Month: April 2012

Connie Marrero: Oldest Players

Connie Marrero: Oldest Players

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¡Ex ligamayorista Marrero cumple 102 años!

“He threw every­thing toward the plate but the ball.” —Ted Williams

Con­ra­do Euge­nio Mar­rero, the old­est liv­ing major league base­ball play­er, cel­e­brat­ed his 102nd birth­day in Havana on April 25, 2013 with one of his patent­ed cig­ars. Con­nie passed away just short of his 103rd birth­day on April 23, 2014.

Con­nie Mar­rero pitched 735 innings for the Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors in 1950-54, com­pil­ing a W-L record of 39-40. He was named to the 1951 All-Star team but did not play. He left after being scratched from the 1955 ros­ter.…

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Mussolini’s Consolation (Churchill Quotes)

Mussolini’s Consolation (Churchill Quotes)

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Is Wikipedia right that Churchill admired Ital­ian dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni for hav­ing the “good sense to shoot his son-in-law”?

It’s a great crack, but it is not verified.

Churchill had called Mus­soli­ni every name in his book: ”whipped jackal”…”organ grinder’s monkey”…”absurd imposter.” In 1944, after Mus­soli­ni exe­cut­ed his son-in-law, for­mer Ital­ian for­eign min­is­ter Count Galeaz­zo Ciano, Churchill said in a broadcast:

 …the suc­cess­ful cam­paign in Sici­ly brought about the fall of Mus­soli­ni and the heart­felt repu­di­a­tion by the Ital­ian peo­ple of the Fas­cist creed. Mus­soli­ni indeed escaped, to eat the bread of afflic­tion at Hitler’s table, to shoot his son-in-law, and help the Ger­mans wreak vengeance upon the Ital­ian mass­es whom he had pro­fessed to love….…

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Churchill on Democracy

Churchill on Democracy

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Not by Churchill: “The best argu­ment against Democ­ra­cy is a five-minute con­ver­sa­tion with the aver­age voter.”

Desert News in Salt Lake City is the lat­est to pub­lish this red herring.

Com­mon­ly attrib­uted to him, but with no author­i­ty, this is not quite as cyn­i­cal as Win­ston Churchill could be—but not about Democracy.

Though he some­times despaired of Democracy’s slow­ness to act for its own preser­va­tion, Churchill had a  more pos­i­tive atti­tude towards the aver­age vot­er. On 31 Octo­ber 1944, for exam­ple, in the House of Commons:

 At the bot­tom of all the trib­utes paid to democ­ra­cy is the lit­tle man, walk­ing into the lit­tle booth, with a lit­tle pen­cil, mak­ing a lit­tle cross on a lit­tle bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or volu­mi­nous dis­cus­sion can pos­si­bly dimin­ish the over­whelm­ing impor­tance of that point.…

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“If God Wearied of Mankind…”

“If God Wearied of Mankind…”

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From Churchill’s last major speech in the House of Com­mons comes a quo­ta­tion devoid of his usu­al optimism.

For some rea­son I can’t pos­si­bly imag­ine, this has come up late­ly with regard for the cur­rent affairs of the world:

Which way shall we turn to save our lives and the future of the world? It does not mat­ter so much to old peo­ple; they are going soon any­way; but I find it poignant to look at youth in all its activ­i­ty and ardour and, most of all, to watch lit­tle chil­dren play­ing their mer­ry games, and won­der what would lie before them if God wea­ried of mankind.…

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Why Churchill Shunned Pipes and Cigarettes

Why Churchill Shunned Pipes and Cigarettes

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A friend sent me a Dun­hill fea­ture from the Dai­ly Tele­graph, stat­ing that Churchill occa­sion­al­ly smoked a pipe as a hol­i­day from cig­ars: “I can find no ref­er­ence to him hav­ing ever smoked a pipe, can you?”

I think Dun­hills are stretch­ing. I can find no tes­ti­mo­ny to Churchill ever smok­ing a pipe. There are indi­ca­tions that he deplored pipe smok­ing (though he tol­er­at­ed it from Sir Arthur Ted­der). Per­haps this arose through his antipa­thy (which grew in the ear­ly 1930s) to Prime Min­is­ter Stan­ley Bald­win.

By look­ing for Bald­win ref­er­ences, I found a key cig­ar-and-pipe stand­off between Churchill and “SB” in 1924, when they were on bet­ter terms, in Mar­tin Gilbert’s Win­ston S.…

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

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Churchill and the Avoidable War

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The Patriot’s Churchill

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