Captain Major Of The Seas Of Arabia

 In the early part of the 16th century, a Portuguese explorer and aristocrat, Afonso de Alberquerque became known as the Caesar of the East and Captain-Major of the Seas of Arabia.  While familiar with the European exploration of the Americas I had only a vague notion what the Portuguese had accomplished in the Indian Ocean during the same time frame.

One of the joys of writing this blog has been coming around brief mentions in other books or articles I've read to someone or to events I'd never heard of and then taking the time to learn more - for instance, with Henry Lafayette Dodge or, more recently, with The Last Message.  In this case I came across an intriguing reference to Alberquerque and began doing research online.  Dissatisfied with the online material I finally tracked down and read the leading work on the subject, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580 by Bailey W Diffie and George D Winius (1977).  Though we can not recapture the essential personal characteristics of those who carried out the exploration and its exploitation, their deeds make for fascinating reading.

It was from the Portugese kingdom in the mid-15th century that daring captains began venturing south along the coast of Africa under the direction of Henry the Navigator.  For seventy years they inched their way slowly southward, discovering and colonizing the Azores and Cape Verde Islands along the way, before Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the southern tip of Africa in 1488, followed a decade later by Vasco de Gama who reached India, a voyage that forever linked Europe with Asia. And then within twenty years later the Portugese created the first European empire across the Indian Ocean.

The Portuguese of the 15th century exuded self-confidence and martial ardor.  After centuries of struggle against the Muslim occupation the final portions of what became Portugal were liberated in 1249.  With the help of its long-time English allies, Portuguese trade expanded and it began looking for new territories in Africa and among the newly discovered islands of the Atlantic.

In the Americas, Spanish and Portuguese adventurers had significant advantages in their encounters with natives.  Their technology (sailing ships, arms and armor, horses) was significantly better than those they faced and, unknown to them initially, the biggest contributor to their success were the germs that hitched a ride with the Europeans, exposing native populations to a host of diseases for which they had no immunity, eventually reducing the pre-Columbian population of the Americas by 80-90%.

The Portuguese found well-equipped opposition with the odds more balanced when they encountered Asian peoples.  And on the disease front it was the Europeans who were the more vulnerable, in Africa as well as Asia to malaria and other tropical diseases.  The distances involved were also much greater, it being three times farther from Portugal to India than from Spain to the Americas.  And Portugal itself had a smaller population and was poorer than Spain.  Given these difficulties there were never more than 12-14,000 Portuguese in the Indian Ocean Empire.

During these years, the priority for Portuguese kings was expansion in the Muslim areas of North Africa, particularly Morocco.  By the start of this period, Muslim holdings in Iberia had been reduced to the Kingdom of Granada, which finally fell in 1492.  Portugal began seizing footholds in Morocco like Ceuta and Tangier with the idea of conquering the entire area.

Meanwhile, Portuguese captains ventured down the African coast, seeking a route to the fabled wealth of India and the spice lands.  Along the way they also initiated a slave trade with African kingdoms, a trade that accelerated in the 16th century with the discovery of America.  The Muslim world already had a centuries long slave trade going on the east coast of Africa.  The Muslim states of North Africa also routinely raided the northern shores of the Mediterranean in search of Europeans to enslave.

Venice had dominated the spice trade for centuries from its outposts in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean seas serving as the middleman between the Muslims and the states of Christian Europe.  In term the Muslims controlled the trade in the Indian Ocean and from the source of spices - India and the far eastern islands of what is now Indonesia.  The Venetian Doges had a long-standing alliance with the Mamelukes who ruled Egypt untl 1517 but their relations with the Ottomans were trouble and led to an interruption of the spice trade just as the Portuguese finally found the route to India via the Cape of Good Hope.

Following de Gama's first voyage the Portuguese moved rapidly to exploit their advantage sending 81 ships in annual convoys from 1501 to 1506 with more than 7,000 sailors and soldiers.  It was a grueling voyage.  Outbound ships left Lisbon between February and April, swinging southwest, almost to Brazil, to catch the tradewinds, the ships would round the Cape of Good Hope between June and August, arriving in Goa in late summer or early fall.  The return voyage would begin between Christmas and April, arriving in Lisbon in the fall, a roundtrip equivalent to circling the globe at the equator.

The Portuguese quickly captured the bulk of the spice trade and by 1503-4 the German bankers and merchants formerly based in Venice had come to Lisbon.  Diffie and Winius characterize Portugal as a wharf for goods transiting from Asia to the booming markets of Northern Europe.

After an initial successful India voyage in 1503-4 Afonso de Albuquerque returned in 1506 and remained until his death a decade later.  Afonso, born in 1453 and from a family of the aminor nobility, was educated at the court of Afonso V.  From 1471 to 1481 he achieved  a distinguished military career fighting in war with Morocco, Castile and in a campaign in Italy against the Ottomans.  He later became Master of Horse and held other prestigious titles under his good friend, John II but when John was succeeded by Manuel I in 1495 his career fell into eclipse until his performance in the India expedition of 1503 allowed him to finally gain Manuel's confidence.  On his return to India he carried the king's appointment as Viceroy of India, an appointment he retained until his death.

A master strategist, Albuquerque parlayed a relatively weak Portuguese position by exploiting divisions among Asian rulers seizing Goa and other Indian ports, Malacca which controlled the straits between the Malay peninsula and Sumatra and Ormuz at the exit of the Persian Gulf.  His strategy was to control all the entrances to the Indian Ocean, from the Atlantic, Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Pacific.  While thwarted in the attempt to completely shut off access, particularly that of Muslims, Albuquerque came close to achieving his goal.  He failed to take Aden which controlled the approaches to the Red Sea although he led expeditions into those waters, also attempting to take Jidda on the Arabian peninsula.

In contrast to their views of Muslims, seen as implacable enemies, and the native peoples of the Americas, seen as an inferior civilization and targets for conversion, the Portuguese had a different take on the peoples they encountered in Asia who they considered civilized and made no concerted effort to convert to Christianity.

Later in the 16th century the Portuguese ventured into the waters of East Asia, establishing trading outposts with China at Macao and in Japan at Nagasaki.  Roundtrip voyages from Portugal to these outposts required two to three years.  According to Diffie and Winius, the Portuguese admired the Japanese more than any other Asia peoples:

"Probably the main reason that the Portuguese and the Japanese struck it off so well was that they had many qualities in common.  In China it was the mandarin bureaucrat and his writing brush who stood at the top of the social ladder and even symbolized the society; but it was the hereditary fighting class, the samurai, whose wearing of the sword symbolized Japan - and made the sword-wearing Portuguese feel at home  . . . the samurai pride and rigid code of honor . . . was similar to the chivalry and pride of the Iberian nobleman."

A little known and quite astonishing episode took place during this period showing a different side of the Portuguese.  For several centuries, stories had circulated in Europe about a mysterious Christian monarch to the east known as Prester John.  Europeans, under constant threat from Muslims, believed that if they could only locate the kingdom of Prester John the resulting alliance of Christian states could finally defeat the Muslims.  Then word arrived of a Christian state to the south of Egypt in the Abyssinian highlands ruled by an African monarch.  With great difficulty some Portuguese emissaries made contact with the rulers of Ethiopia.

In the early 1540s Ethiopia came under attack by Somali Arabs who carried all before them, threatening the very existence of the Kingdom.  By chance, a Portuguese fleet was operating in the Red Sea and received a plea for help.  Four hundred Portuguese under the command of Cristovao da Gama responded.  In the Americas other Iberian conquistadores had entered highland in force but with the goal of conquest and visions of riches.  In this case, the Portuguese went to support their fellow faith members with no personal potential for gain.  In two years of fighting the volunteers defeated the Somalis, saving the kingdom, but at great cost - da Gama captured and beheaded and only a quarter of the four hundred surviving.   Diffie and Winius observe:

"The story of the Portuguese association with Abyssinia has an unreal quality because it smacks more of chivalric romance than of motives people of today can understand. . . The Portuguese conquistadores made far better thieves - and also far better saints - than we."

In the late 16th century the Portuguese were ousted from their Indian Ocean Empire by the Dutch and English, though Goa and Macao remained as relics tolerated for several centuries by India and China.  The loss can be attributed to several factors.

The Empire never prospered as much as anticipated in part because the Portuguese ignored the profitable intra-Asian trade in favor of exports directly to Portugal.  Their Dutch and English successors built their trading empires on the intra-Asian trade.

The profits that did accrue to the Portuguese monarchs were spent on their neverending crusade to conquer Morocco and the Indian Ocean empire always remained starved for resources.  The Moroccan obsession ultimately proved a grand failure.  In 1578 the boy-king Sebastian led an army into Morocco for the intended final conquest but Instead, the king and his army were massacred and the kingdom plunged into financial and dynastic chaos, leading in 1580 to a union with Spain that last for six decades.

Diffie and Winius contrast the relative success of the Dutch and English with the failure of Portugal and Spain:

"European monarchs [Spanish, Portuguese, French] have always been far more interested in what went on under their noses than in places thousands of miles away, and the only historic empires safe from periodic neglect [Dutch & English] were those built and operated by joint stock companies, which had no outside interests to distract them."

Passing

Very surprised and saddened to hear that the talented Chadwick Boseman died from cancer at the age of 43, a condition not publicly known until the announcement of his death.  I saw him in two films, 42 and Get On Up.  They were very different roles - as Jackie Robinson in 42, Boseman portrayed a very controlled, noble, and understated character, while as James Brown in Get On Up he was a very uncontrolled, mercurial, and charismatic performer.  Boseman was excellent as Robinson and phenomenal as Brown (and the film has some of the best music performance scenes you'll ever see).  Bosman also seemed like a man of solid character himself.  I've always liked this photo of Boseman with Jackie Robinson's widow Rachel at the premiere of 42.

Don't Dream It's Over

A 2020 quarantine version by Neil Finn and Crowded House of their 1980s hit song.  Gorgeous tune musically, lyrically, and spiritually.

Go Tell The Spartans

2500 years ago in August or September took place two battles between Greeks and Persians that determined the course of Western Civilization - Thermopylae and Salamis.  The first a legendary and stirring defeat and the death of Leonidas and his 300, the second the unexpected victory at sea by the desperate Greeks, events this blogger has touched on before.

From William Golding on the occasion of his visit to the pass at Thermopylae.  From The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces (1965):

I came to myself in a great stillness, to find I was standing by the little mound. This is the mound of Leonidas, with its dust and rank grass, its flowers and lizards, its stones, scruffy laurels and hot gusts of wind. I knew now that something real happened here. It is not just that the human spirit reacts directly and beyond all argument to a story of sacrifice and courage, as a wine glass must vibrate to the sound of the violin. It is also because, way back and at the hundredth remove, that company stood in the right line of history. A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free.

Climbing to the top of that mound by the uneven, winding path, I came on the epitaph, newly cut in stone. It is an ancient epitaph though the stone is new. It is famous for its reticence and simplicity — has been translated a hundred times but can only be paraphrased:

'Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved as they would wish us to, and are buried here.'

The Greek, from Herodotus 7.228:

ὦ ξεῖν᾿, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
    κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

An alternative translation: 

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

Selfless, Cold And Composed

 From Ben Folds Five with a jazzy sound.  Quite the breakup song.

It's easy to be

Easy and free

When it doesn't mean anything

You remain selfless, cold and composed

What Free Speech Depends On

Excellent point by Greg Lukianoff, CEO, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

"We kid ourselves if we believe our legal freedoms will survive if our free speech culture is undermined by the institutions entrusted to educate future citizens, leaders, lawyers, and judges."

With Woke ideology dominating our educational institutions we are well on the way there which is why dismantling their power base is so important.  Being a lawyer by training I am well acquainted with the de-evolution of law schools into social justice factories where the right result, as defined by Progressive ideology, is more important than the neutral application of legal principles I learned.  Part of that package is a devaluation of rights of free speech, free conscience and access to equal protection under the laws if they are claimed by the "wrong" people.  It is why the philosophy of the "living constitution" is so attractive to identitarians, because it unmoors the document from any attempt to connect it to the political thought of the late 18th century men who wrote and ratified it and makes judges into just another legislative branch in which they rule based upon policy preferences.

The current four liberal Supreme Court justices look like moderates compared to the wave of lower Federal Court judges installed during the Obama Administration who've been marinated in the identitarian Progressive philosophy of law and who do not support the free speech culture we operated under for much of the 20th century,

Tommy Time

Been on a bit of a Tommy Emmanuel kick lately.  I'll share with you.

Train To Dusseldorf.  Listen to it roll down the line.



Here's Tommy doing a TED Talk with plenty of guitar playing.  Give it a listen.

A rousing version of House of the Rising Sun with harmonica by Bob Littel.

You've Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley

Born in 1892 in the Mississippi delta country, John Hurt made one set of recordings in 1928.  After the record failed to do much, he returned to working as a sharecropper and playing at occasional parties.  In 1963 musicologists Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins tracked Hurt down and after listening to him play persuaded him to relocate east and over the last three years of his life he played concerts and made several TV appearances.  I don't know what show this clip is from but in the last frame you can see folksinger Pete Seeger.

You've Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley is an old time gospel song.

You've got to walk that lonesome valley
Well you gotta go by yourself
Well there ain't nobody else gonna go there for you
You gotta go there by yourself

The Present Danger

In his new newsletter, Andrew Sullivan, a liberal recently purged from New York Magazine for insufficient Wokeness, provides the best short explanation of the theory threatening liberal democracy.  It's in the form of a review of the soon to be released book by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories.

It is worth reading every word of Sullivan's piece The Roots Of Wokeness.  Some excerpts:

In the mid-2010s, a curious new vocabulary began to unspool itself in our media. A data site, storywrangling.org, which measures the frequency of words in news stories, revealed some remarkable shifts. Terms that had previously been almost entirely obscure suddenly became ubiquitous—and an analysis of the New York Times, using these tools, is a useful example. Looking at stories from 1970 to 2018, several terms came out of nowhere in the past few years to reach sudden new heights of repetition and frequency. Here’s a list of the most successful neologisms: non-binary, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, traumatizing, queer, transphobia, whiteness, mansplaining.

We need to understand that all these words have one thing in common: they are products of an esoteric, academic discipline called critical theory, which has gained extraordinary popularity in elite education in the past few decades, and appears to have reached a cultural tipping point in the middle of the 2010s. Most normal people have never heard of this theory—or rather an interlocking web of theories—that is nonetheless changing the very words we speak and write and the very rationale of the institutions integral to liberal democracy.

After all, the core truth of our condition, this theory argues, is that we live in a system of interlocking oppressions that penalize various identity groups in a society. And all power is zero-sum: you either have power over others or they have power over you. To the extent that men exercise power, for example, women don’t; in so far as straight people wield power, gays don’t; and so on. There is no mutually beneficial, non-zero-sum advancement in this worldview. All power is gained only through some other group’s loss.

And in this worldview, individuals only exist at all as a place where these group identities intersect. You have no independent existence outside these power dynamics. I am never just me. I’m a point where the intersecting identities of white, gay, male, Catholic, immigrant, HIV-positive, cis, and English all somehow collide. You can hear this echoed in the famous words of Ayanna Pressley: “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need any more black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.” An assertion of individuality is, in fact, an attack upon the group and an enabling of oppression.

Truth is always and only a function of power. So, for example, science has no claim on objective truth, because science itself is a cultural construct, created out of power differentials, set up by white cis straight males. And the systems of thought that white cis straight men have historically set up—like liberalism itself—perpetuate themselves, and are passed along unwittingly by people who simply respond to the incentives and traditions of thought that make up the entire power-system, without being aware of it.

What matters is a diversity of identities that can all express the same idea: that liberalism is a con-job. Which is why almost every NYT op-ed now and almost every left-leaning magazine reads exactly alike.

Becoming “woke” to these power dynamics alters your perspective of reality. And so our unprecedentedly multicultural, and multiracial democracy is now described as a mere front for “white supremacy"

The rhetorical trap of critical theory is that it has coopted the cause of inclusion and forced liberals onto the defensive. But liberals have nothing to be defensive about. 

The fight against Wokeness will not be easy as it has infiltrated many of our institutions in academia, government, media and the corporate world.  While I'd been aware of these pernicious doctrine in higher education until recently I'd not realized the extent it has become part of K-12 education in recent years.  Rooting it, and its practictioners, out of these institutions is essential, particularly in education, and we will face much resistance.

Your Future 4: It's Never Good Enough

New York Times classical music critic: "blind auditions" put into place in the classical music world during the 1970s to ensure musicians were selected on merit, not on race, gender or ethnicity, should be banned because orchestras are not still not diverse enough and, as a remedy, quotas instituted based on race, gender and ethnicity.

Lewis & Clark

I've posted this tune by Tommy Emmanuel before but thought it was particularly appropriate for these times.  Creating a musical portrait of the great journey infused with boundless optimism.

Absence Of Wilford Brimley

The great character actor Wilford Brimley has passed at the age of 85. With many memorable film and TV roles, a very funny and active until the end twitter account, a rodeo rider, blacksmith, Marine, security guard for Howard Hughes, and stuntman before his acting career began.

The role that always comes first to mind is as a senior Department of Justice attorney in the outstanding 1981 movie, Absence of Malice (and that film’s observations about the media, the leak games played by bureaucrats, and the havoc it wreaks on innocent people, are even more timely today). It’s too bad that during the last few years the real DOJ didn’t have people like the character Brimley played, at least until Bill Barr showed up.

He’s only in one scene in Absence of Malice but dominated it. Can’t find the full scene on YouTube so here are portions:

James On Dylan

Some of my favorite moments from Bill James Online are when he writes about things other than baseball, or when he writes about baseball in a way that points to large truths about life.  Here he responds to a remark regarding Bob Dylan.  I think him correct in his assessment of Dylan and also in the larger sense.

There's a famous moment when someone asks if he thinks of himself as more a singer or a poet and he says the thinks of himself as more of a song and dance man.

Asked by: marbus1

---

Answered: 7/31/2020

 I know the interview, although I actually don't recall that line.  Could be a different interview, I guess.  Dylan in that interview seems brilliant, but also arrogant and rude.  He is at the end of that period in his youth when he was able to enjoy his success, and is being pulled under by the undertow of his success.   He is starting to resent what other people have made of him--as he did for five to ten years after that and still does to a certain extent, although he has come to terms with it to a certain extent.  

Dylan is in a certain sense like our beloved President, in that he feeds off of negativity.   Whatever he is told he cannot do or should not do, that is what he is GOING to do.   

There is a passage in Hamlet. . . .I am sure I am going to make of mess of this, because I haven't read Hamlet in 40 years. . . .but there is a passage in which one of his young friends, I think, is trying to manipulate Hamlet to some end, I forget what.   Hamlet hands his friend a violin, I think, and says "play this violin".   The friend says that he cannot, and Hamlet says, in essence, "Well then, don't try to play ME.  If you can't even play a goddamned violin you have no business trying to play me."   

I think that is Dylan.  I think he has a sense--not incorrectly--that if you understand him, then you have contained him, that you have become greater than him because you have subsumed all of his abilities, all of his soul.   He doesn't want you to do that.  He doesn't want you to understand him because he doesn't want you to think that you have control of him.  The same with Trump; he does not WANT you to understand him, because he does not want you to be greater than he is.  

**********

    Back later to try to tie up the thought.   I relate to Dylan because I think that he is a flawed and damaged person, in ways that are similar to the ways that I am a flawed and damaged person.  I suspect that many people see that in him, see in him the failings that they recognize in themselves.   

    But also, what Dylan is doing is compatible with my philosophy of the world, as I have tried to explain many times.   The world is vastly more complicated than the human mind; therefore, all efforts to understand the world terminate in wrong answers.   The conservatives are full of shit; the liberals are full of shit.   The Christians don't have it, the Jews don't have it, the atheists don't even have a clue.   The world is simply not something that you can understand.   All your understandings of it are just simplifications, just models of thought.   Plato's allegory of the cave; we just have shadows in mind, two-dimensional things without color which represent real things which are vastly more complicated.   That is how I see the world; that, I think, is also how Dylan sees the world.   When you force the world to make sense, you are simply buying into some into some kind of phony baloney plastic banana explanation that would disintegrate in your hands if you were honest enough to accept that.  

     Trump is also SORT OF like that, in that he doesn't really believe in any of these bullshit explanations that the Republicans and the Democrats like to cling to.  But he is different in that he thinks that NOBODY ELSE understands it, but, being smarter than everybody else, he has it figured out. 

***

     Again trying to finish the thought.  

     But this does not mean that we do not struggle to see the truth.  It means that we CONTINUE to struggle to see the truth, rather than claiming that we have it.   There is truth and there is wisdom in the conservative theory of the world, and there is truth and wisdom in the progressive view, and there is truth and wisdom in Christianity or Judaism or in psychology or philosophy.  But there is no truth or wisdom in atheism; that is merely defeatism.   That is merely accepting defeat.   

     It isn't really that Dylan is a slippery interview.  It is that interviewers are always trying to get out of him something that just isn't there.   They want to know what is the stopping point at which he rests, secure in his understanding, but there is no stopping point.   

Scoring

A few years ago I wrote a post on about a National League Scorecard from 1939 handed down to me from my dad.  Now let's take a look at the American League in the same year, prompted by coming across this photo at Old-Time Baseball Photos.

  That's the Yankee Stadium scoreboard from July 26, 1939 with the game score at bottom left.  You'll notice the Yankees have scored in every inning in their contest against the St Louis Browns, and ended up winning 14-1.  Despite all the runs the game took just under two hours to play, helped along by the pitchers collectively issuing only four walks and striking out a scant three batters.

The scoreboard shows the situation in the top of the 9th with two outs and two strikes on Browns third baseman Harlond Clift who flied to center to end the game.  And notice that there are only two umpires, not four as there would be today, on the field.

If there were ever the perfect circumstances for a team to score in every inning it was that day and those teams.  The 1939 New York Yankees won 106 games, losing only 45, going on to sweep the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series, while the pathetic Browns went 43-111, finishing in last place.  The Yankees entered the day at 63-25, while St Louis held a 24-63 record.  Starting pitcher for the Gothamites was future Hall of Famer Red Ruffing with a 13-3 record and ERA of 2.60, while George Gill took the mound for the Browns, sporting a 1-8 mark with an ERA of 6.78.  The Yankees would win 19 of 22 contests with the Browns in 1939 having already won 13 of 14. For the season, the New York squad had by far the best offense in the league, averaging 6.36 runs per games, while the Brownie pitchers were battered for 6.01 runs on average, the worst figure in the AL.

At the plate, two more future Hall of Famers led the Yankee assault; catcher Bill Dickey went 4-5 with three home runs, while center fielder Joe DiMaggio added three hits including two doubles, ending the day batting .408.

The Yankee lineup was so strong it survived the retirement of Lou Gehrig eight games into the season due to the onset of the disease that would take the life of The Iron Horse two years later.  The Yankees lost Gehrig's last game leaving them tied for first with a 5-3 record and then proceeded to rip off 28 wins in the next 32 contests.  The rest of the season was pretty clear sailing except when facing the Boston Red Sox, against whom they only won 8 of 19 games, including the shocking loss of all five games in a series played at Yankee Stadium in early July.  The only other trouble they encountered was against the best pitcher in the AL, Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians, who beat them three times in three starts.  When playing anyone other than the Red Sox or Feller, the Yanks compiled a ridiculous 98-31 record.

In contrast, the Browns were 4-4 after eight games, only a game behind the Yankees, but losing 31 of their next 40 left them in their usual position of last place.

Reviewing the season in detail I was struck by the details on attendance.  The Yankees were also first in attendance with 859,785 or about 11,200 per game.  However, the difference between attendance on weekends and holidays versus weekdays was much bigger than we see today primarily because there were no night games.  The July 26 contest was on a Wednesday and attracted only 4,843 spectators and the highest attendance for any weekday game during the entire season was only 12,400.  By far the two biggest crowds were the 61,808 who showed up on July 4 to honor Lou Gehrig and the August 6 doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians when 76,753 packed the stands and watched Bob Feller and Mel Harder beat the home town team.

St Louis was last in attendance with only 109,159 for the season or about 1,420 a game.  The low point may have been a three game home series in July against the Washington Senators with attendance of 728, 621, and 867.  Though the last series of the year, a doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox on Sept, 30 with a mere 433 attendees, followed by the season closer the next day with 707 in the stands may have been worse.  The 15,328 fans who paid to watch the Detroit Tigers sweep a doubleheader against the Browns on Sunday, May 14 was the biggest crowd of the season.  St Louis fans became more discouraged as the season progressed with the largest turn out during the final two months on Sunday, August 20 when 4,514 sat in the stands for a game against the Tigers.

Here I Am

We have not had enough Al Green on THC.  Let's remedy that with Here I Am (Come And Take Me).  First saw this performance on a rerun of Soul Train a few years ago.