Word: marquard
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...story that shambled out of a Manhattan night court was enough to jerk a tear from any baseball fan's eye. Of the 18 bleary Bowery bums charged with loitering "while apparently intoxicated," one gave the name of Marquard. The judge had tenderly inquired: "Aren't you the famous 'Rube?'" Yes, the prisoner croaked, he was "Ol' Rube," who won 19 straight games for the Giants back in 1912. The record had never been broken, but "Rube" was broke. "The magistrate," said an A.P. dispatch, "took a $5 bill from his billfold, handed...
Choking back their happy sobs, two press services and Hearst's tabloid New York Mirror ran the story that way, without bothering to check up on it. At one point in the hearing, said the Mirror, Marquard's "voice broke and the pitcher who once glared at enemy batters and dared them to hit his 'high, hard one' burst into tears...
Next day, when the press found time for a second look, reporters found the real Rube Marquard. He was far from the Bowery. He had a perfectly good job as a pari-mutuel ticket-seller at the $50 window at a New Jersey race track, and insisted indignantly that the $50 window was a post no drinking man could hold. He had spent the previous evening playing pinochle with his wife and the neighbors...
...imposter was picked up drunk again the following day. The New York Sun, which had not printed the original phony, quoted the real Marquard as saying, "You'd think those things would be checked more closely, wouldn't you?" The gullible Mirror quoted Marquard in slightly different words. According to the Mirror, Rube said: "You'd think a judge would be more careful...