Contrast Agent

I have about 2100 songs in my iTune library,  many of them organized into playlists, but I often like listening via shuffle to see what the algorithm reveals.  Recently these two songs came up in sequence, tunes about as different as can be musically and lyrically.  I enjoy them both, which is why they're in my library, but the only other thing they have in common was both were released in the early 1970s.

First up was James Brown's Down and Out in New York City.  And then came The Fountain of Salmacis from Nursery Cryme, one of the best albums from Genesis.  The former a tale of contemporary New York, the latter the retelling of an ancient Greek myth.

Numidia

The Roman province of Numidia included that portion of modern-day Algeria north of the Sahara.  Incorporated within the Roman state between 46 BC and 40 AD, the province remained Roman until the 430 when conquered by the Vandals.  A century later the Romans of Byzantium expelled the Vandal, ruling for 150 years until the Arabs arrived at the end of the 7th century.

The most recent edition of Antigone, the online magazine of the Classical World, contains an entertaining travelogue by two brothers, recent visitors to Algeria who viewed many of the Roman ruins still extant in the former province.

 

Their conclusion:

Quite simply, the Algerian people are warm, the infrastructure superb, and after Pompeii and Ostia in Italy, the Roman sites at Djémila and Timgad (“the Pompeii of Africa”) are the best in the world. The seaside remains at Tipasa aren’t far behind.

Best of all, we had these places nearly to ourselves. Walking through the sprawling, preserved Roman cities in Algeria may well be a 21^st-century traveler’s single best opportunity to imagine life in the Empire two thousand years ago.

They go on to note:

After Italy and maybe Spain, Algeria – known as Numidia in Classical antiquity – produced more Latin literature than any other region. Latin was spoken there for at least six centuries, and maybe even ten. St Augustine lived in Hippo and Apuleius came from M’Daourouch, while Fronto (who taught Marcus Aurelius), Lactantius, and Minucius Felix resided in Cirta (modern Constantine, a spectacular city of gorges and, yes, named for the Emperor). The Augustan writer Juba II ruled Mauretania from the coastal city of Caesarea (modern Cherchell), where Latin grammarian extraordinaire Priscian later grew up. Martianus Capella, Nonius Marcellus, and maybe even Suetonius were Algerians too. (By contrast, in antiquity France produced only two Latin authors – the historian Pompeius Trogus and, er, Ausonius – while England, Switzerland, Belgium, and Germany produced none at all.)

For all of its ancient wonders, Algeria is not an easy place to visit:

Tourist visas are hard to come by: Mike’s took four months to process and required repeated emails, phone calls, and two in-person visits to the New York consulate to obtain. The economy runs on cash, and mostly small bills: good luck closing your wallet. No credit cards, no ATMs for foreign withdrawals, and the official exchange rate is half what traders on the hardly-concealed black market offer. (Guys with bundles of cash, proficient with their phones’ calculator apps, hang around public squares in downtown Algiers.) Even in five-star hotels, you can’t charge to the room – meals and all else have to be paid in cash each time. There’s virtually nothing in the way of tourist infrastructure, either. There’s excellent travel infrastructure – wonderful highways, good restaurants, WiFi everywhere, and upscale lodging – but for tourists specifically, nada.

I don't think I'll be making it there, so I quite enjoyed the article and photos.

 

 

The Catch

Reading about Willie Mays after his passing, I came across this account of what Vin Scully called Willie's greatest catch, and it is not what is now called The Catch - Willie's catch of Vic Wertz's 400+ foot rocket in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series.  Indeed, it is what Willie also thought was his greatest catch and it happened in Ebbets Field in a game against the Dodgers.

It took place at the Dodger's home opener on April 18, 1952.  Willie was beginning his sophomore season, and a month later he was scheduled to report for military service, missing the rest of that season and all of the '53 campaign.

The Giants jumped on starter Clem Labine, scoring five runs in the top of the 1st inning, but the Dodgers slowly chipped away and entered the bottom of the 7th trailing 6-4.  The first two batters were easy, Roy Campanella popped out and Duke Snider hit a one-hopper back to pitcher Dave Koslo.  Then things fell apart; Andy Pafko homered to deep left field on a 0-2 pitch, Gil Hodges singled, and Koslo issued a 4 pitch walk to Carl Furillo.

Bobby Morgan came to the plate, pinch hitting for Carl Erskine.  On the first pitch, the light hitting Morgan hit a long line drive to left center that looked certain to be at least a double, more likely a triple, giving the Dodgers the lead.  Here's Scully's description:

In those days the Ebbets Field warning track was gravel, and the wall concrete.  It was a sinking liner, and in my mind, it would score two runs.  But Willie runs as fast as he could and dives for it with his body parallel to the ground, fully stretched out.  He catches the ball and literally bounces off the gravel and into the base of the wall, rolling over on his back with both hands on his chest.  I'll never forget Henry Thompson, the left fielder for the Giants, walking over, bending down, and taking the ball out of Willie's glove and showing everyone he made the catch.  It was incredible.

This is the AP account of the catch, saying Mays bounced twice on the gravel.

A Society for American Baseball Research article on the catch describes other contemporaneous reactions:

Morgan ripped a liner into left-center-field and Mays began his sprint toward the wall. According to a reporter from Baltimore’s Afro-American, “[I]t was doubtful that anyone in the park, even the most optimistic of the Giant rooters, entertained a hope that (Mays) would catch it.”5

Mays “grabbed Morgan’s blast with a desperation lunge.”6 Dick Young wrote that Mays made “another one of his description-defying catches.” The second-year player “left his feet. He actually bounced, crashed into the wall on the first hop, and rolled over on his back. But he held the ball.”7 Young’s colleague at the New York Daily News, Dana Mozley, insisted “Willie Mays just had no right” to catch Morgan’s liner.8

After the game, the talk turned more to Mays’ catch than Pafko’s heroics. “The greatest catch I ever saw in my life,” [Dodger Pee Wee] Reese said. “He came with it. I know that. There’s no argument. It was in his glove when he turned over, and Thomson went over and picked it out.”10

Brooklyn Eagle sportwriter Harold Burr, in an article titled "Mays’ Catch Greatest, Dodgers, Giants Agree”, wrote “It looked as if the best Willie could do with the drive was to hold it to the double.”

Unfortunately, we have no film of the catch.  Based on Mays' later recollection and accounts of others it seems like Willie momentarily lost consciousness when he bounced into the wall.  Accounts have players of both sides running out to center field after the catch.  Willie remembered waking up and seeing Jackie Robinson and Leo Durocher (Giants' manager) standing over him, Jackie to see if he really caught the ball and Leo to make sure he was okay.

Mays stayed in the game, but struck out in his next two at bats.  In the bottom of the 8th, Jackie Robinson hit a home run to tie the game, and the Dodgers won in the 12th when Pafko hit his second round tripper.

Late in life, Willie said: “That (the catch off Morgan) was a good catch, better than the World Series catch. I believe my best catch.”

Bobby Morgan died in his hometown, Oklahoma City, on June 1, 2023, a month short of his 97th birthday.  At the time, he was one of only two surviving members of the Boys of Summer, the Dodgers' pennant winning teams of 1952 and 1953.  With his passing, and that of Carl Erskine in April of this year, they are all gone.  

During his time with the Dodgers, Bobby was a utility infielder known for his fielding, not hitting, though he had a good eye at the plate, drawing a lot of walks.  You can read about Bobby and some of the stories of his time in baseball here, here, and here.  

Willie Mays was the last living player from the Giants' pennant winning 1951 squad.

Goodbye Willie

He was the first athlete I knew by name because my dad spoke so frequently about him.  His major league debut was when I was three months old, so he's been around my entire life. Willie Mays is gone at 93.

My dad's favorite ballplayer and mine.  Willie was part of our shared lives and conversations over the years.  Dad passed ten years ago, also at the age of 93, and since then, every time I see, read, or think about Willie, I think about my father.  I knew Willie was declining but this is hard news nonetheless.

The Hogback

I didn't understand what I was driving on for the first few hundred feet.  The realization that it was a two-lane road with drop off to canyons on both sides got my adrenaline going.  The big curve at the end really threw me.  Until going back to look for any YouTube videos on that section of highway I didn't realize it had a name - The Hogback.

In Different Perspectives I mentioned Utah Highway 12 so thought I'd provide you with the visuals of The Hogback, situated between the small towns of Escalante (pop. 800) and Boulder (pop. 200).

The first video is done by drone.  The second is from a car driving from Boulder to Escalante (we were driving in the opposite direction).  Enjoy.

George Arrives At St Mary's

(Ruth, on right)

On this date in 1902, seven year old George Herman Ruth arrives at St Mary's Industrial School for Boys.  It was at St Mary's that little George would be introduced to organized baseball under the instruction of Father Matthias and it was directly from St Mary's that George would be signed and go to the Baltimore Orioles of the International League in 1914.  Later that year his contract would be purchased by the Boston Red Sox.

The child was escorted to the school by a local police officer.  Whether beat cop Harry Birmingham was asked to do a favor for a friend, George Ruth Sr, is unknown, but the boy was not in formal police custody. Unlike his parents, Birmingham would occasionally visit George at St Mary's.  According to Jane Leavy's biography of the Babe, The Big Fella, Birmingham later told his children and grandchildren:

He felt sorry for the boy, living above a bar . . .

Leavy quotes him telling a Baltimore sportswriter years later:

"I remember that Babe was a little rascal.  Although he was not a bad boy - just mischievous, and no more so than any other boys his age.  He certainly never gave the police any trouble.  But his father decided to send him to St Mary's because he just couldn't make him mind at home."

Though George's sister claimed he was sent to St Mary's because he refused to go to school, he was too young at the time to be attending school.  His homelife was chaotic.  George and his sister were the only survivors of six siblings, the other four dying a very young ages.  His parents had a fractured relationship with his father eventually suing for divorce on grounds of adultery.  His father died in a street brawl during Babe's teunure with the Red Sox.

For most of the next twelve years, St Mary's was George's home.  Everything he did was communal, sleeping, eating, school. 

St Mary's stood on a hill on what was then the rural outskirts of Baltimore.   Built by the Roman Catholic Church, the building was five stories tall.   According to Leavy, St Mary's:

. . . was unique among the religious institutions create to care for what Baltimore industrialist Alex Brown called 'the broken wreckage of industrial society', because it was funded by Baltimore City and the state of Maryland.  Founded by the archbishop as a refuge for Catholic boys who faced bias in public institutions, St Mary's became a nondenominational public charity eight years later, when it was incorporated by the city and state as a place to settle vagrant and homeless boys.

Its remit was expanded beyond the homeless and orphans in 1882 when a state statute allowed parents to commit a child they deemed beyond their control and were required to designate the school's superintendent as the child's legal guardian.  That is how George Ruth came to St Mary's.  Or perhaps not.  No court order has ever been found, and the Babe's sister remembers that her father paid tuition while George was at the school.

The Xaverian Brothers who ran the school instilled a minimal sense of discipline in George and harnessed his energy into playing baseball.  There were many Brothers who played a role in his development but it was Brother Matthias to whom Ruth gave the most credit, calling him "the greatest man I've ever known".

Throughout his life Babe Ruth helped support St Mary's, making substantial financial gifts as well as organizing and sponsoring fundraising activities.  He also helped many of his fellow inmates who befriended him during those years.  And the New York Yankees called on the Xaverians of St Mary's on several occasions to visit Babe during one of his wild periods in order to adjust his behavior.

A River Runs Through It

The Colorado River, to be precise.

Rights of American states and Mexico to the waters of the Colorado has been a contentious issue for decades.  With the U.S., the upstream states (Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah) have different interests than the downstream states (California, Arizona, and Nevada) and the downstream states are quarreling among themselves.  It's become particularly contentious because of the prolonged drought over the past two decades.

Currently, water rights for each state are determined by the 1922 Colorado River Compact.  Unfortunately, the water levels used as the basis for the allocation occurred during an unusual period of heavy rainfall from 1905 through 1917.  How unusual is described in a recent research paper by NASA scientists on the "Causes and Dynamics of the Early 20th Century North American Pluvial".

From the opening of the paper:

The 'Early 20th Century North American Pluvial' refers to a period of enhanced moisture availability across Western North America that occurred in the first two decades of the century and often delimited by 1905 to 1917. It has a peculiar and interesting history as it directly preceded the 1922 Colorado River Compact that began the legal division of Colorado River flow between states. The division was based on several years of measured flow that, because they occurred during the Pluvial, were much higher than anything that has occurred since. 

They conclude that the Pluvial was not part of the "normal" boom and drought cycle in the Southwest, rather it was an extraordinary event as they report:

To conclude, the early 20th Century pluvial was a unique event in the last 500 years of North America hydroclimate history and it is a great irony that it just so happened to precede the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Unlike the great North America droughts, which can almost entirely be understood in terms of reductions of precipitation, the Pluvial arose from a combination of wet conditions in the Southwest and cool temperatures across the continent. Also unlike the droughts it is not well simulated by a model forced by historical SSTs indicating less oceanic control over it than is typical for droughts. An important topic of research needs to be to explain the cold temperatures during 1905-17. Nonetheless western North America has steadily warmed since the Pluvial which, together with the fact that models predict much of the Southwest and Plains to dry as a consequence of how rising greenhouse gases impact the hydrological cycle, makes it exceedingly unlikely that similar moist conditions will ever return.

Different Perspectives

We recently took a five night trip to northern Arizona and southern Utah to see some sights we've not yet been to.  After staying at La Posada in Winslow, we drove to the Hopi Mesas.  From there we went through Tuba City on Navajo land, to catch U.S. 89, taking the highway through Page (where we stayed overnight) and into Utah, through the town of Kaneb, up to its junction with Utah 12 near Bryce Canyon.  This is a beautifully scenic drive but Utah 12 is even better.

Initially you go through the Red Canyon (which is REALLY red), then past Bryce Canyon National Park, which we visited, and on to the small town of Escalante, in the middle of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, where we stayed for the night at the Entrada Escalante Lodge which we highly recommend.

The next morning we drove to the even smaller town of Boulder.  On the way Utah 12 goes through some striking canyon lands where you drive with no guardrails and there's even a short stretch when the canyon is on both sides of the road.  From Boulder we drove over the 9600 foot Boulder Mountain Pass with its stunning views to the east and south.

After getting to the end of Utah 12 we went to Capitol Reef National Park, another worthwhile place to visit.  From there we headed onto Utah 95, encountering at its start a sign reading "No services next 125 miles".  They were telling the truth.  Making it through 95 we stayed in Bluff.  The next morning it was back onto the Navajo lands to the Canyon de Chelly National Monument.  We drove the north and south rim roads, and plan to return to take the guided tour into the canyon.  Here are some photos:

 About 200 Navajo still live in the canyon, without electricity or running water.  It's been the heart of the Navajo homeland since the tribe migrated from the Great Plains in the 15th and 16th centuries.  It is also the reason for a stark difference in tribal narratives that we encountered in our journey.

The Hopi reservation is completely surrounded by the Navajo lands and there is an historical tension between the tribes.  The Hopi are a Pueblo people, liked descended from the ancient peoples that long inhabited the Colorado Plateau.  The Navajo are late comers to the region, a pastoral and raiding people, whose targets included the Hopi.  You can still see this today in little things.  The Hopi follow Arizona time, while the Navajo use Mountain Time.  The day we left Winslow, we started in AZ time, while traversing the Navajo land there was an hour time difference, but then entering the Hopi lands the time switched back.  After leaving the mesas, we reentered Navajo land with an hour time change and then, upon reaching Page we went back to AZ time.

For the Navajo, Kit Carson, of whom I've written before, is considered a villain.  Carson commanded the military force which, in 1864, put an end to Navajo raiding by entering the canyon and destroying the peach orchards and corn fields so painstakingly planted and maintained by the tribe, forcing their surrender, and then escorting thousands of Navajo to a miserable reservation in eastern New Mexico.  Five years later the Navajo were allowed to return.

However, earlier on our trip we visited the Hopi Cultural Center on Second Mesa (photos not permitted on Hopi land).  The Center displayed a very long historical timeline of the Hopi people from about 500AD to today.  The entry for the 1860s reads (I'm paraphrasing here), "Kit Carson finally stopped the Navajo from raiding us!".

Molly Tuttle

Last week saw Molly Tuttle and her band, Golden Highway. at the Musical Instruments Museum Theater, a 299 seat venue with splendid acoustics.  Molly is part of the new bluegrass thing along with Billy Strings and Sierra Hull.  A terrific show with a mixture of originals, bluegrass covers (lovely version of Shady Grove, for instance) and covers of rock, featuring She's A Rainbow by the Stones and Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit.  None of the covers were straight; all introduced original elements.  Couldn't take photos but here's a video from earlier in the tour.

Saying Goodbye

Powerful photograph of Babe Ruth standing in front of Lou Gehrig’ casket, paying his last respects to his former Yankees teammate. pic.twitter.com/o7L1QjCB2e

— Baseball’s Greatest Moments (@BBGreatMoments) April 21, 2024

 

Lou Gehrig died on June 2, 1941, after ending his consecutive game streak in May 1939.  Until recently I'd never seen this photo of Babe Ruth at the funeral, gazing at his teammate in an open casket - dead at the age of 37.  Babe would die only seven years later at 53.