Sounds like a tribute to dear old Yankee Stadium. Turtle Fan 20:19, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
- I'm betting the impetus was the closure of Yankee Stadium, although Mencken's presence means it won't be easy as all that.
- That the Stadium inspired it would be my guess as well. HT's a baseball fan and damned near all of us got misty six months ago as the grand old place wound toward its final game, even those fools who love not the Yankees.
- As for Mencken, I'm having a little trouble figuring out the tie-in from that angle. Turtle Fan 00:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
- Of course, HT has written Babe Ruth into the margins of a couple of his stories. It makes sense that he'd eventually use him as a character. TR 21:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
- Sure, Ruth makes a great character. He and Charles Lindbergh were really the first American celebrities with larger-than-life personalities. Turtle Fan 00:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
- Upon further review, both men were natives of Baltimore. So maybe it's a small AH where Ruth stayed with the Orioles and turned it from a minor-league team into an analog of the OTL Yankees. TR 22:24, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
- Maybe. The Yankees began as the Baltimore Orioles themselves, you know; Ban Johnson started the American League in 1901 with plans to put a team in New York, for he knew that no American athletic organization that did not include a New York franchise could ever be anything but smalltime. But John J McGraw, his archnemesis, owned the New York Giants and tied up Johnson's plans to move into "his" city in court, claiming that he owned the rights to all the fans within a given area. It didn't work (it would today) but for the first two years the club that was supposed to be in New York wound up in Baltimore till Johnson could get his day in court. So maybe HT's telling a story in which the "Yankees" never get the chance to move to NY, but stay right in Baltimore and get dibs on the hot local talent.
- If it's an AH at all, that is; I sort of suspect it won't be. HT's baseball stories seldom are. They're usually more like odd little bordering-on-the-surreal ficlets. Turtle Fan 00:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
- Well, we missed the boat on that. Ok story, but really more for baseball fans then general audiences, I think. Incidentally, do we now have enough stories for a some sort of baseball-story category? TR 22:48, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
- This, Batboy, the one where a curve ball convinces aliens we're ready to be brought into the wider galaxy. That's three, but I don't know how important it is.
- I'll have to look at it. I might enjoy it. Turtle Fan 17:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
- Eh, it was okay. Turtle Fan 17:47, 24 June 2009 (UTC)