Focus 580; Foul Ball: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save An Old Ballpark

Will Kona park in Pittsfield Massachusetts is America's oldest minor league ballpark. Now the park has seen better days but the people there Pittsfield apparently love the park and wanted to see it preserved. Former New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton came up with a way to do that and put a ball club there that would stay there. A lot of people in the community of Pittsfield liked that idea. The problem was the people that didn't like it happened to be the town's power brokers the mayor and the City Council and the bank and the newspaper what they wanted to do was build a brand new 18 million dollar stadium there. This morning on focus 580 we'll be talking with Jim Bouton about his struggle to save the old ballpark he has written about this in his book foul ball. The subtitle tells it all my life in hard times trying to save an old ballpark. It's published by bulldog publishing and in fact he published the book himself. And we'll get into that story about how it is he happened to publish this book himself. He's going to be here in Champaign-Urbana. He will be giving a talk about the book tomorrow 4:00 afternoon

4:00 in the afternoon at the planned auditorium in Temple Beulah hall and then right afterwards there will be a book signing managed by the aligned Union bookstore there also will be a signing at Borders bookstore that's at seven o'clock so if you're here in and around champagne Urbana you would have a couple of opportunities to meet Jim. And pick up a copy of his book might tell you a bit more about him in 63. He was an all star pitcher and he won 21 games for the New York Yankees in 1064 he won 18 games and he beat the Cardinals twice in the World Series. He's probably best known for his diary of the 969 season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros a book titled Ball Four which was a bestseller and is generally regarded as being the first tell all sports memoir. After that he became a television sportscaster. He acted in a movie. He made a brief comeback with the Braves and that continues now to do a lot of public speaking and traveling around the country by the way if you're

interest if you've never read ball four. You might want to take a look at a brand new edition kind of a 30 year edition. It's titled fall ball for the final pitch with a new epilogue that he has also published a bulldog as the publisher on them. As we talk this morning questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have toll free line. It's good anywhere you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 here a champion Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Mr. Baum Hello. Good morning David. Thanks very much for talking with us. I wanted to be here. Tell us about about the park about Kona park. Well it's one of the last of the wooden ballparks. It's raided by people who rank ballpark experiences as it's called it a great baseball cathedral a step back in time. It's always ranked in the top five or 10 stadiums in the country in terms of you know that whole time baseball experience and what kind of community is Pittsfield

as to what a blue collar town used to be the home of General Electric but when the city abandoned the town years ago they've had to adjust to changing over from a blue collar sort of a working class town to a more of a service oriented community. And and tourism so it's been a bit of a struggle for the community there eclipsed north and south of the city by the Williamstown Theater Festival and down south you have the Tanglewood and there are cultural things all around. Pittsfield and its fields claim to fame was. It's what its ballpark its and its baseball team and of course when the local team order moved to it another city because they built them a new stadium there. This field is going to be without a team and that's when this new stadium reared its ugly head again. Even though the people have voted against it

they couldn't seem to get rid of the idea of the of the of the threat of the stadium being built. Well that you pointed a trend here and it's something I know that you have talked a lot about and that is the I guess there's maybe no other word for it. Blackmail I think is a pretty good one that various places around the country teams who have said no matter what kind of facility they have but particularly I guess if it's an older one they they say to the local government and people in a community say well you know if you want the club to stay here you're going to have to build us a new stadium. And that's worked out a lot. A lot of places they have actually done that and spent millions literally millions and millions of dollars to keep teams there and it seems to be a threat that few teams are above exercising to get themselves new stadiums. Yeah and not just millions but an estimated 16 billion dollars billion dollars has gone to build new sports arenas over the last 20 years at the expense of schools hospitals and fire departments in baseball alone

just that the minor league level no fewer than a hundred 13 new minor league baseball stadiums have been built and most. In towns that had perfectly good older ballparks but didn't have some of the corporate suites and some of the amenities that now even the minor league ball park parks are are insisting on and and the team motorists is to simply move the team and fans you know they have this baseball legacy have as they've had in Pittsfield going all the way back to the early 1900s and they hate to lose that you know but what we know what is their choice and that's why I plan to resurrect the old ballpark and put in a fan own team with such a sort of you know revolutionary even though. But we knew we never got our wish because we were opposed by a small group of powerful people most of them mostly led by the Berkshire Eagle the only daily newspaper in town and the stadium the new proposed new stadium was going to be built on land coincidentally owned by the

newspaper. You think that does just be a little bit of conflict of interest there. Yeah part of the paper is in the way they covered the story was that was it commonly known that in fact that the land that was being considered as the location of the stadium belonged to the paper. Oh yes the paper was. That was they were upfront about that but they weren't upfront about the fact that the property was polluted. They never told the people that. And and something that's come up more recently they never told the people that their quote donation of the property but they were calling it is a donation of polluted property their donation was a contingent upon them getting naming rights to the new stadium and they never revealed that that they were going to get naming rights with the naming rights are worth far more than the value of the property there. The paper was not it was not very responsible in terms of full disclosure. So one there there had been a team there apparently had been lured out of town to another community where they said they would build them a stadium so when did that

happen when did the the existing team leave the existing team left in 2000 and in into that was their first season not playing in Pittsfield but by that time the new stadium. Defeated and also our plan our plan to resurrect the old ballpark had also been voted down unanimously by the Parks Commission and instead they gave the old ballpark to a competitor of ours who is a guy who's been shopping around for a new stadium one of these team owners looking for a place to play. And the reason they gave it to him was because he is the new stadium guy and he would have been out of you know the perfect guy to block us out because our plan would have put a stake in the heart of a new stadium but by putting a new stadium guy in the ballpark. They think they kept their hope alive. You know so badly that for some time there then the city government had this idea that they wanted to try to keep the existing team there and they figured well the way to do that would be to bed Whoever said well you come over to my community and I'll

bill you a stadium. The problem was there that there were several there were several referenda trying to get people there in the community Pittsfield to approve building this this new park this 18 Million Dollar Park. And three tried three times and three times the people said no they didn't write it well they didn't want to. New ballpark and they voted against it even though they were threatened by with losing baseball altogether if they didn't vote for it they still didn't vote. But anyway the problem wouldn't go away because. Because the people in town the other powerful people were calling the shots. And if this is a common thing in most communities the people the citizens don't really want these new stadiums but the politicians conspire against their own electorate and and most mostly they get their way. Well they I'm sure make the argument that building a stadium like this is good economic development policy. Yes that's the common argument but almost every independent

economic study that's ever been done shows that these new stadiums and sports arenas are not economic engines of development of new development because first of all they don't provide very many jobs in the jobs they do provide are very low paid you know the ticket taker groundskeeper popcorn vendor that kind of thing. The real jobs that pay the players and of course they take their money home with them when the season's over. And in terms of economic activity springing up around the stadium Well yes you have some of that. Bars and restaurants that start doing better around a new stadium but that really just cannibalizes people going to bars and. And restaurants in other parts of the city see a lot of more people going out you just simply haven't going out to different restaurants and bars. So and then generally the tax abatements that go along with it. And the land swaps and you know all that other stuff the complicated the the financing of these new stadiums is always complicated. And the reason for that is that the people

behind the new stadiums have to play a game called hide the subsidy so that the taxpayers can't really see how much they're paying for these stadiums. Me introduce Again our guest for this part of focus 580 Jim Bouton is former baseball player who played for the New York Yankees pitcher for the Yankees wrote a book that came about 30 years ago that got a lot of attention titled fall foul foul but horror all for how I want my promised the new. Book which is about the story here we're talking about his efforts to try to save this ballpark in Pittsfield Massachusetts that one has called foul ball. And they're both He's published them himself They're both published by bulldog. And they are available in bookstores he's going to be here on the campus tomorrow in the afternoon to talk about this story it's sponsored by urban planning architecture landscape architecture leisure studies. And you may be the first first former ballplayer I think to talk there in the architectural gallery. He'll be talking about that and then there will be a book signing one right

after the talk. And also in the evening at Borders so she'd like to meet him and pick up a copy of the book you can do that and questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. So really what you did was you. You were interested like a lot of people and seeing the stadium preserved and you came along and said well look what we can do is we can fix up the stadium so we'll preserve it. We can get a team to come in here and play. And you also came up with this idea that you would sell shit essentially sell shares in the team to local people in the community and make it hopefully make it less likely that that team would ever leave. It was our idea was it was that the community would own the team. And therefore they wouldn't. They would never leave town because it would be owned by all the local people. And this is also a practice Incidentally that is banned now by profession by major pro major league sports because they don't want

teams of being owned by the public because if they are owned by the public then they and they don't have as much of the OT that the league doesn't have much control over the team. And also they can't be part of the system of teams bidding one community off against another so you're not going to see any more Green Bay Packers which is probably I think the only community owned major professional sports team. The as you have sketched out it it seemed that the power brokers in the community just didn't like somebody coming at somebody else an outsider coming in making a proposal the the newspaper they own the land that was the place that they were talking about putting the stadium so they certainly had some interest there. But as people when when the when the mayor and the parks commissioner and those kinds of people when they told you why it was they thought your proposal was a bad idea you know what's what sort of reasons what sort of justification did they give for saying no we don't want to do that instead what we want to do is build this new 80 million dollar stadium.

Interestingly enough. They never really had to make that argument because they refused to engage in any kind of a debate with us or or any kind of public discussion. They didn't want to have that discussion because they really had nothing to say about why their proposal was better than ours. And so that was sort of that too almost like living in a parallel universe. Here was the Berkshire Eagle the newspaper promoting the new stadium in attacking us or without ever really matching the two offers up against each other in explaining why one was better than the other and we never ever got that opportunity nobody ever was willing to you know come to a public meeting we set up several opportunities for our opponents to meet us face to face on a stage you know in front of people and take a telephone poll that kind of thing. They didn't want any part of us. And the newspaper continued to print misinformation about us and our proposal and it became a full time

job. My partner and I. I spent all of our time doing this and with the reason we did it was because we were shocked at the response we were getting as you know two businessmen coming in offering to do something good for the community and not dying and not getting a fair hearing and so we took that as a challenge and we did not go away as most businessmen in the past have gone away. We we stayed in there every day and it became a 24 hour job. Week after week month after month and as my partner and I said we were plumbing the depths of the run reasonable this we wanted to expose this lack of democracy in this. This newspaper here which my partner said was like living in Russia and having propped against you. And it really became part of the fun of the adventure of course it wasn't much fun for our wives. I remember saying to my wife Paula one time I said who else but the chip and I could do such a thing like this. And and and she said single people mostly have.

Well it's a. It's a tribute to the strength of your relationship that you're all still together. Yes it is. It just it really showed the level of media malfeasance and I believe that was the reason why I have been asked to speak at a media reform conferences and that kind of thing because Fall Ball really shows the dangers of when a distant media conglomerate owns the only daily newspaper in town. So it's more than a story about political corruption it's also about you know media concentration which I think is probably the most important story we're facing in this country right now. Well let's talk with some people who are listening we have a caller here in Champaign. We would like to call in line one. Hello. Oh it's me. Yes. And I have nothing but high praise for your efforts to bring a simple game to the people.

I thoroughly enjoyed the observation that you made about democratising the ownership of the team to the people and the example of the Green Bay Packers who are so wildly successful. My question would be then without being evil I'll say he could you and your partner bring this family and I hope you maybe have a have an ambition here to try and rescue other minor league teams or whatever you know maybe the Montreal Expos if they're still exist. To me what it takes. He wanted to. We act on the road to Syria what if we would hate to meet me and we will be we will be coming to a theater near you.

I am going around the country speaking at universities to their journalism schools and their public policy courses urban studies programs that kind of thing. And in the process I hope to you know make make make the point here. And you know but I can't get involved in a you know a grassroots campaign in town that's up to the citizens who have to gather themselves and and and and insist on on democracy in this in their town. What I would what I would like to know is if your partner in the process of trying to sell shares or proposed to sell shares so that the city would on the team for so many other people with with baseball teams in their home town that are you know under 20000 and the like. Love their team. Can you play the same way that the corporations are playing. Certainly take the time to take ownership public and put it

on the Nasdaq or something like that and get around and anyone who can buy shares then you just have to help these poor people by setting up parameters and saying no one owner can have more than 15 20 shares of stock in our corporation. Well if we could hand him back away and play by the rules but play them as our dollars these characters it would take a local ownership group who wanted to do that who was willing to share the ownership of the team that they bought with with local fans in most local ownership groups don't want to do that. Most businessmen are in it for themselves and they're not in it for the community and so they want a team that they can they can move well and you know it's a it's a much more valuable asset when they can move. Count to 10 because then they can bid one community off against another so you really need to find some very very civic minded businessmen who are willing to do this suddenly thing.

I think we have a situation right now with a minor league ice hockey team in Danville. I've just come into the conversation a little bit ago but I think this very same crew is trying to be affected with the bando hockey team and trying to find a bigger venue and strip a city of Danville of their team and I bet they would love the people in Danville would love to hear what you have to say and discover some of the great tools necessary for trying to keep them where they are loved relentlessness is the tool that you need more than. The thing I've discovered. Even then you know that you know it doesn't guarantee success but it's an important exercise. This notion of all of the people deciding you know what they get in the way of public policy and too bad that the politicians are much more beholden to corporate

interests now than they are to voters themselves they can always buy the voters off with you know advertising that they that they can never put out and with with with the money they get from corporations. So we don't really have. I have fish and representing the people anymore that that's the problem. I mean when Mayor Giuliani of New York was asked why the citizens of New York City should not be allowed to vote on whether or whether or not new minor league baseball stadiums are built for the Mets and Yankees and. And Giuliani said Yeah because they would vote against it. The will of the people being served by their decision. Right. I get I call that a mockery of cool I mean up all thanks for calling and I look forward to hearing everything you have to say for the rest they are. Well we appreciate the comment. I guess maybe we just should be clear that that the reason that you became interested in this particular ballpark and trying to

save the park there in Pittsfield is because you know you live in the area and this was kind of your neighborhood. No. Neighborhood team right. Yeah this was the local team and you know we're going to park it you know it's such a beloved place and we just hated to see it get abandoned. And and the new team forced down the people's throats and so that's why that's why we got involved but I think that's what it that's what a community needs it needs to have people come forward who are who care enough about it and and are willing to commit to make a fight over it. Let's talk with somebody else one of the neighboring communities here file 0 1 number two. Hello good morning. Yes Mr. Martin I'm more than mildly curious as to one of the Berkshire Eagle ever reviewed foul ball and if so who wrote the review and what did it say. No of course not. The Bircher you go to hasn't reviewed foul ball even though it's been reviewed by you know other papers around the country.

And it hasn't been I haven't been a guest on radio stations in Pittsfield players if there is a cone of silence over the area here and the print you know our letters to the editor either. So it's not it's not a proud story it used to be a wonderful newspaper years ago when it was locally owned but once it's been taken over since it's been taken over by media news group who's boss. Who is owner is in Denver Colorado. And that's that's when I decided to take notes. You know when I went into this project not with the idea of writing a book but just simply saving this old ballpark. And when the one of the city council members told him my partner and I that the city council couldn't consider our proposal until they were released by IndyMac now Andy MC is the publisher and president of the local newspaper so we went to Andy MC and we said Andy what have what about our proposal here why not you know take a look at this and you know this is important for the community. He said it's not up to me it's up to my boss in Denver Colorado. So

here I have them. It's up to Pittsfield. You know almost a hundred year legacy of baseball in this community is now in the hands of a guy in Denver. That's when I started taking notes. Where do things stand now. What's happened since the publication of your book. Well you'd be very interested to know that a recent development is that the old mayor has been swept out of office. So have the city council so have the parks commissioners and the new mayor Jimmy Roberto has just invited my partner and I to come back to Pittsfield and bring our proposal back to the city of Pittsfield and we are now in the process of negotiating a license agreement for the old stadium that would allow us to go in there and renovate the park and at the same time buy a team in a local independent league. The idea of selling stock to the people. We have been invited back and my partner is calling foul ball he said it's the book that changed the city

because it's so graphically showed what needed to be done and and who the bad guys are. And and this city seems to be at least on this issue now in the process of transforming itself. Well congratulations as one with family in Titchfield from long standing I'm very pleased to see something progressive going on. Yeah we are we are too it's a wonderful almost amazing unbelievable development. The reception that we are now getting from the new march commissioners good to talk to you finally. Thanks for the call. And I guess I also read that there are the newspaper find somebody to sell their land to is it still still the plan that the pharmacy is going to be built on that site that they finally put it in the U.S. pharmacy. That property but it's interesting even though the mayor has invited us back and welcomed us back and we're now we're coming back because we you

know we we we just like the you know the warm welcome we've receiving from the government. The newspapers still the sniper get it. So that'll be a part of the fun but as my partner Chip said. As soon as we lose those guys as as our opponents it won't be as much fun anymore. Yeah. Was there one of the things that you write about in the book in part of the story is that the concerns about the possibility that there were environmental contaminants at this site the one where the the pharmacy is now was it ever really do you feel that it was conclusively established just what the environmental situation was about that spot. Yes well there were two or two pieces of property involved both of them owned by the newspaper one which is where they say you know the land immediately around the newspaper and the other parcel was an adjacent piece that they bought to complete the larger footprint for the stadium which would have been overlapping both the new parcel that they bought plus the existing land

but the environmental report on the parcel that they bought was the fact it was that it was polluted in the end. It was discovered by an environmentalist friend of mine at the the EPA in Massachusetts and the documented proof that that was polluted was revealed that was made public for the first time on page 360 of my book. Before that there was no public information or no public notice by the newspaper that this was polluted property. There was also a clause in the civic authority this is the group that would have fought and would have managed and built a new stadium. There's a clause in there that said that if pollution is found on the property it would have the responsibility for the clean up would pass on to the citizens. A new state would be absolved of the clean up so it was conclusively proven that pollution was on at least on the new parcel and most likely on the larger parcel since they're contiguous. But we don't know when nobody can find the test.

The results of the test board have been done on that property years ago for some reason. You know they can't be found now I guess for their part the company that owns the paper and the most recent story I came across on this I think was one from a couple months ago from the New York Daily News where they actually quote the guy who was the CEO of the company that owns that paper the the eagle the seventh largest newspaper chain. Basically he says that he doesn't think that that's that's. True that the pollution problem if there ever was one was cleaned up and there's nothing wrong with this. Well they they spend a lot of money cleaning it up for CBS before they would be willing to take it. So it has been proven conclusively that it's polluted and it's pretty clear that that the newspaper was negligent in informing its readers about this information. We're a little bit past the midpoint here maybe I should just introduce Again our guest. Real quick we're talking with Jim Bouton. You may know him for his book Ball Four was

first published in one thousand seventy came out in the 30 year anniversary edition in 2000 with the new epilogue published by himself. And it's a bulldog publishing is the name of the publisher So if you've never read ball four you might want to take a look at that and then the book that tells the story that we're talking about here this morning his efforts to try to save this ball park the oldest minor league ball park in the United States. Mokoena park in Pittsfield Massachusetts. He tells that in the book foul ball. My life in hard times trying to save an old ballpark same publisher there. It's bulldog he's going be talking about this whole story as well. While afternoon on the U of I campus He'll be speaking in the planned auditorium at Temple point Beulah hall on the campus four o'clock in the afternoon sponsored by the Departments of urban planning architecture landscape architecture leisure studies. So the talk is it for there'll be a book sale and signing at 5:00 and then also they'll be he'll be at the borders in champagne tomorrow night at 7:00 for another signing.

So if you're here in and around Champaign-Urbana And if you'd like to meet him and pick up a copy of the book and get it signed you can do that here on the program of course questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We have somebody Next up in the effing Hamline number for writing about the pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. I read when I was a teenager I kind of had. Hide it in the drawer from my mother but it was the best baseball book ever written. Thank you. I got a couple questions did you do a pitcher by the name of Roger Alexander. Sure I was roommates with Roger Alexander when I was making my comeback with the Atlanta Braves in one thousand seventy eight. He said When I was a guy he looked in Texas now just to let you know. Yes I know he does we. We keep in touch once in a while. That's great. I've got one other question what's your feeling on a former owner of the Texas Rangers who got the taxpayers to build a new stadium and turned a

$600000 investment into 14 million. Yeah. Fellow's name is George Bush. He's now the president of the United States a naturally how he made his his his his fortune was this investment in the Texas Rangers invested $600000 and then used his influence with his dad in politics to get a new baseball stadium built for the Texas Rangers now once a team has a new stadium to play and it increases the value of that team tremendously because they're able to make more money at the stadium. And so George Bush's contribution went from $600000 to 14 million. Incidentally he was he was. He bought a small percentage of the team but when they gave him his payout they voted him an extra bonus for quote services rendered without mentioning what those services were for the future governor of Texas. But that exactly but that just shows you how how money

is made by these team owners as Bill Veck once said you don't make money running a team make money buying and selling them and that's why you have such a big turnover with these sports teams. Also there are tax advantages to owning a team like for example you can accelerate a depreciation of the players salaries as if they were machines and then the new owner can can start from scratch again with that with the salary so you know when wealthy people don't pay their taxes and when wealthy people get taxpayers to build them stadiums that means every buy. He has to have to make up the difference. And so. People who are not are even baseball fans who are even sports fans are indirectly subsidizing owners profits and players salaries. Cause I get your question. Oh yeah thanks. OK well we'll go on here not to talk to somebody in Indiana next line number one you know. Well you mention that it was a wooden structure and that takes me back to my days in high school when some cities here in Indiana had rather

at that time or elaborate you know wooden structures for stadiums for high school teams. Is there any interest in and using that sense of people coming to look at something like that like they do now with say the Woodward rule or coasters you know sort of taking a life of their own as when you know that it's field a stadium could you know present itself as a you know a tourist attraction for that town too. That's exactly what our plan was and it looks like we may be able to to make that come true to to turn it into a you know a living museum which is actually still hosting baseball professional baseball and yet at the same time it's an historic experience. And that's precisely why we want to do we have applied for. Stork register status. So that it's healed and we'll call it a park and become a destination for people who are interested in preservation and interested in history. Interested in the early architecture that kind of thing. Well thanks a lot keep up the good work.

Thank you. All right well thanks for the call. Other questions are certainly welcome here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free wherever you can hear us around Illinois Indiana you if you would happen to be listening on the internet as long as you're in the United States or you can use the toll free line that is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and locally 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and the next caller here is in Champaign. Lie number two. Hello. I have this quite an honor. I read before too but I didn't have to hide it. Anyway I was. One Dream. What do you think will be the future of C-like Fenway Park and some of your really old stadiums. Yankee Stadium. Well a Fenway Park right now appears to have reasonably enlightened owners who have decided that they can do pretty well by you know by Ristori or by keeping it restored

and keeping it as an active part but there's always the threat that they're going to insist on a new stadium in another part of town so that that that's always sitting there in New York Mayor Giuliani's last act before he left as mayor was to put on the drawing boards to new stadiums in New York City one for the Mets and one for the Yankees at a total cost to come by. Cost of one point six billion dollars. The new Yankee Stadium was either proposed for the West Side of Manhattan or believe it or not directly across the street from the existing Yankee Stadium which would then be torn down and made into a parking garage. And I wonder if if they knew if the parking garage would be called the garage that Ruth built. But that just shows you the absurdity of this whole thing is this historic Yankee Stadium which is already been renovated once in the 1700s and the not done well by the way. They did not preserve a lot of the architectural features that they should have that was

characteristic of the original Yankee Stadium but the thought of tearing that down because they're only drawing 3.2 million people a year to build another stadium next to it which might throw up 3.4 million is just shows you the level of absurdity that we have or we've arrived at here. Have you been following the. Well I just was recently settled but the controversy with the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley. Field in the rooftop owners have been following that indirectly but there's always they're always the people who want to preserve these stadiums and and they're and they're always grassroots organization you never hear anybody in town with a door to door campaign to build a new stadium or right. You know that's the way that always come from the from the top the people who want to save the stadiums are the the people who actually live in the community.

Thanks a lot. OK thanks for the call again we have about 15 minutes left we have folks listening I want to call and ask questions may come it's 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5. Something that that you mentioned almost in passing in the book. And many of the reviewers have commented on is the the role in which personal tragedy plays perhaps for you in your interest in trying to save the park. And it has to do with the loss that you experience losing. A child who was killed in an accident. Is that something that the now as you think about it you realize was part of just maybe part of what interested you in trying to save a walk on a park. Yes somebody pointed that out to me and I didn't. I haven't given it too much thought. I do know that it was helpful to have you know a project I could throw myself into completely and

and then maybe that's part of why I have pursued this so so strenuously because it on some level it was therapeutic for me. You know how the mind works. And what the body tries to how the body tries to you know fix itself cure itself. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was wasn't a connection between the two. I came across an interview that you did where you're talking about about the story of fall ball and the effort to save the park and different things about baseball I was interested at one point you were talking about how this this issue how I guess when ball players former ball players get together they like to talk about how well you know in our day we really know how to do in these kids today you know they're not. And and you were having this conversation with somebody who had who had played I guess the time that you did and you said to him Now look when we were playing we would hear the old guy say that and we would say they

were not. And so now here we are saying the same thing and you apparently were saying that in fact you thought that today the players of today because of their training because they're bigger because they're stronger they actually are better players or is that more is it more to do with the fact that the the nature of the game has changed and so now it's really important to be able to knock them out of the park as many as you possibly can and when you played it wasn't quite so much like that things are true. I think placing players today generally and you know putting a steroids aside which you attack is a whole nother evil dimension to the game. I think players generally without the steroids are just they're bigger they're faster they're stronger and athletes have gotten better in all the sports over the years it's just been you know a you have you know better coaching a better training of video cameras. The players can correct mistakes in their pitching motion and their batting motions. And and correct it the next time it that they just go into the clubhouse they watch themselves on the TV they do

replays. We didn't have any of that we had no idea what we looked like when we were pitching or hitting it in that was no video so things are more sophisticated today. Players have better training along the way. And also we're drawing from a much wider audience baseball talent is now coming not just from America but from from Asia and Latin America. And so it's it's a wider population to draw from. I hate the game is the game is the players are better athletes. They're bigger and stronger but they don't think the nature of the game has has changed with the sort of slightly smaller ballparks and I don't know maybe they've even juiced up the baseball but. The emphasis on the home run to me has destroyed the subtle beauty of the game so you don't need the skills you know an 18 to 10 game you don't need somebody who can steal a base or bunt or hit and run or hit the cutoff man doing the little things that I always thought were were beautiful about baseball so it's a it's a grosser game now it's

you know bigger actions and bigger movements and I think it's much more boring actually. To me yes the homerun is about as boring now as the dunk in basketball it's so ubiquitous it has lost his excite it's excitement. Get somebody here on the cell phone when I get to them. When one fellow I want. Yes I think I heard you mention about building a stadium across the street from another stadium and become a parking lot are you familiar with the Chicago Stadium going down which was not a baseball stadium but already played basketball and hockey. And do you find that a lot of these seem to go down we lose a bunch of history. Oh yeah that's. That's why the people want it that the fans generally want to keep the old ballpark even though it may be a little bit more uncomfortable it doesn't have the amenities of a new ballpark because they go to they go to the ball games because it's part of their family tradition they've. They know who their father's favorite team was their grandfather's

team. They took him to the stadiums and baseball for many families around the country have become a religion of sorts and then the stadiums are the churches there the temples and the thought of tearing down a church or a temple to build a more modern one is just to be unthinkable in any other endeavor but here in sports that's that's what they do because. Because the baseball owners are calling the shots. There are Chicago Stadium one of the pieces of history that last was one of the largest. Are organ ever constructed. Sure and it was lost. Yeah we were losing the art history and. And it's a sad thing it's scary particularly for older people to see these kinds of physical changes and losing pieces of our history because I think on some level the thought is you know if they can tear down these old structures and live and sort of let them go than who's who's going to remember us. Yeah that's true thank you very much.

Well thanks for the call. Oh we're coming down to having about seven eight minutes I'm reminded that I said way back to the beginning of the program that I would have you tell the story of how it is that you came to publish this book yourself a foul ball and I'm I better do that for we end up out of time as you did have a contract with a pup. Sure Tud to do this book right. Yeah if the publisher was public affairs they were excited by the book. I was going to be the lead book in their catalog and a month before they were ready to print this catalog the president of the publishing company sat down with me and told me that I would need to get balancing comments from General Electric for what I was saying about them in my book and I said I'm not going to do that I didn't get balancing comments from Major League Baseball and I wrote ball for I'm not going to do it with a foul ball. Then he tells me in the next breath that the top lawyer for General Electric is a friend of his and he's going to become a partner in public affairs. If you don't have to vet the editor with whom I've been working on the book tells me I have to remove all references to General Electric and pollution or they're not going to publish the book. And I said well you can forget about that. I'm going to publish this book and and then

they wouldn't give me a terminations letter which would you know I needed in order to go to a different publisher. Months went by I had to hire a lawyer to get this letter finally in the crib during the course of trying to get my termination letter the lawyer for Public Affairs told my agent and I could keep half of my advance if I promised not to say why I was leaving public affairs. I told my agent I said I don't I don't know what my price for the silence is but. No it's not $25000 probably by the time I got free of this publishing company. Nobody could publish it in a timely manner. I wanted it out in June of last year and so I had to publish the book myself it is a sad story about publishing the same sort of concentration in the publishing industry affects the creative product as it has a concentration in the media industry. Just nothing we did that I want to make sure we did that because someone I think called in and said hey you said you were going to ask him to talk about that and you didn't just go back to talk

about baseball a little bit. And this issue of now as you said there's so much emphasis placed on hitting home runs and so that the players are bigger and stronger they spend time doing strength training that they probably didn't used to but there's also this concern that some of that muscle is chemically developed and. And people are really concerned that baseball is simply not dealing with this. I wonder what you think about it. Well they haven't dealt with it and they should have dealt with it a long time ago. When I wrote in 1970 about players taking bills that baseball owners tried to pretend that that didn't happen. That was an exaggeration and they didn't really do anything about it. And and now because they've turned their back on this problem it's it's escalated and it's even worse than it was back then because that is the these steroids are very dangerous. And even the players association has been on the wrong side of this issue they've been they've been you know

elevating player privacy rights foolishly over the health rights of the players and also the competitive environment. You can't have players who are not taking steroids having to compete for jobs with players who are taking steroids. So for those reasons the Players Association should have should have really come out very strongly against steroids and. And that wasn't done another paying the price for it because all those records and all the recent you know home runs are now called into question. And this is really tears at the fabric of baseball because it's the. It's the it's the. Fan's interest in comparing modern players with the older players that keep that generational thing going and without that I mean if there's a whole section of records that are now suspect it really turns people away. And I think it's a bigger problem for baseball than than gambling. You know Pete Rose is gambling. No I think people probably would know because people are

in public life need to be willing to say just about anything and talk about what what they do. I think people have forgotten just what a flap or Ball Four are caused when the book was published and this really was the first real wide open. Tell It Like It Is. I think sports memore than anybody has ever written. And and I guess it's an indication of just how people reacted to it that after that you wrote a sequel that you titled I'm glad you. Didn't take it personally. I guess I'm a lot of people did. Do you still run into people who who have real strong reactions to the kind of things that you wrote about in more than 30 years ago when you wrote ball four. No people come up to me Now maybe they've read Ball Four and they say boy you know it's a funny book but it's I don't understand what the controversy is all about. It's so tame by today's standards. The big controversy involved for by the way for for

people who may not have read the book is I said Mickey Mantle had a homerun with a hangover and that was a big deal at that time. Baseball would certainly like to have its problems be reduced to an occasional hangover. They've got bigger problems right now. But let me tell you one more thing in the long run the truth of of of my observations here. You know one of the things that bothers me more than anything is. This guy this is this is it. Rod I'm going to the Yankees. And to me it should be questioned by sports writers. I mean here's a guy who is being celebrated for the fact that he's going to finally get a World Series ring not earn one mind you but get him one. He signed a contract to play for the Texas Rangers with the idea that they were not a good team he understood that and he was going to help try and make them better. Well he went down there for a few years. But he and he tried to make him better he wasn't able to do that. But then he quit. He quit trying to make the

Texas Rangers better and he gave him a very short list of teams he would be willing to play for now. The Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees were right. Well because they were going to be in the playoffs and he wanted to be in the playoffs too so he could get a World Series ring. So we have not only a quitter but a front runner. And it's really a disturbing thing. He's not been called on the carpet about this it's perfectly alright evidently in sports that a player who's a good player should be entitled to get a ring. What kind of a message does this send to kids. Remind me when I was when I was young and the players went down to the field to perform up there was all the new league starting in town and the best players on the team all tried to jump on the same line of you know reform lines of 20 kids each and they all tried to jump on the same team so that they can have the best team. There was no thought of gee hey you know let's let's make this team better let's let's get some balance here or or let's let's have something that's really a contest. You know I hated those kids who had to be on a winning team.

You know and you know it's like remember we threw down the field and you know nine kids would show up so you'd play 5 against four and everybody wanted to be on the team with five so they could win the game. I always wanted to be in the team with four. I got to lose touch with four than we needed with five. So the whole notion of whether sports is about competition or whether sports is is it getting handed a trophy for being on the winning team. Well we've used up our time for people here in Champaign Urbana. Again our guest Jim Bouton will be talking about his experiences trying to save this ballpark we've talked about it's the top topic of his book. Foul ball. He'll be on the campus tomorrow afternoon speaking in the planned auditorium 4:00 in the afternoon. After that they'll be signing and they'll also be a book signing at the champagne Borders bookstore tomorrow night at 7:00 and Mr. Brown thanks very much for talking with us. Thank David My pleasure.