We’ve written about this before. This is an unfortunate update

Eddie Gaedel presented major league baseball with a peculiar problem in 1951 when St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck sent him to bat in a game against the Detroit Tigers.

You’re probably familiar with the story. Gaedel, who was described by Veeck as “by golly, the best darn midget who ever played big-league ball.”

Eddie was three feet, seven inches tall.  He weighed sixty pounds. His uniform number was 1/8.  Actually it was the uniform of the Browns’ nine-year old batboy, William DeWitt Jr., now the Chairman of the Cardinals.  Detroit pitcher Bob Cain walked him on four straight pitches. Gadel scampered to first base where he was quickly replaced by Jim Delsing.

American League President Will Harridge was not impressed by the stunt. He accused Veeck of making a mockery of baseball. He voided Gaedel’s contract and ordered Gaedel’s appearance from the baseball records.

Veeck argued that striking Gaedel from the record book would have to mean the game was never played because Gaedel had been the leadoff hitter and if there was no leadoff hitter there could be no other hitters either.  Harridge finally allowed Gaedel to have his place in the record books a year later.

The story of Eddie Gaedel comes to mind with word that some mental midgets in Washington want to expunge from the records of the House of Representatives the two impeachments of Donald Trump. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has to please people such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik (she’s the Republican Conference Chair) because they granted him his tenuous hold on the Speakership, will let their resolution be heard by a House committee that can decide whether to send it to the floor for debate.

Such is the looney world into which our Congress has sunk.

Eddie Gaedel did lead off a major league baseball game regardless of Veeck’s motives (he was quite a promoter in his day and was known for his stunts).  Donald Trump was impeached twice by the House.  Erasing the record does not erase the facts whether you’re three-feet-seven or  you’re six feet-two, whether you’re a paid performer in a major league uniform or whether you’re a (well, we’ll let you form  your own thoughts about the equivalency of Eddie Gaedel and Donald Trump).

The official score cards of that day in 1951 list Gaedel on the Browns’ roster and somewhere in attic trunks might be the unofficial score cards kept by some fans who were witnesses to that day’s events.  The scorecards don’t lie. The news accounts don’t lie.  Will Harridge finally admitted the official records of baseball couldn’t lie, either.

Thousands of pages of the Congressional record have been printed and circulated recording those events although the idea that members can “revise and extend their remarks” for that record make it less officially accurate than baseballs statistics. It is, nonetheless, on printed pages that cannot be recalled from those that have them.

Expunging the impeachments from the House records would mean the Senate was playing some kind of a weird game on February 5, 2020 when it acquitted him of a charge that will not exist (somehow) in the House record, if this airheaded movement is approved by the full House.

The second impeachment has always been questionable.  It happened after Trump had taken his boxes of shirts and shoes and pants and documents to Mar-a-Lago.  The Senate on February 13, 2021, thirteen months after Trump and his boxes went south, voted 57-43 to convict him.  But a two-thirds majority was needed, so Trump was acquitted—allowing him to crow loudly that he had been completely cleared of any wrongdoing in the events of the previous January 6.

And once again, the Senate spent a day dealing with something that the great thinkers in the House now want to declare never officially happened.

One of singer Paul Simon’s greatest songs is “The Boxer.”

It doesn’t refer to our ex-President but the title comes to mind as we have thought of him in this discussion, as does the chorus:

Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie

Expungement would be a lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.

Eddie Gaedel is still in the baseball record books.  Donald Trump deserves the same honor in the Congressional Records.