How The King and His Court Softball Team got Started.

It all began in 1946. Eddie Feigner had been pitching in the Green Pea League of Walla Walla Valley, Washington. He pitched for Kilburg's Grocery store. During one game, Feigner had easily beaten a team from Oregon 33-0. After the game was over, many of the players gathered at a tavern. The manager walked past Feigner at the tavern and made a nasty comment about Feigner's pitching ability. Feigner yelled that he could beat any team that the manager could put together with just a catcher. The manager challenged Feigner to prove it. Feigner agreed, and the only stipulation was that Feigner needed four players to bat in case the bases were loaded. The player's Feigner chose for his team were people he'd known since fourth grade. The manager's team was a prison team made of convicts. Eddie Feigner was still anxious to play.

1956

The first game for the King and His Court took place behind the barbed wire and high walls of a prison. Eddie Feigner pitched a perfect game. He struck out every batter he faced with two exceptions: One failed when he tried to bunt the ball, and the other hit a grounder to the first basemen. The four players of the King and His Court easily beat the nine-player prison team 7-0. The rest is now history.

Eddie Feigner had thrown a 12-inch softball harder than any major league pitcher has ever thrown a baseball. His underhand fastball was once timed at 114 MPH. The fastest documented pitch ever thrown by a major league pitcher is Aroldis Chapman. As of 2018, Chapman owned the record for the fastest pitch ever officially clocked at 105.1 MPH for the New York Yankees.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Best of Yogi Berra's Quotes with a Brief History.

Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (1925–2015) was an American professional baseball catcher, who later took on the roles of manager and coach. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (1946–1963, 1965), all but the last for the Mets in 1965, for the New York Yankees. He was an 18-time All-Star and won 10 World Series championships as a player—more than any other player in MLB history. Berra had a career batting average of .285 while hitting 358 home runs and 1,430 runs batted in. He is one of only six players to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award three times. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. The Yankees retired his uniform number 8 in 1972.

 Type I - A first-generation photograph, developed from 

                           negative, during the period (within approximately two years of

                                                         when the picture was taken).

Original 8" x 10" Photograph by the New York Yankees, 1946. "Rookie. This photo was taken in Spring Training of 1946. Note that Berra is wearing a 1945 Yankees pinstripe uniform.

Berra quit school after the eighth grade. He was known for his malapropisms[1] as well as pithy and paradoxical statements, such as "It ain't over 'til it's over," while speaking to reporters. He once simultaneously denied and confirmed his reputation by stating, "I really didn't say everything I said."

[1] A malapropism is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is a     statement by baseball player Yogi Berra, "Texas has a lot of electrical votes", rather than "electoral votes." Malapropisms often occur as errors in natural speech and are sometimes the subject of media attention, especially when made by politicians or other prominent individuals.

46 YOGI BERRA QUOTES

1. "A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."
2. "All pitchers are liars or crybabies."
3. "Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical."
4. "Congratulations. I knew the record would stand until it was broken."
5. "Even Napoleon had his Watergate."
6. "Half the lies they tell about me aren't true."
7. "He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious."
8. "How can you think and hit at the same time?"
9. "I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."
10. "I didn't say the things I said."
11. "I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?"
12. "I never said most of the things I said."
13. "I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house."
14. "I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question."
15. "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's gonna stop 'em."
16. "If the world was perfect, it wouldn't be."
17. "If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer."
18. "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
19. "If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else."
20. "I'm a lucky guy and I'm happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary."
21. "I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did."
22. "In baseball, you don't know nothing."
23. "It ain't over till it's over."
24. "It ain't the heat, it's the humility."
25. "It gets late early out there."
26. "It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."
27. "It's like deja vu all over again"
28. "It's never happened in the World Series competition, and it still hasn't."
29. "It's pretty far, but it doesn't seem like it."
30. "Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets."
31. "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
32. "Slump? I ain't in no slump... I just ain't hitting."
33. "So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face."
34. "The future ain't what it used to be."
35. "The only color I don't have is navy brown."
36. "The other teams could make trouble for us if they win."
37. "The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase."
38. "There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em."
39. "We have deep depth."
40. "We made too many wrong mistakes."
41. "When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it."
42. Yogi ordered a pizza. The waitress asked, "How many slices would you like your pizza cut into?" Yogi responded "Four. I don't think I could eat eight."
43. "You can observe a lot by just watching."
44. "You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise, they won't come to yours."
45. "You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you."
46. "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Bounce Land and Other Trampoline Parks of the 1950s and 1960s.

Bounce Land Trampoline Parks were around from the late 50s to the early 60s. The Lincoln Devon Bounce Land was at 6301 N Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. 

1960 Chicago Yellow Pages.

Many people associate this Bounce Land with Hollywood Kiddieland Amusement Park in Chicago, but as you can see from the map I created, they are different businesses and a few blocks away from each other.

The owner, Martin Brunderman, opened the park as Americans were swept from one fad to another: miniature golf, then hula hoops, then trampoline parks.

Apparently, several centers were opened around Chicagoland and in communities all over America. Visitors paid 50¢ for one half-hour on one of the trampolines, according to Chicago Tribune archives from the early 1960s. I personally attended the one on Devon Avenue in Chicago. The trampolines were leg-less and laid inches above ground level, over an open pit of about 3 foot deep.

Tons of fun, Right?

But then things turn sour. In November 1960, a father and daughter sued Bounce Land for $50,000 in damages, claiming that a 6-year-old girl suffered a sprained right foot when she fell from a trampoline. When her father, James Jennings, bounced on the trampoline to see what was wrong with it, he came down on steel supports, suffering a back injury that forced him to be hospitalized for six weeks, the article said.

Another story from June 1964 said an Oak Park man was granted $150,000 by a Circuit Court jury after being paralyzed from the waist down in a trampoline accident.

John L. Shea was 18 when he paid 50¢ to use a trampoline at Bounce Landin Melrose Park, Illinois, for 30 minutes. He was thrown off balance by defective springs and hospitalized for one year.

Bounce Land and the companies of trampoline parks thus closed forever.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Sport of Pistol Dueling.

As reported in the Chicago Tribune in 1909, a French inventor created bullets made of wax that worked in dueling pistols and the Army's standard-issue revolvers. Duelists wore loosely fitting garments and wire-and-glass masks for protection. Pistols were fitted with hand shields. 

Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1909

Opponents faced each other, at a distance of 25 paces (60 feet apart). A director barked the command: "Fire!" Officials were on hand to judge the accuracy of the shots.

That same year, there was a New York Times account of a bloodless duel at the Panzer Gymnasium at Carnegie Hall, the city's Athletic Club. Two men — wearing long black gowns and protective masks — faced each other in the gymnasium. "All agreed," the paper reported, "that it was a fine shooting game."

Prideful men could fluff their feathers without anyone ending up dead.

Such pistol duels were explosive gestures of pride. Often, however, the two opponents entered their duel under a mutual agreement to shoot into the air or at the ground; even if they aimed for each other, their guns were often so unpredictable that fatalities were unlikely. 

Pistols and waxed bullets used in the New York duels.

The practice of dueling held sway from words to swords to guns, well into the history of the American South, where it remained so popular for so long that legislators had to step in.

Wax bullet duels appear to have first emerged in France, and in the early 1900s, a “School of Dueling” was established in Paris. At the elite academy, practice duels employed wax bullets, and trainee duelers wore protective face masks, but in every other way, they followed the rules and honor codes of classic dueling. 

The bloodless duels made a brief cameo at the 1908 Olympics.

A version of the sport was even featured as a demonstration event at the 1908 London Summer Olympics, in addition to its inclusion at international pistol and revolver championships.

The wax bullets, however, were not entirely benign. Without adequate protection, and at closer quarters, the bullets could still lop off bits of the body, and spectators needed to be wary of any stray bullets, especially in the vicinity of their eyes.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.