The Hall of Extreme Fame (Part I)
46First off, congratulations to the newest Hall of Fame members — Billy Southworth, Dick Williams, Barney Dreyfuss, Bowie Kuhn and Walter O’Malley. What a day, eh? This veteran’s committee induction class has made me think a little bit more about what the Hall of Fame really means. Here, without looking anything up, is what I know about these five men:
Billy Southworth: Came from Nebraska, I believe, hard ass manager, won a couple of World Series with the Cardinals during the war — it helped to still have Musial, Marty Marion etc. — and might have been a pretty good hitter in his younger days.
Dick Williams: Manager of the Impossible Dream Red Sox, the Charley O Athletics, the Nolan Ryan Angels, some good and underachieving Expos teams, the Steve Garvey Padres and some other team, I think.
Barney Dreyfuss: Owned the Pittsburgh Pirates when they were good, and he helped create the World Series.
Bowie Kuhn: Horrendous baseball commissioner who snubbed Hank Aaron during his home run chase and once wore shirt sleeves to prove it wasn’t cold.
Walter O’Malley: Moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles.
There you go. That’s the bulk of this year’s Hall of Fame class. Kind of pitiful, isn’t it? (No Marvin Miller? Huh?). There may be a couple of players to go along — Jim Rice, perhaps, Goose Gossage, maybe, so that would make things better …
Anyway, I’m wondering about what the Hall of Fame is about. I’m not referring here to the worthiness of any of these guys. Southworth did win two World Series, so did Williams, Dreyfuss was a key figure in early baseball, Kuhn was, I guess, the longest running commissioner or something, O’Malley did bring baseball West. Do they deserve Hall of Fame Induction? I’m not arguing one way or another here. What I’m saying is: Who cares? A friend of mine has a saying he uses whenever he hears us arguing something trivial like “What is thew worst pop song of all time — We Built This City (On Rock and Roll) or Broken Wings?” He will say: “Distinctions on that level are not worth making.”
SONG ASIDE: He’s wrong about the worst pop song argument, though — it is important to come to a consensus on this. I appreciate the Broken Wings side of the argument. When you see these lyrics …
So take these broken wings
and learn to fly again; learn to live free
And when we hear the voices sing
The book of love will open up and let us in.
Yeah yeah.
… it is indeed hard to imagine a worse song. But I still learn toward We Built This City, because I think Mister Mister was only trying to come up with a cheesy love song while Starship, I believe, was trying to come up with an anthem. It took four people write that song, and I think when they recorded it they thought, “Yes! That’s America!” I hate to agree with the VH1 people on anything, but I think they nailed it when they called We Built This City the No. 1 most awesomely bad song.
Anyway, getting back to baseball, I do think that sometimes we get bogged down in the minutiae, in the little arguments about whether Billy Southworth or Whitey Herzog were better managers. And that’s fine. For someone like me, in fact, it’s great. But then we tend to forget that fame is such an important part of the Hall of Fame, it’s actually in the title. So I want to create a whole new Baseball Hall of Fame here. A real Hall of Fame. A Hall ABOUT Fame.
So here’s the introduction to the new Hall of Extreme Fame (HEF). It will be a fluid Hall of Fame too — I have no problem kicking people out, putting people in, but we’re looking for the most famous baseball players ever. I’m taking nominations now. We’ll start with just a few early HEFFERS:
The 25 Players My Mother Would Know.
These are the inner circle Hall of Famers. My mother is a brilliant person, but she is not a big baseball fan. When we played Trivial Pursuit, and a baseball question came up, she always guessed Babe Ruth. I’ve told the story dozens of times but the first baseball story I ever wrote for a newspaper, she called and said: “I read your story and liked it, but I had only one problem. In here, you say the team won with an unearned run. Who are you to decide if a run is earned or unearned? Who made you the judge of runs?” Since then, she has picked up a little more baseball knowledge, so the 25 players she knows are the core of this Hall of Fame. This list is, of course, open to change, especially if any baseball player happens to get on “Dancing with the Stars.”
1. Babe Ruth
2. Joe DiMaggio
3. Jackie Robinson
4. Sandy Koufax
5. Lou Gehrig
6. Hank Aaron
7. Pete Rose
8. Willie Mays
9. Yogi Berra (he’s the guy they named Yogi Bear after, right?)
10. George Brett
11. Mickey Mantle
12. Ty Cobb
13. Ted Williams (his plaque would be a photo of him walking down the street while another guy looks and has a cartoon thought bubble above his head saying, “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.”
14. Reggie Jackson
15. Roberto Clemente
16. Steve Garvey
17. Buck O’Neil (hey, she’s MY Mom).
18. Cal Ripken Jr.
19. Bob Feller
20. Shoeless Joe Jackson
21. Stan Musial
22. Joe Morgan
23. Johnny Bench
24. Robert Redford
25. Boog Powell (he was the last Cleveland Indians card we needed to complete our 1976 Topps set. Plus people call him “Boog”).
Tinker-Evers-Chance as a group entry
Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance are the players named in what is almost certainly the third-most famous poem about baseball (behind “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Casey at the Bat” but ahead of “Go Joe Charboneau)). So they all go in, but you should also know that Tinker HATED Evers and vice versa. So for their plaque we have rewritten the poem.
These are the saddest of words to our ears
Tinkers to Evers to Chance
First two did not talk for 33 years.
Tinkers to Evers to Chance
Evers once got in a cab and took flight
Left Tinker and teamates to find their own ride
And Tinker, that stinker, remembered the slight
Tinker punched Evers first chance.
Movie Star Corner
Lou Gehrig (Pride of the Yankees) and Shoeless Joe Jackson (Eight Men Out; Field of Dreams) already in the Hall thanks to my mother, but others who had movies made from their lives have to go into the Hall as well, and this gains them entry:
1. Grover Cleveland Alexander (The Winning Team): Terrible movie, but it did, as Bill James wrote, make Alexander the only man in baseball history to be named after one President and played in a movie by another.
2. Jimmy Piersall (Fear Strikes Out): Terrible movie, but it did make Piersall the first only man in baseball history to be a psycho and also be played in a movie by the guy from Psycho.
3. Monte Stratton (The Stratton Story): Terrible movie but it did make Stratton the only man in baseball history to shoot off his right leg in a hunting accident, come back to pitch in the minors and have his wife played by June Allyson in the movies. The movie also had one of my favorite all-time actresses, Agnes Moorehead, She was nominated for four Oscars, won an Emmy, played Orson Welles mother in Citizen Kane, and she’s basically remembered for playing the goofy mother in Bewitched. Life is so unfair.
4. Ron LeFlore (One in a Million): It’s a made for TV movie, sure, but come on. It had LaVar Burton. And Billy Martin (as himself).
5. Jimmie Foxx (A League of their Own): The character Tom Hanks played, Jimmy Dugan, is not-so-loosely based on Foxx, who was a great home run hitter and also may have had some issues with his drinking. Foxx also famously ate 12 lobsters in one meal, which would made an excellent scene in the movie. Honestly, I don’t know what these Hollywood people are thinking.
George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin as tag team entry
I saw that Billy Martin got fewer than three votes in the Veterans Committee vote, which is understandable since Billy was, by pretty much all accounts, a despicable human being. But I don’t imagine that there was anyone in baseball who was more famous during the 1970s, unless it’s Pete Rose. Martin did have 1,200 wins as a manager, two World Series titles and he was a World Series hero as a player.
As for George, he goes in but the acceptance speech is given from behind a curtain by Larry David.
Literary Figures
Some players get into the Hall of Extreme Fame for either writing books or offering up legendary quotes:
– Satchel Paige for “Don’t look back, something may be gaining on you.”
Paige actually have about 10 Hall of Fame quotes including:
1. Age is mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it don’t matter.
2. Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.
3. Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move.
4. Dance like nobody’s watching.
5. If a man can beat you, walk him.
6. Avoid running at all times.
7. I ain’t never had a job. I just always played baseball.
8. (When they wanted to put him in a separate wing of the Hall of Fame): The only change is baseball turned Satchel Paige from a second-class citizen to a second class immortal.
9. I never threw an illegal pitch. Trouble is, once in a while I throw one that ain’t never been seen by this generation.
10. Ain’t no man can afford being born average, but there ain’t no man gotta be common.
– Dan Quisenberry for “I’ve seen the future and it’s much like the present only longer.”
Also: Natural grass is a wonderful thing for little bugs and sinkerball pitchers.
Also: I don’t miss the cheers. I just go the ballpark, sit in the stands and pretend they’re cheering for me.
– Roy Campanella for “You’ve gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you.”
– Jim Bouton for Ball Four and especially, “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
– Ernie Banks for “It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame. Let’s play two.”
– Walter Johnson for “You can’t hit what you can’t see.”
– Curt Flood for “After 12 years in the Major Leagues I do not feel I’m a piece of property to be bought and sold.”
– Bob Uecker for “The best way to catch a knuckleball is to wait for it to stop rolling and then pick it up.”
Also:
1. In 1962, I was named minor league player of the year. It was my second league in the big leagues.
2. I helped the Cardinals win the pennant that year. I came down with hepatitis. The trainer injected me with it.
3. When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.
4. Sporting goods companies pay me not to endorse their products.
5. I go to Old-Timers games and haven’t lost a thing; I sit in the dugout and people throw things at me. Just like old times.
– Willie Stargell for “It’s supposed to be fun. The man says “Play ball” not “Work ball.”
– Tom Seaver for “There are only two places in the league — first place and no place.”
OK, so that’s, what 45 people in the Hall of Fame so far. Looking for your nominations — both nominating players (or combinations of players) and nominating HEF categories. We’ll probably cut this off at, what, 100? Certainly no more than 200.
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Dizzy Dean for “The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing,” and for his butchering of the English language.
Casey Stengal for about a hundred quotes.
Reminds me of Bill Simmons’ pyramid-style Hall of Fame, which you can read about in full here: http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/020108
As a native Milwaukeean, I appreciate the Uecker quotes, but you forgot what is possibly the best Uecker quote of all, from his Hall of Fame induction speech (and I’m paraphrasing): “The manager used to look down the bench at me and say, ‘Son, go grab a bat and KILL this rally!’”
I still think the 1995 and 1997 World Series, with him and Bob Costas in the booth, were the best-announced Series I’ve ever watched.
Not to slam your mom’s baseball knowledge, but how can the list of 25 not include Nolan Ryan, Cy Young, or Bob Gibson?
Two things off the top of my head:
1) If Redford is in, Kevin Costner has to go, too.
2) “We Built This City” is, in fact, awesomely bad, but it’s still nowhere near as bad as “My Humps”. Nothing is as bad as that.
I vote for Henry Wiggen
How about “Famous Bench Clearing Brawls”. Nolan Ryan occupies a special place in my heart for absolutely destroying Robin Ventura’s manhood at the age of 46.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_-jcyPznI8&feature=related
This is a fun concept, and your mom makes a better judge than mine would, since mine pays attention to baseball.
I like your rewrite of Tinker to Evers to Chance. (You might, by the way, enjoy the piece on baseball and poetry I wrote for the Poetry Foundation this fall, which of course had to include discussion of that poem: )
Oh, and gogiggs: “My Humps” is about sex. “We Built This City” is about . . . self-congratulation? sounding like a beer commercial? Therefore “My Humps,” regardless of any other qualities, cannot be worse than “We Built This City.”
Levi, I’m sorry, but I have to disagree. If you actually listen to “My Humps”, or read the lyrics, (neither of which I recommend, I cannot stress this enough), you will see that it is not about sex, but, in fact, about… self-congratulation.
The song is all about how the singer is so hot that members of both sexes are constantly hanging about and giving her things, despite the fact that she is not giving them anything (”I say no but they keep givin’” and “you can look but you can’t touch it/if you touch it I’ma start some drama).
Further, while “We Built This City” does suck, at least some members of whatever-the-hell-they-were-calling-themselves-by-then (Starship? Jefferson Starship?) actually did have a hand in making San Francisco an important musical center in the ’60s. Fergie’s (alleged) hotness (I prefer my women not to be methheads who piss themselves in public, but maybe that’s just me) is just genetics and no doing of hers. In other words, while the self-congratulation of WBTC is exaggerated and unjustified, it is at least based on some kernel of actual past achievement, whereas the self-congratulation of “My Humps” is not. Therefore, “My Humps” both can be, and is, worse than WBTC.
Great start… I would add Graig Nettles to your quotes list,(1) “When I was a little boy, I wanted to be a baseball player and join the circus. With the Yankees, I’ve accomplished both.”,(2) “People recognize me wherever I go, where it used to be just New York. I guess people who aren’t even baseball fans watch the World Series. I was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles over the winter and a guy pulled up next to me and gave me the finger.”(3)”In one year, Sparky Lyle went from Cy Young to sayonara”, (4) “We’ve got a problem here. Luis Tiant wants to use the bathroom and it says no foreign objects in the toilet.” (5)”The best thing about being a Yankee is getting to watch Reggie Jackson play every day. The worst thing about being a Yankee? Getting to watch Reggie Jackson play every day.” and so on.
Plus there was that time that in response to Mark Fidrych talking to the ball he talked to his bat and told it not to listen to that ball not realizing til afterwords that he had a Japanese bat that couldn’t understand him.
Hey maybe also Lefty Gomez!
Could we have a “Famous For All The Wrong Reasons” wing? It would be truly fun to stroll through a hall filled with the plaques of Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Ugueth Urbina, Willie Mays Aikens, John Rocker, etc. The possibilities are endless. Ralph Branca? Join the club. Hal Chase? Cheaters need a home too. All the plaques could be made of coal or something, with all of their hideous accomplishments presented in excrutiating detail. And if a player qualified for that wing, he’d be ineligible for all other wings.
Or how about “Players Who Are Famous For Non-Baseball Activities”? Chuck Connors springs to mind. Gene Conley (who, besides playing basketball, also got drunk and tried to fly to Israel with Pumpsie Green, which should get him into the new hall anyway). Jim Thorpe. Maybe Moe Berg, the catcher turned WWII spy.
In any case, I think all members of this new HEF should get matching cheesy blazers, like the NFL Hall of Fame, or Masters champions. Maybe one with rainbow stripes, like the hat Judge Smails wore in “Caddyshack”. Something so ugly it’s distinctive.
Joe,
You do not have to explain or appologize for putting Buck in your HoEF. He did more for the sport of baseball than just about anybody else and he did it with a smile and a hug. How many players do you know now a days that you can say that about? Plus, he had to cover for Satchel all the time. From his accounts, that seemed like a full time job itself.
How about a wing named, “Has his own video game”.
Ken Griffey Jr.
Or the wing of those players immortalized on the Simpsons
Junior, Clemens, Strawberry….help me out.
Mattingly, Ozzie, Mike Scioscia, Jose Canseco, Steve Sax, Wade Boggs.
oh and what about Trammel and Whitaker as a linked set?
Great call putting Jim Bouton in there… lots of fantastic stories from that book. There are probably still a lot of players who hate him for writing that book, but as a fan I am eternally grateful.
I might agree that “My Humps” could be the worst pop song ever… add the video and it’s hands-down. For anyone who’s seen the video and hated it, I heartily recommend Alanis Morissette’s parody version. It will cleanse your mind of the original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W91sqAs-_-g
In response to the famous players for the wrong reasons I would add Carl Mays and/or Ray Chapman. For non baseball activites add Danny Ainge.
I nominate Sparky Anderson for the following quote about the 1992 Blue Jays: “Either they’re the best team in baseball or we’re all drunk.”
Also broadcaster Mike Shannon, who said this to his booth partner Jack Buck, about official scorers: “They’re not perfect. Only one guy was ever perfect, Jack, and they nailed him to a tree.”
And my favorite quote from Dan Quiz — who was not only a great comedian but a great human being — came after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor: “I never asked ‘Why me?’ Why not me?”
Amazing that Steve Sax and Mike Scioscia were on ‘The Simpsons’.
How about platoon guys - Gary Roenicke & John Lowenstein, Dane Iorg & Rance Mulliniks(?) and Andy Pettitte & Clemens’ Wife? (Sorry)
Zomg.
*Anything* over We Built [I can't even type the rest of the title] is a stretch, but that harmless pastiche My Humps? That eminently forgettable ditty, that Stuck In The Middle for a new millenium?
Please.
Back in the glorious original Napster days, my wife and I used to have Crappy Song Off. She would download something bad. And play it, loudly. I would counter with something worse. Insert a drink. Repeat. It was great fun. I’d play ‘Don’t Stop Believing.’ She’d play ‘Waterloo.’ At one point, I figured I had conquered for all time with a live verson of Tori Amos doing ‘Killing Me Softly’.
She countered with WBTC.
I resigned in disgrace.
There is no way it is not the worst song of all time.
Okay, I have to nominate Lionel Richie’s “You Are the Sun, You Are the Rain” for worst pop song of all time.
You are the sun
You are the rain
That makes my life this foolish game
You need to know
I love you so
And I’d do it all again and again
That is what we’re talking about, right?
Nice to see Brett at 10. Garvey at 16? Proud Padre of our country? I think Yaz would fit well right there. And I agree with JR about Ryan. As for the Humps vs. WBTC I fall like this. If had to choose to listen to one or the other one time I go WBTC. Making Humps worst in the world. However, if I was stranded on a desert island with only one song to listen to for the rest of my days - WBTC or Humps - You would have to go with Humps. Right? Call it a draw. Both are truly horrible.
“How’d you get all that breasts inside your shirt?” Vs. “Who rides the wrecking ball in two rock guitars?” Can one even choose these days…? But, as for me, I’ve always found Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” to be particularly abhorrent. As for the HEF (which sounds strangely like a wrestling league from my childhood; George the Animal Steele anybody…?), you’ve pretty much got to put McGwire/Sosa in there for “saving baseball,” or whatever… And Wesley Snipes for his role as Willie Mays Hayes (”I hit like Mays, and I run like Hayes.”)…
How about some love for Crash Davis?! Sure the character was fictional (although the name was that of a real player in the ’40’s). At least put in Kevin Costner next to Robert Redford. Crash was a true professional who knew the game so thoroughly. He really embodied Jim Bouton’s quote about the baseball gripping you. Plus, Bull Durham caused a rebirth of the minors that still goes on today all over the country.
“I believe in the soul, the c***, the p****, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiver, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”
Tug McGraw, generally and for entitling a chapter of his (best baseball ever) autobiography “I’m a People and I’m Screwed Up” (something about smoking dope in Vietnam, and nuns…). Tug at least belongs in the [real] writer’s Hall.
Built this City may be somehow worst because its principles had done so much better, but I stake my professional reputation on the horrid works of Depeche Mode and Tears For Fears
Duane Kuiper belongs in that hall.
also, no one with a brain in their head could ever believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The other HoF is stats driven so how about a Baseball Criminal HoF? Guys like Ron LeFlore and Gates Brown (I took (in High School) a little English, a little math, some science, a few hubcaps, and some wheelcovers), Denny McLain and soon Barry Bonds - guys who actually did time? Of course Pete Rose is in for the time he spent in the Club Fed for tax evasion.
Entry would be limited to guys who had at least 100 ABs in the Majors or 20 innings pitched plus no less than 6 months in a recognized criminal holding facility.
For worst song ever I gotta go old school on you here and nominate “Eve of Distruction”. Bad lyrics, bad melody and performed by the worst singer in pop history - a musical trifecta.
ok, but Johnny Thunders’ cover of “Eve of Destruction” was really…surprising, good.
What’s with the hating on Mister Mister? It was the 80’s, you know, the decade of the Peter Principle. I always wanted Weird Al Yankovic to spoof ‘Broken Wings’, but maybe the joke was already there. Anyway, I could throw a stick and hit a dozen crappier bands/songs than that. Rick Astley, anyone? How about Gerardo? Winger? Shouldn’t someone get teabagged for writing ‘Cherry Pie’?
Starship’s crime is that they wrote ‘We Built This City’ even though they used to be Jefferson Airplane, so they should have damn well known better. It’s like flipping through the channels and seeing a commercial for Rogaine starring Noam Chomsky. I mean, everybody needs money to survive, but selling your soul is probably a step too far over the line.
Oh, and buy Joe’s book! It’s terrific!
Alright, well as a met fan, I have to nominate Keith Hernandez for his work in Seinfeld…maybe he can be inducted with Steinbrenner so Larry David only has to show up once…could be in an interesting episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Also, I think you are forgetting Bo Jackson! You love BO! This man was extremely famous in his prime plus he was the only man to have his likeness made into a cartoon character for ProStars representing baseball and football….with that said, Michael Jordan is also an obvious choice, probably top 5 most famous baseball players of all time, but most of those people who know him might not even know/remember he played baseball.
Oh, and David Wells get in for pitching a perfect game while hung over? eh, I guess it’s not that great, the Babe probably hit about 700 of his 714 while hung over.
IMHO, the quality of the “Broken Wings” vocal (limited, but competent) makes it much better than “We Built This City” — i.e. disqualifies it from worst-ever consideration.
How about Ray Chapman as the only person ever to die from getting hit in a MLB game (Read ->The Pitch that Killed -> great book). As far as the poster adding names for people that are more famous for other things than baseball, I would say to add Danny Ainge who was actually playing 3B for the Blue Jays in Len Barker’s perfect game.
How about the Buck O’Neal wing of the Hall of Fame?
Just Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson and Bo Jackson.
Another Simpsons MLBer, Mark McGwire.
“Do you want to know the unspeakable truth or watch me hit some dingers?”
My favorite is Bill “Spaceman” Lee.
When learning he was fined $250 for leaving the team after Boston sold Bernie Carbo to Cleveland “Make it $750 and I’ll take the weekend.” Or “You said Bernie was like a son to you, well you don’t sell your son to Cleveland!”
Of course he doesn’t smoke marajuana, he sprinkles it on his pancakes to help deal with the engine smog around Montreal.
“I don’t care where Gullet’s going, after the game I’m going to the Eliot Lounge”
And to Graig Nettles after he dropped him on his shoulder “How could you be such a prick? I played ball with your brother in Alaska, a**hole!”
Billy Martin only won one World Series as a manager. He won in 1977, but was fired in 1978 before the Yankees won again. That’s more of a qualification for this Hall of Fame than winning two straight Series would have been.
The comment that recommended Lefty Gomez was on the mark.
When asked whether he ever talked to the ball, a la Fidrych:
“Sure. I’d say ‘Go foul, you bastard, go foul!’”
After the moon landing: “They said the astronauts found a small unidentified object on the moon’s surface. I knew what it was: a home run Jimmie Foxx hit off me in 1938.”
Jeffrey Maier and Steve Bartman have to go in.
Kirby Puckett just for being Kirby.
Bugs Bunny needs to go in with tv/movie stars.
Tug McGraw after being asked if he prefers playing on Astroturf or grass:
“I don’t know…I’ve never smoked Astroturf”
Mark Grace when asked how he is leading the leauge in doubles:
“I don’t turn singles into doubles, I’m leading the league by turning triples into doubles”
Jim Bunning. I mean, hey, Congress!
Neon Deion.
As for “We Built This City”, the true measure of its vileness can be summed up by noting that this piece of tripe somehow came from the same folks who gave us “White Rabbit”, “Somebody to Love”, and (of course) “Stairway to Cleveland”.
I’m a lifelong Tiger fan and my alltime favorite was Al Kaline. Still, late in Kaline’s career, Bill Lee’s comment “The Tigers have a statue of Al Kaline playing right field” seemed appropriate.
Some fine suggestions here for HEF
-As for the question of worst song, I was smart enough to stop listening to anything played on commercial radio back in the 80s. Try listening to jazz and blues and find out what real music is.
-for the nimrod who commented on Lee Harvey Oswald, in point of fact, it is only the moronic brain-dead who do not understand that it was Oswald acting alone. Read Vincent Bugliosi’s book, or Case Closed.
What is missed in the irony that Crash Davis’ speech mentions his belief in Oswald’s guilt is that shortly thereafter, Costner starred in “JFK” as Kennedy conspiracy wingnut extraordinaire, Jim Garrison. It is a horrible indictment of the education and intelligence of Americans that a majority of us believe that Oliver Stone’s lies and distortions are regarded as the truth about the assassination.
I think you might need to add Darren Daulton for his thoughts on time travel, living in a different dimension and of course, when the world is going to end.
Ooh how about Carl Everett and his dinosaurs? Why can’t he Daulton have a chat (sounds like a fun make believe Simmons article)?
A few notes: Crash beleives in high “fiber” not “fiver”. Grrbear has it right about WBTC — it’s one thing to be a one hit wonder, another to be the descendant of an important band. For the famous for other things wing, Dave DeBusschere has to before Ainge — he was better than Danny in both sports. Finally, Wells throwing a perfect game hungover is nothing compared to Dock Ellis throwing a no-no on acid…