for some reason, mark, the system wouldn't let me reply to your note and ralph's on the movies under the
entry that joe mcnally began about 3-finger mordecai brown.

so, i'll reply here:

first, thanks for the tip on "42" - i hope to see it though a lot of people seem not to know that hollywood made
a black & white movie in 1950, called the "jackie robinson story." it starred the real jackie robinson. for a non-actor,
jackie was ok, but he wasn't the sterling player he was on the diamond. the movie, however, is a clunker. it plods along
and makes jackie into a saint. it's well intentioned, but not movie material. hope "42's" better than that.

from my seat on the aisle, "bull durham" remains the best baseball movie of all time, followed closely by "league
of their own," and "bingo long's traveling all-stars."

both ralph and john c. seem a little bored that three-finger brown is being treated as if he were unknown.
i guess it all depends on your vantage point: baseball's history is thick and rich with all kinds of characters,
many of whom were, briefly, legends, and yet not everyone knows all of these remarkable characters, including
sadly, jackie robinson (and larry doby.). in one sense, there's too much to know; in another, that's great
because it means the more you discover, the richer the story and our lives become.

so, if i were to throw out some names now, i wonder how many guys would know who these guys were
in the world of pro ball and what connects them? jim abbott, bill veeck, joe mccarthy, pete reiser; pete gray;
grover cleveland alexander and, this is a bit of a stretch, ty cobb?

use wikipedia if you like. i'll post the answer in a day or so.

-mike

p.s. as for marcus aurelius, he may have been trying to find inner peace (hence his "meditations")
because of what he did for a living: which was to go war and lop people's heads off. but that's what
emperors did in those days. grisly days followed by hard nights sleeping on rocks. if they had baseball
then, maybe they'd have gotten rid of some of that nasty energy by playing games instead. so, romans 5,
barbarians 2, in 11. -m.





-- Edited by mhart on Tuesday 23rd of April 2013 03:47:21 AM