Buzzie and the Bull

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Buzzie and the Bull chronicles a baseball year in the lives of two lifelong friends who couldn’t be more different: Buzzie Bavasi, the legendary general manager of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, and Al “the Bull” Ferrara, bon vivant, fountain of joy, and bench player. Ken LaZebnik discusses his work.

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Institution: Long Island University

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The speaker reflects on their lifelong passion for baseball, detailing experiences from childhood and their involvement in a literary journal called The Minneapolis Review of Baseball, which celebrated various forms of baseball writing. They went on to write plays on baseball themes, including a one-person show about the Minnesota Twins' owner, Calvin Griffith, and a play about a fictional bullpen connected to their friendship with Bob Besi.

Besi, the son of legendary Dodger General Manager Buzzy Bei, inspired the speaker to write a dual biography about Buzzy and Al "the Bull" Ferrara, a lively character from the 1960s Dodgers. Through extensive interviews and research, the speaker chronicled Ferrara's life as both a player and a person, emphasizing his vibrant personality and relationship with Buzzy.

Buzzy's significant contributions as a general manager, including leading the Dodgers to multiple World Series titles, are highlighted. The book centers on the pivotal year of 1965, exploring the human relationships in baseball during a time when the sport was more personal and less commercialized. The speaker hopes readers will appreciate the human essence of baseball through the stories of these two intertwined lives, contrasting the era's personal connections with today's business-oriented approach.

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This book, I've had a lifelong love affair with baseball.

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I played as a kid.

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And, years ago, my friend Steve Lehman

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and I started a literary journal

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of writing on baseball called The Minneapolis

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Review of Baseball.

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And that lasted for longer than it ever should have, given

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that it never made a dime.

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Um, but it was a literary quarterly

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that published baseball fiction history, interviews,

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a real popery of material.

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Eventually, our friend Tom Goldstein purchased it,

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turned it into the Elysian Fields quarterly.

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Um, so I,

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and I've often written about baseball as a playwright

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and television writer.

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Uh, I, I've written two plays around the theme of baseball.

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One was a one person show about the Minnesota Twins

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owner Calvin Griffith.

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Uh, the other was a play about a bullpen,

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a fictional bullpen, that was,

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said in the California at that point,

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California Angels bullpen,

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but buzzy in the bull, if I may give myself a prompt,

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came, really came about because my friendship with Bob Bei.

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Bob Besi is the son of legendary Dodger General Manager,

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buzzy Bei and Bob.

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Um, it, it him, his whole family is baseball royalty.

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His brothers have been the, presidents

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of teams have been general managers of teams.

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Bob himself owned a minor league team, that he owned

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and managed with his wife Margaret.

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And, he,

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I guess he was telling me these stories about Al the Bull

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Ferrara, a wonderful, warm,

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crazy baseball player on the Dodgers teams of the sixties.

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And Bob thought, you know, this,

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this great character deserves to be written about.

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And over time what evolved was, it's sort

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of a dual biography that traces the lives of Buzzy Bsi,

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the general manager of the Dodgers,

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and al the Bull Ferrara, who was his, well,

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as Al says, if there was an off the field hall of fame,

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I'd be in on the first ballot.

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Uh, he led a larger than life kind of crazy existence,

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but a wonderful, warm guy, as he says,

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I gave you a hundred percent on the field

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and a hundred percent off the field.

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Um, and so I interviewed the bull,

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in his studio city residence.

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Uh, over a period of year, maybe two years, once a week,

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I'd go, go over there and talk with the bull

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and get his memorable memories of life in the sixties

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as a baseball player

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and his life as a kid growing up in Brooklyn and,

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and obviously talked a lot with the BSI family.

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Buzzy BSI had passed away by that point.

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Uh, but he had left behind a book, of his own,

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his own reminiscences, the sort of as told to book.

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And obviously his sons had many, many details and,

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and memories of their father.

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So the book came about that way.

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Uh, I give full gratitude and thanks to B Bob Besi

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and the Besi family,

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for theirs generosity in sharing all these memories about

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their father, with me.

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And, it just came out in paperback from university was

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in richly in hardcover,

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and now it, there's a paperback edition.

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So, yeah,

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that was the origin story of Buzzy and the Bull.

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I could tilt my, my laptop

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and show you the library

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of books I gathered around Brooklyn.

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I did just a lot of research on Brooklyn,

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Brooklyn in the 1950s when the bull was

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growing up in Brooklyn.

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Um, obviously the Dodgers have been a team

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that have been written about probably as much as any team.

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Maybe the Yankees have had more books written about them.

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But the, I delved through tons of books about the Dodgers.

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Um, many of the players had written, biographies,

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autobiographies, Maury Wills, wrote a real

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hair racing autobiography.

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Um, and then I did interview both people who had played

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with, with the bull as well as, as,

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people who knew him and,

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and had been sort of alongside him in, in life in,

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in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

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So, yes, there was, in addition to the interview work,

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there was, there was a lot of just research work on the,

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the history of the, and the history of the Times.

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The, the way the book ended up being centered was,

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I took the year 1965, which was a

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great year for Dodgers history.

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They ended up winning the World Series that year.

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It was also a memorable year, in Los Angeles,

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his in Los Angeles history,

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and kind of a memorable year in the Bulls life.

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So, I centered the book on that year with

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digressions and flashbacks about, how we got to

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that place in both the Bull's life and in buzzy Bai's life.

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So Buzzy Vei was the general manager

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of the Los Angeles Dodgers,

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and my thesis is that he was

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arguably the greatest general manager the Dodger's ever had,

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including Branch Ricky.

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Uh, for those who don't know baseball terribly well,

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the general manager, Bob Eva always says, it's like,

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it's like playing baseball cards.

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You have a team, you put it together, you assemble it.

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You're responsible for figuring out the budget for

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how much can I pay this player,

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how much can I pay that player?

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It's really assembling a team.

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It is casting a play, if you will.

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Um, and developing talent

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and knowing who has the right talent,

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the right abilities to work for your team.

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Um, buzzy I, I think, had a genius about this.

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Um, he took over the Brooklyn Dodgers

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and, in the early fifties from Branch Rickey,

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he himself grew up in New York City area.

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Um, he played baseball,

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but never played at a major league level.

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Uh, but early on, he started working for the Dodgers,

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and he served in World War II Heroically.

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He, he was part of the Italian campaign that was brutal

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and very difficult, came back to America,

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started, at the low level of minor leagues in,

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in Georgia as a, as a manager.

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Um, and just worked his way up.

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He, he was there when Jackie Robinson

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integrated Major League Baseball.

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He was there in the sense that he was in the Dodgers

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organization at that time.

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Um, and when he eventually took over the Dodgers,

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I Branch Rickey was a great general manager.

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It was under buzzy

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that the Dodgers won their one World Series in 1955,

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in Brooklyn.

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So the, they were continually in the World Series,

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continually losing to the Yankees,

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but it was buzzy at the helm when they won.

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In 1955, the Dodgers then moved to Los Angeles,

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and once again, he took a team that was aging

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and effectively rebuilt them very quickly so

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that they won another World Series in 1959,

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and then took them again to the World Series,

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took them again to a World Series Championship in 1963

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and 1965.

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Um, Al the Bull Ferrara was a guy who grew up in Brooklyn,

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and played baseball.

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Um, talked his way into a tryout.

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Um, he is a big, strong kid,

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even though his senior year in high school,

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he didn't do very well.

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He talked his way into a tryout

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with the Dodgers back when they were in Brooklyn in EBTs

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Field, and proceeded to hit, I think three home runs.

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Uh, out of the first five pitches he was thrown,

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and they signed him, and he worked his way up

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through the minor leagues.

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And, the thing about the Bulls,

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I said he was a larger than life character who,

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lived life to the fullest.

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He dated a succession of strippers in Los Angeles.

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He, you know, frequented the Sunset Strip.

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Um, but as he said,

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I always gave you a hundred percent on the field.

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He was a incredibly hard worker, a beloved teammate.

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His teammates loved him. And,

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and by the way, many Dodger fans

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who know the team fairly well have just a vague memory

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of the bull because he, he wasn't a, an an everyday player.

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He was a role player. He was an outfielder.

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Um, he, as he himself said, he, for better

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or for worse, he had fortune

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or misfortune to play, in a,

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in an era when the Dodgers had a ton

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of talented outfielders.

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Um, he finally got his chance

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to be a full-time starter in 1967, and did very well.

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I think he led the team in home runs, but, he

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and Buzzy would frequently clash.

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They, it was a situation where they loved each other,

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but buzzy would tear his, what little hair he had left out.

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When the bull left his office.

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Um, the bull, there was something that, that

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Buzz's son came to call, bull Omics,

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which was the Bull's way of dealing with,

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with his e personal economic situation.

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The Dodgers had a mail room, and every month

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or so, I guess it was Peter Besi, well, buzzy,

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let's say, would call the bull up

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and say, bull, you've gotta come up here.

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There's a box full of mail for you.

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The mail he had received were all about

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payments that were overdue.

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And the Bulls method of dealing with these was to say,

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okay, here's a bill from a clothing store.

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Uh, throw that away.

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Here's a bill from, a, a department store.

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I'm gonna throw that away. Here's

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the bill from a restaurant.

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Oh, here, this one says, overdue three times.

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Alright, I'll pay $10 toward this one.

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And his philosophy was, everybody stays happy.

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I give a little bit to this overdue per person,

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a little bit to that overdue person.

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Everyone's getting a little money,

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everyone's, everyone's staying happy.

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The, the advent of the American credit card was both

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an incredible boon for the bull

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because he would get credit cards

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and just, you know, use them and, and,

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and never pay them off.

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But he, he, he was just this carefree character who,

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lived life to live life to the fullest, shall we say.

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That's a great question.

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And, by the way,

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the only thing I know about British football

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is from Ted Lasso.

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So I, you know, I,

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I completely ignorant of how it works over there.

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But, this, I should also note that this was an era.

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The 1960s was an era when there was real personal

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relationships between the general manager

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and his players.

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I'm using the word his, because they were all men.

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Um, and, that doesn't exist anymore.

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Nowadays, there are layers of agents

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and general managers often don't really

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deal directly with the players.

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It become, it's become much more of a business.

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But back then, it was very personalized.

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The salaries were much smaller, needles to say.

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And, buzzy, you know, the thing about Buzzy,

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the bull would come in

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and he, he'd say, buzzy, I, I, I desperately need like $50.

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Um, and he loaned me $50.

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And Buzzy would know full well that the bull was gonna take

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that $50 and go to the track and gamble with it.

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Um, but he would give him the $50.

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And he, he had this soft spot for these kind

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of Damon Runion esque characters, who, and he knew

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'cause the, the bull, a lifelong player of the horses.

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He, the bull still loves betting,

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is very knowledgeable about horses and the racetrack, and,

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and spends a lot of time and money at the racetrack,

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or at least nowadays online.

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But I think the answer about

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how did buzzy manage a wild character like the bull, was,

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it, it was paternalistic.

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And, and nowadays paternalistic is,

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has a very negative connotation.

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Um, but I think at the time,

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he really was like a father figure to the bull.

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He was a man who would take care of the bull.

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He would get him out of scrapes, he would bail him out

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of jail, which happened more than once.

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He would, he would yell at him, he'd get very mad at him,

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but then the next day he'd be all totally forgotten.

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You know, he, he, I think the best answer is to say he,

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he treated them like a beloved,

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but wayward son, the BSI legacy lives on.

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As, as I said, first of all, buzzy, led the Dodgers

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to their greatest decade, the 1960s.

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Eventually, he moved on to be part of the founding

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of the San Diego Padres, another baseball team,

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and then late in his life took over as general manager

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of the California Angels

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and led them to their most successful years.

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Um, his legacy lives on with his,

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his sons, who, as I say, are a baseball dynasty.

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Peter Bei, who is, I hope we get all this right.

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Founder of the Toronto Blue Jays General Manager

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of the Cleveland Indians.

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Um, as I say, Bob owned his own team, bill Besi,

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a general manager for the Seattle Mariners,

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and has worked for Major League Baseball.

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Um, so his legacy is woven into the baseball world.

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And by the way, he should be in the Hall of Fame.

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This is something that I feel absolutely strongly about.

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The only reason he's not, I believe, is that the Dodgers had

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so many players that buzzy lobbied to get into the Hall

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of Fame that I think people felt the Dodgers were

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overrepresented the Dodgers of that era.

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Um, the Bull's legacy, here's the beautiful,

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beautiful thing about the bull.

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So crazy life, wild man.

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As, as he's gotten older

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and older, his legacy lives on

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as an ambassador for the Dodgers.

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He takes great pride

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and he does some wonderful job of being a Dodger ambassador.

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He goes to schools, he goes to little leagues.

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He, the kids love him.

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I've seen this happen where the, the key tells them stories,

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cleaned up stories about life in the major leagues,

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but he's such a charismatic figure,

14:44.865 --> 14:46.685
and he has so much love for the game

14:47.185 --> 14:48.645
and love for the Dodgers.

14:48.985 --> 14:50.885
He loves being this Dodger ambassador

14:51.235 --> 14:53.565
That he'll be at every little league, you know,

14:53.565 --> 14:55.525
opening day and go to schools.

14:55.985 --> 14:59.365
And he's, he's very proudly shown me these letters

14:59.365 --> 15:02.045
that he gets from the kids where they extoll

15:02.065 --> 15:04.045
how great it was to meet, to meet him.

15:04.585 --> 15:07.925
So the beautiful thing about the bull is that this love

15:07.925 --> 15:11.525
that he always had, has in his

15:12.305 --> 15:15.685
recent years been able to express itself in his love

15:15.685 --> 15:17.245
for baseball and his love for kids.

15:17.905 --> 15:19.725
The key thing that I'd love for readers

15:19.725 --> 15:22.285
to take from the book is baseball has

15:22.285 --> 15:23.685
evolved into a business.

15:23.795 --> 15:26.205
It's evolved into a business that also revolves

15:26.205 --> 15:27.365
around statistics.

15:28.115 --> 15:30.685
This was an era when baseball was very human.

15:30.995 --> 15:34.325
This is the story of two human beings relating

15:34.325 --> 15:37.205
to each other, battling each other, loving each other.

15:37.665 --> 15:41.205
And I would love it if readers took away at its heart,

15:41.645 --> 15:43.205
baseball is a game of human beings.

15:43.745 --> 15:46.605
And if we can find our way back to

15:47.305 --> 15:49.365
the personal relationships that

15:49.465 --> 15:52.565
to me make baseball all due respect to football,

15:52.785 --> 15:54.685
the greatest game in the world,

15:55.275 --> 15:57.925
that I would love it if readers would get that, take

15:57.925 --> 15:58.805
that away from this book.

Quick Answers

Baseball, Friendship, and Literary Passion

00:00:00 - This book, I've had a lifelong love affair with baseball. I played as a kid. And, years ago, my friend Steve Lehman and I started a literary journal of writing on baseball called The Minneapolis Review of Baseball. And that lasted for longer than it ever should have, given that it never made a dime. but it was a literary quarterly that published baseball fiction history, interviews, a real popery of material. Eventually, our friend Tom Goldstein purchased it,
00:00:34 - so I, and I've often written about baseball as a playwright and television writer. I, I've written two plays around the theme of baseball. One was a one person show about the Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith. the other was a play about a bullpen, a fictional bullpen, that was, said in the California at that point, California Angels bullpen, but buzzy in the bull, if I may give myself a prompt,
00:01:07 - Bob Besi is the son of legendary Dodger General Manager, buzzy Bei and Bob. it, it him, his whole family is baseball royalty. His brothers have been the, presidents of teams have been general managers of teams. Bob himself owned a minor league team, that he owned and managed with his wife Margaret. And, he, I guess he was telling me these stories about Al the Bull
00:01:41 - crazy baseball player on the Dodgers teams of the sixties. And Bob thought, you know, this, this great character deserves to be written about. And over time what evolved was, it's sort of a dual biography that traces the lives of Buzzy Bsi, the general manager of the Dodgers, and al the Bull Ferrara, who was his, well, as Al says, if there was an off the field hall of fame, I'd be in on the first ballot.
00:02:13 - but a wonderful, warm guy, as he says, I gave you a hundred percent on the field and a hundred percent off the field. and so I interviewed the bull, in his studio city residence. over a period of year, maybe two years, once a week, I'd go, go over there and talk with the bull and get his memorable memories of life in the sixties as a baseball player
00:02:42 - and obviously talked a lot with the BSI family. Buzzy BSI had passed away by that point. but he had left behind a book, of his own, his own reminiscences, the sort of as told to book. And obviously his sons had many, many details and, and memories of their father. So the book came about that way. I give full gratitude and thanks to B Bob Besi and the Besi family, for theirs generosity in sharing all these memories about

Buzzy and the Bull: Dodgers' Legacy Explored

00:03:14 - And, it just came out in paperback from university was in richly in hardcover, and now it, there's a paperback edition. So, yeah, that was the origin story of Buzzy and the Bull. I could tilt my, my laptop and show you the library of books I gathered around Brooklyn. I did just a lot of research on Brooklyn, Brooklyn in the 1950s when the bull was growing up in Brooklyn. obviously the Dodgers have been a team
00:03:46 - Maybe the Yankees have had more books written about them. But the, I delved through tons of books about the Dodgers. many of the players had written, biographies, autobiographies, Maury Wills, wrote a real hair racing autobiography. and then I did interview both people who had played with, with the bull as well as, as,
00:04:14 - and had been sort of alongside him in, in life in, in Los Angeles in the 1960s. So, yes, there was, in addition to the interview work, there was, there was a lot of just research work on the, the history of the, and the history of the Times. The, the way the book ended up being centered was, I took the year 1965, which was a great year for Dodgers history. They ended up winning the World Series that year. It was also a memorable year, in Los Angeles,
00:04:45 - and kind of a memorable year in the Bulls life. So, I centered the book on that year with digressions and flashbacks about, how we got to that place in both the Bull's life and in buzzy Bai's life. So Buzzy Vei was the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and my thesis is that he was arguably the greatest general manager the Dodger's ever had, including Branch Ricky. for those who don't know baseball terribly well,
00:05:20 - it's like playing baseball cards. You have a team, you put it together, you assemble it. You're responsible for figuring out the budget for how much can I pay this player, how much can I pay that player? It's really assembling a team. It is casting a play, if you will. and developing talent and knowing who has the right talent, the right abilities to work for your team. buzzy I, I think, had a genius about this.
00:05:52 - and, in the early fifties from Branch Rickey, he himself grew up in New York City area. he played baseball, but never played at a major league level. but early on, he started working for the Dodgers, and he served in World War II Heroically. He, he was part of the Italian campaign that was brutal and very difficult, came back to America,

Buzzy and the Bull: Dodgers' Dynamic Duo

00:06:23 - in Georgia as a, as a manager. and just worked his way up. He, he was there when Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball. He was there in the sense that he was in the Dodgers organization at that time. and when he eventually took over the Dodgers, I Branch Rickey was a great general manager. It was under buzzy that the Dodgers won their one World Series in 1955,
00:06:53 - So the, they were continually in the World Series, continually losing to the Yankees, but it was buzzy at the helm when they won. In 1955, the Dodgers then moved to Los Angeles, and once again, he took a team that was aging and effectively rebuilt them very quickly so that they won another World Series in 1959, and then took them again to the World Series, took them again to a World Series Championship in 1963
00:07:25 - Al the Bull Ferrara was a guy who grew up in Brooklyn, and played baseball. talked his way into a tryout. he is a big, strong kid, even though his senior year in high school, he didn't do very well. He talked his way into a tryout with the Dodgers back when they were in Brooklyn in EBTs Field, and proceeded to hit, I think three home runs. out of the first five pitches he was thrown,
00:07:58 - through the minor leagues. And, the thing about the Bulls, I said he was a larger than life character who, lived life to the fullest. He dated a succession of strippers in Los Angeles. He, you know, frequented the Sunset Strip. but as he said, I always gave you a hundred percent on the field. He was a incredibly hard worker, a beloved teammate. His teammates loved him. And,
00:08:30 - who know the team fairly well have just a vague memory of the bull because he, he wasn't a, an an everyday player. He was a role player. He was an outfielder. he, as he himself said, he, for better or for worse, he had fortune or misfortune to play, in a, in an era when the Dodgers had a ton of talented outfielders. he finally got his chance to be a full-time starter in 1967, and did very well.
00:09:03 - and Buzzy would frequently clash. They, it was a situation where they loved each other, but buzzy would tear his, what little hair he had left out. When the bull left his office. the bull, there was something that, that Buzz's son came to call, bull Omics, which was the Bull's way of dealing with, with his e personal economic situation.

Bull's Carefree Approach to Overdue Payments

00:09:34 - or so, I guess it was Peter Besi, well, buzzy, let's say, would call the bull up and say, bull, you've gotta come up here. There's a box full of mail for you. The mail he had received were all about payments that were overdue. And the Bulls method of dealing with these was to say, okay, here's a bill from a clothing store. throw that away. Here's a bill from, a, a department store.
00:10:02 - the bill from a restaurant. here, this one says, overdue three times. Alright, I'll pay $10 toward this one. And his philosophy was, everybody stays happy. I give a little bit to this overdue per person, a little bit to that overdue person. Everyone's getting a little money, everyone's, everyone's staying happy. The, the advent of the American credit card was both an incredible boon for the bull because he would get credit cards and just, you know, use them and, and,
00:10:35 - But he, he, he was just this carefree character who, lived life to live life to the fullest, shall we say. That's a great question. And, by the way, the only thing I know about British football is from Ted Lasso. So I, you know, I, I completely ignorant of how it works over there. But, this, I should also note that this was an era. The 1960s was an era when there was real personal relationships between the general manager
00:11:06 - I'm using the word his, because they were all men. and, that doesn't exist anymore. Nowadays, there are layers of agents and general managers often don't really deal directly with the players. It become, it's become much more of a business. But back then, it was very personalized. The salaries were much smaller, needles to say. And, buzzy, you know, the thing about Buzzy, the bull would come in and he, he'd say, buzzy, I, I, I desperately need like $50.
00:11:42 - And Buzzy would know full well that the bull was gonna take that $50 and go to the track and gamble with it. but he would give him the $50. And he, he had this soft spot for these kind of Damon Runion esque characters, who, and he knew 'cause the, the bull, a lifelong player of the horses. He, the bull still loves betting, is very knowledgeable about horses and the racetrack, and,
00:12:14 - or at least nowadays online. But I think the answer about how did buzzy manage a wild character like the bull, was, it, it was paternalistic. And, and nowadays paternalistic is, has a very negative connotation. but I think at the time, he really was like a father figure to the bull. He was a man who would take care of the bull. He would get him out of scrapes, he would bail him out

Legacy of Buzzy and the Bull

00:12:42 - He would, he would yell at him, he'd get very mad at him, but then the next day he'd be all totally forgotten. You know, he, he, I think the best answer is to say he, he treated them like a beloved, but wayward son, the BSI legacy lives on. As, as I said, first of all, buzzy, led the Dodgers to their greatest decade, the 1960s. Eventually, he moved on to be part of the founding of the San Diego Padres, another baseball team,
00:13:16 - of the California Angels and led them to their most successful years. his legacy lives on with his, his sons, who, as I say, are a baseball dynasty. Peter Bei, who is, I hope we get all this right. Founder of the Toronto Blue Jays General Manager of the Cleveland Indians. as I say, Bob owned his own team, bill Besi, a general manager for the Seattle Mariners, and has worked for Major League Baseball.
00:13:50 - And by the way, he should be in the Hall of Fame. This is something that I feel absolutely strongly about. The only reason he's not, I believe, is that the Dodgers had so many players that buzzy lobbied to get into the Hall of Fame that I think people felt the Dodgers were overrepresented the Dodgers of that era. the Bull's legacy, here's the beautiful, beautiful thing about the bull. So crazy life, wild man.
00:14:20 - and older, his legacy lives on as an ambassador for the Dodgers. He takes great pride and he does some wonderful job of being a Dodger ambassador. He goes to schools, he goes to little leagues. He, the kids love him. I've seen this happen where the, the key tells them stories, cleaned up stories about life in the major leagues, but he's such a charismatic figure, and he has so much love for the game and love for the Dodgers.
00:14:51 - That he'll be at every little league, you know, opening day and go to schools. And he's, he's very proudly shown me these letters that he gets from the kids where they extoll how great it was to meet, to meet him. So the beautiful thing about the bull is that this love that he always had, has in his recent years been able to express itself in his love for baseball and his love for kids. The key thing that I'd love for readers
00:15:22 - evolved into a business. It's evolved into a business that also revolves around statistics. This was an era when baseball was very human. This is the story of two human beings relating to each other, battling each other, loving each other. And I would love it if readers took away at its heart, baseball is a game of human beings. And if we can find our way back to the personal relationships that to me make baseball all due respect to football,

Baseball: A Journey of Human Connection

00:15:57 - that I would love it if readers would get that, take that away from this book.

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