the short baseball life of Luther Lane Stuart

I'm not sure what drove me to imagine a major league ballplayer who had one monstrous at-bat, and then never did anything at the plate again. That vision, of course, led me to Google, which led me to a Wikipedia page that is both insightful and tragic. If the Wikipedians are to be trusted--and the Baseball Almanac corroborates--as of this date, there are 114 big-leaguers who smacked a home run in their very first at-bat. Eighteen of those men have since retired from the game with only that single dinger to their name. (Four others are still active, and who knows what glory awaits?)

None of those players exactly fits the description, as all had plate appearances to follow their lone homer.

One comes close, though: Luther "Luke"
Lane Stuart.

Luke Stuart played a grand total of three games for the St. Louis Browns in the late summer of 1921. In his first time up, he walloped an inside-the-parker off the inimitable Walter Johnson, becoming the first of only two MLBers to clear the bases the hard way in their debut. (The other: Johnnie LeMaster.)

Stuart is one of eleven alumni of the Guilford College Quakers to reach the big leagues. As Charlie Bevis describes in his biography of the one-hit wonder,

On August 8, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, Stuart again played in the late innings of a blowout, this time for McManus. Washington scored seven runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to push the score to 16-3 when St. Louis came to bat in the top of the ninth inning against future Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson. With a 13-run lead, there were likely few spectators left in the stands, and probably even fewer newspaper writers. Those who stayed witnessed Stuart crack a two-run home run off Johnson to make the final score 16-5.

After an 0-2 outing in his next game, Stuart was sent back to the minors, where he spent the rest of his career--three short years. After time away selling insurance and real estate, Stuart circled back to baseball, scouting for the Yankees.

Perhaps already succumbing to a fatal condition, Stuart died at his own hand 21 years later.

The North Carolina Room blog has a great two-part summary of his life and context. In the first part, you learn that Luke Stuart once saved a teammate from an opponent / gangster by the name of Snipes. In the second, you learn more about Stuart's career, and his post-baseball existence. Both are interesting slices of Americana, and just another reason to love the Internet.

handsome in pink

Everybody knows that baby boys wear pink and baby girls wear blue.

Right?








[via Maggie Koerth-Baker]

liberal pinko commie

My lone contribution to the corpus of Google Ngram-based scholarship is to note the approximate date when "commie" permanently surpassed "pinko" as the anti-liberal insult of choice: roughly June 1967.

liberty, democracy, and the role of the jury

[Regarding the March/April jury nullification resolution.]


What is the right and proper role of a jury? Proponents of nullification like to point to historical examples, like the Zenger trial, as proof that the practice is legitimate and necessary for a functioning democracy. Not so fast, writes Daniel P. Collins in "Making juries better factfinders," found in the Winter 1997 edition of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

As I see it, the most important reason for preserving trial by jury in criminal cases is not to promote democracy or to encourage "appropriate" nullifications; rather, the reason is to promote accurate determinations of guilt. It might be argued that juries are not well able to produce accurate decisions. But a look back at history--around the time the Constitution was adopted--will show that the Framers' belief in the accuracy of jury decisionmaking was one of the primary reasons given for protecting the right to a jury trial.

In the debates over the Constitution, there was repeatedly mentioned a great fear that judges would be biased or, at least, that they might be too idiosyncratic in their decisionmaking. Thus, while not much discussion of the jury provisions appears in Madison's notes of the convention, at one point Elbridge Gerry says that the Constitution should also provide for juries in civil cases in order to avoid against the possibility of corrupt judges. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 83, argued that by securing a right to jury trial in federal criminal cases the proposed Constitution provided for the surest defense against "the great engines of judicial despotism," which were "arbitrary methods of prosecuting pretended offences, and arbitrary punishments upon arbitrary convictions." An anonymous pamphleteer, during the course of the debates on ratification, had the following to say: "The Chief Magistrate... of a republic, is as liable to personal prejudice, and to passion, as any King in Europe; and might prosecute a bold writer, or any other person, who had become obnoxious to their resentment, with as much violence and rigour." And Richard Henry Lee remarked that if the administration of justice be "entirely entrusted to the magistracy, a select body of men, and those generally selected by... such as enjoy the highest offices of the state, these decisions in spite of their own natural integrity, will have frequently an involuntary bias towards those of their own rank and dignity."

With all due respect to judges, it thus seems clear that the Framers were concerned that an individual judge might not fairly and accurately weigh the evidence in a case. By contrast, a jury was thought to reflect the common sense of the community and thus would not suffer from the biases or idiosyncracies [sic] of an individual judge. As Jefferson put it:

In truth, it is better to toss up cross and pile [heads or tails] in a cause than to refer it to a judge whose mind is warped by any motive whatever, in that particular case. But the common sense of twelve honest men gives still a better chance of just decision than the hazard of cross and pile.

...And a letter, written by one of the convention delegates from Georgia, puts the point this way:

As to trial by jury in criminal cases, it is right, it is just, perhaps it is indispensable,-the life of a citizen ought not to depend on the fiat of a single person. Prejudice, resentment, and partiality, are among the weaknesses of human nature, and are apt to pervert the judgment of the greatest and best of men.

Indeed, the United States Supreme Court, in its cases discussing the nature of the right to a jury trial, has tended to emphasize the jury's role as an impartial factfinder. In a civil case from the nineteenth century, the Court stated that "[i]t is assumed that twelve men know more of the common affairs of life than does one man, that they can draw wiser and safer conclusions from admitted facts thus occurring than can a single judge."

For every Affirmative arguing that the jury is an instrument of democracy, the Negative can respond by arguing that it's meant to protect individual liberty. In a criminal trial, we err on the side of caution--"innocent until proven guilty"--because we fear punishing the innocent more than letting the guilty go free. And, as Timothy Sandefur writes,

...the Progressivist interpretation... sees "democracy" as the central value of the Constitution, and sees individual liberty as a privilege that is created by the government in order to promote "democracy." This is the opposite of the view of the Constitution's authors: they believed that the fundamental constitutional value was liberty, and that democracy existed only to serve liberty. That's why the first sentence of the Constitution declares that liberty is a "Blessing," and why the Constitution goes on to impose serious limits on democracy.

Of course, this argument, in the hands of a capable Affirmative, might be the foundation of an individual rights-based case.

1.7 decades of futility

No matter how terrible your sports franchise of choice has been over the past couple decades, at least it's probably had a winning season or two. No such luck for Pittsburgh's baseball fans: the last time the Pirates had a winning season, Bob Dole--no stranger to failure--was still a senator dreaming of the presidency. ESPN has the story:

The Chicago Cubs assured the Pirates of an unwanted place in baseball's record book, getting two homers from Derrek Lee and an effective start from Ted Lilly while beating the last-place Pirates 4-2 on Monday.

By losing their 10th in 11 games, the Pirates are guaranteed of finishing below .500, just as they have every season since 1993. The 17 consecutive losing seasons represent the longest streak for any team in the four major North American pro team sports, and only the Phillies (1933-48) have also had as many as 16 in a row.

That the Cubs are the ones cementing the Pirates' place in the record books is an irony as sweet as Bob Dole's peanut butter.

cinematic archaeology

Warner is beginning to release obscure films from its vault, Mark Harris reports.

The recent launch of the Warner Archive Collection could well portend a revolution; it's DVD on demand, a way for Warner (and, one hopes, for every other studio) to make movies available without spending the $75,000 to $100,000 it costs to release an old title into an ominously contracting marketplace. Here's how it works: Go to the archive and browse the titles. Click on the ones you want, and for $19.95 apiece, they'll burn a DVD-R and ship you the movie in a standard plastic case with cover art. There are no extras except the trailer, if it's available; there isn't even scene-by-scene chaptering. But you will get the film, shown in the correct aspect ratio and with a picture and soundtrack of mostly high quality. Virtually none of the movies in this collection has been available on DVD before. Many never even made it to VHS.

Along the way, Harris finds some gems, some bombs, and some revelations:

An Enemy of the People (filmed in 1976 but not released until 1981) is your only shot to see Steve McQueen interpret Ibsen. Having watched the movie, I now know why. Still, I wouldn't have missed a minute.

The archive seems like a marvelous way to imagine cinematic counterfactuals. Perhaps other studios will follow suit.

For a more critical take, read John Falcone's article for CNET.

take only pictures, leave only footprints

It's amazing to think that human life has persisted through 15,000 centuries. PZ Myers' latest post got me thinking: in a million years, what remnants of our lifetime will be dug up by our descendants? For that matter, will we have any?

wonderful and weird images from Google

A little while ago I mentioned that Popular Mechanics and Popular Science are now available through Google. (The weird images posted here come from the former, and were found by some of my students.)

Now, something equally cool: Life photos, searchable through Google. History awaits.

Popular Mechanics available online

Way, way, way cool.

You'll build your next house out of molasses!

Update: Other magazines, too, like Popular Science, are also available. The digitization of practically everything continues apace...

[via Instapundit]

Homer the divine

To be divinely inspired, a book must be historically accurate; after fall, if its credibility cannot be established on the basis of known events, it certainly cannot be relied upon as an adequate guide in matters beyond our ability to check. On the other hand, if we can demonstrate that such a book is correct in historical matters, to an extent unknown among human writings, then we have strong evidence that the authors were inspired by Zeus. This is true of The Odyssey and The Iliad.

In his influential book, "Troy and Homer," German classicist Joachim Latacz argues that the identification of Hisarlik as the site of Homer's Troy is all but proven. Latacz's case is based not only on archeology, but also on fascinating reassessments of cuneiform tablets from the Hittite imperial archives. The tablets, which are dated to the period when the Late Bronze Age city at Hisarlik was destroyed, tell a story of a western people harassing a Hittite client state on the coast of Asia Minor. The Hittite name for the invading foreigners is very close to Homer's name for his Greeks - Achaians - and the Hittite names for their harassed ally are very close to "Troy" and "Ilios," Homer's names for the city.

"At the very core of the tale," Latacz argues, "Homer's 'Iliad' has shed the mantle of fiction commonly attributed to it."

Down through the centuries, enemies of these works have attacked its historical accuracy. Time after time, they have been thus questioned, only later to be shown correct by archaeology. Archaeology is a study of relics, monuments, tombs, artifacts, etc., of ancient civilizations. Peoples and events, known before only in Homer's accounts, have been brought to light by the excavations of ancient cities. Always, Homer has been proven right.

You got me: the above is parody. But barely.

marriage, history, government, society

I first noticed Coontz's article about the purported "privatization of marriage" a couple weeks ago. Since then, I've read my brother's critique of its historicizing, confirmed by an extended (and, I think, compelling) critique by Michael Fragoso. Fragoso's analysis, as my brother later notes, shows the nuances and "public character" of the tradition of marriage in the West, and, as I noted before, its continual evolution within a basic framework. Just before summing up, Fragoso, who is hostile to the prospect of gay marriage, writes,

As a rule, the more marriage was enshrined in law, the more freedom under the law was given to men and women who sought marriage. This was often the case in the ancient world, and emphatically the case in the medieval world...

Not only do these laws ensure the continuation of society through the rearing of subsequent generations; they also aimed to protect the rights of men and women. For example, laws in favor of free consent as well as those proscribing consanguinity and affinity protect individuals from being forced into marriage for the sake of dynastic concerns. Likewise, public marriage banns protect women from being two-timed by bigamist rakes.

This, to my mind, is why extending the right--the rite--to gay couples is good for society. Combined with adoption, it would promote stable families for children in need of loving parents. It would protect all parties involved from unscrupulous advantage-taking. Most important, it would recognize and elevate the cultural significance of devotion for all couples, gay or straight. A state truly serious about the institution should shore it up by legitimizing gay marriage.

how the state coopted marriage

Stephanie Coontz, a local scholar, Evergreen prof, and perhaps the country's leading marriage (history) expert, explains:

WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they had exchanged marital vows — even out alone by the haystack — the Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.

In 1215, the church decreed that a “licit” marriage must take place in church. But people who married illicitly had the same rights and obligations as a couple married in church: their children were legitimate; the wife had the same inheritance rights; the couple was subject to the same prohibitions against divorce.

Not until the 16th century did European states begin to require that marriages be performed under legal auspices.

The entire essay is a fascinating rundown of the social and political forces that conspired to turn marriage from a publicly recognized private contract to a state-sanctioned joint benefit agreement. All this is to argue:

Possession of a marriage license is no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple must keep, either to their children or to each other. But it still determines which obligations a couple can keep — who gets hospital visitation rights, family leave, health care and survivor’s benefits. This may serve the purpose of some moralists. But it doesn’t serve the public interest of helping individuals meet their care-giving commitments.

It's a point others have raised before. Gay marriage allows benefits to gay couples without cost to heterosexuals. It simply doesn't undermine traditional marriage, since traditional marriage is nothing like it used to be--and it's always been that way. Or, to borrow a phrase from one of the U.S.'s most astute cultural critics: "Modern marriage. It's been like that all down through the ages."

Update: My brother finds fault with Coontz's analysis and recommendations.


[via Jesse Walker]

archaelogy is all around you

Martin Rundkvist has put together a one-time carnival in which contributors blog about archaeological sites near their home. Check it out.

Semana Santa

As my wife enjoys the marvel that is Holy Week as a non-Catholic American in Spain, I thought I'd pass along an article by Chloe Breyer, who explains just how much of the present celebration owes its origin to "...a little-known, naturally inquisitive fourth–century Spanish nun named Egeria."

Know Your Evangelicals: Nathan Lord

Name: Nathan Lord (1792 - 1870)

Why you should know him: Lord abandoned abolitionism to promote the morality of the slave trade, which set him apart from his Northern intellectual and spiritual peers. Lord claimed that abolitionism places human intuition above God's will, human reason above God's word.

Position: President of Dartmouth (1828 - 1863)

Education: Graduate of Bowdoin and Andover Theological Seminary

Publications: A Letter to J.M. Conrad... on Slavery (1860)
A northern presbyter's second letter to ministers of the gospel of all denominations on slavery (1855)

Background: According to Dartmouth University,

The relative brevity of the Dana and Tyler administrations was more than offset by the long tenure of President Nathan Lord. A graduate of Bowdoin College and a Congregational minister, Lord remained at the helm of Dartmouth College for 35 years, longer than any president except John Wheelock. Lord was an independent thinker, an athlete and a strict disciplinarian. He is said to have preached scripture from memory, unbeknownst to his audience to whom his eyes were always camouflaged by dark glasses. Lord was also a prodigious fund raiser, establishing the College's first alumni association and securing $50,000 in a general solicitation that enabled Dartmouth to build Thornton and Wentworth Halls, the two Greek Revival buildings flanking Dartmouth Hall.

Under the leadership of Nathan Lord Dartmouth enjoyed considerable growth, both in student enrollments and in the physical campus. But many of Lord's strongly held views brought him into conflict with the campus and the external world. He looked on academic awards and other symbols of student achievement as subversive forces in what he considered to be the higher pursuits of virtue and wisdom, and held strong pro-slavery views. As the nation entered into Civil War, those views became more and more repugnant to Dartmouth's constituencies, including several prominent alumni, among them Amos Tuck (1835) and Gilman Marston (1837), a general in the Union Army. Finally, in 1863, the Dartmouth Trustees were asked to remove Dr. Lord from office. Instead, he tendered his resignation.

According to Wilbur Smith,

One of its greatest presidents, under whom Dartmouth experience unusual growth, Nathan Lord (1828-1863), was one who, says the latest historian of Dartmouth, "based the entire philosophy of life upon a belief in the literal accuracy and inerrancy of Holy Writ . . . He was insistent that God should be the main spring of all the activities of man." It was Nathan Lord himself who, in a famous letter to the alumni of Dartmouth College on its anniversary in 1869, said: "For Christ the college was founded and has been administered. To Christ all its influence in all time belongs."

Quote: "[Slavery] is wisely adapted to the ruder portions of mankind, and, in some conditions of the social state, necessary to its best interests, or to its preservation, during the appointed time."

Quote: "Domestic slavery breaks up the power of undisciplined and barbarous hordes, and prevents their destructive combinations.... The New Testament, equally with the Old, recognizes the natural institution, reflects its peculiar light back upon it, and confirms it as a natural ordinance of God."

Related: Wikipedia Entry on Lord
Primary sources on the great American debate over slavery







[topic via olvlzl the heretic. Apologies to Joe Carter.]

out of a limb

If you're quoting Oliver Sacks, you're on my automatic to-read list. Gaby Wood gives a brief history of phantom limbs.

But Ramachandran also wanted to help his patients who had pain in their phantoms, or found them paralyzed, as Mitchell's patients had, in the position in which they'd last felt them. He developed a novel technique for this, which involved giving the patient the impression that the phantom they felt but could not see was physically present. He constructed a "virtual reality box," with a vertical mirror inside it and two holes in the front. He asked patients to put both arms through the holes and to move them about in tandem. With the mirror apparently reversing their arms, the patients saw their phantoms actually move. In some cases the paralysis ended; in others the phantoms disappeared altogether, along with the pain. What appeared to have been performed, as Ramachandran put it, was "the first example in medical history of a successful 'amputation' of a phantom limb." "Philip," he said of one of his patients, "seemed to think I was some kind of magician" and indeed the "virtual reality box" he invented is not unlike the cabinet tricks used by stage magicians in the nineteenth century. The doctor had cured a delusion using illusionism.

Thank Helmut for the link.

(I thought I was original with the title, but it's already been used by a cycling organization for amputees and hand cyclists.)

Added: While we're on the subject, how about an artificial ankle joint that lets its wearer walk almost normally within minutes of first putting it on?

Ten healthy volunteers – five female and five male – walked with the ankle muscle deactivated for 10 minutes, before walking with it switched on for another 30 minutes. Video footage, information from the artificial muscle and the electrodes were used to monitor their performance.

Initially, after activating the muscle, walking was difficult because of the extra power provided, as this video shows (7.1 MB, .mpg format). "But people actually learn very quickly," says Ferris.

Subjects had mastered their new powers by the end of the 30 minute session. "It seems that as long as you put the nervous system in control, it's not too difficult to adapt," he adds. A second video shows the same subject using the ankle later on (6.6 MB).

Participants were also able to instantly readapt to using the ankle after a three day break, suggesting that a person's nervous system remembers how to deal with the extra power.

Too cool.

Essenes, ritual purity, and roundworms

All brought together in this ironically tragic story.

Following directions found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeologists have discovered the latrines used by the sect that produced the scrolls, discovering that efforts to achieve ritual purity inadvertently exposed members to intestinal parasites that shortened their lifespan....

Tabor and Joe Zias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert on ancient latrines, went to the site and took samples.

Zias sent samples to anthropologist Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue of the CNRS Laboratory for Anthropology in Marseilles, France, who found preserved eggs and other remnants of roundworms, tapeworms and pinworms, all human intestinal parasites.

Samples from the surrounding areas contained no parasites. Had the waste been dumped on the surface, as is the practice of Bedouins in the area, the parasites quickly would have been killed by sunlight. Buried, they could persist for a year or longer, infecting anyone who walked through the soil.

The situation was made worse by the Essenes having to pass through an immersion cistern, or Miqvot, before returning to the settlement. The water would have served as a major breeding ground for the parasites.

"The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group I have ever studied in over 30 years," Zias said. Fewer than 6 percent of the men buried there survived to age 40, he said. In contrast, cemeteries from the same period excavated at Jericho show that half the males lived beyond age 40.

on their minds

Whenever you invite a guest speaker, you take a risk: he might be too honest, too opinionated, too frank. When you invite two guest speakers, and you've never met either one, but are taking it on faith from another teacher, your risk more than doubles.

Today's guests, both Vietnam veterans, came to my junior classes, since we're studying The Things They Carried. Their rambling, pointed, sharply personal observations matched well with the spirit and tone of the novel, catching students (and this teacher) a bit off-guard. Some of the quotes that capture what I'm talking about:

"To this day I don't understand why we were there."

"If you need a hole in your soul that you don't have yet, join the Army."

"The stuff they make you do makes you fear the wrath of a vengeful God. It starts dripping, drip, drip, as you remember the evil things you did."

"I hate it when people say 'Thank you for your service.' Might as well say 'Thank you for killing people.'"

"We did it because we didn't want to look like wimps."

"They used to hand out Bronze Stars like shoes."

I guess I just don't expect a certain level of preachiness in a presentation before strangers. My students, though, handled things maturely and respectfully, and were brave enough to challenge their guests on several points.

If I invite them back, next time I'll warn my students to brace themselves for unapologetic antiwar sentiments--and follow it up with an opposing perspective from a different person or group. No one gets a free pass in my classroom, not even me.

demise of the comic duo

North Korea has tested The Bomb (or have they?). Outside, fall rain falls like fallout. One question:

Whatever happened to comic duos? Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Burns and Allen: gone, and in some cases largely forgotten.

The question came to mind this Saturday night, when Melissa and I were watching "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (and The Wolfman and Dracula)" with my parents, who form a Burns-and-Allen of their own.

(Sample: I made a crack about Harry Potter's sibling "Larry," and it turned into a race to find the most rhymes and puns, like "Barry Potter and the Bucket of Steroids." My mother stopped at "Fiduciary Potter." My father's two most salient entries were "Quaternary Potter and the Field of Horses," and "Aquamarine Potter and the Temple of Granite." Do either of those make a lick of sense? No, they do not.)

Was it American individualism that eventually tore the comic duo apart? Was it the triumph of stand-up comedy? Was it the tragic disjunction of Martin and Lewis?

Post-Cold War, shells of comedic pairs like the Smothers Brothers and the Blues Brothers and Bob and Doug McKenzie tried to carry the flag--but they tripped and stumbled. The closest thing we have now is Car Talk.

I miss the comic duo.


Update: But not this much.

FYI, that's 1800 miles per hour

Steve Lodefink, back in 1988, used the magic of stop-motion on a Super 8 to capture "Olympia to Seattle in 2 Minutes." It's amazing how much--and how little--has changed on the I-5 corridor.

[link via Mark Frauenfelder]