Look it up ...

It took us only about 50 years to discover that the smallest player in baseball history was a little guy named Eddie Gaedel. What makes us so sure he was the shortest ever to play the game?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Because he was the only legally certified dwarf: He stood 3-feet-7 inches tall, weighed 65 pounds, and was 25 years old when on Aug. 19, 1951, Gaedel (wearing No. 1/8) pinch hit for the St. Louis Browns in game vs. the Detroit Tigers--his first and only plate appearance in the majors.

And he never got credit for it! The pitcher, Bob Cain, who could hardly contain his laughter, had walked Gaedel on four straight pitches. (Needless to say, they were all high.) You can look it up, the way we did. You'll just find zeroes.

What are we going to do with this sensational piece of news 50 years later? Well, we discovered another little-person in baseball annals. His name? Pearl du Monville! I have to be making this all up, you ask? No, sir and no ma'am.

Again we say, you can look it up. Pearl is the hero of maybe the most humorous story ever written about baseball. The writer is, of course, the wondrous man, James Thurber, and the book is You Can Look It Up.

It will tell you how Pearl du Monville got his name and why James Thurber began to win all kinds of plaques and huge amounts of cash for his short stories, books, and writing and editing for The New Yorker.

As you can see, he is writing in that nice, easy, semi-literate fashion which he uses for his ballplayers (one of who narrates the story).

Following is the way he wraps it all up in You Can Look It Up:

"I don't recollect things as clear as I did thirty, forty years ago. I can't read no fine print no more, and the only person I got to check with on the golden days of the national pastime is my old friend, Milt Kline, over in Springfield, and his mind ain't as strong as it once was.

"He gets Rube Waddell mixed up with Rube Marquard, for one thing, and anybody does that oughta be put away where he won't bother nobody.

"So I can't tell you the exact margin we win the pennant by. Maybe it was two and a half games, or maybe it was three and a half. But it'll all be there in a book that was written thirty, thirty-one year ago. You can look it up!"