2008 Interview With Fay Vincent

Mike and the Mad Dog

On June 2, 2008, former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent stopped by the Mike and the Mad Dog show to promote his book “We Would Have Played for Nothing.”

Of course, steroids in baseball was a hot topic then. Vincent said he believed baseball’s union heads were partly to blame for the problem because they fought against a ban on performance-enhancing drugs.

But Vincent said he, too, was somewhat at fault.

“I wish we’d known more when steroids came along,” he said. “I thought it was a football problem.

“We were wrong. We didn’t realize that there are thousands of different compounds called steroids. It’s not like cocaine. There’s just so many different drugs pitchers can take and hitters.”

Chris “Mad Dog” Russo asked Vincent how he came to choose the 11 baseball stars from the 1950s and ’60s to interview for his book.

Vincent also spoke about interviewing Larry Doby, the American League’s first black player, and Ralph Houk, a war hero, player and longtime manager.

Vincent also talked about his time working for future President George Bush in the Texas oil fields and how he wishes he could have remained commissioner for more than three years.