May 6, 2010

Picked Twice in One Draft

Bus Leagues Baseball brings us the curious story of Kevin Rusnak, picking by both the Yankees and Phillies in the 1970 June draft. The result makes the author think that Bowie Kuhn would make a great subject for a biography:

Has anyone written a good book on Bowie Kuhn? I know he wrote an autobiography, which I’ve sort of managed to read a couple times, with varying levels of comprehension (dude was a lawyer, and he wrote about as clearly as one), but has anyone actually done something on him from the outside looking in? Because he was always doing stuff like this – taking a drafted player from a team on a technicality, refusing to allow Charlie Finley to sell off his players, suspending Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays during their involvement with a casino – while telling everyone that he was doing it to maintain the integrity of the game. It’s fascinating.

Now is probably a good time to attempt such a book, while there are still plenty of people alive who remember and worked with him.

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