Today, the NY Times, that bastion of stuffiness, put this extremely fun article on its front page. It made me thrilled to call myself a historian. It made me realize that we are all not obsessed with proving that John Adams was hipper that TJ, and some of us study issues of far more pressing concern.
Some of the gems in the piece include this one by John Thorn, a baseball historian: “Amateur scholars will attempt to put stakes in a moving stream. But the water is the water.” The allusion wonderful and, in my mind, describes so many discussions on this board.
Librarian George Thompson spoke of his discovery of an 1823 account of a baseball game: “Finding this paragraph… was an accident. I certainly didn’t go looking for it. Anyone who goes looking for something specific in newspapers of that era is in for a lot of frustrations.” Hmmm… The more things change…
But by far my favorite observation was this tidbit. When asked why he culled antique newspapers on a daily basis for articles about baseball, Thompson replied, “It’s a cheap hobby, and it keeps me from falling into the company of frolicsome women.”
Killer sig. And now it’s mine. (Properly attributed, of course.)