In honor of Mr. Wallace’s passing today, an interview from his early days on tv. Full transcript/video at the link:
WALLACE: ... Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick testified in Washington that if baseball were to drop that reserve clause there would be a constant wild scramble by the teams for players and he said, “The natural result would be a concentration of the best player talent in the clubs which are able and willing to spend the money necessary to outbid other clubs. Weaker clubs”, he said, “would be unable to compete; in other words, the rich clubs will be able to buy up all the good players and will compete for them.” Isn’t that true?
FELLER: Well Mike, where are most of them now? You live in New York.
WALLACE: Uh-hum.
FELLER: Er… I say no… I say a ball club would only hire two or three star ballplayers. Naturally, if you have four hundred ballplayers… all free agents, and you have more money than the sixteen other owners, you take your choice of sixteen ballplayers—I’m sorry… of twenty-five ballplayers, the player limit. Is that going to guarantee you a pennant? And if the number three man was a… was the third on the list, his judgment perhaps might be better than yours.
Naturally, that’s not going to happen. But just because you have the most money and four hundred ballplayers are standing in front of you, you can’t pick any twenty-five of them… any more than I could bet you right now, even money, that you can’t pick one out of any three pitchers that will win twenty games next year.
Adam B.
Posted: April 08, 2012 at 01:17 PM |
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1. zachtoma Posted: April 09, 2012 at 01:39 AM (#4100788)Uh oh, time to take Bob Feller out of the Hall of Fame.
So that's where Springsteen heard it.
Wallace *could've* been referring to drugs.
HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF DECENCY MR. WALLACE?
I think its fascinating Feller is on this side of the issue. I would have guessed he'd be one to fall in line. Good for him.
Not only the ad itself but the fact that Wallace says things like "Philip Morris has a man's kind of mildness... The cigarette has a natural taste, a taste a man can get next to, a flavor a man can enjoy..."
WOMEN NEED NOT APPLY!
I liked where Mike pre-emptively distanced himself, CBS and this wholesome tobacco company from any unpleasant opinion that Bob Feller might express.
Yeah, that was great also.
Otherwise, it was an interesting interview to watch, knowing what the next half century of labor negotiations -- and particularly the two decades following the interview -- would bring.
It's like when I watch a movie from 1972 and then look on imdb to see what the actors were up to in the years that followed.
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