Creative History

  On February 9, 1889 in front of a crowd of 1200 bemused bedouins, none of whom had any idea what the Hell they were watching--in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza and beneath the gaze of the sphinx--the Chicago White Stockings and a team of professional all stars called the All Americans played a baseball game amidst the shifting sands of the Egyptian desert. This was part of Albert G. Spalding’s World Tour of Baseball which had begun in October of the previous year and would stretch into April, nearly until opening day, of the 1889 professional baseball season.  The World Tour included stops in Australia, Hawaii where baseball was played before half-naked natives and their indigenous king, England where games were watched by an aging Queen Victoria, Ceylon modern day Sri Lanka in front of groups of Buddhist monks, and Italy where baseball games were played by American major leaguers before papal emissaries outside of the Vatican in the shadow of the Roman Colosseum....

  The Pittsburgh Pirates have just lost game seven of the 1903 World Series to the Boston Americans by a score of 7 to 3.  Unlike today, history’s first World Series was a best of nine game affair, but now trailing four games to three, the heavily favored Pirates are on the brink of elimination. When news of the defeat reaches Ed Doheny at his home in Andover, Massachusetts, he becomes inconsolable and enraged. Doheny, having been placed on a sort of suicide watch by his wife, is convalescing at his home under the twenty-four hour a day care of a physician.  But when he finds out that Pittsburgh has lost, he literally picks up his in-home doctor and throws him through the front door. While his physician is lying on the front lawn Doheny screams, “Don’t ever come back here!  Ever!” and then he spits in his face. The next day, still angry about the predicament of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the course of the inaugural World Series, Doheny in a fit of rage  ...