With the success of a championship the Reds don't promote a second baseman named Rose. Pete is released from Sarasota in 1964 and starts to work in a warehouse in Covington Kentucky and starts to run a numbers and bookmaking operation. He is suspected but never formally charged in fixing the 1967 World Series in which the Red Sox beat the hometown Reds. Subsequently Jim Maloney, Mel Queen, Tommy Helms, Tony Perez and Frank Robinson are banned from baseball. Robinson refused to take part but knew of the fix.

Yep, here it is: a thinly veiled excuse to start up a thread about Jerry Falwell and drive up the site traffic. I knew this was coming.

This ought to be good for at least 500 posts, minimum.

I don't know, I think God did the Yanks a favor so he may indeed be a Yankee fan. He saved them from eternal Falwell taint. (There, I took the bait. I feel dirty now. I'm like a marionette here sometimes. Pull the strings and watch me dance!)

Did you guys know Miguel Caberera is fat and Ichiro! is disappointed by beautiful women who can't bowl?

Yep, here it is: a thinly veiled excuse to start up a thread about Jerry Falwell and drive up the site traffic.

Too late. Falwell's already come up in the Millege rap thread.

Wouldn't this prove God is a Red Sox fan, since the Yankees tried to sign him?

Senators prospect Fidel Castro strikes out rookie sensation Falwell during spring training and makes Washington's roster. Castro goes on to have an unremarkable six-year career as a player, but achieves greater fame as a pitching coach. His reign as coach is known for its cruelty, including the time he made Bob Gibson cry, the 1973 execution of former Yankee owner George Steinbrenner after an unsuccessful attempt to fire Castro, and Steve Garvey.

Castro's pitching staffs powered the 1990's Texas Ranger dynasty, which led owner George W. Bush to devote himself to baseball and drop his bid for governor of Texas. The Rangers are currently in the fifth year of an unwinnable game against an undetermined opponent.

Castro's coaching duties for the Havana Expos are currently performed by his brother Raul, as Fidel Castro died in early 2007.

Brilliant.

Well, that made me laugh out loud in a public place. But nobody noticed.

The Rangers are currently in the fifth year of an unwinnable game against an undetermined opponent.

The opponent is the Iowa Baseball Confederacy All-Stars.

Apparently, you don't become as weird a dude as Jerry Falwell was if you grow up with a normal mother and father. This little anecdote about Falwell's dad comes from Jerry's 1987 autobiography:

There were times that Dad's pranks bordered on cruelty. One of his oil-company workers, a one-legged man he nicknamed "Crip" Smith, complained about everything. Dad and Crip's co-workers got tired of the old man's bellyaching and decided to take revenge. One morning Crip called in sick and Dad volunteered to send by lunch to his grateful but suspicious employee. Dad and his chums caught Crip's old black tomcat, killed it, skinned it, and cooked it in the kitchen of one of Dad's little restaurants. They called it squirrel meat and delivered it to Crip on a linen-covered tray. When Crip returned to work the next morning, Dad and his co-conspirators asked him how he liked his meal. They knew he would complain even about a free home-cooked lunch, and when Crip called it "the toughest squirrel meat" he had ever eaten, they were glad to tell him why.

the cat was gay

The cat was black too.

That was some brilliant stuff, W.A.M...

As far as Falwell generally, I've no desire to kick the corpse and all peace and comfort to his family... I'm also fine with the eulogies and news reports referring to him as "powerful", a "pivotal player in the conservative movement" -- i.e., by all means, credit the man for certainly being an 'important someone' in this and that (not just politics, but religion, media, etc).

...but if we shift into a theme of Jerry Falwell being 'misunderstood' ---- well, I think it's important that we remember that Falwell was a racist SOB - an ardent segregationist who 'repented', then Lee Atwatered (read: Southern Strategied) his way through the Apartheid 80s, too. Even over the last generation, there wasn't an ill or problem that Falwell wouldn't happily convince millions was the fault of the gays... the liberals... the socialists... whatever. The man was a demogogue and a master of the "it's so-and-so's fault" revival style religion.

I've no doubt the man performed some good works in life - the evil-to-the-core Hitler types are few and far between - but I'll draw the line if anyone tries to paint the man as a positive force in our society and civilization.

He was not.

Skinning someone's cat and feed it to them borders on cruelty?

Anyone who turns my cat into food is going to be turned into mulch.

There were times that Dad's pranks bordered on cruelty.

"Bordered on cruelty"? If that's his idea of a gray area...golly.

Fark headline:

So long, Falwell. Auf weidersehen, good-bye.

That Falwell outlived Molly Ivins proves God is dumber than a doughnut.

Burn in your hell, Rev!

Falwell's dad's children should have been taken away.

I'm here to kick the corpse. Where is it?

There was an obit in Salon ($, duh) by Alan Wolfe, the salient point of which I reproduce here:

To the religious life of the United States he made no significant contribution. But to the political life of the country, he made one: He founded the Moral Majority. In so doing, Falwell managed to take something holy -- one does not have to be a Christian to admire the life and teachings of Jesus Christ -- and turned it into something partisan and divisive. Falwell, the quintessential conservative Christian, was always more conservative than Christian. To the extent that history will remember him, it will be as a politician, not as a preacher.

I've no doubt the man performed some good works in life - the evil-to-the-core Hitler types are few and far between - but I'll draw the line if anyone tries to paint the man as a positive force in our society and civilization.

I suppose if you were a bigot, racist, or homophobe, you might consider him to have been a positive force in our society.

Burn in your hell, Rev!

It is ironic that were there to be a hell, Jerry Falwell would be one of the first people god would slam into it.

Fred Phelps is going to be picketing Falwell's funeral. That should be interesting.

Fred Phelps is going to be picketing Falwell's funeral. That should be interesting.

Got a link for that? That's almost worthy of pay-per-view.

http://tinyurl.com/2lwodx

Don't click at work. Hateful url title.

In the early fifties, the Yankees supposedly were also scouting Richard Raskind, the future Renee Richards. Imagine if he (soon to be she) had been a teammate of Falwell in the Yankee farm system.

To the extent that history will remember him, it will be as a politician, not as a preacher.

He will be remembered as a preacher, as one of the most popular TV evangelists. Not on the level of a Billy Graham, but still up there among the TV preachers. If he's lucky, what he preached will be forgotten.

Also, Falwell will be remembered for Liberty University. I was surprised to hear on the news -- Fox News, so maybe the info is bogus -- that Liberty has just under 27,000 students. By comparison, the University of Notre Dame had 11,417 students (in 2004-05). The guy on Fox said that Liberty University is "the largest Christian university" is the U.S. Beyond that, a large number of the lawyers in the Bush Administration are Libery grads, making Falwell's school influential to that extent.

Proof that God isn't a Yankee fan, today's first game.

It takes more than an omnipotent being's help for this White Sox team to get nine hits in one game.

Thanks, Larry. That's... uh, great.

I went to Liberty University's wikipedia page. It doesn't give a breakdown, but some percentage of the 27,000 are "long distance learners," not on campus.

I also learned that Sid Bream, Randy Tomlin, and Lee Guetterman are Liberty graduates. I pitched a 10-inning perfect game with Randy Tomlin on Front Page Sports Baseball '94.

Bream and others (Sparky Anderson, Sal Bando) were (are?) also involved in "Battin' 1000," which was (is?) the baseball-themed anti-abortion group which, while not founded by Falwell, was loudly lauded by him at its inception:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31404

Tomlin coached there as well, leaving this year for a job with Potomac (Carolina League).

Other Battin' 1000 members:

Lee Guetterman (Liberty pitcher)
Bobby Richardson (former Liberty baseball coach)
Sparky Anderson
Tommy Lasorda
Jim Bunning
Robin Yount
Gary Carter
Jerry Colangelo
Bowie Kuhn
Tom Monaghan

I generally like to keep my baseball and politics separate and don't think any less of these guys because of activism in causes with which I personally disagree. But as Bill James observed in HBA re: Gooden, we like to take these figures -- people about whom we don't know much beyond their athletic prowess -- and fill them with whatever it is we think should be there. I'm gulty of that from time to time, and when I read this kind of stuff, I remember that ballplayers have lives and interests we rarely think about during the 21 hours a day we aren't paying attention to them.

I also learned that Sid Bream, Randy Tomlin, and Lee Guetterman are Liberty graduates.

Former Twins reliever Al Worthington coached at Liberty for several years.

Apparently, you don't become as weird a dude as Jerry Falwell was if you grow up with a normal mother and father. This little anecdote about Falwell's dad comes from Jerry's 1987 autobiography:

Ironically, Falwell made this point often.

Did anyone catch Christopher Hitchens on CNN last night? When asked if there was a heaven, would Jerry Falwell be there tonight, Hitchens said, "No. And it's a pity there is no hell in which could burn."

Awesome line.

Other Battin' 1000 members:
Bobby Richardson

And he still couldn't score 100 runs!

Falwell had all God's children taken away...

Falwell had all God's children taken away...

Even the ones God wasn't aware of?

Craig, I think about it all the time. Knowing ballplayers are right-wing asses makes it that much easier to cheer for the laundry.

I'm sure I'm the last one on the boat, and I don't want to spout hyperbole, but the fact that Alyssa Milano has a baseball blog is the coolest thing in the history of time.

Alyssa Milano. Yum.

And as Sally Kohn writes in, "Ding, Dong, Falwell's Dead":

To take some “moral high ground” and praise Falwell even though he was a rabidly racist, sexist and homophobic ####### would be disingenuous at best. Yes, where we most depart from Falwell is in believing that we’re all in it together, equal and interconnected, children of God — which, presumably, includes him. But holding hands with Falwell’s corpse and singing “Kumbaya” would suggest that his vision of hate and our vision of love can co-exist, that we can all just get along. Instead, perhaps the appropriate response to Falwell’s vengeful moralizing is some moralizing of our own, calling a spade and spade and saying that Falwell was destructive and wrong. Period.

Falwell once said that gay folks are “brute beasts” who are “part of a vile and satanic system that will be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven.” So I don’t feel badly for one moment in hoping heaven is now celebrating Falwell’s death.