Bits and pieces, April 25

Politics aside, I’ve often wondering why such smart people such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Thomas Oliphant, and George Will (among others), have such an affinity for baseball. here, Will — author of A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred — tries to explain why the game is such a magnet for Conservatives. I’ve heard from a number of people who said they wouldn’t read anything written by Will. Come on, people, have an open mind.

I find it kind of sad when authors use their books as points of attack. Of course, not having read Mookie Wilson’s book, I can’t say if that’s true one way or the other. But according to a story on NJ.com, “Mookie Wilson unhappy with his current situation with Mets, rips club…” (Mookie: Life, Baseball, and the 86 Mets). But you know how that is; the media extracts one section that may be totally unrepresentative of the rest of the work if it will get people to read the article. They did it in Joe Torre’s last book and Selena Roberts bio on Alex Rodriguez. But when it came down to it, as said, it was just a tiny piece of the whole puzzle.

Biographie ran this Q&A with Jonah Keri for his book on the Expos. For a team that is no longer around — and wasn’t even a U.S. franchise — Keri is really making hay as evidenced by his recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Last week I posted about a TV play on Lou Gehrig as well as the doomed Hall of Famer’s role in Rawhide, a 1937 B-Western. I have since watched both. The former is about standard for the time. The kick was seeing Russell Johnson, the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, as a pitcher crabbing about Gehrig’s poor play late in his career.

Rawhide,, on the other hand, wasn’t half bad. Again, you have to think about it in the context of the times. The juxtaposition of cars and horses in a “modern” western was pretty jarring. Gehrig was on the tail end of his career and, I’m guessing, not yet afflicted by the ALS that would kill him four years later. He seemed pretty jovial, on board with the project. Was the Oscar material? No, but I thought he acquitted himself well. Even more of a trivia note: the music (there were three “cowboy songs”) was written by Albert von Tilzer, perhaps more famous for his part in creating “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Again, who can watch the whole thing (less than an hour) on YouTube: