Bowie Kuhn in NYC #5

00:00Copy video clip URL Bars and tone, with some background conversation.

01:10Copy video clip URL Former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn talks about night games, specifically the World Series, and “what is best for baseball.” He says local fans in Chicago don’t like it, but national fans should have a chance to see the World Series.

03:00Copy video clip URL Tom Weinberg challenges Kuhn, asking what he means by “what’s best for baseball” and who gets to make that call. Kuhn says you need to look at a wide range of interests, including the public, the owners, the players, and the media who bring the game to the public.

05:35Copy video clip URL Kuhn talks about baseball salaries and how baseball is a family sport, so it’s important to keep salaries and therefore ticket prices low. Kuhn says owners have been spending too wildly and it’s hurting the game. Weinberg asks him why he didn’t do anything about it when he was commissioner; Kuhn said he had too many other fights to win.

08:23Copy video clip URL Kuhn talks about drugs, and the emergence of cocaine usage as a problem in 1981. He says it was much more serious than the problems with marijuana in the 1970s. He says player agents came to him as commissioner because they were concerned that they were going to lose their clients to the harmful effects of cocaine usage.

10:50Copy video clip URL Kuhn is also scared of what message it sends to young athletes, to find out that very good baseball players are using cocaine. They begin to think it’s not so bad.

16:06Copy video clip URL Kuhn talks about legalized gambling. He thinks that people who work for legal gambling institutions tarnish the game by associating gambling with baseball, even if they’re not gambling on baseball. He talks about opposing Ed DeBartolo’s efforts to get into baseball.

17:30Copy video clip URL Weinberg asks Kuhn whether he got sick of being “the image-maker,” since the commissioner’s job is largely to protect the image of baseball.  Kuhn didn’t get sick of it; it came to him naturally.

19:50Copy video clip URL Weinberg asks Kuhn to remove his tie.

20:16Copy video clip URL Kuhn talks about Cincinnati 1976, and getting in trouble for not wearing a coat.

21:20Copy video clip URL End of tape.