American Valor Quarterly Issue 11 - Fall 2014 | Page 24

with me. He asked me if I thought
about joining the service for the Korean
War, and I said no. “We’re going to get
you,” he told me. I asked for how long,
and he said about a year and a half.
Well, I asked them to do me a favor and
take me immediately. It was October of
‘51, and I was hoping to miss only one
season of baseball.

Well, they took me at the beginning
of ‘52 and let me out at the end of
‘53. Looking back, that was the end
of my baseball career because I never
really recovered my form after that. I
would like to have had that time to play
baseball, but the most important part
of my life was the five years I spent in
the Marine Corps as a naval aviator. So
basically I have no regrets, because if
you work for your country, what can be
better? The highlight of my life was the
U.S. Marine Corps and it will always be
that.
The Yankees retired me in 1957.
George Weiss, the Yankees general
manager at the time, called me in one
day and said Dan Topping wanted me
to go into the front office. I’m sitting
there as a utility infielder at this point
in my career, and I ask what would
happen if I said no. He told me I could
be traded, so I took the offer. I had
family in Ridgewood, N.J., raising
kids there and school. I thought to
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myself that I wasn’t going to get any
better at 33. They offered me the same
salary, so I said I’d take it. That’s how
I got into the front office. I was the
personnel director of the Yankees for
three years. Then, another man became
the assistant general manager in 1960,
who I won’t name, but he sent me on
a West Coast scouting mission. I wrote
up 10 pages of hot shot
material, and he never
asked for it or looked at
it. That’s when I knew I
was out of there.
Then Howard Cosell,
who was a friend of
mine, said if I wasn’t
going to be the next
general manager of the
Yankees, did he have a
job for me! “Let’s talk,” I
said. Apparently the Van
Heusen shirt company
wanted to change from a
white shirt company to a
sportswear company. So
they wanted to hire some
athletes for advertising.
I thought that sounded interesting.
Rocky Marciano, Carl Erskine, Andy
Robustelli and I were all among the
sports stars that worked with them.
Well, when I took that job, Bill
McPhail, who ran CBS radio and
television, asked me if I wanted to do
the game of the week. That caught me
off guard, but I went to Van Heusen
to see if they would let me do weekend
games. They were all for it because
it was publicity for them. I was with
Van Heusen for about two years and
from there the Yankees offered me
a broadcast position. I was there for
eight or nine years, but there came a
point when my wife, who grew up in
California and hated the East Coast
beyond belief, wanted to return to
California.

sports legend Tom Harmon, and that
led to the Padres job 40 years ago, and
I’ve been there ever since. I’m okay
in baseball, but I had to expand my
comfort zone in Los Angeles where
I covered all sports like boxing and
wrestling and bowling and so forth.
I never really liked that so when the
Padres job opened up, I left KTLA 5
News for the