I was glad the article gave credit to Michael Donohue, who pointed out on this list that the headline was invented.

 

Thanks to Matthew Roth for the Google News search.  This headline from the Baltimore Sun in 1950 is a promising candidate for one that Nabokov might have noticed and decided to versify:

 

A's Down Yanks, 8-7, On Chapman's Homer‎

 

 

 

That was one Sam Chapman, not Ben.  Not only was Ben Chapman a notorious racist, as Robert H. Boyle pointed out; he was also a notorious anti-semite.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Chapman_(baseball)

 

Thus he ideally united two kinds of Prejudice.  I wonder whether, when Nabokov chose the Red Sox for his fictitious Chapman's team, he had any idea that Ben Chapman had played for them and was known for his connection to this topic that Kinbote and Shade discuss.

 

Jerry Friedman