The Swamp

bfj wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:45 pm Johnny Clegg

brian wrote: ↑Wed Jul 17, 2019 8:01 pm Pumpsie Green, the first black player for the Boston Red Sox, shamefully 12 years after Jackie Robinson. The last MLB team to field a black player.

The Dodgers integrated the game when introducing Jackie Robinson in 1947, but the Red Sox were owned by Tom Yawkey, a known racist who resisted adding black players even though the team had opportunities to sign legends such as Willie Mays and Robinson.

Finally, 12 years after Robinson became a Dodger — and three years after he retired — the Red Sox had a non-white player...

...Discrimination followed Green through the Red Sox’s organization including in 1959 when he played magnificently in spring training but was denied an Opening Day roster spot. The Red Sox still weren’t ready to break from their prejudiced practices. At the end of training camp, Green was returned to the minors.

“That was the best spring I’ve had in my life,” Green said. “The best ball I ever played in my life. I had the whole package. I was a shoo-in. … I didn’t know I was that good.”

Green got the word from manager Mike Higgins, who said, “There’ll be no n— on this ballclub as long as I have anything to say about it,” according to Boston sportswriter Al Hirshberg’s 1973 book, “What’s the Matter with the Red Sox?” Higgins was fired in early July, and Green finally got his call to the big leagues in late July.

He was a standup comedian encouraged by Lenny Bruce, a biting satirist celebrated by Kurt Vonnegut, and a swashbuckling drug enthusiast who took a “trip” with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, dropped acid before testifying at the Chicago Seven trial, and “ingested those little white tabs” with Groucho Marx in Beverly Hills.

In those heady years of 1960s radicalism and experimentation, Paul Krassner was also an irreverent ringmaster of the counterculture, known for battling censorship and decency laws, coining the term “Yippie” to describe his anarchic cohort, and founding the Realist, an influential magazine of satire and social criticism.

An FBI agent once described him in a letter to Life magazine as “a raving, unconfined nut,” a phrase that Mr. Krassner gleefully adapted for the title of his memoir. “The FBI was right,” comedian George Carlin later said. “This man is dangerous — and funny, and necessary.”

duff wrote: ↑Thu Aug 01, 2019 4:08 pm Harley Race.

Pruitt wrote: ↑Thu Aug 01, 2019 4:34 pm

duff wrote: ↑Thu Aug 01, 2019 4:08 pm Harley Race.

This picture is a one frame time capsule.

bfj wrote: ↑Sun Aug 04, 2019 1:44 pm Cliff Branch

Raiders owner Mark Davis, who once served as Branch's agent in negotiations with his father, the late Al Davis, was particularly close with the former receiver.

bfj wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2019 1:34 pm Peter Fonda. Yes, Easy Rider was his biggest success, but I will always remember him for his role as Burnett Stone in Thomas and the Magic Railroad. He found the Lady in the Mountain.

brian wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2019 4:27 pm Reuben Foster. 36, motorcycle crash.

brian wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2019 4:27 pm Reuben Foster. 36, motorcycle crash.

EnochRoot wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2019 4:45 pm Neal Casal. 50. Suicide.

Fuuuuuck.

sancarlos wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2019 6:27 pm

EnochRoot wrote: ↑Tue Aug 27, 2019 4:45 pm Neal Casal. 50. Suicide.

Fuuuuuck.

Very sad. That guy played with a ton of different, talented people, a bunch of different styles. Produced records, too. RIP.