Category Archives: Sports

Highway Farty

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St. Louis Sportsman’s Park Banner

Highway Farty refers to the local St. Louis pronunciation of old US 40 (now I-64), where the “o” vowel is shifted to an “ar” sound. It is a characteristic feature of a native St. Louis accent, which also turns neighboring I-44 into farty-far. In this instance though Highway Farty alludes to a YouTube channel on local St. Louis history. I watched this series’ first five episodes that explains why Babe Ruth liked coming to St. Louis to play baseball more than anywhere else in the country. Here is a heads-up, it wasn’t the baseball that attracted him.

The first episode acts as an introduction to this series and centers on Sportsman’s Park and its role in the 1926 World Series. At the time St. Louis had two MLB teams, the Cardinals and the Browns. Located on the northside, both teams shared Sportsmen’s, with one team on the road, while the other team at home. The American League Browns regularly brought the Yankees to town. In 1926 Ruth hit three homeruns in the fourth game of that world series. Most famously one for 11-year-old Johnny Sylvester who was sick in the hospital at the time.

Baseball may have first brought Babe Ruth to town, but it was his favorite whorehouse in the whole country that made him actually want to come here. Episodes 2-5 detail the search for this once famous, but now elusive house of ill repute. Host Don M. Kaiser travels around town, following his clues. False starts and dead ends include the House of the Good Sheperd, Magdalene Laundry and Busch’s Grove. Sifting evidence, he finally hits paydirt.

In St. Louis, on August 29, 1925, Ruth was fined $5,000 ($100,000 in today’s dollars) and suspended from the Yankees for violations of team rules. Given a train ticket, he was ordered back to New York. Instead, he headed back downtown and straight to his favorite bordello, whose site is currently occupied by a Salvation Army parking lot, near the midtown IKEA. On September 3, 1925, the Post Dispatch reported a police raid at this location where the moral squad arrested two young women and a maid. Ruth apologized to management and patch things up with his team and was in St. Louis again next year.

Let the Games Begin!

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Yosemite Fireplace Relief – Ski Jumping

Yesterday, I watched the Olympics opening ceremony live during the day. I enjoyed seeing the kaleidoscope of colors, with giant blue, red and yellow paint tubes pouring out their corresponding-colored fabric at the feet of the dancers below and then hearing Mariah Carey sing Volare in Italian. Not bad for daytime TV. The parade of nations split among four locations didn’t really work for me. Divided by locale four ways, too many of the smaller teams were only further reduced in stature. Watching the parade live, I did get to hear the audience boo VP Vance. I understand that for primetime NBC muted these sounds, so as not to offend any snowflakes.

Turning now to a real controversy that is plaguing these winter games, “Are ski jumpers enhancing their penises to fly further?” Youth and WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) want to know. According to recent news reports, some ski jumpers are allegedly injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid (paraffin) in order to fly that little bit further. Injecting the penis with acid would temporarily achieve a visual thickening of their penis size and give the ski jumpers bigger genitalia at the point their suits are measured by 3D scanners. Larger measurements could theoretically mean athletes being given a bigger, looser suit, which would act like a sail to catch the wind and allow them to make longer jumps. Research from a published scientific journal, said that such a 2 cm change in a suit represented an extra 5.8 meters in the length of a jump.

Adding credence to these latest accusations, are the conclusions announced just this week to another ski jumping controversy. After an eleven-month investigation two Norwegian coaches were suspended for eighteen months because they inserted illegal stitching into the crotch area of some of their best jumper’s suits after an inspection by officials. These changes that amounted to cheating were filmed from behind a curtain and uploaded anonymously to YouTube. They served to make the suits larger and more aerodynamically advantageous, thus enabling longer jumps in competition.

Cochiti Redskins

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Cochiti Redskins, Mateo Romero, 2000

Did you know that since the start of the 20th century many Native American communities have had baseball teams? Many famous early 20th-century Native American baseball players started the sport at assimilationist boarding schools. This painting of men in baseball caps and jerseys emblazoned with the words “red” and “skins” speaks to that history. The slur was the name of the DC NFL football team until 2020, when it was renamed the Washington Commanders. Mateo Romero was actively involved with changing the name beginning in 1992. Here, he reclaims the term with Cochiti Pueblo members dressed and posed like a baseball team. Though Romero’s team is imaginary, Cochiti Pueblo has had a minor league baseball team for decades, the Cochiti Braves.