George Steinbrenner’s 35-year reign as owner of the most-celebrated team in professional sports officially came to an end Thursday, when he handed over keys to the New York Yankees to his son Hal.

There are many ways that Steinbrenner’s stewardship of the Yankees can be scrutinized and dissected, ranging from on-field success that included six World Series triumphs; to his tempestuous relationship with his field managers (notably Billy Martin); to exponentially increasing the financial stakes in the game; to his outspoken, controversial, meddlesome style; to his obsession with making the Yankees franchise the best in the business—no matter what the cost. He earned the grudging respect of his fellow owners, and contempt of fans in the process.

We’ll take a look at Steinbrenner’s impact on the game from the viewpoint of the baseball draft since he took control of the Yankees back in 1973. Though owners rarely involve themselves with something as innocuous as the draft or have anything more than a passing interest in their team’s year-by-year selections, Steinbrenner had a profound impact on how his team drafted. In fact, a case can be made that the Yankees extracted less talent out of the draft over the last 35 years than any of the 24 major league clubs that participated in Steinbrenner’s first draft.

We’ll call it the Curse of Brien Taylor.

Aside from shortstop Derek Jeter, their first-round pick in 1992, the Yankees have not signed and developed another player in the first 10 rounds that made an impact in New York in Steinbrenner’s entire 35-year reign. Fred McGriff, the Yankees’ ninth-round pick in 1981, might have qualified as he went on to hit 493 home runs in a 19-year big-league career, but none of those homers came as a Yankee.

Steinbrenner’s pursuit of high-priced free agents at the expense of player development, and his fixation for drafting football players caused the Yankees to forfeit or squander numerous premium draft selections through the years. Since draft picks were first offered as compensation in 1978 to clubs that lost top free agents, the Yankees have routinely surrendered first-, second- and third-round picks. In fact, in the 11-year period from 1979-89, they gave up their top pick a staggering 10 times.

Steinbrenner, who served as an assistant football coach at Northwestern and Purdue in the mid-50s, also orchestrated the drafting of numerous players destined for promising football careers.

From 1980-82, the Yankees first or second draft picks included Billy Cannon Jr. (third round, 1980), John Elway (second round, 1981) and Bo Jackson (second round, 1982). His return was a half-season from Elway in the short-season Class A New York-Penn League. At least you couldn’t fault Steinbrenner’s eye for talent—football talent, that is—as all three players went on to become first-round picks in the NFL draft.

Though his pursuit of football talent waned in future drafts, Steinbrenner’s Yankees still drafted and signed Deion Sanders (1988) and Drew Henson (1998) to big bonuses. The team also unsuccessfully pursued several other football players of note who went on to have productive college or NFL careers. With the possible exception of Sanders, none panned out as baseball players.

The Yankees have drafted so poorly that in the 16 years since signing Jeter with the sixth overall pick in 1992, they have gotten almost no production from their top draft picks. In fact, the only two such draft picks to actually play for the Yankees are 2004 first-rounder Philip Hughes and 2006 first-rounder Ian Kennedy. They combined for six wins in their big league debuts in 2007, but didn’t win a single game between them in 2008.

Of the 16 picks, only six have even reached the big leagues—and at that, outfielder Brian Buchanan (1994), lefthander Eric Milton (1996), outfielder Tyrell Godwin (1997) and outfielder John-Ford Griffin (2001) made it with other clubs.

Not every prominent Yankees draft pick in the Steinbrenner era has been a bust, though, as they’ve gotten significant mileage out of first baseman Don Mattingly (a 17th-rounder in 1979), and lefthander Andy Pettitte and catcher Jorge Posada, who not only were drafted in 1990, but were selected two picks apart in the 22nd and 24th rounds as draft-and-follow selections. They both signed in 1991.

But that’s pretty much the extent of the direct value that the Yankees have gotten from the draft in the Steinbrenner era—although righthander Joba Chamberlain, drafted in 2006, could emerge as a premium draft in time.

Most of the talent the Yankees have secured in Steinbrenner’s reign has come from shelling out big bucks for free agents like Roger Clemens, Reggie Jackson, Alex Rodriguez and Dave Winfield (all former first-rounders signed by other clubs) and tapping into the foreign market to sign players like Hideki Matsui (Japan), Mariano Rivera (Panama) and Bernie Williams (Puerto Rico).

The Yankees have had their share of futile drafts through the years, but nothing may quite compare to 1980, when they forfeited their first two picks and signed only one player in the first six rounds (fifth-rounder Brent Gjesdal), and 1983, when they foreifted their first three selections and inked only one player in the first seven rounds (fourth-rounder Mitch Lyden).

Even when the Yankees managed to identify and then draft legitimate talent in the early rounds, they often refused to reach into their deep pockets to sign them as they seemed to routinely do for high-profile free agents, even busts like Ed Whitson and Steve Kemp, whose signings in both instances cost them first-round picks.

Among top prospects the Yankees drafted in the early rounds and neglected to sign were New York high school product B.J. Surhoff, who rejected a fifth-round offer from the Yankees in 1982 only to become the first overall pick in the 1985 draft, and righthander Mark Prior, a Yankees supplemental first-rounder in 1998 who went on to become the second overall pick in 2001.

To be fair, the Yankees have still had their moments in the draft. Even when they had no picks in the first three rounds in 1988, they did manage to draft 15 players who eventually played in the big leagues—though none was more prominent than Sanders, a 30th-rounder who awkwardly juggled a football and baseball career over the next several years. In 1990, the Yankees drafted 16 future big leaguers, including Pettitte and Posada.

But just a year later, the Yankees drafted a player that may have defined their checkered draft history. Having fallen to the bottom of the American League standings in 1990 because of their draft and free-agent failings in the ‘80s, the Yankees selected lefthander Brien Taylor with the top pick in the 1991 draft.

They signed the North Carolina high school product to a then record-shattering bonus of $1.55 million, much to the chagrin of other teams as it was more than double the amount paid to any previous draft pick. To the Yankees misforture—yet symbolic of the team’s fortunes in the draft—Taylor’s promising career was derailed in the minor leagues when his prized left shoulder was permanently injured in an off-field brawl.

With Taylor as the obvious No. 1 choice, here’s our spin on 10 Yankees draft picks in the Steinbrenner era that have come to symbolize his penchant for bombast, for raising the bar through reckless spending, for focusing on the present at the expense of the future, for looking out for his own team’s best interests often at the expense of his fellow owners and even the best interests of the game.