Quote of the Day (Ring Lardner, on Baseball)

"Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be either a pitch or a person, stealing is legal, and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or the ball.”—American sportswriter, short-story writer, and playwright Ring Lardner (1885-1933), Lardner on Baseball (2003)

This Day in Baseball History (Death of Harmon Killebrew, Unassuming But Feared Slugger)

May 17, 2011— Harmon Killebrew, as eager-to-please a personality as ever to step onto a baseball diamond, yet so feared for his home run prowess that he earned the nickname “Killer”—died at age 74 of esophageal cancer at his Scottsdale, AZ home.

For most of two decades, it was Killebrew’s misfortune to play—first in Washington, DC, then in Minnesota—for owner Calvin Griffith, who low-balled him at salary time. 

After he retired, misfortune often took a more dire financial form: car dealership and car leasing firms whose failure ultimately, despite his healthy sums from sports memorabilia appearances, pushed him towards bankruptcy in 1993.

Killebrew was honest enough to admit feeling stressed by all of this, but he soldiered on, demonstrating why he was liked and respected not just by fellow baseball players but by sportswriters, who finally elected him to Cooperstown, after three missed tries, in 1984.

Though nothing like the versatile “five-tool player” (hitting for average, hitting for power, speed, arm strength, fielding ability) held up as the beau ideal of everyday players, Killebrew possessed one skill in abundance: slugging home runs.

The 573 round-trippers he amassed at the end of his 22-season career ranked fifth at the time of his retirement. Even that statistic doesn’t indicate the frequency, consistency and force with which he punished the ball.

Starting with the Washington Senators, then moving when the team became the Minnesota Twins before closing out his career after one season with the Kanas City Royals, Killebrew recorded eight 40-home run seasons and 44 multiple home run games. He led the AL in home runs six times, walks four times and RBI three times. 

Named to 13 All-Star teams, he was selected Most Valuable Player for the American League in 1969, when he led the Twins to the American League West Division championship.

Ossie Bluege, the farm system director who scouted and signed him for the Washington Senators, observed: "He hit line drives that put the opposition in jeopardy. And I don't mean infielders, I mean outfielders." 

Griffith took note of these tape-measure homers: “He would hit the ball so blooming high in the sky, they were like a rocket ship going up in the air.”

That bat was what kept Killebrew in the lineup game after game, year after year, despite a glove that most observers of the game thought was suspect. But in his defense, he never spent enough time at one position to master it. 

According to Mark Armour’s post shortly after Killebrew’s death, “he was repeatedly shifted between three defensive positions throughout his career, getting 44% of his starts at first base, 33% at third base, and 22% in left field.”

Off the field, Killebrew’s benevolence sprang from a belief that “The most important reason that we're here on Earth is to love and help one another.” To that end, he became involved in several charitable activities, including:

*helping to establish, in Sun Valley, ID, the Danny Thompson Memorial Golf Tournament (named after a Twins teammate who died of leukemia);

*creating the Harmon Killebrew Signature Classic Golf Tournament to benefit the American Red Cross; and,

*starting the Harmon Killebrew Foundation, a fund-raising charity.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Francis de Sales, on the Need to ‘Keep a Calm, Restful Spirit’)

“Anxiety arises from an unregulated desire to be delivered from any pressing evil, or to obtain some hoped-for good.…Therefore, whensoever you urgently desire to be delivered from any evil, or to attain some good thing, strive above all else to keep a calm, restful spirit, steady your judgement and will, and then go quietly and easily after your object, taking all fitting means to attain thereto. By easily, I do not mean carelessly, but without eagerness, disquietude, or anxiety.” —St. Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church (1567-1622), Introduction to the Devout Life (1609)

Quote of the Day (Zadie Smith, on Exclusivity and ‘The Life of the Few’)

“Don't let your fellow humans be alien to you, and as you get older and perhaps a little less open than you are now, don’t assume that exclusive always and everywhere means better. It may only mean lonelier. There will always be folks hard selling you the life of the few: the private schools, private planes, private islands, private life. They are trying to convince you that hell is other people. Don't believe it. We are far more frequently each other's shelter and correction, the antidote to solipsism, and so many windows on this world.” — Novelist-essayist Zadie Smith, Commencement Speech at the New School, New York, May 23, 2014

This week, we are reading the comments of some university commencement speakers, and it will continue like this for several days or so.

But Ms. Smith’s reminder from a dozen years ago bears keeping in mind, perhaps now more than ever. Barriers of class, ethnicity, race, religion, and politics should not be as rigid as physical structures in blocking access to each other.

The image accompanying this post, of Zadie Smith announcing the five 2010 National Book Critics Circle finalists in fiction, was taken on Jan. 22, 2011, by David Shankbone.

Quote of the Day (W. H. Auden, on Propaganda)

“Propaganda is a monologue which seeks not a response but an echo.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning English-born American poet-critic W. H. Auden (1907-1973), “A Short Defense of Poetry,” originally delivered at the International PEN Conference in Budapest, October 1967, printed in The New York Review of Books, Jan. 30, 1986

Over two days in Beijing this week, two 24/7 practitioners of propaganda, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, met. These leaders of America and China, so used to employing this “monologue” on their countrymen, wielded it on their foreign counterpart.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that these efforts were aimed at establishing their countries as superpowers. Rather, in their blatant legacy-building, these septuagenarian strongmen were engaged in the final rites of their own cults of personality.

TV Quote of the Day (‘SNL,’ Imagining ‘Tucker Carlson’ on Maine)

“Tucker Carlson” [played by Jeremy Culhane] [after criticizing stars at the recent Met costume gala]: “What are we doing? What’s going on? Is this the New York we want to live in, Colin?”

Colin Jost: “Don't you live in, like, Maine?”

“Carlson”: “Yes. And let's talk about Maine. M-a-i-n...e? Huh! Really? The ‘e’ is silent. But who silenced it and why?”

Jost: “What the hell are you talking about? You're talking about the silent ‘e’ in Maine now?”

“Carlson”: “I'm glad you brought it up, Colin.”

Jost: “I didn't.”

“Carlson”: “And what does that ‘e’ stand for? Oh, I know. ‘Euphoria.’” [A poster for the HBO series “Euphoria” flashes on the screen.]

Jost: “No!”

“Carlson”: “Oh, yes. ‘Euphoria.’ And no, I'm not talking about the feeling I get when I press ‘1’ for ‘English.’” [High-pitched, self-satisfied cackling.]—“Weekly Update” segment, Saturday Night Live, Season 51, Episode 18, original air date May 2, 2026

Tucker Carlson has been lampooned before on SNL, but it was almost inevitable that the show would return to him recently, especially considering his podcast apology for past support of Donald Trump.

But his interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times following his much-publicized break with Trump over the Iranian invasion deserved scorn that the show's writers ignored.  It’s astonishing: he can sound sincere, even logical, and before you know it Carlson’s spewing the most bigoted, conspiratorial nonsense.

All this shoots from his mouth with such glib rapidity that he can’t keep track of what he says. So he denied to Garcia-Navarro, for instance, about ever wondering if Trump might be the anti-Christ, even though he said it only a few weeks ago on a readily available recording.

I love how in his devastating impression, Jeremy Culhane captured how what Carlson wants to be a chuckle turns into a cackle. Only I wish he had included one of this demagogue’s most weaselly statements whenever he discusses matters like COVID vaccines: “I’m just asking questions.”

Quote of the Day (Thomas Paine, on ‘The Irresistible Nature of Truth’)

“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks—and all it wants—is the liberty of appearing.”—English-born American pamphleteer and patriot Thomas Paine (1737-1809), The Rights of Man (1791)