Around the Horn

Because it's always hard to keep up, let's go back a bit and touch on some recent notables.

   Stan Musial died, Lance Armstrong lied, the baseball dopers were denied.  Nothing uplifting here, except the tribute paid to Stan the Man, a genuine sports hero from a kinder, gentler time.
 
     It took some jogging to recall that Musial played in his last World Series in 1946, the year before the games were televised nationally.  Other opportunities to see The Man were sparse, but his 12th inning home run that gave the NL All-Stars a 6-5 win over the AL All-Stars in 1955, was on the tube and the memory of it remains vivid.  Confident of my vast baseball expertise,(lots of us could accrue that, it seemed, without ever having stepped into a major league ballpark), I picked the AL, and got my brains beaten out.  Had no money to lose, either, wouldn't you know?

    Musial was a great addition to the Cardinals of 1942, a team that went on to win three NL Pennants in a row and World Series victories in '42 and '44.  The Cards were splendid in '42.  Pitching, defense, and just enough power.  They went against my Yankees, and won the third game of the Series on a football Saturday in October. Ernie White, one of the Cards' fine young pitchers, spun a shutout that put his team ahead three games to one, and they closed it out the next day.  I wasn't able to listen to the Saturday game on the radio, because I was enthralled by the Gopher football team, defending national collegiate champions, in their immense struggle that day against the Iowa Seahawks.  The Seahawks were enrolled in a Navy pre-flight training course at the University of Iowa.  The team was composed of top flight college players from the preceding season mixed with pros from the NFL.  They were coached by the fabulous Bernie Bierman, who mentored the U of M to an amazing record of success from 1932 to 1941.  Bierman and the Seahawks won, 13-7, in what remains to this day the best football game I ever saw.

    Already emotionally overloaded, I didn't hear the World Series score until I got back to town and joined my pals at the Elks' Fall Frolic.  The gloom didn't lift until the music and dancing started.  As callow and green as the pines stretching to the the top of Liberty Hill, we only watched and listened but the distraction proved to be enough.
 
   Stan Musial went on to star for 22 years, compiling records and entering the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Probably as impressive, considering the character, or lack thereof, of today's star athletes, Stan the Man Musial was eulogized by Bob Costas as "a thoroughly decent man."  There are no dissenting voices.

    Concerning the Baseball Hall of Fame, three first time eligibles were roundly rejected by the members of the Baseball Writers Association, the electorate that decides who goes in.  Despite gaudy records, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa, failed to make the grade. According to the court of public opinion, all three used performance enhancing drugs and banned nutritional substances and lied about it.  While not a criterion, we want our baseball heroes to be likable, and Bonds and Clemens struck out on that score,too.

    By odd coincidence, the week the rejections were announced, I happened to see a blown up photograph of Shoeless Joe Jackson, a rare thing.  Shoeless Joe, so called because while growing up in poverty in rural South Carolina, he played baseball barefoot, compiled the 3rd highest lifetime batting average in baseball history.  He was convicted as one of eight Chicago White Sox who contrived to lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.  Shoeless Joe hit .375 and fielded flawlessly in the Series.  Until the day he died, there was controversy about Jackson's involvement.  The purported payoff was $5,000.  That would have been double the illiterate Jackson's salary.  Upon conviction by a grand jury in Chicago, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball, banned all eight from playing in organized baseball for life.  None of the intriguers could have possibly conceived of the multimillion salaries paid to their rogue counterparts of today who cheated.  Nor that baseball allowed them to get away with it.

     Lance Armstrong was a champion bicycle racer. He is now recognized as a cheat, a liar and a fool. A fool because he forfeited world admiration and renown, and twice a fool because he thought the numerous teammates who did drugs with him would never break their silence.  Although Lance is blunted, he still cannot bring himself to come clean. Reminds me of the President who fled the White House forty years ago, shouting, "I am not a crook,"  all the while.