Sandy Leaves

I was fortunate to watch in person many of the great National League hurlers of the 1960s - Spahn, Marichal, Drysdale, Gibson, Seaver, but never saw the greatest of them all, Sandy Koufax.  Fifty five years ago this month, Sandy announced his retirement at the age of 30, due to severe elbow problems.  Though I knew about it at the time, I'd never seen his actual announcement until a couple of days ago.  

In response to questions, Sandy is quite blunt about why he is retiring:

"I don't know if cortisone is good for you or not but to take a shot every other ball game is more than I wanted to do.  To walk around with a constant upset stomach because of the pills, and to be high half the time during the game because you are taking painkillers, I don't want to have to do that."

In response to a question about the impact of losing income from his decision:

"Well, the loss of income.  Let's put it this way.  If there was a man who did not have use of one of his arms and you told him it would cost a lot of money to buy back that use, he'd give them every dime he had."

Today In 1966: Choosing his health over the money, Los Angeles #Dodgers superstar pitcher Sandy Koufax shocks the baseball world by announcing his retirement at the age of 30! #MLB #Legend #Baseball #History pic.twitter.com/yTmChEwSZe

— Baseball by BSmile (@BSmile) November 18, 2021

During the 1964 season, Koufax experienced severe pain in his left elbow, a condition for which he was told there was no cure.  Prior to the 1965 season he asked his doctor to tell him when his condition got to the point where continuing to pitch would cause him to lose the use of his arm.  During the 1965 and 1966 seasons, in which he went 26-8 and 27-9, leading the Dodgers to the World Series in both years, Koufax's regimen included cortisone shots, powerful steroids, taking two codeine pills (one before each start and one in the 5th inning), and smearing his body with an ointment with high levels of capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers.  At the end of the 1966 season he was advised that to continue pitching would cause permanent damage to his arm.

Sandy Koufax turns 86 on December 30.

Harnessing Talents

From Caesar's Footprints by Bijan Omrani.

The Gauls were renowned in Rome for their eloquence, cleverness and bravery: what better way of harnessing their talents than to give them access to a system of education that revered rhetorical excellence as the apogee of its attainment, before paving the path for Gauls to enter the Roman system of government and the Roman courts?

Moreover, like Roman gods and Roman religion, the Roman identity was not exclusive.  Just as long as the reverence due to Caesar and Rome was paid, Roman citizenship, or else presence as a resident in the empire, allowed loyalties and other identities.  Ausonius himself (1), the most Roman of Gauls, wrote that 'I love Bordeaux, Rome I venerate; in this, I am a citizen, in both a consul; here was my cradle, there my curule chair'.(2)

The genius of Rome was to allow both identities to coexist, and to show that acquiescence to Rome not only benefited an individual in a material sense or in the Roman scheme of things, but also allowed that individual to succeed better within the framework of his original cultural identity; to be a more committed Roman gave a Gallic aristocrat the chance to be better and more successful within the old hierarchy of Gallic society as well.

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(1) Decimius Magnus Ausonius (310-395) was a native of Bordeaux and poet, teacher, and tutor to the Emperor Gratian, who named him consul.

(2) A curule chair was the foldable and transportable chair used by high Roman dignitaries.

Have A Bite

Babe Ruth being fed Thanksgiving dinner by a group of orphans pic.twitter.com/O5FF304Bk3

— Baseball In Pics (@baseballinpix) November 25, 2021

 

Yes, it's obviously staged but does reflect the real Babe Ruth.  According to his biographers, including his most recent, Jane Leavy, the Babe felt a real bond with children, particularly orphans, most likely because of the nearly twelve years he spent at the St Mary's Industrial School for boys in Baltimore, a reformatory and orphanage.  Babe himself was not an orphan.  His parents placed him at St Mary's when he was seven because he was ungovernable even as a small child, though it should be added that both his parents were rough characters themselves.  

It was at St Mary's that Babe came under the tutelage of Brother Matthias Boutlier, a huge man and Prefect of Discipline at the school.  Brother Matthias was also the baseball coach and the only man who could ever instill at least some minimal sense of discipline on Babe, who admired him beyond all other men in his life.  Once Babe became famous and well-paid he became a steady and large financial supporter of St Mary's.

For that reason, Babe regularly visited orphanages as he traveled, both in and out of baseball season.  According to Leavy, despite the advice of his business manager, to whom he usually deferred, Babe made it a practice to visit black, as well as white, orphanages.

A Thanksgiving Proclamation

Washington, D.C.

October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. 

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. 

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State

 

Well-Laid Plans

My friend in Bucharest, Titus Techera, just had a piece published on the Steve Martin - John Candy movie from the 80s, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which makes for a good read as we reach Thanksgiving.  Some excerpts;

Still, Steve Martin is the protagonist of the story. For all his failures, he does get home for Thanksgiving. He eventually learns that throwing his money around is not enough, that he should share in some way what he most loves in his life­—his family. At that point, the movie becomes quite Christian and reveals that the whole ordeal only made Martin miserable and terrified so as to teach him a moral lesson, to remind him how precious that love is and how much human beings always need one another. Yes, successful men of business give America its character, people can’t be free unless they work for a living. But without charity, there’s no America in the first place, and charity is not about rich people paying poor people, it’s about admitting we are all human beings. That’s what Candy shows, a love of other people based on equality.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a comedy. It’s not work and it’s not religion either, but it reminds us that we need to put the two together. By ruining the well-laid plans of a cautious man, the story reveals that caution is not enough, that the only safety we have, ultimately, is in being together. The worst thing, the movie suggests, is loneliness, not knowing that there is anyone who would love you or help you in your time of need. Tocqueville called this individualism, a sickness of the heart, a fearful retreat from America as people come to feel too small to be able to achieve anything. A shared faith that reminds us of humanity’s greatness may be needed to adventure together.

Read the whole thing.

Atrani From The Sea

By Josef Rebell (1787-1828).  Born in Vienna, from 1811 to 1815 Rebell was the Court painter for Joachim Murat, King of Naples and Napoleon's brother in law.  Rebell's time as court painter ended when Murat was overthrown and executed after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

Atrani is a small town on the Amalfi Coast, just east of the town of Amalfi.  The painting shows Atrani when it was a poor town clinging to the cliff side.  Later in the 19th century, the Amalfi Coast Drive was built along the coast, starting the area's path toward being a destination tourist spot.  This is what modern Atrani looks like.  On the cliff above Atrani is the beautiful town of Ravello, perched 1,000 feet above the sea, about which I've written before.