All Entries in the "Fractured Opinion" Category

Ouray’s Smoky Joe Wood

Once the best pitcher on the planet    

     29,000 fans crammed Fenway Park on September 6, 1912 to witness the matchup between the Washington Senators’ Walter “Big Train” Johnson and Boston Red Sox’s Smoky Joe Wood. The two fireballers, who admired each other greatly. Johnson and Wood carried with them impressive credentials, each having set records, winning 16 straight games during that season.

     The newspapers loved it. Johnson had remarked, according to The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter: “Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen, my friend, there’s no man alive that throws harder than Smoky Joe Wood.” Years later in a taped interview Wood said of Johnson: “He was always starting from behind with that ball club. Walter Johnson was the best pitcher that ever lived.”

     That was Boston’s year due in part to Wood’s 34 wins and a .383 batting average by the great Tris Speaker. They finished the campaign with 105 wins and 47 losses. By the time of the historic meeting the Red Sox had already run away with the pennant.

     Back to the game: Both hurlers dominated until, in the third, George McBride hit a lead-off double going to third on an infield out. Wood then walked two batters to load the bases but struck out the next two men to end the threat. In the sixth Speaker doubled down the third-base line and later scored on an error to give the Sox a 1-0 lead. The Senators put men on base in all three of the remaining innings but failed to score. By then Wood’s hummer was blinding. He gave up six hits and struck out nine in the victory. Boston went on to clinch on September 18.

     The World Series pitted the Sox against Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants. In the first outing Wood struck out Art Fletcher and Doc Crandall, with the winning run on base, to end the game. In game 4 Wood, facing Jeff Tesreau for the second time, beating him 3-1 while striking out eight. The game ended with a Giant’s victory at the Polo Grounds. The score stood 3 games to 2 favor of the Sox.

     On October 15 Joe faced more than the Giants. Due to weather and disruption on the part of Boston fans he finished his warm- ups only to wait 45 minutes before the start of the game. He got clobbered  11-4. The next day Mathewson started the seventh game for the Giants with Wood in the dugout. By the seventh it was tied. By the eighth Smoky Joe was once again on the mound. This time he held the Giants to a run while Boston scored the go ahead runs in the tenth to win the Series. That was his third World Series win that year.

     He finished the 1912 season a phenomenal 34-5 after posting 23 wins the season before. He started 1913 on the right track posting an 11-5 record. It was then that he suffered a series of injuries that would ultimately end his pitching career. He went on to a 9-3 record in 1914 and was 15-5 in 1915. Excellent stats for most but not for Wood. Due to arm and shoulder injuries he sat out 1916 saying “I never threw a day after that when I wasn’t in pain.”

     In 1918 he got a second wind. A standout in right field for the Cleveland Indians, he batted .298 through 1922. His career batting average was .283 and he was 116-57 with a lifetime ERA of 2.03 holding 51 Red Sox records. Only nine home runs were hit off him during his entire career.

     With accomplishments like these Wood would certainly be inducted into the Hall-of-Fame, but to this day he is not. Insiders point to the brevity of his career although Hall-of-Famer Dizzy Dean played one less season. Others say it’s because he was never fully cleared of charges related to an alleged run-fixing scandal during an gray era when betting was widespread. An oversight on the part of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis left Joe’s name out of the mess when he exonerated Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, who had been “implicated in the impropriety.”

     Wood went on to coach baseball at Yale and was named to the all-time Red Sox pitching staff along with Babe Ruth, Cy Young and Lefty Grove. He passed away in 1985 at age 95.

     The criteria for admission to Baseball’s Hall-of-Fame says: Candidates shall be chosen on the basis of playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, their contribution to the team on which they played and to baseball in general. Wood scores high in all of these considerations and is deserving of honor at Cooperstown.

     Said Tris Speaker in 1958: “Joe, there is no question that you belong in the Hall-of-Fame. Unfortunately you hurt your arm at the height of your career. Your all around ability and the fact that you made yourself into a good big league outfielder should count.”

     Further information on the life of Smoky Joe Wood are available at the Ouray Historical Museum. Thanks to Joe’s son Bob Wood, and grandson Rob Wood for information on Ouray’s greatest athlete.

– Kevin Haley

MALE DOGS LIE SAYS STUDY

(Curville, CA) Old dogs do engage in new tricks if data collected at Cal Amari University is to be believed. According to a just completed study male dogs are consummate, if not refined, liars.

     Ninety percent of the canines observed attempted to lure female dogs into promiscuity by pretending to have food. The liars exuded or secreted a specific aroma that often convinced female dogs that the male knew where to get food or had food stashed. The results of the isolated tests have gone a long way toward convincing animal behaviorists that dogs are far more intelligent that had been supposed and gives further credence to the concept of letting a sleeping dog lie.

     “It’s the same with male humans,” said Dr. Efram Pennywhistle of Cal Amari. “How do you think all those marginal restaurants stay in business?”

     Pennywhistle, recently fired from his position as Head Wienerwurst at nearby Frankfurter Community College, insisted the data collected is relevant. He says secondary findings prove that cats have been lying to their keepers since the days of the Egyptians. 

“That,” he smiled, “should come as a surprise to no one.”

– Sterling Bidet   

     

WAITING FOR COUSTEAU

A rural harbor. A pier

Evening.

Estragon, sitting on the beach, is trying to take off his flippers and catch a fish with a spear. He pulls the flippers with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Vladimir.

Estragon: (Giving up again) Nothing to be caught.

Vladimir: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart)

I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying, Vladimir, be reasonable, there are other fish to fry. And I resume the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turns to Estragon.) So there you are again with a line in the water.

Estragon: Am I?

Vladamir: I’m glad to see you back. I thought you had gone fishing on that boat forever.

Estragon: Me too.

Vladimir: Together again at last. We’ll have to celebrate with a fish fry. I have French wine. But how will we catch such? (He reflects) Get up till I embrace you.

Estragon (irritably) Not now. Not now. I think I have a bite.

Vladimir: (hurt, coldly) May I inquire where His Highness spent the night?

Estragon: On the boat.

Vladimir: (admiringly) A boat! Where?

Estragon: (without gesture) Over there.

Vladimir: And they didn’t make you clean fish?

Estragon: Clean fish? Certainly I cleaned fish.

Vladimir: The same lot as usual?

Estragon: The same? I don’t know.

Vladimir: When I think of it…all these years…but for me…where would you be…(Decisively) You’d be nothing more than carp bait, a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

Estragon: And what of it?

Vladimir: (gloomily) It’s too much for one fisherman. (Pause. Cheerfully) On the other hand what’s the good of losing your catch now, that’s what I say. We should have thought of a net a million years ago, in the nineties when the whales still roamed.

Estragon: Ah stop blathering and help me pull this bloody one in. We’re going to be in an underwater film.

Vladimir: Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable anglers in those days. Now it’s too late. They wouldn’t even let us throw out a line. (Estragon tears at the flippers) What are you doing?

Estragon: Taking off my oxygen tank. Did that ever happen to you?

Vladimir: Diving equipment must be taken off each day, I’m tired telling you that. Why don’t you listen to me?

Estragon: (feebly) Help me!

Vladimir: It hurts?

Estragon: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts! A spear hurts!

Vladimir: (angrily) No one ever suffers but you. I don’t count. I’d like to hear what you’d say if you were bitten by a barracuda!

Estragon: It hurts?

Vladimir: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

Estragon: (pointing) You might button it all the same.

Vladimir: (stooping) True. (He buttons his fly.) Never neglect the little things of life.

Estragon: What do you expect, you always wait until the last moment to set the hook.

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go

They do not move.

Continued next month

Green thumbs labeled anarchists

(Olathe) Persons with green thumbs tend to be anarchists warns Senator Oral Noise of the Liberal Fascist Party. He says statistics collected over the past decade indicate that people who grow gardens are less likely to go along with the flow and often strike out their own path.

     “We can’t have that,” says Noise.

     Tendencies within this wide range of the population generally indicate a lack of dependency on institutions and a desire to be self-sufficient. As one green thumb advocate puts it: “A man with an acre in corn and cucumbers is less likely to sign up for food stamps.”

     Noise who supports a proposal limiting the size of family gardens says many green thumb horticulturists are growing marijuana and guilty of tax evasion to boot.

     Some of them will sell a bag of butter beans for up to $2 and not pay a lick of tax,” he growled.

     Noise favors a plan that would set up a chain of corporate collective farms where the gov’ment could keep a closer eye on planting and production.

     In a related development the Montrose City Council failed to agree on request that developers must grow gardens when they destroy former pastureland to build subdivisions. The mandatory proposal, a brainchild of the local Organic Communist Party, calls for roughly one acre of green garden for each block of houses.

     “We already name our streets after local environmentalists and county commissioners,” said one developer. “Isn’t that enough?”

Cutoff Looms on Celebrity Apps

(Telluride) The final deadline for Western Colorado residents to apply for documented celebrity posture (DCP) has been pushed back to November 15 according to persons familiar with the annual event.

Persons who might believe they are worthy of such status must complete all forms, some quite tedious and challenging, to be considered for the final awards sometime in December for 2026 honors. A one-year reign as a celebrity kahunas or VIPs.

Finalists must present clear evidence that they would conduct themselves properly so as to reflect a  perfect fit in the royal dominion.

“It’s a winner-take-all proposition with no half-way celebrities and no wait-until-next-year whining,” said Royal Sashe, founding member of DCP. “Losers go home. Winners get a year as a full- blown celebrity.

“Many will go on to lead happy lives while some will be driven mad by what they see as vindictive favoritism and a blatant obsession with ugly curtain-call tribalism and bloody backstage vendettas,” she choked.

Malcontents and others who have no prayer of ever becoming a celebrity say the competition is rigged. Some say no one deserves megastar notoriety while adversaries contend that they are fools saying that everyone on the planet is a celebrity in the prestigious sense of the word itself.

Bean counters warn that there are already an overabundance of celebrities in the region, accented by thousands more hoping to ascend to that luminary recognition. They further asserted that no cash prize would be included in the committee’s unquestioned integrity and unwavering rectitude.

– Gabby Haze

Warning to all local bear

Please…if you insist on prowling our golf course at night looking for scraps STAY OFF THE GREENS. There is plenty of rough on which to roam. There is no food on the greens! It is all in the handy dumpsters near the restaurant. Do not bother the golfers. They do not have anything for you either. The porta potties are not for you. Entering one will result with you getting stuck and us calling local mountaiin rescue on our dime. We are tired of cleaning up after you. Leave the Canadian geese alone. No fishing along th Gunnison or Tomichi. The season is short and a little cooperation goes a long way. If you do not comply with what we feel are reasonable requests you will not be invited back next year!

–  Dos Rios Golf Course Management