20-Year-Old Interviews With Baseball Legends

(From The USA Today -- By David Skretta)

Twenty years ago, former minor league pitcher DALE SHELLMAN went to spring training in VERO BEACH, FLORIDA, armed only with a tape recorder and an inquisitive mind.

"Strange things were happening to the game -- talks of strikes,
million-dollar ballplayers and arbitration," Shellman says. "I thought, 'My goodness!'"

Disgusted with the direction baseball was going, Shellman struck up conversations with the likes of TED WILLIAMS, DON DRYSDALE and PETE ROSE. He wanted to know how they responded to pressure, about drugs entering the game and about exploding salaries.

"I guess I looked, talked and smelled like a player, so they accepted me as one of them. Nobody turned me down," says Shellman, who played four years in the BROOKLYN DODGERS' farm system. "I went after the big guys because that is where I'd get the real answers."

Shellman left FLORIDA with 90 interviews that he wanted to turn into a book, but his publisher backed out after deciding they were too critical of baseball. The cassette tapes sat in his attic for 18 years until a friend asked him about his project a few years ago.

Rather than write a book, Shellman decided to put the interviews on CDs. The first volume of SHELLMAN TALKS BASEBALL is already released, with the second of four coming later this summer.

"I talked to CAL RIPKEN JR. after he'd played in 442 consecutive games, about longevity," Shellman says. "RICKEY HENDERSON told me about how, if he got the right lead and the right pitch, they couldn't catch him. CARL YASTRZEMSKI said the prices of tickets were taking families out of the game. It really was prophetic."

But in his conversational tone, Shellman mostly asked about salaries, a sticky subject met with candid answers.

When he asked former NEW YORK YANKEES manager BILLY MARTIN about salaries, Martin replied, "A lot of them are not just playing for the letters across their chest. The dollars have really entered into it."

Said PETE ROSE -- "What money does is creates a lot of pressure on the players. They can't handle the pressure that comes with making all that money."

Shellman is asked often if he wants to go back to spring training, to get a bead on modern players and see how the game has changed. He always balks.

"I don't think it could ever be done again," Shellman says. "Baseball is too protective. I don't think they'd allow it to be done."