Happy baseball season everybody. I am a few days late posting this – spring training opened a few days ago. Baseball was the one sport I could actually compete at a relatively high level (compared to my other sporting attempts). I figured out real quick which position I enjoyed playing – for multiple reasons. First, as a short, slow, fat kid, catching seemed like the perfect fit. Second, as I learned the intricacies of the game, I realized that catching is the most cerebral position on defense (some pitchers will argue otherwise 🤣).
Baseball is the one sport I really loved playing – it offered someone as un-athletic as me a chance to compete beyond his physical abilities. As a kid I had a lot of heroes, but as an adult who still loves the game of baseball – I find myself drawn more and more to Yogi Berra.
Yogi became the impetus for this post after a text conversation I had with my brother Jim yesterday. I sent Jim a text with two quotes Yogi “accepted ownership” of (more on the “” later) about baseball being a mental game. They are: “Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical” and “90% of baseball is half mental.” Yogi has a book titled “I Didn’t Say Half The Things I Said” which covers a lot of his quotes. It should be required reading for baseball fans and English teachers – for entirely different reasons of course.
The reason for the “accepted ownership” in quotation marks stems from bad memory recollection, and the ability to change a quote’s wording for context and retelling. It is believed that Yogi said both versions (and possibly more) at different points in his life. Those are two he actually remembered telling (or found proof of telling).
After texting Jim the Yogi quotes, I was reminded of how often quotes are attributed to people (usually famous) who either never said them, or were simply repeating something they read or heard elsewhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one writer I have read extensively. His language and philosophy have always appealed to me, and I have learned much from reading his works – challenging as they are. As someone who has read him often, I am aware of a few quotations misattributed to him also. One of the most famous involves his “definition” of success. Some of you may be familiar with it? It reads:
“What is success?
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”
The problem? Emerson never wrote it, and a record of him telling it orally is missing also. From the Emerson Society.
https://ralphwaldoemersonsociety.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/esp-11-1-2000.pdf
Enter Bessie A. Stanley and her poem.
https://middleschoolpoetry180.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/55-what-is-success-ralph-waldo-emerson/
There is a disturbing trend with the rise of the internet as a “reputable source” for truth when on a fact finding mission. Maybe it is the same problem we have always had, and the internet just provides quicker access to tools we would use anyhow? I don’t know. But the disturbing trend is this: quotes and wise sayings are being attributed to the wrong people – and being posted and covered by other “reputable sources” which only muddies the water. The internet would, it seems, make anyone with a smartphone and internet access as smart as any scholar?
However, I still doggedly hold the idea that truth exists and absolute truth absolutely exists. This is where intelligence (aka smartness) pales in comparison to wisdom (which is gained through experience). Most blessed (and least confused) is the gift of intelligence combined with the educated wisdom earned from living and learning. Perhaps there has always been confusion found where one (intelligence) abides without the other (wisdom). While researching quotes, I was reminded of a clip from “The Andy Griffith Show” with Andy and Floyd discussing the weather.
Then again, both Andy AND Floyd may be wrong about that famous weather quote.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/04/23/everybody-talks-about-the-weather/
So, maybe, just maybe, Warner told Twain some version of his “weather quote” which Twain decided to alter to its current version? Either way, Twain carries much more historical weight, and that alone may be the reason for the quote attribution. Let’s see. What is that quote “Oh what a tangled web we weave”? Nope, not Shakespeare…
https://www.shmoop.com/william-shakespeare/trivia.html
That “tangled web” sounds an awful lot like the internet, don’t it?