It’s A Small World

Old Business

1. A big shoutout to Dr. Memory.  Glad ya liked last week’s edition, Doc.  Your comments mean a lot to me.

2. Buck Turgidson.  That was George C. Scott’s role in Strangelove .

New Business

Al* and Tipper Gore are splitsville.  There’s an old joke going around that he claims to have invented the internet.  Whether or not this is true, I recently read another bragadocious claim about Al and Tipper; that they were the inspiration for Love Story .  What is true is that Gore was a Harvard roommate to Tommy Lee Jones and that bring us to this week’s installment of my wackiness.

There’s Joe Jackson, the illiterate bribe-taking Black Sock who was portrayed by Ray Liotta in Field of Dreams .  Then there’s Joe Jackson, the pro-smoking English musician who has made forays into New Wave and jazz.  I know what you’re thinking: how can Daly possibly connect these two?  In case you forgot, over the winter I mentioned Eight Men Out . That was a book by Eliot Asinof about the Black Sox.   John Sayles adapted the book into a movie and he has a small part as Ring Lardner.   D. B. Sweeney played Shoeless Joe.  Lardner was a big sportswriter almost 100 years ago; a more versatile Joe Posnanski of his day.  Lardner’s son was a screenwriter for four decades and adapted the book M*A*S*H for the big screen.  Ring Lardner Jr. had a daughter named Kate.  She was married to Tommy Lee Jones for a few years.

Tommy Lee Jones is a good connector in these types of exercises.  In addition to being Gore’s roommate, he appeared in JFK with Kevin Bacon and Men In Black with Will Smith.  I think I liked him best in the Lonesome Dove miniseries.  You could also connect Jones back to the Deadball days of baseball because he portrayed the title character in Cobb .  One of his early roles was in the aforementioned Love Story .  Erich Segal, who wrote that book and screenplay, also wrote the screenplay for the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine .  The Fab Four would go on to record Let It Be .  Billy Preston appeared on that album; playing electric piano and Hammond organ on various songs.

Preston might be the Kevin Bacon of music.  He’s appeared with artists as diverse as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Eric Burdon, Isaac Hayes, and Johnny Cash.  He also alternated with Nicky Hopkins as a keyboardist for the Rolling Stones.  He was with Mick and company during the Exiles On Main Street days.  I hear people rave about that album, but I don’t get it.  I like “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice”, but what makes this one better than Let It Bleed or other quintessential Stones platters?

Anyways, Mick Jagger used to be romantically involved with Marianne Faithfull during the Sixties.  They were quite the item in Swinging London.  An appetite for drugs that would make Hunter Thompson jealous slowed down her career, but she did make a comeback.  Faithfull would later appear on Night And Day II , an album by Joe Jackson.  One of Jackson’s albums from the Eighties was It’s A Big World .  It was an ambitious live concept album.  The only other live concept album I can think of is Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty .  Regardless, Jackson got it wrong.  It’s really a small world after all.

* The funniest Al Gore moment that I can think of (outside of Lisa Simpson buying a copy of his book) took place during the 1992 Vice Presidential debate.  I was over at the Stagecoach Inn; a bachelor pad where the Wig’s two brothers lived with some other guy.  My buddy Will showed up with a twelve-pack like he was Archie Bunker watching a football game.  He was rooting for Dan Quayle to tear gore up.  Then Perot’s candidate, James Stockdale, started into his “Who am I?  What am I doing here?” routine.  Soon after that, Will’s brother Phillionaire called up looking for Admiral Will Stockdale.  Okay, that wasn’t really a Gore moment, but writing this reminded me of that incident and it is one of my favorite anecdotes.

Jon Daly has been a SABR member since 2001. He has written several biographies for SABR that have appeared online or in books, including ones on Billy Southworth and Jim Willoughby. His writing has also appeared online at websites such as The Perpetual Post, Baseball Think Factory, and The Hardball Times. Jon is also the sole contributor to the blog Designated Sitter (http://designatedsitter.blogspot.com/) He Tweets @designatedsittr and can be reached at jon31768@gmail.com.