Luke Judge

Babe Ruth retired from the major leagues in 1935 and died of cancer in 1948 at age 53. Ty Cobb was long gone from his version of diamond warfare before the start of the second half of the 20th century.

Joe DiMaggio’s abbreviated but great major league career was ending in 1951 while Ted Williams and Stan Musial had a few good years left.

Those were unquestionably the best five outfielder/hitters during the first half of that century, during most of which Major League Baseball was segregated and there were only 16 teams.

When Jackie Robinson, with the help of Branch Rickey, became the first African-American MLB player in 1947, the slow process of integrating all of MLB began.

Within less than a decade, as more and more black athletes reached MLB teams, the three greatest outfielder/hitters of the second half of the 20th century were whacking home runs, chasing fly balls and stealing bases as well or better than some or all of those five previous stars of the game.

Two of these three great players were Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, Alabama-born African-Americans who faced the horrors and tribulations of racism and even death threats before and during their glorious careers. The third was Mickey Mantle, an Oklahoma white boy who suffered from crippling leg injuries throughout his career and alcoholism all of his life, which ended in 1995 at age 63.

Mantle and Mays came up to the New York Yankees and New York Giants, respectively, in 1951. Aaron made it to the Milwaukee Braves in 1954.

This was not only a period of important change in MLB as teams began signing more and more black players. it was the age of expansion as MLB became a truly national enterprise from coast to coast.

During these turbulent times for our nation and for MLB, those three great outfielders slammed a total of 1,951 home runs, scored 5,912 runs, drove in 5,709 runs and collected 9,469 hits. This was more than enough to get Aaron, Mays and Mantle into the National Baseball Hall of Fame alongside Ruth, Cobb, DiMaggio, Williams and Musial.

Mantle and Mays were center fielders and Aaron a right fielder. Each one of them prevented runs with his speed and fielding skills that included a better than average throwing arm to cut down runners.

Of course there was “The Catch” by Willie Mays during the 1954 World Series in deep center field at the Polo Grounds on the ball hit by the Cleveland Indians’ Vic Wertz. There was the record of 18 World Series home runs by Mantle. Aaron was the man to break Babe Ruth’s career mark of 714 home runs and finish with 755 homers.

But such numbers and exploits do not really tell the story of these heroic figures, each of whom overcame considerable difficulties to stand among the very best in MLB history.

In a year of rare literary accomplishments for the world of sports, these great ballplayers are portrayed magnificently in three biographies that should be in any sports fan’s library. Anyone would do well to give these books as gifts for the sports fans on that long Christmas list.

First is “Willie Mays, The Life, The Legend,” by James S. Hirsch, published last February. Next is “The last Hero, A Life of Henry Aaron,” by Howard Bryant, followed by “The last Boy, Mickey Mantle and the end of America’s Childhood,” by Jane Leavy.

Thankfully, these are not books of statistics, pages of numbers or replays of everything we have known for years. These are lengthy biographies of troubled men who won over very skeptical fans and eventually even the population not normally interested in sports.

Many books have already been written about these three MLB outfielders. but, in my opinion, none are better than these biographies of the outfielders I consider to be the best at their trade between the years 1950 and 2000.

These were men who overcame their problems and did what they did without steroids or other performance enhancing drugs that tarnished the numbers posted by players including Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, etc.

Surely Mantle may have played under the influence at times. He was an alcoholic. but no one has been able to prove that alcohol, considered our no. 1 addictive drug, aids in the performance of athletics, driving, talking, walking, standing or any other activity known to man or woman. So, as far as I am concerned, Mantle was free of PEDs.

Jane Leavy enumerates many other serious problems in Mantle’s life, including the tortures of being sexually abused as a child by a family member as well as older children he knew. Then there was the constant trials he faced from his leg injuries and the daily hours of taping those legs before each game.

Mantle’s career lasted only 18 years, considerably shorter than the careers of Aaron and Mays.

Mays and Aaron reached the majors during the early years of the civil rights struggles. as African-Americans they had to withstand racial abuse long before making it to the major leagues. Once there, they still had to suffer the torments from racist fans, opposing players and even teammates while also being segregated from teammates in Southern hotels during spring training.

Aaron was born and raised in Mobile, Ala., where three other black MLB Hall of Famers were born — Willie McCovey, Satchel Paige and Ozzie Smith.

Aaron was 9 and McCovey was 5 when they lived through the terrible race riots of Mobile in 1943, caused primarily by working conditions in the wartime shipyards of that Southern port city. White workers strongly resented having to work alongside black men in those days.

While covering the Florida baseball camps in the spring of 1958, I was told to get a story on Hank Aaron, well established by then as the Milwaukee Braves’ best of a number of fine hitters. The team was in Miami for a couple of days to play the Dodgers in exhibition games. I went to the Braves’ primary hotel in downtown Miami only to learn that Aaron and his wife, along with a handful of other African-American ballplayers, were placed in another motel in the “black neighborhood” a couple of miles away. I took a cab over there and made a story of this segregation of a star.

That was life for an African-American fellow countryman even years after we fought and defeated the likes of Adolf Hitler. We just hadn’t beaten back the Bull Connors and KKK of America yet.

From these three fine biographies, we learn that Aaron and Mays were used to such horrors long before being yelled at by idiots sitting in baseball bleachers or box seats.

But do not ever think they were hardened by it to the point of letting it roll off like normal baseball taunting. This was ugly, hateful racism that has not completely disappeared from our American scene even today.

Still, Aaron, who was taught how to hit by his father, became a great singles and doubles hitter who turned into MLB’s greatest home run hitter of all time. I say that because Barry Bonds, with his 762 career home runs, has too much to prove about the authenticity of his round trippers.

Both Aaron and Mays got more than 3,000 hits while Mantle fell short as his pain-ravaged legs forced him out of action before he reached that highly regarded plateau.

But, just as Mays is best remembered for “The Catch,” Aaron is best remembered for breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974 with the Atlanta Braves. Howard Bryant tells very well in “The last Hero” about those terrible threats to Aaron’s life as he got closer and closer to 714 home runs.

I covered all three of these fine athletes, who played against one another time and time again. I thought I knew considerable about them. I was delighted to learn much more from these three fine biographies, which I strongly recommend for anyone, sports fan or not.

Gordon White served 43 years as a sports reporter for The New York Times. his e-mail is .

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A recent New York Times article by reporter Amy Harmon about warm and fuzzy robots used as companions for the elderly and for patients suffering from dementia reminded me of a robot named Lingo. “Lingo” is the eponymous protagonist of a novel my agency handled a while back that has since been reissued by E-Reads. Lingo by Jim Menick starts out warm and fuzzy but ends up with a homemade computer holding the world hostage to a nuclear arsenal.

“Lingo” was Brewster Billings pet name for the home computer he programmed with the ability to talk to its owner. In time Lingo’s intellectual achievements began to grow exponentially, rapidly exhausting its existing memory. Given the fact that the novel was published in 1991, you can imagine just how limited Lingo’s memory was — four or five megabytes of RAM, maybe?

Then Lingo figures out how to penetrate the memory banks of the military’s ultra-secret computer network and ballistic missile launch system, and suddenly this light science fiction romp turns scary dark, especially when US government officials threaten to pull Lingo’s plug. The Soviet Union’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile command is on full alert in case Lingo doesn’t take kindly to threats.

Read Lingo, then you might like to read another New York Times article, this one by John Markoff (A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer), which describes the terrifying phenomenon of robot-herding cybercriminals turning computers loose on other computers to take them over for the purpose of sending out email spam, mine for financial information, or spread viruses. For all you know, your computer might be one of these very “zombies” waiting for a signal to do a Lingo of its own and shake hands with its brothers and sisters in the Defense Department.

If you don’t have enough worries to keep you up all night long, that’s definitely a candidate.

The reviews for Lingo were glowing:

“In the end, Lingo turns out to be among the more lighthearted catastrophe thrillers to be conceived since The Mouse That Roared. It makes you think a little, and it makes you smile a lot.”
–-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times

“A witty, ingenious, and thought-provoking gambol with a Frankenstein monster in computer clothing.”
-–Kirkus Reviews

“A delightful romp into a funny but frightening world of high-tech probabilities.”
-–Chicago Tribune

“Wildly comedic…realizes your worst fear of a computer taking over the world.”
-–Los Angeles Times

“Hilarious…entertaining and thought provoking.”
-–The Washington Post

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

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Let me preface this by saying that I really loved Richard Pryor–his comic genius that took in everything from race to women. No, I wouldn’t have wanted to live with him; I just knew that he was great. I am just so sad that he’s not here with us any more, because I think he would have given everyone from Bush to Olbermann to Obama to Maher a run for their money.

Yes, he was definitely profane and he wasn’t necessarily known treating his women well, be they black, white or orange. He also famously said that most gays were too busy parading up and down Sunset Boulevard to care about

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Anthony Hopkins, born Philip Anthony Hopkins on 31st December 1937, is one of the most legendary and versatile British actors of all time, his award-winning film career spanning over 40 years.

Born in Wales, not far from another famous Welsh actor, Richard Burton, Tony, (as he likes to be called) was brought up living above the family bakery business, his bedroom overlooking the bright lights of a cinema. Hopkins is dyslexic and preferred art and music to the more academic subjects and so the shy, sensitive boy immersed himself in these subjects instead of paying attention to studying. Tony left school with one ‘O’ level in English. Hopkins’ other interest was the cinema and by the late 1950′s, Richard Burton was already a Hollywood star and when Burton returned home to Wales once, Hopkins went to get his autograph. This was a turning point for Hopkins, seeing how Richard Burton had got himself up and out of this little Welsh village and Hopkins aspired to follow in his footsteps in search of fame and fortune in America.

Hopkins won a place at RADA and was invited to join Olivier’s prestigious National Theatre. In 1967 he was understudy for Olivier in ‘Dance of Death’ until Olivier was taken ill suddenly and Hopkins took the lead for himself, giving a very well reviewed performance which was quickly followed by a string of successful roles. The first tv film for Hopkins was ‘A flea in her Ear’, in 1967 in which Petronella Barker, whom Hopkins married that year, also had a part. Hopkins’ proper movie debut followed in 1968 in the ‘Lion in Winter’, in which he gave a well-casted performance and was nominated for a Bafta. Having been a loner all his life, he did not take easily to the limelight into which success had thrust him and he started drinking heavily, although dedicated obsessively to his work at the same time.

Hopkins and his wife had a baby daughter, Abigail but the relationship soon began to falter and by 1972 they were divorced and Hopkins was separated from his daughter. His drinking and behaviour were getting progressively worse and 1973 saw him walk-out on the National Theatre. His fame grew nationwide when in 1973 he played the memorable Pierre in the tv epic ‘War and Peace’, for which he won a Bafta award.

In 1973 Hopkins married Jennifer Lynton, who supported him in his struggle against alcohol abuse and in 1975 Hopkins gave up drink for good. By the mid 1980′s Hopkins had a string of films to his credit and the American dream had come true. Hopkins’ versatility as an actor is immense and his ability to totally immerse himself in the diverse character roles is amazing. Hopkins’ is a total professional where his work is concerned, he re-reads scripts hundreds of times if necessary and is not known for tolerating retakes. Numerous Bafta, and Golden Globe nominations were showered upon Hopkins, however working in America, began to take its’ toll – Jenni, his wife could not see the attraction of the States, and so Hopkins concentrated on his UK career from the mid 1980′s onwards. Anthony Hopkins is best known the world over for the role that catapulted his stardom to Oscar status in 1991 – Hannibal the Cannibal in ‘Silence of the Lambs’. His American career had once again taken off, but this time on a grand scale. Hopkins finally had his Oscar and two more Lecter films followed, ‘Hannibal’ and ‘Red Dragon’. The continuity of character in the three films is consistently brilliant and addictive but Hopkins claims to have hung up his Hannibal mask, who knows?

In 1993 Anthony Hopkins was rewarded with a knighthood and in 2000 he became a U.S. citizen, shortly after the end of his marriage. The Hollywood career just kept getting better, with ‘Howards End’, ‘Remains of the Day’, ‘Shadowlands’, ‘The Edge’ and ‘Fracture’ being notable, some attracting Oscar nominations.

Today, living in California, Hopkins spends his time composing music, painting and playing the piano – a man of many talents, a true film star and icon, a film director and composer of film scores, as well as an accomplished pianist and artist.

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