Baseball Quiz: 1) What American Leaguer won four batting
titles in the 1920s? [Hint: Ty Cobb won his last in 1919.] 2)
Between 1975 and 1978, what two National Leaguers each won
back-to-back batting titles? Answers below.
Indy Is Back!
Wow, I must admit I’m just a casual racing fan these days, but I
do watch Daytona and the Indy 500 every year and one thing is
now for certain. After a period of upheaval in Indy racing,
following the incredibly stupid split in the sport ten years ago,
Indy is back.
I was watching the Senior PGA playoff (Jay Haas picked up his
first major of any kind), knowing that Indy was winding down,
and quickly switched over to catch the last few laps.
Marco Andretti was in the lead!
Marco Andretti? Geezuz, the grandson of Mario (son of
Michael) is just 19!
Unfortunately, Marco lost on the final patch of straightaway to
Sam Hornish Jr. in the second closest finish in Indy history but
the result has undoubtedly generated a ton of support for the
sport, as now we have a budding rivalry (whether they want it or
not) between 24-year-old Danica Patrick (who had her second
consecutive top ten) and 19-year-old Marco to give fans of
racing a big reason to go to the track.
And you can be sure a future Sports Illustrated cover will feature
them both.
[One other side note. Father Michael Andretti finished 3rd and as
good as the day was for the family, it continued the Andretti jinx.
An Andretti has yet to win since patriarch Mario won all the way
back in 1969.]
Dwight Johnson
In honor of Memorial Day, I present the story of Medal of Honor
winner Dwight Johnson, an African-American from Detroit. It
doesn’t have a nice ending, though, but then a lot of these stories
don’t.
From the book “Medal of Honor: Profiles of America’s Military
Heroes from the Civil War to the Present,” by Allen Mikaelian.
“Johnson went through basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
[The year was 1966.] One of his friends remembered a day in
training when a ‘wise guy’ asked him what NAACP stood for.
Dwight told him, but the white soldier told him he was wrong –
it stood for ‘Niggers Acting As Colored People.’ Witnesses to
this provocation tensed up and waited for a fight, but Johnson
laughed it off.
“Johnson formed lasting friendships in basic training. He got
drunk for the first time in his life in Fort Knox – and then he got
arrested for the first and only time for his drunken behavior. He
was soon sent to Vietnam, where the tank duty to which he had
been assigned brought him close to the four men in his crew. It
was his first time away from home and he was getting along.
“On January 14, 1968, eight days before he was due to ship
home, Specialist First Class Johnson was assigned to a new tank.
He was given no reason for the change. The following day, he
was driving his newly assigned tank in a column near Dak To,
not far from Cambodia. In this column was his old tank, manned
by the soldiers with whom Dwight had spent the last year, and
two other tanks. They were heading toward an ongoing battle
when a series of rockets flew from the trees and a battalion-sized
enemy force appeared from nowhere. Two tanks, including the
one Johnson would have been in, took direct hits, while
Johnson’s tank threw a track. Johnson looked to the side to see
his former tank ablaze.
“ ‘No one who was there could ever forget the sight of this guy
taking on a whole battalion of North Vietnamese soldiers,’ said
one witness. With only a .45 caliber pistol, Johnson leaped from
the safety of his own vehicle and ran through 60 feet of crossfire
to reach the burning tank. He pulled a barely recognizable but
still breathing crew member from the turret and carried him to
the ground. At that moment, the ammunition exploded, turning
the tank inside out. ‘When the tank blew up, Dwight saw the
bodies all burned and black, well, he just sort of cracked up,’ the
witness told a reporter years later.
“He dove into the attack with only his .45. He kept running into
the thick of the fight and firing until his clip was spent. He then
turned around, returned to his tank, got a submachine gun, and
continued the one-man battle. When he ran out of ammunition,
he turned his rifle into a club and killed a Vietcong soldier with
the stock.
“For 30 minutes he continued, firing from the .50 caliber gun
atop his tank, reloading and using his pistol at close range, and
assisting in firing the main gun of his tank. At any time, a bullet
or rocket could have killed him, but one incident during this
sustained action would perpetually remind him of how close he’d
come. Running through the jungle, he came face-to-face with a
Vietcong soldier with his rifle raised to Johnson’s chest. Johnson
watched him pull the trigger, and heard the click of a misfire. He
quickly killed his would-be killer, and continued to fight.
“Dwight killed between five and twenty men that day. No one
knows for sure how many. He wouldn’t stop fighting. He tried
to kill the prisoners. He was held down and given shots of
morphine. They took him away from the battlefield to a hospital
in a straitjacket.
“Six days later, he was back in Detroit.”
Johnson suffered from survivor’s guilt, knowing he would have
died along with his friends in his original tank but for the Army’s
reassignment.
“He also had the experience of what officials in Vietnam called a
‘personal kill.’ Hardly any soldier, no matter how hardened, can
walk away from a face-to-face killing like this without being
affected. On top of that, he had the memory of the enemy’s rifle
pointed at his chest and the sound of the click. Everyone at the
scene of the battle could see that he was highly disturbed by what
he’d just experienced.”
But back home, no one in Johnson’s family or his group of
friends knew what he had really been through. Meanwhile, the
Army, looking for role models, presented him with the Medal of
Honor, with President Lyndon Johnson doing the honors. It was
1968, Johnson had announced he was not going to seek
reelection, but the administration was trying to end its own tour
on a positive note and present the public with the best side
possible.
Dwight Johnson signed a three-year contract to be a recruiter.
After a brief time he knew he was being used. The Army let him
get away with a lot, though, such as not showing up for meetings,
just as long as he made the requisite number of personal
appearances. Over time he wondered if he was doing the right
thing, as the war went from bad to worse. Was he just sending
the guys in his neighborhood who signed up to their death?
Johnson began to lose it and he agreed to a stay at the Valley
Forge Army Hospital in Pennsylvania to undergo psychiatric
treatment. But even though he would sneak off for a few days at
a time (once for about two months) the Army would just let him
off. In fact while he was at Valley Forge they’d drag him out to
make an appearance or two.
Then on April 29, 1971, Johnson, back home in Detroit and
AWOL again (after being given just a three-day pass on March
28), walked into a convenience store, asked for a pack of
cigarettes and offered a dollar for the bill. When the storeowner
opened the register, Johnson pulled a .22 caliber pistol and told
him to step aside. But the owner lunged for the gun when
Johnson reached for the money.
“The pistol went off, twice. One bullet grazed the owner; the
other entered his left arm. The owner reached under the counter
and produced his own gun. He started firing.
“ ‘I hit him with two bullets, but he just stood there, with the gun
in his hand, and said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I kept pulling the
trigger until my gun was empty,’ the storeowner told police.”
Dwight Johnson died on the operating table.
Some 400 attended his funeral in Detroit. Everyone tried to
make sense of what happened.
The Army gave Dwight full military honors at Arlington
National Cemetery on May 6, 1971.
Years later, the Veterans Administration ruled that Johnson was
not able to ‘make a rational decision,’ opening the way to an
increased pension for his wife.
Johnson’s mother later told a reporter from the New York Times,
“Sometimes I wonder if Skip tired of this life and needed
someone else to pull the trigger.”
Stuff
–Desmond Dekker died and boy am I embarrassed. I couldn’t
stand his one Billboard hit, 1969’s “Israelites,” which peaked at
#9. But until reading his obituaries, I have to admit I really
didn’t know who he was. As in…I didn’t know he was the first
reggae superstar.
Dekker was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1941 and grew up
digging the music of Nat King Cole and Jackie Wilson. He then
developed his own sound and “Israelites” was a tribute to the
living conditions in Jamaica.
“Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir.”
Dekker said the tune was “about how hard things were for a lot
of people in Jamaica – downtrodden, like the Israelites that led
Moses to the Promised Land,” Dekker wrote last year. “I was
really saying, don’t give up, things will get better if you just hold
out long enough.”
Dekker also told the Boston Globe in 1996, “It was the right song
at the right time…Many people didn’t understand it, but it had a
nice vibe.” [Personally, I never had a clue what it was about…
but now I’ve been humming the freakin’ thing for days.]
Four years after “Israelite,” Dekker helped open the door for Bob
Marley, who had worked with him as a welder.
–I didn’t know this. Despite all my years working at PIMCO, I
never knew leader Bill Gross was one of the world’s biggest
stamp collectors until reading a piece in this Sunday’s New York
Times.
In what’s being labeled a once-in-a-decade event, Gross has lent
his unique collection to the 2006 World Philatelic Exhibition in
Washington.
Gross’s stash is the only one to contain every United States
stamp issued in the 19th century, including the rare “Z-grill,” a 1-
cent blue stamp from 1868 with an experimental security
impression. Only two are known to exist and Gross traded a
block of four rare misprinted airmail stamps, that he acquired last
year at auction for $3 million, for the Z-grill.
After the show, Gross is lending his collection to the
Smithsonian for a spell.
–Baseball Bits:
Arizona’s Brandon Webb is 8-0, though it shouldn’t be too much
of a surprise why he has suddenly blossomed into the best pitcher
in the league, and all of baseball, thus far in 2006. Two years
ago he walked 119 in 208 innings. Thus far this season he has
walked only 9 in 82 innings. He faces the Mets on Wednesday
in a match-up with Pedro as it now stands.
Congratulations to Derek Jeter on his 2,000th hit. Jeter is only
31, so there is every reason to believe he will finish up with at
least 3,500….3,514 is #5 on the all-time list, Tris Speaker. Hell,
assuming the obvious health issue, averaging 180 hits the next 10
seasons he’d approach 4,000 and these days there’s no reason to
believe he won’t be out there at age 40 or 41.
What New Yorkers love about Jeter is he’s the real deal…a flat
out winner. Boy, I hate the Yankees, but not a week goes by
where Jeter doesn’t put his greatness on display; compared to
that guy next to him, A-Rod, who’s a fraud.
Have you taken a look at outfielder Shawn Green lately? This is
a guy who between 1998 and 2002 hit 35 or more home runs in
four of five seasons. Since then, though, he has slammed 19, 28,
22 and just 4 in 166 at bats (thru Sun.) this season. Green is only
33 and still quite capable, witness his .335 batting average. But
you don’t think he was on the juice during his slugger years, do
you?
Suddenly the Detroit Tigers are 35-15. Just three years ago they
finished 43-119 as your editor took a road trip to catch a few
games, looking to be part of history. [Alas, the Tigers swept the
last three games of the season, if I remember correctly, and
didn’t best the Mets” 1962, 40-120 mark.]
Depending on the next few months’ progress, I just may have to
head out to Kansas City to see the Royals. K.C. is off to one of
the worst starts in history; the third fastest to fall 25 games below
.500 and currently 11-37.
–I love this stat. The Dallas Mavericks are 23-0 when Josh
Howard scores 20. [Mavs up on Suns, 2-1]
–The other day I wrote of a historic event from 1976, when
American wines defeated French brands at the Judgment of
Paris. Well in a rematch, America came up the victor again in a
blind taste-testing.
Alan Hamilton and David Sanderson reported for the London
Times.
“The nose-off began in 1976, when Steven Spurrier, an
Englishman who owned a wine shop in the French capital,
invited a panel of French experts to a blind tasting of some of
their own classic vintages against some Californian reds. To the
horror of the entire French wine industry, the Americans won
hands down.”
So Spurrier and a group of British, French and American tasters
re-enacted the event by holding simultaneous tests in Napa
Valley and London, as well as Paris. [Wine obviously hasn’t
hurt Spurrier’s health, it would appear.]
“Despite the French tasters, many of whom had taken part in the
original tasting, ‘expecting the downfall’ of the American
vineyards, they had to admit that the harmony of the Californian
cabernets had beaten them again. Judges on both continents gave
top honours to a 1971 Ridge Monte Bello cabernet from Napa
Valley. Four Californian reds occupied the next placings before
the highest-rated Bordeaux, a 1970 Chateau MoutonRothschild,
came in at sixth.”
–At least 15 climbers have died this year ascending (and
descending) Mount Everest but one in particular has ignited the
wrath of Sir Edmund Hillary (the first to climb Everest in 1953).
Over 40 climbers passed David Sharp, 34, who was running out
of oxygen after reaching the summit but failed to give him aid.
Sharp later died in a snow cave.
Hillary decried the “callous” modern climbers. “Our expedition
would never have considered leaving a man like that. We were
very much aware of our responsibilities to look after any person
on the mountain who was in distress.”
Sir Edmund said it was clear the priority of the other climbers
was to get to the top. “David Sharp’s welfare was secondary.
There is no doubt at all that there has been a lowering of
standards in recent years….They don’t give a damn for anybody
else who may be in distress and it doesn’t impress me at all that
they leave someone lying under a rock to die.” [London Times]
You can make a similar statement about much of modern life
these days. It’s the “What’s in it for me” era and the hell with
everyone else.
–This is absurd. Next year in Connecticut, if a high school
football team beats its opponent by more than 50 points the
coach faces a one week suspension. Running up the score is an
unsportsmanlike activity, according to state athletic officials.
Last year, Jack Cochran’s New London High School defeated
one opponent 90-0 and another 60-0, which appears to be the
source of the ruling.
But let offenders face the wrath of the court of public opinion (as
in that New York high school girl scoring a zillion points, and
setting a new national record, in a basketball game last winter).
Don’t legislate it.
I went to high school when the great Willie Wilson was there and
we beat a few opponents by more than 50, yet I never saw it as
running up the score. The guy could simply score a touchdown
from anywhere on the field.
Yup, this Connecticut rule is just a further sign that we’re raising
a nation of wimps. When these kids get in the real world, losing
a football game 56-0 will be the least of their problems.
[Of course there are a-holes in the coaching ranks, I’ll admit, but
it’s easy to spot them.]
–We note the passing of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward at the way
too young age of 39 after a seven-year bout with brain cancer.
Heyward, like Willie Wilson, was a high school football legend
in New Jersey who went on to greatness at Pitt and then a solid
career in the NFL, where he rushed for 4,300 yards from 1988-
98.
–Remember Timmy Smith, the running back for the Redskins
who came out of nowhere to rush for over 200 yards in the 1988
Super Bowl? He did zippo outside of that lone effort and has
now been sentenced to 2 ½ years for cocaine distribution.
–Bad enough for horse racing that Barbaro’s competitive career
ended in such tragic fashion. But to compound matters,
Preakness winner Bernardini won’t run in the Belmont Stakes,
the third leg of the Triple Crown. Bernardini would have
attracted a few fans to the track to see if his solid run in the
Preakness (after not entering the Kentucky Derby) was for real,
but now there is zero reason to go to the Belmont and fight the
traffic, etc.
–Greg Norman and his wife of 25 years, Laura, are divorcing.
“The Palm Beach Post reported that if the Normans do not file an
uncontested divorce with a prearranged settlement, Florida law
would permit Laura to seek a settlement beyond half of Greg’s
estimated $500 million fortune.” [GolfWeek]
Top 3 songs for the week 5/29/71: #1 “Brown Sugar” (The
Rolling Stones) #2 “Joy To The World” (Three Dog Night) #3
“Never Can Say Goodbye” (The Jackson 5)…and…#5 “It Don’t
Come Easy” (Ringo Starr) #8 “Sweet And Innocent” (Donny
Osmond…just had to show the contrast with “Brown Sugar”)
Baseball Quiz Answers: 1) Hall of Famer Harry Heilmann
(Detroit) won four batting titles in the 1920s. He had 2,660 hits,
1,537 RBI and a .342 career average. 2) Bill Madlock (1975-76,
Chicago) and Dave Parker (1977-78, Pittsburgh) won batting
titles.
Oh, and Barry Bonds hit #715.
Next Bar Chat, Thursday.
