by John Walters

Quality of Life Vs Inequality of Life*

*The judges will not accept “The Morgue The Merrier”

We give thumbs ups to yesterday’s New York Times columns by David Brooks and Paul Krugman. Let’s begin with the latter, whose column “On The Economics of Not Dying” asks, “What good is increasing the GDP if it kills you?”

Valid query, and one we’ve asked here. Here’s where Krugman’s column really gets to the heart of it:

What, after all, is the economy’s purpose? If your answer is something like, “To generate incomes that let people buy things,” you’re getting it wrong — money isn’t the ultimate goal; it’s just a means to an end, namely, improving the quality of life.

Now, money matters: There is a clear relationship between income and life satisfaction. But it’s not the only thing that matters. In particular, you know what also makes a major contribution to the quality of life? Not dying.

And when we take the value of not dying into account, the rush to reopen looks like a really bad idea, even in terms of economics properly understood.

As for Brooks, his “If We Had A Real Leader” paints the sharp contrast to how Lincoln and other leaders (RFK, Bush 43, Obama, Reagan, Churchill) handled major crises or tragedies and how our president right now is handling this one. Tangentially, Brooks mentioned the value of a solid education. I enjoyed this line:

“… it was the job of a school, as one headmaster put it, to produce young people who would be “acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.”

I think we know that Trump would grope an unwilling female in the cloak room at a dance and he’d row off with all the provisions in case of a shipwreck.

Mine Kampf

Every day we research our sports year item and we like to begin by researching the year itself in general. And every day we’ve noticed something crazy: a hell of a lot of Americans died in mine disasters in the latter half of the 19th century.

And it doesn’t get any better in the 20th century.

Between 1839 and today there have been, by my one-time count, 72 mine disasters that claimed AT LEAST 49 lives. At least. The worst was Monongah, W. Va., in 1907, that killed 362 people. And that’s not counting all the many, many, many more mine disasters/accidents that killed fewer than 49 people.

But here’s something worth remembering. Between 1839 and now there have probably been fewer mining deaths in the USA, or about the same total, as there have been coronavirus deaths in this country since late February.

In fact, 1,223 more Americans died yesterday from Covid-19. It’s incredible how cavalier everyone has gotten about it.

$274,000 —- A Month!

But let’s return to the previous headline, which I did not address head-on: “Quality of Life vs. Inequality of Life.”

A couple weeks ago AT&T chairman Randall Stephenson, 59, announced that he was retiring. He’s walking away with $64 MILLION in pension on top of what he’s already earned, which averages out the past three years to $30 million per. And none of the above includes his $20 million in stock and options from AT&T.

It probably will not surprise you to learn that earlier this spring Stephenson’s, whose AT&T owns CNN and WarnerMedia, announced earlier this spring that the company will likely be cutting plenty of jobs. But, you know, no one’s taking his golden goose.

When I see the people in Minneapolis rioting and lighting fires, justifiably as an outpouring of complete outrage at the injustice of the system, I wonder why the rest of us aren’t joining them.

Why we’re not marching to Stephenson’s estate, swimming across the moat and storming the property like Lee Marvin & Co. in The Dirty Dozen, and locking him and his family in a cellar and just tossing grenades down the air vents.

Frankly, I’d be fine with that. $274,000 a month. Five families could live off that per year. And he doesn’t even need it. Every year his pension could take care of 60 families. That’s a subdivision.

There’s that scene from Key Largo where Humphrey Bogart reminds Edward G. Robinson’s gangster that he had plenty enough to live off for multiple lifetimes, so why is he getting back in the game and courting danger? And the G. man replies, “I want more.”

And that is the disease of America.

Black To The Future

So we were reading about the tragic death of Greg Floyd (I mean, yeah, “forgery in progress” is dire but really…) in Minneapolis and about the Central Park Birder and oh yeah, let’s not forget Ahmaud Arbery, and it got us to thinking: What if black athletes started their own league (I can already hear Mike saying, “They did; it’s called the NBA.”)

But honestly, what would happen if black athletes banded together and formed blacks-only basketball and football leagues? And if they all agreed to not play in the NBA and NFL? Can you imagine how that would upend the power structure in America, particularly as regards the latter league?

Admittedly, I can’t see NBA players, who have an enlightened commissioner and a pretty good thing going, doing this. But what about the NFL? Imagine players instituting a blacks-only league and most importantly, OWNING IT THEMSELVES. And imagine none of them playing in the NFL. The most important thing here would be exclusive black ownership and then exclusively black players.

The NFL is currently the biggest TV show in prime-time. It’s also overwhelmingly black. Want to improve the way your people are treated by police and others? Take this gargantuan first step. It would be incredibly bold and dangerous, and an entire generation of current stars would need to put their careers on the line (which is why it most likely won’t happen). But imagine if they did. Imagine if you could expunge old white racist, massage-seeking billionaires from professional football.

That would be a day of amazing grace.

And by the way, as Don Lemon pointed out last night on CNN, maybe THIS is why Colin Kaepernick, who would be welcome in said league, was taking a knee.

Sports Year 1900

On January 19 the American League is founded in Philadelphia with eight franchises (here in the order in which they’d finish): the Chicago White Stockings, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Indianapolis Hoosiers, the Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Blues, Cleveland Lake Shores, Buffalo Bisons, Minneapolis Millers.

The National League, meanwhile, contracts from 12 to eight teams, eliminating franchises in Baltimore, Cleveland, Washington and Louisville. The last city will never return to the Major Leagues. At least not yet.

***

On February 27, F.C. Bayern is founded in Munich. It will go on to become one of the premier clubs in all of Europe, i.e. on the planet. Not three weeks letter F.C. Ajax, which will become the greatest Dutch club of all, is founded in Amsterdam.

***

The 1900 Olympics are staged in Paris, beginning on May 14 and running until October 28th. This as part of the World’s Fair. Nineteen events are held, including automobile and motorcycle racing, ballooning, a swimming obstacle race and underwater swimming. In shooting events, live pigeons were used.

While the French won the most overall medals, American Alvin Kraenzlein was the standout star, taking first place in the 60-meter dash, the 110-meter hurdles, the 200-m hurdles and the long jump. After winning the final even, Kraenzlein was punched in the face by his rival and fellow American, Myer Prinstein. See, there was a Sunday final and preliminaries before. Prinstein, a Jew who attended Syracuse, was forbidden by school officials to compete on Sunday, when the final was held. Kraenzlein was Catholic and attended the University of Wisconsin.

Apparently, both men had agreed in a fit of sportsmanship beforehand not to compete on Sunday and let the results stand as they were. Each had held the world record within the past two years. On Sunday Kraenzlein decided to compete and Prinstein, who settled for silver, smashed him in the face.

The following day Prinstein took gold in the triple jump. He would win gold in both events in 1904.

***

In the Olympic marathon, three American runner protest the French runners finishing one-two, claiming they took a short cut. The French harriers were the only ones with no mud on their clothing. Fast and exceptionally clean.

In the Boston Marathon, Canadian Jack Caffery wins the first of his consecutive Bostons with a time of 2:39 (25-mile course, reminder). He will die in 1919 at age 39 from the Spanish flu.

***

by John Walters

Squawk On The Wild Side

Despite their make-nice this morning, there’s no hiding yesterday’s contretemps on CNBC’s “Squawk On The Street.” Joe Kernen “questioned the questions” that Andrew Ross Sorkin called him on it. And then he took him to task for “panicking” about everything. That’s when Sorkin had enough.

“JOSEPH! JOSEPH! YOU DIDN’T PANIC ABOUT ANYTHING!” Sorkin said, . “JOSEPH, 100,000 PEOPLE DIED! 100,000 PEOPLE DIED, JOE! AND ALL YOU DID WAS TRY TO DO WAS HELP YOUR FRIEND THE PRESIDENT!

“That’s what you did! Every single morning on this show! Every single morning on this show! You used and abused your position, Joe!”

Well, Joe’s friend the president certainly knows a little about using and abusing your position. But that’s what Sorkin got wrong. Joe is not the president’s friend; he’s his sycophant. And as soon as Kernen says anything contrary to the president’s desires (which may be never), they’re not friends anymore.

So Who’s Right?

Kernen argues, correctly, that if no one had done anything with their stock portfolio in early March they’d pretty much be back where they started. Correct. But using that logic, why does anyone tune in to CNBC in the first place? If you didn’t touch your stock portfolio in October of 2008, most of your companies would eventually have gotten back to where they were within five years.

So, yeah, don’ panic but how much time are you willing to sit on that very, very hot seat as you see your personal worth plunge thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more?

Meanwhile, Sorkin’s questions break down this way: If the barometric pressure is this, and the relative humidity is that, and the very, very dark storm clouds are directly overhead and the temperature suddenly drops, then why isn’t it raining?

And the answer, we believe, is that the stock market does not take the pulse of the economy, it takes the pulse of the wealthy. And for whatever reasons the truly wealthy in this country, the hedge-funders and the billionaires and the CEOs, want Trump to succeed. So they’re priming the market to bolster the Dow.

But it’s more than that. The 100,000 deaths of mostly non-work force people are not a detriment, but a benefit. Meanwhile, the pandemic is a built-in excuse to trim the workforce. Finally, when the going gets tough, the government floats them “pay me back when you feel like it” loans of OUR tax dollars. But as for those of us who paid those taxes, sorry, we don’t believe in handouts.

Insidious, eh?

We still believe in reality. Unemployment in double-digits, 100,000 dead and no reason to think we won’t reach 200,000 before Christmas, unrest with China, a suffering middle-class. Eventually the system becomes overwhelmed, no? To capitulate now, from the mega-wealthy, would be to abandon Trump. They’ve got an interesting decision to make in the next few months.

Meanwhile, the Dow is up 1,000 points in the past week.

Killer On The Loose

Meanwhile, we were grimly amused by CNN’s (and others’) coverage of the manhunt surrounding a U Conn student who murdered two people over the Memorial Day weekend. He was eventually apprehended without incident yesterday in Maryland.

But come on, now. Two people! Two!

Donald Trump has killed tens of thousands of people in the past three months. He’s right up there with the Viet Cong, who in all fairness were never this efficient.

A Columbia University study released last week found that had the US started social distancing a week earlier, it could have prevented the loss of at least 36,000 lives. That’s just so far. And that’s just if we’d begun earlier in March, not even in February or even January, back when Trump said, “We have it totally under control.” I think he told his friend Joe Kernen that.

Had the U.S. followed the lead of, ironically, China back in early February, the number of U.S. deaths would’ve been more than halved. But that’s back when this all was a “Democratic hoax,” remember? At least 36,000 fewer dead Americans if Trump had just behaved with the common sense of your local grocery store clerk. And CNN’s wasting my time with a college kid who bumped off two people.

Do the news, Joe. I’m begging you, do the news.

Wendell Wrote A Book!

A memoir, really. MH pal and contributor Wendell Barnhouse has penned a book about his 40 years in sports journalism. It has a felicitous title: “Bylines, Datelines and Deadlines: A Memoir of a Sportswriter’s Life” and is available FOR FREE right here. So please, if you have the time, give it a read and maybe even send our friend some words of insight on what he’s written.

Sports Year 1899

Sewanee: The University of the South, becomes the first southern gridiron power (“S-E-W!”), finishing 12-0. The small Tennessee Episcopal liberal arts school’s undefeated season is more impressive when you learn that the Tigers undertook a road trip in which they shut out five opponents in six days. The names of those foes: Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, LSU, Mississippi.

Even after this feat—remember, not just wins but shutouts, all on the road, all in one week, by a combined score of 91-0— Kirk Herbstreit went on GameDay and said that he still doubted Sewanee could beat Ohio State, which is why he had the Buckeyes ranked higher in his poll.

****

Lawrence Brignolia, a 6th-grade dropout, becomes the heaviest (161 pounds) champion in the history of (to this day, I mean) the Boston Marathon. Brignolia had run the first two Bostons, finishing in 4:05 (following a hearty breakfast) in the inaugural 1897 event and then 2:55 the following year. This year’s heavy gale-like headwinds suited Brignolia’s stocky frame and he finished in 2:54, despited turning his ankle on a loose stone just a mile from the finish line and having to walk-jog afterward.

***

In the Midwest, the University of Kansas plays its first basketball game, coached by one James Naismith. They lose 16-5 to the Kansas City YMCA.

***

The Cleveland Spiders set a record for Major League incompetence (and perhaps incontinence, but who knows?) by losing 134 of their 154 games. Cleveland’s 20-134 record remains the sub-standard for futility for all Major League baseball teams and the Spiders are dropped from the National League in the offseason when it contracts from 12 to 8 teams. Bring on the Browns!

***

Harry Vardon wins his third of a record six British Open championships. His last will come in 1914. The son of a French mom and a Brit dad, Vardon was born on the isle of Jersey betwixt the two nations. We like to think that his mom was a French maid and that pops had one of those randy curlicue mustaches that always seemed to get men into trouble back then, but we’re only supposing. We don’t know.

by John Walters

Black Birder, White Lies*

*The judges will also accept “Unleashed Fury”, “Bye Bye Black Birding” and “Stupor Fly,” but not “Pigeon Woo” or “Dog Day Afternoon”

As frequent (but not frequent enough) MH collaborator Katie M. put it last night, “Central Park dog lady really blew that ‘meet cute’.” Katie’s husband, Mike M., and I just wondered when Eric Dickerson changed his name and became a birder. She got what she deserved and he’ll either get a nature show on NatGeo (“Cooper’s Coop”) or a reality dating show (“Christian Cooper’s Love Nest”) out of it.

Mask-erade

Must we really weigh in on this? We’re so tired of Trump. Can we stop calling him an idiot and a fool and a racist and just agree that he’s fat and that he’s mastered the art of manipulating Dumb America? Really, what’s left to say?

SportsWorld

The abeyance of live sporting events plus our needing to prepare for a class we’re teaching has led to an uptick in sports books being consumed. We just finished SportsWorld by Robert Lipsyte, published in 1976. Lipsyte was the New York Times’ wonder boy writer and then columnist in the 1960s and by the time he hung it up (at least as a full-time employee of the NYT) in the early ’70s, he was still shy of his 40th birthday.

Having read Lipsyte’s book, an examination of American society and its relationship through the prism of various teams (the Mets!) or revolutionary athletes (Muhammad Ali), with whom Lipsyte had a close and long relationship, I’m somewhat embarrassed. In the way a military recruit is given a haircut and a box of condoms upon reporting to boot camp, I feel that every young (and naive) sportswriter/broadcaster should be handed a copy of this book. And you may not agree with everything Lipsyte puts down here, but it should make you think.

Dirty Boulevard

Okay, not every street in Manhattan looked like this in the 1970s, but enough did. And we remember. When our dad took us to a Knicks game, parking at the Port Authority, we’d clutch his hand tightly as we navigated those nine block from the PA to MSG. It’s a concrete jungle out there.

Recent reports tell of a mass exodus from NYC as high-six and seven-figure earners migrate, mostly northeast to Fairfield County, Conn. (and some even to Devil’s Gulch, AZ, if you count the two numbers to the right of the decimal point). That will bring rents down and in a way return NYC to Lou Reed’s “Dirty Boulevard,” which was written in 1989 but better portrays the NYC of the Taxi Driver and Mean Streets ’70s. Some old-timers are actually looking forward to flushing the city of all that d-bag hedge fund money. Remember, the Law of Unintended Consequences is always here to add irony and surprise to any event.

Sports Year 1898

On New Year’s Day New York City annexes land from surrounding counties and splits itself into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island (the last annexation will prove totally unnecessary and it should have been yielded to Jersey). We don’t yet know what this has to do with sports, but it seems kind of a big deal.

On the last day of this year, Joseph Vacher, “the French Ripper,” is executed. Vacher was a French serial killer who murdered between a dozen and two dozen people, mostly isolated shepherds tending their flocks. Previously Vacher had twice attempted to kill himself, unsuccessfully. Try, try again! Not “try again.”

***

In Chicago, the Morgan Athletic Club is founded. You know it now as the Arizona Cardinals. This is pro football’s oldest extant team and, with no disrespect meant to the Detroit Lions, its most enduringly mediocre.

***

The second running of the Boston Marathon is won by, and we’re not making this up, Ronald MacDonald. You imagine Mayor McCheese putting the medal around his neck. A Canadian who had relocated to Boston and attended Boston College, MacDonald cut 13 minutes off the previous year’s time, finishing in 2:42.

****

In his first Major League at-bat, Bill Dugglesby, a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, hits a grand slam. The feat will not be repeated until 2005.

***

In Reading, Pa., Lizzie Arlington plays one inning to become the first female to play in a professional organized baseball game (for the Reading Coal Heavers of the Atlantic League). Arlington heaved not coal but pitches, giving up two hits and a walk but no runs in relief.

***

The U.S. Amateur Athletic Union organizes the first national basketball championship (we wonder if any teams west of Chicago or south of Baltimore participated) and it is won by the 23rd Street YMCA from Manhattan.

***

By riding Sly Fox to victory in the Preakness, Willie Simms, a black jockey, becomes the first of his ilk to ride horses to victory in all three Triple Crown races. The “event” was not yet known as the Triple Crown and Simms did not accomplish this feat (this hoof?) all in the same year, though he did ride the winners of both the Kentucky Derby (Plaudit) and the Preakness (Sly Fox… so it was also a quick Sly Fox) in this year.

***

In motor racing, the Paris-Amsterdam-Paris Trail is run over the course of one week in July and covers roughly 900 miles. In this same year, and not in this race, the first automobile fatality occurs in England when a motorist loses control of his vehicle on a downhill and it slams into a tree. Days later, Geico, Progressive, Liberty, All-State and State Farm all release their first commercials.

by John Walters

Sick’s Figures*

*The judges will also accept “The We’s Dumb of Crowds”

In the past two days U.S. coronavirus deaths have slowed (hmm), failing to top 1,000 each day. And so as I type this we’re still not at 100,000, not officially, but we will be by day’s end. And the Trump White House gets to disconnect their handling of the pandemic from Memorial Day, at least officially.

Going forward, it’s going to be difficult to trust the numbers. As this Op-Ed, written by a New York physician who recently lost her mother shows, the president will do anything in his power to stymie the death toll. And we’ve all learned what that means. Here’s another example.

Area Man Who Wrote ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ Has One

Queen guitarist Brian May, who penned the song that would also be the title track of the band’s 1974 album, had a decent sense of humor about it all after a full recovery that included the installation of three stents. “Hmm,” May wrote on the ‘gram, “‘Sheer heart attack, eh? I think I always worried a little bit about that album title.”

Ironically, much of that album was written by May in a hospital, as he’d been struck down with an illness in the midst of a tour opening in Europe for Mott The Hoople. Apparently, all the young dudes could not carry the news.

Oddly, that song was written for MTH by… David Bowie (totally sounds like him, no?). Which gets us back to May and his pulse feeling under pressure.

When To Reopen The Golden Dome

Fr. John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, wrote a coronavirus-related Op-Ed in this morning’s New York Times that is (surprise!) far more insightful and intelligent than anything that has spewed from the president’s mouth (related to this disease or, well, ever). You should read it.

One thing with which I strongly agree with the good reverend: Online classes are fine and all, but the experience of being on campus, of interacting with fellow students in class and more importantly, in the dorms, is invaluable. This past weekend six of us college buddies were texting back and forth and I was laughing out loud at the messages. Thirty years later, our sophomoric senses of humor still titillates me.

Also, burying the lede somewhat, Notre Dame is going to have students return two weeks earlier in August and send them home at Thanksgiving through the Christmas break. I could potentially see this becoming a thing even after the pandemic. We shall see.

As for the football team, Jenkins sounds rarin’ to go. Not to have anywhere near a full stadium, but rarin’ to play a schedule. Remember, Clemson is slated to visit the first week of November.

Murder In Broad Daylight

The black man below, who continually told the white police officer above, “I can’t breathe,” died minutes after this video was shot. Apparently of asphyxiation. The police officer ignored bystanders requests to get off the man’s neck.

It should be noted that the police officers were responding to a call of “a forgery in progress.” The man did resist arrest, but if I were a black man I probably would, too. Look at what happens once they get the cuffs on you.

Just insane. This is what they teach at the academy?

Sports Year 1897

On April 19, the first Boston Marathon is staged. The event is the brainchild of John Graham, who had been the Olympic team manager in Athens the year before and been inspired by the marathon staged there (from Marathon to Athens). Graham is a member of the Boston Athletic Association.

The distance is 24 1/2 miles and of the 15 entrants, only 10 will finish. The winner, John McDermott, crosses the finish line in 2:55:10. He walked much of the final 5 miles but still was the only man to break 3 hours. McDermott had won the only previous marathon run on U.S. soil, the year before (from Stamford, Conn., to the Bronx, New York), which we didn’t know about or we would have noted yesterday. You can read about it here.

***

On St. Patrick’s Day, Bob Fitzsimmons scores a 14th-round knockout of James Corbett in the first heavyweight title bout captured on film.

***

The first French Open women’s singles event takes place and is won by Francoise Masson.

***

Not a sports moment, but in West Virginia the case of a man charged with the murder of his wife results in his conviction with the help of “spectral evidence.”

Also this year: the electron is discovered, aspirin is first synthesized and Bram Stoker’s book about a weird count from Transylvania is released.

by John Walters

We Salute You

Before ‘Murica became your favorite football team, hundreds of thousands of men and women (mostly young… and mostly men) gave their lives fighting for this country. The service, as the mission, was humble.

We watched parts of the Memorial Day concert from the nation’s capital on Sunday evening and we really liked the message from Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Whoever wrote it deserves a promotion.

Memorial Day 100K

Ordinarily, some of the nation’s more renowned 10-K runs take place on Memorial Day weekend (we think of the Bolder Boulder in Colorado, which we’d like to do some day). This year Memorial Day will live in infamy as the U.S.A. turns over the death odometer: there’s a very excellent chance that the 100,000th official death from Covid-19 will be recorded today (likely that number was passed awhile ago but when you have a president who, you know, doesn’t like to test, it’s hard to know what the actual figure is).

Never fear: today President Trump will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Cougher.

As an aside, New York state has nearly 24,000 deaths from Covid-19 since early March, more than twice as many as any other state. You know where Donald Trump has not been this spring? New York. Not at all. He’s visited Arizona and Michigan. But New York? Navaho. Must be cuz he has no history there.

Downsizing America

So there was the front page of the Sunday New York Times staring at you, with the names of 1,000 U.S. coronavirus casualties (if you looked closely, there was a dude (or lady marmalade) from New Orleans, aged 44, named “Black N Mild.” We loved that. Can you imagine one of the editors asking, “Can we sub in someone else here? Nope? I mean, there’s only like 99,000 more candidates but you wanna stick with ‘Black N Mild’? Okay.“)

So we counted down the first 100 names on the list from the hyperlink above and here’s was what we found: 66 of those names were of people who were 66 or older, or above retirement age. I don’t know how representative those 100 are of the 1,000 and how representative the 1,000 are of all the victims, but let’s assume they are an accurate representation.

You’ve got two-thirds of the Covid-19 victims being Americans of retirement age which, don’t tell grandma, means that they are citizens who are more or less a drain on the federal budget. Sure, they’ve worked all of their lives and paid taxes, but now they’re collecting Social Security and using Medicare. Which may explain the two reasons why the White House doesn’t worry too much about the virus: 1) If you just let businesses reopen, it’s actually an economic windfall (“Soylent Green is people!”) to be rid of all these old pensioners and 2) most everyone of working age, even if they do contract it, will not die. Unofficially, in our count of 100 dead, we doubt we saw more than five victims who were under the age of 40.

The White House we have is backed by very wealthy CEOs and Wall Streeters who think nothing of downsizing their workforce in order to become more profitable. And our administration fully supports them. So why would anyone be surprised that this White House is fully in favor of downsizing America, of getting rid of those who don’t produce, of culling the herd? What they’re not actually (at least not often) saying out loud but are thinking is, This coronavirus is a godsend! Pandemic? No, panacea.

TCM Today

You’ve got a full day of greatness today. We’ll begin with the best, at 8 p.m., The Best Years Of Our Lives. We now count this among our all-time top five. A sublimely rendered film on a topic that could’ve been maudlin or saccharine but never is. Theresa Wright sparkles and Dana Andrews deserved an Oscar.

Next best, at 11:15 a.m., The Great Escape. Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, etc.

Better than you might think: Where Eagles Dare, from 1968, starring Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton.

And not as great as it might’ve been, The Dirty Dozen, which is sort of a WW2 take, in a way, on The Magnificent Seven. Except that our ruffian protagonists are playing offense, not defense.

Don’t miss The Best Years Of Our Lives if you’ve not yet seen it. And you’ll love The Great Escape if you like guy flicks.

Sports Year 1896

The Crash At Crush

This really happened, and even though it is not strictly a sports event, we’re including it. In the latter half of the 19th century, no accident was as potentially horrific to the average person as a train wreck (maybe a coal-mining disaster, but that only befell coal miners). In fact, in July of this year 50 people died when two trains collided just west of Atlantic City.

So William Crush, a railroad general passenger agent, hit upon the idea to have two trains collide for fun. Just to see what it was like. Who wouldn’t want to see that? Turns out, 40,000 people turned out in a designated spot about 14 miles north of Waco, Texas, on September 15 to watch. This made the spot, designated for the day as “Crush” after our boy William, the second-most populated town in Texas that day. It also illustrated the dire need for Major League Baseball to expand beyond St. Louis.

Anyway, the two empty trains (save for the conductors) raced toward one another. Then the conductors leaped out, with each train going roughly 45 m.p.h. which, if we remember out Doppler Effect correctly, means that they hit at a combined speed of 90 m.p.h.

The boilers on both trains blew up. Like a bomb. Crush hadn’t planned on that. Who knew?!? Three people died from the flying train shrapnel. But the crowd soon got over it and took their places posing for photographs on the demolished trains. That would’ve been all over the ‘gram and Twitter today.

***

In the spring the first modern Olympic Games are staged in Athens, Greece. 13 nations are represented. The first gold medal, in the triple jump (known as the “hop skip, jump”), is won on April 16 by American James Connolly, thus making him the first Olympic gold medalist in more than 1,500 years.

Connolly, 27, had dropped out of Harvard to take part in the Olympics. He had requested a leave of absence but the school denied it. Fifty-two years later Harvard offered Connolly an honorary doctorate, but he turned it down. Still chapped.

***

Harry Vardon wins the first of his six British Opens.

***

The first World Figure Skating Championship, men only, is held in St. Petersburg. Gilbert Fuchs of Germany wins.