The public outcry against Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for his part in “Deflategate” is rather interesting when played against the backdrop of this 1983 video of former baseball owner Bill Veeck telling David Letterman how his teams cheated.
Maybe because it was a different time or maybe because his teams were awful, but no one seemed to really care that Veeck cheated. In fact, people laughed about it.
Veeck, who owned the St. Louis Browns, Milwaukee Brewers, Cleveland Indians and White Sox, so beautifully and semantically explained to Letterman: “I don’t advocate breaking the rules, but I do advocate testing their elasticity.”
With his second go-around with the White Sox in the 1970s, Veeck popularized the seventh-inning stretch by having Harry Caray sing “Take Me out to the Ballgame.”
In this classic video, Veeck brags to Letterman about having an adjustable fence for “depending on who you were playing.” He also talks about grooming the baselines for speed or, in his teams’ case, lack of it. “A good groundskeeper is worth a dozen wins,” Veeck said.
[The Veeck interview begins at 56:30 mark.]