Baseball and Talking Frank(ly)

Since it’s Flashback Friday, let’s continue talking baseball here with a couple more items for you from the past.  The first is a photo sent to me from Jack Flately whose Great-Grandfather and his Auntie Finn (the lady in the picture) were brother and sister.  Neal Finn (the baseball player) was her son.  Jack described the picture as follows:  “The player is Cornelius “Neal” Finn. His Mother is in the stands. We never could figure out who the two guys on each side of Neal are. Probably guys in the Dodger organization? The guy on the right looks like a young Bob Hope.”  (If you recognize either of the two guys in the pic, let Jack know.  If you don’t know Jack, ok I just wanted to work that in there, then you can let me know.)

Second item involves something I witnessed Wednesday as mascot Calvin Coolidge won the Presidents’ Mascot Race at the Nationals ballgame that I attended.  The Nationals have recently added President Coolidge to their Presidents’ mascot race (click here.)  Coolidge was the first president to throw out the first pitch at a World Series game.  He did so at Game 1 of the 1924 World Series which the Washington Senators won (click here.)  He also attended games 6 and 7 of that World Series.

From http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/al/wasdc/nats.html

Winning the 1924 World Series negated the famous quote “Washington – first in war, first in peace, last in the American League” (click here.)

Music-baseball-wise, there is always the Mrs. Robinson-Joe DiMaggio connection (click here for related story.)  Paul Simon tried using his favorite Yankee Mickey Mantle as the where-have-you-gone-dude but the syllables didn’t work out so he settled instead on Joe DiMaggio.  Joe initially viewed as a bit of an insult until Paul explained it to him.  

But check out this version of the song where you have the good Catholic boy Frank not wanting to be blasphemous so he changes the lyric “Jesus loves you” to “Jilly loves you”and then proceeds to totally bastardize the whole song.  (Frank usually enhanced a song when he covered it e.g. George’s Something.  However, on Mrs. Robinson not only did he change and add some terrible lyrics to it but also he made it sound like he was doing a SNL-Joe Piscopo parody of it.  Come on Frank, that was just bad.  Maybe Paul Simon should have asked “Where have you gone Frank Sintara!”)