Hold My Cutter
The Art of the Diamond and the Press with Rick Cerrone
When Rick Cerrone, the esteemed editor-in-chief of Baseball Digest, opens up about his journey, even the air in Burn by Rocky Patel seems to hang on every word. Graced with the scent of fine cigars and the spirit of America's pastime, Rick weaves tales of his New York Yankees days and the path that led him back to the heart of Pittsburgh. This episode is a love letter to the city, the sport, and the art of storytelling, as Rick reveals the intricacies of helming a revered publication and the poignant moments behind Baseball Digest's most prestigious awards.
Navigating the tectonic shifts of the journalism landscape, Rick Sarone stands as a beacon for resilience and adaptability. With Baseball Digest's evolution from a pocket-sized periodical to a full-size sensation, we probe the challenges of keeping a niche sports magazine thriving in an increasingly digital world. Rick's personal anecdotes underscore the sentimental value of print media, while his insights into the business side of running a publication shed light on the delicate dance between passion and pragmatism.
Culminating with a suspenseful account of a public art fundraiser, we're reminded that the drama of baseball isn't confined to the diamond. Rick’s tales of statues and last-minute fundraising triumphs are a testament to community spirit and dedication. This episode is a homerun for anyone drawn to the sound of the bat, the smell of fresh ink on paper, and the collective history woven through Pittsburgh’s streets. Join us for an unforgettable conversation with a man whose life is as rich and compelling as the sport he represents.
CHAPTERS
0:04 Media Giant Returns to Pittsburgh
5:45 The Evolution of Baseball Digest
18:49 Career Journey in Journalism Industry
30:23 Baseball Honors and Hank Aaron
37:48 Baseball Digest
46:05 Costs and Contributions in Baseball Digest
54:06 Pittsburgh Pirates
1:03:37 The Statue Fundraiser Success
https://baseballdigest.com/
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!!!!
www.holdmycutter.com
When Rick Cerrone, the esteemed editor-in-chief of Baseball Digest, opens up about his journey, even the air in Burn by Rocky Patel seems to hang on every word. Graced with the scent of fine cigars and the spirit of America's pastime, Rick weaves tales of his New York Yankees days and the path that led him back to the heart of Pittsburgh. This episode is a love letter to the city, the sport, and the art of storytelling, as Rick reveals the intricacies of helming a revered publication and the poignant moments behind Baseball Digest's most prestigious awards.
Navigating the tectonic shifts of the journalism landscape, Rick Sarone stands as a beacon for resilience and adaptability. With Baseball Digest's evolution from a pocket-sized periodical to a full-size sensation, we probe the challenges of keeping a niche sports magazine thriving in an increasingly digital world. Rick's personal anecdotes underscore the sentimental value of print media, while his insights into the business side of running a publication shed light on the delicate dance between passion and pragmatism.
Culminating with a suspenseful account of a public art fundraiser, we're reminded that the drama of baseball isn't confined to the diamond. Rick’s tales of statues and last-minute fundraising triumphs are a testament to community spirit and dedication. This episode is a homerun for anyone drawn to the sound of the bat, the smell of fresh ink on paper, and the collective history woven through Pittsburgh’s streets. Join us for an unforgettable conversation with a man whose life is as rich and compelling as the sport he represents.
CHAPTERS
0:04 Media Giant Returns to Pittsburgh
5:45 The Evolution of Baseball Digest
18:49 Career Journey in Journalism Industry
30:23 Baseball Honors and Hank Aaron
37:48 Baseball Digest
46:05 Costs and Contributions in Baseball Digest
54:06 Pittsburgh Pirates
1:03:37 The Statue Fundraiser Success
https://baseballdigest.com/
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!!!!
www.holdmycutter.com
This is a great edition of baseball digest. And, boy, nothing better than reading this great magazine while enjoying this Rocky Patel edition Unica with Honduran Jama Stran, honduran binder and filler smoke, cedar cocoa and a slight bit of pepper involved in it. And why not, you say, reading the baseball digest right now, during hold my cutter, coming your way from burn by Rocky Patel, just a couple of blocks away from PNC park. Well, why wouldn't Michael McHenry and I be talking about baseball digest when we're sitting here with our guest, the editor in chief of baseball digest, the incomparable media giant Rick Sarone? Now you laugh.
Speaker 2:I laugh, he's a chief. Yeah, he can't laugh. You're chief.
Speaker 1:I don't know what an editor in chief is. Why not? Why not just editor? Why not just chief? That's true, yeah.
Speaker 2:Chief, like the daily planet. That's it.
Speaker 1:Rick Sarone not only the editor in chief of this historic publication and iconic baseball magazine, baseball digest, he was the vice president of PR for the pirates from 1987 to 1993. He worked at the commissioner's office at major league baseball before joining the pirates. He was the longest serving media relations director in Yankee history under George Steinbrenner, a one time technical advisor of the movie the natural. He created a three hour nightly sports talk show back in the late eighties in New York City called the sports connection a 2022 inductee into the northern Illinois university athletic hall of fame. And that's just touching the surface of again this media giant and one of our great friends, rick Sarone, who's back in Pittsburgh. One of the themes that Michael McHenry and I have chosen for our podcast hold my cutter is how great Pittsburgh is and how people seem to be migrating back to it. Athletes, professional members of the media like Rick Sarone. And Rick, you've decided to come back and live in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my wife Karen and I did. I born and raised in New York other than going to college out at northern Illinois university back in the seventies. That's all I knew until I came to Pittsburgh in 1987. And we just loved it. I went back to New York because the Yankees beckoned and that was my dream job. But when I belong to a cigar, belong to a cigar club in New York, and all the guys are like Pittsburgh, why Pittsburgh? Lima, zilly oh it's over pirate.
Speaker 2:Pittsburgh. You know I'm all live. I never, ever, ever said I'm retiring to Pittsburgh. Well, number one, I'm not retiring, Don't give it all. I love Pittsburgh. So when my friends say to me, why Pittsburgh, I say, well, obviously you've never been there. Because if you were here once and some of the guys in my cigar club one of them has a son who currently is enrolled at Pitt, so he's here Some of them have been here, they know it they're like, oh, it's a beauty. I once read something when we came here the first time and remember at that time I'm trying to sell this to my wife who worked in Major League baseball and basically, okay, I'm going to give up my career and moving to Pittsburgh. So I remember reading a magazine about Pittsburgh and somebody said at the time that if Pittsburgh was located in Europe, people would travel thousands of miles to see it. John, how would it go?
Speaker 2:It's the only city in the country, maybe the within entrance. When you come through that Fort Pitt tunnel on a beautiful day and you see the remember when I did it back in the 80s, you saw the mausoleum, three river stadium that always you know, if it rained the outside was wet and it was not very attractive building from the outside. Now you see the Steelers I still call it Heinz Field and you see PNC Park and it's just a magnificent site and it's got. Pittsburgh has so much to offer. I've been here two months now and I don't miss New York. I'm enjoying every aspect of Pittsburgh and all it has to offer. And here I am.
Speaker 1:You're stuck with me we won't go necessarily in sequential order, so let's start with baseball digest. How are you the editor in chief? Or, as Michael just said, just the chief?
Speaker 2:just a baseball digest, an iconic magazine, you know baseball digest started publishing in 1942 as the little digest size and I read it every month. I would go to the local Rexall. I don't know why I never subscribe to describe that book for those that.
Speaker 3:I got it as a kid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because it was so different, it was tiny, tiny black and white newsprint and basically most, if not all of the articles were basically lifted, with or without permission, from various newspapers. So I would say this is by Milt Gross, new York Journal, american, or Jerome Holtzman, chicago Tribune, and they would send them a check for $25, but obviously you can't do that today because you pretty much have access to everything in the country on your computer. So we now have to have original content and content that, if you come out six times a year, which we do it's got to be something that you're not getting somewhere else. It's a different take on things. You've got to kind of create your own news or things like that. But I basically my life has been someone's up there looking out for me or it's just happenstance because I'm doing my own thing.
Speaker 2:I left the Yankees in 2006, started my own PR company and I get a call from a gentleman that I worked with who had a graphics firm and he said hey, how would you like to write for baseball digest? I'm like I didn't even know they were still around. I'm not looking to write for different people, but and he explained to me that he got a call from the new owners of baseball digest and they were going to outsource everything. They were shutting down their brick and mortar shop in Evans Illinois. They were moving on from the editor that they had and this is what they were going to do remotely. They were going to give him to do everything like turnkey. You provide us six issues a year. I said, well, based on what you're saying to me, you're going to need an editor that I'd be interested in. So he goes well, let me take that to the. So they talk to ownership. And my friend, bill Goodspeed, calls me back and says he was so excited, rick Sarone, we have a chance to get Rick Sarone. I said, whoa time out.
Speaker 2:This guy clearly thinks that I'm the former Yankee catcher with the same name different spelling but same name. I said no, no, no. I said trust me, he goes. Well, listen, we're going to have a conference call. Come down to my office on whatever Thursday two o'clock. I go down. His office was in the Empire State Building. We go in a little conference room, he puts me on speaker and he gets a guy who's Jake Bill Goodspeed. I'm sitting here with Rick Sarone. Right away he goes and I bet Bill Goodspeed, do you remember what you bet him? I don't remember, probably lunch or something. But he said I'm sitting here with Rick Sarone. All of a sudden this, the gentleman at the end of on the other line, jake Zimmerman, says Rick Sarone. Let me tell you something. My memory of Rick Sarone I'm and I'm like here we go and he goes. When he took over as the vice president of public relations for the Pittsburgh County, he got you.
Speaker 1:he got everything about me.
Speaker 2:So we talked and you know I went through an interview process. I talked to the longtime publisher, norm and Jacobs, that had published Baseball Digest since 1969. And we had a very. I was in spring training. So the funny thing is, you know, it was a day in spring training. I went down there for a week for a couple of PR clients and I'm sitting by the pool, I'm sitting in a lounge chair and this and that and I'm. I only got them. I got them. I'm doing my job interview from the pool at the hotel and I asked them as many questions as they asked me because I wasn't going to get involved with something that you know I remember saying to them. I said I, I I see from my research that you've given an MLB player of the year award since 1969, which means this year will be your 50th year of giving.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're very proud of that. I said well, jose Altuve of the Astros won it last year, right? I said does he know he won? Well, I think so. I said well, did you give him a trophy? No, did you put out a press release? No, I'm like well, right there, we have to monetize these awards We've got. We have all these rookies of the year, picture of the year, relief picture of the year, and we went out and we got a co-sponsor of eBay. We've done it for six years and we created a magnificent. I've given this award to players Jacob DeGrom, aaron Judge, max Scherzer, mookie Betts and some of them have said to me this is the nicest award I've ever. Willie Mays, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:We created a lifetime achievement award, because there is no annual lifetime achievement award in Major League Baseball and we wanted to honor people that have, you know, exemplified the game and all that it stands for, and our first recipient back in 2021 was Willie Mays, and Willie Mays told us this is the greatest honor I've ever received. How about?
Speaker 3:that this is the nicest trophy. I'm so proud of you. You've got so much hardware. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:I gotta tell you a great story real quick. So two years ago 2022, when we first came to Pittsburgh to start looking, my wife and I were traveling up 79, going to the North Hills, I think, and the phone rang.
Speaker 3:You sound just like me, by the way.
Speaker 2:The phone rings over the car and this 310 area code comes up and I said well, I know that's Los Angeles area, but I don't know who it is. So I hit the phone, I said hello, and then the other end of goes Rick, this is Vin Scully. Oh my gosh, I'm like. Oh, vin, how are you? Rick? I'm just calling to tell you that I just received your beautiful memento. This is as nice as any award and to think that I would be honored by such a prestigious public. And he went on and on. I'm like I feel like we're listening to the radio and you know, he died two months later. So I was so happy to do that. Last year. Our recipient was Joe Tori, who I worked with for 11 years, and I was honored to be able to inform Joe of winning the award. And Joe was very moved and very touched and I just sent the ballots out yesterday to our voting panel of 18 longer. You're on the panel and you have not returned your ballot.
Speaker 3:Hey, I think you could probably get that done today.
Speaker 2:We have 12 finalists, which include help me here Rachel Robinson Sandy.
Speaker 1:Popax Bob.
Speaker 2:Euter Dusty Baker. Jim Leland was added to the ballot this year. Jeff Bud Selig just a tremendous amount.
Speaker 2:Sir incredible names, incredible names, and someone's going to come away as our 2024 recipient, which is our fourth annual Lifetime Achievement Award. So listen, you know. Maybe we'll get to the story of how I got involved when I was sitting in my high school guidance counselor's office. But he asked me what do I see myself doing when I'm a grown up? Well, I gave him the first one, and if he had said, well, that's unrealistic, which he kind of said if he had said what's your second choice, I really, honest to God, would have said okay, I'm the editor of baseball dodge, not the editor in chief, just the editor was the first choice.
Speaker 1:Well, well, we got to go there now.
Speaker 2:To set up the story, I had gone to a parochial school, so that meant I sat in the same desk for six, seven hours a day and when the subject changed you just put the one book away and you took the other book out. Was very structured, whatever. So in high school we moved to Yorktown Heights, New York. Happenstance number one I moved from Mount Vernon, New York, 35 miles north to the country, and I go to Yorktown High School my freshman year. I could not acclimate. I was a horrible student.
Speaker 1:How far is this from New York City? 4550?
Speaker 2:minutes. Okay, you're a horrible student. I was a horrible student Really, why? Well, first of all I think I had ADD, but in those days he doesn't pay attention. Me too, yeah, but okay, it's the other side. But I also went from a very structured thing to having beautiful girls say do you want to protest the war with us? Do you want to work on the bonfire? Do you want to do this? So I was focusing on everything else except my studies. So to become a sophomore, I had to take two courses over again in the summer at a nearby high school. So I would get on the bus every morning in the summer while my friends were going to the pool and the lake and whatever. I'm going to Lakeland High School to pass these two courses. So now I'm a sophomore.
Speaker 2:Now something happens that literally changed my life and it did not resonate with me at all. In August of that summer 1969, maybe 68, 69, I'm going into my sophomore year. My guidance counselor from my freshman year was a man named Richard Swales very nice man. He got named principal. Okay, it means nothing to me, but I'm getting a new guidance counselor. Now, how they selected what guidance counselor you get, I don't know. Maybe it was alphabetical, maybe whatever, but I was given to a man named Forrest Buddy Douds. What a cool name, buddy Douds. Well, wait, I knew Buddy Douds. He was the football coach. His father was the first ever coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Come on, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Here we go, here we go, there we go, it's coming, all right.
Speaker 2:So, and when I told Buddy Douds two, three months ago I'm moving to Manaka, which is where he's from, he's from that area, my gosh, he was Ford. So first week of my sophomore year, I'm sitting in the office of my new guidance counselor, buddy Douds. I can still picture the scene. I'm on the side of his desk. He's sitting there with his white shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie undone with the tie I can still picture it. And he's looking at what I called my rap sheet, which was actually my grades, and he's like wow, we've got a problem here, he said at some point.
Speaker 2:He said to me what do you see yourself? You could do anything you want. What are you doing as a grownup? Now I know that whatever I answer, I want to be an airline pilot, I want to be a construction worker, I want to be a schooled, whatever it was his response is going to be well, that's very noble, but to do that you're probably going to need a high school diploma and you're not off to a very good start. But my answer completely changed my life. I said that's easy, coach. I'm the public relations director of the New York Yankees. Stop it.
Speaker 1:Stop the fight.
Speaker 2:True story I got my dad's on the phone right now. Stop the fight. So the first thing he said was wow, that's awful. I told him exactly what the PR director and you're a sophomore. I'm 14 years old.
Speaker 3:I didn't even know what a public relation was. Well, that's wild, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I knew who it was and what he did, because ever since I became a Yankee fan eight years earlier, when I was eight or 10, I listened to the games on the radio, on TV, and they filled with. Oh, bob Fishel has walked into the booth to tell us that that home, run by Joe Pepitone, was a. That's a good risotto, by the way.
Speaker 1:No, not really. It's going to say hey.
Speaker 3:Pepitone, that's what you're going to say. Hey white, you want a cup of coffee.
Speaker 2:So I knew what he did. I said, coach, he does the media guy, he does the game notes, he answers the fan mail, blah, blah, blah. I said I know I could never grow up to be Mickey Mantle, but there's no reason I can't be Bob Fishel. And he looked at me and he said to me all right, I'll make you a deal If you can get your grades up and you can keep them up. You think you could do for my football team what this guy, bob Fishel, does for the Yankees. Well, when do I start? So I walked into that office as a disinterested man OK, I'm an underperforming student. I walked out of that office with a job. I am the public and a big responsibility of the York County.
Speaker 1:He created a job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I and he said we never had a PR guy before you and we never had one after you. We never had. We had a media guide. He tells people, if you walked into a Bud Douts for the next half hour, would tell you he had a media guide with pronunciations and with you know, hobby, it was unbelievable. And he would say to you in all my years of 50 years in being a guidance counselor and a teacher, I've never seen anything like what happened. He goes. I sat there at my desk and he goes. You know the movie uh, butch Cassidy. When he says who are these guys, I'm sitting there saying who is this guy? But anyway, that was my love, that was my advocation. So that changed everything.
Speaker 2:Because I then meet a man who's a local sports writer and I called the stories into him and then it was basketball and it was baseball. His name was Stanley Shallot and my senior year starting to think about colleges, but colleges are not thinking about me. So Stanley Shallot tells me hey, I got some bad news for you. I said well, what's that? This big guy, giant of a man. I'm moving, I'm leaving.
Speaker 2:I'm just accepted a job as the sports editor of the DeKalb Illinois Daily Chronicle in DeKalb, illinois. Okay, he goes out there, life goes on, and he calls me up and he said hey, you need to come out here and see this university that's in DeKalb, 25,000 students, division one just started as a division one program. Um, you got it. So I went out and visited him. Now he takes me to NIU and I'm with royalty, so I'm going to the luncheons, I'm in the locker room at the basketball game. The week before I went there, the basketball team beat Indiana, who was ranked fifth in the country, by 19 points, and now they're ranked 19th in the country and they've got this great all America basketball player who I met when I was out there, I mean you know so, uh, jim Bradley, who left.
Speaker 2:NIU to play for the gut got declared in Elgbore. He went to the Kentucky kernels, was a member of their world championship team. But, um, so I? I go to Northern Illinois University and before I go he leaves that job and he goes to Winston Salem. Which was a good thing, because now I'm on my own.
Speaker 2:You know, if I want to, I'm not, I'm not going to work at the Chronicle on weekends with Stan Charlotte I got to make. So freshman year. I kind of got acclimated, you know, just did studies this then. Then, sophomore year, I went over to the Northern star, the student newspaper, and I got hired as a reporter, starting out on golf and tennis. I knew nothing about tennis. The score was, you know, 30, 15, 15. This I would just say I was 30, 15. I was horrible. But then they put me on football I'm flying to the West coast, uh, basketball. And then I was a resident advisor for a year, so I didn't have to pay room and board.
Speaker 2:Senior year, I was the radio voice of the Huskies for that year. Football and basketball, um, I kind of learned my trade and that catapulted me. You cannonballed is what you did. Well, you know he looked back and seems that way. It didn't seem that way at the time, but I'll never forget writing a letter to Bob Fischel, the PR director. It was in 1972. It's my freshman year. I ended a first semester of my freshman year asking for a summer job and in those days you didn't call them internships, you just got one looking for a summer job. And I still have the letter. I've since framed it on New York. You know, I remember getting the letter in my mail box.
Speaker 3:Do you? Saw that heading oh cow, this is it.
Speaker 2:And it said dude, there's nothing available. I'll keep your resume on file, but frankly, I'm not optimistic. A major league front office is very small. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, so you know, he might have had a thousand of these letters, he might have had 200 of these letters, whatever.
Speaker 2:So I later learned that no, they just weren't any jobs. You know, I might have been the only one that, because Bob Fischel's assistant at the time, Marty Appel, who's now a very good friend, he said when he wrote that letter they happened to. Somebody walked into Bob Fischel's office and said what are we going to do with all this fan mail? Mantle left for the off season. He goes well. This kid sent a letter, Call him and he ended up getting the job. But that wasn't the case when I was, when I did it. So now I'm in New York, the Yankees are. I got a degree in journalism. The Daily News is going to hire me, so I work part time for a local newspaper writing feature stories.
Speaker 3:And then, another piece of happenstance, a guy that I met by the way, I love the term happenstance.
Speaker 2:That's good, is it?
Speaker 3:that, or is it divine intervention? You also worked your tail off and took advantage of a big opportunity.
Speaker 2:Maybe somebody up above was like my grandfather or whatever. Always, always, so you know, when I was the sports editor of the Northern Star. I'm in that hall of fame too, by the way.
Speaker 1:But, but I think at the Northern Star.
Speaker 2:If you work there you're in there all of fame. But anyway, I was. I was the sports editor in the summer because by staying out there for the summer semester, one, I could be closer to the girl that I was dating who lived in Illinois, and two, I could take less credits during the regular semesters and just string, you know, less than the load. So I take six credits in the summer and I was the sports editor of the Star, which published three times a week in the summer and you had to fill like two pages three times a week. Well, there's nothing going on, there's no sports. You can only do so many previews. So I would find stories to write about that I could put in the can. And one of them was a guy that lived in my town was making baseball cards in his basement, like he was making cards of the 1927 Yankees. He bought all these photo files, which is something now you couldn't do because they would cost thousands of dollars, but in those days there was no value. So he'd go to this defunct newspaper and buy their sports photo files and he was putting out baseball cards. I did a story on him.
Speaker 2:So my senior year he started a collectors magazine because he wanted to compete with tops and put out cards of the current players, which you can't do. They had a license but he did it and he got sued and whatever. But he started this magazine collectors quarterly. So he had done three issues. I had read them all very amateurish. But, you know, and he calls me over to his house he says I've decided I'm getting out of the magazine business. It's not what I thought it would be. I didn't get the response. I wanted blah, blah, blah. I need you to finish off the last issue of collectors quarterly. And he hands me this tray with all this manuscript and photos and because in those days you didn't do it on a computer, you pasted them on a thing and you made a plate and all that.
Speaker 2:Now the reason that the current editor didn't finish the magazine was because he went off the college. His editor was a high school senior. His name was Keith Oberman, which you may know. So I do the last issue and I had a blast doing it. He gave me, you know, sit down $150, which was like holy, wow. I said this is what I want to do. So I tried to convince him to keep the magazine going. But I said you can't put out a collector's magazine. I know you want to put the baseball cards. The reason he did the magazine was to put a centerfold of baseball cards to promote the full set. And he said you can still put the cards in the middle, but you're narrowing your audience to collectors. There's no, you know, large full-size baseball magazine. There's baseball digest. That's a piece of crap which is funny.
Speaker 2:But quality-wise it wasn't full-size, it was newsprint. So I convinced him to change collectors quarterly to baseball quarterly, which would come out four times a year, and we put the cards in the middle and we did it. So we did one issue and some person I don't remember who it was says to the both of us, mike Aronstein, a genius, by the way, and myself wow, this is really good, how wise is it? On the newsstand. And I think our answer was well, because we have no idea how we would do that. We put an ad in his little circular and took subscriptions. So the guy says well, you know, there's got to be a way you can find out how to put this on the newsstand.
Speaker 2:And Mike says my uncle Selig is a magazine wholesaler, which means he was the local guy that all the magazines would come to and then he would send them out to the local you know five and whatever. So we went and met with Uncle Selig, who was a guy right out of Central Casting with the cigar in his mouth and the apron, and he says yeah, this is pretty good, you'll need a national distributor. So he sets up a meeting for me in the city at Cable News with these two gentlemen, they take me to lunch first business meeting I've ever been to in New York City. They take me to this restaurant, smith and Walensky's, and as I walk in, the matriarch calls me over and hands me a jacket because you had to wear a jacket. Now those days are gone.
Speaker 2:So I'm sitting there with some crappy waiter's jacket on and I'm showing them this and they really liked it and they said okay, we'll test it. Give us 10,000 copies and put a color cover and get rid of these baseball cards. Oh, 10,000 copies, holy. So Mike says we can't do it, I'm paying. But it turns out they gave us a printer that is based in Mississippi. So it turns out that 10,000 copies was going to cost us a whopping $2,800 because you're printing so many. So we tested it. Then we went to 100,000. And that's where I really kind of like you, went from 10,000 to 100?.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, over a year or two period I don't know if it was from 10 to 100, but we ended up printing 100. You put them on the newsstand. We ended up with 22,000 subscribers. We sold another 40,000 on the newsstand. But after five years or so I said I got to get out of this because if you don't have advertising back then and I couldn't get the advertising because the circulation to me was monstrous, but just to you know, chevrolet, it was nothing. And who's your audience? Like somebody pointed out, great, if you had sixty thousand, if you were photography magazine, sixty thousand would mean a lot to an advertiser because we know that they buy film, they buy cameras, they buy this. What do we know about a baseball fan? Eight years old is eight years old. What is?
Speaker 3:he buying, so in no analytics no doubt so.
Speaker 2:Bottom line is I closed, turned the door. I sold my subscriber list to Newsweek who was starting their own sports magazine, so that took my big liability was the subscriber list and I closed the door and I went. You know I, I first went to work for a food service magazine, so now I'm out of sports and I'm not very happy. But then a job opened up at Major League Baseball as the assistant PR director under Buick youn. And you know, as I said to someone in a news, local newspaper interview when I was doing baseball quarterly, if nothing else, it's a very expensive resume and that turns out what it was, because I became known. You know I, you know I, I. I mean, one of the things I'm most proud of is we created the MVP awards for the league championship series. Come on, because there weren't any. So I went to Major League Baseball. I still have the letters. So, yes, we will authorize you to be the sponsor and we gave the first one.
Speaker 3:You may have done it again, by the way, with the lifetime achievement.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we'll see we had one with baseball quarterly, but it only lasted a year because it was the year I Bill Vec was the first recipient, by the way, and Bill Vec, who comes to New York to accept the award at Gallagher Steakhouse, he calls me up and he says uh, rick, I'm so honored by this, I and you mind, if I bring two friends along, you can bring whoever you want. You know it's two friends were Hank Greenberg and Larry Dolby. She, I mean. So I'm sitting at lunch with Bill Vec, hank Greenberg, larry Dolby. Let me come on. So here's another story and I'll try to make this quick, but please don't.
Speaker 2:At the end of the decade of the 70s, we devoted an issue to this, the team of the decade, and I had a hundred people from throughout baseball writers, broadcasters, hall of Famers, club executives. I remember Bud Selig had a ball at all to pick the first basement of the decade, the third basement, and we had a player of the decade. And and what decade is this? Is the 70s, 70s. So we also had an article that Keith Oberman wrote. This is just an article. The top, the 10. Greatest moments of the decade, and Hank Aaron 715th home run was the moment of the decade. Again, happenstance Hank Aaron hired a marketing agent to you know, because his career is over. He wants to get into some TV, did whatever and and this young man went to the same high school as me.
Speaker 3:Is dying, the marketing agent, the marketing agent to the Yorktown.
Speaker 2:High School, a couple years. Not too far behind me, somebody was watching out. All right, so anyway, I End up having Mike Aaron steen myself. The marketing agent are having lunch in Yorktown it's New York with Hank Aaron, I mean. So I tell the marketing guy. By the way, the next issue is gonna be the players of the decade of which Hank finished second Rose.
Speaker 3:Okay, this is tough company.
Speaker 2:I remember I only played six of the Ten years of the decade, and two of those years he didn't play full seasons, right? So he really wasn't the player of the decade, yeah, but I said but he did have the greatest moment of the decade and we're gonna honor the Player of the year and our players of players of the year and our player of the decade at Gallagher Steakouts. He goes well when are you gonna give?
Speaker 2:Hank his award. Now, it wasn't an award, but me, being somewhat smart, said, well, we'll do it at the same time. Brilliant, you know. So he's all excited. Hank's gonna come. We send two first-class airline tickets, this and that, and he did that's beautiful. Here comes P Rose, keith Hernandez and nationally player of the year, don Valor America. And here comes Hanks, marketing guy. This is a Gallagher Steakhouse on February 2nd 1980, and he comes in. He goes, rick, come here. I said what he was Hank is not gonna be here. He's asked me to accept the award on his behalf. I said, well, why isn't he gonna be here? He goes. I'll explain that when I accept the award. Okay now, booey-cune was Presenting the award, the commissioner baseball the time and I had because they had to issue Hank Aaron, and booey-cune because, remember, booey-cune did not go to the game where Hank Aaron hit the home run because he had a previous commitment. People might not.
Speaker 1:Right, we get into that a little bit. There was a little debate about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, listen, I worked for booey-cune and I say to this day that was a terrible misstep. Yeah, you know, this is well.
Speaker 3:I can't follow around the country.
Speaker 2:Well, the night he hit it was Hank Aaron night. Yeah, you could have been there on Hank Aaron night. Yeah, you send Monty Irvin, send Monty, which put Monty, a prince of a human being, in a terrible position. Booed, monty could have gone to Cleveland and you go to Atlanta. Aaron hits the home run. It's a big story that we wasn't there. I Asked the marketing guy I'm booey-cune is presenting the award for player of the decade to Pete Rose.
Speaker 2:Do you want someone else presented to Hank? Or he'd like to present Hank with this award, but I want. He says I've spoken to Hank. Hank's good with it, him and the commissioner good. Okay, so I've covered my bases. I said I'm not having booey-cune present this award to the marketing guy. Right, I'll present it. So I presented it. He gets up there at the mic I'm still sitting there. You can see the pictures on the dais media is all out front cameras. And he proceeds to read a telegram from Hank Aaron that says Because I don't agree with the voting process, the lack of opportunities for minorities in baseball, because the commissioner didn't see fit to be there, one is I cannot accept this award. Wow, and I'm thinking to myself I'm gonna go grab him and throw him down. And then I looked out and I saw every flash bulb going off, guys writing I'm like Rick, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to your magazine. Wow, so Happenstance right. Okay, that yeah, for the next week.
Speaker 2:This was the biggest sports story in the country.
Speaker 3:Everybody wrote about it. Oh no, everybody award that didn't exist right and everybody sadly crushed Hank Aaron.
Speaker 2:Really, this was inappropriate, that he you know he was once again. He was Now. I will tell you right now, hank Aaron in my mind, who called me the next day and apologized. He goes not for how I feel, but for any embarrassment that may have caused you and we were friends till the day he died and I did things for him and he did things for me. That's amazing. And you know, one time I did something for him in like 2009, where we commemorated when Bonds was gonna break the homerun record, we got Delta Airlines to name a plane, the Hank Aaron 715. And when he came to the airport, he sat down next to me. He goes I might have known it was you that was behind me, so anyway, he apologized. We're good, whatever. I'm like that's.
Speaker 2:Hank yeah yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, apologies. So it was a big story, I think, Hank, I felt horrible the way Hank got. I could show you the clippings, you know. But it happened. It was tremendous publicity and who knew that this little magazine that I started in my basement would facilitate? But you know, that got me the job in Major League Baseball. I had built up a track record. I had created the LCS awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Player of the Decade, so I went to work for Bowie Cuen's.
Speaker 1:What do you think, by the way, speaking of magazines, what do you think of what's going on with Sports Illustrated, and how can, quite frankly, even a baseball digest continue to exist when it seems like everything is leaving in favor of online?
Speaker 2:The print magazines are a challenge to breed, but I remember Sports Illustrated when I got involved in baseball. Well, we all grew up with Sports Illustrated Right, but I remember it on the inside, like I'd go to their offices or they used to have a man named Keith Morris and I first knew of Keith Morris when I was in college and the sports director of the radio station.
Speaker 2:Every week they would send a reel-to-reel piece of tape and there would be three or four features narrated by Keith Morris Maybe one was an interview, and I would run them sporadically on my radio station. I met Keith Morris when I'd go to Yankee Games. Now I have the magazine. I'm going to the ball games, I'm in the clubhouse and he would walk around and he would put them in players' lockers. Oh, reggie, here's the new Sports Illustrated. I'm like oh, so then I started doing that. Hey, with baseball. He never gave me one Nicest man in the world never gave me a magazine.
Speaker 3:Wow, man, that's nice, but anyway no, he didn't, Couldn't collaborate, couldn't do any of this.
Speaker 2:But you'd go to their offices. They would throw lavish parties for all the local PR directors. They would bring in top-name comedians and their offices were at the top floor on the Avenue of the Americas. Their overhead must have been astronomical. We have no overhead. We have no overhead. I would say that if not for the new ownership of baseball digest, baseball digest would not exist, because they're not paying rent, they're not paying for waste baskets, for computers, for this, and that They've streamlined everything where all the money is, in the product.
Speaker 2:Now can Sports Illustrated get by with a circulation of 100,000? No, can baseball digest? Yeah. So it's two very, very different business models. I don't know what happened at Sports Illustrated. You'd have to take a college course to learn what happened from point A to point Z, where we are now. I'm not convinced it's completely dead yet, but clearly something went amiss in the last 10, 15 years. But I will say one thing about baseball digest. Our largest distribution point is Barnes Noble. We are pretty much in every Barnes Noble Now. We're in the Giant Eagle in Cranberry but we're not in the Giant Eagle in Rochester, but we're in every Barnes Noble and we can kind of pinpoint our improvement because Barnes Noble. This is the last report which probably goes through the last issue of last year. Barnes Noble has 3,900 titles Now. Three years ago it was 4,300. So since COVID, 400 of that, 4,300 have bit the dust and now there's 3,900. In change Of all those titles in sales, baseball digest is number 103.
Speaker 3:That's pretty good. That's really good. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2:We're the largest selling sports magazine in Barnes Noble and a lot of it has to do with the business market and the editor.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's not particularly in that order, yeah, but don't you guys love still to the?
Speaker 3:I think it's coming back, don't you love?
Speaker 1:having something, even a newspaper, in your hand.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you right now. You mark it on your calendar right here. The book actual, let me hold a book, not on your Kindle or your iPad. The magazine all of that is gonna become a collector. People are gonna have it. I have thousands of books saved in my basement. Right now. I put it in storage and it's nice to give it as a gift, but also I really believe that all those things are gonna come back around, because you can't just always sit there and look at your device and there's something vintage about it. Well, picking up a magazine as a kid was awesome Also.
Speaker 2:I hope you're right. I worry that younger people today it's so foreign to them to read a book to learn history and it's almost becoming accepted that I worry about that. But let's just say we're a niche product, exactly Okay, oh, you're focused on an older audience.
Speaker 2:That's fine. If I had to sell 500,000 of every issue, we'd be in big trouble, but the untapped market for baseball digest is still so large that there's enough of them out there to make us not only successful but to thrive. Look when I got involved with baseball digest in 2018, people in the game, Bob Costas, people of that ilk, maybe Greg Brown, I didn't know, you still existed.
Speaker 2:I read it all the time, are you still? You know that's right. So I've had people I can't think of their names now, but named baseball people thinking that somehow we brought it back, that it was gone. It never was gone, you just lost track of it and a large fault lied with baseball digest. How about?
Speaker 1:your decision. By the way, this is a how did it happen? Where baseball digest goes from that almost pocket-sized thick, as you say, black and white to a regular magazine sports illustrated type.
Speaker 2:It went to color, first when it was still, and then the glossy stuff. But this decision predated me by six or seven years. But my understanding is they decided that just exposure on the newsstand. You couldn't survive as a digest.
Speaker 1:It gets hidden, literally it gets hidden.
Speaker 2:I had somebody come up to me recently and said hey, I love baseball, you gotta go back to the pocket-sized. You gotta go back to the pocket-sized. I said you don't know anything about the magazine business, so please stop.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, just so you can put it in your pocket.
Speaker 2:Sales has never been better with a number 103 out of 3,900, but I'll go back to the pocket-sized I really wonder about did you even kids? Aren't there some somebody? Is it like I'm?
Speaker 1:holding the November December 2023 edition of the baseball digest. We're here with Rick Sorrell, the editor-in-chief, and on the cover cool looking shot of Ronald Acuna, shoya Tani and Mookie Betts. Don't you think kids wanna visualize that? See it, hold on to it. I cut it out and put it on their wall. Yeah, like I used to. I used to. I used to rip my cover before it's first edition.
Speaker 2:I literally used to do that. Yeah, you know the nicest thing. I'm very big on small, small little things. That's on the back, that's on the back, but for the magazine. So I send a copy to broadcasters. Michael, you'll be it, I'm in.
Speaker 3:But Greg I collected that as a kid.
Speaker 2:You get a I got a copy and one of the people, one of the broadcasters that gets a complimentary copy is Michael Kay, who's the voice of the New York Yankees. So Michael Kay sends me a text, I don't know six months ago, and he goes. I gotta tell you my son, charlie, who I think is like eight nine, absolutely devours baseball digest. Oh isn't that great.
Speaker 2:I said well, I'm switching the subscription from your name phase. Yeah, and he goes. Oh, that would be great. So I mean that's amazing, charlie Kay likes baseball digest. That's good enough for me that it's not just you know, 70 year old Rick Serone people you know.
Speaker 3:So I'll give you a story that'll make you feel good. It was probably a little bit predated your time since you came in in 06, but as a kid my grandmother used to buy me old baseball books and she did everything out of magazines. Her name's Jacqueline and I ended up marrying a Jacqueline Full circle, but I used to get those and I had two learning disabilities and I'd get them and I was so enamored with sports, especially baseball, that was the one thing that I would practice reading on on my own. And I just moved and my parents moved out of our old timey home and I got a bunch of them and I have them and just looking through them brought back so many memories of you know.
Speaker 3:This literally helped me be a better student and everything else, but it gave me the love too, and it reminds me of my grandmother, because she's the one that subscribed for me year in, year out, as part of one of my presidents. It was outstanding. I mean, that's what you have that maybe people don't realize is you created a connection I lost her about. I guess it was in 2014, and every time I see baseball digest, I think about one of my favorite people in the world right.
Speaker 2:Well, I will tell you that the biggest threat to baseball digest and other publications like it is the unexplainable rise in costs of everything Paper through the roof, shipping through the roof, ink and there's always some reason. Well, they've taken the pigment that they used to use for ink and they're not putting it in the COVID vaccine so it was crazy stuff like that.
Speaker 3:There's always a reason.
Speaker 2:There's always a reason I do think that companies are taking advantage of the situation that we face, but we are facing significantly rising costs and, at some point-.
Speaker 3:Do you mind disclosing that Like not how much the magazine costs, but maybe the cost difference that you've seen over the last couple years?
Speaker 2:I would say in the last 10 years, the cost of the card to go up 30%, which is you know, and we're operating on a very, very small margin. But hey look, I'll do it as long as they'll have me and I think I'm making a contribution. My associate editor lives here in Pittsburgh, jim Lachema, who was my director of media relations with the Pirates, so we have a great time doing it. My art director is in the Chicago area working remotely, and we have two proofreaders, copy editors, and that's basically it.
Speaker 2:What you're looking at there. You know a very small group of people and now we have writers and photographers all over the country, you know will tap in. Oh, I want to do a story on Josh Hader. I got my guy in Houston. We're on the story on Garrett Cole. I got my guy in New York, you know.
Speaker 1:So and there have been some features on Pirates. I remember you did a cool feature on Steve Blass.
Speaker 2:We did Steve Blass, we did Kent Tukovie, we did the two catchers from Venezuela. Yes, I think it was my first or second issue. I'm sure we've done Ben Cherrington he was the Q&A, so Jim Leland is gonna be probably Jim Leland will be a baseball life-.
Speaker 1:Oh, a famous. Yeah, I want to get into that with you too. By the way, Rick, you went from the commissioner's office to the Pirates. How did you-.
Speaker 3:Can I ask one more? Question about baseball digest, Of course you came in 06, right? No, no no 18.
Speaker 2:2018.
Speaker 3:2018. So you're right in the cusp of social media, oh yeah. So how did that change your business model? How did that help hurt and how much do you attack it and how? Because I see like there's a trend right now that the SEOs and the blogs if you don't know what that is, the blogs are really growing, really, really growing. Is that helping, like, how has it changed over the last couple of years? Because it seems like that's ever evolving.
Speaker 2:It's not a world I'm all that familiar with. We have Facebook and we have our face. Our social media numbers are very significant, I mean in terms of you know hits and whatever you call it. You know impressions and things like that. I've taken Twitter from 500 followers to 5000. It's very hard to get. At one time was very easier to get followers. Yeah, it's for some reason. It's not that.
Speaker 3:They want you to buy ads I use it to promote the magazine.
Speaker 2:You know, and I also repost a lot Like if I see something like yesterday was Hank Aaron's birthday or Willie May's day or something that MLB puts out or MLB network or a team, that's all reposted because I want people to see yeah, you're a team player, that's awesome, you know we've also. We're also the go-to place that if someone passes away in the baseball family we always do a. We remember we just did Jimmy Williams.
Speaker 3:I want to do Al McBean today or tomorrow Al McBean's?
Speaker 2:over Pirate. Yeah, so, and we do that in our January February issue, where we do tribute and we try to list every name of everybody connected with Major League Baseball, even if you're, you know, working in the front office. You know we. Two years ago there was a story I read it in various places that this iconic hot dog vendor from the Oakland Coliseum had passed away and he was so well known that the team put out a statement and Tom Hanks made a comment on it that we put his name in the tribute page and his father called and was in tears that you would do this for, and he also bought 50 copies so that didn't hurt either.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, you know. But you know we try to remember women from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. You know the Negro Leagues, so you know I'm really proud of what we do. That's amazing, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you went from the commissioner's office. You know we're jumping around, but you got to get your years with the pirates and how you got that interview and the job. Well, I'm not going to get my cookies, no, your dream job is the answer.
Speaker 2:That's my dream job. I've applied there, I've done interviews and you know.
Speaker 3:You seem like you're very persistent about that first. Well, I kind of give an up.
Speaker 1:Some people might call it obnoxious, no persistence. Well, hold on. This is important.
Speaker 2:I tell people this when I talk to college students, and I taught at two universities where you've got to be persistent without being a pest.
Speaker 3:You don't want to be the guy, oh God it's serone again. Oh, it's so nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you got to be persistent.
Speaker 1:Just know the right touch.
Speaker 2:When I you're not calling too often, right, yeah, but what happened was I left the commissioner's office after the 86 World Series where I watched the ball go under. I had the best seat in the house to see the ball go under Bill Buckner's glove and when the ball was hit I said the word out loud trouble, because it was like a pool queue. And I now see the video and I saw an interview with the late Bill Buckner where he said his glove didn't open. He couldn't open his glove, his glove was so old. Wow. But if you see it, his glove close us on its own.
Speaker 1:Wow, anyway, still say one of the most overrated gaffes in the history of baseball. Oh, come on, overrated. They had another game left. It was tied. The game was tied. Yeah, it was a tie game, yeah.
Speaker 3:Please go into this a little bit further.
Speaker 1:The Red Sox are going to win that game. Well they lose the game because of the ground ball right.
Speaker 2:No, the Red Sox lost the game on the ground.
Speaker 1:I know that but they still had another game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was game six, right yeah, but the Wilson's would have been over.
Speaker 1:I understand that, all right. Okay, well, that's a further show.
Speaker 2:Well, the Mets put on the scoreboard, congratulations.
Speaker 1:And how about the Wild Pitches? How was it?
Speaker 2:I know, but I know Bill Buckner was wrongly persecuted, that's my point First of all he should not have been on the field. That's right, but because he should have been put in. Dave Stapleton was the ninth inning guy and he didn't go to him. He wanted Buckner on the field for the last out. Anyway, okay, I had a great view of that and you said, oh no, sorry, I brought that up.
Speaker 2:It's trouble, yeah, it's trouble Anyway, but after that World Series I made a decision. I'm now married to Baseball Karen, who worked in the commissioner's office in broadcasting, and a woman asked me out to lunch. She was the promotions director for WNEW AM radio and WNEW FM. Am was the music of your life Frank Sinatra and FM was rock and roll, and the AM station also was the home of the New York Giants and Penn State football. Okay, she goes. I'd like you to have lunch with me and I will tell you that this lunch is going to change your life.
Speaker 3:I'm like okay, my wife said all right, yeah, you show up to lunch. When somebody says that, yeah, it's either really good or really bad yeah rose paladoro and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:So this is 1986. This is pre WFAN. This is when sports talk shows were Myron Cope for three hours a night on one station and maybe somebody on another. New York had two. They had Dave Sims on WNBC and they had Art Russ Jr on WNBC.
Speaker 2:And rose paladoro sat down and she said to me we at WNEW believe the future of AM radio is sports and we're going to acquire as many sports properties as we can and we need a three hour a night show to tie it all together. Well, they nailed that one, didn't they? Well, yes and no. So she said we're going to have a show from six o'clock to nine o'clock, five nights a week. We have a host. We want you to be the producer and book the and you and the host, richard Neer, who was the morning DJ. Richard Geer, neer, oh, neer, that's kidding. So I met with Richard and we mapped out this idea of a show that it was going to be like the USA today. It's not going to be a guy on a phone. My guest is Freddie Proceko. Yeah, we'll take your calls. Yeah, we were going to be. We're going to go from this. Here's the Yankee report. Let's go to Jack O'Connell in Tampa. Here's the Metro report.
Speaker 2:Oh, action it's around here and every 20 minutes we would break to give scores and news, which the station manager said every 20 minutes you're going to break. So I started doing that. And then I went out to the Super Bowl. When the Giants played in the Super Bowl and Richard stayed back in the stadium. So I was kind of anchoring and we brought Dave Jennings, the former Giants punter, out with us and we were. You know, you saw a radio row. Yeah, radio row was me and NBC, that's it. So the station manager really liked it and he said I want you to go on the air with Richard. So it's, you know, you'll be a co-host. So now I'm co-host of a radio show.
Speaker 2:Okay, so come July this is January, we're doing this now and I'm not really enjoying it. This is an. I missed baseball. I wanted to work for a team I, you know I don't like criticizing people and whatever.
Speaker 2:So I get a call from a woman that worked for the Pirates that you well know, nancy Rich. Now, nancy and I worked together at the commissioner's office when she was an executive trainee, I believe, and she landed a full-time job with the pirates to be their centennial coordinator in 1987. What, what is that? Well, 1987 was the hundredth anniversary of the pirate franchise as the pirates in the national league and she was coordinating all the celebrations they were going to do for that. And one day she calls me up surround. She's never called me by first name, surround. The pirates just fired the vice president, public relations, and they're doing a search and your names come up. So you should put your name in there running for the vice president. The pirate oversees media relations, public relations, community relations, the scoreboard, everything, pa and I talked to my wife and, regardless, we talked to them and she said look, I know this is what you want to do. I don't really. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3:Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2:And she had a career in baseball as well. So I went down to do the interview and I in one day I interviewed with three people Bernie Mullen, who you know who, the senior vice president of business. Sid Thrift, the general manager, and Mac Prine, the president, and I got on a plane to go home that night and said well, karen doesn't have to worry because I'm not getting this job. I mean, what made you think that? Because it just didn't go well, didn't?
Speaker 1:feel right.
Speaker 2:I don't think they connected with me, isn't that funny? Yeah, it really is I. When Mac Prine was interviewing me, he turned the chair around in my hotel room, so he's sitting on the chair backwards and I'm sitting on the pad and I thought I was going to start to cry.
Speaker 1:He was one of the most intimidating human beings, mac Prine, the late Mac Prine, who was Right guy.
Speaker 3:He pulled a person, move on you.
Speaker 1:It was the, the consortium that bought the pirates a bunch of businesses in Pittsburgh. To save them, they needed to appoint one guy as president. It was Mac Prine who was president of Ryan Holmes right. Exactly, and he was a big tall man and he was a college football referee and every time he called you into his office you were like on the witness. He grilled you. You had to be ready for everything. Oh, it was unbelievable. Yeah, the fact he turned his chair around like like it's an interrogation yeah, everything.
Speaker 2:Did you get a spotlight on you? No, but everything I said. He was like well, I don't agree with that, we're not doing that. I'm like I got no chance, yeah. And he was like there was like 20 other candidates, this was like a big search, and then I, I, I, I.
Speaker 3:But what about the other two interviews? Did there's go?
Speaker 2:They were okay, they weren't as intimidating, but Sid Thrift was like it was all about Sid. Oh yeah, it was like I was going to be his personal. Sid was quite a character, a genius, and helped turn that. And look, let me say this right now, and I like to think I was part of it, you were part of it. That group of people that was there in 1986, from Bernie Mullen to Sid Thrift, to Jim Leland, to the players they saved baseball in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow, 86 to what 92?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, they, they, they started the ball rolling. Okay, they saved.
Speaker 1:this franchise was teetering on the brink of one foot out of the city. I mean, it was honest, oh wow.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, I don't remember the call that I got, but I get the job right. So I fly down and I'm not starting yet, but I went to a game. They wanted me to come to a game and announce that I was the new vice president and I'm in the owner's box and I meet a gentleman by the name of Carl Barger. Nobody more responsible for saving this great franchise than Carl Barger. He was the lawyer, but he put the 13 groups together that bought the franchise. Okay, I mean just a tremendous achievement that you can get these companies to commit. I think they commit like a million dollars each. He later helped start the Marlins the Marlins. So Carl Barger in the owner's box comes over and he goes, come over here. He walks me into the corner of the owner's box and he's got a scotch in this hand and a cigarette in this hand His 50th cigarette of the hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he says to me I want to tell you why we hired you for this job. I said oh, I'd like to know. You're probably really wondering. He says we didn't hire you for your media guide or your press notes. And I'm like, wow, I'm pretty proud of my media guide and my press. And I said, well, he goes and his veins are popping, he's so emotional. He said we hired you to convince the great city of Pittsburgh that this great franchise will be here for another hundred years.
Speaker 2:And I'm like that's all that's it, but I give him credit, because if that conversation doesn't happen, I don't have those marching orders. So I start thinking well, how do we convince the market we're going to be here for a hundred years? First thing I thought of was well, let's solicit the All-Star game because you're not going to get it for four years. So at least that shows we're not going anywhere in 1992. And then we couldn't get it for 92 because we couldn't get the hotel rooms. The whole city, every room in the city, was taken by the international Barbershop Cortetta.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so they bumped us to 1994, but I was the director, the head of the All-Star Game Committee. The other thing is I went to Bernie Mullen who was the senior vice president of business operations. I said, oh, I gotta give credit where credit's due. Every day I walked to work. On a game day there was a young man standing outside the door and then he'd move over and stand outside the press gate and he would say well, you signed my petition to get a statue built for Roberto Clementi.
Speaker 2:You know I'm talking about right. Of course he's there every day Joe Vogel.
Speaker 3:That's amazing Joe.
Speaker 2:Vogel is the reason that Clementi statue exists.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Joe Vogel. Joe Vogel, baseball Joe.
Speaker 2:You see him at the ballpark every day.
Speaker 1:He suffered a massive stroke many years ago.
Speaker 3:He's the same guy he had no longer talk. I love Joe. He writes me near my walls every week.
Speaker 1:He was the driving force behind the truck.
Speaker 2:After a while I walked in and I said to Sally O'Leary, the secretary, that had been there. I said you know, why isn't there a Clementi statue? I mean, oh, we've tried, we've tried. Go and look at the files. And I looked at the file Clementi statue 1975. Clementi statue 1979.
Speaker 2:Clementi statue yeah, that's the one where the guy absconded with all the money. I said so. I said we've got to at least try. So I went to Bernie Mullen and I said I think we should try to erect a statue on Roberto Clementi. And he said to me how would we do that? Do we? Do you know anything about a statue? I said, well, the Steelers just erected one for Argruny Jr. Why don't I meet with Joe Gordon at the Steelers? And maybe so Joe Gordon, bless his heart, was phenomenal and basically gave me the. You know what they? You're going to need a quarter of a million dollars. There's hero, there's, there's this there's. So we just started, we got it designed, we had a open to the public. You can bring your, you know whether it's artwork or an actual statue. And we once again, that's brilliant we picked this woman named Susan Wagner who I think at the time did the Hall of Fame Plaques. She might have done the Rooney statue and she did the magnificent statue, but I'm only looking at it, this big.
Speaker 3:So they made like little, like model statues. That's so cool.
Speaker 2:One of them that somebody did a model crumble when she was presenting it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's probably mine. We won't choose that one.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't going to win it.
Speaker 2:I saw it before it crumbled, but anyway, so you know I was named. They said we want you to be chairman of the. We have to raise $250,000. And they said you're going to be the chairman of the fundraiser committee. I said I think you need a name. So they said well, I'm going to call Dan Galbraff, the former pirate owner, and see if he would co-chair it with you, which he graciously did. And you know they raised the money. Like I'd like to say that I was ultimately responsible, but a year before the statue was to be unveiled, they called me in and said you don't know the work here.
Speaker 1:To be continued. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's coming up.
Speaker 1:So stick around for the next episode of hold my cutter. Rick Sarone, the great one, the chief.