After the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the 1952 World Series 4 to 3, Dodger player Jackie Robinson (the first African American in the major league) came into the Yankee dugout, shoot hands with first time World Series player Yankee Micky Mantle, and said “You’re a helluva ball player and you’ve got a great future.” He later told the press “Mantle beat us. He was the difference between the two teams. They didn’t miss DiMaggio.”
Mickey Mantle became a Robinson fan at that moment, and titled the chapter in his book All My Octobers about that series “Here’s To You, Mr. Robinson.”
Mickey Mantle played his entire career with the New York Yankees. He first appeared in the majors in 1951 at age 19; his final season was 1968 when he was 36 years old. He played in 12 World Series (the Yanks won 7 of them), and he was the American League Most Valuable Player 3 times.
Charles S. “Chuck” Robb was a Governor of Virginia, a U.S. Senator, and is married to Linda Bird Johnson (daughter of President Lyndon Johnson). Chuck Robb is also a US Marine.
Lucianne Goldberg, a former Johnson Administration press aide and later Washington ghostwriter, was moved out of the press office after advising a reporter he could tell Johnson’s daughters apart by remembering that “Luci is the short ugly one, and Lynda is the tall ugly one.”
Country music singer Jamey Johnson, from Montgomery, Alabama, nominated for three Grammies and winner of the 2009 Song of the Year from the Academy of Country Music and also from the Country Music Association Awards, for the song “In Color”, is a US Marine.
Shaggy (Orville Richard Burrell), the Jamaican-American reggae rapper who performed “Oh Carolina”, “Boombastic”, “In The Summertime”, “It Wasn’t Me”, and “Angel”, served with a Field Artillery Battery in the 10th Marine Regiment during the Persian Gulf War. He was a Lance Corporal at his career peak, but was busted twice.
The first name Casey ranked among the top 200 names for both sexes in the 1990s. Variants include Caicey, Kaisey, Caci, Casi, Cacey, Kacey, Kacee, Kaci, Kasi, Kacy, Kacie, Kasie, Kasey, Kaycee, Kaysee, Kayci, Kaysi, Kaycey, Kaysey, Kaycie, and Kaysie.
Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 is a baseball poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. It was first published in the San Francisco Examiner newspaper on June 3, 1888. The poem ends with, “there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.”
The New York Yankees were not integrated until 1955, when Elston Howard was signed to the team. Mickey Mantle wrote that, while the all-white roster did not go unnoticed, he didn’t think there was any prejudice involved: The Yankees were winning team with an amazing roster under the management of Casey Stengel , and were just not looking for new players at the time.
The names “Ernest” and “Earnest” were popular in the 1800s, inspired by the Victorian emphasis on the virtue of earnestness. One of the best-known poems of the era was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life”, with its reminder that
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Oscar Wilde mocked the cult of earnestness in his comedy The Importance of Being Earnest.
Neither Longfellow (born in Maine in 1807) nor Wilde (born in Dublin in 1854) were Yankees fans.
Lily Tomlin first came to fame playing Ernestine, the officious telephone operator (“One ringy dingy …”) and 5 1/2 year old Edith Ann on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”.
Robert Wagner, born in 1930, is an American actor best known for starring in the television series It Takes A Thief and Hart To Hart. Wagner is also known for being the husband of actress Natalie Wood, who drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1981. Wagner and Wood were married from 1957 through 1962; they remarried in 1972. Wagner was also married to actress Marion Marshall from 1963 through 1971, and to actress Jill St. John from 1990 through the present.
In his memoirs, Robert Wagner claimed to have had affairs with Yvonne De Carlo, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Anita Ekberg, Shirley Anne Field, Lori Nelson and Joan Collins. He also claimed a four-year romantic relationship with Barbara Stanwyck after they acted together in the movie Titanic (1953). According to Wagner, because of the age difference – he was 22, she was 45 – they kept the affair secret in order to avoid damage to their careers.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theater director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. He was considered to be antisemitic and racist and many believe that there were antisemitic tropes in his operas.