Our Gang

their homework in the first place!

(All applaud)

Now, as to the voting. Since I am a decisive man, as you can see from my book Six Hundred Crises, I am now going to decide how many of these five enemies of America each of you will be allowed to choose to charge with the crime. Of course, we still have to decide which of the three crimes that the Professor mentioned we’re going to use, but in that it is getting on to morning, perhaps we can put that off to a later date. In the meantime, we will come to a decision as to who is guilty. (Impish endearing smile) That’s the best part, anyway!

Now (back to serious business), we will proceed in the following manner: the Professor will read his list, and each person present will select as many as he wants, up to three… No, two… No, three… Uh-oh, my lip’s sweating — uh-oh, I think I’m having another crisis! Two! Two! Say two!

POLITICAL COACH: Good going, Mr. President you’ve weathered it!

TRICKY: Wow! That makes six hundred and two crises! Wait’ll I tell the girls what Daddy did!

LEGAL COACH: Mr. President, in that we are to be allowed only two of the candidates from the Professor’s list, may I ask if we can each add two names of our own, should we think we have more that warrant suspicion?

TRICKY:, Well, let me ask you a question. Is this a deal you want to make?

LEGAL COACH: Well, if you want to think of it that way, that’s okay with me.

TRICKY: I’d prefer to. Otherwise it might seem that I was changing my mind because I’m indecisive. But if it’s just a matter of a payoff for something or other you’ll deliver in the future, I think everybody here will understand.

LEGAL COACH: Suits Me.

TRICKY: There we are then. Two from the Professor’s list and two of your own choice.

HIGHBROW COACH: To the list then, gentlemen. is Hanoi. z: The Berrigans. 3: The Black Panthers. 4: Jane Fonda. 5: Curt Flood.

ALL: Curt Flood?

HIGHBROW COACH: Curt… Flood.

SPIRITUAL COACH: But — isn’t he a baseball player?

TRICKY: Was a baseball player. Any questions about baseball players, just ask me, Reverend. Was the center fielder for the Washington Senators. But then he up and ran away. Skipped the country.

HIGHBROW COACH: He did indeed, Mr. President. Curt Flood, born January 18, 1938, in Houston, Texas, bats right, throws right, entered big league baseball in 1956 with Cincinnati, played from ‘58 to ‘69 with the St. Louis Cardinals, presently under contract at a salary of $110,000 a year to the Washington Senators, on the morning of April 27, 1971, with the baseball season not even a month old, boarded a Pan Am flight bound from New York to Barcelona, giving no explanation for his hasty departure other than “personal problems.” Though Flood is known to have purchased a ticket for Barcelona, he apparently disembarked in Lisbonwearing a brown leather jacket, bellbottomed trousers and sunglasses — there to make connections with a flight for his final European destination… The question, gentlemen, is obvious: why, a week to the day before the uprising of the Boy Scouts in Washington, D.C., why did Mr. Curt Flood of the Washington baseball team find it necessary to leave the country in so precipitous and dramatic a fashion?

TRICKY: Oh, I think I can answer that one, Professor, knowing sports as I do inside and out. Poor Flood was in a slump, and a bad one. In his first twenty times at bat this year, he’d had only three hits, and two of those were bunts. Fact is, Williams had benched him. He’d sat out six starts in a row against right-handed pitching. Now I may be the highest elected official in the land, but I still don’t think I’m going to second-guess Ted Williams when he benches a hitter. No, sirree. On the other hand, you can well imagine the effect being benched had upon a one- hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year star player like Flood.

HIGHBROW COACH: With all due respect, sir, for your knowledge of the game, which far exceeds my own, this “slump,”as you call it, might it not have been just the right “cover” for a baseball player planning to leave the country in a hurry, just the right alibi?

LEGAL COACH: If I get your drift, Professor, are you suggesting that Ted Williams, the manager of the Senators, is implicated in this as well? That benching Flood was part of some overall plan?

POLITICAL COACH: Now hold — on. Before we carry this any further, I want to say that I think we are skating on very thin ice here, when we are dealing with a baseball figure of Ted Williams’ stature. Despised as he was by many sportswriters in his time — and I’m sure we could call upon these people for assistance, if we should want them — my gut reaction is that it is in the best interests of this administration to maintain a hands-off policy on all Hall of Famers.

TRICKY: And what a Hall of Famer! I wonder how many of you know Ted Williams’ record. It certainly is a record for all Americans to be proud of, and I’d like to share it with you. Just listen and tell me if you don’t agree. Lifetime batting average, 344. That makes him fifth in the history of the game. Lifetime slugging average, 634. That makes him second only to Babe Ruth himself! In doubles, fourteenth with 525; in home runs fifth with 521; in extra base hits seventh with 1,117; and in all-important RBI’s, and I really can’t say enough about RBI’s and how important they are to the national pastime, in RBI’s, also seventh with 1,839. And that isn’t all. Led the league in hitting in 1941 with an average of — just listen to this — .4°6! In ‘42 again, with.356; in ‘47 with.343; in ‘48 with — 369 — (Suddenly angry) And they said Jack Charisma was the one who had the memory for facts! They said Charisma was the one who had the grasp of the issues. Oh, how they loved to downgrade Dixon! No wonder I had a crisis in that campaign! They were always picking on me! My beard! My nose! My tactics! Well, just let me say one thing as regards my so-called “tactics”: if in any of the averages I have just quoted to you, I have altered Ted Williams’ record by so much as one hundredth of one percentage point, I will submit my resignation to Congress tomorrow. Now that would be an unprecedented act in American history, but I would do it, if I had dared to play party politics with the American public on a matter as serious as this one. (All applaud)’

POLITICAL COACH: Mr. President, that was a most impressive recitation of the facts and has only served to strengthen my conviction that it would be utterly foolhardy to bring a slugger like Williams under federal indictment.

TRICKY: Good thinking. Good sharp political thinking. Of course, with Flood himself, we have a very different situation. To be sure, he batted over.300 for the Cards in ‘61, ‘63, ‘64, ‘65, ‘67 and ‘68, but never once did he lead the league in hitting or home runs, as Williams did, and his slugging average is almost half what Williams’ was at the end of his career.

Of course, in 1964, Flood did lead the National League in base hits with 211, and something like that could stir up a certain amount of sympathy. Now let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not saying that he is anywhere near the all-time leader in that department, George Sisler, who got 257 hits in the year 1920, but a fact is a fact, and we are going to have to confront it. Those 211 base hits could mean trouble.

HIGHBROW COACH: Mr. President, under ordinary circumstances I too might be leery of bringing a charge as drastic as whichever one we come up with, against a man who, as you so wisely remind us, led the National League in total base hits with 211. But Curt Flood is something more than your run-of-the-mill hitting star of yesteryear: he is a bona fide troublemaker, and was in hot water right up to his neck even before I put him on my list. That is why I put him on my list: for not only has he jumped a hundred-thousand-dollar contract and skipped the country only a month into the season, but he of course is the man who in 1970 refused to be traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies, claiming that the trade denied him his basic rights to negotiate a contract for his services on the open market. Subsequently, he hired as his attorney none other than Lyin’ B. Johnson’s appointee to the Supreme Court…

POLITICAL COACH (hopefully): Abe Fortas!

HIGHBROW COACH: No, no, but almost as good. Arthur Goldberg. G-o-l-d-b-e-r-g. And these two instituted a suit against baseball on constitutional grounds, asserting that organized baseball was in violation of the Antitrust Laws, and that the owners, by trading players from one team to another without their permission, treated them like pieces of property, which was both illegal and immoral.

Now, impugning the sacred name of baseball in this way did not go over very well with a good many loyal Americans, including the Commissioner of Baseball himself, and in the eyes of many, sportswriters and fellow