Still a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest
I didn't care for this Simon & Garfunkel song when it came out in the late 60s. I do now. Heavy hitting lyric, strong melody, and stirring arrangement. Listen carefully to the instrumental outro; so much going on.
From Stuart Humphryes at BabelColour. Stuart restores and enhances old color autochromes, but does not colorise them. This photo is from 1910, taken by Professor Fernand Arloing. I enjoy the feeling conveyed here on a hazy late summer afternoon.
The autochrome process, considered the first practicable method of color photography, was invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière. You can read about the process here. The Lumiere brothers are best known for their invention of the cinema. You can view one of their earliest efforts, from 1896, here.
I was vaguely aware of this group in the early 70s but had no recollection of hearing them. A few years ago clips from an appearance they made on German TV showed up on YouTube and I, and many others, saw them for the first time and learned they were a really rocking band. That's the Millington sisters on guitar and bass.
This is a cover of Hey, Bulldog, one of my favorite Beatles tunes. You can also listen to them perform a cover of Marvin Gaye's Ain't That Peculiar (featuring June Millington's slide guitar) and Place In the Country.
Today is the 50th anniversary of a personal event that is significant for two reasons.
The first is that on the evening of July 18, 1975 the future Mrs THC and I attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. It was the first Red Sox game we attended together. We'd met a few weeks prior and attending this game is the first event in our relationship that we can place a firm date upon. And, in two weeks, we celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary.
It was also the occasion of the longest home run I've seen hit in person, courtesy of Jim Rice.
This led to the post from 2017 which follows.
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This is prompted by a conversation at the recently concluded Analytics
Conference of the Society for American Baseball Research held in
Phoenix. At lunch I was talking with a fellow attendee who mentioned
that at his first game at Fenway he'd seen Mark Fidrych pitch against
Luis Tiant. It turned out I had been at the same game on May 25, 1976
(see The Bird).
I'd been able to figure out the date of the game with the invaluable help of Baseball-Reference. I've also used BR to reconstruct the first time I saw Willie Mays play and the day I met him (see Meeting Willie Mays), as well as narrowing down the possible dates on which I'd seen my first major league game (My First Ballgame?), and even figuring out what New York Giants game my dad had attended in 1939 based on a blank scorecard he left me (Baseball Scorecard 1939).
After the lunch conversation, I decided to use BR to track down another
event I remembered vividly and to see how my recollection matched up
with the facts.
The longest HR I ever saw in person was hit by Jim Rice in a game at Fenway in 1975 against the Kansas City Royals. I remember being stunned at how hard it was hit, how fast it got out of the park, and how far it went.
The homer was hit off Jim Busby, the hard throwing KC pitcher.
Bill Lee was pitching for the Sox.
The Red Sox won the game easily.
The HR was a rising line drive that went over the left center field
wall, to the right of the Green Monster and to the left of the flagpole
(this was before the centerfield scoreboard was built).
The ball was still rising as it disappeared into the night.
We were sitting in the grandstands underneath the overhang between home and third base. "We" refers to the future Mrs THC and I.
(Fenway in 1975. This photo of Fred Lynn shows the outfield as it existed then. You can see the flagpole.)
The game was on July 18, 1975.
Busby and Lee were the pitchers and the Sox won 9-3. Rice's homer was
off Busby, who lasted only 3 1/3 innings, giving up seven runs, but
striking out six.
Bill Lee tossed a vintage Bill Lee-style complete game, giving up six hits,
walking one and not striking out anyone. Lee got 16 outs on grounders
(including seven in a row at one point) plus two more on pop ups. The only Royals to cause Lee trouble were Hal McRae (single,
double and triple) and Harmon Killebrew (double and two-run homer in the
9th). It was also great fun to see Lee tie John Mayberry up in knots with an
eephus pitch. George Brett went 0-4, with three grounders.
I found several articles referencing Rice's titanic blast leading off the third inning for Boston.
Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park's Centennial by
Curt Smith, describes Rice's homer as one of only six to clear the
centerfield wall before the 1976 park alterations. The others were by
Hank Greenberg (1937), Jimmie Foxx (1937), Bill Skowron (1957), Carl
Yastrzemski (1970), and Bobby Mitchell (1973).
On July 23, 2015 the Boston Herald, as part of a series about the 1975 Red Sox, carried an article entitled "Jim Rice's Mammoth Home Run off Steve Busby":
The righthander mis-spotted a fast ball and Rice, the Boston rookie slugger, sent the ball out of the park just a little to the left field side of dead center. Rice's home run, making the score 6-0, didn't clear the famed Green Monster, but rather the back wall of the park behind the rows of bleacher seats.I also learned from the article the game was not televised
And it did not just slip over that back wall – which in itself constituted a feat reportedly accomplished only five times previous – it exited Fenway somewhere near the top of the flagpole reaching far above the wall.
Then Boston Globe sports writer Peter Gammons famously wrote the "ball was stopped by Canadian customs". In a 2009 Boston Globe story, reporter John Powers wrote that Yawkey said it was ""unquestionably the longest ever'' hit at Fenway.
The winning pitcher that night, Bill Lee got a good look at Rice's clout.
"Once it leaves the ballpark, it goes over Landsdowne Street, it usually lands in the flatbed of a truck, a train, a truck that's heading west, so it ended up in Buffalo, for all we know," Lee said during a recent visit to Axis Bat Technology in Fall River. "It was an amazing line drive type shot. It wasn't one of those towering high fly balls that (Dave) Kingman hit.
I was sitting in the Fenway CF bleachers in July 1975 when I saw Jim Rice teed off on Steve Busby and hit the longest home-run I've ever seen at Fenway. This was before the "600 Club" so there was probably the jet-stream effect, and before the centerfield scoreboard, so there was just a moderately high wall behind the seats in CF. Rice hit a bomb to straight-away CF, that cleared the CF back-wall (behind the batters eye) and from my vantage point some 430-450 ft from home that ball still had an upward trajectory as it left Fenway. It was probably a 500 footer.At the Baseball Think Factory, Rice answered a question about a homer he'd hit in Comiskey Park this way:
I don’t remember that home run. Comiskey was a very small ball park. It was shorter than Fenway to centerfield, short to leftfield, and shorter than that in right. I had two long home runs in my career that stand out in my mind:I'm a little surprised at how close my memory was to the actual event. Nice to have my recollections confirmed. It doesn't always happen that way.
I hit one into the 3rd or 4th deck (however many they have, it was the top one) in Yankee stadium off Matt Keough. I think Keough hit me with a pitch twice in that game, but third time I got him.
The other home run, which is probably the biggest shot of my career, was off of Kansas City pitcher Steve Busby in 1975. Mr. Yawkey said it was probably the longest home run he had ever seen.
On this date in 1863 occurred the Union assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston, SC, an event depicted in the movie Glory. If you saw the film you'll certainly remember the scene when the character portrayed by Denzel Washington grabs the Union colors from the color guard of the 54th Massachusetts to prevent them from falling to the ground and is then shot as he rallies his fellow soldiers.
Meet William Carney. Born in 1840 into slavery in Virginia. His family was eventually freed and moved to Massachusetts. When the 54th Massachusetts was organized as the first official black unit (designated as United States Colored Troops) in the Union army, Carney enlisted. Promoted to sergeant, on July 18 he found himself among the leaders of the assault on the Confederate held fort. Reaching the ramparts he saw the unit's color guard mortally wounded and grabbed the colors to prevent them from falling to the ground.
Wounded several times, Carney kept the flag flying as he rallied his men until finally collapsing from loss of blood. Unlike Denzel Washington's character, Carney recovered from his serious wounds, and received the Medal of Honor on May 23, 1900. His citation reads:
When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded.
Some accounts call him the first black recipient of the Medal, but other black soldiers received the Medal before Carney. However, the events for which Carney received the Medal preceded all of the others.
Carney returned to Massachusetts after being discharged, married, and became a mail carrier. He died in 1908.
For an account of a battle a month prior to Fort Wanger in which black soldiers, who had been slaves just weeks previously, resisted an Confederate assault read Milliken's Bend.
