Glimpses of a Golden Age
While Major League Baseball opens its season Tuesday showcasing its future—the Oakland A's face the champion Boston Red Sox in Tokyo—former MLB commissioner Fay Vincent has kept a keen eye on the game's past. His second volume of oral histories, "We Would Have Played for Nothing," featuring stars of the '50s and '60s, hits stores next week. He talked with NEWSWEEK's Mark Starr.
That's a sentimental title.
It came from Brooks Robinson, who said, "The owners weren't very smart. We would have played for nothing." I wondered about the title because, of course, in some sense it's not true. But it does get at the generational difference. We're all looking back at what was considered to be a rosy time in baseball. It was never what we think it was.
Why are these oral histories so important?
I knew that my great friend, Larry Doby, the first black player in the American League, had cancer. I started this endeavor [because] I was concerned that people were going to die away and we wouldn't have their stories.
How distressed are you by recent issues about steroid use?
This off-season was awful. But people are voting with their feet. They go to the ballpark. Baseball is booming again.
Is MLB immune to the damage?
The cheating is a very big threat. There is the potential of losing the belief that it's a fair competition. I don't think fans will stay if the cheating is pervasive. Take the 100-meter dash. Will we ever again look at women running the dash and not think of Marion Jones cheating at the Olympics?
Does baseball have any credibility left in tackling this problem?
I think the Mitchell Report was a noble one. It was flawed only because the union wouldn't participate. The union's record is both consistent and abysmal. It never wants to deal with these issues.
Isn't baseball a special case because of the reverence for numbers? Has that been lost?
The last 10 or 15 years, everything is tainted. I don't know if we could have stopped it. Look, I was there, I was part of the problem. I never thought steroids was going to be as big an issue as it became because I thought it was a muscle-building drug. I looked at [Hank] Aaron and [Willie] Mays and they weren't muscle guys. It was all about quickness. I thought it was a football problem. I thought Jose Canseco was an anomaly.
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Mark Starr was named a senior editor in March 1998. He continues to serve as Newsweek's Boston bureau chief, where he has been headquartered since 1985. Starr has also held the title national sports correspondent since 1992. Before moving to Boston, he spent four years as a general editor in National Affairs.
Starr has covered eight Olympics, beginning with the Winter Games in Albertville and the Summer Games in Barcelona back in 1992. Before the Salt Lake Olympics, he wrote a cover story on American skating queen Michelle Kwan and, during the Games, covered both figure skating's judging scandal and Sarah Hughes' upset gold medal. In December 2001, Starr profiled Hughes in Newsweek's year-end issue as the "Athlete to Watch" in 2002, calling her a strong upset possibility in Salt Lake.
He was also prominently involved in four cover stories on the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding saga, which climaxed on the ice in Lillehamer, Norway in 1994. Starr has also covered three World Cups, writing cover stories on the shocking French men's home triumph in 1998 as well as America's "girls of summer," after they beat the Chinese in a thrilling Rose Bowl shootout in 1999. Starr has always been interested in women's sports. In 1996, he wrote on the U.S. women's basketball team hopes for an Olympic gold medal to jump-start a pro league. A year earlier Starr sailed with the women of America3 before its America's Cup challenge in San Diego.
Starr was a major contributor to Newsweek's special issue on the retirement of Michael Jordan, "The Greatest Ever" (October/November 1993) and the March 20, 1995, cover story on Jordan's first return to basketball, "Hoop Dreams." Starr has profiled a wide range of top personalities and performers in all sports including basketball's Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, baseball's Pedro Martinez, NFL coaches Steve Spurrier and Bill Parcells, skating star Tara Lipinski, tennis' Martina Hingis, boxing champ Evander Holyfield, track stars Marion Jones, Michael Johnson and Carl Lewis, soccer superstars Roberto Baggio and Mia Hamm, Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller, speedskating queen Bonnie Blair and golfer David Duval.
Starr has also covered some of the more dramatic political stories out of Massachusetts, including John Silber's longshot bid to capture the State House, congressman Barney Frank's revelation that he was gay and Michael Dukakis's 1988 campaign for the presidency. Starr rode the Dukakis "bus" from New Hampshire until the November election.
Prior to Newsweek, Starr covered Central America for the Chicago Tribune during the Sandinista revolution of the late '70s. He was also a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury-News.
Starr, a native of Boston, holds a B.A. from Cornell University and an M.A. in journalism from Stanford.
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