Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Tear Down This Wall

Check out this story, from ESPN.com. (I saw this link on Can't Stop the Bleeding.) Apparently, Bill Buckner was wearing a Chicago Cubs batting glove on the night of Game 6, and, most likely, ever since he'd left the Cubs two years prior. Nobody noticed this until 2003, when some kid spotted it in this photo in a book. His father, a reporter, mentioned it in an article, but no one picked up on it.

Then, ESPN.com's Sean Hintz noticed it, and did the blow up which you see here.

They say this is all real, and it seems like it, even if the guy's name could be said "Seen hints." I mean, we've all seen hints that Billy Buck had acquired some bad karma, when he leapt up onto the left field wall in a vain attempt to catch Hank Aaron's 715th homer. I think the baseball gods mistook that as a genuine ploy to stop Aaron from breaking Ruth's record. Which led to that roller in '86, and Billy and the Babe being linked eterna-- until 2004 (!)--on bootleg T-shirts sold in the Bronx. To people from Westchester.

Speaking of the man who has the power to specifically place 86 year curses while blatzed, I was in a cab the other day, and the driver said his birthday was February 6th. I told him that was my mom's as well. The guy shot back, "and Ronald Reagan." I kept the tennis match going with "Babe Ruth..." The man got excited, and grabbed a pen, ready to add to his list. "Who?" "Babe Ruth," I enunciated. "Who's that?" Oh my.

Turns out the dude was from Russia, and had never heard of the Bronx's first evil George.

That was the first time in my life I got to explain to someone who Babe Ruth was.

The moral of the story: My mom is still, by far, the coolest person born on February 6th.

Comments:
Hey, Babe was not evil!

It wasn't his fault he got traded. (Well, considering the excessive boozing, compulsive, whoring, annual car accidents, daily curfew-breaking, and non-stop salary demands, maybe it was his fault.)

Anyway, the Yankees weren't evil then. They were just the former Baltimore Orioles. (The MFY: an expansion team? Hmmm, they are more like the Brewers, a team that moved in from somewhere else.)

At least the Red Sox are an original American League team.

Finally, Babe Ruth didn't have an evil cell in his body, ever.
 

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