Moormanism #7, 02/02/72, from McLeansboro Times Leader; McLeansboro, Illinois

MOORMANISM #7, 2-3-72

In life I wanted to be a professional ball player. Circumstances and conditions wouldn’t permit. I also tried boxing and wasn’t rugged enough. In sports I was a failure, yet I think I could have been a champion had I become a perfume salesman. Ira E. Moorman.

Poking fun at his self, Hank was not beneath this, even though he was acutely aware of people poking fun at him. I could just see him writing this and then blowing his nose, as only Hank could, right there on the floor or in a bucket.

Moormanism #6, 01/13/72 from McLeansboro Times Leader, McLeansboro, Illinois

MOORMANISM #6, 1-13-72

I was hunting a few days ago near Old Fairview school house. A covey of quail flew and I shot two of them. The third object was not a quail, but it was an old weather beaten object. I shot it and the object fell. I examined the object and it looked like the parts of a very old baseball.

 I stood there for an hour trying to comprehend this puzzling thing. Now here is what happened. Thirty-two years ago I played my first baseball game about three hundred feet from this spot. We had a pitcher that couldn’t throw hard enough to break an egg and I remember the last out. He threw a slow ball, the batter swung and the game was over. I knew the catcher didn’t catch the ball, but the umpire called him out.

Our pitcher threw that ball so slow that the ball couldn’t fall. I think he threw that ball so slow that we all forgot to see it. You must agree that it had to be a slow ball if it took thirty years to travel three hundred feet.

Could it be that this pitcher played too much softball in grade school?

Ira E. Moorman

Again a humorous story, to make his point about softball.