RUSH: I’ve been intending to mention the books that I’m reading lately ’cause people ask — all I have to do is mention one book and I get inundated with e-mail, people asking me what else. I’m reading a bunch of right now. Filip Bondy, The Pine Tar Game. Filip Bondy is a reporter for the New York Daily News, and he has written an entire book about one incident that took place 24 years ago, some such thing, 29 years, whatever it was.
The Pine Tar Game, Kansas City Royals and the Yankees at Yankees Stadium, George Brett hits a top of the ninth ultimately game-winning home run off Goose Gossage and Billy Martin jumps out of the dugout, grabs Brett’s bat, and starts pointing to the umpire, Tim McClelland. “Look, the pine tar is way higher than it should be,” and they took the home run off the scoreboard, threw the bat out, threw Brett out.
Brett erupted, and I knew it was gonna happen. I was watching. I wasn’t there. I was watching. I was watching on TV, and I’m watching what’s going on at home plate, and they cut to the Royals dugout and they’re oblivious. If they’re paying attention, you can’t tell it, and I’m seeing this meeting at home plate’s going on way too long. I mean, if they were gonna tell Martin to go to hell they’d have done it five minutes ago. So I wasn’t surprised, and the Royals dugout erupted.
Brett led a mad dash out to home plate and had to be restrained by who knows how many numbers of people. Anyway, Filip Bondy has written an entire book about this incident, and it resonates with me. I worked for the Royals at the time, and it talks about the Yankees-Royals rivalry in the day, and he actually… (interruption) Oh, yeah, well, everybody in that era, everybody on both teams, says Gossage was great, Brett was great. Those were fascinating years.
But to write an entire book about a single event, it’s really good. Full disclosure: Bondy talked to me about my experiences with it, even though I was not there. But I was, of course, the official director, marketer of marketing and sales special events. I was in charge of ceremonial first pitches and National Anthem singers. There was nobody better than me to interview. (chuckles) I saw the bat! He brought the bat home and he started autographing bats. He had fun with it, Brett did.
You know, he got back off that road trip and people started asking Brett for autographed bats not balls, so he had Hillerich & Bradsby make a bunch of bats. He used a Marv Throneberry bat, the New York Mets, and he would draw a line where his pine tar was when they threw the bat out and sign it and give those away to people that wanted them. I mean, not everybody wanted one got one, but… Full disclosure: Bondy has a small chapter in this book on me and my recollections of the event called The Employee.
So, anyway, I’m reading that; it’s fascinating. Just to get a full book out of one incident, and then none of it’s boring. I mean, it is all really cool. I mentioned Daniel Silva and The English Spy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, the Sununu book. What I was gonna tell about the Sununu book… The title of the Sununu book is… Where is it? Where is it? It’s The Quiet Man. The Quiet Man: The Indispensible Presidency of George H. W. Bush. Sununu was his chief of staff. I know a lot of people are angry still at Bush for breaking the no-tax pledge and so forth, but Sununu’s perspective of the time is… You know, as somebody obsessed with history, even recent that you think you remember, this is still a lot of insider things, and it was fascinating to me. And Sununu makes the case here that George H. W. Bush is far more conservative than anybody wants to admit right now. You think of that what you want, but that’s the cases he tries to make. The Quiet Man: The Indispensable Presidency of George H. W. Bush. And he talks about Bush as mannered, cultured, as opposed to what we have now, a bygone era. So, it’s a nostalgic look back.