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" "He had made one of the greatest catches in Polo Grounds history; he had played third base as no Giant before or since ever played it; he was a slashing hitter and a scientific hitter; he played baseball with courage and spirit. Yet, somehow, failure hovered about him; a pebble in a base line is remembered more than his 24-game hitting streak; his feud with McGraw is recalled more vividly than his 4 hits in a single game against Walter Johnson or the three times he made three hits in a single game all the same season. His spat with Hornsby and his disagreement with Terry come more quickly to mind than those five years he tore pitchers apart; more quickly to mind than the years he hit .358 and .379. It ought not to be that way. Two pebbles in a base line can cause a team to lose a World Series, but they can't wipe out the dazzling years, the .311 lifetime average. Two pebbles ought not persuade baseball men to say Devlin or Groh or Herzog, but somehow they do. So we put Lindstrom here, on this greatest Giant team, and we put the pebbles back where they belong—as part of a rocky past that littered his way, but in no way diminished the greatness of Fred Lindstrom.
Arnold Philip Hano ((March 2, 1922 – October 24, 2021) was an American editor, novelist, biographer and journalist, best known for his non-fiction work, A Day in the Bleachers, a critically acclaimed eyewitness account of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, centered around its pivotal play, Willie Mays' famous catch and throw.
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Mantle played ball almost under a shroud of depression, because he always thought he was going to die an early death. But Mays probably thinks he's going to live forever. Mantle acted like a man who was doomed. Mays never did, even though he played long beyond his ability. I talked to Willie after the 1973 World Series, in which he looked terrible. I said, "What were you doing out there, Willie?" "Oh, I was having fun!" he told me. Mantle never had fun. Mays, on the other hand, seemed to be inoculated from all the pressure. He simply went beyond the usual frames of reference. If I were writing this, I'd say that he went beyond the usual frames of reverence. That's the way we all felt, and I think it was true for not only the press, but also for managers and other players. And this bled into the other pages of the newspaper.
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Jim Dilley, the father of the Laguna Greenbelt, used to take roses to the secretaries of the county Board of Supervisors when he'd go to do battle over open space with the secretaries' bosses. Jim Dilley was a nice man, kind and gentle. He smoked a pipe. His eyes twinkled as though he knew a joke the rest of us didn't. But he's dead, and the Board is still alive, and that is a joke on us of monstrous proportions. I'm not nice, kind or gentle. The Board keeps rubber-stamping building permits, and this is my goodbye to these shores. After 36 years, my wife and I will soon leave Orange County for Costa Rica, to join the Peace Corps, and that, too, is a joke. We traipse off to bring peace to Costa Rica, which hasn't had an army since 1948.