All in Good Humor

“These are the saddest of possible words:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

         F.P. Adams, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”

In 1910 New York Evening Mailcontributor Franklin Pierce Adams, a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, penned a couplet for his “All in Good Humor” column that was destined to become, next to “Casey at the Bat,” the most famous baseball poem of all time. The Cubs had just defeated their archrival New York Giants, thanks to a rally-killing, shortstop to second to first double play. At the behest of a copy editor, Adams added six lines, making use of a medieval Italian word – gonfalon -  meaning a banner or flag:

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double-

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

F.P. Adams in the 1920s was a charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, matching wits with the likes of Dorothy Parker, who once said, “One more drink and I’ll be under the host,”  and Robert Benchley, who quipped:“I know I’m drinking myself to a slow death, but then I’m in no hurry.” Adams once defined middle age as “when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.”  Hard to imagine that golf was once considered an old man’s sports.  F.P. Adams probably never dreamed that thousands of fans would pay to watch 43 year-old Tiger Woods finish second to 28 year-old Brooks Koepka in the hundredth annual PGA Open.

Baseball’s first matinee idol, according to David Rapp’s “Tinker to Evers to Chance,” was Michael “King” Kelly, who during the 1880s led the forerunner of the Chicago Cubs, the White Stockings, to five pennants. A charismatic showman and vaudeville performer during the off-season, Kelly was the first sports celebrity to sign autographs for fans.  He invented the hook slide and inspired the 1889 hit “Slide, Kelly, Slide.”  Prints of a painting showing Kelly sliding head-first into second adorned countless Windy City saloons. A catcher when not playing the outfield, he kept up a line of patter to distract hitters, a favorite tactic of my old Porter Acres battery mate Omar Farag, whom I ran into at Miller Sunday Market, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

As the contestants on Jeopardy’s 2017 Tournament of Champions, a summer rerun, were introduced, one covered his eyes, the second his ears, and the third his mouth, referencing the 3 wise monkeys who embodied the proverb, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”  Nobody knew Final Jeopardy, the state capital since 1805 whose first four letters were the same as the state’s last four letters.  Answer: Montpelier, Vermont.  Final Jeopardyin this week’s initial college Tournament of Champions was: which twentieth-century U.S. president was inaugurated twice within 14 months?  Easy: LBJ. Two young folks (a math and a science major) got it incorrect, guessing TR and Grover Cleveland.

In Richard Russo’s “Voice” a brilliant but mute college student with Asperger Syndrome suffers a breakdown in an English seminar.  Nate, the instructor, is blamed for the incident and replaced in mid-semester.  Given Russo’s comic sensibility, “Voice” contains humorous asides, such as comparing a jealous husband to a neighbor’s dog who bit you once and acts like he’s still got more unfinished business.  And this: “Next year, in place of the Jane Austin seminar, he’d been offered a section of comp, an indignity that put him in mind of e.e. cummings’s Olaf, who from his knees declares there is some shit he will not eat.”  Sensitive Nate has an obnoxious brother, Julian, who calls him “Prof” in a pejorative manner (Nate: “How the word rankles”),uses words likeuncuntedand befucked to describe him, and is seldom right about anything but, according to Russo, never in doubt, much less self-doubt.  On a tour in Venice, Nate comes upon a so-called art piece that, in essence, is a half-ton of dirt poured onto the floor, which gay guide Klaus, whom Julian continually mocks, calls provocative.

“FOX and Friends” commentator and former Trump aide David Bosse told African-American Joel Payne, “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind.”  Payne responded: “I’ve got some relatives who picked cotton, and I’m not going to sit here and allow you to attack me like that on TV.  You better watch your mouth.” Just months before, FOX sports announcer Brian Davis was reprimanded for using the exact phrase to describe Russell Westbrook’s high level of play. And that was meant as praise while Bosse’s intent was clearly ridicule.

On the cover of Time: Spike Lee, director of “BlacKkKlansman,” based on a true story about African-American policeman Ron Stallworth going undercover to join the KKK. “BlacKkKlansman” stars John David Washington (Denzel’s son) as Ron Stallworth. It opens with a scene from “Gone with the Wind” and closes with the 2017 alt-white Charlottesville riot.  At times bitingly funny, like the 1963 Cold War critique “Dr. Strangelove,” the film, to quote critic Simon Miraudo is also “stunningly effective as a call to arms” – as is true of most all Spike Lee pictures.

Joaquin Phoenix assumes the role of quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan in the biopic “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” the title a punchline from a cartoon panel showing a posse coming across an empty wheelchair in the desert. Before he killed himself, Robin Williams was set to play the part in tribute to his friend Steve Reeves.  Disabled at age 21 due to an auto accident, Callahan employed a unique brand of “sick humor” in such publications as the New Yorkerand Penthouse.Callahan’s first published cartoon was of a panhandler holding a sign reading, “I am blind and black but not musical.” A subsequent one had the caption, “Refuse to have a nice day.”   In one depicting two cowboys in wheelchairs an old-timer draws a gun on the other and says, “This town ain’t accessible enough for both of us.”  New Yorker cartoonist Sam Gross recalled this Callahan anecdote:

  He was waiting for the light in his electric wheelchair, and some evangelical comes along and goes, “Boy, boy – believe in Jesus and get up and walk!”  And John looks at him and says, “I have five thousand dollars invested in this chair!”

 Sean Penn as Spicily

On TV I watched two Eighties comedies, “Back to the Future” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” the former with only mild interest and the latter with my interest piqued upon learning that it was written by Cameron Crowe.  Sean Penn played stoner Jeff Spicoli, whose character reminded me of Jam in “Detroit Rock City,” my favorite comedy of all time, along with “Fargo,” the Coen brothers darkly comedic murder tale.  While Roger Ebert called “Fast Times” a “scuz-pit of a movie,”it had its funny moments and the music was great, especially numbers by the Go-Gos, Don Henley, Jackson Browne, the Ravyns, and, of course, the Cars’ “Moving in Stereo” during the pool fantasy scene.

Former Cubs hurler Rick Sutcliffe, 16-1 during the memorable 1984 season, was in the broadcast booth prior to singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He recently worked a game with Cubs 2016 World Series hero David Ross, who evidently takes frequent bathroom breaks.  One inning Ross got back late and Sutcliffe asked, “And what do you think of that, David?”Ross had no idea what he was referring to. Sutcliffe got a laugh, but I didn’t think it was funny.  In the rubber game of a series with Washington, Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins sang during the seventh inning stretch. The Cubs trailed 3-0 in the ninth when Jason Heywood scratched out a hit and, with two out, Nationals closer Ryan Madson plunked two batters in a row.  Then rookie David Bote hit a 2-2 pitch into the bleachers for a walk-off grand slam. I immediately called Dave, who said he’d almost turned off the TV when Washington scored 2 runs in the top of the inning. Next morning on AM 670 Lin Brehmer played Vince Lloyd’s dramatic home run call, culminating with these words: “It has a chance.  Grand slam. Cubs win. (pause) Listen to this place.” Pretty moving.

High school friend Vince Curll sent me an article by historian William H. Thiesen that appears in the current issue of Sea History entitled “First Lady Harriet Rebecca Lane and the Cutters That Have Borne Her Name.”  The first Harriet Lane, commissioned for the Revenue Cutter Service in 1858 while Harriet’s Uncle James Buchanan was President, was an 180-foot side paddled steamer that fired the first naval shot of the Civil war in Charleston Harbor near Fort Sumter. Harriet Lane II was commissioned in 1926, designed to interdict whisky smugglers during Prohibition and later a Coast Guard air-sea rescue vessel.  During the 1990s Harriet Lane III helped rescue thousands of Haitian and Cuba migrants and is still in use, primarily in counter-drug operations but also, sadly, to catch Latin Americans fleeing from poverty and tyranny.

 USS Harriet Lane forces USS Nashville to show its colors in 1861

Harriet Lane III

I haven’t seen Vince Curll in over 50 years, but he obviously recalled that President Buchanan was my ancestor (great-great-great uncle).  His accompanying note indicated that his politics differed from mine, as he wrote: “In your own inimical way, feel free to use the enclosed material to exaggerate, embellish or create however you deem appropriate.  I have yet to encounter an avowed “Lefty” that allowed confirmable facts to interfere with the attainment of his target.  Lineage be damned.” I replied: 

  As you were my good friend and mentor in high school in the ways of the world, I must defend “Lefty” historians.  I believe our quest is for the truth, and where politics enters the equation is in the choice of subjects to research: poor people, minorities, immigrants, women, environmental inequalities, etc.  Most classmates that I’m in touch with are, lamentably, conservative, including Skip Pollard, Phil Arnold, Wayne Wylie, even onetime bad boy Pat Zollo.  That doesn’t prevent me from enjoying their friendship.  Chuck Bahmueller broke off communication with me after we argued politics at our thirtieth reunion (how sad).  Among the few liberal exceptions are LeeLee Minehart, a Peace Corps grad whose father was a Democratic officeholder, and Gaard Murphy, whom I talk with weekly and shares my distaste for our current administration.  

I’d like nothing more than to rekindle the friendship with Vince.  He taught me that it was more important to be yourself than to follow the crowd. In the late 1950s, while we were in high school, the swampland where Vince used to trap muskrats (I occasionally tagged along) became an industrial park.  One summer  the two of us made the rounds looking for employment and we got hired by the company that published the weekly Ambler Gazette to work the overnight shift once a week during the press run. In tenth grade, after I had my driver’s license, we double-dated and ended up on adjoining couches in my date’s rec room.  Vince seemed so self-assured, I copied his every move.