Baseball, Debt, Forgiving the Goons and Making Sense of the Goofy New World Order - Michaek Moriarty on Point

Wazzit Say? 

Sumpin aboud . . .Exercisin Yer Free Will . . .don't cost nutttin.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense: - Alexander Pope

 The measure the greatness of all other books against the greatest literary backdrop of all-time, the Bible, and I find with Joyce's Ulysses, the Bible doesn't even come close. If you're a writer, and you haven't read Ulysses, that fact is probably apparent in your writing  . . .
Joyce would have said as much. Joyce said a lot of things, such as: If Dublin was to be destroyed,Ulysses would be the book used to put it back together again. He said the same thing about the universe in accordance with Finnegans Wake.FW is a literary work that seems to have condensed time and space into a nutshell. Joyce also said of Ulysses: I'm writing a book to keep the scholars and professors guessing for centuries. That is the only way to ensure one's own immortality. Adam Michael Luebke

James Joyce is a tough read.  When a reader manages to get through with Dubliners, a collection of short-stories, the novel Portrait of the Artist as Young Man tosses up an offensive line of cultural tropes and references from Western Civilization that is as daunting as Jerry Kramer, Jim Otto, Fuzzy Thurston, Jim Ringo, Forrest Gregg and Bob Skoronski.  Those gents were the 1959-1963 Green Bay Packer offensive linemen - tough to get through.

Life is tough to get through.  James Joyce was said to have revolutionized literature - not really. Many, many, many ink-slingers are as thick with cross-references and dark conceits - Rabelais, Laurence Sterne, Jonathan Swift and Marcel Proust to name a few. Joyce, however,  could be as lucid and straightforward as a sportswriter when he chose to do so, or if the occasion demanded.

The more one brings to the blank paper, along with the standards of plain and truthful speaking, the richer the benefits for the writer's readers.    James Joyce brought music to his reader via the written word. Sound and Sense merged in a beautifully orchestrated and executed performance - Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake make the 1959-1963 Packers' offensive line seem like Mae Kennedy Kane Dancers *confronting Ragen's Colts with hangovers. Those are two obscure Chicago references for the energetic reader.

Ulysses offers this - Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine (55).

Is there anything left un-uttered? Ulysses is that Roman name for that Greek guy what wandered when he pissed off the gods and took a long time to get home to the Old Lady and the kid, right?  So, what's that got to do with Dublin on  16 June 1904?  Plenty.  That's the point.

Michael Moriarty writes much like James Joyce and brings a vast arsenal of culture to his prose.  This early morning before I could get to Kareem's Dunkin Donuts at 104th & Western, I was fully  caffeinated with the following offering by my pal Michael Moriarty.   Mr. Moriarty and I share a Jesuit education, a Catholic upbringing and Chicago roots.  We learned that First Principles based upon obligation to God as the foundation to living a good and happy life.  Without a sounding board, man is deaf.  If we refuse to hear the sound of the unborn child in mother's womb, what is the point of going to a symphony.

Michael Moriarty - read and listen:

THE NEW WORLD ORDER’S FIELD OF DREAMS
By Michael MoriartyAugust 7, 2012NewsWithViews.comMy grandfather, George Moriarty, first played for Chicago.No, he didn’t field for the Chicago White Sox, a team that eventually became known as the infamous Chicago Black Sox.He played for the Chicago Cubs. That baseball team hired my grandfather right off the sandlots of The Toddlin’ Town’s very, very tough and very, very Irish South Side.“Big George”, as we used to call him, then went on to play with the New York Highlanders – which later became the New York Yankees – and then he settled down for most of his playing career with the Detroit Tigers.There he became that team’s best third baseman … until George Kell, that is.My GrandfatherMy grandfather really couldn’t hit all that well. Never broke a seasonal .300.But what a base stealer!!Stole home more times in one season than anyone in baseball history … including Ty Cobb.Well, at least that’s what my father said he did.DON’T DIE ON THIRD!was written about him.The film, Gangs of New York, wasn’t all that different from gangs of Chicago.Tough.You had to know how to fight or you weren’t going to last long.You certainly couldn’t survive in the American Big League Anything if you batted under .300.Unless you knew how to protect the better hitters.I played a hockey “Goon” in television’s Deadliest Season. I was there on the ice to do nothing more than “intimidate.”Things get a little out of hand and my character kills another player on the ice.Bang The Drum Slowly was almost exactly the opposite message from my grandfather’s life and the lessons of The Deadliest Season: Protect the wounded and the infirm and you’ll build team spirit.Another baseball film, Field of Dreams, preaches a much more profoundly Liberal sermon than Bang The Drum Slowly.Field of Dreams is not only more palatably radical than any other American baseball film but more heart-warmingly revolutionary than any other American film in recent history.It basically echoes a breathtaking philosophic position that the writer Gary Wills offered us regarding the New Testament’s Judas:Gary Wills, another version of a Christian contradiction-in-terms, a Catholic Progressive – along with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi – has been trying to canonize Judas for quite some time, exalt him as the most Christ-like of characters, this side of Christ Himself.Judas performed the job he had to perform and, therefore, he was doing God’s Will.“He was only doing his job!”Judas deserves to be honored for that.“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!”Okay.Kind of.Field of Dreams is a beautifully made film of forgiveness and reconciliation … for everyone.It is ultimately everyone’s field of dreams in everyone’s most childlike reveries.According to this film, we all, good-bad-or-indiffently-evil, end up in heaven, even every member of the undeniably but poignantly corrupt Chicago Black Sox.Okay.Kind of.There is still, however, the last, big time I noticed a dividing line between the good and the evil.Between, say Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill.Then why did President Barack Hussein Obama send a gift from the Queen of England – a bust of Winston Churchill – why did he send that bust back to London?!And why did he promise Vladimir Putin of neo-Soviet Russia that he would be more “flexible” when he’s re-elected?Barack Obama must be a fan of something other than the World War II Free World.He’s not only a fan and booster but a major creator of what we now know of as “The Progressive New World Order.”Imagine a film wherein the victims of Stalinist oppression, relatives of the executed and worked to death, played soccer with Nikita Khrushchev?“All is forgiven!”Of course, a few cheating baseball players in Field of Dreams are hardly the Red Army.Dreams are the heart of an inevitably worldwide conflict; and since conflict is the heart of drama, let’s examine The Fields of Everyone’s Dreams.President Barack Hussein Obama dreams of a “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”.It’s all there in great detail within his tribute to his family, Dreams For My Father.Okay.He, however, is not the only one working on this.Guess what?The Progressive “New World Order” was most noticeably announced by George Bush Sr.A kinder gentler America” was,I believe,how Bush expressedhis own “field of dreams.”Eventually this New World Order just had to necessitate “the fundamental transformation of the United States of America.”What better way to begin it than by having George Bush Jr. put America into its biggest debt until, of course, Barack Hussein Obama showed up and tripled that same, record-breaking bankruptcy.Why?A Field of Dreams called the New World Order cannot be achieved without a “fundamental transformation of the United States.”What easier and simpler way to do that than by putting America into a debt that she cannot possibly extricate herself from?A field of dreams called The New World Order will take “strong medicine” in order to transform life on earth into the very heaven we experience in the filmField of Dreams.American debt is that “strong medicine”.Aside from suicidal, American debt, what is the main ingredient for creating The New World Order?Forgiveness.Apparently our feelings about the Soviet Union and Red China are the main obstacles to The New World Order’s Field of Dreams.We are in for the Obama Nation’s prolonged “teachable moment.”If we wholeheartedly forgive the Chicago Black Sox, put ourselves in heaven with them, then we can move on to forgiving the tyranny of Communism.After the revelations of America’s self-loathing, plus the opening punches to American self-respect in the patronizing brilliance of what I call “naïve genius,” the New World Order will keep America soft, warm and gooey withField of Dreams and Dreams For My Father until America welcomes her own death as a favor.I’m in Canada watching all this while rooting for the Tea Party and leadership such as Allen West. All of which are an embarrassingly painful minority.There is, however, the possibility of miracles.If such miracles don’t happen and the Obama Nation is reinstated by reelection, all of Canada had better start praying for her own miracles. My new homeland is much easier “pickings” than the former greatest nation of the Free World, the United States of America.Such death of individual freedom and responsibility is called “Progress”.With the virulently expanding death by legalized abortion and euthanasia, I call it The New World Order’s Fourth Reich.
What does that mean?The Progressively Digestible Survival of The Progressively Fittest.Until then, with the expanding control of Big Government over everything, we’ll be fed the palatable pap, the heart-warming, end-of-the-film suicide of James Earl Jones.
Perhaps never to return alive?His winningly and gently humorous dance into that heavenly field of corn?But only as a ghost of his former self?Death as merely an easily addictive field of dreams?The Western World’s Judeo-Christian culture, largely inspired by the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations?All to be melted away by a Progressively Marxist New World Order?Forgiveness for everyone?Including Judas, Mao and Joseph Stalin?When will that happen?When Hell freezes over and Heaven is a skating rink.© 2012 - Michael Moriarty - All Rights Reserved

* Mae Kennedy Kane 

Ragen's Colts - "Hit Me and You Hit 2,000". 



http://voices.yahoo.com/5-greatest-lines-james-joyces-ulysses-8361231.html?cat=9

http://newswithviews.com/Moriarty/michael133.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragen's_Colts
http://www.irishamericannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2511:chicagos-first-family-of-irish-radio&catid=86:region
http://www.dom.edu/library/collections/kane-irish-books

The Most American Movie - Bang the Drum Slowly

 

The Best Years of Our Lives defines the essence of what American courage is versus the disastrous proposals and delusions that brought the entire human race into the Second World War. The film also portrays the essence of an American goodness which, now more than ever, is like no other in the world. Michael Moriarty - Ottawa Life Magazine 7/15/2012

       "Genius is a web into which poor, normally mortal humans inevitably fly!" - Michael Moriarty - Ottawa Life Magazine        

Bruce Pearson ( Robert DeNiro): Everybody'd be nice to you if they knew you were dying. Henry Wiggen ( Michael Moriarty: Everybody knows everybody is dying; that's why people are as good as they are. from Bang the Drum Slowly - 1973

I beg to differ with a man of true genius, only this once; Michael Moriarty wrote that The Best Years of Our Lives, which presents the the physical, mental and spiritual anguish of three WWII veterans upon homecoming,  might just be the greatest American film ever produced.   Moriarty, whose grandfather was reputed to be the one of the most fiercely competitive men to ever play professional baseball, the most American of sports, George Moriarty, feared by the legendary Ty Cobb and respected by the profession as an umpire once he retired from play, is an athletic actor who brought the soul of baseball - a tragi-comic drama itself- to life in the film Bang the Drum Slowly (1972)*.   I'd offer that this film is the genuine American movie.

It is American because it is youthful, hopeful, energetic, profane, respectful, witty and courageous.  Play is serious business.  Games ( in Greek agonistes ) are man's recognition of God.   In pure sport, man enacts his course of life.  The goal is to come as close to perfection as possible, without allowing ones self to become ensnared in pride (hubris)  -that is what tragedy is all about.   The Games that we play are very serious.   The struggle required in living well is our mortal art.  Baseball is often agreed upon to be an example of perfect sport - requiring patience, energy, charity, deft physicality and self-deprecating humor.

The manager of the fictional baseball team of Mark Harris's novel and screenplay, Dutch, offers this summary of his time on earth -" When I die, in the newspapers they'll write that the sons of bitches of the world have lost their leader."  

Dutch Schnell's aphorism stands as tall  his memorable "Skip the facts, just gimme the details."  The devil dwells in the details:

This is the story of a star-pitcher Henry " Author" Wiggen ( Moriarty) attempting to give dignity to the last months  of dying catcher Bruce Pearson ( DeNiro) and in so doing draws every spark of humanity from a clubhouse full of idiosyncracies, egos, appetites and grudges. Death has no sting.

Here is what Moriarty and Wiggen hath wrought.

The agony ( the struggle) of dying young is the American gift to God.  The Game is everything, because the game reflects God's love of man.

Bang the Drum Slowly is the American film.

* Chicago Note -America's Montaigne, Joseph Epstein**, sent this Chicagoland fact along:

Maury and Lois Rosenfield, the couple who produced Bang the Drum Slowly, both of them now dead, were dear friends of mine. They lived in Glencoe. Maury was a successful lawyer, who became interested in the movies through a friendship with Ben Hecht. The Rosenfields acquired the services of DeNiro for this movie for $10,000. Of Michael Moriarity, Maury used to say that no actor had ever done less to advance his own career. . . . Keep tapping away.
Best, Joe

Joe noted that Mr. Rosenfield had great respect for Moriarty's selflessness.

**

Joseph Epstein (born January 9, 1937 in Chicago) is an essayist, short story writer, and editor, best known as a former editor of the Phi Beta Kappa Society's The American Scholar magazine and for his recent essay collection, Snobbery: The American Version. He was also a lecturer atNorthwestern University from 1974 to 2002. He is a Contributing Editor at The Weekly Standardand a long-time contributor of essays and short stories to The New Criterion and Commentary. The late William F. Buckley, Jr., in his review of Snobbery, called Epstein the wittiest writer alive.

Epstein's body of work reveals his fascination with common everyday situations, amusing trends and small pleasures that he brings to his reader's attention. He also specializes in essays that shed light on the musings and ideas of famous and forgotten authors and writes short stories that prominently feature the city of Chicago and the characters that have populated his 70 years as an observer of the city.

http://www.ottawalife.com/2012/07/the-best-american-film-of-my-life/

Chicago Roots: Actor Michael Moriarty Jazz Man

Actor Michael Moriarty's grandfather, George, was born in Back of the Yards and played for the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs. Mr. Moriarty is an accomplished jazz pianist and vocal stylist.

Talented man from a talented blood-line in a tough town!

* George Moriarty

George Moriarty, former third baseman, umpired from 1917 to 1940

George Moriarty grew up in Chicago, where his immigrant father was a childhood friend of another Irishman, Charlie Comiskey. He reached the majors as a third baseman in 1906, having already earned a reputation as a fighter of the first rank. When he joined the Detroit Tigers in 1909, Ty Cobb challenged him to a fight. Moriarty handed Cobb a bat. “A fellow like you,” said the young third baseman, “needs a bat to even things up when fighting an Irishman.” Cobb wisely backed off.

In 1917, his playing career over, Moriarty joined the American League umpiring staff, remaining until 1940. A Sporting News poll in 1935 rated him the best umpire in the league. One day in 1932, he took a page from Tim Hurst’s book when he fought four Chicago White Sox (three players and the manager) all at once after a hotly contested game in Chicago. Moriarty emerged with a broken wrist, but managed to hold off all his assailants despite being nearly twice the age of the players involved.

Moriarty was so esteemed as a baseball man that he took a two-year hiatus from umpiring in 1927-28 to manage his old team, the Detroit Tigers. In fact, several Irish-American umpires interrupted their umpiring careers to manage major league clubs; others who did so were John Gaffney, John Kelly, Hank O’Day, and Tim Hurst.

http://www.wcnet.org/~dlfleitz/sabrpres.htm



Street-tough George Moriarty carved a career in baseball that spanned more than 50 years, as player, coach, manager, umpire, executive, and scout. As a player, Moriarty played with Ty Cobb on the Detroit Tigers, and used his aggresive baserunning to swipe home 11 times. He later succeeded Cobb as manager of the Tigers, after becoming an AL umpire. Moriarty spent two decades as an arbiter before joining the Al office as a public relations official. He later scouted for several teams, until his death in Miami in 1964.
Career Batting Stats
G AB H R HR RBI SB AVG SLG OBP OPS OPS+
1076 3671 920 372 5 376 248 .251 .312 .303 .616 95.9
Teams George Moriarty Managed
Detroit Tigers (1927-1928)
Born
George Joseph Moriarty was born on July 7, 1885, in Chicago, IL.

Died
April 8, 1964, Miami, FL

Batted: Right
Threw: Right

Major League Debut
9 27,

Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1903
John Titus
Hans Lobert
Solly Hofman
Lee Tannehill
George Moriarty
Jake Stahl
Three-Finger Brown
Chief Bender
Red Ames

Post-Season Appearances
1909 World Series
Notes
Actor Michael Moriarty, known for his roles in the television show Law and Order, and the baseball movie Bang the Drum Slowly, is the grandson of George Moriarty.

Michael Moriarty's Close Reading of Communism/Progressivism in "On The Water Front"

Michael Moriarty is great actor and a serious scholar. I learned that Mr. Moriarty had Chicago roots ( Grandfather was baseball great George Moriarty - born in 'Back O' The Yards and buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Evergreen Park). Mr. Moriarty played Henry Wiggen in the great American film Bang the Drum Slowly.

Mr. Moriarty writes for Big Hollywood. The other day Moriarty presented a close reading of Elia Kazan's classic film On The Waterfront and presented some sobering thoughts on American Political culture, Marlon’s Mao: Part Three.

Michael Moriarty is a good read. Click my post title for the full article.

Here is a sample:


Close Reading/Reading to Write
Definition of genre

Close reading—usually of a written text, but quite possibly of a film, a painting, or another work of art—is the first stage in writing an essay that responds to or builds upon the ideas in the original text. That is why a close reading is sometimes called “reading to write” or “reader response.” Rather than merely extracting facts from the text, a close reading prepares you to analyze it critically through your own writing.

http://uwp.duke.edu/wstudio/resources/genres/close_reading.pdf

This, the Great American Tragedy of Communism’s homicidal insistence upon invading America as a “Progressive Movement” – the assassination of the very Catholic President John F. Kenney being one of its most disgracefully high points – will, I have massive faith, eventually turn out to be just another triumph of America over the mortal enemies of her infinitely and universally resonant Declaration of Independence.
Here, while basking in the relevance of On The Waterfront, I suddenly see the cosa nostra metaphor, the Brechtian fascination with Chicago mobs, the Obama administration’s Red-packed Czardom and Mao Zedong himself as the Godfather of all Godfathers … this mounting tower of Progressive Babel, making absolutely no sense whatsoever unless you have a ruthless mob willing to enforce it.
Our Second Amendment?!
If we don’t have weapons in our hands, the enlightened despots still know that we’re packing heat.
Most important is our American knowledge of the truth and the power of love.
With our government now run by no more than an Ivy-league educated, gangster’s mob, I recall Terry Malloy’s reluctant acceptance of a pistol from his doomed lawyer brother who insists – following one of screen history’s greatest moments of acting, Rod Steiger’s resigned and tragic sigh, the beginning of his surrender to the inevitability of his own death – “You’re gonna need it!”
Here is where, even before Karl Malden’s firey priest makes his re-entrance, God begins to arrive.
Then, of course, the hair-raising race down the darkened alley when Terry Malloy and Edie Doyle first barely escape being run down by Johnny Friendly’s hit team truck, then see the hanging, dead body of Rod Steiger.
Brando’s childlike plea to Eva Marie Saint to take care of his brother’s now fallen body, that gun in his possession, ready to do business.
Terry goes to Friendly’s bar to reek revenge upon his brother’s killers. With his hand still bleeding from the near-death escape with Edie, Terry hunches on the bar, gun in hand, to await the arrival of Johnny Friendly.
Who shows up?
A priest … a Catholic priest.
God again!!

Mark Harris and the Moriartys - George & Michael: Novels, Baseball, Chicago and God

"You will no more expect the novelist to tell you precisely how something is said than you will expect him to stand by your chair and hold your book". Mark Harris American Novelist 1922-2007

In my Arcturus Calendar for October 7 it says, "De Soto visited Georgia, 1540." This hands me a laugh. Bruce Pearson also visited Georgia. I was his pall-bear, me and 2 fellows from the crate and box plant and some town boys, and that was all. There were flowers from the club, but no person from the club. They could of sent somebody.

He was not a bad fellow, no worse than most and probably better than some, and not a bad ballplayer neither when they give him a chance, when they laid off him long enough. From here on in I rag nobody.

Mark Harris - Bang the Drum Slowly

Mark Harris wrote great novels. I read The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly while I worked nights at Orchestra Hall, which paid for my tuition at Loyola University. I worked - didn't get fired anyway.

I read these books on the recommendation of Dr. William Heibel of the English Department at Loyola. Years later, Dr. Heibel would serve on my Master of Arts Oral Examination panel - he was brutal and a great guy.

Bang the Drum Slowly is a secular parable set in the 1950's - its narrator is a fireball pitcher for the fictitious New York Mammoths by name of Henry Wiggen.

Henry Wiggen is a talented athlete and sharp student of human nature - in the off season Wiggen sells insurance to the natures who inhabit the team clubhouse. One of the more ignorant, sad and lonely members of the Mammoths is the rube catcher Bruce Pearson who would make Shoeless Joe Jackson appear to be Baseball's Noel Coward.

Wiggen and Pearson room together and Wiggen learns that Pearson is dying of cancer.

Wiggen tries to make Pearson enjoy his own talents, gifts and humanity in his last days.

The novel was made into a beautiful film and teamed two wonderful actors Robert DeNiro and Michael Moriarty.

Recently I learned that Moriarty's grandfather, George, had been born and raised in Chicago's Stockyards and was great baseball player.

George Joseph Moriarty

Positions: Third Baseman, First Baseman and Outfielder
Bats: Right, Throws: Right
Height: 6' 0", Weight: 185 lb.

Born: July 7, 1885 in Chicago, IL (All Transactions)
Debut: September 27, 1903
Teams (by GP): Tigers/Highlanders/WhiteSox/Cubs 1903-1916
Final Game: May 4, 1916
Died: April 8, 1964 in Miami, FL
Buried: St. Mary Cemetery,in Evergreen Park, IL
Relatives: Brother of Bill Moriarty

and more . . .


George Moriarty
Street-tough George Moriarty carved a career in baseball that spanned more than 50 years, as player, coach, manager, umpire, executive, and scout. As a player, Moriarty played with Ty Cobb on the Detroit Tigers, and used his aggresive baserunning to swipe home 11 times. He later succeeded Cobb as manager of the Tigers, after becoming an AL umpire. Moriarty spent two decades as an arbiter before joining the Al office as a public relations official. He later scouted for several teams, until his death in Miami in 1964.
Career Batting Stats
G AB H R HR RBI SB AVG SLG OBP OPS OPS+
1076 3671 920 372 5 376 248 .251 .312 .303 .616 95.9
Teams George Moriarty Managed
Detroit Tigers (1927-1928)
Born
George Joseph Moriarty was born on July 7, 1885, in Chicago, IL.

Died
April 8, 1964, Miami, FL

Batted: Right
Threw: Right

Major League Debut
9 27,

Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1903
John Titus
Hans Lobert
Solly Hofman
Lee Tannehill
George Moriarty
Jake Stahl
Three-Finger Brown
Chief Bender
Red Ames

Post-Season Appearances
1909 World Series
Notes
Actor Michael Moriarty, known for his roles in the television show Law and Order, and the baseball movie Bang the Drum Slowly, is the grandson of George Moriarty.


Michael Moriarty's grandfather played with Ty Cobb and could be as mean as that iconic sociopath, but retained more humanity and good humor. From Wikipedia:

It is reported that once while Moriarty was umpiring, Babe Ruth, who was at bat, stepped out of the batter's box and asked Moriarty to spell his last name. When he had spelled it out, Ruth reportedly replied, "Just as I thought; only one I." The baseball card shown to the right of this text spells Moriarty's name incorrectly - with "two I's."
Moriarty also was noted for his influence on the life of Tigers first baseman Hank Greenberg. During the 1935 World Series, Moriarty warned several Chicago Cubs players to stop yelling anti-semitic slurs at Greenberg [2]. When the Cubs players persisted with their remarks, Moriarty took the unusual step of clearing the entire Chicago bench - a maneuver that got him fined by then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis [3]. Later, when Greenberg was pursuing Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, Moriarty kept the final game of the 1938 season going until darkness made it impossible to continue. Greenberg finished the night two homers shy of Ruth's record [4].
In his biography, Hank Greenberg recalled:
Much later in my career George Moriarty and I became very good friends. Back in the early 1900s he played third base for Detroit, and he used to steal home. Somebody wrote a poem about him, and the title was “Never Die on Third Moriarty.” All through the rest of his life George felt he knew something about stealing home. When he was umpiring on third base . . .

Not only that George Moriarty was a musician and songwriter.

thus -

Despite his combative field persona, off the field Moriarty could be more congenial, maintaining close friendships with Jesuit priests at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. Moriarty also fancied himself a lyricist, and collaborated with Richard A. Whiting on the tune "Love Me Like the Ivy Loves the Old Oak Tree."

A great American Novelist created a character who plays America's past time. A great athlete competes and flourishes in that mileau. His grandson goes on to play the character created by Mark Harris and goes on to become a great American Actor

God seems to know what He's doing.



http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/moriage02.shtml?redir