Transcripts

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SPEAKER 1: The plot from the Broadway musical Damn Yankees centered around Joe Boyd, a plump and balding middle aged real estate salesman who sold his soul to the devil in order to become a superstar for The Washington Senators and lead them on to victory over the Yankees.

Some say that Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith, who is plump, balding, and growing a bit long in the tooth, would sell his soul to the devil as well. If the deal was cash on the barrelhead, and there were favorable tax advantages as well. Recently, Griffith has lost some outstanding players to the free agent draft. Fans criticize him for refusing to spend money to build a winner.

Criticize him if you will, but most in the game of baseball will tell you that there are few owners who know the game of baseball as well as Calvin Griffith does.

CALVIN GRIFFITH: Well, I started out as a bat boy back in 1922, and I've gone through all the--

SPEAKER 2: Was this for your uncle's team?

CALVIN GRIFFITH: Yes, right. For the Washington Senators. And I've gone through every capacity that there is in the game of baseball, as a bat boy, a gun as a batting practice pitcher, a batting practice. catcher, and manager in the minor leagues. I played a little ball in the minor leagues. I was the traveling secretary. I ran the concessions, and also been the general manager and start signing ballplayers back in 1935. So I've had a little bit of everything that you can imagine in baseball.

SPEAKER 2: Did you ever want to be a Major League player?

CALVIN GRIFFITH: I did. I had a good chance of making a Major League catcher. Believe it or not, but my family told me there's more security in the front office. So here I am in the front office.

SPEAKER 2: Do you ever regret that decision?

CALVIN GRIFFITH: Yes, I do, because I think wanting to do something on your own was a thing that I never will know if I could have done it or not. I was a pretty good catcher, and I could throw, and I could catch the ball, and I could hit the ball a long way.

SPEAKER 2: What about the free agent draft? Do you that's going to wreck baseball?

CALVIN GRIFFITH: It is going to wreck baseball. And we can't afford to let certain ball clubs rule the roost. You've got to have 26 ball clubs. The way the League is constituted right now, and all those 26 cities are not as good as Los Angeles, New York, Boston, or Chicago, or Detroit, or anything like that.

The population is a big factor in sports. If you have all those people to draw from, you draw a heck of a lot more than you can from a state like Minnesota, where he only got around three million nine and three million eight in the whole state, and you take the New York City, got 12 million people within a hundreds miles of the stadium.

So there is a difference. A population is going to be the big factor on what a ball club can pay and how much we can afford to give away. It's all the way I look at it.

SPEAKER 2: Do you love this game of baseball?

CALVIN GRIFFITH: You have to love it. As long as I've been in it, just people say sell and retire. And I said, well, sell and retire. Then I become an old man.

SPEAKER 1: There is another side to Calvin Griffith that people don't see. The man has a sense of humor.

CALVIN GRIFFITH: I got a brand new Ford car way back here in 1935. I think it cost me $435 or something like a brand new one. And man, I never had any idea about insurance or any other darn thing on it. So now, I'm living with Buddy Lewis and Dick Lanahan. Now, Dick Lanahan is used to be up in this neighborhood.

And so now they go and get one, they get me a cherry bomb and they put it on the engine. And I said, we're all going downtown to go to a movie. So I go in there and say, well, let's go. I got that new car. So went out there and stepped on the starter and boom! It just blew up. And I got jumped out of that car and hit my screen behind a great big old oak tree.

And I looked around for them and they were over there in the car laughing their heads off. They put a dead bomb in there to scare the dead. They didn't scare me too. That is a funny story. I mean, that's the thing that they used to do. He wouldn't dare do anything like that today. These are the things that back in those days. Ballplayers were ballplayers, and they played together. They had humor together and they did everything.

Now, they have these planes and they get to towns. And my Lord, you don't even see him after they get to town. Something like that.

SPEAKER 2: A lot of players come up with relatively the same skills. What is it though, that makes one a great player, another one a mediocre player? Is there something upstairs that counts?

CALVIN GRIFFITH: It's in their hearts, in their gut feeling that you get.

(SINGING) You gotta have heart

All you really need is heart

When the odds are saying you'll never win

That's when the grin should

CALVIN GRIFFITH: I think that you have to believe that you can do it. And have enough of confidence in yourself to say, I can do this, and I can do that and not shy away from anything. You don't have to be a guy that's braggadocios or anything like that. I like to have one like Dizzy Dean, bragging and do this stuff.

But I think the ballplayer these days should have enough confidence in himself to say, I am a Major Leaguer and I'm going to be a Major Leaguer, and if I'm not going to be a Major Leaguer, I'm going to get out of it.

(SINGING) Miles of hearts

Oh, it's fine to be a genius, of course,

But keep that

CALVIN GRIFFITH: Defense is the name of the game, and our defense is not exactly what it will take to win a championship.

(SINGING) A great slugger, we haven't got

A great pitcher, we haven't got

A great ball club, we haven't got

What have we got

We've got heart

CALVIN GRIFFITH: In this ball club, could turn around and do something. But unfortunately for us, this year we've had some injuries that really hurt us.

(SINGING) We've got hope

We don't sit around and mope

Not a solitary sob, do we hear

Mister, cause we've got hope

Boys, I'm proud of you

We're so happy that we're humming

That's the hearty thing to do

Whoo hoo hoo

Cause we know our ship will come in

CALVIN GRIFFITH: As long as you win, everybody is your friend. You start losing, and everybody says, what in the hell does he know? Why did he do this? Why did he do that? That's the way life goes in sports. The winners take all. And the losers are guys that nobody wants to talk to.

(SINGING) So what the heck's the use of crying

Why should we curse

We gotta get better

Cause we can't get worse

And to add to it

We've got heart

We've got heart

We've got heart.