Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (35 page)

Then the investigators discovered some bizarre coincidences: The Carlsons and the Cones traveled in the same exclusive social circles. The two families had both sent their children to the same prestigious Berkeley Preparatory School, and Hillary Carlson and Jean Ann Cone had served together on the school’s board of trustees. Both families had given lots of money to the school—the library named in honor of Mrs. Cone was just yards away from the baseball field that was named for Mrs. Carlson.

Douglas Cone and Donald Carlson seemed to have less in common than their wives did. Cone didn’t travel in diplomatic circles like Carlson—he was in road construction. But had Jean Ann Cone and Hillary Carlson compared notes about their husbands, they might have noticed something unusual: Jean Ann’s husband was away on business during the week and home on weekends, while Hillary’s husband was away on weekends but home during the week.

And just like Superman and Clark Kent, Douglas Cone and Donald Carlson were never in the same place at the same time.

In 1014 A.D., Viking ships pulled down the London Bridge, apparently on a whim.

THE JIG IS UP

With the cops (and the newspapers) hot on his trail, Douglas Cone had no choice but to reveal his incredible secret: for more than 20 years, he had been living a double life. On weekends he lived with his wife Jean Ann in town, but during the week he posed as Donald Carlson, living with his mistress, Hillary Carlson, and their two children on their large estate.

He and Hillary had made up the story about the State Department job so they would never have to appear together in public. Douglas Cone’s “business trips” were simply a ruse so he could spend the week with Hillary. She knew everything, but Jean Ann Cone apparently died without realizing that her husband had been two-timing her for over two decades.

REST IN PEACE

The police still believe, and the Cone children now accept, that Jean Ann Cone’s death was an accident. “The family was only suspicious because Douglas Cone remarried too quickly,” says Tampa Police Sergeant Jim Simonson. “Turns out that can be easily explained; it’s not like he met the woman two weeks before.”

RANDOM INSECT FACTS

•
The word “bug” started out as the Anglo-Saxon word
bugge
or
bough
meaning a terror, a devil, or a ghost.

•
The word “dragonfly” probably originates with the Greek word
drakos
meaning “eye.”

•
The hairs on the butt of a cockroach are so sensitive that they can detect the air currents made by the on-rushing tongue of a toad.

•
The praying mantis is the official state insect of Connecticut.

•
Mating soapberry bugs remain locked in embrace for up to eleven days, a period of time which exceeds the life span of many other insects.

The skin on the soles of your feet is called the
stratum corneum
(Latin for “horny layer”).

Great lines from great comedians
.

“My doctor told me I had Attention Deficit Disorder. He said, ‘A.D.D. is a complex disorder, blah, blah, blah.’ I didn’t pay attention to the rest.”

—Kyle Dunnigan

“One night I made love for an hour and five minutes. It was the day they pushed the clock ahead.”

—Garry Shandling

“Personally, I’m waiting for caller IQ.”

—Sandra Bernhard

“A relationship is like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks’ notice...and they should have to find you a temp.”

—Bob Ettinger

“Penguins mate for life. Which doesn’t exactly surprise me that much ’cause they all look alike—it’s not like they’re going to meet a better-looking penguin some day.”

—Ellen DeGeneres

“While driving I had an accident with a magician. He came out of nowhere!”

—Auggie Cook

“You know the good thing about gangs is, they carpool.”

—John Mendoza

“I was on the corner the other day when a wild-eyed sort of gypsy-looking lady with a dark veil over her face grabbed me right on Ventura Boulevard and said, ‘Karen Haber! You’re never going to find happiness, and no one is ever going to marry you!’ I said, ‘Mom, leave me alone.’”

—Karen Haber

“I’m not saying my wife’s a bad cook, but she uses a smoke alarm as a timer.”

—Bob Monkhouse

“I was on the subway sitting on a newspaper, and a guy comes over and asks, ‘Are you reading that?’ I didn’t know what to say. So I said, ‘Yes,’ stood up, turned the page, and sat down again.”

—David Brenner

Rain contains vitamin B12.

Over the years, the BRI has written a lot about the history of the game of baseball. Here’s what happened when people began to realize that there was a lot of money to be made in the
business
of baseball
.

P
ROFESSIONAL BASE BALL

On May 17, 1857, the Knickerbocker Club of New York City invited rival clubs from around their region to a meeting. The reason: to draw up a standardized set of rules for the new sport they all played—base ball. Twenty-five clubs attended and by the end of the meeting they had become The National Association of Base Ball Players. The sport had only recently emerged from various similar, traditional games being played around the country—cricket, “rounders,” and “townball”—but by 1868 more than 100 teams were members of the National Association.

One of the Association’s original principles had been that baseball should remain a purely amateur sport. It didn’t. In 1862 Albert Reach of the Brooklyn Eckfords became the first professional player when he was paid $25 to join the Philadelphia Athletics. As the game’s popularity grew, rivalries between the different teams became so intense that paying players, though still against the rules, became commonplace. In 1869 the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first all-professional team, traveling the country challenging—and demolishing—all comers. (They won 65 straight games that year.) Other clubs followed suit and two years later the original organization rewrote its charter to become the first “major league”—The National Association of
Professional
Baseball Players.

THE NATIONAL LEAGUE

As attendance continued to climb and even more teams got into the act, baseball started to generate substantial revenue. And people involved with the sport started to realize that the NAPBP might be more suitably run by
businessmen
than by players. By 1875 many of the teams found themselves in a pickle. Why? That year, seven of the 13 teams in the league ran out of money and were unable to finish the season. The owners had to do something. In December, 1875, they held a secret meeting and formed the National League of Professional Base Ball
Clubs
with rules specifically tailored to benefit the owners, not the players—the era of big-business baseball had begun.

More than 200 languages and dialects were spoken in the former Soviet Union.

The new League had a board of five directors who were empowered to enforce the new rules and dole out punishments for teams and players that broke them. The reserve clause, prohibiting players from going to another team for better pay, was implemented at this time, and salary caps were put in place. Other rules: both liquor and gambling, which had coexisted with baseball since its early days, were no longer allowed. The board of directors began fining teams and banning players for “conduct in the controversion of the objects of the league.”

In 1880 the board of directors ejected the entire Cincinnati Reds team for “the selling of spiritous liquors on league grounds.” Cincinnati owner Justus Thorner responded by quitting the league and forming his own: the American Association—and it was a success. By 1883 the National League was forced to deal with them, so the two leagues (along with a third, the Northwestern League) met to draw up a “National Agreement,” establishing many of the rules that are still in place today, as well as promoting cooperation between teams and leagues. The American Association wouldn’t last (it was gone by 1891; the Reds went back to the National League in 1890), but the National Agreement gave the game a foundation, and business continued to grow.

THE AMERICAN LEAGUE

The players weren’t happy with all the new changes in the game. They resented the loss of power that had come with the rise of club ownership and wanted to maintain the right to sell their talents to the highest bidder. So they tried—twice—to start up separate, player-controlled organizations: the Union Association of 1884 and the Player’s League of 1890. It didn’t work—both folded within a year for lack of finances. Baseball players had become the contracted property of commercial teams. (It wouldn’t be until free agency came into being in 1976 that players would regain some control over their fates.)

By 1900 there were 14 leagues signed on to the National Agreement, with the National League the undisputed leader in terms of prestige and revenue. In 1901 another successful group, the Western League, changed its name to The American League and declared itself the National League’s equal. The older league refused to recognize the claim, so the new league withdrew from the National Agreement. They began raiding National League teams for players, luring away top stars with higher salaries, and placing teams in National League cities. The upstarts were gaining popularity; recognition by the National League seemed inevitable.

By age 60, you will have lost about 50% of your taste buds and 40% of your sense of smell.

“THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES”

At the end of the 1903 season the owners of the National League Champion Pittsburgh Pirates and the American League leading Boston team (known variously as the Pilgrims, Puritans, or Red Sox) agreed to compete in a best of nine game inter-league, championship series. After falling behind three games to one, the Boston team came back to win the next four games...and the first “World Championship Series,” and the win sent a message to the baseball establishment: The American League was here to stay.

The following year the New York Giants won the NL pennant and refused to play the Red Sox, who had repeated their AL title. The Giants manager, John McGraw, told reporters, “Why should we play this, or any other American League team, for any post season championship? When we clinch the National League pennant, we’ll be champions of the only real Major League.”

Fans didn’t like his attitude, and the next year, when the Giants again won the NL pennant, public demand for the post-season series was so strong that they were compelled to play. But New York owner John T. Brush insisted on crafting a set of rules for post-season play and box office revenues—the same rules that are in use today. It is the “Brush Rules,” for example, that established the length of the series at seven games rather than nine.

After this second World Series, the two leagues buried the hatchet for good and drafted a new National Agreement establishing the American and National as the “Major Leagues” and all others as the “Minor Leagues.” And compared to most other professional sports, the game of baseball has changed very little since.

Turtles
live in the sea,
tortoises
live on land, and
terrapins
live in fresh water.

Here’s the story of one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century
.

S
NAPSHOT

In December 1984, a
National Geographic
photographer named Steve McCurry visited the Nasir Bagh refugee camp on the Afghan/Pakistan border while covering the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. While there he snapped a photograph of a 12-year-old girl with haunting blue-green eyes. The girl had been living in the camp ever since Soviet helicopters had bombed her village five years earlier, killing both her parents.

McCurry didn’t have a translator with him that day, so he never got the girl’s name. But the photograph, which appeared on the cover of the June 1985 issue, went on to become the single most recognized photograph in
National Geographic
’s 115-year history and one of the most reproduced images in the world.