A WORD - The Okay on Okay.

I guess it would be okay to say the whole thing started when somebody noticed that according to the criminal code of Boston, ""No person, unless duly licensed by the mayor and aldermen, shall ring, or cause to be rung, any bell, or other instrument, in any street, to give notice of the exercise of any business or calling...under a penalty of not less than three nor more than twenty dollars for each offense.” This bureaucratic banality inspired the formation, on 26 October, 1838, of the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society, or in abbreviated form, the ABRS.

It was a joke, of course, an inside multi-layered joke - a joke about a joke about a joke. In this cause the first joke, to the jesters,  was the anit-bell ringing law itself. And the second joke was in the group's name. It wasn't an anti-bell ringing society, it was actually a pro-bell ringing society; sort of the way “Working Class Americans for Fair Taxes" aren't any of those things either. And the third joke was that there wasn't anybody actually in the anti-bell ringing society.

See, during the 1830's there were 43 newspapers in the city of Boston, from the weekly Advertiser to the Daily Wig. As you can imagine, the competition was rather severe.  Each of their publishers had an axe to grind, from conspiracy theories ( the Anti-Masonic Christian Herald) to benevolent rich people (the National Philanthropist), or they carved out special interest niches (the New England Farmer). But the capitalist imperative eventually drove all the successful newspapers to copy each other, just as reality television did in the 1990's. A by-product of this leveling process was an intellectual rebellion by those who consumed the same papers but needed to convince their fellow readers that they were smarter than the average yokels who read this drivel. Karl Marx referred to this as the "Club Effect", when he said, "I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it." Or was that Groucho Marx?  Anyway...

At the time in Boston, there were many inside-joke clubs, like the Association of Presidents of Bankrupt Insurance Companies, or the Mammoth Cod Association, or the Flouring Committee. Most of these existed merely to post newspaper announcements for non-existent meetings for these non-existent clubs. . Some of them, like the Anti-Bell Ringing Society went so far as to announce platitudinous field trips, which nobody actually showed up for because there was actually no body in the clubs. Everybody who got the joke was supposed to read these announcements and just laugh, not pack their bags.

In November of 1838 the ABRS went so far as to file suit in court to overturn the anti-bell ringing ordinance. And although they never paid the filing fee (and their case was never on the docket) the founders, whoever they or he was, kept the joke going by arguing with their non-existent critics that they had as much right to gather together as "any other moral and benevolent societies in existence". Did I mention their critics were also non-existent?  According to the stream of press releases, issued by the Lord High Chancellor of the ABRS, the group had elected a "Professor of Bell-ecution", and a “Benign Reliever of the Bell-y-ache”. And at their first mythical anniversary dinner party they (myth-ically) had toasted the ladies as, “the only belles the members of this society will ever ring to.”  In mid-March of 1839 they even took a mythical train trip to New York City. The term "ad nasseum" leaps to mind. Are you LOL yet?

Taking their cue from these latter day “You Tube-erites” the newspaper columnists launched their own abbreviated inside-jokes, abbreviated because they relied on initialism, also known as acronyms. In this alternative inside joke universe the initials KY were substituted for “know yuse”, which had already been substituted for “no use”. Ah, if this had been the late 1830's you and I would have been ROTFL right now. Parenthetically, this buffoonery was intensified by including an explanation of the ersatz slang gag in parentheses immediately following the acronym, as in “N.C. ('nuff said), when the writer might have simply written “enough said” instead, or “GTT (gone to Texas), or PDQ (pretty damn quick) and SP (small potatoes) or AWALY (Are we all laughing yet?).

e.g.; in June of 1838 the Boston Morning Post (one of the participating newspapers) carried the following note: "Eliot Brown, Esq., Secretary of the Boston Young Men's Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Indians, F.A.H. (fell at Hoboken, N.J.) on Saturday last at 4 o'clock, p.m. in a duel W.O.O.O.F.C. (with one of our first citizens.) What measures will be taken by the Society in consequence of this heart rending event, R.T.B.S. (remains to be seen)."  Nobody was actually shot, except of course the writer who was shooting his mouth off, but i.e,. removed from their environment these abbreviated jokes shriveled up and just died. But while they were in vogue, they reduced the world to a 18th century MMORPG (Massive Multi- player Online Role Playing Game). Ah, LOL et al. for the initiated. All others must pay cash.

On 23 March, 1839 the Post (again) carried a follow-up story on page two, concerning that mythical field trip the ABRS did not take to New York City. The editor of the Providence, Rhode Island "Mercury" newspaper had  noticed that on the day announced, nobody from the ABRS had been on the Boston to New York train, and noted so in his newspaper. The Boston Sophisticates were in stitches. Clearly the poor philistine from Providence was not in on the joke. But the Post's columnist, Mr. Charles Gordon Greene, continued the gag by responding as follows: "We said not a word about our deputation passing "through the city" of Providence.—We said our brethren were going to New York... and they did go... The "Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells," is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have his "contribution box," et ceteras, o.k. (all correct) —and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward."

Okay, ignoring Mr. Greenes' convoluted sentence structure for now, the corks were flying because (mythical) champagne bottles had been opened by the (mythical) band of raucous anti-bell ringing acolytes, in their mythical celebration. And reading all this, the non-mythical readers of the Post were by now having a jolly good time at the expense of the rubes from Providence. And I suspect they were having such a good time that they failed to notice the momentous event which had just occurred - the birth of a new word.

Not the conception, certainly, which may have occurred orally a hundred years before, maybe a thousand years before. But this was the moment of birth, 23 March, 1839, the first appearance in print that has so far been uncovered of the word "Okay" or OK. The word was so new, is still so new even today, that its spelling has yet to be standardized. And it all happened because the humorists in Boston had become cannibalistic, consuming their own jokes.

But OK would probably have died aborning (or a-boring) had not it been saved by the Presidential election of 1840, which pitted the incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren against the Wig, William Henry Harrison. You might think the joke here was that Harrison would win the election but died just a month after his interminable inaugural address. But it turns out the real joke was on the loser, Van Buren, who took only 7 states, to Harrison's 19. But that's OK, because Van Buren's political loss was a big win for lexicography.

You see, the Democrat's campaign manager, Amos Kendall, decided it would be a good idea to emphasise his man's ethnic roots. Van Buren, although elected from Pennsylvania  had been born in the tiny New York village of Kinderhook,  a bastion of Dutch culture in a rising sea of Englishmen, making their man an ethnic minority. And believing this was just the image the American people were looking for in a politician, Kendall decided to give him the nickname of "Old Kinderhook", calling attention to both his age and his different-nesss at the same time. And he tied it all together with that trendy new word from Boston.  They even had campaign buttons printed up reading simply "OK", and started OK clubs, urging supporters to say, "I'm voting for OK", as in "Old KInderhook".

In response the Wigs insisted that OK actually stood for "Out of cash" or "Out of credit", revealing once again the endless wealth politicians can mine out of America's mountains of economic insecurity. One Wig columnist described them as " “frightful letters … Those who wear them should bear in mind that it will require their most strenuous exertions … to make all things O.K.”

The fledgling word derivative then received a further boost from new technology, when the Morse telegraph was introduced in 1844. It took far less finger pressing to tap out the word "OK" (you could ignore the "o" and the "K" was just "dash - dot - dash") than to tap out the words "All is Correct". OK was far easier to spell, too. In fact, OK is the strongest remaining artifact of telegraphy in our culture, the equivalent of a "Record Player" in the era of music downloads.

Twenty years later the young six foot five inch James Pyle left his family home in Nova Scotia to seek his fortune in New York City. He opened a factory in Greenwich Village, where he repackaged sodium carbonate powder as "Pyle's OK Pearline Soap".  Mr.Pyle's genius was his discovery that the only difference between soaps was the advertising. All his advertisements framed traditional images of children and dogs and kitties, with that hip new word, OK. He plastered Manhattan from the Battery to the Bronx with the word "OK" until the denizens were seeing it in their sleep. James made a literal fortune, and in 1914 his company was bought out by Proctor and Gamble, which renamed "OK Perline" as "Ivory Soap". But by now the adolescent word was strong enough to stand on its own two letters.

And just as the telegraph was being pushed to extinction by the telephone, the lucky "OK" was given yet another new boost on 5 May, 1961. Commander Alan B. Shepard, sitting atop a Redstone rocket, assured his controllers that, "Everything is A-OK." And because the American space program performed in public, and the entire world was listening with rapt fascination, this anachronistic sliver of American English slang, a 130 year old inside joke amongst Boston sophists,  instantly became the first phrase of modern international slang.

Everything was indeed "OK." People the world over, who do not speak or usually hear English, know and use OK. It is a borrowed word, which is a nice way of saying it may be the only English word for which the Shakespeare family is does not collect royalties.

Okay?

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SELLING THE TOWER Victor Lustig, Confidence Man

I wish I had received one of the invitations. The 5 letters arrived in the late spring of 1925, via special delivery, and were written on stationary of the Ministère de Postes et Télégraphes.  Each letter invited the addressee to a confidential meeting with the Deputy Director General to be held after hours in a suite at the Hotel de Crillon (above), at number ten Champs-Elysees.  Each recipient was warned to discuss the invitation with no one.  Those who received the invitations were surely intrigued. It was not often that scrap metal dealers are invited to meetings in such exclusive places.

The Hotel had been constructed by Louis XV as government offices, before being bought by the Crillon family and converted into a five star hotel. Its interior was adorned throughout with 17th Century tapestries, Louis XVI gilt and brocade furniture, sculptures, paintings and other valuable art works. Government ministries held public and closed door meetings in the hotel every day. Besides, who would reject the opportunity of seeing the room where Marie Antoinette took piano lessons, or where Charlie Chaplin slept? The five 'petit bourgeois' businessmen were suitably impressed. before they even arrived.

The guests were greeted by an officious bureaucrat who identified himself as Msr. Robert Tourbillon, personal secretary to the Deputy Director, Msr Victor Lustig. The ministry, explained Msr Tourbilliuon, was about to offer a valuable business opportunity to these five men. However, he insisted, everything said in this room must remain confidential. If the guests did not agree with this stipulation they should leave at once. None of the businessmen budged from their seats.

A few minutes later Deputy Lustig (above)  bustled into the room, pompous and brusque, as you would expect any good French bureaucrat to be. After reminding his guests of the absolute need for secrecy, he quickly got down to the subject at hand. The men in the room may have read recently, explained Msr. Lustig, that the government was facing a major and expensive renovation of Msr. Eiffle’s Tower.

The tower had been controversial even before it opened on 31 March, 1888. 

Three hundred workers had spent 3 years welding 7,000 tons of iron, fashioned into 18,000 pieces connected by 2,500,000 rivets into the open framework tower.

It was half a proof of concept construction and half a work of art.  Completed, it stood 1,000 feet high, making it the tallest structure in the world; and one of the most despised.

The Paris press referred to it as “…a truly tragic street lamp.”  Three hundred influential artists and politicians publicly protested the “…useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower”.  Author Alexander Dumas called it a "loathsome construction".  Is Paris going to be associated with the grotesque, mercantile imaginings of a constructor of machines?” 

The inventor of the short story, Guy de Maupassant, asked, "What will be thought of our generation if we do not smash this lanky pyramid".  When asked why, despite his hatred, he ate lunch every day in the cafe (above), located on the second level of the tower... 

...de Maupassant explained he ate there because it was the only place in Paris where he did not have digest while looking at the damn thing.

Msr. Eiffel had retained ownership of the “"odious column of bolted metal” for twenty years. In 1909 possession finally passed to city of Paris.  By then the tower was making a profit, as de Maupassant’s angry patronage of the restaurant proved. And to a younger generation which had never known Paris without Msr. Eiffel’s tower, it had become a symbol of France, and a  massive radio broadcast tower.  So the tower stayed put.  But by 1925, years of defrayed maintenance were catching up with the structure.

Every seven years the tower required a year and a half of attention from dozens of workers, applying fifty tons of paint, using 15,000 brushes. That was expensive. 

Worse, rust and decay required replacement of many structural supports. To pay for all of that, the city government was in need of a loan from the national government. Beginning in 1925, the politicians began to prepare the public for a monumental refurbishing bill of the monument. 

Newspapers and magazines were filled with articles detailing the expense and difficulties involved. As expected, resistance surged.  And now, Msr. Lustig explained to the five businessmen , the government had come to the conclusion that the tower was no longer worth the expense. The decision had been secretly made to sell it all for scrap.

The five dealers had been chosen, they were told, because of their professional discretion. And, they were warned, if  word of the tower’s imminent demise were to become public ahead of time,  sentimentality might prevent the sale of seven tons of scrap iron. 

So, Msr. Lustig told the five men in the room, they had four days to present their sealed bids to Msr Tourbillon. The highest bidder would have the privilege of dismantling the Eiffel Tower and selling  the high grade iron in the Tower, which was worth the modern equivalent of $2.8 million. Lustig said the the bids would be expected to be in the half million dollar range.

Each of the dealers left the room with their minds buzzing. There was not much time to budget the project, to figure labor, equipment and insurance costs.  But only one,  that we know of, was desperate enough to ask for a second, private meeting with Msr. Lustig. 

An embarrassed Msr. Andre Poisson sheepishly explained that his wife had expressed concerns about the secrecy and haste.  Msr Lustig smiled and said he understood completely. It was a shame that money concerns were always complicating the lives of decent, honorable people. Why even he, a minor government official often struggled to make ends meet. 

Msr. Poisson understood immediately. In the language of bureaucrats everywhere, Msr. Lustig had just asked for a bribe. Msr. Poisson breathed a sigh of relief. He now had no doubt that the Eiffel Tower job was perfectly legitimate and that he now had the inside track. Twenty-four hours later Poisson handed over to Msr. Lustig a cashier’s check for $500,000 as his bid, and a suitcase filled with cash - the bribe. And then he returned to his office to await the public announcement of his contract to dismantle the Tower.

The announcement never came. However Msr Poisson's check was cashed. When Msr. Poisson called the Ministry of Post Office and Telegraphs and asked when the winning bid on the Eiffle Tower deconstruction was going to be announced,  he was told no such contract was being considered. In fact, the government was about to announce the refurbishing of the tower,. Worse, there was no Deputy Director General named Lustig. 

Slowly, Msr. Poisson came to the sickening realization that he was going to have explain to his wife that he had handed over a suit case filled with cash to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.....er, the Eiffel Tower. It seems he was so ashamed he told no one. In fact his name is a nom-de-fraud, since in French "Poisson" means "Fish", as one who is hooked - and every April Fools Day it is a French tradition to slap a paper fish on a subject's back and shout "April Poisson"  So quiet was the mark that six months later Msr Lustig returned to Paris, to run the scam again.

 

By then rumors of the scam had bubbled up to the ears of the Paris police, and they quickly identified the con men running the game. Msr. Torbilion was actually an American con man named “Dapper” Dan Collins. But the brains behind the game was none other than the prince of con men, Victor "The Count" Lustig.

Victor was originally a Czech, but and he had been stealing suckers' money on the Atlantic Cruise ships for a decade or more.  He would never be prosecuted for his sale of the Eiffel Tower, but he would be arrested for other scams in America.

And with the publication of his photo, his days as a con man were over. He would end his life in Alcatraz prison, dying of pneumonia in 1947, at just  57 years old.

This year the Eiffel Tower is 136 years old. To the best of Parisian authorities’ knowledge, it is sold about a thousands of times every day.

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A BLACK DAY FOR BASEBALL, The Death of Ray Chapman

I am writing this on yet another oppressive August afternoon. It is baseball weather, when all Americans should be surrounded by the comradely of strangers in shirtsleeves, with a penciled box score in hand and green pastures before them, a land upon which time dare not intrude. Baseball in August is an endless limitless existence,  from which other realities retreat, and which may be savored patiently until the final out is called.  But I am thinking now of one particular afternoon, almost a century before this August, the hot and humid afternoon of 16 August, 1920.  In my mind's heart I am at the Polo Grounds, a bathtub shaped ballpark along the Harlem River, at the very northern tip of Manhattan. It is home to the National League New York Giants, but since 1913 the American League Yankees have also leased time on the field. And as fans gather in the Coogans Bluff stands beyond right center field, we are witness to a battle of the two best teams in the American League. The Yankees are hosting the powerful Cleveland Indians. And time is about to pause, to catch its breath, to teeter, balanced for a micro-second between one era and another. And as the fifth inning begins, this is the instant of transition.

The Yankees are using their best pitcher, the crafty right hander Carl Mays. He once praised another pitcher, saying, “That fellow has no friends and doesn’t want any. That’s why he’s a great pitcher.” The friendless Carl Mays may be the greatest pitcher in baseball at this moment. He was part of the Boston Red Sox dynasty that dominated baseball in the first two decades of the 20th century. But in 1919 he demanded to be traded. The Yankees paid $40,000 and gave up two players to be named later to put Carl in Yankee pinstripes. They wanted his “submarine” (underhanded) pitch, his blazing sidearm delivery, his un-hit-able spitball, and his reputation for brushing back batters who crowded the plate. In 1920 he was on his way to a 26 win -11 loss record with six shutouts. Today, 16 August   he is pitching out of rotation because the game is so important and because Carl Mays is going for his 100th major league win.

The batter is the top of Cleveland's order, the veteran Indian speedster, short stop Ray Chapman. The cheerful songster is fondly known around the league as “Chappie”.  After nine seasons in the majors he is at the very top of his game. So far this season he is batting .303, and he has a lifetime 93 runs scored and 671 runs batted in. Chappie also has 233 stolen bases and he wields one of the finest defense gloves in the league.  But he made his reputation laying down the bunt. He crouches down, hunched over the plate, at the very back of the batters box, thus leaving the pitcher with almost no strike zone to aim for. It is this stance, and his blazing speed to first base - he once rounded the all four bases in 14 seconds - which have given Chappie an impressive on-base average of .358. But only a few close friends know that Chappie is planning on getting out while he is on top. He was married the year before, and has made plans to go into business with his new father-in-law. And some World Series earnings would certainly smooth his way to retirement.

As Chappie steps to the plate at the top of the fifth inning, it is a humid 82 degrees under a cloudless blue sky. The 24,000 fans lean forward in their seats. When Chapman is at the plate, things happen. In the first inning Chapman had laid down his 34th successful bunt of the season. Thanks in part to Ray's speed on the base path, Cleveland is now leading over the Yankees 3 – 0. In the third inning Chapman had popped up. And now, as the fifth inning begins, Ray steps into the batters’ box and digs in.

On his very first pitch Carl Mays delivers a winding, rising, side armed fast ball bullet. With extraordinary velocity the spinning ball hurtles toward the plate, almost faster then the eye can register it. And in that second of time, between the ball leaving Carl's fingertips and it's arrival at the plate, baseball changes forever -  an era ends and an era begins - what might have been becomes what once was, what used to be. It is the blink of an eye. It is the passing of a shadow through a life. 

There is a loud ringing thud. As Mays steps out of his delivery he sees the ball is rolling quickly back toward the mound. Thinking Chapman has hit it with the handle of his bat, Mays adroitly retrieves the ball and throws a peg down the line to first base. And only then does Carl Mays realize that Ray Chapman is crumpled on the ground. 

The Polo Grounds gasp as if a single soul. The umpire, Tommy Connolly, sees blood coming out of Chapman’s right ear and nose. He asks Ray if he is alright. Receiving no reply he calls into the crowd for a doctor. At that shout, Ray opens his eyes and staggers to his feet. A few people in the crowd began to applaud. But after taking only a few steps down the first base line, Ray Chapman collapses again, in a broken heap. His teammates carry Ray into the club house where he mumbles a request for his wedding ring, which he’d given to a trainer for safe keeping. Feeling the ring in his hand seems to comfort Ray.

Meanwhile, on the field and with a new ball, the game resumes. Mays retires the next nine batters in a row and the Yankees fight back to tie the game at 3 - 3. It is a Yankee relief pitcher who gives up the winning Cleveland run; leaving the final score 4 – 3.  Called in Cleveland, Ray’s wife, Katie, boards the next train for New York City.

Hospital X-rays show Chapman has a depressed fracture of his skull. The doctors operate and remove a 3 ½” section of Ray's cranium to lessen the pressure on his brain. The surgeon tells the Cleveland manager that not only is the right side of Ray's brain lacerated from the impact with the ball, but so is the left side, where it  bounced off the inside of his skull.  At 4:40 the next morning Ray Chapman is declared dead, the only person to ever die while playing a Major League Baseball game. A family friend meets Katie’s train from Cleveland at 10:00 am the next morning. But she does not tell the young woman of her husband’s death until they got to the hotel. Once behind closed doors, and told the horrible news, Katie collapses in a faint.

That one pitch can stand as the unofficial end of the "Dead Ball Era", when the game was hit and run, steal and bunt, when the leather was mightier than the wood. It was a time when the game was more strategy than brute force, more brains than brawn, more spunk and more a team sport than it is today. It was a time when baseballs' greatest slugger was Clliford "Cactus" Gravath,  who in 1915 hit a record 24 home runs, 11 more than his closest rival.  It was not unusual for a league batting champion to have fewer than 10 home runs in a single season. It was a  time when Owen "Chief" Wilson, playing for Pittsburgh, set a record of 35 triples in a single season  - a record which still stands today, a century later.

And then, in 1920 the New York Yankees decided that their new $100,000 acquisition, Babe Ruth, who had earned fame as a pitcher, should stick to batting. In 1920, his first year as a Yankee, "The Sultan of Swat" hits a record 54 home runs, more than all but one of the other entire teams in baseball combined.  He also batted for a .376 average, and his .847 slugging average (total bases earned divided by total at bats) was a Major League record until 2001. The game had changed in a fundamental way after 1920, and the tipping point had come at the moment between Carl Mays releasing the ball, and it impacting Ray Chapman's skull.

Wearing black arm bands in Chappies’ honor (above), The Cleveland Indians beat out the New York Yankees for the pennant that year, and went on to win the World Series. The Yankees finished a distant third. The Cleveland team voted Katie Chapman a full share of the winners’ purse, about $4,000 (worth $45,000 today). Six months after Chappie's death, Katie gave birth to his daughter and named her Rae. A few years later Katie remarried, to businessman J.F. McMahon and he moved them to California. But she still mourned Chappie. In 1926 Katie committed suicide by drinking cleaning fluid. Three years later little Rae contracted German measles and died as well. Both bodies were brought back to Cleveland,  to be buried in Calvary Cemetery under the name “Chapman”. Ray is buried alone about five miles away in Lake View Cemetery, where fans still leave baseballs, bats and memorabilia against his tombstone. If you have a chance, you should do the same.

Carl Mays played for the Yankees for only one more season. In 1921 he won 27 games and lost only 9. And he  batted .343, unheard of for a pitcher in any era of the game. Despite that achievement, part way through the 1922 season he was traded to the National League Cincinnati Reds, where he went 20 and 9, making him the first pitcher to win 20 games in both leagues.

Carl Mays spent 15 years in the majors, earning 208 wins and 31 saves against a mere 126 losses, with an amazing 862 strikeouts in 490 games. His lifetime batting average of .268 makes him one of the best hitting pitchers of all time. And yet, despite what are clearly Hall Of Fame statistics Carl Mays has received only 8 votes for that honor. Some may believe in the absurd story that he fixed a World Series game in 1922. But the facts deny that. No, what haunted Carl Mays until his death in 1971,  what kept him out of the Hall of Fame, was that one pitch out of the thousands of pitches he threw over his career, the one pitch he threw in the August heat of the 1920 pennant race. It is something to ponder, as the dog days of summer approach once again, and the finality of September hints at the winter which shall soon to envelope us all. 

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