The Saturday Picture Show, October 22, 2016

As we get ready to say goodbye to baseball again until next Spring, take a look at a catcher's mask worn by Moe Berg, who caught for a few teams in the 1920s and 30s. Moe is better known for speaking a dozen languages, reading at least ten newspapers per day and making films during a baseball tour of Japan in 1934...films which came in handy in his second career as a United States spy in World War II. Hollywood is making a movie of his life, to be released next year, starring Paul Rudd, who looks like Moe Berg like I look like Haile Selassie, but whaddya gonna do?

You look at this picture and you think, there's a man named Enos Slaughter, and his nickname was "Country," because he hailed from Roxboro, NC, before playing in the majors from 1938 - 1959.  But it was something that happened to him before he got to the big leagues that is the best part of the story to impart to young people of 2016. Ol' Enos was playing in Columbus GA and dogged it on his way back to the dugout one time...he walked in instead of running. His manager said, "Son, if you're tired, we'll get you some help out there."  And Enos Slaughter never operated at a pace less than full-tilt hustle on a baseball field again. 

When Hurricane Matthew was finished his dirty work on and around Fernandina Beach, FL, he left behind a veritable treasure trove of sea shells!

This is the house once belonging to Vera Coking in Atlantic City, NJ. "Penthouse" publishing smutking Bob Guccione wanted to build a huge casino on her property and on either side of it, and began construction, figuring that Mrs Coking would accept the $1,000,000 he offered. She wouldn't budge, but Guccione ran out of money and abandoned the project anyway. Several years later, penthouse building king Donald J. Trump tried to force the aging widow of her house with an eminent domain lawsuit, like the one that we used to chase Native Americans off their property. She won. There is justice.

Speaking of justice...if you want to go to Indonesia, have fun! Send me a postcard.  Just don't steal anything.  This is how foreign thieves are punished there...

We're saluting American poetic genius Bob Dylan, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. His sixth album came out in 1965 and was entitled "Highway 61 Revisited."  These tracks parallel Hwy 61 in Bob's native Minnesota.

Busch Gardens in Pasadena CA closed in 1979. There were lots of birds who lived there in huge aviaries, and the vast majority of them winged it to zoos and other sanctuaries.  But the Busch people did a curious thing.  They set some of the parrots free. And ever since, for one day a year, those parrots and their families pause during migration to return to roost in Echo Park near the site of the old Gardens.  

This is a handy item to keep on the shelf just in case your water stops running.  It also makes a handy dessert if frozen.