My Morning in Exile

Three day weekends screw me up for a good five days:

  • Was Shoeless Joe innocent? You won’t find that answer to that question in the linked article, but you will find some dirt thrown on the “Eight Men Out” version of things.
  • Lou Gehrig: The Iron Horse’s Ass. OK, not really, but that’s probably how today’s tabloids would have played it.
  • Tom Glavine isn’t going to pitch in 2010. Try to remain calm.
  • Even if Oakland has no future as their home, the Athletics’ future is bright.
  • Charlie Manuel drops some F-bombs. At least I’m assuming they were F-bombs. What else gets the [expletive] treatment these days?
  • Finally, Bobby Valentine and Chip Hale look to be the strongest candidates for the Nats’ job. In other news, I’m pretty sure that there was an early-60s duo named “Bobby and Chip” who performed songs written by the Brill Building combo of “Valentine and Hale.” The had some hits about teenagers and racing and necking and people dying in cars on prom night or somesuch. Good stuff, really.
  • Sorry that this post is a bit late today. I’ve been trying for two hours to work up a joke that ties the Eight Men Out story to my weekend visit to the old railroad town of Thurmond, West Virginia via John Sayles and “Matewan,” but there were just too many moving parts.


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    Wooden U. Lykteneau
    14 years ago

    That was Jan & Dean… “Dead Man’s Curve”, “Last Kiss”

    YankeesfanLen
    14 years ago

    Actually, “Last Kiss” was J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers.

    Alex
    14 years ago

    tying two threads together …

    I would imagine that Gehrig’s sullenness was a result of being a college-educated man at a time when they were very rare in baseball (and were often met with distrust and resentment by fellow players and management). Recall that this was mostly (from what Eight Men Out tells us, at least) the experience of fellow Columbia alum Eddie Collins with the Black Sox.

    Drew
    14 years ago

    I sure hope NBC pays you well for the tidbits you write over there, because if you’re expected to read through the comments, it’s hard to imagine being paid enough.  I saw the comment left on your Gehrig article, and wondered exactly what this reader was looking for in his daily blogroll.  I imagine I’ll never know.

    APBA Guy
    14 years ago

    It’s a nice story that the A’s are heading in the right direction. We’ll know more when they actually have an offense. Wake me when that happens.

    In the meantime, the owners have to show some commitment. Not to building within or any on-field baseball related matters. That is largely left to Beane and his staff.

    They need to show commitment to the Bay Area. The sense all of us have is that the Fremont idea was a non-starter from the beginning, and the constant bad mouthing of Oakland is counter productive. Right now if you asked the roughly 50% of A’s fans who went to games last year but aren’t goin this year many would say a big reason the aren’t going (right after the kid pitchers putting the team behind three or more runs after the first inning) is that they don’t belive the A’s are going to stay in NorCal. Once that bond is severed, and Wolfe owns that problem, even a winning team won’t get all the fans back all the time.

    Wooden U. Lykteneau
    14 years ago

    Actually, YFL, “Dead Man’s Curve” was originally performed by Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders, but thanks anyway.

    Jonathan
    14 years ago

    Maybe Shoeless Joe could have borrowed a line from Few Clothes Johnson, “I’ve been called cheater, and I can’t help that’s the way baseball writers is, but I ain’t never been called no scab!”

    Alright, I doctored it a little. If you have any suggestions, lay it out there.

    P.S. I live about 10 miles from Thurmond and some friends of mine got to be extras in Matewan. Good times. Do you get down that way?

    Craig Calcaterra
    14 years ago

    Jonathan—I’m from Beckley, as is my wife, though she’s a native and I a transplant at age 14.  My mother in law still lives right off of Maple Fork Road. My brother in law and his family are in Fayetteville. I was there (all over there) this weekend, and was in Thurmond on Saturday, showing my son the train station and the river and stuff.  I get back to Beckley multiple times a year, and try to go rafting most years as well.  When people ask me where I’m from, I tell them Beckley.

    My brother in law was an extra in Matewan too. Funny story: he and my father in law went to the casting call. My father in law was Italian and spoke Italian fluently. He figured, based on the casting call, that he was a shoe-in.  My brother in law, on the other hand, is just a WV guy, though he is an electrician in the mines.  They rejected my father in law and cast my brother in law to be an Italian miner.  He’s in the scene where some miners are playing baseball in the strike camp.  You can see it for about 3 seconds in the DVD. I remember it being longer in the VHS version.

    Jonathan
    14 years ago

    Sweet! I’m in Fayetteville. I transplanted there for good only about 5 years ago, but was introduced to the area as a young lad of 7 when my folks went rafting in the 70’s. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

    The baseball scene in Matewan is sweet. When I worked on the river, we always told the joke that the New River Gorge was where the “miner” leagues started. Haha.

    Love your blog. Thanks for all the work!

    Greg Simons
    14 years ago

    I thought “Last Kiss” was a Pearl Jam song.  There was a version before that?  (J/K!)

    tedly
    14 years ago

    i just finished eig’s book about gehrig last night, oddly enough.

    turns out, gehrig kept the boxscore from his first game as a starter for the yanks in his wallet for years and years…and when he got close to the 2000 consecutive games mark, he corrected a written account, saying that the
    papers were shorting him a game.  he’d pinch
    hit in the game before his first start.

    yeah, i guess he cared about the record.