WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK By Bull Allen (John Bailey) Meets Phil Pepe, the King of the Corona (typewriter) in the Old Yankee Stadium mezzanine open air press box. May 29, 2011:
One of the great shows on Public Access Television White Plains is Beyond the Game, hosted the last decade by John Vorperian, crusading county attorney by day, sportscaster/interviewer, sabermetrician by night.
View from Phil Pepe’s seat in the Old Yankee Stadium Press Box in the Mezzenine, 1961, when he covered the greatest Yankee team of them all: the 1961 Yankees and the Maris-Mantle homerun chase.
Mr. Vorperian gets the most interesting sports personalities dropping by his show. Last week, he invited me to meet Phil Pepe, the man who covered the Yankees in 1961 when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris battled to beat Babe Ruth’s 60-homer record in a season, with the Rajah hitting number 61 on the final day of the season. I saw Maris hit that one on television off Tracy Stallard with Phil Rizzuto making the call on old WPIX Channel 11(Baseball and Ballantine; Baseball and Ballantine).It was fittingly the only run of the game, to beat the Red Sox, 1-0
I was 16 years old when I saw the September 1 Friday night game with the Tigers that year on a 95 degree night that the Yankees won, 1-0 in the ninth on a single by the Moose, Bill Skowron, after a tense duel between the Tigers Don Mossi and a string of Yankee pitchers who kept defusing Tiger threats. Well, I digress.
Mr. Pepe has written a book about the Maris-Mantle race for the home run crown, titled 1961 from Triump Books. (http://www.amazon.com/1961-Inside-Story-Maris-Mantle-Chase/dp/1600783902 That wonderful Yankee season featured the Bombers (they were Bombers then) holding off the Detroit Tigers by 3 games. The CitizeNetReporter interviewed Mr. Pepe after his BEYOND THE GAME appearance.
After Mr.Vorperian’s show, I talked with Mr. Pepe about baseball today here’s his view from the Upper Deck:
WPCNR: How has Bud Selig done as Commissioner of Baseball? Good, bad, or what?
Phil Pepe: I think he’s done a terrific job. When he took over, him as an owner, you thought well….but I think he’s really improved the game. He doesn’t get high marks on the steroids situation (in the 90s). He should have known. We all should have known.He didn’t react to steroids right away, but he’s made a pretty good comeback since then.
I don’t have daily contact with him. From afar, I look at him as a fan, and I think his overall record has been positive.
WPCNR: You think his changes to the playoffs have been positive (adding two extra teams to the Wild Card for example)?
Phil: I don’t like it. I’m a traditionalist. Every move he’s made. How can you argue with a success? The attendance is up all over, everywhere. The Yankees are going to draw 4 million people this year. In my day if they drew 2 million that was outstanding. In 1961 they drew 1.7 million I think it was. The final day they had 23,000 people at the game when Roger Maris hit his 61st homerun. The proof is in the pudding. Attendance everywhere is up. TV ratings are high. World Series ratings aren’t very good. Look at the Red Sox, how many consecutive sellouts have they had, 600?
WPCNR: Back in the 90s, do you think sportswriters should have discovered and reported steroid use?
Phil: I don’t think they knew. I don’t think they were aware of it. We didn’t have privy to what was going on behind the scenes. It did not come about in the early 90s, it was more in the late 90s. The first tip off was the number of homeruns being it. But there were other reasons for that: the ball was juiced, the bats were different; the ballparks were smaller; the strike zone was reduced; they were excuses, they were alibis.
The other thing that should have been a tip-off was the size of some of the players. They exploded. They burst. Their heads were getting bigger. Their shoulders were getting bigger. If you didn’t want to think the worst you’d say it was because of weight-lifting and the way they were working out. Every player now works out year round. It wasn’t that way when I was young. Most of the high paid guys have gyms in their homes. They workout in their home. They have trainers they work with. They don’t have to have a job in the offseason. So they can devote their offseason to working out. Back when I was covering, players would use spring training to lose weight, Now they come into spring training in shape.
WPCNR: Do you like the way the game has evolved today?
PHIL: No. There are some things I don’t like. I don’t like the idea that they have a sixth inning specialist, a seventh inning specialist, an eighth inning specialist, and a closer. I like to see pitchers go nine innings. I appreciate a guy like Halliday (Roy), he’ll pitch 9 complete games. Big deal. We’re never going to see the pitching records we used to see.
A guy pitches 90 shutouts in his career. That’s never going to happen (again).
WPCNR: What’s wrong with the game? What’s right?
PHIL: It will always be the national pastime. But the game has changed. The purists and traditionalists like me don’t see the game we used to see. We don’t see pitchers like Bob Gibson. We don’t have a Nolan Ryan, though Nolan Ryan should be given credit for getting back some of those old-fashioned ideas (going the distance).
What’s right about it is the players are much better, bigger, stronger, faster. The teaching and conditions in college and high school baseball are much better than it ever was.They have four or five coaches. They have better facilities. They play in these beautiful ballparks. There are college teams that are probably good enough to play professionally as a group in Class A, or whatever. Now you don’t have as many minor league teams but you have the independent leagues now. The players are bigger, you should see the size of some of these guys. My son is an agent and he tells me there are scouts who will not look at a pitcher unless they are 6 foot 4.
WPCNR: Baseball’s future?
Phil: I think it’s going to keep growing. There will be more expansion, but some dilution though. They’ll just move to another location. Maybe Tampa will be replaced by the next coming big city. Free agency is good for the players. They’re making so much money because of that. I just think there’s a problem, and I don’t mean to pick on the Yankees but they do have a $200 million payroll and the Cleveland Indians, a $30 Million payroll.
That’s not fair. There has to be a cap where you can only spend so much money. Revenue sharing is a good idea if they’d only put it into their team. They put it in their pocket.
