Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Tolstoy curse.

Many years ago, watching the old This Week with David Brinkley show one Sunday morning, I heard George Will remark that the Chicago Cubs, of which he is a rabid fan, had not won a World Series championship since ”two years before Tolstoy died.” It was a funny line then, twenty years ago or so. And it’s a scream now, the Cubs having recently concluded the 2008 campaign by losing three straight in the NLDS against the putatively inferior Dodgers. That’s a sweep, Jack. And this after a 97-win season buoyed by the widespread conviction that 2008–the 100th year since that last title–was “the year.”

I would note that also among the living at the time the Cubs last ruled the ballyard were Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain. As were Winslow Homer, Gustav Mahler, Clara Barton, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Thomas Hardy, author of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge, among other Victorian masterpieces, would live another twenty years. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Friedrich Nietszche–two more luminaries of the century before last–lay in their graves but twelve and eight years respectively. Without doubt a goodly cohort of Cub fans, and a number of the players on the 1908 squad, were still mourning Emile Zola, just six years gone. 

Not widely reported by the Progressive Era MSM, however, was the fact that Tolstoy, James, and Twain hooked up for game five (the clincher). It was kind of spur-of-the-moment. Here’s a snap of the three of them and a few other dudes horsing around in the bleachers on that unforgettable day.
 

Posted by Tom at 04:55:40 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, March 27, 2006

MLB’s other scandal.

Ease Barry Bonds aside for the moment (as if we could). Baseball’s other major scandal, in my book, is its failure to reinstate Buck Weaver to good standing after all these years. Weaver was one of eight Chicago White Sox players banned for life from baseball for throwing the 1919 World Series–despite the well-documented facts that Weaver never took any money to throw the series and, as admitted on all sides, clearly played each game of the series to win (see, e.g., Eliot Asinof’s Eight Men Out). His only sin in this, arguably, was his failure to turn in the true conspirators, though he was far from the only player not selling out who knew what was going on. If you go to this website, you can cause a letter to be sent in your name to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, demanding Weaver’s long-overdue (and, alas, posthumous) reinstatement.
Posted by Tom at 04:32:41 | Permalink | Comments (2)