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Army Recruitment Up Despite Iraq, But Will Soldiers Stay?
Aired April 16, 2004 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Tourists could get $4,000 in extra pay, and it's tax-free.
Terror detainees at Gitmo will get their due process in the highest court. The Supreme Court Tuesday will hear two appeals over whether detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are being held lawfully. It is the first time the justices will look at the constitutionality of that part of the administration's anti-terrorism policies.
John Kerry rocks in Steel City. The Democratic presidential candidate ended his college tour today at the University of Pittsburgh. Rocker Jon Bon Jovi took the stage with Kerry in front of thousands of students. Kerry told the crowd he plans to make college tuition more affordable.
In the fight for Iraq, it has been the deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops since it all began. Nearly 90 have died so far. Amid that somber news, the Pentagon announced that about 20,000 troops set to come home from Iraq will stay for another 90 days.
Could this affect military retention and recruitment? The Army says re-enlistments have actually increased.
Army spokesman Colonel Elton Manske joins us live from the Pentagon to talk about this issue.
Colonel, good to have you with us.
COL. ELTON MANSKE, ARMY SPOKESMAN: Good afternoon, Miles. Thank you for having me.
O'BRIEN: How is it possible that recruiting and retention are actually up in the wake of all of this?
MANSKE: Miles, our soldiers are proud to serve. They're loyal to this country. They're loyal to the Army. They're loyal to their fellow soldiers. They are indeed proud to serve.
O'BRIEN: All right. Now this whole notion of the size of the military has been discussed quite a bit. Right now, there are 33 combat brigades in the Army and 24 of them are deployed overseas. That, on the face of it, at least, those of us outside the military, seems like it's stretched fairly thin. Is it?
MANSKE: Our soldiers are busy, Miles. But from my perspective in retention I can tell you that they are staying and they are staying at rates at or above our historical rates. O'BRIEN: Are you concerned that down the road, though, there will be, as these people are held over, and I'm talking perhaps more specifically here about reservists and guard troops, that they won't re-up because it isn't quite what they signed up for?
MANSKE: Miles, I'm not in the best position to talk to the guard and reserve issues. Our guard bureau and the Army reserve should do that. But again, all of our indicators are saying that soldiers are going to stay, and they are, in fact, staying.
O'BRIEN: Let me ask you a question about structuring, though. What has happened over the years is that many of the duties which would fall to an occupation force have been left to reserve or guard units. And we're talking about military policing, civil affairs units, that sort of thing. The very type of units that are required right now in Iraq and as a result they're being leaned on a little too heavily.
Does that need to be changed over time, do you think?
MANSKE: Again, Miles, it's really not my expertise. My business is getting soldiers to make a decision to stay in boots, stay with the Army. And all I can tell you is when the time comes, we'll have the soldiers there to do the job.
O'BRIEN: I've read -- "Stars and Stripes" did a survey. They interviewed about 2,000 troops. And many of them told "Stars and Stripes" confidentially, about half of them, as a matter of fact, said they would not be re-upping.
How does that jive with the numbers you've been telling me?
MANSKE: Again, against our historical performance, over time only about 50 percent of our soldiers stay with the Army. We're doing very well. We're at or above that level of performance. Soldiers are staying.
O'BRIEN: Now as far as officers in the military are concerned the notion of going to a draft, is that in any way discussed, debated and is that considered advisable under any course of action?
MANSKE: Miles, that's definitely not on the tip of my tongue. Again, our all-volunteer force is doing very well. We're bringing soldiers in. Soldiers are staying. There's no need, from my perspective at lest, for a draft.
O'BRIEN: Are you concerned, ultimately, though -- and this is harder to quantify -- about some morale issues that might crop up as a result of all these holdovers?
MANSKE: Frankly, I can't anticipate or predict what soldier behavior will be like. All of our indicators, and we look at many things to try to gauge what soldiers might do. All of our indicators are very positive. Soldiers are staying. And again, they're very proud to serve. O'BRIEN: Colonel Elton Manske is a spokesman for the U.S. Army. He focuses on issues of retention and recruitment. Thanks very much for being with us. Appreciate it.
MANSKE: My pleasure. Thank you.
O'BRIEN: Our next guest says military recruitment is holding up well, despite the situation in Iraq.
Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He also served as a former assistant secretary of defense from '81 to '85. He joins us from Washington.
But in a recent article in foreign affairs, he talks about the possibility that this might ultimately undermine the volunteer Army, which has been such a success over the past 20 years or so.
Good to have you with us, Mr. Korb.
LAWRENCE KORB, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Nice to be with you.
O'BRIEN: Why do you say that? Why do you say the volunteer Army is sort of in jeopardy because of the way things are going in Iraq and Afghanistan?
KORB: Well, what happened is we underestimated, particularly in Iraq, how many troops we would need. And because we underestimated how many troops we would need, a lot of troops are being asked to stay longer than their year they were anticipated. A lot are going back to Iraq without having been home in the United States for at least a year. A lot of guardsmen and reserves are being called to stay on active duty longer than the norm.
The idea is, according to the chief of Army Reserve is no more than one year out of every five years. A lot of them are staying on much longer than that.
And while the colonel is correct the Army's meeting its re- enlistment goals right now, what he failed to point out is they have stop loss in there, which means that, once you get orders to go to Iraq, you can't get out until 90 days after you come back from Iraq.
So we really haven't seen the impact of this poor planning for what's going on in Iraq right now.
And then finally Secretary Rumsfeld has been adamant about not adding about 40,000 people to the active Army, which many members of Congress, including members of his own party, have been trying to get him to do.
O'BRIEN: Why is there such resistance to that notion?
KORB: Well, it's cost. Because if you add 40,000 people to the active duty Army, it's about a $10 billion a year cost to your baseline defense budget. That means you're going to have to make some hard choices about, for example, rushing to deploy national missile defense, building a new supersonic jet fighter for the Air Force, the F-22. And it would require some tough decisions, which they're not -- they don't want to make right now.
O'BRIEN: So, what you're saying is that simmering beneath the surface, and we really haven't seen it come to bear yet, is a fairly serious personnel issue for the Army?
KORB: Well, I think we're in jeopardy for the Army. And the other services are doing fine, because they're not bearing the brunt of this occupation.
And unless we add to the active duty Army, about 40,000 soldiers, and take some functions that are in the guard and reserve, like military police, civil affairs, which we use very heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan, and transfer them from the guard and reserve to the active component, you're going to really have some long-term problems.
Remember, we went to Vietnam. We had a draft. It really wasn't until the end of that war we began to see how badly troop morale suffered and how people in this country resisted the draft.
In fact, I think if you had a draft right now, the American people would be asking a lot more questions of exactly what is our policy in Iraq? How long are we going to be there? How many casualties are we going to sustain?
O'BRIEN: That's an interesting point. The draft is sort of a check and balance on the process.
The colonel said the draft is not on the tip of his tongue or anybody's tongue there at the Pentagon. You take that at face value?
KORB: Well, I do. Because your military you have on a volunteer basis is the most professional we've had. People come in, they have to sign up for longer tours. When you're drafted, it's only two years. If you volunteer, it's usually four years.
And so it is a very professional, very good military. The leaders would not want to have people who really don't want to be there, because conscription forces you to be there. So they're really not thinking about it.
But the real question is, what about the American people? And you know, this is the first war we've ever fought. Not only did we have a draft, we're actually cutting people's taxes. So what sacrifices are the American people making to fight this war on terror? And I think that's really the key issue for us as a society.
O'BRIEN: Lawrence Korb is senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Always a pleasure having you drop by. Thank you, sir.
KORB: Nice to be with you. O'BRIEN: Americans in the Arab world. Breaking down barriers or making things worse? A new play in Egypt may open your eyes to all of this. That's next.
Plus, curiosity nearly killed this cat. It jumped into the wrong box, and it took a long ride overseas.
First, "TIME" magazine's 100 most influential people.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: In my lifetime, I have seen unbelievable changes in the opportunities for women.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So says the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed in 1981 by Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O'Connor is now known less for being female than for her judicial decision-making.
She is at times the crucial key swing vote on some of the most controversial issues of our time. Standing firmly in the middle of the courts four more conservative and four more liberal justices.
From decisions on abortion to affirmative action, the Florida recall vote to campaign finance reform, O'Connor's vote has determined the outcome.
The 74-year-old has come a long way. When she graduated from Stanford Law School in 1952, her only job offers were as a legal secretary. She went on to serve as Arizona's first female state Senate majority leader and sat on the state's court of appeals before being appointed to the nation's highest court.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Let's go live to the White House now, the daily briefing. Scott McClellan. Let's listen in.
(LIVE EVENT)
O'BRIEN: We have been listening to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, his daily briefing, feeding the White House reporters there. We're going to continue to monitor it and look for items that might be newsworthy, bring them to you, obviously, if they come along.
In the meantime, we're going to take a break and we'll be back with more LIVE FROM in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: President Bush promises to be a man of his word to the Iraqi people. Mr. Bush and his main ally, side by side in the Rose Garden today, for a big news conference after some talks.
Also ahead, the little girl who survived ten days by her mother's side after a car crash. Out of the hospital eating ice cream today.
And Cal Ripken Jr., brother Bill, too, will drop by for a visit. They're going to teach us how to play baseball and talk about the state of the game, as well. Should be a big thrill. They're going to be right here in Atlanta. So stay with us for that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Welcome to LIVE FROM. I'm Miles O'Brien. Here are the headlines at this hour.
Moving forward in Iraq: at a White House meeting today, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair voiced support for a U.N. plan on Iraq's future.
Under that plan, an interim government would assume power by June 30. Coalition troops would remain in Iraq to maintain security.
The Army is offering bonus pay to soldiers whose tours of duty in Iraq have been extended beyond one year; 20,000 soldiers have been ordered to stay up to three months longer than planned. The Army says they'll be paid an extra $1,000 a month tax free.
Reforming America's spy agencies. The White House is considering a plan to create a new national intelligence post. The spy chief would oversee work now done by the CIA and 14 other intelligence agencies. The White House says it wants to hear recommendations from the 9/11 Commission before it makes a decision on this.
Cindy McCain out of the hospital. Her doctors say they expect a rapid recovery. The wife of Senator John McCain was hospitalized in Phoenix on Monday with what doctors described as a minor stroke. They say it was probably the result of a spike in her blood pressure.
Departures, detours and U-turns. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair jointly endorsed some ideas that represent major breaks from their own policies in Iraq and the disputed Palestinian territories.
First, Iraq and what now looks to be a central role for the U.N. in the transfer of political control.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This week, we've seen the outlines of a new Iraqi government that will take the keys of sovereignty. We welcome the proposals presented by the U.N. special envoy Brahimi. He's identified a way forward to establishing an interim government that is broadly acceptable to the Iraqi people.
The past few weeks have been hard and the days ahead will surely bring their own challenges. What we're seeing in Iraq is an attempted power grab by extremists and terrorists. They will fail.
(END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: As for that much older Mideast conflict, Messrs. Bush and Blair are calling Israel's plans to leave Gaza but hold on to parts of the West Bank an opportunity for a lasting settlement, one not inconsistent with the U.S. road map for peace, they say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: ... to the international community is, whatever the doubts and worries, get involved now, because there is a possibility, when that disengagement happens, the Palestinian Authority have got to have the wherewithal in political, in economic, in security terms to start running the land, the territory that will be then under their control and use that as the basis of getting back into a proper road map negotiation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Palestinians consider the Israeli plan a disaster that will doom any hopes for peace.
Ever so cautious optimism emanates from the first direct talks between U.S. envoys and influential residents of Fallujah. That is one of two Iraqi cities where U.S. forces are staring down stubborn insurgents and vice versa, and one way or another, says one U.S. official, resolution is coming.
We get the latest from CNN's Jane Arraf in Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: A fragile cease-fire in Fallujah west of Baghdad is still holding. But U.S. officials, military and civilian, are clear that it won't hold forever.
They say they have stopped offensive operations and are responding only to attacks by what they call a collection of insurgents and foreign fighters. They say as a measure of the coalition's resolve, a delegation of senior coalition officials has gone to Fallujah to try to find an end to this peacefully.
And a standoff in Najaf as well with U.S. troops massing near there. Radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr has called some of his followers into the street to show their support for him. There have been some clashes near Kufa, which is not far from Najaf. U.S. forces say they are not involved in fighting but they will not be afraid to use force if they need to. Clearly, nobody wants it to come to that, and negotiations continue.
And a stream of kidnappings of business people, security people and others continues in an apparent effort to put pressure on countries to withdraw their nationals. The Danish Foreign Embassy says a Danish national, a businessman, was abducted. And a Jordanian- born citizen of the United Arab Emirates taken from his apartment in Basra, according to a coalition source. Others, though, have been freed. Three Czech journalists who were abducted near Fallujah last week have been released, according to the embassy. Also freed, a Syrian- born Canadian aid worker who is now free in Najaf.
Jane Arraf, CNN, reporting from Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: That $1,000-a-month bonus soldiers will get for serving longer than expected in Iraq comes at a heavy price for military families who have been planning reunions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WAYNE LEBRETON, FATHER OF U.S. SOLDIER: I expected when I got home on Saturday night that I would be getting a call from my son Matthew (ph), saying that he was in Fort Drum, New York. And to find out that they were set back again for the second time, it was extremely demoralizing to me and I know how the troops feel as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: It was a low-key homecoming for military families at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Thousands of soldiers from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment were supposed to get a heroes welcome. Instead, only about 125 were on hand for the ceremonies.
CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman with that.
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GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fort Polk, Louisiana, was ready to host a huge party for its soldiers returning from Iraq.
MAJOR RON ELLIOTT, FORT POLK SPOKESMAN: This was going to be the biggest celebration, we were hoping, within the country. We'd even put in a request for the president to come back out here.
TUCHMAN: The celebration has been put on hold.
SUZY YATES, WIFE OF U.S. SOLDIER: The first thing I thought was to be strong for him. I don't like to have my husband to hear me cry. So I told him it would be all right.
TUCHMAN: Suzy Yates was told by her husband, Sergeant Corey Yates (ph), that after a year in Iraq his return home later this month has been delayed by at least three months.
YATES: And my head dropped into my hands and I took a moment for myself and let it sink in.
TUCHMAN (on camera): How difficult that was moment?
YATES: It was pretty difficult. I was in a lot of shock, disbelief. I thought I was dreaming. TUCHMAN: The home of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which has lost 14 soldiers in Iraq, has been told 3,000 of their men and women will not be coming home as scheduled, including Sergeant Arnold Powell, a husband and father.
HELEN POWELL, WIFE OF U.S. SOLDIER: I couldn't get mad at him and I couldn't get mad at anybody so I was kind of mad at the Army, but it's an entity. I'm mad at that a lot.
ALEX POWELL, SON OF U.S. SOLDIER: There's more of a chance he might get hurt or something might happen to him.
TUCHMAN: Many people are sharing similar thoughts with military counselors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now the chances right now of him being hurt or being killed are even stronger.
TUCHMAN: Back at the Powells' house, personal items already sent home from Iraq are going back to Iraq.
(on camera): Sergeant Powell had planned to retire from the military, but that has now been delayed. He had planned to go on a celebratory Caribbean cruise with his wife next month, but that has now been canceled.
H. POWELL: I am very proud of my husband. I'm starting to get upset. I am very proud of my husband and I am very proud of his job.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): Now they just want him home.
Gary Tuchman, CNN, Fort Polk, Louisiana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: News across America now.
The NRA aims for the air. The National Rifle Association has launched a talk show on the Internet. It also plans to buy a radio station so it can operate free of political spending limits while it talks gun rights and candidate positions.
A wakeup call, that's how one porn star sees it after two actors tested positive for HIV. The AIDS scare has forced a number of adult movie companies to either stop production or delay it.
Going home. With a cast on one leg and a bandage on her left hand, Ruby Bustamante leaves the hospital. The 5-year-old was found Tuesday in a wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine. She had been there about 10 days. Authorities say her mother probably died within moments of the wreck.
Let's go live now to the Pentagon. Some news coming in.
CNN Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has that for us -- Jamie. JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, just a short time ago, a Pentagon spokesman told CNN that a videotape that purports to show an American soldier being held hostage has been dropped off to military authorities in Iraq.
It's not clear exactly where the tape has come from. But according to Pentagon officials, the tape appears to show what is an American in a U.S. military uniform apparently being held by the insurgents. Now, the tape's authenticity has not been verified. The U.S. Central Command is reviewing the tape now. However, the Pentagon does and has acknowledged that two U.S. soldiers have been missing in action, officially listed as duty status -- the official term is duty status whereabouts unknown after an attack on April 9 on a fuel convoy outside of Baghdad.
That was the attack in which several -- 12 people I think were injured in that attack, one killed. Later, they discovered the bodies of some civilians who may have been killed in that attack as well. Again, the two soldiers who are missing after that attack are reservists from the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company.
They are Sergeant Elmer Krause and Private 1st First Class Keith Maupin. Both of those families have been notified, we're told, that this tape has surfaced. Again, the contents of the tape have not yet been verified, but it may indicate that at least one of these soldiers is being held hostage, if it turns out they're one of the people on the tape.
Again, that's pretty much all we have at this time, Miles. Again, a videotape purporting to show an American soldier being hostage has been dropped off to military authorities in Iraq. The tape is being evaluated at this time.
O'BRIEN: Jamie, has the military indicated to you whether they will release it publicly or are they not saying so yet?
MCINTYRE: They're not saying so and it's not clear if the tape is going to be released in any other way at this point. So we haven't seen the tape. And so we can't describe exactly what it looks like, but at this point, it hasn't been released. And I'm not clear that the military would release a hostage tape if it was -- if they had it.
O'BRIEN: CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon for us.
We'll be watching that story very closely, obviously.
Back with more LIVE FROM in just a moment. Stay with us.
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(FINANCIAL UPDATE)
O'BRIEN: All-star, MVP, legendary iron man, Cal Ripken Jr. If there's a baseball fan in your house, get him by the TV right now. Or, if they're not around, TiVo this next segment.
Stay with us.
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O'BRIEN: All right, what a thrill today.
We'll talk about a couple of serious things, like that steroid controversy, the home run milestone coming up, and those burgeoning player salaries. That's good news for the likes of this guy. They're part of the current fundamentals of professional baseball, but a new book by baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. and his brother Bill and, by the way, if you look closely on the left-hand side of the cover there, that's Cal's boy.
What's his name?
CAL RIPKEN, FORMER MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER: His name is Ryan.
O'BRIEN: There's Ryan.
RIPKEN: A 10-year-old.
O'BRIEN: The next Ripken who will be in the majors undoubtedly.
It's designed to pass on some fundamentals to kids playing the game. It's called "Play Baseball the Ripken Way." And Cal Ripken Jr. is here to talk about it.
Who wouldn't want to play baseball your way? It's good to have you with us.
RIPKEN: Thank you. My pleasure.
O'BRIEN: All right, how did this all come to be? Have you always had a desire to teach? Is that something that's kind of ingrained in the Ripken genetic code?
RIPKEN: I think so.
Dad spent at least 37 years of his life passing on the craft of baseball. And I think we wanted to capture his life's work, bring tribute to him. We used to call him the baseball encyclopedia. And I often wondered how do kids learn that had don't have the baseball encyclopedia? So we provided it for them now.
O'BRIEN: All right, now, you're talking about a game here that is so complex, it often takes a long time to explain it father to son or, for that matter, mother to daughter, but generally father to son. And yet you say keep it simple. How do you do both?
RIPKEN: Well, I think anything that you teach, there's a desire to want to make it sound better than it is.
And a lot of times with baseball hitting in particular, you can throw jargon at someone. You can throw these things at them. But if you can reduce some of the real substantive material down to a simple message and then let them build on that year after year, I think that's the way to teach. So we just try to simplify the message, not necessarily simplify the teaching.
O'BRIEN: Well, but that's easier said than done when you're working on mechanics issues, you know, keep your wrist and bad speed and all that stuff. Of course, the simplest way to do it is say, rawhide meets wood, right?
RIPKEN: Right.
O'BRIEN: But you've got to do more than that, don't you?
RIPKEN: Well, you can say it simple. See the ball, hit the ball.
O'BRIEN: Right.
RIPKEN: But there are so many different facets of swing and hit it. They say hitting it is the hardest thing to do in all of sports, because...
O'BRIEN: I have heard that and I do believe that. I think that's got to be it, don't you?
RIPKEN: Because of the success rate.
But, again, there's a balance position. There's your stance. There's your weight shift. There's how you even grip the bat. But if you're able to simplify some of those complicated things and actually present it to the kids where they can absorb it, then you've taught.
O'BRIEN: Let's see some of the -- some of the pictures from the book and some of the methods that you teach. I'm just curious the reaction you've gotten to the book. You're in your third printing now.
Is it aimed -- kids aren't going to pick this up, necessarily. And, by the way, there are the three Ripkens.
RIPKEN: Yes.
O'BRIEN: There's your late father and then Bill, who couldn't be here today, who, gosh, the likeness is startling.
RIPKEN: As we get older, we look a lot more alike now, too.
O'BRIEN: Yes. It's really amazing.
And, well, first of all, let me ask you, now, what was that like writing with Bill? You guys have a sibling rivalry still going on a little bit there or not?
RIPKEN: No. No. We think -- we had the same teacher for baseball. We think very much alike. The challenge in the book was to make it broad enough for an 8- or 9- or 10-year-old to read. And I had my little man read certain sections to me to make sure that he understood those things.
O'BRIEN: And he did?
RIPKEN: Yes.
But also make it substantive enough for a high school and a college coach to read, which it would make sense in. And that was a challenge. So we went back and forth and we edited. And I think we really accomplished what we set out to do.
O'BRIEN: All right, now, what's interesting about it is, you just told me a moment ago that you did the lion's share of the writing on this. Now, a lot of people would say, let's face it, a guy like you could just -- you could put your name on it and have a ghostwriter do the whole thing. It was important to have your voice in here and Bill's voice as well.
RIPKEN: Well, Larry Burke really was the writer that helped us shape the book. Again, you know what you know and know what you don't know.
But, sometimes when you're in a teaching mode, in order to get the point across and the full message of the point, sometimes, you have to sit down in your data processor and start pecking it out yourself and say this is what I really meant by that. And I found that I did that in quite a few sections of the book.
O'BRIEN: Does it work? When you get with kids and you teach this method, do you see results almost immediately?
RIPKEN: Yes, absolutely.
I mean, today, we were out at Turner Field. And we had a camp out there with -- I got 30 or 40 Boys and Girls Clubs. And they ranged from some pretty good athletes to some that were just introducing themselves to the game of baseball. And I find it more gratifying that just a simple thing as swinging and hitting the ball off the tee and actually take your weight shift back to bring it forward, to have them go through it just once or twice or three times.
And that's an example of off the tee right here that you see. And the kids today said, oh, I really don't want to do this. I'll only swing four times.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
RIPKEN: Then they swing four times, said, well, try this and try that. Next thing you know, they're swinging 10, 11, and 12 times and they're actually some success and they're enjoying it.
So I find gratification out of taking the very early ones that really -- don't really have any training, giving them some basis in which they can grow through.
O'BRIEN: All right, a couple serious baseball points before you get away. In your long and distinguished career, to what extent did you see the prevalence of steroids in the locker room and to what extent does this whole controversy kind of taint what's going on with Barry Bonds?
RIPKEN: Well, I didn't really witness much about that. I think I'm smart enough to know that, if steroids are in other sports and you see the changes in some people's physiques over time, you could have suspicions about what they're doing, but you really don't know.
And I would still like to think that people are innocent until proven guilty. But I have a certain perspective, is that you have to look at yourself in the mirror. You make certain choices in life. If you've done something, the truth will be found out eventually. You can't keep it a secret forever. And if those truths come out, then your accomplishments will forever be tarnished.
Don Mattingly put it really good for me one time, when we were talking about corked bats. He said, I would never ever use a corked bat, he said, not even once, because if I used it once and it exploded, everyone would think I got all my hits as a result of a corked bat.
O'BRIEN: Well, and people don't forget those kinds of things. And it does have that effect, doesn't it?
RIPKEN: Well, steroids, the interesting part -- I don't want to turn it back to the book, but it's interesting how kids perceive it, because we talk about it at the highest level.
And it is a black cloud that's over baseball. And, in some good ways, it's good to get it out in the open because now you have to deal with that issue and really do what's right for baseball. But the kids see that and they listen to it. Little Ryan has a member of the team named Brock (ph). He's a little spray hitter that hits the ball around and he has good hand-eye coordination. One day, he popped one over the center fielder's head.
So everybody immediately said it was because of steroids. And they started joking about it. But they process things in a certain way. And we as parents and coaches have to make sure that they understand the dangers of that.
O'BRIEN: It's really a shame to hear that kind of thing, isn't it?
All right, Cal Ripken, Jr., great pleasure having you drop by. The book, once again, is "Play Baseball the Ripken Way." And, like I say, who wouldn't want to play it the Ripken way?
It's good to have you with us. Enjoy the book tour and the clinics. And we wish you well in the future.
RIPKEN: Thank you very much.
O'BRIEN: All right, that wraps up this edition of LIVE FROM.
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MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Tourists could get $4,000 in extra pay, and it's tax-free.
Terror detainees at Gitmo will get their due process in the highest court. The Supreme Court Tuesday will hear two appeals over whether detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are being held lawfully. It is the first time the justices will look at the constitutionality of that part of the administration's anti-terrorism policies.
John Kerry rocks in Steel City. The Democratic presidential candidate ended his college tour today at the University of Pittsburgh. Rocker Jon Bon Jovi took the stage with Kerry in front of thousands of students. Kerry told the crowd he plans to make college tuition more affordable.
In the fight for Iraq, it has been the deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops since it all began. Nearly 90 have died so far. Amid that somber news, the Pentagon announced that about 20,000 troops set to come home from Iraq will stay for another 90 days.
Could this affect military retention and recruitment? The Army says re-enlistments have actually increased.
Army spokesman Colonel Elton Manske joins us live from the Pentagon to talk about this issue.
Colonel, good to have you with us.
COL. ELTON MANSKE, ARMY SPOKESMAN: Good afternoon, Miles. Thank you for having me.
O'BRIEN: How is it possible that recruiting and retention are actually up in the wake of all of this?
MANSKE: Miles, our soldiers are proud to serve. They're loyal to this country. They're loyal to the Army. They're loyal to their fellow soldiers. They are indeed proud to serve.
O'BRIEN: All right. Now this whole notion of the size of the military has been discussed quite a bit. Right now, there are 33 combat brigades in the Army and 24 of them are deployed overseas. That, on the face of it, at least, those of us outside the military, seems like it's stretched fairly thin. Is it?
MANSKE: Our soldiers are busy, Miles. But from my perspective in retention I can tell you that they are staying and they are staying at rates at or above our historical rates. O'BRIEN: Are you concerned that down the road, though, there will be, as these people are held over, and I'm talking perhaps more specifically here about reservists and guard troops, that they won't re-up because it isn't quite what they signed up for?
MANSKE: Miles, I'm not in the best position to talk to the guard and reserve issues. Our guard bureau and the Army reserve should do that. But again, all of our indicators are saying that soldiers are going to stay, and they are, in fact, staying.
O'BRIEN: Let me ask you a question about structuring, though. What has happened over the years is that many of the duties which would fall to an occupation force have been left to reserve or guard units. And we're talking about military policing, civil affairs units, that sort of thing. The very type of units that are required right now in Iraq and as a result they're being leaned on a little too heavily.
Does that need to be changed over time, do you think?
MANSKE: Again, Miles, it's really not my expertise. My business is getting soldiers to make a decision to stay in boots, stay with the Army. And all I can tell you is when the time comes, we'll have the soldiers there to do the job.
O'BRIEN: I've read -- "Stars and Stripes" did a survey. They interviewed about 2,000 troops. And many of them told "Stars and Stripes" confidentially, about half of them, as a matter of fact, said they would not be re-upping.
How does that jive with the numbers you've been telling me?
MANSKE: Again, against our historical performance, over time only about 50 percent of our soldiers stay with the Army. We're doing very well. We're at or above that level of performance. Soldiers are staying.
O'BRIEN: Now as far as officers in the military are concerned the notion of going to a draft, is that in any way discussed, debated and is that considered advisable under any course of action?
MANSKE: Miles, that's definitely not on the tip of my tongue. Again, our all-volunteer force is doing very well. We're bringing soldiers in. Soldiers are staying. There's no need, from my perspective at lest, for a draft.
O'BRIEN: Are you concerned, ultimately, though -- and this is harder to quantify -- about some morale issues that might crop up as a result of all these holdovers?
MANSKE: Frankly, I can't anticipate or predict what soldier behavior will be like. All of our indicators, and we look at many things to try to gauge what soldiers might do. All of our indicators are very positive. Soldiers are staying. And again, they're very proud to serve. O'BRIEN: Colonel Elton Manske is a spokesman for the U.S. Army. He focuses on issues of retention and recruitment. Thanks very much for being with us. Appreciate it.
MANSKE: My pleasure. Thank you.
O'BRIEN: Our next guest says military recruitment is holding up well, despite the situation in Iraq.
Lawrence Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He also served as a former assistant secretary of defense from '81 to '85. He joins us from Washington.
But in a recent article in foreign affairs, he talks about the possibility that this might ultimately undermine the volunteer Army, which has been such a success over the past 20 years or so.
Good to have you with us, Mr. Korb.
LAWRENCE KORB, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Nice to be with you.
O'BRIEN: Why do you say that? Why do you say the volunteer Army is sort of in jeopardy because of the way things are going in Iraq and Afghanistan?
KORB: Well, what happened is we underestimated, particularly in Iraq, how many troops we would need. And because we underestimated how many troops we would need, a lot of troops are being asked to stay longer than their year they were anticipated. A lot are going back to Iraq without having been home in the United States for at least a year. A lot of guardsmen and reserves are being called to stay on active duty longer than the norm.
The idea is, according to the chief of Army Reserve is no more than one year out of every five years. A lot of them are staying on much longer than that.
And while the colonel is correct the Army's meeting its re- enlistment goals right now, what he failed to point out is they have stop loss in there, which means that, once you get orders to go to Iraq, you can't get out until 90 days after you come back from Iraq.
So we really haven't seen the impact of this poor planning for what's going on in Iraq right now.
And then finally Secretary Rumsfeld has been adamant about not adding about 40,000 people to the active Army, which many members of Congress, including members of his own party, have been trying to get him to do.
O'BRIEN: Why is there such resistance to that notion?
KORB: Well, it's cost. Because if you add 40,000 people to the active duty Army, it's about a $10 billion a year cost to your baseline defense budget. That means you're going to have to make some hard choices about, for example, rushing to deploy national missile defense, building a new supersonic jet fighter for the Air Force, the F-22. And it would require some tough decisions, which they're not -- they don't want to make right now.
O'BRIEN: So, what you're saying is that simmering beneath the surface, and we really haven't seen it come to bear yet, is a fairly serious personnel issue for the Army?
KORB: Well, I think we're in jeopardy for the Army. And the other services are doing fine, because they're not bearing the brunt of this occupation.
And unless we add to the active duty Army, about 40,000 soldiers, and take some functions that are in the guard and reserve, like military police, civil affairs, which we use very heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan, and transfer them from the guard and reserve to the active component, you're going to really have some long-term problems.
Remember, we went to Vietnam. We had a draft. It really wasn't until the end of that war we began to see how badly troop morale suffered and how people in this country resisted the draft.
In fact, I think if you had a draft right now, the American people would be asking a lot more questions of exactly what is our policy in Iraq? How long are we going to be there? How many casualties are we going to sustain?
O'BRIEN: That's an interesting point. The draft is sort of a check and balance on the process.
The colonel said the draft is not on the tip of his tongue or anybody's tongue there at the Pentagon. You take that at face value?
KORB: Well, I do. Because your military you have on a volunteer basis is the most professional we've had. People come in, they have to sign up for longer tours. When you're drafted, it's only two years. If you volunteer, it's usually four years.
And so it is a very professional, very good military. The leaders would not want to have people who really don't want to be there, because conscription forces you to be there. So they're really not thinking about it.
But the real question is, what about the American people? And you know, this is the first war we've ever fought. Not only did we have a draft, we're actually cutting people's taxes. So what sacrifices are the American people making to fight this war on terror? And I think that's really the key issue for us as a society.
O'BRIEN: Lawrence Korb is senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Always a pleasure having you drop by. Thank you, sir.
KORB: Nice to be with you. O'BRIEN: Americans in the Arab world. Breaking down barriers or making things worse? A new play in Egypt may open your eyes to all of this. That's next.
Plus, curiosity nearly killed this cat. It jumped into the wrong box, and it took a long ride overseas.
First, "TIME" magazine's 100 most influential people.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: In my lifetime, I have seen unbelievable changes in the opportunities for women.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So says the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointed in 1981 by Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O'Connor is now known less for being female than for her judicial decision-making.
She is at times the crucial key swing vote on some of the most controversial issues of our time. Standing firmly in the middle of the courts four more conservative and four more liberal justices.
From decisions on abortion to affirmative action, the Florida recall vote to campaign finance reform, O'Connor's vote has determined the outcome.
The 74-year-old has come a long way. When she graduated from Stanford Law School in 1952, her only job offers were as a legal secretary. She went on to serve as Arizona's first female state Senate majority leader and sat on the state's court of appeals before being appointed to the nation's highest court.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Let's go live to the White House now, the daily briefing. Scott McClellan. Let's listen in.
(LIVE EVENT)
O'BRIEN: We have been listening to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, his daily briefing, feeding the White House reporters there. We're going to continue to monitor it and look for items that might be newsworthy, bring them to you, obviously, if they come along.
In the meantime, we're going to take a break and we'll be back with more LIVE FROM in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: President Bush promises to be a man of his word to the Iraqi people. Mr. Bush and his main ally, side by side in the Rose Garden today, for a big news conference after some talks.
Also ahead, the little girl who survived ten days by her mother's side after a car crash. Out of the hospital eating ice cream today.
And Cal Ripken Jr., brother Bill, too, will drop by for a visit. They're going to teach us how to play baseball and talk about the state of the game, as well. Should be a big thrill. They're going to be right here in Atlanta. So stay with us for that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Welcome to LIVE FROM. I'm Miles O'Brien. Here are the headlines at this hour.
Moving forward in Iraq: at a White House meeting today, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair voiced support for a U.N. plan on Iraq's future.
Under that plan, an interim government would assume power by June 30. Coalition troops would remain in Iraq to maintain security.
The Army is offering bonus pay to soldiers whose tours of duty in Iraq have been extended beyond one year; 20,000 soldiers have been ordered to stay up to three months longer than planned. The Army says they'll be paid an extra $1,000 a month tax free.
Reforming America's spy agencies. The White House is considering a plan to create a new national intelligence post. The spy chief would oversee work now done by the CIA and 14 other intelligence agencies. The White House says it wants to hear recommendations from the 9/11 Commission before it makes a decision on this.
Cindy McCain out of the hospital. Her doctors say they expect a rapid recovery. The wife of Senator John McCain was hospitalized in Phoenix on Monday with what doctors described as a minor stroke. They say it was probably the result of a spike in her blood pressure.
Departures, detours and U-turns. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair jointly endorsed some ideas that represent major breaks from their own policies in Iraq and the disputed Palestinian territories.
First, Iraq and what now looks to be a central role for the U.N. in the transfer of political control.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This week, we've seen the outlines of a new Iraqi government that will take the keys of sovereignty. We welcome the proposals presented by the U.N. special envoy Brahimi. He's identified a way forward to establishing an interim government that is broadly acceptable to the Iraqi people.
The past few weeks have been hard and the days ahead will surely bring their own challenges. What we're seeing in Iraq is an attempted power grab by extremists and terrorists. They will fail.
(END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: As for that much older Mideast conflict, Messrs. Bush and Blair are calling Israel's plans to leave Gaza but hold on to parts of the West Bank an opportunity for a lasting settlement, one not inconsistent with the U.S. road map for peace, they say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY BLAIR, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: ... to the international community is, whatever the doubts and worries, get involved now, because there is a possibility, when that disengagement happens, the Palestinian Authority have got to have the wherewithal in political, in economic, in security terms to start running the land, the territory that will be then under their control and use that as the basis of getting back into a proper road map negotiation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Palestinians consider the Israeli plan a disaster that will doom any hopes for peace.
Ever so cautious optimism emanates from the first direct talks between U.S. envoys and influential residents of Fallujah. That is one of two Iraqi cities where U.S. forces are staring down stubborn insurgents and vice versa, and one way or another, says one U.S. official, resolution is coming.
We get the latest from CNN's Jane Arraf in Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: A fragile cease-fire in Fallujah west of Baghdad is still holding. But U.S. officials, military and civilian, are clear that it won't hold forever.
They say they have stopped offensive operations and are responding only to attacks by what they call a collection of insurgents and foreign fighters. They say as a measure of the coalition's resolve, a delegation of senior coalition officials has gone to Fallujah to try to find an end to this peacefully.
And a standoff in Najaf as well with U.S. troops massing near there. Radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr has called some of his followers into the street to show their support for him. There have been some clashes near Kufa, which is not far from Najaf. U.S. forces say they are not involved in fighting but they will not be afraid to use force if they need to. Clearly, nobody wants it to come to that, and negotiations continue.
And a stream of kidnappings of business people, security people and others continues in an apparent effort to put pressure on countries to withdraw their nationals. The Danish Foreign Embassy says a Danish national, a businessman, was abducted. And a Jordanian- born citizen of the United Arab Emirates taken from his apartment in Basra, according to a coalition source. Others, though, have been freed. Three Czech journalists who were abducted near Fallujah last week have been released, according to the embassy. Also freed, a Syrian- born Canadian aid worker who is now free in Najaf.
Jane Arraf, CNN, reporting from Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: That $1,000-a-month bonus soldiers will get for serving longer than expected in Iraq comes at a heavy price for military families who have been planning reunions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WAYNE LEBRETON, FATHER OF U.S. SOLDIER: I expected when I got home on Saturday night that I would be getting a call from my son Matthew (ph), saying that he was in Fort Drum, New York. And to find out that they were set back again for the second time, it was extremely demoralizing to me and I know how the troops feel as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: It was a low-key homecoming for military families at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Thousands of soldiers from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment were supposed to get a heroes welcome. Instead, only about 125 were on hand for the ceremonies.
CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman with that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fort Polk, Louisiana, was ready to host a huge party for its soldiers returning from Iraq.
MAJOR RON ELLIOTT, FORT POLK SPOKESMAN: This was going to be the biggest celebration, we were hoping, within the country. We'd even put in a request for the president to come back out here.
TUCHMAN: The celebration has been put on hold.
SUZY YATES, WIFE OF U.S. SOLDIER: The first thing I thought was to be strong for him. I don't like to have my husband to hear me cry. So I told him it would be all right.
TUCHMAN: Suzy Yates was told by her husband, Sergeant Corey Yates (ph), that after a year in Iraq his return home later this month has been delayed by at least three months.
YATES: And my head dropped into my hands and I took a moment for myself and let it sink in.
TUCHMAN (on camera): How difficult that was moment?
YATES: It was pretty difficult. I was in a lot of shock, disbelief. I thought I was dreaming. TUCHMAN: The home of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which has lost 14 soldiers in Iraq, has been told 3,000 of their men and women will not be coming home as scheduled, including Sergeant Arnold Powell, a husband and father.
HELEN POWELL, WIFE OF U.S. SOLDIER: I couldn't get mad at him and I couldn't get mad at anybody so I was kind of mad at the Army, but it's an entity. I'm mad at that a lot.
ALEX POWELL, SON OF U.S. SOLDIER: There's more of a chance he might get hurt or something might happen to him.
TUCHMAN: Many people are sharing similar thoughts with military counselors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now the chances right now of him being hurt or being killed are even stronger.
TUCHMAN: Back at the Powells' house, personal items already sent home from Iraq are going back to Iraq.
(on camera): Sergeant Powell had planned to retire from the military, but that has now been delayed. He had planned to go on a celebratory Caribbean cruise with his wife next month, but that has now been canceled.
H. POWELL: I am very proud of my husband. I'm starting to get upset. I am very proud of my husband and I am very proud of his job.
TUCHMAN (voice-over): Now they just want him home.
Gary Tuchman, CNN, Fort Polk, Louisiana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: News across America now.
The NRA aims for the air. The National Rifle Association has launched a talk show on the Internet. It also plans to buy a radio station so it can operate free of political spending limits while it talks gun rights and candidate positions.
A wakeup call, that's how one porn star sees it after two actors tested positive for HIV. The AIDS scare has forced a number of adult movie companies to either stop production or delay it.
Going home. With a cast on one leg and a bandage on her left hand, Ruby Bustamante leaves the hospital. The 5-year-old was found Tuesday in a wrecked car at the bottom of a ravine. She had been there about 10 days. Authorities say her mother probably died within moments of the wreck.
Let's go live now to the Pentagon. Some news coming in.
CNN Senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre has that for us -- Jamie. JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, just a short time ago, a Pentagon spokesman told CNN that a videotape that purports to show an American soldier being held hostage has been dropped off to military authorities in Iraq.
It's not clear exactly where the tape has come from. But according to Pentagon officials, the tape appears to show what is an American in a U.S. military uniform apparently being held by the insurgents. Now, the tape's authenticity has not been verified. The U.S. Central Command is reviewing the tape now. However, the Pentagon does and has acknowledged that two U.S. soldiers have been missing in action, officially listed as duty status -- the official term is duty status whereabouts unknown after an attack on April 9 on a fuel convoy outside of Baghdad.
That was the attack in which several -- 12 people I think were injured in that attack, one killed. Later, they discovered the bodies of some civilians who may have been killed in that attack as well. Again, the two soldiers who are missing after that attack are reservists from the Army Reserve's 724th Transportation Company.
They are Sergeant Elmer Krause and Private 1st First Class Keith Maupin. Both of those families have been notified, we're told, that this tape has surfaced. Again, the contents of the tape have not yet been verified, but it may indicate that at least one of these soldiers is being held hostage, if it turns out they're one of the people on the tape.
Again, that's pretty much all we have at this time, Miles. Again, a videotape purporting to show an American soldier being hostage has been dropped off to military authorities in Iraq. The tape is being evaluated at this time.
O'BRIEN: Jamie, has the military indicated to you whether they will release it publicly or are they not saying so yet?
MCINTYRE: They're not saying so and it's not clear if the tape is going to be released in any other way at this point. So we haven't seen the tape. And so we can't describe exactly what it looks like, but at this point, it hasn't been released. And I'm not clear that the military would release a hostage tape if it was -- if they had it.
O'BRIEN: CNN's Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon for us.
We'll be watching that story very closely, obviously.
Back with more LIVE FROM in just a moment. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(FINANCIAL UPDATE)
O'BRIEN: All-star, MVP, legendary iron man, Cal Ripken Jr. If there's a baseball fan in your house, get him by the TV right now. Or, if they're not around, TiVo this next segment.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: All right, what a thrill today.
We'll talk about a couple of serious things, like that steroid controversy, the home run milestone coming up, and those burgeoning player salaries. That's good news for the likes of this guy. They're part of the current fundamentals of professional baseball, but a new book by baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. and his brother Bill and, by the way, if you look closely on the left-hand side of the cover there, that's Cal's boy.
What's his name?
CAL RIPKEN, FORMER MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER: His name is Ryan.
O'BRIEN: There's Ryan.
RIPKEN: A 10-year-old.
O'BRIEN: The next Ripken who will be in the majors undoubtedly.
It's designed to pass on some fundamentals to kids playing the game. It's called "Play Baseball the Ripken Way." And Cal Ripken Jr. is here to talk about it.
Who wouldn't want to play baseball your way? It's good to have you with us.
RIPKEN: Thank you. My pleasure.
O'BRIEN: All right, how did this all come to be? Have you always had a desire to teach? Is that something that's kind of ingrained in the Ripken genetic code?
RIPKEN: I think so.
Dad spent at least 37 years of his life passing on the craft of baseball. And I think we wanted to capture his life's work, bring tribute to him. We used to call him the baseball encyclopedia. And I often wondered how do kids learn that had don't have the baseball encyclopedia? So we provided it for them now.
O'BRIEN: All right, now, you're talking about a game here that is so complex, it often takes a long time to explain it father to son or, for that matter, mother to daughter, but generally father to son. And yet you say keep it simple. How do you do both?
RIPKEN: Well, I think anything that you teach, there's a desire to want to make it sound better than it is.
And a lot of times with baseball hitting in particular, you can throw jargon at someone. You can throw these things at them. But if you can reduce some of the real substantive material down to a simple message and then let them build on that year after year, I think that's the way to teach. So we just try to simplify the message, not necessarily simplify the teaching.
O'BRIEN: Well, but that's easier said than done when you're working on mechanics issues, you know, keep your wrist and bad speed and all that stuff. Of course, the simplest way to do it is say, rawhide meets wood, right?
RIPKEN: Right.
O'BRIEN: But you've got to do more than that, don't you?
RIPKEN: Well, you can say it simple. See the ball, hit the ball.
O'BRIEN: Right.
RIPKEN: But there are so many different facets of swing and hit it. They say hitting it is the hardest thing to do in all of sports, because...
O'BRIEN: I have heard that and I do believe that. I think that's got to be it, don't you?
RIPKEN: Because of the success rate.
But, again, there's a balance position. There's your stance. There's your weight shift. There's how you even grip the bat. But if you're able to simplify some of those complicated things and actually present it to the kids where they can absorb it, then you've taught.
O'BRIEN: Let's see some of the -- some of the pictures from the book and some of the methods that you teach. I'm just curious the reaction you've gotten to the book. You're in your third printing now.
Is it aimed -- kids aren't going to pick this up, necessarily. And, by the way, there are the three Ripkens.
RIPKEN: Yes.
O'BRIEN: There's your late father and then Bill, who couldn't be here today, who, gosh, the likeness is startling.
RIPKEN: As we get older, we look a lot more alike now, too.
O'BRIEN: Yes. It's really amazing.
And, well, first of all, let me ask you, now, what was that like writing with Bill? You guys have a sibling rivalry still going on a little bit there or not?
RIPKEN: No. No. We think -- we had the same teacher for baseball. We think very much alike. The challenge in the book was to make it broad enough for an 8- or 9- or 10-year-old to read. And I had my little man read certain sections to me to make sure that he understood those things.
O'BRIEN: And he did?
RIPKEN: Yes.
But also make it substantive enough for a high school and a college coach to read, which it would make sense in. And that was a challenge. So we went back and forth and we edited. And I think we really accomplished what we set out to do.
O'BRIEN: All right, now, what's interesting about it is, you just told me a moment ago that you did the lion's share of the writing on this. Now, a lot of people would say, let's face it, a guy like you could just -- you could put your name on it and have a ghostwriter do the whole thing. It was important to have your voice in here and Bill's voice as well.
RIPKEN: Well, Larry Burke really was the writer that helped us shape the book. Again, you know what you know and know what you don't know.
But, sometimes when you're in a teaching mode, in order to get the point across and the full message of the point, sometimes, you have to sit down in your data processor and start pecking it out yourself and say this is what I really meant by that. And I found that I did that in quite a few sections of the book.
O'BRIEN: Does it work? When you get with kids and you teach this method, do you see results almost immediately?
RIPKEN: Yes, absolutely.
I mean, today, we were out at Turner Field. And we had a camp out there with -- I got 30 or 40 Boys and Girls Clubs. And they ranged from some pretty good athletes to some that were just introducing themselves to the game of baseball. And I find it more gratifying that just a simple thing as swinging and hitting the ball off the tee and actually take your weight shift back to bring it forward, to have them go through it just once or twice or three times.
And that's an example of off the tee right here that you see. And the kids today said, oh, I really don't want to do this. I'll only swing four times.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
RIPKEN: Then they swing four times, said, well, try this and try that. Next thing you know, they're swinging 10, 11, and 12 times and they're actually some success and they're enjoying it.
So I find gratification out of taking the very early ones that really -- don't really have any training, giving them some basis in which they can grow through.
O'BRIEN: All right, a couple serious baseball points before you get away. In your long and distinguished career, to what extent did you see the prevalence of steroids in the locker room and to what extent does this whole controversy kind of taint what's going on with Barry Bonds?
RIPKEN: Well, I didn't really witness much about that. I think I'm smart enough to know that, if steroids are in other sports and you see the changes in some people's physiques over time, you could have suspicions about what they're doing, but you really don't know.
And I would still like to think that people are innocent until proven guilty. But I have a certain perspective, is that you have to look at yourself in the mirror. You make certain choices in life. If you've done something, the truth will be found out eventually. You can't keep it a secret forever. And if those truths come out, then your accomplishments will forever be tarnished.
Don Mattingly put it really good for me one time, when we were talking about corked bats. He said, I would never ever use a corked bat, he said, not even once, because if I used it once and it exploded, everyone would think I got all my hits as a result of a corked bat.
O'BRIEN: Well, and people don't forget those kinds of things. And it does have that effect, doesn't it?
RIPKEN: Well, steroids, the interesting part -- I don't want to turn it back to the book, but it's interesting how kids perceive it, because we talk about it at the highest level.
And it is a black cloud that's over baseball. And, in some good ways, it's good to get it out in the open because now you have to deal with that issue and really do what's right for baseball. But the kids see that and they listen to it. Little Ryan has a member of the team named Brock (ph). He's a little spray hitter that hits the ball around and he has good hand-eye coordination. One day, he popped one over the center fielder's head.
So everybody immediately said it was because of steroids. And they started joking about it. But they process things in a certain way. And we as parents and coaches have to make sure that they understand the dangers of that.
O'BRIEN: It's really a shame to hear that kind of thing, isn't it?
All right, Cal Ripken, Jr., great pleasure having you drop by. The book, once again, is "Play Baseball the Ripken Way." And, like I say, who wouldn't want to play it the Ripken way?
It's good to have you with us. Enjoy the book tour and the clinics. And we wish you well in the future.
RIPKEN: Thank you very much.
O'BRIEN: All right, that wraps up this edition of LIVE FROM.
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