Jeffrey L. Pasley

Univ of Missouri political historian, lapsed blogger, music/comics/film fan. Refreshingly astringent and wise, said blog comment slated for my tombstone.

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

What the fans looked like at a major league game in 1975. I’m gonna recommend you zoom in and poke around for a minute or two. Just trust me on this one.

[John Podhoretz @jpodhoretz]

This might be the greatest photo I've ever seen. 1973.

[Salve Regina University @SalveRegina]

Last week, our Humanities and Technology Ph.D. students gathered in Newport for their spring residency. Thank you to our guest speaker Marcus Nevius, associate professor of history in the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, for joining us.
https://t.co/ihzo2seEDR

[Jim Koenigsberger @Jimfrombaseball]

"Joe Garagiola fought against chewing tobacco, wrote two more books, helped found an organization to assist former players in need, and worked tirelessly to try to help Native American kids.
By any measure, that's a full life."
Bryant Gumbel pays tribute.
"I only wear two rings: a wedding ring and my 1946 World Series ring."
Joe Garagiola
Best man Yogi Berra and Stan Musial fill the glasses for a toast at the 'Wedding Breakfast' of Joe Garagiola and Audrey Ross, the organist at the Cardinals' ballpark in St. Louis. 1949.

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

The Tiger Stadium concession stand was pretty much just like your high school lunch line except they had Stroh’s.

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

Any party that is attended by both Frank Drebin and James Bond is a can’t-miss social function. Clearly Robert Conrad agrees.

[Christopher Lasch's Angry Ghost @ghostofchristo1]

Any discipline that developed originally with the aim of providing a sense of collective history for a national or linguistic group is currently facing existential questions, as this underlying mission becomes not only deprecated but unsayable.

[Jim Koenigsberger @Jimfrombaseball]

"Stan Musial was not an “activist” by nature. He was just a thoroughly decent human being. Willie Mays & Hank Aaron have each told the story of how, at an All-Star Game in the 1950s all the great black players–Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks–were kinda gathered in a corner of the National League clubhouse playing cards. No white players were anywhere near them. Then Stan just walked up and casually said, “Deal me in.”
Bob Costas eulogy for Stan Musial
Musial with Eddie Stanky & Red Schoendienst

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: The former chief marketer for NBC apologizes to the American people for giving us Donald Trump by helping to sell “The Apprentice” myth to the American people.

This is humiliating for MAGA…

“I want to apologize to America. I helped create a monster,” writes John D. Miller in a piece entitled “We Created a Monster: Trump Was a TV Fantasy Invented for 'The Apprentice'” for U.S. News & World Report.

“For nearly 25 years, I led marketing at NBC and NBCUniversal,” Miller explains. “I led the team that marketed ‘The Apprentice,’ the reality show that made Donald Trump a household name outside of New York City, where he was better known for overextending his empire and appearing in celebrity gossip columns.”

He goes on to state that his team “created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty” which was a “substantial exaggeration” that “created a false narrative by making him seem more successful than he was.”

Miller points out that Trump had to declare bankruptcy four times before the show premiered and at least twice over the course of its 14 seasons.

“The imposing board room where he famously fired contestants was a set, because his real boardroom was too old and shabby for TV,” writers Miller.

In a section that is certain to bruise Trump’s ego, Miller states that he was the “perfect choice” for the show because “more successful CEOs were too busy to get involved in reality TV and didn’t want to hire random game show winners onto their executive teams.”

Meanwhile, Trump “had no such concerns” and “plenty of time for filming.”

“I never imagined that the picture we painted of Trump as a successful businessman would help catapult him to the White House,” writes Miller, likening all of their advertising around the show to “fake news” because it was so “highly exaggerated.”

“I discovered in my interactions with him over the years that he is manipulative, yet extraordinarily easy to manipulate,” he goes on. “He has an unfillable compliment hole. No amount is too much. Flatter him and he is compliant. World leaders, including apparently Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, have discovered that too.”

Miller calls Trump “remarkably thin-skinned” and describes his adversarial relationship with the show. The future president would claim that the show was number one in the ratings, even when the numbers refuted that claim.

Not surprisingly, Trump was full of bad suggestions for the show. He wanted to make “a team of Black players compete against white players.” Miller tried to convince him against it by appealing to Trump’s greed and telling him that it would alienate sponsors.

“While we were successful in marketing ‘The Apprentice,’ we also did irreparable harm by creating the false image of Trump as a successful leader. I deeply regret that,” writers Miller. “And I regret that it has taken me so long to go public.”

“Now America is facing a critical choice. Should this elderly, would-be emperor with no clothes, who is well known for stretching and abandoning the truth, be president again?” he asks.

“I spent 50 years successfully promoting television magic, making mountains out of molehills every day,” he continues. “But I say now to my fellow Americans, without any promotional exaggeration: If you believe that Trump will be better for you or better for the country, that is an illusion, much like ‘The Apprentice’ was.”

“Even if you are a born-and-bred Republican, as I was, I strongly urge you to vote for Kamala Harris. The country will be better off and so will you,” concludes Miller.

Please retweet and ❤️ to thank Miller for speaking the truth and owning his mistake — and join the growing exodus to Tribel, a new pro-democracy social network that is exploding in popularity. Please follow us on Tribel to get all of our breaking news alerts sent straight to your phone or computer by clicking the following link: https://t.co/HnJzSKj4Hp

[Steve Chung @SteveChung1968]

is remembering Lester Dent on his birthday. The creator and main author of the series of novels about the scientist and adventurer known as Doc Savage.

[Jared Koller @JaredKollerKC]

2 minutes of Bobby Witt Jr. talking about the #KCRoyals future fires me up.
"Feels like you let a lot of people down. It'll light a torch in you, leave a bad taste... This team's gonna be special. Teams aren't gonna want to play us. It's gonna be like that for a while." @KCTV5

[Vintage Jerseys & Hats @PolyesterUnis]

Hal McRae, 1973 @Royals

[Baseball by BSmile @BSmile]

49 Years Ago Today: Comedy legend George Carlin brilliantly describes the differences between football and baseball on the first episode of Saturday Night Live! (October 11, 1975) #SNL #1970s #History #MLB #NFL

[Tyler Austin Harper @Tyler_A_Harper]

It is so galling that the same people who tell kids not to go to college and romanticize the trades are often the same people who get bent out of shape when someone doing manual labor makes any money. We only find blue collar folks charming when they’re the right amount of poor.

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

50 years old.

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

The only swing to produce a batting crown in three decades (‘76, '80, '90).

[Midwest vs. The Rest @midwestern_ope]

We will not tolerate this Great Plains erasure

[Tyler Austin Harper @Tyler_A_Harper]

I have not heard this discussed much, but this point is spot on. Colleges and universities cannot sell themselves as bastions of environmental sustainability while also encouraging students and faculty to see ChatGPT as a learning tool they should integrate into their work.

[Jacob Bruggeman @jacob_bruggeman]

Thrilled to share a CFP for "After Rust: The Post-Industrial American Midwest in Historical Perspective," an edited collection @jlauck1941 and I are planning for @IllinoisPress.

[Twiz @twizzyu]

Every city (min. 50k people in 1950) that declined more than 50% from 1950 to 2020