Michael Morse: Another Smead Jolley?

Smead Jolley

Giants' outfielder Michael Morse was so inept last night in the exhibition game with Oakland---botching three plays in left field---he brought to mind the legendary Smead Jolley, who once made three errors on one play:

He was stationed in right field in a game against the Athletics in Philadelphia. Bing Miller smashed a single and, to the White Sox's dismay, it headed right for Jolley. As expected, the ball rolled through his legs for error number one. Jolley whirled around to play the carom off the wall. To no one's surprise, the ball scooted back through his legs for error number two. Jolley could have stopped while he was ahead, but perhaps sensing immortality, he seized the moment to vault himself into the twilight zone of fielding. He picked up the ball and heaved it over the third baseman's head for error number three. Meanwhile, Bing Miller circled the bases.

The local angle: Jolley played for the San Francisco Seals for five years early in the 20th Century. Maybe he wasn't much of a fielder, but he was a great hitter.

Jolley played before my time, but as a kid I saw some Seals games at old Seals Stadium, where the Giants played before Candlestick Park was built.

Seals Stadium

Jolley played for the Seals before the stadium was built. But Joe Dimaggio played there, and I was thrilled to see Ted Williams play an exhibition game there once---he lined a single into right field---when the Seals were a Boston Red Sox minor league team.

Below is the former location of Seals Stadium at 16th and Bryant, now a strip mall.

Shoddy Nova program on JFK murder

Maybe I missed the first local broadcast of the Nova documentary (Cold Case JFK) that KQED aired Wednesday night[Later: KQED tellls me that they did run it last November]. It was originally broadcast on PBS last November 13 before the 50th anniversary of the assassination. 

Before this I had a high opinion of Nova documentaries in general, but this one is so bad it damages the Nova brand. (If you want to get deep in the weeds on exactly how it's inadequate, you can go here for more details. See also the rest of this site for more critical information on the assassination).

Nova devotes almost all of the program to the alleged assassination rifle and the nature of its ammunition in an attempt to verify, "using state of the art technology," the Single Bullet Theory of the Warren Commission. If the theory is false---and it surely is---there had to be at least two people shooting at the president. Actually, there must have been three shooters, since the wound to the neck and the final shot were from the front.

I went into some detail on the Single Bullet theory here.

Nova focuses entirely on the issue of whether a single bullet fired from that rifle could have done all the damage to both the president and Governor Connally, with a father and son team spending two years conducting various tests.

Apparently no one involved in the production knew that the Single Bullet is also known as the Magic Bullet not because it could/could not inflict that damage, but because, as per the drawing on top, it would also have had to change its trajectory a couple of times to line up with the alleged entry wounds.

Nova assumes that the shot to JFK's throat---the first shot---is an exit wound, which is preposterous, since the only entry wound on his back is six inches below the collar line, not in the back of his neck.

The photo above is the Warren Commission's version of the path of the Single Bullet, which, as even this photo shows, has the entrance wound lower than the alleged exit wound, which was up by the knot on the president's necktie. Recall that the shot was fired from the sixth floor of the school book depository building and was thus on a downward trajectory.

Take a look at the photos of JFK's jacket and shirt below to see where the bullet entered the president's back, not "the back of the president's neck" as the Warren Commission claimed. There is no other wound in the back. The Warren Commission claimed that this bullet then exited up near the president's necktie and then changed course again by going down to wound Governor Connally: