At Least Spell It Correctly

Yeah. They hate each other. Mantle, Murcer, Maris (1965)

I belong to a bunch of different groups on Facebook.

There are the road group and the sports groups and the radio groups and the the play-by-play group and the Mahopac groups and the Howard Johnson's (restaurant, not the former New York Met) group and on and on.

There are some that aren't active and others that I should probably just purge.

I tend to read and participate when needed.

In the case of the play-by-play group, that is the land of "Thou Shalt Not Criticize" and there are the police in the group who only want to read positive things. Thus, no "Joey" talk, if you know what I mean.

In fact, that was tried and quickly scuttled.

Which I find sort of sad and laughable. Shouldn't conversation be encouraged? Nah. Instead it's just a bunch of wanna-be's sitting on their high perch.

I was in a group about vintage baseball pictures today because I saw someone posted Mickey Mantle's 500th home run.

Jerry Coleman with the call on WPIX.


On one hand there was plenty of fawning over number 7, and deservedly so. The Mick was The Man, especially to the, ahem, "Boomer" generation.

In Yankee-land, of course he's on Mount Rushmore with Joe D, Gehrig, and The Babe.

But it's well-known that Mickey Mantle was no saint and my oh my were the haters out en force, with some even calling him "overrated" to go along with him being an overall miserable human being.

Now, was he the best dad? No. Best husband? No.

But he was also a great teammate, a great friend, and most of all, a pretty fantastic ballplayer.

So it was that I was reading a lot of vitriol about Mantle which, to be honest, I understood. Haters are going to hate, they say.

I mean Mantle (who wasn't a miserable human being as far as I know) is generally regarded as an icon but he's also -- GASP! -- a Yankees icon. Thus it's haterade time.

Then came one that accused Mantle of being so horrible that he said bad things about -- ready? --

Deep breath...

Bobby...

Mercer.

Yes. MErcer.

Just pure hatred between them

I read it and initially ignored it.

I read more in the thread and it was repeated. So I weighed in.

"Bobby Murcer was a pallbearer at Mantle's funeral and they were fairly close," I wrote. "I know in the one time that I interacted with Mantle he was kind."

I didn't even add that Murcer wore number seven in Chicago with the Cubs in honor of his friend.

I was willing to let it go.

He made a snide comment about fanboys and those who were fawning. Still calm, I responded again.

"Hmmm," I added. "I don't think that was me but you do you."

Nope. He wasn't done.

"Try reading the comment again," is the best way I can paraphrase what he said.

So I called out his condescension and decided to let him know that "if that's you way you want to play this game, try spelling MURCER correctly. We're done here."

A few minutes later, that portion thread was gone.  Deleted.

I don't normally play grammar police. I let most of it go, and goodness knows I make my share of mistakes. I was willing to let the spelling error go.

But once I saw the line had been crossed, it was game on.

And, quickly, game over.