City Talk with Ken Meyer (Larry Rutman)

0:00Welcome to this edition of City Talk. I think you will enjoy this program as much as I will and also have enjoyed reading a book called American Jews and American Baseball. The author, America's Game. America's Game. I knew I'd get that wrong, but I got the name of the author, right, Larry Rutman? Larry, I'm glad that you still call Baseball America's Game. Well, I think it is America's Game. And, you know, Ken, first of all, I want to thank you for inviting me on and I know how entrenched you have been in the radio industry for so long and how highly you're thought of and I know all about the Massachusetts broadcasters recognizing you and, you know, I was anxious to meet you and I think the listeners should know that I come to you through the Perkins Institute for the Blind over in Watertown and that my wife, Lois and I,

1:01are contributors over there and we know some of the people. It's a wonderful institution when Stephen Rostin was the president. He now was over at the JFK Library. We got to know the people over there and they suggested that I'd enjoy being on a show with you and I'm sure I will. Well, I appreciate that and I hope you feel the same way after we get finished. Now, what inspired you to write this book? Yeah, to what inspired me? Well, it is America's Game. I'll tell you why because I feel that way. Well, first of all, I'm, you know, I'm going to be 87 in February. So I've been I've been around for a while and I think that it certainly was America's Game when I first came to the game back in the 1930s. My father took me to my first game when I was five and a game between the Yankees and the Red Sox and there I was out in in the outfield roped off. There were no bullpins then Ted Williams had not yet arrived and it certainly was America's Game

2:06and you know, I think it is still America's Game even though football draws so many people and interest. I think it's a violent game. I'm not a violent person. I'd like to follow the Patriots but as far as the and Tom Brady's a great player and we have a great coach, there's no question about it. I know Bob Krafties from my town of Brooklyn have interviewed him. But still, as far as baseball is concerned, nobody remembers who took them to their first football game, Ken. Everybody remembers who took them to their first baseball game. And usually it was their father just like in my case. Yep. And mine as well. I remember I went the first minor league game I ever went to. I grew up in Rochester, New York and the Rochester Ball team played Havana back in the days when they had an international league team in Havana, Cuba and I can remember it like it was yesterday. The pitcher for Rochester was a knuckleballer named Lim Love and Gooth.

3:07And like I said, I remember it like it was yesterday and and Bud Selig, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, but Bud Selig says the exact same thing that you did that everybody remembers their first major league ball game, which is I think is a very interesting point. And the second one that I went to was with my father again. And I think that was in in 1940 when Ted Williams was a sophomore. And we were, this is in my memoir that I spoke to about it, my memoir of Fenway Park that I wrote. And we were sitting my father and I was sitting up on the grandstand maybe in the 20th row or something like that. And it was a double header and some guy against the white socks. And some guy came running up the aisle and he said, I'm through with these guys. They're terrible, which a lot of people have done, but they always come back. And he said, do you want my tickets down below? And we, and my father said, yeah. So we went down and we sat in the second row of the box seats. And the second game was tied eight to eight.

4:11And Ted Williams came up and hit a top spin line drive single to right. And Jimmy Fox, the beast came up and whacked one into the screen and deep left center to win the ball game. And then when I got to the University of Massachusetts several years later in 1948, I said, did I really remember that or is that a figment of my imagination? So I went to the stacks and became acquainted with stacks of books and libraries. That was good. And I looked it up. They had old New York times. And sure enough, Fox hits, walk off home run and saying, I said, I remembered it. Yeah, that's great now. And that's Jimmy Fox as well as Hank Greenberg, the gentleman that you write quite extensively about in your book, almost tied and broke Babe Ruth's 60 home run record in 1927. Right. Well, Hank Greenberg was, you know, he's really my favorite. Well, Ted Williams was the guy that it was my hero when I was a kid. But, you know, I'd all Jewish kids knew about Hank,

5:14Greenberg, the ones that go back who were in their 80s now. And I consider that Hank Greenberg really was the greatest Jew of the 20th century because he was so much more than a baseball player. I mean, he, you know, he respected his who he was, even though he wasn't particularly religious after coming from an orthodox family. And he stayed out in his sophomore season. I think it was, didn't play on young Kipper. And so he respected that. He was in Detroit where there was a lot of anti-Semitism at that time from Father Cofflin and also from Henry Ford and also the Nazis were rising at that time. But he was right there to enlist in the service before the war, served four and a half years, then came back and and won the 45 penit for the targets with a grand slam home run of the last day of the season challenged as you say, Babe Ruth's record. He was a handsome guy. He went against the sort of ingrained idea that the Jews are only smart,

6:19but they they're not fit to be athletes. He was six, four handsome. The women loved him and he could hit 58 home runs. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. He was he he was something else. But was it now he went and played part of the end of his career with the pirates. Did that hurt him after having spent so many years with Detroit? Well, I think that he was hurt when they released him because they released him after the 1946 season in which he in the late spirit beat Ted Williams for the home run championship by hitting 44 to Ted's 38. And he had a very good season, but he was 33. And I think they figured that maybe his mobility in the field was challenged. Anyway, they you know, at that time there was no free agency. They released him. But the last season he spent with Pittsburgh, he you know, he had 25 home runs. They built a garden form and left feel like they did for Ted and right field at Fenway Park. But he developed a friendship with

7:21Ralph Kina and he really tutored Ralph Kina who they wanted to send back to the minor leagues. Bing Crosby was one of the owners and of the pirates that particular year because he was striking out a lot and wasn't hitting and Hank went to the front office and he said, I'm you know, leave him here. I'm going to tutor him and he taught him a lot of things at batting practice. He said, Ralph, you don't have to hit it out of the ballpark, you know, a million miles out of the ballpark. He just got to hit it over the fence. Can you believe that from the end of May of that year to the end of the season kind of hit 49 home runs to end up with 51, the beginning of six or seven home run championships and in the national league. But the real thing in my book that I strike that I comment about, I interviewed Ralph Kina. He was a wonderful guy, very gentle, very nice and interviewed him in a delicate test and we lived in Palm Beach and he's he he talked about his

8:23lifetime friendship with Hank Greenberg. They were fast friends from the time of that season until Greenberg died in the in the 1980s. I think Hank was best man at one of his I think kind of was married two or three times and he was the best man at one of his weddings. It's a story of friendship and that's a wonderful story and I think that's a big Jewish value too family and friendship. I loved Kina as a broadcaster. I used to listen to him when he was with the Metz with Lindsay Nelson and Bob Murphy and I thought that was a great tandem, the three of them, but I loved Kina's work. Well, you know, you would because, you know, I heard him broadcast here and there and to sit and talk with him, you know, like I said to him, well Ralph, let me at the end of the interview, we were reading lunch and but I had the recorder run, the digital voice recorder and I said to him, Ralph, how about a few pictures and so he he posed, he's already in his 80s at that time and I said, Ralph, why don't you why don't you strike a pose like you're facing the

9:27picture and he put his hands up over his right shoulder as always holding a bat and I took the picture and that's the one that appears in the book. And you know, you see this book is called American Jews in America's game. Well, Jewish appears once in that title America twice. The book is really about America and American Judaism, about people, about baseball. It's about a lot of things that mean a lot to me and I think that Ralph Kina was an exemplar of those kind of values and so you think how we talked a few minutes ago about famous people who get sold on themselves so that they become obnoxious. Well, you know, Ralph Kina was totally the opposite of that and he was he was quite a guy and yeah, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Well, you know, there's a wonderful story that, you know, Ralph came from California from a mining town that's now extinct and when he was a sophomore player at the time that Hank

10:29Greenberg played with him in Pittsburgh, he was pretty well, he, I would say that he was unsophisticated. He had to go to an event where he needed a tuxedo so he hired a tuxedo and put on brown shoes and Ralph said to him, I mean, Hank said to him, no, no, you can't do that Ralph, you got to have black shoes to go with a tuxedo and this story is told in my book and so then he taught him, you know, some of the some of the finer points of being a celebrity. So two years later, there was Ralph Kina who was very handsome when he was young. It is a picture in the book of him taking out Elizabeth Taylor when she was 19 to an event in Hollywood and that picture is in the book. I found it hidden away in the hall of fame someplace so that well, I guess Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism late in her life, but the fact of the matter in this book is that of the of the hundreds of people indexed, maybe 25% of Jewish and the rest

11:33are not and of the 85 illustrations, maybe a third of them were of people not Jewish. So I want to say to anybody who's listening, it's not just a story about Judaism, that certainly is a major part of it, but it's about so much more. It's about our country and a baseball and the best things that happen or have happened in our country. Who of all the athletes that you interviewed and sports writers, who's the one that you walk away and just say, wow. Well, you know, it's a funny thing. I mean, Hank Reiber was the only deceased person that I interviewed because and I did that through his son and his daughter and a Viva Kempner who did the film documentary and Ira Berkau who did a book on him. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. There's also a story about him in the book and I guess that Anne Ralph Keiner. So he was, I never met Hank Reemberg. So I watched him play. So I'm playing in 1945 when he played with

12:38the Tigers against the Red Sucks. There's a story there too. But amazingly, there were a lot of people who impressed me. I would say this that, you know, some people think athletes are not bright. That's ridiculous. They're very bright and I think that there were a lot of players that I interviewed that I thought were very good and a typically Fajouish players of Fajouish people who are not known for being handsome necessarily. A lot of these guys were really good looking. I mean like Sean Green was movie star handsome and Brad Osmos is my wife. You know, Brad Osmos came and did a show with me down in Wellfleet where I have a summer home and my wife fell in love with him. He's so nice. And he's so handsome. And Kevin Euclis wasn't so handsome but there were other guys. And you know, Al Rosen, who was a great star, who looked like Paul Newman. And I

13:39interviewed him when he was in his 80s in California, but he just died recently. And Al Rosen actually really should be in the Hall of Fame. He was a great player and a great executive. But you know who impressed me the most? The two guys that impressed me the most weren't players were Marvin Miller and Don Fear. Now Marvin Miller, you know, changed. I mean, the guy that used to broadcast for the Dodges Red Barber said the most important three people in baseball history were Babe Ruth obviously Jackie Robinson obviously. And Marvin Miller because Marvin Miller changed the economic face of the game so that players make these enormous sums. And by the way, the owners make much more too. So that by winning free agency. So the owners demonized him and they're still demonizing him because he should be in the Hall of Fame and has not been elected to the Hall of Fame. And the fact of the matter is that and he was not a lawyer. He came up through the steelwork as union. He was the right hand economist, Helper at Walter Ruther, who was the famous labor leader at that

14:44particular time. But he knew the players were getting a raw deal. They should have free agency. They weren't able to bargain properly for their services. Even Babe Ruth and Ted Williams had got paid a lot would have been paid multiples of that. And so that so that when I went see him in his retirement, he was already 90 years old. He I said to myself, what kind of a guy is this going to be? Because they demonized him. He's he's he wants to be the commissioner. He's a nasty guy. He's one of his, you know, the this the hidden agenda was he's one of those Jewish guys from Brooklyn that are really a pain in the rear end and you can't trust him. So I meet this gentle guy who's like a grandfather. So I'm saying to myself, this is Marvin Miller and he he he answered every question. So we and he had a doctor's appointment. He was so interested in our conversation. He's signaled to his wife, a PhD professor to break the appointment so he could

15:46stay with me. We talked literally for three hours. And I never shut off the the machine. He was apparently he liked the questions. I was asking him. And I love talking to him. So at first, I said, he's a nice guy. And then I said, he'll be a good friend. Then I said, he's like a uncle. And then he's like a grandfather. Well, you know, the fact of the matter is from that one meeting, we developed a friendship that that lasted from that day to the day of his death five years later. He was an amazing guy. So then I meet Don Fear and Don Fear says, well, I suppose you're seeing me just because he was a different guy altogether. But with Don Fear, you see, he said, I suppose you're seeing me because you saw Marvin Miller and now you just got a completed center. So I said, no, not at all done. I'm seeing you because I because you've done wonderful things for the players after Marvin Miller. So you're an important guy. And I want to talk to you. And so he pains taking the over a two hour period, explained what he had done and how they treated

16:51the players like, you know, one big family. And as label leaders, both Miller and he had the philosophy that you don't tell the players what to do. You respect them as individuals. You work with them. You show them the way you want to go. If they agree with you, you go that way. And at the end of it, we were talking about philosophy. He was a far more well-read person than I am. And he's a super intelligent guy. And to complete the story without making it too long, after my book came out, I was the moderator at Temple of Man of Well, which is on Fifth Avenue, the biggest Jewish temple there is. I mean, it seats 2,000 people, a lot of famous people have belonged there. And on my panel was Alan Girishowitz, who's a good friend, was Ira Burka, was Arch Shamsky, who played for the miracle match. Yeah, I know that name. And the other person on that panel was, I don't know, come to me. It was announced. Oh, yeah, it was Donald Fear.

17:56I'm telling the story about Donald Fear. So, Don, you know, had said to me that he would appear. Now, you know, these, maybe there's a thousand dollar on a, on a rarion that goes to the people on the panel, but he never took an on a rarion ever for whatever he did. And I've had him on other panels. But he, he didn't think he would be in California, but it was in California at the time of this was coming up on a Sunday. Flew back to be, to keep his word to me, was on the panel and then flew back to complete his business out there. And so that's the, all on his own money. That's the guy, you know, that's the kind of guy Don Fear was. So both of these guys were remarkable. And, and like with Miller, Fear, who's, you know, not a vanquilla like, like Miller was, but is more, I would say, you know, he's sort of last year, but he, he, he does great things. And he's a wonderful guy. He, we became very good friends. I said to my wife, I said, imagine being, being

18:58a good friend with Don Fear, my God. I mean, what wonderful things happen to you. You know, Ken, you're, you're a broadcast that you meet people and you make friends that, you know, oh, absolutely, absolutely. I had a, I mean, the stories that we could both tell about people, Dick Clark from American bandstand. I had a chance to interview him. He was a wonderful guy. And, and we stayed friends for a while. Raymond Burr, he and I were friends for, for a long time after we did our interview. He told me, he said, if I wanted to find out anything about my career, so I got to do what's called you. And I loved it. Talk about Jerry Reinsdorf. Is he the kind of guy who would support, do you think, and convince the owners that it's a black mark against them not to vote Miller into the Hall of Fame? No. Because I think that Jerry Reinsdorf, you know, he, I mean,

20:00I think Jerry Reinsdorf is, you know, an unusual guy. I mean, comes from Brooklyn. They didn't have his family. He doesn't have any money. And he went into real estate. And then he made a lot of money there. And he's been the owner of the bulls and the white socks for a long time. And, you know, one of the most famous guys in sports history, the basketball player that we're thinking of is Jordan. Yeah. Michael Jordan. Yeah. I mean, he was with him in the picture in the book, is Reinsdorf giving an award to Jim Tony. He was a great baseball player and played a little bit for Chicago. And Jerry is, he's always been a very active owner with all the committees that the major league baseball has set up. He was close as a friend to Bud Sealing. But his heart and soul was with the owners. And I think that he considered that Miller and then fear were really the enemy and that they were going to take money from the owners by representing the players.

21:03And I think that he was strong in that way. And he's, but he's a formidable individual. I respect, I respect him. And as a matter of fact, when he walked into the room to be interviewed, I'd never met him before. And this was in the western office of MLB baseball. And where Sealing would spend the winters. And so he comes into the room and the first thing he says to me, he says, he's the only reason I'm doing this is because you're so goddamn persistent. So I said, I said, well, you know, what I hear about you, Jerry, is that you're really a nice guy, even though everybody thinks you're a nasty guy. I see that Murray Chas wrote an article the other day about how you're really a nice guy. So that he said, well, I am a nice guy. He said my, I said, everybody likes my jokes, except my wife, who doesn't laugh at my jokes. I said, hey, we have something in common. So we got a lot. I got a hunch. And I hope I'm wrong that Marvin Miller will

22:06never be inducted into the baseball hall of fame. And yet his picture is in the Supreme Court. Yeah, I told that story. That's a wonderful story. And the tagline on that was good enough, good enough for the Supreme Court, but not good enough for the baseball hall of fame. And I, that when it was very sad, well, you know something. First of all, he may never be in the hall of fame. And maybe it's better that he never be in the hall of fame because his name will be more famous, not being in the hall of fame, just for the fact that he's not in the hall of fame. It'll just add to his fame. And it will show that there is a certain, I don't know what the word is. I don't want to use too strong a word, but the fact that the owners are all together and about basically all together and keeping them out says something about money and says something about American society and values. We have a lot of good values. We have other values that are

23:06questionable and can be, you know, discussed. But I think that, I think that he may never be in the hall of fame. And that story, because he, he, Arthur Goldberg was the Supreme Court justice and Marvin Miller worked together before and after Goldberg was the Supreme Court justice. He got off because Lyndon Johnson said to him, he needed him at the United Nations. He never should have gotten off. But only lately, and just before Marvin died, NYU, I don't know, I guess it was George Mason University down in Washington, DC, who was involved in putting up oil paintings of the Supreme Court, justices at the Supreme Court, decided they wanted to include Marvin Miller because he was so close to Arthur Goldberg. So he's the only non-justice non-lawyer up in the walls of the Supreme Court. And I told that story. It went into the book at the last

24:08minute and I called up maybe two weeks or three weeks before Marvin died and read it to him over the phone. And he was, he was very touched by that. I understand that you have a rather good and great connection with Gordon Eads, who's a local sports writer here in Boston about another book that is about to come out soon on your memories and love affair of Fenway Park. Yeah, Gordon's a great guy. You know, I never met Gordon until recently, but you know, you talk about guys you meet that you remember. Well, I remember Gordon because before I met him, because I would read the globe. And I've always found his sports columns more interesting than the other guys. He seemed to know more and he has a great writing style and he was very good writing for the globe. And he had several other positions, I think, with ESPN and stuff like that. So anyway, what I was interested in, I wrote this 50-page memoir of my years at Fenway Park.

25:08It's sort of funny and I was there at a lot of crucial games and it's just it's a personal memoir. And I never really thought of it for publication, but then after I spent some time with it, I did. And to make a long story short, I wanted to see if the Red Sox might be interested in it. And it got to Gordon's desk. And before I have a met Gordon, this is all within the last couple of months, what he did was write a two-and-a-half-page press C or a short little piece on the memoir, which was like 50 pages long. And I looked at that memoir in amazement. I shouldn't have been amazed because I know Gordon's work, but I was amazed because I couldn't find anything wrong with it. In fact, everything was right about it. I said, how could this guy get all this stuff into two-and-a-half pages to describe this thing so well that people will really want to read it? I looked at it and I said, I did I write all that? I think I'll go back

26:09and read it again. And so that was something right there. The only thing he mistated was my age. He had me at 87, which hopefully I'll reach in another month. But as I think I said to him when I finally did meet him, I said, 86 is young, but 87 is old. So anyway, so I did meet Gordon, and he edited the memoir itself with about 50 or 60 different edits. I mean, you know, not only can he write, but he can edit, and he made it much better from that point of view. But in my little lawyer's brain, I thought of something that way. Another thing is that at the very same time that the Red Sox, that Gordon and the Red Sox became interested in that memoir, there's a baseball journal put out called nine, obviously nine because of nine baseball players, and they liked

27:10the memoir, and they offered to publish the whole thing. And at the same time. So they're again, to make a long story short, I guess it's going to be in both places. And so as I said, I thought to myself that, well, and actually Gordon came up with a unbelievably great plan that might give a second life to the book we're talking about. American Jews and America's game by his pre-c linking people up or directing them to my own website with a memoir would appear, and the memoir would carry references to the book and suggest that if you like this, maybe you like the book even more, go out and buy the book. That was all Gordon's idea, basically. And he came up with that, in which I, you know, was unbelievable. So that, and you know, he knows a few Yiddish words, he'd probably say, that's my Yiddish or cop gone. So I owe a lot to Gordon. He's a great guy. We

28:13gave a talk to the recent convention of the, what is it called, the Hebrew Union or something like that. It's the biggest Jewish organizations in the country, like 5,000 people coming in there, and there were quite a few people there. And I overspoke a little at that one to Gordon's constanation, but still it went, it went okay. He's a wonderful speaker. He talked about the first Jewish Red Sox player, which, who was a guy that became a war hero. Mark Berg? No, not Mark Berg. It was my old memory as a failure me, but he was a war hero, became, and his wife divorced him before the war, but then during the war, he became a paraplegic war injury. And his wife came back to remarry him afterwards, and he did a lot of great work

29:14afterwards. And it was a very touching story. And the people in the audience were absolutely wrapped in attention, hearing about this, Gordon knew the story very, very closely and explicitly. So that, you know, that was a nice experience as well. So a lot of good things happening lately, and I'd like this book to have another life because people seem to like it a lot, like you tell me you do. Oh, absolutely. One of the things that I enjoy in your book, there are three stories that I found very interesting regarding three Jewish individuals and Jan Kippur, and the people that I'm thinking of are Sandy Kofax, Murray Chas, and Ken Holtzman. And I wish you would tell those stories. Yeah, I could tell you a little about that. Well, first of all, as far as Kofax was concerned, you know, he was really an unbelievable pitcher. And if his pitching career haven't been

30:15cut short, maybe he would be deemed not only one of the four or five greatest pitches in baseball history, but the greatest pitcher because in his final, you know, he had lack of control during several years of his major league career. But then when he found control, it became almost impossible to hit. He sat out on the first game of the 1965 World Series between the Dodgers and the Twins because of Yum Kippur. And you know, back in Greenberg's day, it showed you the difference between the view of Jewish people then when Greenberg sat out for Yum Kippur, he was sort of attacked as not being true to his team. You know, he should play. But people by the time in the 60s, after the war, they applauded Sandy Kofax for doing that. And you know, he came back and he lost, I think,

31:19the third game of the series, not because it was hit hard, but he ran up against tough pitches sometimes. But then he won the fifth game by a shout out and came back on two days rest to win the seventh game by a shout out. And that made him a real hero in American sports. And to this day, people remember that. And Sandy Kofax is thought to be the greatest Jewish star ever. But I really think that, you know, my heart goes to Hank Greenberg. But I love Sandy Kofax. And what he did, he was a man of real character. I've spoken to him several times. And there is a funny story that goes along with that. Walter Rolston had to find somebody else to pitch that first game. So he found that the guy that should pitch was Sandy's Don Drysdale. Sandy's mate, they both had that big holdout where they challenged the owners to pay them what they were worth before a free agency. But he was hammered. And so when Austin came out to get him, and like, I don't know,

32:23the second inning, Drysdale, who was a bit of a cut up said, boy, I bet you wish that I was Jewish too. And then Sandy did not would not do an interview with you. No, he called me. I wanted to do an interview. I got to him through Marty Appell, who was my agent, who, you know, he was, Marty was the perfect relations guy in his 20s for the Yankees. And then served under, served under, you helped me with that, you know, the guy, the convicted felon. Oh, oh, Murray Chess. Oh, George Steinbrinner. Yeah, Steinbrinner. But Steinbrinner was, you know, a tough owner to work for, but a very, but a very effective owner. And what I found out doing this book was that a lot of people really liked Steinbrinner. You might think not, but

33:26because it was a tough guy, but a lot of people did like him. And in an event, Marty Appell had a history from early on, and he got me through to Sandy Kofax. Call me on a Saturday morning, and I pick up the phone, a deep voice says, this is Sandy Kofax. And I'm, you know, I'm calling to say that, you know, I really don't want to do an interview. I don't do interviews very infrequently. Anyway, we had like a 15 minute conversation, and it became Sandy and Larry, and I'm thinking of everything. I said, well, Sandy, you know, we don't have to meet. You can write it, and I'll put it in the book, or you can send it up and record as a nothing, nothing. And, but as the conversation went on, I found enough in the conversation to write a story about him with the help of his catcher. No, I'm Sherry, who was the one who was credited with finding control for Sandy Kofax. So it all worked out. All right, Murray Chas. Yeah, Murray Chas was, he claimed not to be

34:30an author, but first of all, Murray Chas, for anybody who doesn't, might not be familiar with the name, was a sports columnist for the New York Times for many years, and was extremely popular in New York City. And so that Murray, all the way to claim not to be orthodox, he usually went to temple on a Saturday, and he was assigned at that time he wasn't working for the New York Times. I think he was working for one of the presses, and he, he was told to cover that particular game, and he couldn't go to the game, but he had many friends among the sports writers. And what he did, he, he found near the hotel where he was staying, a businessman's temple, where I guess Jewish guys, workers, office people, executives went sometimes, but on that particular day, a Saturday, nobody was there because nobody was working in the middle of the city. So he went there, and that's

35:32where he spent his, and I guess it was young Kipper. Yeah, so I'm sorry. So he spent not just the Sabbath, but young Kipper. So he spent the day there. And then all his friends gave him the story of the game, which by the way was the game that Bob Gibson pitched and struck out, I think, 17 tigers. And that was, and they wrote the story for him, and he filed the story. So that's how Murray Chas appeared with a, with a good story that particular day. So that was his young Kipper experience. He found, he found a way to write the story, even though he didn't attend the game. Not bad. And was in temple all day. Pretty good thinking. I thought that was very good. I like that. Then the other one was, oh yeah, Ken Holtzman. Ken Holtzman, one more games than Sandy Kofax. He's the biggest winner, a biggest Jewish winner in baseball history. Well, he played longer

36:33in Sandy Kofax's career was cut short, but you know, he was a very interesting guy to interview. Where did I interview? I interviewed him in the lobby of the Dan Panorama Hotel in Israel, in Tel Aviv on the shores of the Mediterranean, where Marty Appell got me to go for the opening and closing season of the Israel baseball league. And the managers in the league were former Jewish major ligas, like the guy that I mentioned before, I've Shamsky and the Holtzman himself and Noem Blumberg. Noem Blumberg. I mean, Ron Blumberg. Oh yeah. So anyway, what happened? Designated hitter. Designated red. First designated hitter ever. Right. You got it. Yep. And so what happened is that, I interviewed him and he tells me this story about the playoff, the end of the season. He's playing for the Oakland athletics in there. And their foe is Baltimore.

37:39So he goes to Dick Williams and it's so happened. Dick Williams laid out the pitching schedule. Vita Blue was the other great pitcher on that stuff. And of course, you know, we're talking about a fellow here, Ken Holtzman, who won a 180-odd games and pitched an O hitter and won five of six World Series game. He was a hell of a pitcher, really was. And he had a real good work ethic. So what happened is that he said to Williams. He said, I know, I can't pitch when you got me assigned because that's Yum Kipper. So he's back in his hotel room on Yum Kipper and he wants to go to temple. So he calls up the Chamber of Commerce and they refer him to somebody and he gets a phone call back. We're going to pick you up in a few minutes. We're going to take you to the one of one of the nicest temples. So a limousine comes, picks him up and takes him to a temple. The rabbi comes out on the front steps and greets him. Says, let me take you to your seat. Takes him to the seat. The seat's in the front of the temple. There's a family down there and there's the father turns out

38:44to be Jerry Hofberg. Hofberger? Hofberger? Hofberger? Hofberger? Who owns the Orioles? Yeah, I remember. I know the name well. Yeah. Right. So that I guess it was beer or something like that. So anyway, so Hofberger says, welcome, Kim. And he not only does he attend the service, but he says, well, come on, we're going to take you home for a dinner after, you know, when sundown and when the holiday is over. So he has a terrific meal that day. That night, they make friends. Hofberger's family is wife. I think there were two boys and a girl or two girls and a boy, the children. And so he comes back to the ballpark the next day and he said, well, Dick, I got to tell you that what happened and he told them what happened in Williams, who's not known for a terrific to be a terrifically friendly guy, but he was a great manager. But in this particular occasion, he said, that's that's okay. You know, that's that's fine. Give you an extra

39:49day of rest anyway. And as a matter of fact, the series went back to Oakland and he did have that extra day of rest and he beat the Orioles. That's kind of funny. I wonder what Hofberger would have said later on. Well, Hofberger sounds like he must have been a nice guy. He probably said, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. And there's also a great story in there about Holtzmann pitching against Sandy Kofack. Yeah, right. The last loss, the last loss in Kofack's career at the end of his last season in 1966, maybe. That was it. Yeah. Yeah. Was it was when Holtzmann was like a rookie or a second year player and they pitched against each other and they went nine innings and it was still zero to zero. And Holtzmann ultimately won the game, I think on the 10th inning and two to one or something like that. And I think that he pitched like a one hitter and Kofack's pitched

40:49as well. It was just, you know, somebody has to win the ball game. So Holtzmann's mother and father were there. And his mother loves Sandy Kofack's. I mean, you know, the women loved Sandy Kofack's. I mean, he was so handsome, speaking about he was really good looking. And so Ken comes out and he's proud as punchy won the game. And he said, well, would you think of them? My, you know, beat Sandy Kofack. She said, I was praying for both of you. And Ken Holtzmann said, even my mother didn't want me to win against Sandy Kofack. You talk about Bud Sillig in here. And it's my impression that you think he is the greatest commissioner of all time. Is that correct? No, well, I don't know. Yeah, he may have, well, you know, the history of commission as a baseball is kind of fraught. I mean, Landis, Landis did what they wanted him to do and cleaned up

41:51baseball. But he really, he destroyed the careers of several of these guys. Joe Jackson, I don't know, I don't know how much black socks scandal. Yeah, but the black socks scandal. I don't know, I mean, that's why they own his higher them. And the black socks scandal certainly was a mark on the game. And as a matter of fact, the guy that engineered the whole thing was a bad Jewish guy, you know, Ronald Rustin. Oh, Rusty. Yeah. And he's the guy that was behind it all, with his sidekick, the former boxing champion, Abatel. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And Abatel was the frontman on this deal. And, you know, as far as Jackson was, I mean, some of these guys, Eddie, I said, Caudi, however you pronounce his name, C I C O W T E was a great pitcher and he won 29 games that season, but stunk in the World Series. So we can think that he might have been on it. But Joe Jackson hit 375 and set a record for hits in a World Series with 12. So if he was throwing

42:54him, how about maybe he would have had 18 hits. And so, but he was a tough, he was a, he was a racist and he was a tough commissioner. He never would have done anything that would have allowed blacks into baseball. I think that there were some good commissioners, but Ceeleg was a peacemaker. And he had learned from his father the, the idea of making peace. And as a matter of fact, he, he got the present president, the Yankees, who has been for some time, who's also in the book, Randy, Randy Levine, yeah, to intercede and negotiate with Don Fear. And in the late 90s, that was the last time there's been any strikes or anything like that. So something happened to, I don't think they're, they love each other on either side of this argument, but at least they're not taking baseball away in the middle of the season. And so that there's no completion of the season in no-world series has happened in one of those years in the 1990s. 94. 94 was it?

43:58Yeah, I'll never forget it. Never because that was the only time in my lifetime that was no-world series. I couldn't believe it. It was, it was awful. Yeah, it was awful. So that, you know, I think Ceeleg has to be credited. And he came up with a lot of things like the World Baseball Classic and some new rules and some of them are good, some of them are bad, but I think essentially Ceeleg was interested in doing the right thing if that's the right expression. And he looked, he was very nice to me. He wrote the, the forward to my book, who could complain about that. And he, then when he came to Boston for the last World Series, the Red Sox Rin, his, his public relations guy got in touch with me and said there's a photo opportunity, you never had one. So I was there and I took a photo with, with Ceeleg. And then afterwards Pat said to me that he knew from all the

44:59pictures he had seen Ceeleg take that he knew when he enjoyed taking a picture. And he said he liked taking the picture with you. So that was nice. We all judge commissioners or different parts of baseball in different ways. I've been a baseball fan since I was eight years old. Granted, the owners are making boat loads of money. Ball players are getting contracts that I despise. For example, Jacobi Ellsbury, they're paying him, the Yankees are paying him a huge amount of money and he's only a part-time player. But I, I, I don't like that. I don't like the fact that this year's baseball season will start the 29th of March and will probably go to the end of October. If I were a commissioner, I would want to see double headers reinstituted. I want games to start earlier in the playoffs in the World Series. I don't want to have to sit up to a quarter or

46:00nine just to have a game start. That to me is not good for baseball. Well, you know, I agree with for most of, for practically everything you just said because I found baseball to be much more attractive as a spectator sport all the way through the 20th century. I think now the ballpark is too loud. The games are too long and the players, I don't know if they paid too much because we do have a laissez-faire type of economic system and these guys bring the people into the ballpark. But I think that, you know, I really used to love going out to the ballpark and I write a lot about that in this memoir that I talk about. But going out to the, you know, it's a hard game to destroy. Baseball is a wonderful game. It's unlike the up and down games with a goal at either end. It's a unique game. But it could use some brushing up along the lines that you suggest. You know, I just, it's taken a certain course and football may destroy itself because of these

47:05head injuries. I don't know. And baseball may ultimately destroy itself because of greed. Up until the 90s, you know, you could get a box seat for 20 bucks, the 25 bucks. Now it's horrendous. I mean, in an era of big screen, high definition television, you can't, I mean, it's like music. I'm writing a book about music now. Well, you can't appreciate a concert on the best of equipment. Being there is a totally different experience. And being at the ballpark is a totally different experience. But if there's enough at the ballpark, or whether it's football or baseball or even a concert to drive your home, you'll choose to stay at home. Or you could be the price of the ticket. It could be a lot of things. So that, yeah, but I'm really loving doing this book about music. Yeah, I was going to get into that.

48:11You told me you met Charles du Tours. No, Prevent. Oh, yeah, Prevent. Andre Prevent. You know, a little different from baseball. But tell me about this book. Well, you know, I'll tell you about both of them as long as I mentioned du Tours. You know, du Tours is a, you know, he's been all over the papers the last several weeks in this sexual harassment stuff. And he probably was one of the two or three greatest conductors in the world by the time this happened. He's already 80, 81 years old. I was just telling my wife this morning that the last thing I heard him conduct, which was Hector Berlio's damnation of Faust, was maybe which requires a huge chorus and a huge orchestra and soloist was maybe the best thing I'd ever heard him conduct. And he's conducted many things famous for the French repertoire and a very nice guy. And but this destroys him. He'll never get back on the podium again. And you know, it's interesting to compare that to Bruce Dean's quotes in the Globe the other day.

49:12The guy that used to be the head honcho over at the Globe in Cambridge theater that saying, you know, one thing is the person's art or capability. And another thing is those that have been accused of sexual harassment have done great things. Should we dismiss them as artists, even though they have this blood on their records as people? And, you know, I'm not going to try and answer that question. This is not the place, but it's a serious question. Because I found Dutwatt to be a very charming individual. Now, André Preven was one of my, since I go back all the way to when he was, he's two years old and then I am. And his Hollywood passed when he escaped the, you know, he grew up in Germany and escaped the, his parents got out before the Holocaust. And he came and they settled in Hollywood. And by the before he was out of his teens, he was an arranger and a composer and he was winning Academy Awards in his 20s. And then he made

50:15the rather brave decision to follow his real stuff. And he became a great jazz musician and a pianist. And then he decided he wanted to do classical. So that this guy's chops are unbelievable. I mean, as a composer, a classical composer, a pop composer, a jazz pianist, a classical pianist. And so to me, and he's still composing classical. And to me, a lot of people don't know his name, because they're not within his living memory, although he did conduct the Boston Symphony within the last 10 years, several times. But he's now illness challenged. And he was married early in the in the 2000s to Ann Sophie Moutier, German, who's one of the great violinists in the world. So I wanted to interview her and got in touch with her. And she invited me to come to the hotel she was staying at, which is right outside of Tango, with this past summer. And it's well known that

51:18even though they divorced around 2010, they remain very friendly. And she's a wonderful woman. And she obviously has a deep friendship with Andrei who still writes music for her and considers her the greatest violinist in the world. So on that occasion, while I'm interviewing at the South Fresco lunch with Ann Sophie, she mentions that Andrei is here. I said, oh my god, I hope I can get to meet him. And before the day was out, after the interview was over, I did meet him. And I'm in contact with him and hoping to interview him where he lives down in New York, because he's sort of not necessarily indispensable, but very much very desirable as an interviewee about whom I can write a story to complete this picture of this book is trying to get into the psyche of composers and musicians, famous people, to find out what goes on in their

52:24heads, especially the composers, to allow them to be able to create such beautiful things. And so, I don't know, I'm not a musician. I don't know an awful lot about musical technicality, but I know a lot about musical history. And I've been able to connect with these people and make friends with them. And it's a wonderful experience. And you know, in a society like ours, a lot of these people I've met are musicians are don't seem to be overly aggressive. They're very interested in working together in companionship and collaboration. So it's interesting to meet these people. I know exactly what you're talking about as far as meeting people is concerned. And I classify you as one of those people. I loved your book and it has been a real kick for me to be able to sit down and sit across from you and talk to you about all these things. It's a wonderful book. I

53:25highly recommend it and hope that this musical book will be available for us to read as well. I can't thank you enough for coming in here and spending an hour. It's just been a great hour and I thank you so very, very much. Well, Ken, I want to thank you too because I probably spoke too much because I know from questions you asked and comments you made that your knowledge in many things goes beyond mine. And when I read your biography and realize all the things you've done since you came to Boston, I'm incredulous that you've been able to accomplish them as especially as a sightless person. And I guess you've developed your memory to a fine point. And you know, read about all these things, you know, people would ask when they wanted to connect

54:27with somebody, you'd get them right away because filed away in your brain was their telephone number. So, and now in our conversations before this interview, and now I, you know, recognize what a great history you've had. And it's an honor to be on to be questioned by you. Well, I appreciate that. And I feel the same about you. And if there's if there's ever anything I can do for you or with you in the future, please give me a call or send me an email. I would be very happy to do whatever I could with you. When you're speaking to the wrong guy because I'm able to take advantage of that. Oh, no, absolutely. But please, listen, I enjoy good books and I enjoyed that one particularly. And I, again, it was it was an honor to have you here. And hopefully we can do this again another time and another book. No, thanks very much. And that will do it for this edition of City Talk. So long, everybody.