"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Monday, July 28, 2003 The sad man behind Chief Wahoo's grin
The tragic Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot of Jim Thorpe-like skills for whom the Cleveland Indians are said to have been named, is recalled in a column in the Portland Press-Herald that quotes a contemporary newspaper's hyperbolic account of the Indian's prowess.
Then up to the plate stepped Sockalexis, with the odor of the forest . . . with the curling smoke of wigwams, with the rushing of great rivers; strong of arm was Sockalexis, he could throw 10 baseballs upward, throw them with such strength and swiftness that the 10th ball left his right arm ere the first to earth had fallen.
Brian McDonald has penned a book on the sad man behind the grinning Chief Wahoo.
So has David Fleitz, whose article on oldest living ballplayers extends happy birthday wishes to Negro League star Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe, 101 on July 7.
As it happens, the late Bob Hope was once a minority owner of the Cleveland Indians, who pay a tribute to the late comedian at the team site.
Meantime, in other Maine news: The Portland Diocese in Maine marked its sesquicentennial with a Mass honoring the local Church's Indian roots.
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