In his great new book, Over Time, Frank Deford devotes a fun chapter writing about his experiences in those classic Miller Lite commercials. The alumni gatherings for the group commercials, he writes, were terrific fun.

However, there was one guy who Deford, and everyone else, detested: Rodney Dangerfield.

Deford writes:

We were a pretty happy gang, and everyone got along. Well, except for Rodney Dangerfield. He was a total horse’s ass. His trademark line–“I don’t get no respect”–was well deserved, and he was as insecure in person as he portrayed himself in his act. Rodney was, I think, intimidated by the All-Stars and dealt with his fear by setting himself far apart from them. Plus, he was generally disagreeable.

There’s great stuff about Mickey Spillane tearing into Dangerfield, and how Big Ben Davidson once defended Deford during a Dangerfield tirade by saying, “That’s enough, Rodney.”

Writes Deford:

For the softball shoot, when the other guys had been on location for hours and Dangerfield finally only bothered to show up at the end of the day when everyone was assembled for the team picture, Billy Martin began the chant as soon as Rodney stepped out of the limo.

“Big Fucking deal!” Martin cried, and all the others picked up on it. “Big fucking deal! Big fucking deal!.”

The chorus rolled across the diamond, and Dangerfield’s face turned red as his signature tie. He just silently, sullenly took his place in the photo, though. Hecklers in a nightclub he could deal with. These burly athletes scared him into silence.

Still, the guy was funny. Here’s one of the memorable alumni commercials.