Flashback, June 1965: Last J. D. Salinger Work Published in His Lifetime

When New Yorker readers received their most recent copy of the magazine 60 years ago this week, they didn’t know they were experiencing something extraordinary: not just a 26,000-word novella by J. D. Salinger that filled 50 pages in that issue, but the last time with a new work by the novelist and short-story writer what would come out in his lifetime.

Considering Salinger’s output for the prior several years, “Hapworth 16, 1924” closed out his career in an appropriate fashion: a letter by Seymour, the eldest son in the Glass family, who had also figured in Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963).

Coming from an upper-class environment, the Glass children grew up privileged, precocious and dysfunctional, a tendency borne out in the 1948 short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” in which a grown-up Seymour commits suicide.

A post of mine six years ago surveyed most of the course of the enigmatic writer’s career, but I didn’t concentrate on “Hapworth 16, 1924,” or what came after: silence.

If you want to encounter this last published story to date by the author of The Catcher in the Rye, you can’t find it in a collection of his work. You can’t even find it in a New Yorker anthology. Instead, you have to go to the actual physical issue of the magazine (June 21, 1965) online (if you have a subscription to the magazine and its archives) or click this YouTube link to listen to a reading.

In a March 2010 article in New York Magazine, Roger Lathbury discussed how his hopes for publishing this elusive title in book form were briefly fanned before dying.

He had sent a letter to Salinger in 1988 proposing that his tiny company, Orchises Press, issue the novella. After a quick note from the author saying he’d consider it, Lathbury heard nothing more for eight years when, out of the blue, he was contacted by Salinger’s literary agency, Harold Ober Associates. If a book were to be issued, he was told, it needed to be done “to exacting standards”—i.e., bound in buckram.

A cordial meeting at Washington’s National Gallery followed between publisher and novelist, with Lathbury acceding to Salinger’s unusual demands (e.g., limited distribution, the author’s name nowhere on the cover).

Then, the deal came unraveled after Lathbury confirmed to the press that the book would be published. Horrified by what he evidently felt was a betrayal of trust, Salinger withdrew his approval.

Six years ago, Salinger’s son Matt and widow Colleen indicated that they had since 2011 been preparing to release for publication stories written by the legendary New Hampshire recluse in the more than four decades after “Hapworth 16, 1924.” But it was an arduous process, Matt told   of the British publication The Guardian:

“[My father] wanted me to pull it together, and because of the scope of the job, he knew it would take a long time. This was somebody who was writing for 50 years without publishing, so that’s a lot of material. ... [But] there’s not a reluctance or a protectiveness: When it’s ready, we’re going to share it.”

Since then, silence—not unlike the sphinx who began it all.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Barney Miller,’ On Getting Off on the Wrong Foot With an Eyewitness)

Detective Ron Harris [played by Ron Glass, pictured]: “Miss Jacobs? Hi, I'm Detective Harris. If you'll have a seat right over there, we'll be right with you.”

Miss Jacobs [played by Ivy Bethune]: "Both of you?”

Harris: “Uh, no, I meant me.”

Miss Jacobs: “Then say what you mean, for heaven's sake!”—Barney Miller, Season 5, Episode 29, “Quo Vadis?” original air date Mar. 2, 1978, teleplay by Tony Sheehan, directed by Alex March

Quote of the Day (Tobias Wolff, Urging a ‘Turn Away From Power to Love’)

“Mend your lives. You have deceived yourselves in the pride of your hearts, and the strength of your arms. Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, thence I will bring you down, says the Lord. Turn away from power to love. Be kind. Do justice. Walk humbly."—American novelist, short-story writer, and memoirist Tobias Wolff, title story from In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981)

Happy birthday to Tobias Wolff, born 80 years ago today in Birmingham, AL!

(The image accompanying this post, showing Tobias Wolff at an event at Kepler's in Menlo Park for his short story collection Our Story Begins, was taken Apr. 25, 2008, by Mark Coggins from San Francisco.)

Quote of the Day (Edmund Burke, on How One Private Citizen Can Avert a Public Crisis)

“How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin by the seasonable energy of a single man! Have we no such man amongst us? I am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind, without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind (at a time when the want of such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is), I say, one such man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, would appear and troop about him.”—Anglo-Saxon statesman and father of conservatism Edmund Burke (1729-1797), “Letter to William Elliot,” May 28, 1795, in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) (1887)

The kind of person envisioned by Burke possesses not just “seasonable energy” but moral stature to influence followers. In our cynical age, who wields such authority?

If there is such a person, I hope he or she will step forward quickly.

Quote of the Day (Bonnie Kristian, on How to Stay Truly Well-Informed)

“Resolve to know just a few stories and to know them well. Your time and attention are limited. You can’t do justice to every issue of the day, and maintaining a broad, shallow pattern of news consumption makes you vulnerable to manipulation and confusion. So this year, pick at most half a dozen big stories to follow carefully and in depth. Read books, not just the latest headlines. Learn key names and legislation. Find trustworthy journalists to keep you up-to-date. Then remember your finitude and ignore everything else.”—American journalist and author Bonnie Kristian quoted by Tish Harrison Warren, “Resolutions That Are Good for the Soul,” The New York Times, Jan. 4, 2023

Quote of the Day (Desiderius Erasmus, on ‘Conniving at Your Friends' Vices’)

“Conniving at your friends' vices, passing them over, being blind to them and deceived by them, even loving and admiring your friends' egregious faults as if they were virtues—does not this seem pretty close to folly?”— Dutch monk and Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), In Praise of Folly (1509)

It also seems pretty close to complicity in an emerging American autocracy.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Karen Armstrong, on Serenity Vs. ‘The Nervous Craving to Promote Yourself’)

“Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate others, draw attention to your unique and special qualities, and ensure that you were first in the pecking order, you experienced an immense peace.”— British religion scholar Karen Armstrong, The Case for God (2009)

This Day in Architectural History (Pierre L'Enfant, Visionary Capital Planner, Dies Lonely Death)

June 14, 1825— Major Pierre L'Enfant, an architect who designed the capital of the new American republic only to miss out on his chance for credit and compensation, died at age 70 in Prince Georges County, Md., destitute and ignored by the seat of government he had helped conceive.

A trained painter who, like the Marquis de Lafayette, left his native France in a burst of youthful idealism to join the American colonies in their fight for freedom, L'Enfant caught the attention of George Washington with his draftsmanship skills while serving in the Continental Army Corps of Engineers. He not only endured the brutal winter at Valley Forge but suffered a grievous leg wound at the Battle of Savannah and spent six months as a prisoner of war after being captured at the Battle of Charleston.

After the war, L’Enfant worked on the insignia and diploma for the Society of Cincinnati and the design for New York’s Federal Hall. In 1789, even before Congress had formally approved a capital district for the nation, L’Enfant was lobbying Washington with his proposal for creating it.

Only 11 months after obtaining his prestigious architectural commission, L’Enfant was off the project—depending on who you believe, having resigned or been fired. In a way, the manner of his departure doesn’t matter, because, following continual clashes with the three supervisory commissioners of the new federal District of Columbia, he would have been gone in just a matter of time.

Perhaps taking a cue from his adored commander in the war, Washington, L’Enfant had neither requested nor been given a salary for his work in planning the district. But, as the years went by and his income from other projects dwindled, he felt the urgent need to press his claims.

It did not help that when he had left, he had annoyed many with his egotism, his overbearing ways, and his failure to adequately communicate his vision. He had ordered the demolition of a property belonging to a prominent resident; delayed producing a map for the sale of city lots; spoke and wrote English poorly; and, when he walked away from the project in a huff, taken all the plans with him.

For his last 15 years, the unmarried and childless L’Enfant lived as a charity case on the estate of his benefactor, William Dudley Digges. Long before he was buried in an unmarked grave on the plantation, he had haunted key figures in the city he designed through rambling letters and appearances, wearing his blue Continental Army uniform, in which he fruitlessly pressed his case for proper remuneration for his work. (He wanted $95,000 for his architectural services; Congress would go no higher than $3,800.)

The fulfillment of L’Enfant’s vision for the city—and his honor for creating it—did not occur until early in the 20^th century. The centennial celebration of Washington’s founding led the McMillan Commission—a panel of architects and planners appointed by the U.S. Senate—to consider how to beautify a metropolis that had fallen victim to decentralized, private land development.

The commission members sought to adapt L’Enfant’s original scheme in the light of the “City Beautiful” movement coming into being.

At the same time, a parallel movement grew to remember L’Enfant in the fashion he craved during life. His remains were exhumed, transported in in a casket draped with the American flag to the U.S. Capitol (where he became the first foreign-born man to lie in state) before being taken by military escort to Arlington National Cemetery. There he was buried overlooking the city he had created.

Some aspects of L’Enfant’s plan, such as a waterfall flowing down Capitol Hill, never came to fruition. But others eventually were adopted, including:

*the seat of government on Capitol Hill;

*the mall connecting Capitol Hill to what he called “The President’s House” and we call the White House;

* a four-quadrant grid, with north-south and east-west streets crossed by grand diagonal avenues, creating public squares and beautiful buildings in what consisted of hills, forests, marshes and plantations.

Quote of the Day (Margaret Chase Smith, on True Strength and Leadership)

“Strength, the American way, is not manifested by threats of criminal prosecution or police state methods. Leadership is not manifested by coercion, even against the resented.” — Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995), Republican Senator from Maine, “Declaration of Conscience,” U.S. Senate speech, June 1, 1950

The Fallen Boys of Summer: RIP, Brian Wilson and Sly Stone

 Just when music fans with indelible memories of the Sixties were getting used to the death of Sly Stone, Brian Wilson followed him within 48 hours.

The conjunction of deaths had an all too sad symmetry: both gone at age 82, with their heyday as pop trailblazers 50 to 60 years behind them, undone by drug abuse, with occasional reappearances in the spotlight that started and electrified admirers.

The critical and commercial peak of each man lasted for about five years. At first, to the wide public that snapped up their hits, most, if not all, of their behavior seemed a matter of the kind of eccentricity that often accompanies artistic genius, like Wilson wearing a fireman’s hat while directing a promo video for “Good Vibrations” or Stone donning long wigs and hats.

For Wilson and Stone, the expectations generated by their success proved too immense to handle. Somewhere along the line eccentricity shaded into instability, then worse: mental illness (Wilson) or homelessness (Stone).

By 1975, canceled concerts and musician departures meant the effective end of Sly’s band. The Beach Boys carried on, even braving multiple changes in popular taste. But at roughly the same time that the Family Stone folded its tents, the Beach Boys became no more than Mike Love’s nostalgic troupe. 

Canceled concerts followed, then isolation from collaborators, a vacuum in their bands’ leadership, and concluding with declines on the pop charts. Their creativity then came only in fits and starts. Wilson admitted to Rolling Stone that he became “too concerned with getting drugs to write songs.”

Eventually, reality fractured Wilson and Stone without destroying them. 

That is not what I remember them at their best, though. Then, while listening to their best records—the Beach Boys’ entire Pet Sounds LP, “Good Vibrations,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Don’t Worry,” or Sly’s “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” or “Everybody is a Star”—I can only marvel at their effortless mastery of sounds and styles.

But, although the Beach Boys and Sly and the Family Stone released records throughout the calendar year, I—and, I suspect, many other fans—think of them overwhelmingly in terms of summer.

Wilson ran with his brother Dennis’ suggestion that the group record songs appealing to the carefree, hot-rod-and-surf culture then springing up in California, giving rise to a whole string of hits: “Little Deuce Coupe,” “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “Surfin’ Safari,” “Surfer Girl.” Stone and his band became indelible parts of the counterculture with their summer 1969 appearances at Woodstock and the Harlem Cultural Festival.

During his glory years, Stone created what sounds like a quintessentially Beach Boys tune: “Hot Fun in the Summertime.” In fact, the Beach Boys, nearly three decades after their time atop the charts, recorded a cover version for their Summer in Paradise CD.

For fans of the two groups, their peaks occurred during our summers, too—when our energy seemed as endless as the world that beckoned to us.

But, for all the aural complexity of their masterpieces, they won the allegiance of listeners with simple, effervescent messages of joy and love.

Decades ago, we could never imagine Wilson and Stone getting old, any more than we could imagine we could. Their bodies may have died, crumbling as much from their Dionysian excesses as from old age, but they live in the endless summer of memory, where youth is forever golden.

(The image of Sly Stone that accompanies this post was taken in Berkeley, CA, on Apr. 16, 1982, by Sarfatims.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Frasier,’ As the Crane Brothers Weigh Filling in During an Emergency)

[An ailing Frasier suggests to his brother Niles that he fill in for him on his psychiatry advice radio call-in show.]

Dr. Niles Crane [played by David Hyde Pierce]: “Frasier, I think that fever of yours is making you delusional.”

Dr. Frasier Crane [played by Kelsey Grammer]: “Oh, no! I filled in for you when you were too sick to meet with your ‘Fear of Intimacy’ group!”

Niles [heading into the bathroom]: “I wasn't sick. They were just getting too close.”—Frasier, Season 1, Episode 23, “Frasier Crane's Day Off,” original air date May 12, 1994, teleplay by Chuck Ranberg and Anne Flett-Giordano, directed by James Burrows

Quote of the Day (Ralph Ellison, on Americans’ ‘Limited Attention to History’)

“At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.” —American novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison (1913-1994), Shadow and Act (1964)

Ours is no longer “the tempo of the motion picture,” or even the 24/7 news cycle, but instead TikTok. Fear for any nation that not only no longer remembers the past but isn’t even inclined to learn about it.

This Day in Literary History (William Styron, Chronicler of Slavery, Holocaust, and Despair, Born)

June 11, 1925— Novelist and essayist William Styron, who wrote powerful fiction about slavery, the military, and the Holocaust—as well as a searing memoir of his own struggle with suicidal depression—was born in Newport News, Va.

Lie Down in Darkness brought the 26-year-old Styron notice as a novelist of abundant narrative gifts and deep moral seriousness, working in Faulkner’s tradition of Southern storytelling. He did not realize until his first bout of mental illness in the mid-1980s that even the heroine of this early effort suffered from this affliction.

As part of a cohort of writers who served in World War II and briefly spent time abroad after its conclusion, he—as well as friends James Jones, Irwin Shaw, Norman Mailer, and Peter Matthiessen—took cues from the “Lost Generation.”

They were, Styron’s youngest daughter Alexandra wrote in her memoir Reading My Father, “Big Male Writers…[who] perpetuated, without apology, the cliché of the gifted, hard drinking, bellicose writer that gave so much of twentieth-century literature a muscular, glamorous aura."

Even as Styron played the bon vivant during summer parties at Martha’s Vineyard, his poet-activist wife Rose and their four children endured his moodiness, angry outbursts, and frequent frustration over his inability to bring his work to as quick and successful conclusion.

In middle age, that age of homage, masking their own attempts to obliterate the shock of their war, proved increasingly unsuccessful and counterproductive. Though Styron’s career lasted four decades, his output was not that extensive—four full-length novels, a book of short stories, a memoir, a play, and an essay collection—finding, at the age of 65, that the “senior partner” to his writing, his drinking, no longer satisfied or spurred his writing.

A childhood in Tidewater region of Virginia was overshadowed by his mother’s decline and death from breast cancer, a struggle that only worsened his father’s melancholy. W.C. Styron’s second marriage left his son with a stepmother he found chilly and unsympathetic.

I briefly described in this post from 14 years ago the controversy surrounding Styron’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the bloodiest slave uprising in antebellum America, The Confessions of Nat Turner.

Many admirers like myself of his forays into the darkest chapters of American life attributed the long gaps between books to perfectionism, a tendency common among authors.

But with Darkness Visible, he described, in shattering detail, how his writer’s block was bound up with a psychic condition that he likened to a storm in his brain.

This memoir provided knowledge and help to others similarly afflicted. But, aside from the trio of novellas collected in Tidewater Morning (1993), Styron was never able to complete his World War II novel, The Way of the Warrior, after Sophie’s Choice in 1979, because his depression returned with a vengeance in the spring of 2000, troubling him till his death six years later.

Quote of the Day (Musician Maurizio Pollini, on Great Art and ‘The Dreams of a Society’)

“I think great art has entirely progressive aspects within it, elements that are somehow outside the detail of the text or even the political opinions of the person who made it. Art itself, if it is really great, has a progressive aspect that is needed by a society, even if it seems absolutely useless in strictly practical terms. In a way art is a little like the dreams of a society. They seem to contribute little, but sleeping and dreaming are vitally important in that a human couldn't live without them, in the same way a society cannot live without art."— Italian pianist and conductor Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024), quoted by Nicholas Wroe, “Maurizio Pollini: A Life in Music,” The Guardian (UK), Dec. 31, 2010

The image of Maurizio Pollini that accompanies this post was taken during a reception in Tokyo on May 17, 2009, by Dundak.

Quote of the Day (C. V. Wedgwood, on Officials With ‘Narrow Hearts and Little Minds’)

“The dismal course of the conflict [i.e., Europe’s "Thirty Years War,” 1618-1648], dragging on from one decade to the next and from one deadlock to the next, seems to me an object lesson on the dangers and disasters which can arise when men of narrow hearts and little minds are in high places.”― English historian C. V. Wedgwood (1910-1997), The Thirty Years War (1938)

Quote of the Day (Francis Sanzaro, on the Benefits of Walking)

“Study after study after study has proved what we feel, intuitively, in our gut: Walking is good for us. Beneficial for our joints and muscles; astute at relieving tension, reducing anxiety and depression; a boon to creativity, likely; slows the aging process, maybe; excellent at prying our screens from our face, definitely.”— Climber, athlete, and author Francis Sanzaro, “The Transcendent Power of Walking,” The New York Times, Sept. 18, 2022

Yes, walking can even feel good on a cold winter day, as seen here in this picture I took from nearly a decade ago in Saddle River County Park in Ridgewood, NJ.

Joke of the Day (Rita Rudner, on Prime Male Candidates for Marriage)

“Men with pierced ears are better prepared for marriage—they've experienced pain and bought jewelry.”—American stand-up comic Rita Rudner quoted by Lawrence Christon, in “Comedy Review: Rita Rudner Is Svelte, Pretty, Original American Princess,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 5, 1988

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Teresa of Avila, on Truth)

“Never affirm anything unless you are sure it is true.” — Spanish nun, mystic and reformer St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Maxims for Her Nuns, in Complete Works of St. Teresa of Avila: Vol.3 (1963) edited by E. Allison Peers

Quote of the Day (William Simon, on an ‘Elitist Approach to Government’)

“The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated.”—American businessman, philanthropist, and Treasury Secretary William Simon (1927-2000), A Time for Truth (1978)

Twenty-five years ago this week, William Simon died at age 73. In both the public and private sectors, he appealed to a generation of free-market conservatives with warnings like the.

At the time, Simon identified this group as liberals who were threatening the foundations of America with a leviathan central government. But, nearly a half-century after the peak of his influence, with this bestseller, it is more apparent that this “elite” consists of financial sector titans who possess the arrogance of Gilded Age robber barons but all too little of the physical infrastructure they built.

I was reminded of Simon this past week after watching Drop Dead City, the recent documentary about New York City’s 1975 bankruptcy crisis. As Gerald Ford’s Treasury Secretary, Simon vehemently opposed bailing out the city, then, after the President reversed his earlier decision refusing aid, held out for more punitive terms, with treasury loans carrying an interest rate of 1 percent higher than the market rate.

All of this was pretty rich considering that, before entering government service in the Nixon Administration, Simon had been an extremely well-compensated bond trader—and he hadn’t raised a peep then about the extremely flimsy financial instruments and budget tricks used by New York City and Governor Nelson Rockefeller, then on a construction spree so wild that he was said to have an “edifice complex.”

It was all of a piece with the position maintained by the financial industry in general in these years, noted Village Voice investigative reporter Jack Newfield:

“The banks never warned the public about excessive borrowing, because they were busy making millions of dollars in commissions on underwriting the city's paper. The bankers made a pusher's profits, while the city slipped into addiction like a junkie. Then the banks suddenly ordered the city to withdraw cold turkey, or mug its own citizens."

A year after leaving the Ford administration to become a consultant for an investment‐banking house, Simon wrote A Time for Truth, part of a boomlet in conservative economics bestsellers that found receptive readers as the GOP sought a return to power, such as Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose and George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty.

He reputation for straight talking with observations that shaded from being outspoken to outrageous (e.g., the “the hostile collectivism unleashed in the 60's” set the stage for Watergate, not Nixon’s paranoia). Some of his more ardent admirers even hoped that Ronald Reagan would select him as his running mate for the 1980 Presidential campaign.

It’s too bad that Simon’s penchant for straight talking wasn’t matched by straight dealing.

No, I’m not saying Simon was a swindler. But it was more than a little disingenuous that, in the 1980s, the treasury secretary who had denounced using other people’s money and debt financing made staggering amounts of money with the same two practices in the private sector.

In 1982, Simon and his partner, using only $330,000 each of their own money, borrowed $79 million from Barclays Bank and General Electric to engineer a leveraged buyout (LBO) of Gibson Greeting Cards. Eighteen months later, they flipped the company, taking it public again and selling it for $270 million.

This transaction was a key moment in the Reagan era upsurge of private equity, the investment strategy of acquiring ownership stakes or control in companies not publicly traded. From a mere 24 in 1980 in the US, it has grown to more than 17,000 today. It was all part of an era of laissez-faire capitalism that, in many ways, has lingered on to today.

The problem was that the U.S. economy moved decisively away from manufacturing, according to Bad Money, by the late political and economics commentator Kevin Phillips. “LBOs and debt speeded manufacturing’s ebb, inasmuch as goods producers constituted a disproportion of companies affected, and when they were stripped of some assets and loaded up with debt, blue-collar jobs and futures were usually at risk.”

You could also call it “Simonomics,” to signify the influence of this conservative icon who hailed the genius of the marketplace. The influence of private equity on politics spread beyond Republicans to Democrats, with donors from these companies contributing to candidates who aligned with conservative positions on taxation, regulation, and economic growth.

Away from his work, Simon was a devout Catholic active in philanthropy, and a foundation he established continues to provide scholarships for inner-city students. One wishes he would have given more prayerful consideration to papal encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum and Mater et Magistra that advocated for social progress and justice.

TV Quote of the Day (Mitch Hedberg, on Turtlenecks)

“I hate turtlenecks, man. A turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy… All day.”—Stand-up comic Mitch Hedberg (1968-2005), appearance on Late Show With David Letterman, original air date Mar. 7, 1997

Quote of the Day (Paul Auster, on Writing by Hand Vs. a Keyboard)

“Keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page. Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.”—American novelist Paul Auster (1947-2024), interviewed by Michael Wood, “The Art of Fiction No. 178,” The Paris Review, Issue 167 (Fall 2003)

The image accompanying this post, of Paul Auster at the 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival, was taken Sept. 16, 2007, by Piktor08.

Quote of the Day (T.S. Eliot, on ‘Half the Harm That is Done in This World’)

“Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.” —American-born British poet-critic-playwright—and Nobel Literature laureate—T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), The Cocktail Party (1950)

Flashback, June 1925: Baseball Hall of Famer Eddie Collins Notches 3,000th Hit

Eddie Collins laid down another marker as perhaps the greatest second basemen in baseball history in early June 1925 by belting a single (and then a second) to center for the 3,000^th hit of his career, sparking the Chicago White Sox to a 12-7 victory over the Detroit Tigers. 

Only five players—Cap Anson, Honus Wagner, Nap Lajoie, Ty Cobb, and Tris Speaker—had achieved this feat before him—and, of the nearly 21,000 known players in the history of the major leagues, only 27 have done so since. Yet remarkably, nobody observed the milestone at the time.

Even now, I have seen or two different dates in this week 100 years ago for when Collins reached that point.

I became interested in Collins for a couple of reasons:

*He preceded Lou Gehrig as a student at my alma mater, Columbia University, who ended up inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame;

*Though captain of the White Sox during the 1919 World Series, he was considered so honest that he wasn’t even approached by any of the ringleaders of the notorious group that threw that series at the behest of gamblers;

*He was, simply, a superb player, so respected that New York Giant manager the best ballplayer I have seen during my career on the diamond.”

If ever there was a “money player”—one not just well-compensated (for his time) during the regular season, but in baseball’s World Series, where additional money and glory accrue—it was Collins. He remains the only non-Yankee to be part of the same team winning five or more World Series.

Consistently over his 25 seasons in the big leagues, he could do nearly all—hit for average, walk, bunt, hit-and-run, steal bases, and play excellent defense. (The only skill he did not possess was hitting home runs, but that was not important in the “deadball” era in which he spent the first half of his career.)

The nickname given Collins was “Cocky.” Joe Posnanski’s 2021 book on what he considers the greatest players of the national pastime, The Baseball 100, insists that “on the field, he was all arrogance and bluster and condescension.” But baseball biographer Jack Kavanagh has written that the nickname came “not because he was arrogant, but because he was filled with confidence based on sheer ability." (Indeed, unlike Pete Rose, he was, by most accounts, oblivious to his assault on the record books.)

Whatever the case, he believed he could rise to any occasion—and he nearly always did.

Intelligence bolstered Collins on and off the diamond, and set him apart from many of his teammates. Not the fastest of players, he developed his prodigious base-stealing prowess by scrutinizing pitchers’ motions, then taking off when he detected the point in their delivery he was waiting for. A left-handed batter, he would slap outside pitches past third base if the defense played him to pull the ball—a discipline that many modern players have never learned.

Masterful at adapting, Collins went from a core member of Connie Mack’s famous “$100,000 Infield” with the Philadelphia Athletics to an equally key member of the Chicago White Sox.

Despite his athletic accomplishments, Collins succeeded in triggering resentment, possessing levels of class and education that teammates from more hard-scrabble backgrounds did not enjoy. He grew up in a comfortable middle-class environment as the son of a railroad freight agent who could afford sending him to boarding school. He had planned to become a lawyer after graduating Columbia until he realized he could make decent money as a baseball player. He was college educated (and Ivy League, at that) in a time when that was beyond not just most big leaguers but most Americans.

The animosity of some A’s teammates first surfaced in 1914, when they suggested that a series of magazine articles he wrote alerted rivals to flaws he detected (such as tipping pitches) and enabled them to correct these.

But this annoyance took on more significant dimensions in 1919 when he rejoined the White Sox after his WWI military service concluded. That team, he later concluded, though more talented even than the Yankees’ immortal 1927 “Murderers’ Row.” was “torn by discord and hatred during much of the '19 season. From the very moment I arrived at training camp from service, I could see something was amiss."

Collins and Ray Schalk headed what baseball maven Bill James called the “gentlemen’s faction,” while Chick Gandil headed a more discontented clique. So loathed by this group was Collins that he was frozen out of pregame infield practice through much of the season.

Nobody ever suggested that Collins was part of the “Black Sox” scheme that autumn. But accounts have varied about how much Collins might have suspected, and what he did to stop it. At one point, Collins observed that he had heard something might be amiss, but dismissed these thoughts as preposterous. In a second account, he said he had approached Charles Comiskey in early September with the rumor, only to be dismissed—a claim that the White Sox denied.

Whatever the case, though Collins expressed some sympathy for Shoeless Joe Jackson for not having enough education to sense he was being manipulated, he supported baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s ironclad ban on the eight group members who knew about the fix.

The White Sox began a slow but inexorable long-term passage from contention that even Collins couldn’t prevent when he served as player-manager from the end of 1924 through 1926. He was then traded back to the A’s, where he concluded his career in 1930.

After retiring as a player, Collins served as general manager of the Boston Red Sox, trading for top-line players like Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Grove before building the team for the long term by spotting and signing future Hall of Famers Bobby Doerr and Ted Williams.

But he only granted a tryout to African-American players when subjected to public pressure—and even then, in 1945, he failed to pursue Jackie Robinson, whose subsequent career demonstrated that he was the same kind of intelligent, aggressive game- and team-changer that Collins had been.

(Dan Holmes' 2017 post from the "Baseball Egg" blog calls Collins "the greatest second baseman of the Deadball Era" and ranks him third overall at that position for all major league history. Many would rank him even higher. 

But Holmes succinctly summarizes his postseason excellence, and offers a delicious piece of trivia: Collins "buried his bats during the off-season in shallow holes in his backyard that he called 'graves' in order to keep them 'lively.'”)

Quote of the Day (Walt Whitman, on ‘Lands To Be Welded Together’)

“Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.” — American poet and editor Walt Whitman (1819-1892), “Passage to India” (1871)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Parks and Recreation,’ on Names and ‘Getting a Little Chummy’)

Ron Swanson [played by Nick Offerman]: "Ann was getting a little chummy. When people get a little too chummy with me, I like to call them by the wrong name to let them know I don't really care about them."— Parks and Recreation, Season 4, Episode 3, “Born and Raised,” original air date Oct. 6, 2011, teleplay by Greg Daniels, Michael Schur, and Aisha Muharrar, directed by Dean Holland

That, folks, is a unique method for throwing shade.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Reinhold Niebuhr, on ‘The Children of Light’)

“The children of light must be armed with the wisdom of the children of darkness but remain free from their malice.” — American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (1944)