Sunday, September 01, 2002
Oh, brother, where art thou?
By John Erardi, jerardi@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Why not, I figured. It had worked with everybody else. Why not with Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig?
He is the peg for this story. But I will save him for later. Because he is also the punch line.
Like any reporter chasing a story, I'll use almost any frame of reference to get a conversation started. Since my job involves a lot of baseball coverage, it has occasionally been a good frame of reference for me that my brother, Greg, played seven years of pro baseball, including a short stint with the Seattle Mariners in 1977 before blowing out his rotator cuff, back in the day before those things were relatively easily fixed.
When I first joined The Enquirer sports department in 1985 to do a book on Pete Rose's chase of Ty Cobb's all-time hit record, the famed baseball writer Roger Angell told me — in reference to Rose — that all of baseball history is a “river” and that anybody who has dipped a toe in it is part of that history.
I would later find out how right he was.
Over the years, Greg's career has helped me get stories, or pass the time, with future Hall of Famer Robin Yount (Greg hit him fungoes two hours a day in Newark, N.Y., where Yount played his only season of minor-league baseball before going to the bigs at age 18), and former Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Pedro Guerrero (Greg struck him out on a 3-2 slider with the bases loaded in Pittsfield, Mass., although I was never sure if Guerrero, not the friendliest or best English-speaking Dominican ever to make it off the island, understood a single word I said) and former Reds great Vada Pinson (he nicknamed my brother “Yosemite” for his orange Fu Manchu moustache that reminded Seattle coach Pinson of the cartoon character Yosemite Sam).
It also has been fun reminiscing over the years with such former teammates of Greg's as Reds outfielder Sammy Mejias, Brewers second baseman Jim Gantner and Astros shortstop Craig Reynolds.
Back during the 1994 labor negotiations, I even had a conversation with players' union head Don Fehr about Greg, because Fehr was general counsel of the players union in 1978 back when Marvin Miller met with Greg, and Fehr filed a grievance on Greg's behalf and won a full season's pay for him because the Mariners had released him when he was hurt.
Sometimes, people in baseball see my last name and ask if I'm related to Greg. That happened a few years ago with Reds batting practice pitcher Tim Burman, who roomed with Greg in Salem, Va., the Pirates' Single-A affiliate.
Greg and Tim recently hooked up here on one of Greg's visits. It turns out their sons are both promising high school and college pitchers, respectively. The dads talked shop.
Which is where Bud comes in. The Enquirer has had mixed results over the years reaching commissioner Selig when we've needed him. It's not as though we're on his cell phone's short list. He doesn't have much of an appetite for Pete Rose questions.
So, when I sought an interview with Selig five weeks ago for the purposes of doing a question-and-answer story and a profile in connection with the then-looming strike by the baseball players, and Selig's appointments secretary asked me to put my request in writing and fax it to Milwaukee, I told Bud I wanted to talk about the economics of baseball. I promised I would ask only one question about Pete Rose (OK, so I asked three) and I wouldn't ask any questions about why, when he owned the Brewers, Bud traded my brother to Pittsburgh two years after having drafted him out of high school in 1972, and then, after reacquiring him in 1975, left him exposed in the November 1976 expansion draft and happily pocketed from Seattle the $1million, which was the going rate for each of the players that all American League franchises lost to Seattle and Toronto.
Sure enough, a few days later, my phone rang. It was Bud's secretary; I would get the interview.
When I walked in Bud's door a week later, the first question he asked me was, “So, how's Greg doing?” Bud even allowed me and a photographer to meet with him the next day to take his picture at Gilles Frozen Custard stand. As he was leaving, Bud said: “Remember to tell Greg I said hello.”
I'm not saying I got the interview with Bud because of my brother. But it couldn't have hurt; it never has. Same as when Bud returned my call Friday when he got back to Milwaukee, after three long days of hammering out the collective bargaining agreement in New York.
My brother got a lot of mileage out of his baseball career — the money Fehr and Miller won for him put him through Wharton Graduate School, and Greg is now retired after a career on Wall Street and is coaching baseball in Weston, Conn. — but I got more. I've met everybody from batting practice pitchers to the commissioner. It might seem like I've taken this act as far as a man can, but why quit now? Greg's son, Nick, wants to pitch for the Reds. That ought to be good for at least another 30 years' worth of material.
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Oh, brother, where art thou?
