Interview with Earl Weaver

Earl Weaver is a former Major League Baseball manager. He spent his entire managerial career with the Baltimore Orioles, managing the club from 1968–1982and 1985–1986. Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996.

BW: Did your ejections spark your team up?

EW: Sometimes it did.

BW: Why did you make pitchers your DH’s?

EW: Well (chuckles) that takes too long to tell you this. It’s a story where the night before, they changed pitchers on me in the first inning. And I had put in and I put in Lee May as my designated hitter. I had always switched Lee May and Pat Kelly, right hander and left hander. When they switched pitchers in the first inning, I pinch hit Lee may. The following night I said, “I can fix that if they try to do that again.” I would write in a pitcher as my designated hitter and when the time comes, I pinch hit for the pitcher I still have Lee May and Pat Kelly available for duty.

BW: What were your World Series' like?

EW: Well winning in 1970 was wonderful, we’ll say losing in 1979 after being up 3 to 1 was horrible.

Interview with Lee MacPhail

Lee MacPhail is a former administrator in Major League Baseball. MacPhail was a front office executive for 45 years, serving as the director of player personnel for the New York Yankees, the president and general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, chief aide to Commissioner of Baseball William Eckert, executive vice president and general manager of the Yankees, and president of the American League. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1998.

Here is my interview:

BW: How was it being a General Manager?

LM: Good.

BW: And the GM for the Yankees?

LM: I wasn’t GM for Yankees. Well I was in a way for a long time.

BW: How does it feel being the Hall of Fame?

LM: I’m in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Thank you.

BW: No, how did it feel?

LM: Very pleasant. Very lucky. Very thankful after all those years.

BW: How does it feel to go down in history with the Pine Tar Game?

LM: (chuckles) I don’t know. I’m happy to be alive.

By the way he is the oldest living Hall of Famer. He's 92 years old.

Interview with Ralph Kiner

Ralph Kiner is a 1975 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee. The Pittsburgh Pirate outfielder led the National League in homeruns. Kiner's name is synonymous with the Pirates all-time offensive records along with Willie Stargell. As Willie was the greatest offensive threat from the left side of the plate, Kiner was their greatest threat from the right of the plate. His 10 year career statistics speak for themselves: twice he hit over 50 homeruns, drove in 100 or more runs six times, ranked first in slugging percentage three times, and averaged over 100 walks. In 1949 his 127 RBI was tops in the league.

Here is the interview:

BW: What was it like being in an organization with Honus and Branch Rickey? What were they like?

RK: Honus was a nice coach, great ballplayer, and you couldn't find a nicer guy. Branch was not very nice, didn’t care about the players, didn’t put money into players or ballpark, and wasvery political but still a very smart man.

BW: What was it like being inducted into the HOF?

RK: It was a great thrill, and a real honor to be one of the select thousand players to be in HOF. a tremendous honor.

BW: How did you become such a legendary announcer?

RK: I was looking for a job after the general managing job with the San Diego Padres. The Mets called and said if I was interested in talking about Mets games and I assumed it would be a good job and a great way to extend my baseball career.

This is the start of a whole load of interviews. Every day at 3:04 PM ET there will be a new interview so constantly check back. There will be no alerts of new interviews besides this one. Thank you Ralph.

SB44

Colts, Saints. Did I not say it a few weeks ago? Peyton vs Drew is becoming a horse race just as close as having Gaga, Swift, and Beyonce going for Album of the Year on Sunday. They are the two best quarterbacks of the year and both have wonderful offenses. They have the best receiving crews too. Haitian Pierre Garcon and BYU's Austin Collie (who I both had in fantasy this year) had break out games against the Jets mixed with Reggie Wayne, Joe Addai, and Dallas Clark make them a dominant offense. But I personally love the Saints O. I love their two back situation of Reggie Bush and Pierre Thomas and the fact the depth of their receivers is crazy good. Hofstra's Marques Colston along with Devery Henderson, Lance Moore, Courtney Roby, Robert Meachem and a hopefully healthy Jeremy Shockey show how amazing the Saints are. Speaking of being healthy, the Colts are praying to the football heavens that Dwight Freeney is healthy while Sean Carroll is begging for him to be too injured to get to his QB. But here is the funny thing about this years Super Bowl. Archie Manning, father of Peyton and Saints legend, is tugging for the Colts instead of his team, the Saints. During the year, Archie gave some tips about Peyton to Drew, looking like a dumb move with a Colts loss. That's only one of the story-lines of this Super Bowl. Besides this being the first time that two teams who were 13-0 meet in the Super Bowl and that Caldwell took the Colts to the big game despite throwing in Painter against the Jets, there are some other funky stats. There are two Heisman Hopefulls and one winner in the game(Peyton Manning, Chase Daniel; Reggie Bush), Drew Brees got good in football by playing flag football, and two players in the game were dumb mistakes to get rid of by NY teams (Shockey and Jonathan Vilma).

I'm going to have to stick with my gut on this one. Saints 28, Colts 20.

I've felt Colts all week but I'm feeling Sainty.