I was just looking at pure numbers standpoint.

Interesting stat on Drysdale. In 1965 he hit .300 with 7 HR's and 19 RBI's in 130 ab's. The team leader in HR's that season hit 12 and drysdale hit only 1 fewer HR than the starting 1st baseman, catcher, 2 less than the right fielder, and 3 more than the 3rd baseman. The Dodgers won the World series that year.


In his other 14 seasons he hit over .200 only once (1958) when he hit .227 with 7 HR's. He was a lifetime .186 hitter.

I don't think I could do his generosity justice.

A partial list off the top of my head:

Upon reading about two firefighters and a police officer dying in the line of duty in the '80s, he formed The Gold Shield Foundation which provides a college education to the spouses and children of fallen officers and firefighters. The Foundation has been a great success and has even spread to the surrounding counties. Tragically, we just lost two police officers in Tampa and the 5 kids left behind will have their educations taken care of when they are ready for college.

A while back, the city of Tampa announced that they didn't have the money to buy badly needed new police cars. George stepped up and bought them. They were always easy to spot because they had Yankee logo stickers on them.

He used to rent the Big Sombrero for a night every year and hold a high school football jamboree so the kids could have an opportunity to play in an NFL stadium.

He would anonymously help people he saw on the local news if they had some sort of tragedy.

He donated the money to build a trauma center at All Childrens Hospital.

He built a branch of the Boys and Girls Clubs and continued to fund it with charity events.

One day, he walked into his favorite breakfast restaurant and announced that he was going to pay to take all the employees to New York for a weekend to see a Broadway play and Yankees game.

When a little league concession stand burned down, he immediately paid for a new one.

I can go on and on. These are only some of the things he did that were publicized, I'm sure there are many more that we will never know about.

As a Sox fan, I must say he was one of the best. Yankee fans everywhere should be thankful he was the BOSS! Owners today should be more like him.
RIP George!

as i said in my inital post the good far outweighed the bad and those in the tampa area know best

:tro:

I can buy a lot of your criticisms of George but this one doesn't fly. Baseball's fall from the perch of america's game has much more to do with the advent of sports tv than anything George ever did.

Sports such as baseball or horse racing for that matter simply aren't made for tv. Football and basketball with their pace and natural stoppages are more easily staged and better to keep interest. Tv is the answer there.

There are lots of answers to the decline of baseball but listing George as a primary reason is fallacious.

Baseball lost much of it's luster after the 2 strikes, both over free agency. The resulting big/small market issues that are now simply a given but this wasn't always so. You denying that competitive balance isn't a factor in the decline of baseball is silly. Your hypothesis makes no sense if we are talking about 1973 when sports were televised widely and no sport became more widely covered with the advent of cable tv then baseball. So in the 70's people suddenly decided that football was fun to watch and baseball wasn't? Professional basketball was virtually out of business in the 70's and made a comeback on the back of Magic johnson/Lassy Bird, not because it was easy to watch on tv.

And that would explain why absolutely nobody cares about the NBA anymore.

I honestly think it goes hand and hand. I'm a big baseball fan and still love to play, but I have to admit I hate watching it on TV. I'm a Yankee fan so it's not a matter of them being competitive, I just think that it's a very tough game to watch on TV (playoffs are a different story). It takes too long, there is very little action most of the time and there is very rarely any type of flow to the game. Not to mention that there are way to many games. I couldn't imagine how I would feel if I rooted for a club that realistically had no chance every season. I'm sure there are fans of those teams that don't watch because of the unfair balance. So I think it is a combination of things.

I do think that fantasy baseball has given the sport a much needed boost as far as more people watching games. But otherwise as much as cable has helped the game with basically being able to watch any teams games, it has hurt with so many other viewing options (not necessarily sports) including multiple channels/shows where you could see those same teams highlights in anywhere from a 2 minute to an hour abridged version. As far as I'm concerened if I had a choice baseball would be 3rd on the list of sports I would watch out of the 4 majors, being behind football and hockey.

basketball has always been controlled by a relatively small number of teams because a sport with 5 players on the court only takes a few top players to win unlike the other sports where the rosters are much bigger.

Only one team can win the championship every year and the problem with baseball is that many of the teams arent even making the playoffs.
KC-24 years
Expos/Nats-28 years
Orioles-12 years
Toronto-16 years
texas-10 years
Pirates-17 years
Reds -14 years

There are several other teams with recent appearances that were rarities including the Astros, Mariners, Rays, Indians, brewers, padres, cubs.

Now no doubt some of this is due to mismanagement/owners happy to squeeze out a profit but it is hard to make a case to become a fan of one of these teams when we all know that they realistically have no chance of winning.
Even teams like minnesota and Tampa that have great baseball people are seemingly hitting their heads on the glass ceiling because of strict budgets that they must adhere to.

The longest drought in the NFL is Buffalo and Detroit with 10 years. True a greater proportion of teams make the playoffs but teams in small markets like Indy and Green Bay are able to excel on the field due to peoper management, player selection and coaching. This isn't so in baseball.

And I am not saying that George was intending on creating this situation. But as the primary owner who lavished free agents with over the top contracts, he helped create the system that led to 2 work stoppages and an unequitable salary heiracrcy that continues to this day. As I said in one of the first posts, it eventually may have played out like this anyway. And in the 2nd strike George was willing to accept a salary cap system despite it being a negative for the Yankees.

There are a lot of factors why baseball has dropped in popularity. The length of the games is a huge factor in a society that has been increasingly speeding up life. The 2 strikes were way more harmful to baseball than the one mid season strike was to football. The rise of sports gambling and the fact that baseball is not an easy game to bet on especially versus football. But the fact that a great many baseball games are played against teams with few stars or recognizable names because of the inequity of revenues/payrolls surely plays a role as well.

No one supposedly cares yet the leBron announcement "special" was the highest rated non-NFL show ever on ESPN.

Baseball, as a league, had a huge head start on the NFL. The "NFL" as we know it today didn't come into existence until 1970. That is the year monday night football debuted.

Sports TV went through a "revolution" if you will in the 70's. For the first time, viewers actually had choices as to what they could watch in terms of sports. First exposure for children during that generation to the sport was based on TV...not the ballpark for the first time.

Is George to blame for the deterioration of the game of baseball at the little league level as well? Kids don't play baseball as much anymore because it is a time suck and many find it boring and the fact is that its not nearly as exciting as it was in another era when sports and entertainment options were limited.

I have an 8 year old son. He played baseball for the first time this year. Loved it. Nice natural swing. We took him to see Strasburg on friday. He was enthralled as he was last month watching the Orioles beat up on the yanks. Watching it on TV? Forget it. I can get him to watch Arod or jeter or Adam Dunn but beyond that, he won't watch. It bores him to tears. Is George to blame for that? He will play Major league baseball "the show" for hours on end though.

I like baseball. I grew up thinking George Brett was the greatest and hottest thing ever and being a yanks fan when my grandpa was around. But does it really compare to football or basketball as a tv event? Come on.

Basketball was saved by Bird and magic but taken to the next level with MJ. What else happened during that period of time from 1981 on? Again, the masses had choices for the first time. You could now choose to see almost every single game Dominique Wilkins played from the time he left Georgia on while watching TBS. You could watch Jordan almost every night on WGN. Now, you weren't forced to watch baseball anymore. You had 200 other channels to watch. Kids had video games like atari now. Other youth leagues sprang up into prominence. Again, choices.

Baseball dominated during a time when entertainment choices were much more limited especially on TV.

Of course, it isnt as simple as just TV and there are several other factors involved with baseball's decline as "americas game". But if you had to put the primary key, you would have to say that the entertainment product simply doesnt match up.

The crazy thing is that many stats say that more people will follow a dominant team or francshise. More people want to watch a "dynasty" than this competitive balance that is being thrown around.

Isnt that why we want a triple crown winner?

All of which is nice and has a lot of truth to it but has little to do with the conversation that you originally quoted from. I hardly "blamed" george for the detoriation of the free world as you imply. But to ignore the negative aspects of his legacy, such as the continuing competitive imbalance in baseball which he played a big hand in, is myopic. My staement that because of competitive balance in the NFL, virtually every team can become a powerful team is still ture and is not true in baseball. Social factors aside would you agree that if you bought the Minnesota Vikings you would have a better chance of winning and establishing a championship contender than if you bought the Minnesota Twins? Or Miami Dolphins vs FL marlins? Or Seattle Seahawks vs. Seattle mariners?

agreed. The only games I can really sit through and watch are Phillies games, but they dont bore me for one second.

I cant sit there and watch a Reds - St Louis game, or anything like that.. though I darn well can sit down and watch a Jets vs NE game.

The only non-phillies baseball games I'll watch are when a top pitcher is out there (I seem to watch all of Strasburgs televised games), or playoffs / WS.

My viewing list would be:

Eagles games
Phillies games
Arizona wildcat football games
other NFL games
other College football games
golf
top pitchers
college basketball
MLB games I dont care about
NBA
womens volleyball
soccer
tennis

Chuck you make it sound as this all started under geroge

was baseball un-competitve in the 20's , 30's 40' and 50's when the yanks were winning every thing in sight

weren't there teams in those decades that never had a chance either , i mean come on , yankee domination started in the 20's , had a hiccup from '64 until '76 , baseball has survived and prospered with the yankees winning in all decades

care to tell me how tennis makes the list and horse racing doesn't

There isn't 25 minutes between serves.