Author: Mike Schilling

July 8, 1958: Casey Stengel Testifies Before Congress

Well, I will tell you, I got a little concerned yesterday in the first three innings when I say the three players I had gotten rid of and I said when I lost nine what am I going to do and when I had a couple of my players. I thought so great of that did not do so good up to the sixth inning I was more confused but I finally had to go and call on a young man in Baltimore that we don’t own and the Yankees don’t own him, and he is going pretty good, and I would actually have to tell you that I think we are more the Greta Garbo type now from success.

Casey Stengel Testimony : July 8, 1958 Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearing, Baseball Almanac

Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries – New York Times

The worsening of tidal flooding in American coastal communities is largely a consequence of greenhouse gases from human activity, and the problem will grow far worse in coming decades, scientists reported Monday.

Those emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, are causing the ocean to rise at the fastest rate since at least the founding of ancient Rome, the scientists said. They added that in the absence of human emissions, the ocean surface would be rising less rapidly and might even be falling.

New York Times February 22, 2016: Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries

July 4, 1939: Lou Gehrig’s Speech

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies – that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.

Lou Gehrig, speaking at Yankee Stadium

(audio)

September 29, 1954: Wille Mays’s Catch

I’m playing a shallow center field. It’s the eighth inning, the score is tied and I don’t want Larry Doby scoring from second base. One run could be the ball game. The ballgame could be the series. You never know. Wertz hits it. A solid sound. I learned a lot from the sound of the ball on the bat. Always did. I could tell from the sound whether to come in or go back. This time I’m going back, a long way back, but there is no doubt in my mind. I am going to catch this ball. I turn and run for the bleachers. But I got it. Maybe you didn’t know that but I knew it. Soon as it got hit, I knew I’d catch this ball. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was Larry Doby on second base. On a deep fly to center field at the Polo Grounds, a runner could score all the way from second. I’ve done that myself and more than once. So if I make the catch, which I will, and Larry scores from second, they still get the run that puts them ahead. All the time I’m running back, I’m thinking, ‘Willie, you’ve got to get this ball back into the infield.’ I run fifty or seventy-five yards – right to the warning track- and I take the ball a little toward my left shoulder. Suppose I stop and turn and throw. I will get nothing on the ball. No momentum going into my throw. What I have to do is this: after I make the catch, turn. Put all my momentum into that turn. To keep my momentum, to get it working for me, I have to turn very hard and short and throw the ball from exactly the point I caught it. The momentum goes into my turn and up through my legs and into my throw. Larry Doby ran to third, but he couldn’t score. Al Rosen didn’t even advance from first. All the while I was running back, I was planning how to get off that throw. Then some of them wrote, I made that throw by instinct.

Wille Mays in The Era, 1947-1957, by Roger Kahn

Rubio Clarifies Whether He Thinks Bill Clinton Is Responsible For 9/11 – TPM

“Well, I believe that if Osama bin Laden had been killed, Al Qaeda as an organization would not have grown to the point where it could have conducted 9/11,” Rubio said. “And my argument was, no, the responsibility of 9/11 falls on the fact that Al Qaeda was allowed to grow and prosper and the decision was not made to take out the leader when the chance existed to do so.”

Todd asked him if that meant he was not blaming Clinton for 9/11.

“No, he made a decision not to take out its leader, which I think ended up being there, the situation that happened with 9/11. And as this was a response to an attack, that the reason why 9/11 happened was because of George W. Bush,” Rubio said. “And my argument is, if you’re going to ascribe blame, don’t blame George W. Bush, blame a decision that was made years earlier, not to take out bin Laden when the opportunity presented itself.”

“So I’m actually still not quite clear,” Todd said. “Are you putting 9/11 on Bill Clinton?”

“No, I’m putting it on his decision not to take out bin Laden, absolutely,” Rubio said. “This is what happens when you have a chance to take out the leader of a terrorist organization, and you failed to do so. And the results are something like 9/11.”

Rubio Clarifies Whether He Thinks Bill Clinton Is Responsible For 9/11 from Talking Points Meme

Josh Marshall: Playthings – TPM

But I think I know why McConnell is right out of the gate with a principle he seemingly has no need to explicitly invoke: to normalize the behavior, to stake out the maximalist position early in order to allow it time to become accepted as a given. And more than this, it makes sense for him to do so while the White House is bound by normative rules of propriety and decency to focus on statements and gestures of mourning rather than political brinksmanship.

As I said, there’s no debate here. It’s just a power-play, a refusal to fulfill a straightforward constitutional duty, which no one, not the President or anyone else, has the power to prevent. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

From Playthings: Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo