Hitter

...My first-ever Benjamin J. Stein...

...It seems to me we need some government activity to get sex out of this institution even if that means a government-sponsored voucher plan...

...Are you opposed to expansion of the private sector on Guam because you want to make Guam dependent on federal hand-outs...

...Richard A. Biagioli Westfield, New Jersey Ciao Time I am pleased that Mr...

...Since the Pulitzer Prize committee does nothing, the president of Columbia University, who has the power to do so, should publicly withdraw that award...

...His eye was so good that even the umpires would sometimes ask him to make a close call when he was at bat...

...Christopher M. Schnaubelt San Luis Obispo, California Herbert London replies: Mr...

...Once he disappeared through the left field scoreboard in Fenway to nip across the street for a sandwich...

...If they were mistaken in going to Poe, they make good company to be mistaken with...

...David Hudson Hilo, Hawaii Sowell Trainee Please let Thomas Sowell know that apart from a few very personal satisfactions I have enjoyed recently, his brief piece, "Multicultural Instruction" (TAS, April 1993), is the best thing that's happened to me this month...

...Establish an organization for homosexuals to meet with a faculty adviser...

...ong before Sir Charles Barkley, L however, Williams knew to accept no duty as a role, model to anyone...

...WILLIAMS: Pretty good...

...Moreover, there is now a curious book dedicated to the discomfiture of the greens...

...Seth Forman Agana, Guam A Fragrance-Free Rag Aside from contents—always provocative and lucid—there are two things I love about your exemplary publication: (1) no blow-in subscription postcards (which invariably fall on the floor...

...At his first batting practice after serving two years in the Korean War, he returned to the dugout and told Joe Cronin that home plate was out of line...

...WILLIAMS: Yuh...

...How can it be a history of environmental political activity with not a single mention of either Henry Waxman or John Dingell...

...that Williams was the only .400 hitter in history who did not benefit from the sacrifice-fly rule, and with it would have hit .412 (fourth best of all time...

...Harold Kaese of the Boston Evening Transcript distributed mimeographed copies of this telephone interview with the Splinter, who was off fishing in Florida while his wife was up north giving birth: REPORTER: Hello, Ted...

...However, there are currently two military air bases on Guam, NAS and an Air Force facility...

...Rather, it is to restore public confidence in the integrity, and the competence, of our political system...

...One wonders what else Mr...

...NAS also borders on Guam's international airport, thereby blocking expansion of the civilian airport and hindering growth of the private sector tourist industry...

...Have school libraries purchase films dealing with homosexual behavior...

...To say that they did not know English well is rough on Baudelaire, but surely incorrect for the English teacher, MaHarm& Poets of their talent do not "see what they want to see" in another poet's work: they look for what they can use...

...WILLIAMS: I didn't give a s...

...So afraid because, when he was on, he could make the decision whether or not to swing during the last sixteen feet the ball traveled, and could see the rotation of the seams, and actually see the bat make contact with the ball...

...Both are underused, and either one alone could handle all of Guam's military air traffic...

...This is the Globe...

...My own examples are these: When I mistook Poricany for Noratev on the railway map (an eminently understandable error to anyone but my kids), I got us lost somewhere in eastern Bohemia...

...illiams was also an iconoclast and screwball, in the finest baseball tradition...

...Newberry in future articles...

...F--- 'em," he replied, and sat motionless with his arms folded, grinning...

...The fraudulent nature of this action starts with the official justification for it: "to make it easier for persons to register to vote...

...What could I do up there...

...Did you look under Dempsey...

...Big Ben I just read "Two Steps Forward" (TAS, April 1993...

...This nefarious law does exactly the opposite...

...REPORTER: Then you didn't care...

...WILLIAMS: For Christ sake...

...A novel, The Green Progression (TOR/St...

...Without any indication whatever that the people want it, or even understand its implications, the new law will (1) federalize voting functions that have always been regarded as state responsibility, (2) impose enormous costs on state and county governments without adequate compensation, and (3) generate a potential for voter fraud far beyond what the country has ever seen...

...Required Reading With Al Gore in a position to do some real damage with his sophomoric ignorance of all things scientific, Jonathan H. Adler's review (TAS, April 1993) of the latest four tomes dedicated to the ravages and perils of environmental journalism is particularly timely...

...The other example is the Bila Labut department store in Prague, where a sign on the jerky escalator plainly proclaims: NO OLD PEOPLE (and an arrow to the elevators...

...WILLIAMS: Haven't tried...

...It was "Edward VIII" in typescript until a terminal "I" was lopped off during typesetting...

...he knew his only task was to smash the baseball as hard and often as he could, and beyond that—well, nothing...

...Jerry Dorbin's 50-year search for an understanding of the term pastafazool came to a degree of fruition (Correspondence, TAS, May 1993...

...This is absurd...

...Williams insisted, and to humor him Cronin had the field surveyed...

...Gabriel Austin New York, New York Starved for News R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s column "The Worst Book of the Year" (TAS, May 1993) cites a number of undeserving Pulitzer prize-winners, including "journalists who have made preposterous claims...

...Purchase books on homosexual behavior for school libraries...

...Edward VII did not abdicate...

...Rochester, New York In response to Jerry Dorbin's 50-year pursuit of pastafazool—I must say that any self-respecting, Brooklyn-born Italian worth his salami could have told him (had he asked) that the words "pasta fazool" are dialect for the grammatically correct Italian words pasta e fagioli...

...Who is this guy, why is he so nice, and how can he mist my eyes with such simple words while I am eating French Toast at Denny's at high noon...

...For example, Janet Cooke...

...It was the sort of behavior that could not possibly endear him to the Boston writers of his day, who were hands-down the meanest, cruellest, most vicious and scabrous journalists the world of sports will likely ever see...

...and that Williams's on-base percentage that year, and over his career, are also both major-league records...

...Being goodpoets, they understood how language can be used...

...This is what interested both Baudelaire and Mallarme...

...Martin's Press, 1991), was written by two former EPA employees to describe how the environmental bureaucratic process can be manipulated, and perverted, by those who wish no good to American free enterprise...

...Duranty's "preposterous claims" was his denial that there was any Russian famine...

...REPORTER: Have you been able to get a reservation to Boston...

...Even the New York Times editorial page recently described Duranty's journalism "as some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper...

...Purportedly a history of the environmental movement, it is no more than a cut-and-paste collection of quotes from the tree-huggers...

...The result is not quite Tom Clancy, but a worthy effort to use fiction to make the case that we are surrendering to litigation the possibility of more sensible technical approaches to maintaining the environment we have, the most healthy in human history...

...after he lost a fight...

...It must have been for reasons of space that Mr...

...It still appears occasionally on the dinner tables of their descendants...

...We talk about juvenile delinquency, and fight against it, and then officially honor a man whom we should officially horsewhip...

...which means pasta and beans, not pasta and peas or pasta and vegetables...

...A single bean is fagiolo...

...However, Edward VIII, who later became the Duke of Windsor, did...

...and Bruce Scott Levinson draw a murder, some sex, and even the KGB into their story line of devious doings under the cloak of environmentalism...

...Your headline writer refers to "The Cask of Amontillado," assuming no explanation needed...

...I get the impression that Mr...

...For these reasons, Governor Ada and most Guamanians would like to see military air operations consolidated at the air force base, so that NAS can be closed and the land which it is located on returned to productive use...

...Linn points out that in virtually all categories, only Babe Ruth was his equal, and if the different sacrifice rules are taken into account, Williams's average is five points higher than that of the Babe during his stint with the Yankees...

...One of the true baseball fan's parlor games is to speculate what the Kid's numbers might have been had those seasons been spent on the diamond...

...Hitter offers some extrapolations, but it's not difficult to feel that Williams would have surpassed even these...

...Neither Governor Ada, a Republican, nor the great majority of Guam residents, who also support the closure of NAS, wants to close all military bases on Guam...

...Adler's modesty in not touting CEI's very effective volume is noteworthy, but not altogether well-advised...

...Anthony Burke Arlington, Virginia The editors reply: Not Richard Lamb's fault...

...William C. Caccamise, Sr., M.D...

...The crowd cheered and screamed for minutes, but Williams wouldn't budge...

...The plural form is fagioli, not fagiole...

...It's fine to say keep the government out of the bedroom, but government has taken sex from the bedroom and put it in the schools...

...Vincenza de Luca Kerrville, Texas Reckless Motorists Grover G. Norquist's reference to the "motor voter" legislation in his April column ("Congress's Feisty Frosh") is certainly valid as far as it goes, but it conveys only a small part of the atrocity...

...As an aside, take cum grano salis the correctness of the Italian that appears on the menus of many restaurants...

...Pitchers were afraid of Ted Williamsso afraid of giving him something in the bright red .400 zone—that in 1957, when he was already 39 years old, he walked once in every 3.87 at bats, the only player under 4.00 ever...

...Do you believe that federal control of land is better than local control...

...this knowledge makes their translations of Poe work successfully in French...

...The correct pronunciation of fagioli is strictly phonetic—i.e...

...The title is Environmental Politics, explaining how the ecofascists have been able to find allies, some of whom can see some private return in promoting almost any environmental program—like Archer Daniels Midland and oxygenated fuels, to name the most venal (after Engelhardt Minerals and catalytic converters, that is...

...The new federal procedures will vastly increase the potential for voting by non-citizens...

...Arnold Beichman Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford, California Czech Choo-Choo I share with Jon Newberry ("Cincinnati on the Vltava," TAS, May 1993) the improbable suspicion that the Czech Republic may, at the moment, be the closest thing to paradise on earth...

...It seems disgraceful to me," roared Dave Egan, the legendary Harvard-educated drunk who covered the Sox for the Boston Record, "that a person such as Williams is to be given the keys to the city...

...Tyrrell omitted the Pulitzer award in 1932 to the infamous Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent during the horror years of the Stalin dictatorship, "for dispassionate interpretive reporting of the news from Russia...

...Saul David Van Nuys, California What's in a Number...

...Sometimes his shortstop would turn around to give him the count, and find he was arguing with someone in 'the stands or, more often, that his back was to the game as he practiced the perfect motion of his swing...

...The first comes directly from Adler's group of enlightened pilgrims, the Competitive Enterprise Institute...

...After Williams homered in Fenway on his last at-bat in the majors, his teammates in the dugout urged him to step out onto the field and acknowledge the roaring crowd...

...These reforms, by the way, are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg...

...As the late Leonard Reed used to say, this is like attempting to cure a man who's been run over by a truck by having the truck back up over him again...

...Kaese would have published it, but he held back out of regret for an earlier cheap shot at Williams for not visiting his mother during the off-season...

...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 10) inept, wrongheaded bureaucracy can correct the situation by providing instruction in morality...

...Include sexual orientation in human development education...

...But let me suggest the review of two more books recently available to a public badly in need of a wake-up call...

...Among Mr...

...Schnaubelt makes the erroneous claim that Governor Weld, despite claims to the contrary, has actually kept government out of our bedroom...

...What everybody doesn't know, and what Ed Linn points out in this absolutely marvelous book, is that Williams outhit Joe DiMaggio during the latter's record 56-game hitting streak that glorious summer, reaching base 55 times out of 100 to DiMaggio's 44...

...Eliot was annoyed by the appeal and continued popularity of Poe...

...REPORTER: How's the fishing...

...Poe was both an excellent short-story writer and the author of several memorable (and highly memorizable) poems...

...Navy (Retired) Atlantic Beach, Florida Poe Folk I had not meant to provoke a reply from Mr...

...Actually, there is no evidence that existing registration procedures impose hardship, no solid indication that easing registration procedures increases voter participation, and no evidence the public is clamoring for such a change...

...Evidently, Santa Fe is suffering from a severe lack of Italians, and there is no one there to tell him "Come ona my house...

...He did envy Poe "one of the finest lines" in English poetry: "The viol, the violet, and the vine...

...The usual combination consists of macaroni and beans—not peas (piselli) or other vegetables (legumi...

...fa—as in father, gi—as in gee, of—as in old, and i—as in machine...

...Stay basic...

...REPORTER: Were you disappointed that it was a girl...

...sure, his manager ribbed him, sure, sure...

...In fact, as a wit at the time put it, he went from being First Lord of the Admiralty to third-mate on a tramp steamer...

...Not to discuss chiefly the poetry in writing a biography about a poet is like not discussing the politics of a president, or the "management style" of a manager (see the review of the McNamara biography in the May issue) or the science of a scientist or the painting of a painter or the technique of a basketball player or etc...

...Five prime years of his career were spent serving as a flight instructor during World War II and then as John Glenn's wingman in Korea...

...NAS occupies a substantial amount of potentially prime commercial or residential real estate in the center of the island...

...So bad is it that I doubt that it would pass muster even in a journalism school...

...Millions of Russians and Ukrainians starved to death but Duranty wrote in the New York Times (March 31, 1933): "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition...

...Bob Faltin Edmonton, Alberta Duck Scoop Okay, I'm prepared to hate the new Bartlett's ("You Can't Look It Up," by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., TAS, May 1993), but one good reason for not quoting Reagan's "Honey, I forgot to duck" is that the line was first spoken by Jack Dempsey to his wife, who'd asked, "What happened, Jack...

...the plate was out of whack by a fraction of an inch...

...William C. Chapman Captain, U.S...

...The law will require local election and Postal Service officials to generate costly new data banks and coordinate them with each other...

...So afraid that he holds the record for the most intentional walks with the bases loaded...

...At all...

...Thanks...

...Rieselbach but perhaps just some reflection (Correspondence, TAS, May 1993...

...and (2) no perfumed inserts (which make me sneeze...

...If Bobby Bonilla thinks he's got it rough, he might find some solace in the saga of the Kid...

...Republican Governor Weld is the first governor in the nation to establish a Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth which includes the following recommendations: • Establish public school policies to protect homosexual students from harassment...

...However, this word—which is still well known to most first- and second-generation Americans of Southern Italian descent—is a modification (corruption) of pasta e fagioli...

...Dorbin does with his time...

...Teach about homosexual culture in history, arts, and family life courses...

...One of the dark secrets of voter qualification issues today is that election officials have virtually no way of verifying the citizenship of voter applicants, and therefore seldom, if ever, make the attempt...

...Stein is a real person, as it were, and one that it would be possible to have a real conversation with on any number of topics...

...It is also well done—as far as it goes...

...Impossible as it may seem, Shabecoff has managed to write a book even worse than Al Gore's (A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement, Hill & Wang, 1993...

...If this is leadership," he crowed, "I'll have strychnine...

...And don't you allow any lousy writers in your magazine...

...Your copy editor should be sent to the Tower...

...I am mystified as to why your magazine would oppose this and would belittle Governor Ada's position...

...How startlingly incorrect, and practical...

...Do you want taxpayers on the U.S...

...The way to improve voter turnout is not to scale down the qualification and registration of voters...

...If you've got it, flaunt it...

...This line (it seems to me) is clearly echoed in Mallarmes "Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui...

...None of these positions seem to be consistent with your purported conservative ideals...

...Finally, there is no evidence that easing voter registration improves the quality of government...

...To help me remember how it feels to spend time with decent, un-guiltridden, straightforward people, and drink good beer, I hope to read Mr...

...He had movie-star looks, and once when a reporter in the locker room asked about the women who adored him, he grabbed his crotch and snarled, "All they want is what I've got right here...

...Some day I plan to donate $3.60 to the Czech railways...

...Richard Lamb's review of the biography Lord Beaverbrook: A Life (TAS, May 1993) reads: "Chisholm and Michael Davie do an admirable job of explaining Beaverbrook's often murky role in events like Edward VII's abdication...

...Oakley K Davidson Clarendon Hills, Illinois This is to let you know how much I appreciate Ben Stein's journal every month in TAS...

...Irwin Chusid Hoboken, New Jersey...

...mainland to continue paying for the maintenance of unneeded facility...

...For instance, it fails to mention the unique accomplishment of the New York Times's long-time environmental reporter, Phil Shabecoff...

...In consequence we boarded two trains without any tickets, and in both instances—both instances, mind you, twice...

...Under the new law, people applyingfor driver's licenses will be automatically registered, and state, county, and local officials will be required to assist in voter registration as an added responsibility unrelated to their work...

...in a biography of any of these...

...REPORTER: Aren't you coming up to see the baby...

...Authors L. E. Modesitt, Jr...

...It is by far the best regular column in TAS, or in any of the many other magazines I regularly read...

...If Governor Weld is on the right track, then the train is headed off the cliff...

...two times!—the train conductors in their wrinkled blue CSD uniforms contorted, did a little dance, and said: "I can't honestly write you a fine of 10 Crowns (45 cents per person), because that would be more than the price of the whole ticket," and they each charged us the regular price for the trip, and damn government regulations...

...A pot of pasta e fagioli was the sustenance of many Southern Italian immigrants who settled in upstate New York seventy-five to one hundred years ago...

...WILLIAMS: Nope...

...Malcolm Muggeridge, Duranty's contemporary as Moscow correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, described Duranty as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism...

...Stan Langland Belmont, California (continued on page 75) CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 71) By Guam . . . In the May issue's "Continuing Crisis," it is implied that Governor Joseph Ada is some sort of left-wing pacifist for seeking the closure of the naval air station on Guam...