Philosophers in the Booth and Clubhouse

 For as long as I can remember, celebrities have dropped in the broadcast booth during baseball games, Cubs or White Sox.  Raise your hands if you can remember Jack Brickhouse shooting the breeze with “actor” Forrest Tucker between pitches.  No?  Well, how about Bill Murray subbing for Harry Caray?

Yesterday, it was James Lovell, who went into space four times during the Gemini and Apollo programs, including Apollo 13.  What a treat to listen to broadcasters Steve Stone and Hawk Harrelson try to interview one of the few human beings who has ever ventured beyond our home planet.  The best part was when Lovell described how he stuck his thumb out in front of him during one of the missions, and was able to block out the Earth and its billions of inhabitants.  At the age of 90, Lovell may have become something of a philosopher.

In his own way, at the age of 26, Daniel Palka of the White Sox is something of a thinker, too.  Palka hit his 27^th homerun—and team record fourth pinch-hit homer in the process—in yesterday’s 10-4 interleague-play win over the Cubs.  Told after the game by a Sun-Times’ reporter he had tied Zeke Bonura (1934) for third-most by a Sox rookie, Palka replied, “I saw that, and I thought it was weird that a guy in the ’30s had the name ‘Zeke.’”

 Not space-worthy, perhaps, but profound in its own way.