On Nov 28, 2012, at 12:54 AM, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> A couple of quotes from Marvin Miller on Bart Giamatti that lbotalkers might like. Giamatti was prez of Yale and Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Miller was the most dynamic and successful U.S. labor leader in the last 60 years. He died today at 95.
>
> ``Giamatti, I don`t have to tell you, he comes from about the only institution in the country as right wing and arrogant as the baseball owners- namely academia, where notions of due process or cause are completely foreign,`` said Miller.
>
> "Like a Pope who died after just a few weeks in office, Giamatti has almost taken on the aura of sainthood; a philosophic scholar who descended on baseball from some higher level — or at least a higher level than most of the newspaper and magazine writers who quoted his pretentious, overripe prose with awe, without bothering to figure out the content of his precious emissions."
When I first got to Yale, I heard Giamatti give a talk for prospective English majors. I thought he was an annoying windbag right away. His later baseball thing seemed like an instance of the cultural elite getting down with the masses via the National Pastime, in the style of George Will. Yay, Miller.
Doug