Q: Do you think baseball has any hope of fixing itself so small-market teams like Pittsburgh have a chance to compete?

A: Right now they have a chance. We see them succeeding. You have to have sharp management, there's no question about it, but there's a way. In fact, the rich teams that are throwing dough around can get locked into huge contracts with some bum who goes on the disabled list two days after he signs. But fundamentally the disparity in revenue certainly is terrible for the small-market teams, which once in a while will pop up there. They've rectified it to some extent with the luxury tax and the revenue sharing, but it's still way out of line.

Q: Do you think that pro football is in need of any major changes -- is it too technical, too over-officiated?

A: Well, they are being forced by all of the attention right now to pay greater attention to all the serious brain injuries. I've talked to an old, great football star in recent days about this -- and I won't mention his name -- who told me, "I had 10 concussions and I don't know if I had more, but I probably did." The doctors are studying things and they're coming up with stricter standards for going back into the game.

But fundamentally, the way I always looked at it was that you are an athlete and if it's a sport that risks bad injury, you're comparable to a soldier of fortune when you go into it. You sign up with the French Foreign Legion in the old days and you might get killed easily. You did it for the dough -- the dough was good. And of course we've got mercenaries all over the world today who do the same damn thing. So I said, "Well, a football player is doing something he loves to do." And even in the old days they got paid -- the good players anyhow -- better than some working stiff. It was good money and it is better money now, and you sign up knowing the risks. But that ain't much comfort to you when you get old and suddenly you have chronic pain.

There are ways to remedy these injuries, or at least cut back on them, and they are very simple. One is to throw away those huge heavy helmets, which supposedly have all these safety factors built into them, and put those guys in old leather helmets -- and maybe throw away their face guards -- and they'll start respecting one another. The other thing is make coaches return to teaching tackling. This was not a problem when I was coming up, even in my 20s or 30s. A coach taught a guy to tackle between the shoulders and the ankles. You didn't see all these guys with these bad injuries. It's simple. But then you're toying with the entertainment factor.

Q: Do you have any interest in pro basketball?

A: Very little, because we don't have it here. They're brats. You know, the coach can't give them any orders. You're liable to have, as happened, a guy take a coach by the neck and try to choke him to death. I like college basketball, by the way, and I follow Pitt, my alma mater.

Q: Do you care at all about boxing today?

A: Boxing was huge when I was coming up. Boxing was second only to baseball in America in popularity. I loved boxing for the most part. I covered boxing. To me, the most gentlemanly athletes around were boxers. It's a great sport, but it fell into the hands of guys like Don King and I lost all interest in it -- not so much because of them, because there are always crooks in boxing -- but because you have 97 titles now where you had eight before.

You had eight weight divisions and each one was considered a world champion. Now you've got a lot of acronyms and 96 or 105 divisions -- who counts them? Organizations -- the WBA, this that and the next thing. It's a great sport, and when people say how brutal it is, you know, hey, when you hit a guy in the ring, you're facing him, right? And the rules say anyhow you have to hit him from the waist up. It's not like football, where you tackle the guy from behind or clip him or something. Boxing, for a contact sport, has probably the best rules in sport.