yankees, and I’ve always said, ‘That’s how it should be done,'” Al Davis told me a few years ago. “Don’t accept secondbest from anyone. Don’t settle for excuses. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. Go out and seize the damned day. I learned that from George.”

Davis, the man who built the Oakland Raiders, in many ways has been to football almost everything Steinbrenner has been to baseball, right down to their shared birthday of July 4 (Davis is one year older). They need several warehouses to count up the enemies they’ve made along the way. But they also need serious storage space to house the championships they’ve collected along the way, too.

“I used to say Al was the only man I knew who hated losing more than I did,” Steinbrenner said. “But then I thought about it, and came to my senses. Because nobody hates losing more than I do.”

That single-minded devotion to victory has informed and emblazoned everything Steinbrenner has done since he first put together the limited partnership that bought the Yankees for $10 million in the winter of ’73, when the Yankees were stuck in a terrible nuclear winter of their own, a dynasty in serious decline. Steinbrenner himself had said that first day: “I think this is the best bargain in sports,” and he had no idea how right he was.

Along the way, he has terrorized more than his share of employees, from secretaries to PR men, from general managers to limited partners. He’s infuriated more than a few of his players, and once actually paid 40 grand to a sad little con man named Howie Spira to try to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield, a lunatic move that bought him a second suspension from baseball in 1990.

Steinbrenner never apologized for any of that. It never occurred to him. He was stubborn, and he was stormy, and he could be as unfeeling and as cold as any of the three worst bosses you’ve ever worked for combined. He once made an enemy of Yogi Berra, and may well be the first man to ever do that.

He hired Billy Martin. And fired him. And hired him. And fired him. And hired him. And fired him. And hired him. And fired him. And hired him. And fired him.

Yankees fans once spit at the mere thought of his name. But those same fans have always understood that Steinbrenner cared about winning every bit as much as they did.

You don’t always get that in sports, don’t always get that from owners. He wanted to win and didn’t care how many people that ticked off in Kansas City or Pittsburgh or Minneapolis. He could have used the Yankees to fatten his own bottom line. Almost always, he reinvested in the team instead.

When free agency was in its infancy, he understood what that meant and made sure he got the best of the first bunch: Reggie Jackson. He was the first to realize that even the small fortune Madison Square Garden had once bestowed on him was tip money compared to what he could do with his own network. So he blazed that path, too.

His mistakes have sometimes been just as luminous, and as ominous, as his successes. But he always came back for more. He always came back just as loud. And he never minded getting his hands bloody. Not so much anymore, perhaps, which made that February morning so extraordinary, and nostalgic.

His was a life lived not only well, but deafeningly. After 75 years, he’s left his mark on the one city that always keeps score. That’s not a terrible legacy to have.

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THE BOSS TIMELINE

* July 4, 1930: George M. born in Rocky River, Ohio to Rita and Henry Steinbrenner

* 1952: Graduates from Williams College in Mass., moves on to 2-year stint in Air Force.

* May 12, 1956: Marries Joan Zieg. They go on to have 4 kids (2 boys and 2 girls) and 12 grandchildren.

* 1957: Returns home to help with family shipping business after stints as assistant football coach at Northwestern and Purdue.

* 1960: Buys the Cleveland Pipers, an American Basketball League team for $125,000.

* Jan. 3, 1973: A limited partnership headed by Steinbrenner purchases the New York Yankees from CBS for $10 million.