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The Red Baron. Joe Morgan exudes confidence. He always has. At 33, he is the best player in baseball. The National League's Most Valuable Player for two straight years, Morgan says proudly: "I want people to expect a lot of Joe Morgan. Success scares some people. Me, I have to have it." The Cincinnati Reds' cocky second baseman has a three-year contract with the club that will net him nearly $1.5 million, but he could add substantially to his earnings by endorsing more products (he stars in several TV commercials) and making personal appearances. However, he maintains, "I'm a private guy. The less I do after the World Series, the more privacy I have and the more time to spend with my family."
Little Joe, as he has been called since high school days in Oakland (he is 5 ft. 7 in., 162 lbs.), pilots a blue-and-green 1977 Cadillac these days and is building a four-bedroom house on 2.6 acres above San Francisco Bay. "But I haven't changed," he insists. "I'm still concerned about doing well. I have a chance for a batting title this year. It keeps me pushing." Joe, who has been married for ten years to his high school sweetheart, says that he would marry her again tomorrow. He takes college courses in physical education when he is not hitting home runs and stealing bases, and plans to be a junior-college baseball coach when he retires from the game. Morgan vows: "I'll never be a fat cat. I'll always do constructive things." He feels not the slightest twinge of guilt about making more money than the President. "When people ask me that," he says, paraphrasing a famed riposte by Babe Ruth, "my answer is: 'Can the President hit Tom Seaver?' "
The Promoters
Beyond sheer diligence and hard work, there is a particular American tradition of salesmanship. The genre lives on among those hyperkinetic promoters who have latched or lucked onto a product of no special utility or promise and hustled the hell out of it.
Cookie Pusher. Chocolate chip cookies are not exactly new: they date back to colonial times, when they were known as tollhouse cookies. It took Cookie Pusher Wally Amos, 40, to put chic into chips.
Amos, who was the first black talent agent to be hired by William Morris, fell upon hard times in Los Angeles and rose again on his Aunt Delia's recipe for guess-what. Thanks to salivating promotion, he is baking six tons of his Famous Amos cookies each week at a factory in Nutley, N.J., and his original shop on Sunset Boulevard; the chewy entremets are sold in bon ton stores from Bloomingdale's to Neiman-Marcus, J.L. Hudson's to Robinson's.
Amos got his backing from show biz cookie freaks, notably Marvin Gaye and Jeff Wald and his wife Helen Reddy, who jointly put up $11,000. Says Wald: "We invested in it for love, but as it turns out, it will probably be a better investment than any we ever made. It could be worth a few million in a couple of years." Amos is in the chips (his two-year-old company grosses more than $1 million a year), but he frets incessantly about costs (pecans and chocolate have more than doubled in price in two years). "I'm a hero in Los Angeles," he complains, "but back in Nutley I'm going nuts paying for nuts."