Fact Checking

TigerBlog gets some very random inquiries requesting all kinds of random information.

He's gotten a bunch of emails and calls from hiring managers fact-checking resumes. Let that be a lesson to everyone out there applying for jobs; they are checking out what you're saying.

And speaking of fact-checking, TB has a great story from a long time ago about a different sort of inquiry.

Back in the 1990s or so, he received a call from a seemingly young woman who wanted to know if a certain person had been an All-American fencer. It seemed innocuous enough, so TB looked up the information.

That was before these things were on a webpage, which has certainly cut down on the phone calls.

When TB went to check the record book, he learned in fact that the person was not a fencing All-American. For that matter, he was not a men's fencing letterwinner.

When TB mentioned that to the young woman, she asked if he had a way to check to see if the person had gone to Princeton. It turned out that he hadn't.

By now, TB's curiosity was peeked, so he asked what the purpose was.

To paraphrase, the woman said that she and her friends had been out the night before in a bar in New York City and a young man told her that he had been an All-American fencer at Princeton in the course of their, um, conversation. She was calling his bluff - and presumably not calling him ever again after that.

At the time, and now for that matter, TB thinks it was a pretty sharp move by the prospective suitor.

If he said that he was the captain of the football team, she wouldn't have bought that too easily. Princeton. Fencer. Sure, why not.

Even if he flopped.

TB has no way of knowing if this next story is true, but he did hear it once and it does seem plausible. An old friend of his was in a bar listening to another young man trying to impress another young woman, and he told her that he was a former Major League Baseball player. Not believing it for a second, TB's friend asked him who he got his first Major League hit off of, and when the guy stumbled and didn't immediately have the answer, TB's friend called him out and said he was full of it, causing the young woman to flee.

Of course, it's easy to assume that everyone who ever played in the Major Leagues can recall who his first hit was against, or, for pitchers, who the first batter he struck out was. To test this, TB asked a former Major Leaguer, Scott Bradley, if he could remember whom his first hit was against.

This was the response:
"First hit was against the Blue Jays in old Exhibition Stadium. Pitcher was Louis Leal! Ground ball between first and second. Was my third major league at bat!! Remember it like it was yesterday!!" 

Bradley, of course, is Princeton's long-time baseball coach.

Bradley was a lefthanded hitting catcher, which is a rare and valuable commodity. He was a career .257 hitter in nine Major League seasons, and he played in more than 100 games in four straight years with the Mariners from 1987-90.

The highlight of that time was June 2, 1990, when he caught a no-hitter thrown by Randy Johnson. He would go on to coach Ross Ohlendorf at Princeton, and Ohlendorf was once part of a trade for Johnson.

Bradley has won 413 games in 22 seasons as Princeton head coach, trailing only the 564 that Bill Clarke won in 36 years as Tiger head coach. He has taken Princeton to seven NCAA tournaments, most recently in 2016 at Louisiana-Lafayette, and he has turned out an army of professional players, including several Major Leaguers and a World Series champion in Chris Young.

You don't have to email anyone. All of those facts are correct.

And there it for today, which is Wednesday, right? If you're like TB, you're having trouble remembering which day is which in these surreal times.

Stay safe.