Dive into the explosive Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, disco fever, and the birth of iconic TV moments as author David Krell joins Blaine DeSantis to unpack his fascinating book “1978: Baseball and America in the Disco Era.” From Louisiana Lightning’s unstoppable pitching to Robin Williams’ star-making alien debut, discover how this pivotal year shaped American culture both on and off the diamond. Whether you’re a baseball fanatic or a pop culture enthusiast, this time-traveling journey through a defining year will captivate you with untold stories and nostalgic revelations.
Links:
- “1978: Baseball and America in the Disco Era” Book
- David Krell Website
- Watch on YouTube
- Join the Newsletter
Transcript
Blaine DeSantis: [0:00] Hi, everybody. This is Blaine DeSantis, and I welcome you back to another episode of Books and Looks. Yes, it’s our weekly voyage of discovery into the wonderful world of books, the best of history, mystery, fiction, and nonfiction that I’ve been reading, along with, yes, along with exclusive interviews with the authors, something you don’t find many places at all, but they’re all here on Books and Looks. And what else is here? A big shout out to our partner, booktrip.com. Again, anything you want in terms of books, you’re going to find it right there. And let’s not forget that booksandlookspodcast.com. I’m telling you, great site. You can find everything there you need to know about Books and Looks. I love it. It’s great. Thank you. Thank you, my webmaster, my producer, Nathaniel DeSantis, for all that work.
Blaine DeSantis: [0:47] Anyway, hey, this year we’re going to step back in time to the unforgettable year of 1978. Yes, we have a nonfiction book for you today, friends. Now, 1978, disco fever grips the nation. Baseball provides thrills, heartbreaks, and controversies. They still resonate today. In his newest book, 1978, Baseball in America in the Disco Era, David Krell weaves a captivating tapestry of the events and personalities that defined that pivotal year, both on and off the diamond. From the Yankees and the Red Sox rivalry reaching a boiling point to cultural touchstones that shaped a generation. This book is nostalgic. This book is insightful. And it’s a journey through a defining time in American history. We talk baseball. We talk movies. We talk TV shows. You name it. We’ve got it here all this week. So anyway, I’m Blaine DeSantis. This is Books and Looks. And today I’m interviewing David Krell about his new book, 1978, Baseball and America in the Disco Era. David Krell, welcome to Books and Looks.
David Krell: [1:58] Thank you, Blaine. It’s great to be here.
Blaine DeSantis: [2:00] It is wonderful, friends. What a book. I’m going to host it up here. Whoa, I’m knocking things over here. 1978, Baseball and America in the Disco Age. Oh my God, what a great, great book. I love that book. And you interweave, culture with baseball so that I know I have some friends and some followers who are baseball fans. You’re going to love it. I have others who don’t have an idea what baseball is. They will understand the culture. And so this is a great book for everybody. So thanks for writing this book.
David Krell: [2:33] Thank you. Very generous words.
Blaine DeSantis: [2:35] Well, we’re going to try to go as far as we can month by month, bit by bit, building up 1978. Why did you write it this way with baseball and culture and why did you choose 1978?
David Krell: [2:48] Well, I’ve done two books in this format before, 1962 and another book about 1966 called Do You Believe in Magic? And I just found it very compelling to research a year and what was going on in the background of baseball, what was going on in the culture, what were people watching on television, what were the popular songs, what were the fashions, what was going on in politics. And my goal, Blaine, is if you were to tell me that you were going into a time machine back to that year, I would give you this book to read beforehand to remind you and give you a flavor of what everyday life was like for a baseball fan in that season. So it’s an easy format, as you know, January through December. And it’s I think a breakdown of about 70% baseball and 30% everything else.
Blaine DeSantis: [3:49] That’s great. It was well done. I’ll tell you what. We begin back in January, and the very interesting thing that Bowie Kuhn, for those of you who don’t know him, the former commissioner of baseball, stops Charlie Finley from selling or trading players to teams. He uses something called the best interest of baseball. You know, tell us about what that is. And also, if it was if it still can be used, what would Bowie Kuhn say about the Los Angeles Dodgers and those deferred salaries they’re doing?
David Krell: [4:23] To your first point, it means whatever the commissioner says it means in 1978, which apparently was unfettered authority. He prevented players from going to other teams, primarily wealthier teams. And he said, we can’t have just a few teams with deep pockets having the best players. Regarding what he would say today, the economic pressures are different and the money is different. So a player can make maybe $100 million going to a big market team and $87 million going to a smaller market team. Well, is it worth that much? If the smaller market team is competitive or if the smaller market team is in Florida, where the tax advantage may be greater, it might not matter.
David Krell: [5:16] $100 million over, let’s say, eight seasons in New York or Los Angeles is not the same as $85 million in Florida or Las Vegas. We’re going to have the Las Vegas Aces in a couple of years. So you might get more endorsement opportunities in a certain city. You might get more tax advantages in a certain city. So Kuhn would have to navigate that in terms of what he would allow and not allow. Plus, the players union is stronger now than it was in 1978. So you would have the players lobbying against the commissioner saying, wait a minute, you can’t tell me where to go. That’s a restraint of trade. And this best interest of baseball clause is overreaching. That’s my feeling anyway.
Blaine DeSantis: [6:05] But now what about a guy like Ohtani, who’s got, is being deferred over 20 years. You think he would have liked something like that?
David Krell: [6:12] I don’t think any player would like a commissioner to say you cannot go to a certain team because it would cause an imbalance. Well, of course there are imbalances. Of course there are imbalances. And you get a great player who is on a mediocre team. Is that fair to the player to say after his contract’s up, he can’t go to a competitor? He can’t go to somebody, to an owner, an owner’s team who’s a contender. I think about when I grew up and there were players like Earl Campbell on the Houston Oilers, but the Houston Oilers never made it to the Super Bowl. It was always the Steelers or the Cowboys in those days, or at least that’s the way it seemed. Are you going to tell that player he can’t go to the Steelers or the Cowboys and get to a Super Bowl because you want parity?
Blaine DeSantis: [7:07] Well, let’s bring that right up to date. Saquon Barkley left those lousy New York Giants and went down the highway and my Eagles got them and now they’re Super Bowl champions. So it does certainly allow that player that ability to go and get things and do things. And I agree. But I just interesting that that was a big concept back in 78. But I got to go to February, got to move to February because February, you know, you and I get excited. Pitchers and catchers report how many days the countdown goes. But there was something else. There was a blizzard, which I had completely forgotten about, in 1978. And then there was something about Robin Williams. Yeah, the comedian. Tell us a bit about those two.
David Krell: [7:50] Well, the blizzard was epic. It hit the mid-Atlantic. It hit the northeastern part of the United States. New England got walloped. I lived in northern New Jersey and I think our school was out of commission for a week, I believe. I believe in my memory it was five days where we had to make them up at the end of the year. It was startling. All over the news, this is before 24-hour news, all the New York stations had special coverage. And it’s very exciting when you’re a kid, when you’re a grownup, not so much because remember, this is 1978. No internet, no email. So parents who.
David Krell: [8:37] Had to go to work, either through a bus, a train, on the highway, they were stuck inside with nothing to do. Usually parents brought home maybe a night’s worth of work if they had a big project or something. And that wasn’t the case with people who had a home office and could just say, well, I’ll just work on what I’m working on. The Robin Williams appearance on Happy Days vaulted him into superstar status literally overnight.
David Krell: [9:10] I remember going to school the next day and every kid was talking about that episode. We had never seen anything like that on Happy Days or any other show. He dominated. And when you see the interviews that other cast members have done about that night, I mean, Happy Days was on for what, 10, 11 seasons? That night stands out and they said to a person he was a dynamic force and he was a replacement they didn’t have anybody at the middle of the week they’re taping on Friday night and it’s Wednesday and they don’t have somebody for that role as Mork from Ork the alien he comes in and just absolutely devastates the crowd, In the audition or the meeting, Jerry Paris, who was the director in Anson Williams’ account, he says that Jerry Paris came out into the studio, said, he’s a genius, he’s a genius, he’s a genius. And then later that fall, we got Mork and Mindy, the spinoff. And Robin Williams had a very long and rich career in movies and television.
Blaine DeSantis: [10:23] Yeah, no doubt about it. But Nanu Nanu was something we all knew about there.
David Krell: [10:26] Oh, yeah.
Blaine DeSantis: [10:27] Yeah, yeah. It came into the lexicon. Well, now I got to go to March. March comes. And in March, you know, Tommy Lasorda takes over March. He hates everybody. Or if he doesn’t hate him, he’s got an epic rivalry with everybody. Sparky Anderson, he doesn’t like. He didn’t like the Phillies. He didn’t like anybody else. It was Dodger Blue. Tell us about Tommy.
David Krell: [10:51] Well, Tommy Lasorda, as you know, Blaine, was a passionate person, especially when it came to baseball. And the Dodgers were close to his heart. I can’t imagine Tommy Lasorda in another uniform. I just can’t. But March was important because we started to see spring training games and the Dodgers would have to compete for the title again. They lost the 77 series to the Yankees, but they had great players. Davey Lopes, who became the captain, Ron Cey, Steve Garvey, Reggie Smith, Tommy John. These were solid players. I knew when the Mets played the Dodgers, they were playing the elite squad of the National League or one of the elite squads of the National League. And Lasorda was the spokesperson. I might have to go to my baseball cards to find out who was the manager of the Cubs or the Tigers or the Astros, you didn’t need a baseball card to tell you who managed the Dodgers. He was out in front. He was great copy for sports writers. A great presence on TV when he gave interviews and he’s synonymous as you allude to, synonymous with the Dodgers.
Blaine DeSantis: [12:14] Yep. And he and he and he and Anderson with the Reds just started sniping at each other. I mean, it was back and forth and no one was going to back down. So, yep. He set that tone and the Dodgers where they followed him and that I love a good team. Oh my God. I just finished up law school out there in LA and I, you know, I grew up and got used to old Walter Johnson, Walter, Walter, Walter Alston, you know, very calm person. And here comes, here comes Tommy Lasorda and boy, oh boy, what a change. But let’s go then to April. Now, April is fascinating because we have the development and it comes out. The Philly Fanatic, the ultimate sports mascot, is debuted in Philadelphia. The Fanatic. And we also have something called Dallas, which all the critics say is going to be a terrible show. Tell us about those two features.
David Krell: [13:13] Well, the Fanatic is fun. A Mets fan, a Tigers fan, a Cubs fan, any fan will accede to the fact that the Fanatic is fun. He just exudes happiness and joy when he comes out onto the turf in that trike riding that trike it’s joyful and he premiered in 1978 nobody knew what it was and he very quickly became an icon of endearment for Phillies fans, and I would dare say fans across baseball. Dallas was a five-part miniseries. Larry Hagman stars as J.R. Ewing. It revolves around the Ewing family, which is an oil dynasty, for lack of a better word.
David Krell: [14:04] And it was soap opera. And as you say, and as I write in the book, critics were harsh. They did not like this. They thought it was beneath what television should be, that it was tacky, that it was absolutely on, what’s the word I’d say, junk. That’s a good word. Yeah, unquality but junk and the fact is that people flocked to it so much so that over the five episode miniseries, it brought an audience that convinced CBS to produce this as a weekly series. And it became a cornerstone of the Friday night lineup on CBS for 13 years until 1991. Couple that with two TV movies and then the reboot on TNT. Couple that with the Knots Landing spinoff, which lasted an incredibly long time.
Blaine DeSantis: [15:08] Longer than Dallas, I think.
David Krell: [15:10] Yeah, I think it was 14 seasons. And you have one five-episode miniseries spawning millions and millions and millions of dollars in advertising, creating jobs for people in the entertainment industry. It shows you, what do critics know? What do critics know? And the other thing that I had forgotten about, Blaine, is it was timely because of the oil crisis that hit in the 70s. I think we had two, I believe. So that hits headlines. Why wouldn’t you want to see the machinations behind the scenes? Who wouldn’t want to be in a family that’s worth a couple of billion dollars controlling oil?
Blaine DeSantis: [15:55] And from the United States, man.
David Krell: [15:57] Right. The characters were good. They were drawn very well and developed over time. Larry Hagman, we hadn’t really seen in anything substantive on television since I Dream of Jeannie went off the air in 1970. And he tells a story that he had a choice between two projects, Dallas and the Waverly Wonders. It’s good that he picked Dallas. He changed face of television and certainly elevated salaries for actors. He set a precedent. I believe that he became the first actor to make $100,000 an episode.
Blaine DeSantis: [16:37] On television wouldn’t surprise me. Wow that’s interesting. Didn’t know that. Two things I went up to Cooperstown. I saw one mascot in the in the Hall of Fame and that was the Philly Fanatic. Now maybe more there now but when I went up there there was the Fanatic standing in the one room.
David Krell: [16:54] The Chicken is there too, I think.
Blaine DeSantis: [16:55] Is he there? Okay, all right. Who was completely different. They not at all lovable to me, right?
David Krell: [17:02] The Chicken was zany.
Blaine DeSantis: [17:04] The Chicken was.
David Krell: [17:06] Good for This Week in Baseball.
Blaine DeSantis: [17:08] And other.
David Krell: [17:10] Clips like growing up in the New York area you had Warner Wolf.
Blaine DeSantis: [17:13] Right doing.
David Krell: [17:15] The sports cast on WABC and then WCBS so it was good visually.
Blaine DeSantis: [17:21] Because he was.
David Krell: [17:22] So wacky and he had the exposure on Johnny Bench’s show.
Blaine DeSantis: [17:26] The Baseball Bunch, right, right. The other thing is, have you ever been down to South Fork? You ever make it down there to the ranch?
David Krell: [17:32] No, I would like to someday.
Blaine DeSantis: [17:34] Yeah. I’ve been there. I found out, every time you saw Bobby swimming in that Olympic pool they had in the background, wasn’t an Olympic pool, wasn’t very big. What they did was they strapped a mirror.
David Krell: [17:47] Right.
Blaine DeSantis: [17:49] So they filmed it and it looked like it was this huge pool and it really wasn’t that big.
David Krell: [17:53] Right. And when you watch it now, now, you can tell when the pool shots are studio or exterior on location.
Blaine DeSantis: [18:03] Yep. Interesting stuff. What a show. Hey, I got to go to May. And there’s a guy named Dave Kingman. Now, Dave Kingman, he could hit some prodigious home runs. And he did something to the Dodgers. That set off Tommy Lasorda again. Tell us about why Tommy got upset this time.
David Krell: [18:22] Well, Dave Kingman was my favorite player growing up. We had the same name. We had the same initials. And I loved when he played for the Mets, watching him swat the ball over the fence. He plays for the Cubs in this particular game that you’re referencing. He played for many teams in this particular game, the Cubs, and the Cubs play the Dodgers. Kingman hits three home runs, and a reporter after the game asks a tremendously benign question. He might as well have been asking Tommy Lasorda, what’s your favorite kind of steak?
David Krell: [19:02] Porterhouse, T-bone, New York, strip, what’s your favorite color? Instead, he asks, what did you think of Kingman’s performance? Any other manager would have said he’s a tremendous asset. What a force. Kingman is one of the most powerful batters in the league. Instead, Lasorda goes on a rather florid rant using just about every permutation of the F word, which you can find on YouTube. And for no good reason, the reporter was not being obstinate or arrogant or provocative in any way when it set Lasorda off because he didn’t, he was frustrated not just to lose the game, but for Kingman to hit three home runs.
Blaine DeSantis: [19:52] Yeah. No doubt. No doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, by the way, I think Dave Kingman, the forerunner today’s baseball player, I think he made hundreds of millions of dollars. What do you think?
David Krell: [20:02] As a DH, maybe, yeah. I was surprised in going over his career that he was not recruited by more American League teams because there were better outfielders defensively, and he would have been a tremendous asset for an AL squad just in the DH position.
Blaine DeSantis: [20:28] That’s right. That’s right. Well, it’s very, he’s certainly, you know, the game now is you’re swinging, you miss or you hit a home run. And that’s what, he sort of led everybody on that. Hey, I want to go to one of the great, great performances you highlight in the month of June, Louisiana Lightning, Ron Guidry. Wow. What a year he had. I don’t think it’s been topped since 1978. Tell us about Louisiana Lightning and Ron Guidry.
David Krell: [20:54] Well, Guidry is a force in 78, the likes of which we hadn’t seen maybe since Sandy Koufax. And he goes 25 and three. Nobody can hit him. On a June night, he racks up a tremendous amount of strikeouts. I think it’s 18 strikeouts, if I have my math correct. And what can you say about him? He was just a dominant force. That night is when fans rose on the second strike, according to Guidry. That’s when the tradition began. It’s more for the Yankees. Other teams have adopted it somewhat, but at Yankee Stadium, it’s automatic. When a Yankees pitcher has two strikes on a batter, everybody stands. And it started that night.
Blaine DeSantis: [21:50] Isn’t that something? Wow. Wow. It was 25-3. He had God knows how many hundreds of strikeouts. Now we can’t get pitchers to go five innings. Will it ever be topped?
David Krell: [22:02] I don’t think so. Because if you look at what the pitchers are racking up today in terms of complete games and looking at the league leaders versus the league leaders from 40 years ago, no comparison. And they just don’t have the opportunity. It’s not that they can’t do it. It’s not a knock on their ability or their stamina. The game has shifted in terms of strategy, where you’re bringing in a pitcher for a certain batter or player. A certain inning and that’s it you’re not letting them work out of the inning.
Blaine DeSantis: [22:42] That’s right, that’s right. Yep, and back in the day you know we get that’s later on but still back in the day you’d have Ron, you’d have Sparky Lyle, you have Goose Gossage going three innings. A reliever going three innings. Nowadays no, no, no. Taijuan Walker went three last night for the Phillies because they were losing so badly but other than that no one’s going to put a guy in for three innings. So very fascinating. And, you know, he wasn’t a big man. He wasn’t a six, five, six, six. He was not that tall. And they weren’t worrying about spin rates or things like that. He was just so good that year. So I enjoyed him. Yep. Now I got to go to July and now Billy, Billy Martin erupts, Billy Martin erupts, says things, probably truisms, by the way, about Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner. Oops. That sets off another whole explosion. What happened? Tell us about those things.
David Krell: [23:38] Well, Billy Martin said some not so kind things about his star player and his boss, and he resigns. Whether he got pushed, that’s a matter of debate. But at any rate, he leaves the Yankees and they bring in Bob Lemon. Bob Lemon, the great pitcher for the Indians from decades ago, had managed the White Sox. Lemon brings calm to the Yankees clubhouse, where before there was chaos and conflict. So you can’t perform when there’s chaos and conflict. Lemon treats the players as men, treats them as professionals, and there’s a certain lessening of the burden of just coming into work because you know, Blaine.
David Krell: [24:27] When somebody leaves a job, it’s very rarely because of the job itself. It’s because of bureaucracy. It’s because of the bosses. It’s because of budgetary reasons. It could be a combination. But you had Yankees who were vocal in the papers saying, I don’t want to be here next year. And they were quoted directly. You didn’t see an unnamed player. You saw the actual player’s name. So that’s how unhappy they were. Lemon comes in and the Red Sox are ahead in the standings by a tremendous amount of games. There’s no way the Yankees can catch up. But as we later find out, the Yankees start creeping up little by little. And I’m sure we’ll talk about that in a few minutes.
Blaine DeSantis: [25:17] Now, also, you bring up that in that month of July, the hot summer, we got disco really hitting everything. I mean, my God, you got Donna Summer, you got Gloria Gaynor. Wow. How big was Disco, David?
David Krell: [25:32] Disco in the late 70s was as big as surfing in the mid-60s with the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean and other folks. You had, excuse me, Saturday Night Fever in 1977. The soundtrack is released, and it’s a top performer in 78. You had Gloria Gaynor with I Will Survive. It was just dominating popular culture for a short period of time. By the early 80s it was gone. But for that brief snippet, for those four or five years from 75 to 80, let’s say, Disco was everywhere with Donna Summer at the pinnacle.
Blaine DeSantis: [26:14] Right, right. Now, here’s something that I may know, you might not. I’ll see if you knew this. In 1978, ABBA brought out their only two disco songs.
David Krell: [26:24] Oh, I didn’t know that.
Blaine DeSantis: [26:25] Voulez-Vous and Does Your Mother Know? And they never made it. It was good. We all know it now. You know, everybody can sing it now. But back then, they were not the hits because that wasn’t ABBA disco. But that’s how prevalent it was that the Swedish group had to bring out disco. And then, of course, we all had 1979, the infamous disco, disco, death to disco at Chicago. And it was a real hoot where they blew up all those records. Oh, my God.
David Krell: [26:55] That’s how prevalent it was. That was not baseball’s finest hour. That was a promotion gone awry.
Blaine DeSantis: [27:03] It was. But it also showed that you begin to see that trend against disco. And they come out and say, oh, it was anti-this. It was because of that. I just got tired that and we had songs like Disco Duck. I mean come on, how bad was Rick Dees doing Disco Duck? It was terrible.
David Krell: [27:22] It was novelty but that’s what the culture.
Blaine DeSantis: [27:24] Was in 1977.
David Krell: [27:26] 78 where Saturday Night Fever elevated disco to this absolute prolific presence across radio record players. I mean, there wasn’t a household in America that had a record player that didn’t have the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
Blaine DeSantis: [27:46] Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m going to have to skip a little bit until we get to September. We’ve got the Boston Massacre. We got, what happened to the Red Sox that year?
David Krell: [27:59] Very quickly, the Yankees came into Fenway Park for four games, and not only do they win all four games, they absolutely clobber the Red Sox in the first two. New Englanders are demoralized.
David Krell: [28:13] The press is demoralized in Boston, and it just looks like they’re deteriorating. The Yankees, for whatever reason, were able to, like I said, creep up. It wasn’t like they won three out of three and then went on some great 15-game winning streak. They won, Boston lost. They win, Boston loses. The four games were essential to catching up. And then later, we find out that the teams are tied at the end of the season. So what was supposed to be an insurmountable lead now becomes, oh my God, we have to play our rivals for the AL East playoff. And that happens in early October. Bucky Dent and Reggie Jackson hit home runs. Lou Piniella makes an amazing catch in the outfield that probably prevented a couple of runs from scoring. And the ratings are through the roof. Why? Because in the New York and Boston areas, you have a heavy Jewish population. Well, it just happened to be taking place in the afternoon of a Jewish holiday. So Jews went to synagogue. They davened, which is.
David Krell: [29:31] Hebrew word for pray. And they came home, took off their suits, took off their dresses, got in their everyday clothes and watched the ball game. In those days, it was the late afternoon. Today, it would be a spectacle on Fox. It would start at eight o’clock with first pitch probably being 8:20.
Blaine DeSantis: [29:50] Absolutely. Wow. They caught them, they beat them, and then they went to the World Series. What happened in that World Series?
David Krell: [29:59] They’re down 2-0 against LA, and they come back to win the next four. I think that people kind of look at the Yankees askance from those days. They don’t acknowledge that they went to the World Series three years in a row, 76, 77, 78. 76, they didn’t have Reggie Jackson. 77 and 78 they’re firing on all cylinders when needed and didn’t go back to the series until 81 but it was a tremendous series with two great teams. You can’t discount LA’s competitiveness, their toughness, their quality. They had amazing players. It could have gone either way but the Yankees were able to gut it out and capture the World Series title for the second year in a row.
Blaine DeSantis: [30:56] Right. Tommy Lasorda was beside himself.
David Krell: [30:58] Oh, yeah. There’s a play that I describe where Russell throws the ball to first base. Jackson is on first, and he’s in the base path. The ball hits his hip and goes into right field, thereby allowing him to go to second base. And you can see this on YouTube. Lasorda was mic’d up during that World Series, or at least during that game. You hear his entire argument to the umpires, as well as the umpires’ refutation of him. And it’s pretty rare for a manager to go toe-to-toe with an umpire like that, especially during a World Series. But he was so furious. He said, Jackson has to get out of the way of the ball. And the umpire said, well, where is he supposed to go? He’s not allowed to go out of the base path. And then you had the argument, did Reggie thrust his hip ever so slightly and, so that the ball would hit it and then go into right field.
Blaine DeSantis: [32:04] That would have been a pretty snap judgment if he did that. Maybe he did. I’ll tell you. Interesting. But this is not the only time. You know, we talk about Lasorda going nuts. He went nuts in the Philly Fanatic. He attacked the Fanatic later on in his career.
David Krell: [32:18] Yeah, there’s a lot of controversy with Lasorda. But at the end of the day, he was likable because he was so passionate about baseball. And I’m sure I never had the pleasure of meeting him but if I did I imagine that he would be very gracious if you said you were a fan of another team he would probably say that’s a great ball club keep rooting for that team. I have a feeling that’s the way he was with fans but.
Blaine DeSantis: [32:46] We stay away from Dave Kingman, right.
David Krell: [32:48] Well right, well I’m part of the fans. I have no empirical evidence, but that’s just my feeling that that’s the type of guy he was to just not bad mouth someone in front of the fans. Now, trash talking to reporters is a different story.
Blaine DeSantis: [33:05] No doubt. The season now ends and there is this beginning of this mass exodus from New York. Everybody now on the team wants to get off, get out of the team. They may have won the World Series, but they were upset enough that they wanted to leave. Tell us about that.
David Krell: [33:25] Well, New York has a media pressure all its own. When you are living and working in New York City, you’re walking fast, you’re talking fast, you compete for everything. It’s expensive. It’s tremendously hot in the summer. It can be brutally cold in the winter, and players just didn’t have the wherewithal to stay here if they didn’t have to. They wanted to go to a place where they didn’t have microphones from all these different outlets and all these different reporters with notepads after a game where if you play in a medium market team, that medium market may have one or two newspapers and it’s an easier lifestyle.
Blaine DeSantis: [34:11] Right. So who left after that season? Who left?
David Krell: [34:15] I’d have to go back to the roster. I know Reggie stayed until 81, and he definitely stayed. I know Figueroa was unhappy. He was quoted in an article.
David Krell: [34:29] I don’t have the roster in front of me about who left and who stayed, but I just sensed that in researching the book, Blaine, Bob Lemon’s coolness and calmness was great for the season, but you still had conflicts. You still had tension. Steinbrenner is in the paper all the time. And I didn’t know who an owner of the Tigers was or the Cubs or the Twins, but everybody knew who Steinbrenner was because of these controversies that had emerged primarily with Billy Martin. And then bringing Billy back and then firing him and bringing him back and this whole seesaw with Martin as the manager. Does he stay? Does he go? So it’s a great place to work, but it shows you that all that glitters isn’t gold. When I saw the story about The Offer, which is the miniseries that was made about the making of The Godfather, I did not know that Al Ruddy did not produce The Godfather Part II. Now, I don’t know why, but I suspect The Godfather was enough. Because people don’t realize how exhausting it is.
David Krell: [35:47] As I got older, I started to realize when I would see a player leave a team like the Yankees, or I would hear about a newscaster leaving Channel 7 or Channel 4 in New York for a smaller market, why would you do that? Well, an easier lifestyle, an easier commute. You don’t have the pressure. You don’t have the fans up and down all the time.
David Krell: [36:13] The fans are tremendously loyal, as you know, in Buffalo to the Bills, where they got a welcome home party, or I shouldn’t say party, but they were welcomed at the airport when Norwood missed the kick. Wide right. Right. So do you want to play in that atmosphere where it’s easier, where you can just focus on your job rather than what’s going on with the reporters and being asked about the soap opera that’s playing out in the clubhouse? And the template for this is Roger Maris. Roger Maris’s hair was falling out during the home run race between him and Mantle to see who would break Babe Ruth’s record.
Blaine DeSantis: [37:00] Right.
David Krell: [37:01] That’s a tremendous toll that it takes on you personally and that can only injure you professionally.
Blaine DeSantis: [37:08] No doubt. I thought that Barry Pepper did a fine job portraying Maris in that movie, 61 with an asterisk. That was well done.
David Krell: [37:15] I recommend that movie to anybody who wants to learn about baseball. It is such a lovingly crafted movie. And thank God Billy Crystal directed it because he idolized Mickey Mantle growing up. And he also got to know Mantle later on. So he knew certain stories about that season. And what a tremendous story.
Blaine DeSantis: [37:43] Yep. Great, great thing. Well, now, the season has ended, the book has ended, but I got to know, what’s next for David Krell? What are you working on now?
David Krell: [37:53] Right now, I’m working on two books. One is a book about 1986, and the other is a book about the cultural history of baseball in New York City. So stay tuned for that. I have two other books coming out this year. One is a biography of Bo Belinsky and another book, which is non-baseball related. It’s a Christmas movies book relating to the law. So in other words, using Christmas movies and Christmas TV episodes to illustrate points of law. For example, when the Clampetts celebrate Christmas on the Beverly Hillbillies, that’s an opportunity for me to talk about Mr. Drysdale and the wonderful world of private banking and the legal hoops that he would have to jump through. So it’ll be a great stocking stuff or Hanukkah gift for any lawyer in your family.
Blaine DeSantis: [38:48] Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, as a Bo Belinsky fan, I can’t wait to read that book, you know, Bo was a force of nature. I’ll say that much.
David Krell: [38:56] I can’t wait to talk to you about it. That was a labor of love, and I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t been chronicled before.
Blaine DeSantis: [39:07] Yep, I know. Now, before I go, okay, and I know we’re running out of time, but I got to ask this, David. I’m living down here in Greenville, South Carolina, and everybody wants to know, after the ruling, will Shoeless Joe Jackson get into the Hall of Fame? What’s your thoughts on that?
David Krell: [39:25] I predict, yes. I think there’s a great chance of him getting in immediately, certainly within three years. Rose, I flip a coin. I just don’t know because there’s an upswell that’s happening online, and I think that’s going to translate into a formal protest.
Blaine DeSantis: [39:48] Okay. Well, we’re hoping for Shoeless Joe to get in. That’s our hopes down here. David, this has been wonderful. This has been spectacular. You have done a great, great job with this book. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us about this. I’m looking forward to all your other books. I know you’re up at Cooperstown a lot. Are you going up to that symposium in May?
David Krell: [40:12] I’m speaking at the symposium in two weeks, and I’m also delivering an alternative version of Casey at the Bat during the banquet. It’s a Casey at the Bat, but the events as told from an opposing player’s point of view.
Blaine DeSantis: [40:30] Wonderful. People don’t, and David might not remember this, but I was up presenting, Dave was up presenting. We met, we are paths crossed up at Cooperstown at one time. I liked him from day one. This is a great guy, a great baseball historian. And the fact that he blends it all culturally. David, thank you so much for being with us today on Books and Looks.
David Krell: [40:49] Thank you, sir. Take care.
Blaine DeSantis: [40:51] Well, I don’t know about you, friends, but I learned a heck of a lot talking to David about that book, 1978. So much went on. Again, if you’re a baseball fan, you’re going to love all the baseball. If you like, you know, all the cultural stuff that went on from Robin Williams and Dallas. We didn’t even get a chance to talk about Animal House, the movie. I mean, there was just so much going on. It’s a great book. Absolutely great book. One more time. Hold up here. 1978. Yeah, baseball in America and the disco era. You don’t want to forget this one, friends. Anyway, on behalf of Books and Looks, this is Blaine DeSantis saying, may all your leaves be pages in a book.
