A friend of mine told me that he “can almost picture it (my writing) more like a talk show — one of those great ones from the Golden Age of real talk shows in the 60s and 70s — where a guest with a drink or two in him chats with a host who is openly smoking a cigarette and making the kinds of half-dirty jokes that no one is allowed to make on TV anymore.” I was sort of going for that, although I was stone sober. I also stood up the whole time so my voice would project better. I was nervous at first, but I think I relaxed a little and got better as the appearance went on. Enjoy!

One thing that that scandal did accomplish is that it got Dennis and Callahan to stop talking about the Red Sox collapse. For those of you who get their power delivered by CL&P, Boston did not make the playoffs this year. Terry Francona is gone. Theo Epstein left for Chicago. Dirty Water turned to vinegar. I knew that Epstein’s grandfather and great uncle wrote Casablanca. I did not know that his sister wrote for the TV show Homicide: Life on the Streets. (I once complained that Detective Munch has a longer Wikipedia entry than Richard Belzer himself and someone accused me of Wikigroaning, but I digress.) That show crossed over with Law and Order several times. Epstein helped write an episode called “For God and Country.” Jerry Orbach guest starred as Lenny Briscoe.

Arthur Branch was the Manhattan DA on L&O for a few years. Fred Thompson played him. Thompson actually had some prosecutorial experience and was minority counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee. Another counsel was then Cubs fan Hillary Rodham. She was a Yale Law classmate of Larry Lucchino. Lucchino was counsel on the House committee considering impeachment. He was a protégé of Edward Bennett Williams and would later become Theo Epstein’s boss. BTW, Lucchino was a Princeton alum who roomed and played hoops with Bill Bradley, but that’s a story for another day.

That Senate Watergate Committee and its hearing was my first exposure to politics. I vaguely recall it being on TV instead of whatever kids show I wanted to watch at the time. I’ve had an on and off fascination with it since then. I’ve saved only a few newspaper clippings in my life, but one was a Hartford Courant article from 1999 speculating that Mark Felt was Deep Throat. This was a few years before Bob Woodward and Felt admitted this. I’ve read quite a few books on the topic over the years; the Woodward and Bernstein ones as well as bios by many of the co-conspirators like Liddy, Dean, and Haldeman. At one point, I was sympathetic to Nixon. These days, not so much. Anyways, it is back in the news again. Nixon’s grand jury testimony has been released.

Penn State? That’s not a scandal. Watergate? Now that was a scandal. /Crocodile Dundee

The forward pass was legal and had been a tactic for at least 20 years after Notre dame beat army in 1913. But the rules committees enacted rules that discouraged the aerial game. The passer had to be five yards behind the line of scrimmage. A team was only allowed one incompletion during a drive. And an incomplete pass thrown in the end zone resulted in a touchback for the other team. Single wing tactics reigned supreme. It was like the Wildcat that some teams use for a change of pace.

In 1933, at the depths of the Depression, Veteran’s Day fell on a Saturday. Michigan beat Iowa 10-6 that day. The Wolverines were on their way to the national championship. A few hundred miles to the south and west of Ann Arbor, a young announcer in Davenport was recreating the game for Hawkeye fans. He was reading the play by play off the teletype. His name was Ronald Reagan. Michigan did not allow broadcasters at the Big House, so he stayed home. Had he gone to the game, his path might have crossed that of a benchwarmer from Grand Rapids. The sub would later be a standout center, but the Wolverines had a senior named Chuck Bernard. The world knows that benchwarmer better as Gerald Ford. Ford and Reagan’s paths did cross on the campaign trail in 1976, but they might have crossed that day 43 years earlier.

I set up a Pandora station recently that is mainly 40 plus years old instrumental rock; stuff like Booker T and the MGs and a lot of surf guitar. Tuesday, I heard a song by The Blue Men called “Orbit Around The Moon.” It was off a concept album called I Hear A New World. That disc was the brainchild of the fascinatingly bizarre Joe Meek. The melody sounded hauntingly familiar. I believe that Neil Young used it for the verses of “Like A Hurricane.”

Neil’s father, Scott Young, was a sportswriter. According to WIkipedia, he wrote occasionnaly for Sports Illustrated. I went into their vault and couldn’t find any articles credited to him, but I believe that this is one. The cover to that issue came up when I searched for him. I was hoping for some Angellic prose, but it was nothing more than a game report. I was hoping for something more. Anyways, hockey is starting to grow on me. I may write some about the Bruins as the season goes ob. That kid Tyler Seguin seems to be coming on strong so far.

If you get a chance to see a movie soon, I highly reccommend Anonymous. I saw it with my wife last nite. It was a little hard to follow at first, but the payoff is worth it. If, that is, you are ready to suspend your disbelief about some of the plot inaccuracies.

Yesterday I wrote about some creative baseball players. Today I wanted to mention some baseball poets, priests, and politicians. There have been other poets associated with baseball; including Marianne Moore, Donald Hall, and Carson Cistulli. But there is an active warrior-poet in the bigs. Pitcher Miguel Batista once wrote a serial killer thriller, but he also writes poetry. If you peruse that article, it mentions Fernando Perez as a possible major league poet.

I don’t know if Batter’s Box still does these, but they used to hand out Allan Travers Awards. Travers was a student at Saint Joseph’s in Philly who was recruited by the Tigers to take the mound against the A’s after Detroits players walked off the job in protest of a Ty Cobb suspension. He got shelled. Travers had a higher calling, though. He became a Catholic priest. St. Joe’s, incidentally, has made a greater contribution to sports, and it isn’t Delonte West or Jameer Nelson. From professor Sean Forman created Baseball Reference; one of the greatest achievements of Western Civ. The priesthood itself has made contributuions to understanding baseball. Fr’ Gabriel Costa is a sabermetrician. One wonders if West Pointers eschew bunts and work the count. Finally, former Oakland prospect Grant Desme retired to join a seminary about two years ago.

Many baseball folks got involved in politics. The most famous may be Jim Bunning. He was a Hall of Fame pitcher, not the best one in Cooperstown, but he made it. Along with Robin Roberts and others, he helped the Players Association become a force against the owners. Later, he became a Senator from Kentucky. Unfortunately, towards the end, he was suffering from dementia. What isn’t well known is that one of Bunning’s contempo pitchers also had a political career. Juan Marichal held a cabinet position in the Dominican Republic.

As for the police, there;s always Kevin Romine. Austin’s dad investigates auto theft in L.A.. Maybe he was the guy who found the Dude’s ’73 Torino.

There used to be a chain of stores called Media Play that sold books, DVDs and CDs. I liked it, but it went out of business around the time Saint Louis defeated Detroit. Today, I wanted to highlight three former baseball players that personify that store’s merchandise; an author, an actor, and a singer.

Before Jim Bouton, there was Jim Brosnan. Brosnan wrote two in-season diaries; The Long Season and Pennant Race. I have yet to read the latter, but I thought that the former was better than Ball Four once I finally read it. Plus, he didn’t have to have Leonard Schecter help him write it. Bouton’s book may have been more historic at the time he wrote it, but I didn’t read it until at least ten years after it came out. Brosnan was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary’s Shrine of Eternals four years ago. If you ask me, that is a higher honor than getting a plaque in Cooperstown.

Chuck Connors was an Eisenhower-era Man. He played baseball and hoops and was also Lucas McCain on “The Rifleman.” I’m still in search of the elusive Center of the Entertainment Universe, but he might be it. Dennis Hopper appeared on that Western. And Hopper is The Center of The Hollywood Universe. Connors connects you to the NBA, major league baseball and the Pacific Cast League; which was still big back then. There’s also a football connection. Sid Gillman appeared on the show. He was one of the most influential coaches in football history; practically invented film study. His coaching tree is like a sequoia.

Last but not least, I checked out Dave Marsh’s New Book of Rock Lists the other day and came across Lee Maye. I had heard of The Rifleman even if the show was before my time, but I wasn’t familiar with Maye at all. Phill Millstein argues that this doo wopping outfielder was the best combination baseball player-musical artist. Check the link out.

I was on Monday Night Sports a month ago and he suggested that the reason some players of that era moonlighted in other entertainment fields was because sports salaries weren’t as high as they are now and they needed the money. He may have a point. Ironically, I was talking about Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax and their joint holdout. Chuck Connors helped act as an intermediary between the two pitchers and the Dodgers.

On November 22nd, 1963 JFK was shot. Lyndon Johnson named a commission to investigate the assassination. It was called the Warren Commission after Chief Justice Earl Warren. One of the members was Republican congressman Gerald Ford. He tabbed Specter to become one of the lawyers for the commission. Specter was he one who developed the “single bullet theory”, the one where Kennedy and John Connolly were hit by the same bullet.

Ford was an up and coming star in the Republican Party. At the 1964 GOP Convention, he nominated George Romney (Mitt’s father) for president. Barry Goldwater won the nomination and got crushed by LBJ. So did the Republicans in general. They lost quite a few seats in the House. A group of Young Turks in the House revolted against leadership and named Ford as the Minority leader. They included Charles Goddell (NFL commish Roger’s dad), Donald Rumsfeld, and Bob Dole. Ford was ecstatic. It was his dream to someday become Speaker. Bt that wasn’t what Fate had in mind for him.

One of the consequences of the JFK assassination was the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. This Amendment is one you rarely hear about (it isn’t a hot-button issue), but it provides a way to fill Vice Presidential vacancies. The last time the U.S. had no Vice president was between Kennedy’s death and the swearing in of Hubert Humphrey in January of 1965. Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973 and Nixon had to pick a new veep. He wanted to pick someone like John Connolly, Nelson, Rockefeller, or Ronald Reagan, but Ford was picked instead. Congress would have it no other way.

In 1976, Ford ran on his own. Rockefeller was his veep at the time, but Ford wanted to placate the more conservative wing of the party, so he nominated Bob Dole as his running mate. Dole was also from Russell, Kansas. His father ran a small creamery. He had large scales for weighing milk. One of his customers was a guy who ran a junkyard named Harry. He’d often use Doles scales to weigh his junk. Harry was Harry Specter and his son was Arlen. Two senators came from that town and they both were connected to Gerald Ford.