JustOneMinute: Those Who Do Not Understand Our Glorious Past...

Those Who Do Not Understand Our Glorious Past...

Hillary Clinton, Yankees fan, hedged at the Dem debate on the tough issues of the day:

KING: For many here, in New England, the answer to this next question may be the most important one you answer tonight.

(LAUGHTER)

Red Sox or Yankees?

...

KING: Senator Clinton, where are you on this? Red Sox or Yankees?

CLINTON: Well, I hate to say it in front of this New Hampshire crowd -- I'm a Yankees fan. Have been for a long, long time.

(APPLAUSE)

RUSSERT: Senator Clinton, what about a World Series -- Yankees and Cubs?

CLINTON: Well, you know, I've worried about that because I think, given the Cubs' record, which of course, I hope it happens, but it could very well be a sign of the coming apocalypse, were that to ever occur.

(LAUGHTER)

It would be so out of history that you would have the Cubs versus the Yanks. Then I'd be really in trouble.

RUSSERT: But who would you be for?

CLINTON: Well, I would probably have to alternate sides.

"So out of history"? Someone ask Hillary who the Yankees were playing when Ruth called his home run. (OK, then explain to her who "Ruth" is and what a "called" home run would be).

Pathetic.

MY (ATTEMPTED) CONTRIBUTION TO WIKI-HISTORY:

WikiPedia covers the controversy around the Ruth called shot and describes the contemporaneous reporting:

Ruth's second home run in game 3 probably would have been merely an exclamation point for the 1932 World Series and for Ruth's career, had it not been for reporter Joe Williams. Williams was a respected but opinionated sports editor for the Scripps-Howard newspapers. In a late edition the same day of the game, Williams wrote this headline that appeared in the New York World-Telegram: "RUTH CALLS SHOT AS HE PUTS HOME RUN NO. 2 IN SIDE POCKET." Williams' summary of the story included, "In the fifth, with the Cubs riding him unmercifully from the bench, Ruth pointed to center and punched a screaming liner to a spot where no ball had been hit before." Apparently Williams' article was the only one written the day of the game that made a reference to Ruth pointing to center field. It was probably due to the wide circulation of the Scripps-Howard newspapers that gave the story life, as many read Williams' article and assumed it was accurate.

Well, I can't dispute the specific "pointed to center filed" detail, but the broader story is supported by this from the NY Times archive, Oct 2, 1932, by John Drebinger:

But it seems decidedly unhealthy for anyone to taunt the great man Ruth too much and very soon the crowd was to learn its lesson. A single lemon rolled out to the plate as Ruth came up in the fifth and in no mistaken motions the Babe notified the crowd that the nature of his retaliation would be a wallop right out of the confines of the park.

OK, maybe the guys in the press box all got behind a good story. But this account supports the "called home run" version.

Posted by Tom Maguire on September 27, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

Geeze...is nothing sacred? I've watched enough movies to know it happened. ::grin::

Posted by: Sue | September 27, 2007 at 04:05 PM

With the Clintons, history started January 20, 2001.

Posted by: MayBee | September 27, 2007 at 04:08 PM

As Mark Twain once put it, "A truth is not hard to kill and a lie told well is immortal."

If it is a lie, I don't want to know it.

Posted by: Sue | September 27, 2007 at 04:26 PM

As Mark Twain once put it, "A truth is not hard to kill and a lie told well is immortal."

If it is a lie, I don't want to know it.

Posted by: Sue | September 27, 2007 at 04:27 PM

As Mark Twain once put it, "A truth is not hard to kill and a lie told well is immortal."

If it is a lie, I don't want to know it.

Posted by: Sue | September 27, 2007 at 04:27 PM

As Mark Twain once put it, "A truth is not hard to kill and a lie told well is immortal."

If it is a lie, I don't want to know it.

Posted by: Sue | September 27, 2007 at 04:27 PM

There's newsreel footage of the big fella pointing. It happened.

Posted by: richard mcenroe | September 27, 2007 at 05:02 PM

4 times? Sorry, even though I thought it was a good Mark Twain quote, I never intended to spam the board with it.

Posted by: Sue | September 27, 2007 at 05:46 PM

And a minute apart. Is someone cloning me again?

Posted by: Sue | September 27, 2007 at 05:48 PM

A Yankees fan that can't answer the question: Yankees vs. Cubs? Please. Just ask her who the Yankees beat to win their last four Series titles. Nothing worse than the fair-weather fan. She's worse than pathetic.

Posted by: Forbes | September 27, 2007 at 06:13 PM

This is as good as a place as any to celebrate the last few weeks (This year!) with the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals.

What's that?

Oh, I'm not disappointed. Even I wouldn't expect a team ten games under .500 and nine games back* to win the Series.

But here's the essential difference between cold, cruel Easterners and warm, friendly midwesterners: I and most of my fellow fans will be pulling for the hapless Cubbies. Let's hear a real Yankees fan say that 'bout the Red (or White, for that matter) Sox.

*Were they playing in the same divisions as the Yankees, they'd be some 20 games back, but that's just the luck of the draw.

Posted by: Walter | September 27, 2007 at 06:36 PM

Gee, I read "out of history" as in something out of the history books. You know, as in something we haven't seen in a long time.

Not that I'd ever defend Hillary.

Posted by: Strick | September 27, 2007 at 08:50 PM

Gee, I read "out of history" as in something out of the history books. You know, as in something we haven't seen in a long time.

Not that I'd ever defend Hillary.

Posted by: Strick | September 27, 2007 at 08:51 PM

Speaking of misunderstanding history, politics, philosophy and semiotics I give
you George Packer everyone:

"Ever since the nineteen-fifties,American universities and the idea of intellectual freedom have been under attack from two kinds of anti-intellectualism. On the right, the McCarthy era created a blueprint for landing devastating political blows by ridiculing the patriotism, the manliness, and the common sense of those inherently comical figures known as liberal
professors. On the left, beginning in 1964 with, ironically, the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, the campus became a political battleground where large numbers of students decided that only certain ideas—ones they liked—deserved a hearing, and that the group identity and political bona fides of a speaker mattered more than the quality of his argument.

This history evolved into new forms but never died. It helped create the New Left, the New Right, multiculturalism, political correctness, and the conservative media empire. The events at Columbia University surrounding the appearance of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday put it on full display. The university decided to invite an unpopular politician to speak. Right-wing pundits poured scorn on Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger; Republican politicians introduced bills to cut off the university’s federal funding; students protested the invitation because of Ahmadinejad’s views and his country’s actions; other students insisted that a refusal to allow Ahmadinejad to speak would be a form of American imperialism.

There is a genuine question about whether giving a platform to a figure like Ahmadinejad sanctions his views or shows them in an unflattering light—whether the effect of the invitation is intellectual surrender or intellectual engagement. Columbia and Bollinger decided that the latter prospect outweighed the former, and that the head of state of a hostile regime at a time of huge international danger deserves a hearing, unlike, say, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan or the spiritual leader of a terrorist organization. It was a defensible decision. Some Columbia students condemned Bollinger’s withering introduction—as if free speech should also be free of consequences. They didn’t understand that they had just witnessed a small victory for intellectual freedom and liberal values. chance to hold forth, but it was not a free ride".
<http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/george packer>
One could consider this a naive rendition of events;McCarthy and its predecessor, Nixonism is there was such a word was mainly a challenge to the abysmal judgement of the liberal establishment, that had allowed Stalinism and fellow travelling sentiments to permeate their midst: (Hiss, Stewart Service, Duggan, et al)It did reach some extreme conclusion ;re Gen Marshall, but some strong questions should have been raised about events as disparate as Pearl Harbor, and the disengagement from Chiang's
China. Ironically, the same pattern of events in Cuba in the 50s, provoked a disparate response. The free speech movement was basically adopting the proto netroots formulation that arose out of the Port Huron Statement that led to the SDS and then self immolate itself in the Weather Underground. Sadly said premises
embedded themselves in the up and coming
'Baby boomer' careerists in media, academia,
law, etc. Those that didn't chose to undermind the essential staples of social
stability,including the former liberals that are now virtually a curse word; the neocons, are regarded even more harshly than the progressive malcontents whose alienation from the system leads to sympathy to the most reactionary foreign
elements (the 1979 Iranian revolution and
a grudging accomodation with AQ's tactics
at least in Iraq are notable examples)

Serious delusions that persist after the IRNA, AlJazeera and BBC coverage (can one really tell the difference in tone) has
chosen to focus on the umbrage taken at
pointed questions, at a homophobic, anti-semitic, theocratic murder crat; re my posts on his dissident surveilance and
termination work), propped up by his higher
ups in the corrupt theo-oligarchy. Or to
delete them altogether, like Winston Smith's memory tube. I find this attitude
pervasive even among the soft left blogs like Belgravitas,Yglesias, and Douthat,where the structure of the mullahacracy is debated to elide it's identification as a dictatorship. to the deranged shores of the Kos, Huff Post and Depleted Uranium (D.U).

Posted by: narciso | September 27, 2007 at 11:16 PM

I keep thinking I'd like to write about the intellectual fogginess in the groves of academe (aka Fruitcakeville), but protein wisdom does it so well it seems pointless.

Columbia invited him because there was pressure to do so brought to bear on the dimwitted Administration by the Arabists on its (well)independently funded Middle East studies and spin offs (like that headed by the well-named Dr. Sick).Faced with extensive criticism, Dr. Bollinger, never a strong man--which makes him perfect for the post these days--"butched up" the intro.
Machts Nicht.
It merely compounded the mistake.

Posted by: clarice | September 27, 2007 at 11:51 PM

P.S. our major universities are sitting on enormous endowments , making them the modern day equivalent of the Middle Ages monasteries--with the same result of insularity, too much influence and too much unchecked power. Personally, I'd like to see all federal duns cut off of any institution which refuses to allow ROTC on campus. They'd have to spend down some of the pile of gold, more normal kids would show up on campus, and the universities would have to produce something other than blather.

Posted by: clarice | September 27, 2007 at 11:54 PM

***federal funds*********88

Posted by: clarice | September 27, 2007 at 11:55 PM

Another stupid comment ..

"I have been against the fence, I thought it's a bad idea even when it was just a matter of discussion," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "These are communities where you have a border going through them, they are not communities where you have a fence splitting them."

.. this officer of the United States of America, Speaker of the House, 3rd in line to be President, doesn't seem to understand the idea of sovereignty.

Posted by: Neo | September 28, 2007 at 02:00 PM