New Scaratings

My friend, an incredible trivia player, has been devoting an undeserved amount of effort toward improving my trivia play. Coaching me is like herding kittens. He tries so hard to keep me on the path, but I meander off into the trivia weeds, sniffing random flowers and nibbling on poisonous berries. I thought you guys would enjoy this conversation we had via text.

He was trying to convince me to try out for Millionaire. I don't want to do it because I don't mind being embarrassingly bad in small groups (I'm OK with getting schooled by a bunch of Englishmen next month at Quizzing Americas UK because there will only be about ten witnesses), but I don't want my trivia humiliation broadcast to just anyone with a TV.

Note: He's also a Rush fan and it drives him insane when I tell him that Rush and The Who sound the same. So I say it. Often.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ME: If I missed a football question, yeah, oh well. But if I missed a PRESIDENTS question, that would be so bad.

HIM: Or worse, a Supreme Court question. Not as common, but they come up. Nobody on J! got Harry Blackmun. The category was Harry. They showed his picture. They said that although appointed by a Republican, he ended up as one of the most liberal justices. Raw meat for me.

ME: Did not know that one.

HIM: I don't know another Harry on the SC. But he's certainly the most famous if there are others.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ME. Harold Hitz Burton. There was also a Bushrod Washington. How in the [hell] did he get that name?

HIM: Harry Blackmun is 42 times more famous and likely to come up as Burton. At least. Final Answer.

ME: Hey, YOU ASKED if there was another Harry.

HIM: Exactly. Thanks for finding the obscure one. Who will never be asked. So I can rest easy. And what name was applied to Blackmun and Burger, even though Burger stayed conservative as Blackmun got more liberal?

ME: No idea. The Middlings. Found my favorite judge name. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II.

HIM: Hint: They were from the same state. And appointed around the same time. Burger 1969 and Blackmun 1970. And everyone, including Nixon, was sure Blackmun would be philosophically the same as Burger.

ME: The B.B. Twins

HIM: The Minnesota Twins.

ME: Are you [freaking] kidding me? That sounds so pedestrian.

HIM: How often do I kid you about trivia facts? Like 0.01% of the time. And this is not the 1 in 10000.

ME: Worst case scenario: the answer is "Rush" and I guess "The Who."

HIM: USE YOUR PLUS ONE! I'd literally have a stroke if you missed that one while I was sitting unused 25 feet away.

ME. [I'm going to pay someone off to specifically ask a question you a question about Harold Hitz Burton].

HIM. Ok. I will now have to remember that otherwise completely useless fact. Thanks for wasting 10 of my neurons.

ME. You have plenty more. Plus, it's an easy name to remember. He was a mayor of Cleveland and a Senator.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ME. He also helped shape the Court's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

HIM: Remember Harold and the Purple Crayon? I can see Harold hitting Tim Burton with a purple crayon.

ME: No? Dude, as a former explorer, Burton's dad had accompanied Robert Peary on several expeditions to the North Pole. The Burton brothers and J. Edgar Hoover were second cousins on their mother's side.

HIM. You don't know Harold and the Purple Crayon? Very popular children's book. 97 times more likely to come up in LL than Harold Hitz Burton.

ME. No, I never have.

HIM. Write an Alpaca quiz on Hoover's second cousins. Let me know.

ME. His first important majority opinion came in Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath [. . .]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ME. He also joined the majority in Ullmann v. United States (1956), an important decision which upheld the Immunity Act of 1954 [. . .]

HIM: DO look up Harold and the Purple Crayon. Please do not write any more questions about Harold Hitz Burton.

ME: His Wikipedia page is really long.

HIM: His other second cousin must have spent a long time editing the Wikipedia article. Of course when you take Constitutional law, they'll spend an entire week on Burton's decision. Because they are vastly more important in law school than in trivia.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ME: I will let you know every time his name is mentioned in law school.

HIM: You can say "I told you so" when Burton starts showing up everywhere. I'm sure his birthday will soon be a federal holiday. When is his birthday?

ME: June 22

___________________________

I added an alert on my calendar for that day. I’m going to send him a card wishing him “Happy Harold Hitz Burton Day.”

Fun story, Gypsy. I wish more of my everyday conversations were more like Aaron Sorkin scripts.

For the benefit of the friend you're tormenting, GYPSY, I'd be tempted to try breathing new life into the old Alan Dershowitz question. Something on the order of:

Find the athlete among the Supreme Court justices:

1. Noah Hayes Swayne
2. Horace Harmon Lurton
3. Mahlon Pitney
4. Vada E Pinson
5. Willis van Devanter

Swap out Pinson for Fred M Vinson and the list is fully carpeted with justices.

Well, now I know the first Republican Justice, the oldest to assume the bench, one of two appointed by Taft who later served with Taft, one of the Four Horsemen (who issued a particularly eyebrow-raising opinion in United States v. Sandoval), the last Chief Justice to preside over a court solely nominated by Presidents of one political party, and a former outfielder who coached the inaugural editions of two MLB expansion teams.

Fun Fact: Harold Hitz Burton was the sole remaining Republican on the Court upon Vinson’s death.

GYPSY

But I don’t understand the Dershowitz reference.

Did you mean 'Republican appointee'?

The Courts of the United States, the Supreme Court included, do not take cognizance of party affiliation. Appointments are usually nominated by the President, and endorsed or refused by the US Senate.

When Fred Vinson died, he was replaced by Earl Warren, a "safe" California Republican nominated by Eisenhower. But with Warren, as with all honest citizens, of whatever political affiliation, integrity and honest judgment supercede political orthodoxy.

I wasn't the least surprised by Antonin Scalia's premature death. Those brilliant, and undeniably partisan opinions, were the product of a soul at war with its better nature.

Sure. Yeah. He wasn’t a Republican. He was a Republican “appointee.”

Yes,alot of times regardless of supposed political affiliation the courts reaffirm society's mores.Often, despite the rhetoric,many political leaders gravitate to the middle often disappointing their supporters.

Sorry Gone D, you're a mess here.

Antonin Scalia was a happy (overweight) genius who died at the age of 79. Read Scalia Speaks.

Also, his death, while a tragedy, spared him the recent phenomenon too often seen of clinical senility on the court.

Also, anyone who might think Vada Pinson was on the court ought to be ashamed.

_________________
Merkin

How many people in society and how many that play trivia actually know who Vada Pinson was.He was a solid player well above average and it was years ago he played.

As an old fart who had his baseball card, this was a gimme.

One of the beauties of New Scaratings is that I can show up a complete mess and receive an intelligent rebuke, perhaps even a literary recommendation. There is no questioning Scalia's talent for the mot juste.
.


Did I mistakenly fall in love with the juxtaposition of Fred M Vinson with Vada E Pinson? As opposed to Mahlon Pitney?

Old farts, such as you and me and KAUFMAN may light up candles over the mere mention of his name, but at no time, since his retirement as a player, has anyone mentioned to me the name of Vada Pinson. And it's been more than forty years.

GYPSY, who originated this conversation, and if truthful, is currently 40 years old. A rare confession, we all may agree.

Her correspondent, in her origination of this thread, has been represented to me as a guy who tends to lose interest when it comes to Supreme Court justices with unusual names.

So I appeal to GYPSY -

Is the drop-down box I suggested too easy? Did either you or your friend know the answer? Without a look-up?

The only one we knew was Vinson.

OK, to be completely forthright, he knew quite a bit about Vinson. I had heard the name. In a Buzztime question, I would have known he was on the Court. But that’s it.

GYPSY

My apology for having sped past this inquiry.

The question shows up now and then in Countdown: WHO AMONG THE FOLLOWING HAS NEVER SERVED ON THE SUPREME COURT?

The drop-down box consists of four prominent late 20th C justices, and Alan Dershowitz. I've seen the question 4-5 times.

Prior to composing the Vada Pinson question, I had never seen any of the four justices around him in print, and hadn't seen Pinson's name in print since he retired as a baseball outfielder in 1975.

I sent him a frame-worthy photo of Harold Hitz Burton for HHB Day. But Amazon didn’t give me the option of a gift note. So he received this random black and white photo of a guy he didn’t recognize from an unnamed source. .

He send me this: “Wow! I got your photo of Harold Hitz Burton today. I had no idea what it was at first. [My wife posted it to a Facebook group] (70k members) and someone found it. So now HHB is super famous with female doctors. I forgot today was HHB day. Won't happen again. Thanks!”

“It’s actually tomorrow. I got one, too. I’m going to frame it. ”

“They've actually started HHB festivities across Asia and Europe because of the time difference. Like New Year's Eve.”

Catching up on this thread....I'm not GYPSY, nor do I think I'm an old fart at the ripe old age of 38. And I know little to nothing about the supreme court (short of Scalia, I don't recognize anyone mentioned in this thread) except for some of the more famous cases but Vada Pinson was a no-brainer to me anyways. But I could be an anomaly too in that sports is probably my best category, especially baseball between the Murderer's Row days through the strike shortened 94 season. Plus Vada spent the majority of his career with the Reds which is even more in my wheelhouse so it would have to be a pretty obscure player for me not to at least recognize the name.

Thanks, BRUTUS. Your message was one that I wanted to hear.

I've never written any questions for Buzztime. But their quizzes frequently include questions I couldn't possibly answer, and then somehow do. Some of these are eureka moments and some are just duh!

If I've framed it correctly, a first glance at the above-going drop-down box, presented in a Countdown format, should be at once mildly panic-inducing and yet quickly resolvable.

Don't worry, Brutus, I'm in law school right now and I didn't recognize any of them except Scalia and Warren. (I think I would have gotten Blackmun and Vinson if the question were multiple-choice, but that's always difficult to predict.)

After participating in this thread, I duly searched Pinson, because apparently that was something I should have known.

GYPSY

I believe a good trivia player should know the names of Supreme Court Justices since WW II and should know all baseball players with 2,000 (2,757) hits, especially players for the (formerly) GLORIOUS Cincinnati Reds!

_________________
Merkin

There are 285 players with 2,000 hits! But only 31 Justices confirmed after WWII.

The first one was Harold Hitz Burton.

You are probably correct although I'm not sure I would call myself a good trivia player...I would say more of a great drinker that enjoys trivia and that when given the right set of questions can put together a good score. However, I can probably hold my own with most on Reds trivia alone. Maybe that's why Pinson stuck out so much to me.

Good thing his middle name wasn't Strikeoutz. Otherwise, he'd have been the first of only seven.

Loyola has a London program over Christmas break. I chatted with the dean in charge of it on the way to the Italian Supreme Court today and asked him if the slot availabilities were according to GPA. He said, "No, no. Quite the opposite. The last thing we need is another reward for GPA." He said they prefer people who would have an interest in comparative advocacy and judicial history and that candidate personality plays a large role in the selection process.

I told him about Harold Hitz Burton.

He immediately encouraged me apply.

GYPSY

Well. I for one would say you have an abundance of personality.

Must be interesting on the Continent while the Polish Supreme Court issues unravel.