Pick your historic day

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Alert Reader, in this case a history professor here in Arkansas, noted a considerable gap--78 years--in my regularly revised July the Fourth column, which lists memorable dates in American history. There was no entry between November 19, 1863, when Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, and December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy" because of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

"What struck me this time," to quote the professor's email, which I've edited here and there for easy reading, "was the wide gap between the Gettysburg Address and Pearl Harbor. This game, of course, calls for critical moments, and momentous changes don't necessarily happen in a moment, but still, surely there must have been something to record during those nearly eight decades. The republic was not napping. Our part in World War I doesn't qualify, I think, especially in relation to the weight of WWII--and to what the Great War meant to others across the Atlantic.

"Spanish-American War? Maybe. It marked our turn toward the Pacific, which has continued since. Women's suffrage? Which doubled the electorate in U.S. elections, and tilted campaigning toward new issues. Is there some particular date that marks the emergence of professional sports, especially baseball and football, both of which rose to national prominence in the 1920s? What would our life be without them? Anyhow, it's fun chewing over. Any of your thoughts?"

Yes, sir, lots, all of them random. Beginning with my thanks for writing. It's always good to hear from a fellow history buff, in this case one who's made a profession of it. Here are some quick nominations for dates to fill out that 78-year gap:

December 23, 1913, Establishment of the Federal Reserve System. At last an end to all those tiresome Gold-Silver-Greenbacks debates of the previous century complete with their conspiracy theories and other arcana. They're pretty much gone now, along with Coin Harvey's apocalyptic visions. Money cranks we will always have with us, but their theories may no longer be the centerpiece of presidential elections.

Is there a single date that would stand in for the whole, long Great Depression of the 1930s? How about the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, aka Black Tuesday, when the Roaring Twenties ended with a bang and the Dreary Thirties set in like a whimper? How commemorate the Noble (and failed) Experiment called Prohibition? The date it began or the date it was repealed? The introduction of women's suffrage certainly deserves noting, but, however great a change it marked, it was such a gradual process that choosing a single date to commemorate it would be a challenge. August 18, 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified?

And how pick a single strand of the wildly mixed bag called the New Deal, which was revolutionary, conserving, both and neither all rolled into one historic period? Should I cite my favorite programs like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (June 16, 1933), the Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking (June 16, 1933) until it was repealed during the Clinton Years (a big mistake!), and Social Security (August 14, 1935)? Or my least favorite--indeed, dangerously dictatorial--innovations? Like the fascist-style National Recovery Administration (June 16, 1933) and FDR's court-packing plan (proposed February 5, 1937)? Thankfully, the Supreme Court found the first unconstitutional in a unanimous decision, and survived the second, bearing out Bismarck's observation that God looks after fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.

As for the emergence of professional sports into national prominence, how choose a single date to mark the sad shift from baseball to football as the national pastime, the replacement of balletic grace with brute force, the thinking man's game with Super Bowl Sundays?

Naturally super bowls go by their Roman numerals, as befits a gladiatorial clash in the most decadent Roman tradition. If today I mourn baseball's replacement by football as the country's most popular sport, and what it says about the decline of the national character, will Americans one day lament the replacement of football with soccer as the national obsession?

How commemorate the role baseball has played on the national stage, and in the national consciousness? How about noting Joe DiMaggio's unrepeated and maybe unrepeatable batting streak, hitting in 56 consecutive games? As war clouds gathered over America in the fateful year 1941, the whole country was mesmerized by Joltin' Joe's day-to-day miracle, from its nondescript beginning--a first-inning single in a 13-1 loss on a Thursday afternoon in May of 1941--till it finally ended in July. So do we cite the day that legendary streak began or the day it ended in this list of dates to remember?

Neither. To symbolize baseball's place in American history, and in American eloquence, I'd pick July 4, 1939--the date of Lou Gehrig's farewell appearance at Yankee Stadium. Dying at age 36 of the fatal disease that would one day bear his name, and that still seems to strike down the best, the most talented, the noblest of us all, the athlete they called The Iron Horse for his endurance and strength tried to avoid speech-making. But between the games of a double-header that July the Fourth, he was gently shoved in front of a microphone at the crowd's insistence. ("We want Lou! We want Lou!")

His words that day still carry, resounding just as they did over the echoing old public address system at Yankee Stadium: "For the past two weeks, you've been reading about the bad break . . ." That last word wasn't clear as his voice broke. But after a moment he regained his composure and went on: "Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth . . . ." He wasn't the only one who had to choke back tears at that point.

That was Lou Gehrig, that was baseball, that was America.

Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at:

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Editorial on 07/27/2014