After a 15-Year Hiatus, Kubek Is Back (Briefly) (NY Times)

From The New York Times:

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Published: July 25, 2009

Onetime Yankee shortstop and television analyst Tony Kubek will be celebrated by the Hall of Fame for a broadcasting career he left abruptly 15 years ago:

“People finally realize it was a divorce,” he said the other day by telephone from his summer home on a lake in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. “I just got a different life. It was time to move on. More than once, people have said, ‘You must hate baseball,’ but I never said that because I don’t. I didn’t like some of the things I saw. I’m not averse to either side making money, but money was becoming more important than the game itself.”

A conversation with Kubek is a reminder of what he brought to a broadcast — an acute intelligence, a contrarian’s view and a no-frills demeanor — and why he is receiving the Ford C. Frick Award from the Hall for nearly 30 years of broadcast service with NBC, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Yankees. Kubek said he tried to follow the advice of Chet Simmons, the former NBC Sports president, who told him, “Every word that comes out of your mouth, you’re responsible for.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/sports/baseball/25kubek.html?_r=1