Reviews

Citizenship Reminder from a Baseball Great

11/5/2018

Babe Ruth, Roger Angell, Tin Lincecum. Art from: http://www.joedarrow.com/sports-figures/

When friends in Jerusalem and the Upper West Side send the same link, it makes sense to read it -- and pass it on. Roger Angell, 98, has some thoughts on election day and citizenship.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/get-up-and-go

What could be more American than an essay on voting by a hallowed member of the writers' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame?
Enjoy....and vote.

http://www.joedarrow.com/sports-figures/

(The art was a bonus. I found it on line, and consider my posting it here as an endorsement for any artist who can put these three dudes in the same work.)

steve

11/5/2018 04:01:29 pm

George,
There's no link to the Angell article that I can find. Can you add it?
Thanks!

George Vecsey

11/5/2018 06:10:04 pm

Steve, thanks for the alert. I just inserted it. Must have knocked it out when I was inserting the link for the artwork. Appreciate your letting me know. Best, GV

bruce

11/5/2018 05:39:36 pm

george,

some great illustrations there.

laughed when i saw bill clinton as the first lady.

didn't see a lot angell's writing but enjoyed what i did read.

pretty vital and interesting guy. first published in 1944 and still at it....sheesh.

as you know, i'm moving. i was putting my books into boxes and found 'the boys of summer'. state of shock it was 46 years ago.

i was a bit obsessed with the babe when i was a kid.

i was a pretty decent baseball player. played for the braves in little league. we didn't have numbers on our uniforms, but i insisted my mother sew #3 on the back of mine.

only player on 10 teams that had one.

i see fred zimmerman died.

haven't read SI for a long time, but i subscribed for a number of years.

used to like his stuff.

putting any money down on your midterms?

bruce

George Vecsey

11/5/2018 06:13:14 pm

Bruce, it was Paul Zimmerman, old colleague from the 60s, a cult figure to NFL fans. Big dude, played football and rugby. His father was a long-time official with the ILGWU, lefty from the 30s, met him when I was a news reporter. Paul was ill a long time. RIP. GV

bruce

11/5/2018 07:13:30 pm

george,

aging is a pain in the butt.

I knew it was paul, but fred---not sure why--always comes into my mind.

I was aware of this and reminded myself but to no avail.

looking at the citizenship in the hed made me think of the whole birther thing.

always struck me as odd since Canada has had three prime ministers that weren't born here with the last in the 1980s. and two of the past four or five aussies weren't born in oz.

no muss, no fuss.

bruce

Brian Savin

11/5/2018 07:59:36 pm

George,
You need to decide whether you will address the obvious issue that Bruce the Troll refuses to identify himself, even to you. I want you to think whether he has been assigned to you, because I think he has. I could have this conversation in private, but I think it should be in the open. We are both old coots. What do we believe and what do we live for at this point? There is nothing but honesty left for us. Let's be honest and act the best we can.
Best
Brian

bruce

11/5/2018 08:07:03 pm

brian,

i'll let george handle this, but I will say that he knows who I am, where I live and lived.

I have to add that I do appreciate your fine use of irony.

your last sentence is one of the great 'tongue in cheek' comments in recent memory.

i'll let george deal with you.

good luck george.

bruce

Steve

11/5/2018 08:08:28 pm

Finally read it, George. Thanks so much for posting. He's still an amazing writer. And 100% right!

Brian SAvin

11/5/2018 08:10:56 pm

I don't believe George knows anything close to as much as you claim. But I do believe you are trying to intimidate him.
And you are an asshole.

bruce

11/5/2018 08:20:02 pm

brian,

only responding because you mentioned george.

you really believe he's that stupid?

and could be intimidated by.....what exactly?

do you still believe he writes critical things about your hero so he won't lose his nyt pension?

pathetic.

bruce

Brian Savin

11/5/2018 08:27:13 pm

No, Troll, you are getting desperate. George is an extremely bright fellow who has meant much to me for decades. And you are the pretender.. You have no history. If George weren't politically important you wouldn't be involved. You don't know him. You never have. You are paid to troll this sight and other sites as well. F-bomb off, asshole.

George Vecsey

11/5/2018 08:34:42 pm

Brian, you've been a loyal reader for a long time. Your notes when I wrote the NYT sports column were reassuring.
But I have to tell you, you are over the line with this obsession with Bruce.
You really need to let it go.
I have maintained that I don't believe in fatwas.....but the state of this site is being dragged down by your insistence that he is a gnome.....no, a drone.....wait, I've got it, a clone.
Brian, cool it, seriously.
GV

Brian Savin

11/5/2018 08:42:01 pm

I think Ive made my point. Now call off the Troll. Thanks.

Randolph

11/6/2018 08:23:28 am

11/5/2018 09:20:47 pm
I wrote that my first Presidential vote was for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1944, when I was a young Air Force sergeant stationed in the Central Pacific. I went on to say that, seventy-two years later, defeating Trump made that immediate election the most important of my life. Alarmed as I was, I had no idea, of course, of the depths of the disaster that would befall us, taking away our leadership and moral standing in the world.
Roger Angell
George,
Thanks for the article. Mr. Angell is spot on!

I vote tomorrow for my parents. They are deceased, but would be the same age as Mr. Angell if they were alive.
My mother was the first of our family born in America. Immigrants that came through Ellis Island :Robert and Catherine Zando and their children , Abraham, Mary and Sixtus. I know how they would want me to vote.
Thanks again George for the article.
Keep the faith, but don’t forget a pint of good ale at the dimming of the day.

Randy

George Vecsey

11/6/2018 08:32:23 am

Randy, thanks for the note. Just a guess that your parents would have remembered FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt visiting Appalachia during the Depression and putting programs in motion. (She pushed her husband, as the great Ken Burns documentary makes clear.) Loretta Lynn told me that her daddy "thought FDR hung the moon." Later she was a Bush-ite. When I was living in Kentucky, I retraced a visit by Bobby Kennedy in 67 or 68....through eastern KY. One family had three portraits on their walls -- I used it in a chapter in my book on Appalachia, "One Sunset a Week." The portraits were: Jesus, Bobby and Elvis. Well, at least WVA rejected that criminal Blankenship in the primary. GV

bruce

11/6/2018 08:53:01 am

george,

I've read that jfk's portrait was in many homes too.

I've said for a long time that bobby kennedy underwent the most profound political change of any American politician in my life time.

from ruthless pol to bobby kennedy.

bruce

Randolph

11/6/2018 12:35:22 pm

George,
Yes my family loved FDR and Eleanor. My grandfather, who came through Ellis Island, was an Italian stone mason. FDR‘s creation of the CCC program allowed my grandfather, uncles and other Italian men from their small village in the dolomites, to become US citizens. My grandfather was one of the first builders on the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway, building those beautiful stone arched bridges.
Yes my brother from New York City, that is the America I am voting for.
Randy

PS: And on this day I also pay honor to the great Ken Heckler. He was the only member of the United States Congress in 1965 that marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. That was greatness and that is what we need so desperately in this time where fear and hatred are seizing the day.

Peter Kennedy link

11/6/2018 01:06:41 pm

George:

Thanks for posting the great Angell piece...and the Joe Darrow artwork. But I'm missing the thread-- The Babe, Roger A., and The Freak? Assume it originated during the latter's SF days, when he was at the top of his game. I rooted for his comeback attempt this year. (Sigh.)

To our nation, and its sacred pastime,

Peter

George Vecsey

11/6/2018 01:16:08 pm

Peter, I would never have associated The Babe with Lincecum but then again I am not an artist. Artists make those kind of connections -- is Darrow saying that Ruth and Lincecum were both one-offs?
Think of Magritte and Dali...and before them, Bosch? And Roger between Babe and Tim? Go figure. GV

bruce

11/6/2018 05:26:29 pm

george,

bosch is magic for me.

my first memory is from my mid teen years when i saw his work in an art book.

i've loved art ever since i can remember.

looking not doing. strictly stick figures is the limit of my talent.

i don't know enough to talk with authority about bosch but 'the garden of earthly delights' seems to come out of nowhere.

kind if dantesque with clues of modernity.

i made a beeline for it when i finally got to madrid and the prado about five years ago.

it was mesmerizing. took me a while to pull myself away from it. durer's self portrait was something else i wanted to see.

then over the queen sophia museum for guernica.

didn't 'get' picasso until a french prof of mine spent a class or two explaining.

the musee d'orsay had an exhibit of picasso's blue and rose periods when i was in paris last month.

good stuff.

when i see bosch, i think of lennon's 'tomorrow never knows' which, to me, also comes out of nowhere.

i'd never heard of darrow, but enjoyed his covers immensely when you included him on your site.

bruce

George Vecsey

11/6/2018 01:10:32 pm

Randy, I drove the Blue Ridge once, it was beautiful. Pulled off a few times, That stonework is gorgeous.
I knew Ken Hechler when I was in Kentucky. He was so reachable. I never knew he had written "The Bridge at Remagen." He was at the forefront of the coal health and safety movement....I never met Jock Yablonski but did meet Tony Boyle a few years after the deed was done. And Hechler is twinned in my mind with Arnold Ray Miller, who won the UMWA vote in 1972. The remaining miners are smarter than Trump and McConnell -- they know coal is over but Our Leaders are playing games with them.
Hechler was kind of a more low-key Bernie Sanders.
Almost Heaven....GV

Alan Rubin link

11/9/2018 09:55:31 am

I loved everything of Roger Angell's that I read. He always had an interesting and informative take on things.

Symphony Space at Broadway and 95th Street in Manhattan has a Selected Shorts series for the past thirty years. My wife and I were regulars for twenty years until we retired and moved to the Berkshires in western, MA. Each month interesting short stories were read by well know actors and actresses. Most lived in the neighborhood and all performed free. Many of the evenings would have a theme.

On the evening devoted to baseball, Roger and Bart Giamatti co-hosted the evening. Both were terrific and complemented each other. Unfortunately, Bart died shortly after.

His loss was felt in many areas, but I have often wondered what MLB might have been like if Bart had been commissioner long enough to have had an impact. It certainly would have been better than that of Bud Selig.

Alan Rubin link

11/9/2018 10:36:17 am

I was ten years old when FDR died. I heard the news while in the school yard playing softball and told my mother when I got home. I did not understand why my mother cried.

Her parents were born in Russia and came to the U.S. with here older sister. My mother and her younger brother were born here.

I could somewhat understand my grandmother's English, but my grandfather was much more difficult to comprehend. Since their language was Yiddish, which was not spoken in my home, I had to get used to their broken English.

Their loyalty and pride to be American citizens needed no translation. My grandfather was the air-raid warden for his block and he took it very seriously. Not a sliver of light was permissible on his watch during air-raid drills.

My grandmother did not understand the politicos, but she voted Democratic in every presidential election. In Russia she had no voice and she wanted to exercise her right to express her choice.

We need some of her dedication to the importance of the right to vote today.

George Vecsey

11/10/2018 12:17:01 pm

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/opinion/irving-berlin-god-bless-america.html

Alan, immigrants who achieve citizenship totally get what it means to be American. We have good friends from Europe, Asia, one from Rwanda, who know what this place means. Great article today on Irving Berlin and "God Bless America" -- a Jew from Siberia meant every word, every note, of it. Wrote it in 1918 and hauled it out of a trunk for Kate Smith in 1938. It was picketed by protesters in Manhattan, at the kind of rallies Drumpf Sr. used to attend. GV

George Vecsey

11/10/2018 12:23:04 pm

Alan, Giamatti was a tough guy..had firm opinions. He also had Fay Vincent, who had been out in the world, as his cohort. They would not have had that drug mess that followed. Donald Fehr could not have gotten away with stonewalling as long as he did -- which results in an entire generation in Hall of Fame Limbo, waiting for people to forget. Giamatti hated legalized gambling -- lotteries, etc.Thought it was government endorsed degeneracy. It would have been, shall we say, different. GV

Alan Rubin link

11/9/2018 10:21:47 am

On a three week driving trip through VA, SC, NC and GA, we spent four days in Ashville, NC. In addition to enjoying all the country music, we spent a day driving the Skyline Drive.

The town of Marshall, NC is about a half hour north of Ashville. We timed our trip to be in Marshall on a Friday for their weekly family friendly community event that started at 6:30 pm.

Youngsters were taught traditional music and dances. Nice dishes of local cooking was available. I had been aware of the term "cake walk" but I never understood what it was. They had several that evening. A homemade cake was raffled off and men walked in a circle and the person next to the cake baker when the music stopped won. A search of cakewalk surprised me in that it was a plantation slave tradition.

https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/blogs/cake-walk-the-strange-origin-of-an-unwittingly-prejudiced-term.htm

For some strange reason, the locals realized that we were from the north as we talked with them. The were very welcoming and asked why we had stopped by. They were pleasantly surprised that it was a destination on our trip. We had many conversations about what we thought about the evening, all positive and friendly.

Two women seated in front of us were having an interesting conversation and we wanted to ask them some questions. Unfortunately, their accent was so heavy that we were afraid that we would have to continually ask them to repeat things. So we did't ask.

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Citizenship Reminder from a Baseball Great

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