Because I "interact" with baseball posts on FB, a picture of the first pitch of the 1950 World Series appeared on my feed. No comment beyond "first pitch of the 1950 World Series." You couldn't tell—at least, I couldn't tell—who the teams were, let alone the pitcher and the batter. Looks like a breaking ball taken low and away for a ball—by Yankee left fielder Gene Woodling, it turns out, from Phillies pitcher Jim Konstanty, the National League's MVP that season. I was a little surprised never to have heard of a guy who won the MVP award in 1950. This was the Philadelphia team known as "The Whiz Kids." I'd have to research their identities, too. The Yankees swept them and you've heard of their stalwarts that year—preeminently, DiMaggio and Berra, but the AL MVP was their shortstop, Phil Rizzuto, and Whitey Ford was a rookie.
But I wanted to flag something in the Wikipedia article about the 1950 Series. I love Wikipedia, partly because it is so often pleasantly quirky. The source of the quirkiness must frequently be the private obsessions of a co-author. In this case, you're reading along, it's all the runs and hits and errors, like box scores in prose, and then, suddenly, indent, new paragraph, almost certainly new author, and this:
In attendance at the game was Grover Cleveland Alexander, who had led the Phillies to their previous pennant in 1915. It was his first World Series game in 20 years. Ill from the effects of long term alcohol abuse, Alexander was generally ignored. He would be dead less than a month later on November 4, 1950, at age 63.
Not sure whether this is intended as a PSA on the evils of drink, or what. Next paragraph the colorless narration reasserts itself, but from now on, if anyone asks me about the 1950 World Series, I'm going to tell them the Yankees won and Grover Cleveland Alexander was a booze hound.
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