The Funnies: Why He Wants an Airplane (1920)

Why WIllie Wants an Aeroplane

The Judge Magazine, July 1920

What better way to honor opening day than with a little ballpark humor? And it's Square Root Day to boot!

The Funnies Special Edition - Opening Day (1920)

"Our team is a regular in-and-outer."

"Yes, some days their batting is all wool and a yard wide, some days it's only cotton batting."

The Judge Magazine, July 1920

Welcome to the Postseason

Welcome to the post season, football fans. All the prognostication is over and the swollen-headed experts can pretend the fantasy scenarios of how the season would play out they so proudly proclaimed back before week one actually played out. Most fans of the home team can begin their off-season commiseration and start looking forward to the eternal promise of next year while sixteen teams fight it out in the Thunderdome that is the NFL playoffs.

The photo is of Cal Hubbard of the New York Giants and was taken in November of 1936. Hubbard started playing pro ball in 1927 playing both defense and offense. In 1929 Hubbard moved to the Green Bay Packers where he played for the legendary Lambeau and won an NFL championship.

Hubbard took to the small town atmosphere in Green Bay and began umpiring baseball games during his summers there. In 1936, he took on a new career as an American League umpire and eventually became well known for his work on the diamond. In 1958 he was appointed umpire-in-chief of the AL and to date Hubbard is the only person to be enshrined in both the Baseball and Pro Football Halls of Fame.

Candy of the Day - Baby Ruth

In the 40’s Curtis Candies jumped on the dextrose bandwagon, touting the fact their product contained processed corn syrup as a good thing. If you’ve seen my earlier post regarding the 40’s and 50’s push to rehab the image of dextrose you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s possible to argue that knowledge about processed foods has grown over the years and this Curtis ad is a lot less harmful than the cigarette ads of the era that sighted smoking as healthy. What’s not so easy is to excuse the blatant mistake in claiming grapes contain dextrose (I checked, they contain glucose, fructose, and sucrose).

The Baby Ruth bar came into being in 1920 when Chicago native Otto Young Schnering developed a new addition to his Curtis Candy Company line. This new bar was an adaptation of another Curtis product called the Kandy Kake which had a pastry center topped with nuts and coated with chocolate. The newly dubbed Baby Ruth bar was introduced in 1921 and it eventually replaced the Kandy Kake bar. Baseball enthusiasts like to argue that the Ruth got its name from legendary player George Herman Ruth, better known as Babe Ruth. To me Otto Schnering, the man at Curtis, puts this argument to rest. He stated that the Baby Ruth was named after the daughter of President Grover Cleveland, Ruth Cleveland and not Babe Ruth. Yes, I know there are Wall Street Journal articles which seem to link the athlete and the candy bar, but I’d point out that the first image of Babe Ruth associated with the Baby Ruth bar came from Nestle in 1995. The source material and facts don’t support a link.

I can remember getting Baby Ruth bars as a part of my Halloween haul every year. They were an old fashioned candy, usually handed out by a grandmotherly woman in her upper sixties who partially bought the bars out of nostalgia. For my brother and me, they fell somewhere below Three Musketeers in the candy pecking order, but were popular none the less. Baby Ruth bars also produced one of my favorite comedy moments (warning, brief nudity):

 

100 Years Ago - Christy Matheson's Advice

The Major League Baseball playoffs have arrived and in the wake of doping, BALCO, and ignominious testimony before congress by some of the more...colorful...characters in the game I thought it might be nice to look back 100 years to the advice given by one of baseball's greats.

Matheson began his professional career with Norfolk, a minor league team in the Virginia-North Carolina League, and in the 1900 season he got the call up to the majors to pitch for the New York Giants. Between July and September he played in six games, starting one, and by the end of the season he hadn't won a single game. The Giants, angered with what they perceived as Matheson's lack of talent, not only sent him back to Norfolk, they demanded a refund. The same month the Cincinnati Reds acquired Matheson, but quickly traded him back to the Giants where he stayed.

Matheson dabbled with professional,  playing fullback for the Pittsburgh Stars in the first NFL's 1902 season, but he disappeared from the roster in mid-season. The reasons for his ending this dalliance with full-contact sports is a bit of a mystery, but Matheson spent the remainder of his MLB career with the Giants and still holds the National League record for career wins (373).

Matheson's sage words about sports come from the October 1913 issue of  Boy's Life Magazine. 

100 Years Ago - Foul Ball!

Today in 1913 umpire Bill Brennan entered baseball history by throwing a game to the New York Giants in spite of the Philadelphia Phillies holding an 8-6 lead. Lynch made the call when Mickey Doolan, acting manager of the Phillies, refused to have spectators removed from the center field bleachers after Giants manager John McGraw claimed they were distracting his hitters. The decision resulted in a near riot and the decision eventually was overturned by NL President Tom Lynch. The Giants turned to the National League Board of Governors who determined both Brennan and Lynch had been wrong, ordering the remainder of the game to be replayed from the point it had been interrupted. The reversal cost Lynch his job, and umpire Brennan switched to the newly-formed Federal League the next season.

1920: The Corona Personal Writing Machine

I have to admit that this possibly looks like the most perfect job either. Imagine sitting up close to the game with your portable, typing copy for the late edition’s sports section, and getting paid for the privilege. I know, the life of a sports writer isn’t week-day double-headers and enjoying the game, but I can’t help hearing the sound of the peanut vendor and smelling the freshly cut grass and thinking it’d be a pretty good job to have.

 

This Corona ad comes from the August 1920 issue of Popular Mechanics, hence the male-centric sports writer angle. Corona produced a number of customized small typewriters with a variety of accessories including a tripod with a folding note table that would let the typewriter literally be used in the field. In 1926 Corona merged with the L.C. Smith Typewriter Company and form the Smith-Corona company was born. In 2000 Smith-Corona would file for bankruptcy and by 2005 a nearly 100 year history of producing typewriters came to an end.

Nothing stays the same. Mechanical typewriters gave way to electric ones, then came the era of computer-typewriter hybrids, finally the personal computer killed the typewriter all together. Somehow this ad wouldn’t be the same if our straw-hatted sports hack was one-fingering a laptop and uploading his copy to some corporate-owned server via the internet. Sure, I’ll admit that I don’t want to go back to the era of whiteout and correction tape, but I can’t help feeling that the wheels of progress crush the good along with the bad. Mental note to enjoy a day game, a box of Cracker Jacks, and a warm summer day before every game is played on an air-conditioned holographic field under a simulated sun.

An interesting note about this ad, the scrap of text shown mentions Kopf’s triple in game two of the World Series. This is the infamous “Black Sox” game when members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing games. Larry Kopf played shortstop on the opposing Cincinnati Reds during that series and a quote given in his obituary indicated he had doubts about the validity of the scandal. When this issue of Popular Mechanics hit the racks the controversy about the Sox hung in the air over any park where the Chicago team played. Eventually eight Sox players would be banned from professional baseball for life.

Worst Idea Ever: The Pitching Gun

With the start of baseball season and spring in the air (even if it’s frozen), I thought I’d present possibly the worst idea ever. This article in the June 1913 issue of Popular Mechanics states "the pitching gun never fails to inspire fear in the hitter...". Gee, I wonder why? I mean you're only the target of a baseball that's been heat treated until it's hard as a brick. Oh yeah, and it's just been shot out of a cannon. I guess this is one way to keep your kid from wasting his time chasing that dream of joining the big leagues, though. Then again, how many budding hitters were put off the game and into a psych ward after watching dad blow himself up with the pitching gun?