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Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth

During the many months of modeling and molding it took to create her 9-foot, 800-pound Babe Ruth in bronze, the artist Susan Luery met countless experts and aficionados. Details were researched and debated. Did the Babe wear his belt buckle on the left or right? Was his hat cocked to the side or worn straight? No fact was too small to escape scrutiny. Except one. The bronze Babe, unveiled at the northern Eutaw Street entrance of Oriole Park, is leaning on a bat and clutching on his hip a right-handed fielder’s glove.

The real Babe was a lefty. Ms. Luery, who admits to “not being very astute in the fine points of sports,” said she worked with a vintage glove sent over by the Babe Ruth Museum. She says she believed the glove was Ruth’s. Communication error? “Yes,” said Mike Gibbons, the museum director. Or, as Ms. Luery puts it: “It was the right glove on the wrong man or the wrong glove on the right man.”

From The Baltimore Sun, quoted in Parade, December 31, 1995, p. 12

Shoot Me!

Shoot Me!

Lincoln was, naturally enough, much surprised one day, when a man of rather forbidding countenance drew a revolver and thrust the weapon almost into his face. In such circumstances “Abe” at once concluded that any attempt at debate or argument was a waste of time and words.

“What seems to be the matter?” inquired Lincoln with all the calmness and self-possession he could muster.
“Well,” replied the stranger, who did not appear at all excited, “some years ago I swore an oath that if I ever came across an uglier man than myself I’d shoot him on the spot.”

A feeling of relief evidently took possession of Lincoln at this rejoinder, as the expression upon his countenance lost all suggestion of anxiety.
“Shoot me,” he said to the stranger; “for if I am an uglier man than you I don’t want to live.”