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George Steinbrenner at age 75 doesn't seem to be a whole lot different than, say, George Steinbrenner at 65, or 55, or 45, or for that matter, even George Steinbrenner at 5. Indeed, while the caterer was whipping up his birthday nosh, he was whipping the rest of the Yankee braintrust over the team's latest burst of failure.

But that's why he is the most famous owner ever, with no competition for the crown. He's been doing this for more than 30 years, and hasn't strayed off message since the day after his initial press conference, in which he said he would not be a meddlesome owner.

Part of George Steinbrenner's "genius" is hiring smart, successful people like Joe Torre.

Hey, one off day out of almost 12,000 – if that isn't consistency in the Northern European tradition, nothing is.

Then again, this is how he redefined the owner concept in Sporting America, putting the guy in the suit in front of the guy with the uniform.

Until he showed up, you could count on two fingers the baseball owners who blotted out their teams' suns – Bill Veeck and Connie Mack. Veeck, because he was far more entertaining than most of his teams, and Mack, because he managed as well as owned, and most of the teams he managed were not worth watching all that much.

In football, there was Paul Brown and then Al Davis. Carroll Rosenbloom, if you wanted to stretch the definition. Basketball and hockey … not a peep.

That, though, was about it. Most owners figured making the money was attention enough, and did their preening when squeezing an extra nickel out of an employee's hands.

Steinbrenner, though, became the heart, lungs and spleen of the Yankees, and he vented all of them in equal measure.

In doing so, he made the world safe for your Mark Cubans and Dan Snyders, Arte Morenos and Marge Schotts, your Bob Krafts and Dan Gilberts. Some of them have their hearts in the right places, some have Nazi regalia in the front hall table, some just wanted to be the emperor. But they all liked the attention, and they liked using the leverage that attention got them.

The result is we now include as a key component of our sporting experience the quality of the owner. Does he or she have enough money? (Yes, they all do.) Will he or she spend it? (Some will, more won't.) Will he or she let someone else do the idea work? (A few will, most won't.) Can the team win with this yahoo in charge? (Hey, you know better than we do.)

And if it doesn't happen, well, the owner can only delegate so much blame before the talk-show hyenas start howling at the gates.

All because Steinbrenner reinvented the powerful owner into the uber-powerful owner. He combined a capacious wallet with a rapacious vision and a domineering personality to swallow up the Yankees in his own caricatured image. Everything ran through him, and nothing escaped his attention without extraordinary care. He was the original "Fear Factor," without the necessity for bug-eating.

And he still is. If he is slowing down, nobody is calling him on it. If he has ceased to scare the players, nobody is talking particularly tough. And if there is a Yankee who generates more visceral reaction, he has had the great good sense not to do it while George is looking.

Nobody else can say that. Malcolm Glazer can't say it, even though he is already Public Enemy No. 1 in Manchester United annals. Bud Selig can't say it, and couldn't even say it when he was both the commissioner and the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. There is, in fact, a raft full of unpopular owners who have chosen to stay out of public view rather than catch the grief Steinbrenner attracts as the price of doing imperial business.

Thus, he stands alone, at three score and 15, the tallest statue in the park, the longest shadow in the room, the baddest dude in Bad-Dude Heights. In his day, Davis could have matched his best, but unlike Steinbrenner, he is rarely seen in the open any more, deciding apparently that he can run his universe just as well without the public's prying eyes.

Thus, as Steinbrenner turns 75, you will notice only that the turtlenecks have to work a little harder, and the help tries to assert its independence in small, almost imperceptible ways.

Mostly, though, it's still his party, and you'll cry when he tells you. George III not only changed the landscape, he remains the chief gardener. Not a bad gig at 75. Or 65, or 55, or even 5.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com