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from Gainesville, Florida, right five Live presents conversation from the University of Florida, a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day. Your host is Dr Michael V. Gannon, professor of history, and Nixon, an assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.

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Hello and welcome to conversation on this particular conversation. I have the pleasure of talking with Willie Stargell. 20 years in the major leagues, Most Valuable Player in the National League, twice led his team the Pittsburgh Pirates to a world championship and was co recipient of the 1979 Sports Illustrated Athlete of the Year award.

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Willie uh, is also a now a narrator of a new musical production, which has received rave reviews. He's an adviser traveling with the Pittsburgh Pirates, his old team also working with minor league teams in that particular National League club system. Willie, welcome to conversation, Thank you very much.

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And George Plimpton, George. Your face and your name are known to millions of Americans. Your literary figure of note, editor of longtime editor of The Paris Review, one of the most distinguished literary quarterly's in the country. But I suppose? More popularly, you're known as the liver out of our fantasies.

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You've made our dreams come alive as a quarterback. One time quarterback of the Detroit Lions. Last string. Last string correctly as I go here, member of the Boston Celtics basketball team again. Benchwarmer power forward. Power forward. Uh, a member of the Boston Bruins hockey team? I don't know.

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Goaltender, Goaltender. Uh, you played percussion with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Was Cymbals or drums? Triangle. Well, I can do that. And then you can I can't. All right, I take it back. Extremely difficult instrument. And then a pyrotechnic expert of note. Uh, I believe that you conducted the fireworks display at the centennial of the Brooklyn Bridge.

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Just a short time back. Well, choreographer, really choreographer of fireworks. Well, thank you, George, for coming on conversation. Thank you for having me. Well, I thought we'd talk about sports. Uh, here is a gentleman and Willie Stargell who lived a real life sports career, and, uh, George, I hope you won't mind if I say you have lived a fantasy sports career and each of you is in love with athletics in our society.

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I'd like to find out what role athletics does play in our society and what relationship it has with other cultural forms. There's one thing on the minds of a lot of people today, and that is the pressure under which athletes live. And some athletes have run into difficulties, moral and legal, that have been highly publicized of Lee.

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Did you find yourself growing up in baseball is being under pressures that you found different from the pressures that other people experienced. No, quite the contrary when I was growing up with just a childhood dream and desire to to play the game of baseball. I always fantasized with the idea of taking a a round object and around another round object and theoretically, which is impossible to hit him squarely.

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But I've always just enjoy that eye hand coordination to be able to hit something and then to drive it for distance. And I took such great joy that that that was basically all the time that I used. All my energies were somewhere in the neighborhood, around the baseball, in the back.

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As far as Precious was concerned. I have always felt that if you're having problems doing something the best place to solve those problems is on the field. What is happening? I think probably today more than anything, is that when I was coming along, you were paid basically on what you did, and if you had a great year, you knew you could go in and negotiate and get some additional money.

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However, if you did not, you knew that there was a chance that you're going to get cut now with the free agency, which is a good thing for the game, no question about it. I won't say the uncontrollable amount of money, how it's being distributed, his It's going to have to take some leveling off.

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But they're paying basically the players on what they think they're going to do, and right away that puts that individual under some money, this amount of pressure. And when I say that, it means that these guys for the first time are going to have to excel, who are they supposed to and say what it takes normally four or five years?

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But they are expected to do that right away. Do you think that salaries are out of line for the people who play professional sports. But I can't say that it's out of line because I think now and everybody here in the studio, if someone walked in here and say we're going to give each one of you a million dollars nobody's gonna say that's too much money So that's what we're talking about.

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I mean, you never heard one case where a ball player has been accused of literally taking the salt off shotgun and going and enforcing that money being presented to them. That's true. And no one, none of the owners that I've heard of have said that they cannot afford to play these place, the amount of money that they're giving them.

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So I can't say that that's something. And I don't think that we've seen it to the point where it's going to level off because there's yet to be cable and pay television. Turn into the picture and you may see a guy making as much as three or $4 million a year.

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Is there the same disparity in baseball as one finds in football, where the older players are not making as much as the younger players just being recruited into the game well, the guys that have proven themselves. Yes, they're getting it. In a case where you might say, as your career is fading out, you get a taste of it.

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But the bulk of it, the the Dave Winfield, Um, just to mention a few of the guys that are really making tremendous amount of money, they've put themselves in a position where you know, if they're with the ball club for the next five or 10 years, and they certainly going to continue exercising the ability to play the game better each year, they're not going to make much more money.

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Of course, it's true, isn't it that the money doesn't come out of the fans pocket? A lot of people make that mistake. It comes out of the owners exactly. Pocket and the fan is because the owners would like to, because the price of a seat in a baseball field baseball stadium hasn't really gone up very much.

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Is it still 3 50 in New York is the cheapest thing in town, so the fellow who puts the price on that seat is not. It's not the budget of the team. It's an actuary who puts the price on there that will get the most money out of potential audiences, isn't it?

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Because what happens? You know, in your local commercials with its radio TV, two sponsors say the parts, for instance, the money they make their can pay everybody in their entire minor and major league administration and still have money left over. That's not even not even talking about the network money that's coming in.

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Um, it's a tremendous and very lucrative business, which you expect a person who fox up the amount of money to run a business. You expect that person to make money and they do want anything about the money. Is that, of course it? There is something wrong with the society, which pays those vast amounts of money to for someone to hit a ball over a fence, whereas the schoolteacher who has a presumably a much more important job in theory, teaching kids gets paid, what, 15 $16 a year.

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But the answer to that, of course, is that when Willie Stargell hits a home run over the fence, he creates a type of at least in Pittsburgh, a great joy and a sense of euphoria, and he's creating a great artistic function, which is very hard to measure in terms of money.

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Yes, that's a cultural phenomenon in itself, Isn't it? An elevation of the spirit Really important? I know a theologian, a fellow called dear Michael Novak. Oh, yes, I know. Yeah. He once said that a city would be in worse shape for losing its baseball team than its church, and it's, uh, it's Symphony Orchestra.

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I didn't say that I'd be too nervous to say that. But he's a theologian, Michael Novak, and he so he understands how important to the community it is for someone to hit a home run over a fence. Although it is a next to the teaching of Horace or homework doesn't seem like very much.

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You grew up obviously wanting to visualize yourself as an athlete, I say, obviously, on the basis of your I did exactly what you really want to do. I wanted to hit a ground ball with Stick, and I spent as much time, I think, thinking about that as he did.

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But something happened. Well, he didn't get the right coaches. Well, yes, perhaps it was in the coaching to be sure. Well, I think the innate ability was not there. I still dream about James Thurber once said that 95% of American males put themselves to sleep at night, striking out the batting order the New York Yankees.

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That goes on until you're about 94. I guess you interviewed James Thurber for The Paris Review. Did you talk about Walter Mitty? I think of Walter Mitty. When I see you on television or read your books. There seems to be something of Walter Mitty and you.

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Well, of course he was a daydreamer, his daydreams in his mind. He never actually had to try them. And when you do, try a daydream and you get out there and you throw a pitch, as I did, too. Frank Thomas of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It ends up in Section 37 or whatever it is in the Yankee Stadium.

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And that's not Walter Mitty. Hemingway once said it was the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty, which was a nice way of putting it. I think the sort of thing that I do actually living out that dream in reality is a nightmare. Yes, Uh huh.

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Well, with the Detroit Lions. Did you get banged up badly? No, but I lost 29 yards and four plays, which is not particularly good. You know that playing with the Colts, which they did the same thing I played with the Colts. Um, same thing to do.

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A television show went in. There is the quarterback for plays and we made 17 yards when I was in there, 15 of them on a roughing the passer penalty. Congratulations. It's not quite the way I expected to pick up yardage, but it'll do. Did you get to throw a pass in any of those games?

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Well, what went for a pass? You know, it was mhm. Well, uh, you had your heroes. Willie had his. I'd like to ask who your heroes were when you were kids. Willie, Who are your heroes? They were predominantly in baseball. I would assume, since that's the sport you entered.

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Well, I grew up in the housing projects in California, and my idol was a fellow that actually lived in the projects. He was the high school greatest football player, and he was also the president of the student body. So he was the figurehead in my life.

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And and then, as I would really become in tuned with the organized game of baseball, I was particularly interested in left handed hitters. Stan Mutual, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle when he did hit from the left side. And then once I got into organized baseball, which was 1959.

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It was also the year that the Giants called up Willie McCovey. And it was just the awesome display that he put on out there in the Bay Area and just really gave me that needed push that I would need to to really go into a motivational thing in terms of getting there.

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But I'll have to say, um, the one guy's name was Marion Maze. Who was the football player there? Where was he? I've forgotten. Mary and Maize. Marianne mazes postal worker in Oakland, California Well, he played No, he did not play in a major team. No, he only played football.

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Uh, his career ended at Humboldt State College. Willie, you wear a medallion with the numeral eight? Uh, is that your number? Was that your number with the Pittsburgh Pirates? Yes, for 20 years. And that was presented to you on the occasion Well, when I was married, my wife gave this talk.

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So that's great. Kind of hold on to it. When things really get bad, I can melt it down. But they've retired the jersey with the numeral eight on It happens. Do they ever retire any of your jerseys, George? Well, uh, I don't think anybody has ever worn the number.

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I guess they had. The number zero was what I wore for the Detroit Lions. Oliver. Where is that now, Does he? My jersey? Well, you see, there's the answer. It wasn't retired, and then I wore double zero for the Boston Bruins. And, of course, in in football.

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Auto used to wear that would. So I didn't retire that one. No, the answer is no. Don't retire. And I wore number 20 for the Celtics. I'm sure that's not retired. Who were your heroes growing up? And where did you grow up? If Willy grew up in California, in the East, in New York and Massachusetts, and my hero was in baseball, which I always thought was the best game or is the best game was Carl Hubbell.

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I wanted to pitch. I had that James Thurber thing and he was a screwball picture like Valenzuela. And what was interesting about him was that he thrown so many of these things that his arm was deformed. When he walked along. You could you could see that there was something wrong with his left arm and sort of stuck out like this.

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And that's the way I walked around when I was 11 in the hope that somebody would say, Hey, look like it was a through ball picture. I mean, I really emulated him in every way. I walked the way he did. I wore my baseball uniform the same way he did.

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He was called high pockets, wore his, and, um and I was right handed. I would have given anything to be left handed. Uh, but that was the end of the, uh, the similarities. And then, um, Cliff Melton. He was another. He was the first picture I ever saw.

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When I was taken to the Polo Grounds, my father, he had a great big Mickey Mouse. Ears like that I could imitate. He was again another left hander. I don't know why I picked all these left handers, but I could wind up and pretend to be him for hours back there.

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Willie, you mentioned Ted Williams. Many say that he was the best batter in modern times. So far as knowing the techniques of batting. Would you agree with that estimate? And did you ever have a chance to talk with him about batting? Ted and I are very good friends, in my opinion.

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He is EF hunting a baseball when he talks. Everybody wants to listen because he has a science of hitting and it is indeed a science. What? I'm sorry. I'm going to ask The great legend about him is that he could read Harry his name on the baseball as it came in.

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Well, I'll tell you what. I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't question him if he said he could do it. I would believe it because the success that he had, because he is really one of the few people who had success 60% of the time of hitting a baseball and one of the few men in the 100 years that baseball has been in existence because if I'm successful, uh, say 10,000 times and plate appearances, I'm going to get 3000 hits and then I'm gonna make 7000 ounce when I'm striking out.

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Rounding out of popping up. However, Ted Williams didn't do that. I think the next person active today might be Rod Carew, who it may be on a 3.6 percent average, as opposed that Ted Williams. Without a doubt, Uh, he has a book out the science of hitting, and I've read this book many, many times, and each time I read it, it's like reading the Bible.

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You get a a completely different version of what he's saying, and then you can implement these things and sure, they do exist. They're documented. So how much of a science is? Could somebody step up with just an absolute natural me hitting a ball, you would think would be the most natural thing in the world?

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Can someone have there been hitters who just have never had to read a book called The Science of Hitting who? Just step up there and hit 3, 90 or 400 what I believe in first of all, and I'm no one to be a complete judge of anything, but I think you get a good athlete, period, and for one year you can put a baseball bat in his hand and put him around good athletes that no, the game of baseball and just by his ability to adjust and do various things, that particular person will become a great baseball.

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For same token, if you put a football in his hand or basketball or tennis regular golf, good athletes can do just about anything. So that if Elway had decided not to go with the Denver football team, he possibly could have had a great career in doubt.

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It Yeah, from what I was told, and I haven't seen Elway play. But I understand he did not have what you look for and hitting bat speed. Oh, so it didn't transfer well in his case, No. But what I'm saying when I say a good athlete, you talk about a kid that's on the high school level.

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And in high school, when I was coming up, we played virtually all three major sports and and we did very well. But it's that little intangible thing that caused the heart and where your soul really lies. I've always wanted to ask somebody like you this question Willie, usually in high school.

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As I recall, high school, the best player on the team ended up the picture. He was also the best hitter. He was the best all around athlete. And yet, as players moved into semi professional baseball or professional baseball, the pictures became so specialized in pitching they neglected the batting game.

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Or so it appeared. Because pictures are not noted for their prowess at the plate. What happened along the way? Because if if a picture is still such a fine athlete, could he not have maintained his ability as a hitter? Well, I would have to say to that if if a guy is really gonna be a good picture, it requires so much of his time and effort and mental thoughts and he really doesn't have the time to take that, it takes to consistently be a good hitter.

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I mean, hitting you've got to and how I would teach hearing if I had to teach you today. If someone that doesn't have to spend at least 5 10 minutes a day hitting, learning how to hit line drives all over the ball field, and then if they have that God given talent of being able on occasions, too.

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Drive the ball for a considerable amount of distance, then to work at that. But it's an eight hour job. Mentally and physically. You just don't never stop hitting or becoming a student of it. You said 55 hours, five hours a day. Five minutes. I mean 58 hours of Alright, alright, but hitting baseball if you can hit for five minutes a day Uh huh.

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But your thought pattern is gonna run 8 to 10 hours a day. George, you said that baseball was your favorite sport. Or at least you thought of baseball is the greatest of all the American sports. Why didn't you don a baseball uniform? Or perhaps you did.

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And I didn't read that book. I did. I wrote a book called Out of my League. I'm sorry, In which I pitched in the Yankee Stadium in an all Star game and I pitched to Richie Aspirin and Willie Mays. But when the maze out yeah, pop up out by those monuments.

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Wow. Very long. You wrote a book called Shadow Box. Uh, did you go to the ring? I was in the ring. I got into what was the book was really about Mohammed Ali, who was a great hero, and I think, I think, indeed the sort of great Titanic sports hero of our decades.

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And But I did. There is a chapter in there about getting in the ring with Archie Moore, who was in the light heavyweight champion of the world. Another fiasco. My thought. Don't get into the ring with a and then anybody for that one more July, you wrote.

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And what was the theme of that particular one More? July is a book with Bill Curry, who's coach if I can whisper the word Georgia Tech and was a great player at center at Baltimore and then at the Green Bay Packers, started with the Green Bay Packers and one of the most articulate, interesting men out of the sport.

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He one of the very few sports figures I've known who really took an interest in his constituency and was interested in. He'd go and sit with different people at the team dinners and so forth where people tend to get into their clicks and sort of settle in there.

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But he was he would have been a very good journalist and um So I did a book with him about his his his football career, which was with a lot of clubs and and, as I say, carrying around this extraordinary journalistic curiosity, it's a better book than paper lion.

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I think about football. Paper Lion is the book for which you became best known for a long period of time. Of late, people have noticed you prominently on television, um, promoting a particular product, which we can mention or not mentioned. As you wish. Do you play video games yourself?

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I did. I I have two Children, one is six and the other is 12, and they tend to. They love those games, and so occasionally they suckered me into them and wallet me up. I think the a lot of people worried about the impact of such games, but I think like anything taken in moderation, they can be a very interesting adjunct to education to entertainment.

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When I was down in Miami the other day, all the Miami Dolphins, when they're not on the practice field, is sitting there playing in television football. You'd think they'd be sick of the game, but they're not. They sit there, play with these play the play themselves in miniature on the screen.

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It's the dawn to sight to see a £280 are really intensely upset at losing a couple of yards there in the on the video screen. We may have national championships, Uh, as that develops. Well, there's some of those games where they do have championships. There's a there's an in television game.

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I went and gave out prizes at a championship in Pittsburgh. There were hundreds of people that competed all over the country. Game called. Well, they had to play five different games, and they was a tremendous competition When a quick question here about fireworks. How did you get into that?

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And why are you the fireworks commissioner for New York, or whatever it was I invented that there's no such thing, really, as the fireworks commissioner. But I did go to the mayor once and say I would like to be He wanted me to become a commissioner of something else, and I couldn't do it.

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So we invented this bogus commissionership. Well, I think fireworks is the eighth art. I can't think of anything, which gives us such visual splendor as an enormous firework show, and indeed, in the past it was considered one of the odds. It just It's very much like music, except it's a symphonic effect on the I rather than the air.

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Um, I got interested, I think, because I always thought the Fourth of July was the most interesting, the best day of the year. It was in the summer time, which is the best time of the year, and you were on vacation. And it's a very long day or used to be with fireworks because you can't buy them now in New York, which you used to be able to, and when I was growing up, the day would start at 6 a.m. With a cherry bombs, cherry bombs, the family cat.

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And then it would go on through the evening. You'd have the fireworks show in the river, on the lake or on the so it was a long day. It was somehow better than Christmas. The weather was better. And then there were no disappointing presence, and you had this wonderful paper bag full of these things.

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There's always a little bit of free song of danger involved, and then in the Army. I was a demolition expert, which for some reason that was absurd. So I've always had an interest in things that go up, make loud noises and affect changes in the sky and one of the great.

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And I think also I've never met a writer who wasn't fascinated by fireworks because writing is so difficult to sit down at a typewriter never comes out the way you want to. But you touch a flare to a big aerial shell and it goes up. It does everything that you want to do as a writer.

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People go wow, and they get their impressed. Great paragraph. It's a great paragraph, and you can also you can reach many more people. There are a million two million people that came to see the Brooklyn Bridge show. When you finish that, you have a sense that you've done.

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It'll be like hitting a home run, I suppose. I suppose, Willie, you're trying to hit some home runs. Now, as a member of the President's advisory board for sickle cell anemia, how close are we getting to a good treatment or cure? Well, I don't bring a bearer of good news.

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The federal funds have cut off and cut back in a lot of areas, including sickle cell, to give an idea. It's being put on an umbrella with other genetic orientated diseases, and there's roughly about 200 of them, and they're just fixed income in terms of how that money is distributed among all these 201.

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Now that sickle cell is there, sickle cell at one time had roughly 19 million that was responsible for the United States, And the people who were religiously doing things Pittsburgh alone could use right around the state of Pennsylvania could use right around $10 million. Excuse me.

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So the upside of that would be that the communities we're taking a real first hand look at this and said, Let us collectively do something about the local treatments that they need to have done in their respective communities, and that's the good side of it. Hopefully, if they see these kinds of things being done on a community level, the federal government will indeed come back and allocate more money so that they can continue.

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This, as they did in polio, religiously have people working around the clock and hopefully come up with something in terms of a major breakthrough. I hope that that happens. And I want to thank both of you for being with me on conversation. Willie Stargell and George Plimpton and I want to mention that you are brought to our campus by accent, which is the speaker's Office of Student government, which does such a fine job of bringing outstanding individuals to talk to our students and faculty and members of the surrounding community here on campus.

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I appreciate very much your taking time out to join me on conversation. And, uh, I wish you all the best Willy and your new careers uh, George in your exotic careers and hope that we have you back again sometime soon. Thank you very much. Zajick Dancing.

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I would be interesting today. Go for it. Right. Mhm.