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Re: Fwd: more on Chapman's Homer joke
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----- Forwarded message from michaeldonohue@hotmail.com -----
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 17:05:54 -0400
From: Michael Donohue <michaeldonohue@hotmail.com>
It was a very old joke. If you do a ProQuest search in the New York Times
sport section alone, you'll find that the phrase "Chapman's Homer" appears
many times, especially earlier in Ben Chapman's career, when he played for
the Yankees and was more of a power hitter (17 home runs one year). You can
imagine those sportswriters, former English majors, getting a kick out of
their cleverness. My guess is that Aunt Maud's headline is a real
one--perhaps from the Ithaca papers?--but that Nabokov, not being such a
baseball fan, didn't realize how widespread the joke was.
Mike Donohue
>From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
>Subject: Fwd: more on Chapman's Homer joke
>Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 12:25:49 -0700
>
>
>
>----- Forwarded message from chaiselongue@earthlink.net -----
> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 20:17:45 -0800
> From: Carolyn <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
>
>Dear Don,
>
>Jansy asked me for the Pale Fire reference regarding Chapman's Homer.
>
>"A curio: Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-4
>On Chapman's Homer, thumbtacked to the door."
>
>I thought this joke pre-dated Nabokov - - and might have been an actual
>sports headline so I went a-googling. I didn't find a definitive answer,
>but
>I did find this interesting discussion:
>
>In "Pale Fire" are the lines:
>. . . Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-5
>On Chapman's Homer . . .
>
> Was there ever such a game, or is this another of Nabokov's jokes?
>DW
>
>To which came the following response:
>
>Could have. Ben Chapman played for the Red Sox in 1937 and 1938 as I think
>an all-around utility player. In 1937 he had 7 HR wearing number 1 for the
>Red Sox, in 1938 he had 6 HR wearing number 9 (in other words, his stints
>with the Red Sox those two years were not consecutive). I couldn't find a
>way to look up in which games he hit those home runs and what the box
>scores
>were for those games, so I can't answer your question, but it's obviously
>conceivable. From 1930 to 1946 there were 90 of Chapman's homers overall,
>with the Yankees, Brooklyn, Washington, Cleveland, the Phillies, and the
>White Sox. From '44 to '46 he was a pitcher, with an overall W:L of 8:6 and
>141 innings pitched.
>
>Nabokov's interest in American baseball being limited, I imagine there
>really must have been such an event, even if the headline itself is just a
>joke. It must have been an old joke too. Nabokov is not above recirculating
>old jokes as Jansy and I discovered when we looked into the "what time's
>the
>next swan" joke in Laughter in the Dark.
>
>Carolyn
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>EDNOTE. COuld well be a "real" headline. It looks like one of those filler
>items
>the New Yorker is/was so fond of.
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----- End forwarded message -----