There is life after baseball, according to Tony Kubek, our neighbor to the north. Kubek was on the big-league scene 38 years–nine with the Yankees as a star shortstop, including six World Series, and the last 29 years as a broadcaster.
He recalled a conversation with Phil Rizzuto, who at 79 was still behind the mike until he quit last August in a dispute with management, which didn’t allow him to attend the funeral of Mickey Mantle.
Remembered Kubek: “He said, `Tony, this job is so easy and you make a lot of dough. Nobody gives it up.’ “
But Kubek, 60, hung it up after the ’94 season.
“I got tired of the travel,” he said. “It wears you out. And I got tired of hearing myself talk and giving my opinions. People were always asking my opinion.”
Some still ask but Kubek is far from the madding crowd. He lives in Menasha, Wis. (pop. 14,711), a few miles outside of Appleton, 100 miles north of Milwaukee.
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“We’ve been down to 20 below and that’s without the wind chill,” he said of the recent cold snap. “We only go out for survival.”
He said he is as busy as ever.
“At noon, I’m already behind schedule,” Kubek said. “I have four children in this area. And a grandson, Tony IV. There’s always something.”
He was in the midst of writing an anecdote about Mantle to go with a new series of Mantle collector cards:
“I was 18, my first spring training. (Yankees manager Casey) Stengel used to have us run footraces, according to position–infielders against infielders, outfielders against outfielders.
“Tommy Carroll was with us, a big bonus boy who could run. Mickey comes up to me and says, `I have a $100 bet with Hank Bauer. If you beat this guy I’ll give you $25.
“Then Bauer, he was a big, tough ex-Marine, pulls me aside: `Kid, let this guy beat you and I’ll give $50.’ “
Who won?
I could hear Kubek chuckling.
“I threw the race. (That) was a lot of money in those days.
“Mickey shook his head in disbelief. Next to Mickey, I was the fastest guy on the team. I can still see Mickey paying off and Whitey (Ford) and Yogi (Berra) laughing.
“Mickey was a great guy. He was always nice to the rookies. He never got caught up in his fame. He deflected a lot of the attention. In ’61, when he and Roger (Maris) had that great home run duel–Roger hit 61, Mickey 54–there was always a crush of writers at their lockers.
“Mickey thought it was unfair to the other players. He’d say `Go talk to Ellie Howard, he got a big home run. Or talk to Moose Skowron, he got the winning hit.’
“Some of the writers were angry. They thought he was brushing them off. He just didn’t like one or two players getting all the glory. It’s a nine-man game. Or it was. This was long before the DH. When I came up there were only 16 teams.”
He conceded there are some superstars today, but contends not as many as in his time.
“I’m not knocking Frank Thomas or Ken Griffey–they’re legitimate superstars–but I don’t know how to quantify what they’re doing because they’re hitting against inferior pitching,” Kubek said.
“Sandy Koufax was great. He was the ultimate pitcher. But the pitching has been diluted. With every new wave of expansion, the pitching gets worse. And in another year there will be two more teams; (currently there are) 28 teams, that’s a lot of teams and a whole lot of players.
“When I look at the pitching now I think of Spud Murray. He was the Yankees’ batting-practice pitcher–threw us home run balls, balls we could drive. He’d make some of these clubs today.
“People say it’s all relative, that so long as there is a good level of competition, you can’t tell if the game was played better 35 or 40 years ago. I say that’s hogwash. There are just too many players who don’t know how to play.”
The way he sees it, baseball and the other professional sports are shooting themselves in the foot.
“Both sides, players and owners, are driven by money. And when money drives a sport, when there is that kind of obsession, it eventually will wreck it. I know money is important. But that’s all we hear about. I’m tired of reading about how the union might strike again and the high salaries. And everyone else is, too.”
I mentioned that probably from the beginning of time, in baseball and other ventures, there were constant financial labor-management disputes.
“I suppose that’s right,” Kubek conceded. “Did I ever tell you about my dad? He was the first Tony.
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“He was a good ballplayer. Hit .352 in the American Association. The next year he was offered a contract to go to spring training with the St. Louis Browns. And he quit because they didn’t offer him enough money. He had 10 of us to support and made more money working in a tannery on the south side of Milwaukee.”