One of the bigger Renaissance men in baseball was Mike Burke.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I say Renaissance man, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that he went to fairs, got stoned and LARPed on weekends.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to do that.\u00c2\u00a0 He was a veteran of the OSS and the CIA.\u00c2\u00a0 Before that, he was a football star at Penn.\u00c2\u00a0 Afterward, he worked for the Ringling Brothers.\u00c2\u00a0 But that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough of a circus, so he joined CBS.<\/p>\n
It was The Sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 Most people think of stuff like Vietnam or the Civil Rights movement or hippies when they think of that decade.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was also the age of the Holding Company and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not talking about Janis Joplin.\u00c2\u00a0 Conglomerates were a big thing on Wall Street in those days as companies would purchase other companies outside of their core competencies.\u00c2\u00a0 CBS was no exception.\u00c2\u00a0 They purchased the guitar maker Fender and the New York Yankees among other businesses.\u00c2\u00a0 William Paley put Mike in charge.<\/p>\n
Buy low; sell high is the investing mantra.\u00c2\u00a0 But CBS got that wrong; waaaay wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 They bought an aging team with no farm system right when it went into a tailspin.\u00c2\u00a0 Then they sold out to George Steinbrenner not long before the team returned to glory.\u00c2\u00a0 This era in Yankee history was typified by players like Joe Pepitone, Roger Repoz, and Tom Tresh.\u00c2\u00a0 And Jim \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bulldog\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bouton.<\/p>\n
Bouton was kind of a flake; an outsider in the clubhouse.\u00c2\u00a0 Although he once won twenty games in a season, he is best known for co-authoring Ball Four<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 What isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t well known is that CBS turned it into a short-lived sitcom.\u00c2\u00a0 Bouton was in it along with ex-football player Ben Davidson.\u00c2\u00a0 Davidson also appeared in the movie M*A*S*H<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said before, Bouton has other connections to that film, working with Elliot Gould and Robert Altman in The Long Goodbye<\/em>.<\/p>\n Larry Gelbart turned M*A*S*H into a TV show.\u00c2\u00a0 Although not as good as the movie, it was great television until it jumped the shark when a number of cast members left.\u00c2\u00a0 I will brook no dissent.\u00c2\u00a0 Frank Burns > Winchester, Trapper John > B.J. Hunnicut, and Col. Blake > Col. Potter (that last one is less of a blowout than the others.)\u00c2\u00a0 Then Alan Alda got more creative control and got too preachy.\u00c2\u00a0 But it was still better than most shows out there.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Alda\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father was an actor, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Robert Alda got his start in vaudeville and burlesque.\u00c2\u00a0 He later went on to stage and film.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perhaps best known for playing George Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 He also appeared in a wartime espionage thriller called Cloak and Dagger<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a movie starring Gary Cooper and it was loosely based on Mike Burke\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exploits in the OSS during World War II.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, Burke acted as technical adviser on the film.<\/p>\n The OSS had a number of notables on its payroll.\u00c2\u00a0 Besides Burke, there was Julia Child and a couple of folks with a baseball connection; the catcher Moe Berg and future Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Goldberg?\u00c2\u00a0 Read on.<\/p>\n SABR\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest Baseball Research Journal<\/em> is devoted to baseball and the law.\u00c2\u00a0 Shysterball, some call this subject.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems to be the second most popular topic in the sabersphere after rating players using advanced metrics.\u00c2\u00a0 One article mentions perhaps one of the most celebrated cases in the pastime\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history; Flood V. Kuhn.\u00c2\u00a0 The defendant was Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.<\/p>\n The plaintiff, Curt Flood, was a centerfielder for the Saint Louis Cardinals who felt that his rights were violated when he was traded by that team to the Philadelphia Phillies.\u00c2\u00a0 His attorney?\u00c2\u00a0 Arthur Goldberg.\u00c2\u00a0 Flood had been with Saint Louis for over a decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Won two World Series with the Cardinals.\u00c2\u00a0 You may have heard Tim McCarver talk about him.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Before that he was with Cincinnati and their farm system.\u00c2\u00a0 They miscast him as an infielder.<\/p>\n But before he became a big league star, he played in Oakland.\u00c2\u00a0 Not for the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00c2\u00a0 They were still in Kansas City at the time.\u00c2\u00a0 He played for McClymonds High School.\u00c2\u00a0 He was a teammate of Vada Pinson.\u00c2\u00a0 A number of players came from that school and its rivals during that era.\u00c2\u00a0 They had a helluva coach in George Powles.\u00c2\u00a0 Other McClymonds Warriors included Willie Tasby, Frank Robinson, Jesse Gonder, and Bill Russell.<\/p>\n That wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Russell the shortstop.\u00c2\u00a0 That was Russell the basketball center.\u00c2\u00a0 He would go on to win two NCAA titles with the University of San Francisco, a gold medal in the 1956 Olympics, and eleven NBA titles with the Boston Celtics.\u00c2\u00a0 He was also the first black coach in a big-time professional sport when he took over the Celts in 1967.\u00c2\u00a0 Before he became player-coach at Boston, the head coach was Red Auerbach.<\/p>\n Auerbach was an alum of George Washington University in the District of Columbia.\u00c2\u00a0 He coached and taught in high schools for a few years after graduating from there.\u00c2\u00a0 One school he coached at was Roosevelt High.\u00c2\u00a0 While there, he noticed that the tallest kid in school was not on the basketball team.\u00c2\u00a0 He stopped him in the hall one day and asked him why he was never tried out.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a lousy player,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d replied the student.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let me be the judge of that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Auerbach.<\/p>\n After a weeks worth of practices, they both came to the conclusion that the kid didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t belong on a basketball court.\u00c2\u00a0 The student\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name was Bowie Kuhn.<\/p>\n Kuhn was the first baseball lifer to be named commissioner of the sport.\u00c2\u00a0 Around the time that Auerbach approached him, he was also working as a scoreboard operator at Griffith Stadium.\u00c2\u00a0 And after being admitted to the bar, he worked for the white-shoe firm of Willkie Farr Gallagher.\u00c2\u00a0 The National League retained them as outside counsel.<\/p>\n In 1965, baseball owners elected William Eckert, a former Air Force general as commissioner.\u00c2\u00a0 The New York World-Telegram<\/em> had this to say about Spike Eckert: “My God, they’ve chosen the Unknown Soldier.”\u00c2\u00a0 Dick Young of the New York Daily News<\/em> wrote “They (the owners) have said that they don’t really need a commissioner at all.”\u00c2\u00a0 Well, the owners preferred not ceding power to the commissioner (or anyone, for that matter), but Eckert was too ineffectual.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, player rep Marvin Miller felt that Eckert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s support for players who refused to play on the day of MLK’s funeral may’ve led to his demise as commissioner.<\/p>\n Kuhn was eventually elected as a compromise candidate in 1969.\u00c2\u00a0 This occurred after his predecessor was ousted before his contract expired.\u00c2\u00a0 Young Turks among the owners led a successful bloodless coup against Eckert in December of 1968.\u00c2\u00a0 This group included Jerrold Hoffberger of the Orioles and Mike Burke.<\/p>\n