Feb 25, 2021
Rush and George Brett
From the mid 1970s until the early 1990s … THE Most Popular/Beloved Human Being in Greater Kansas City was Kansas City Royals’ 3B George Brett.
With due respect to current Chiefs QB Patrick Mahones, I’d say #5 George is STILL The Most Beloved / Popular Guy in Kansas City.
That phrase… Every man wanted to Be Him … Every Woman wanted to Be With Him. That was George Brett.
So how did Mr Kansas City become best buddies with some schlub in the sales office with a funny name.
To understand this one you have to understand the pecking order reality of a professional sports organization.
There is The Locker Room or in Baseball – The Clubhouse. That’s where The Players hang out.
There is The Front Office … “Upstairs”. That’s where “the suits” hang out. The pencil pushers … the bean counters … the PR guys … the sales guys … etc.
The Players can go “upstairs” whenever they want to, But why would they ever want to?
The “suits” are NOT welcome in The Clubhouse. OK, maybe the Owner … The GM … one of the 2-3 Big Office guys.
Whenever “a suit” dares to come in The Clubhouse he “wants something”… an autographed ball or such to impress a girlfriend or something dumb like that.
In 1981-82 Rush Limbaugh and George Brett had nothing in common whatsoever except they parked in the same lot each day … with George’s parking place A LOT closer to the main gate than Rush’s.
Until the day George bought himself a whizbang super-duper stereo system … and no clue or care what a Woofer or a Tweeter was. He just wanted his stereo system up and running… NOW!
There’s this guy up in sales that used to be a radio disc jockey. He knows all about hooking up sound systems. … Mr Brett meet Mr Limbaugh.
Rush goes out to George’s house and has him wired up lickety split. “What do I owe you” George asks. – “Oh, nothing, glad to do it” – “Ya wanna autographed ball or one of my old gloves or …” – “No, really I’m just glad I could help you.”.
Rush Limbaugh “just glad he could help out…” Where have we heard THAT Vince Flynn?
And from that day on … George Brett – Mr Kansas City / Baseball SuperStar & Rush Limbaugh – National Icon-to-be / Radio Superstar began a friendship that lasts to this day.
George goes back and tells the rest of his team … and it IS “George Brett’s team”. Rush Limbaugh is My Good Friend.
And Frank White and John Wathan and Jamie Quirk and … and … all say Rush Limbaugh is Our Friend too.
That simply Does NOT Happen in Professional Sports.
For many years Rush would bring EIB-1 thru KC and pick up George and The Fellas for a week of golf in Hawaii.
I don’t know if RL was in Cooperstown for George’s HoF induction. Likely he was.
George Brett knows EVERYTHING about Baseball … EVERYTHING. George Brett don’t know Squat about “politics” or pretty much anything Rush might talk about on the radio … unless it was Baseball.
But he knew that his good friend Rush KNEW EVERYTHING about whatever he was talking about.
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More Rush Chronicles by BobLee – Click Here
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Find time to watch Brett’s HOF induction speech. For some reason, it always resonated with me, and about months ago I rediscovered it on youtube, and it reminded me why. Most of those are 90% canned appreciation talks, but you can tell he is a man’s man and top shelf teammate. Toward the end, the weight of the moment hits him while he is talking about what his older brother means to him. Great stuff BL!
I’m pretty sure RL was there.