Richardson Sniper Fires Draft Record (The Baseball Kind)
–Or Did Bill Swift Boat His Baseball Heroics?–

 

Arnold Mycock led the reporter down to his basement, a low-ceilinged, seldom-visited time capsule underneath his home in Cotuit, Massachusetts. His 82-year old fingers clasped and tugged at the chain from a solitary light bulb, which illuminated the basement in a low glow made even murkier by the millions of dust particle flies that came to life with the new light.

Mycock knew right where to look amongst the stacks of cardboard boxes, all of which were full to the brim with papers and books and scraps. His withered fingers stuttered across the top of a row of pamphlets in the box he’d pulled out of the personally organized jumble. His index slowed down to read the top of a few pamphlets. Arnold Mycock pinched out a thin booklet with a single staple in the side and a single crease near the fold. The cover read:

PROGRAM

COTUIT KETTLEERS vs. WAREHAM GATEMEN
CAPE COD LEAGUE
JUNE 20TH, 1967

…

There is a long history of misremembering in politics. You need not look back very far to find an example. In fact, the story of the 24-hour news cycle today seems to be a perfect illustration of a politician’s faulty memory on display. Hillary Clinton is feeling the full wrath of the media, the bloggers and the YouTubers for remembering, quite fictitiously, running for cover from “sniper fire” during a visit to Bosnia while she was the First Lady.

From the version she tells, one might believe that Hillary ran straight into enemy fire, hauled her daughter Chelsea into a fireman’s carry and then scrambled to safety just moments before a string of machine gun bullets kicked up dust in the spot from which she just dove, head-first, into the fuselage of her downed bomber.

Of course, (oh, that’s what he’s up to now) Sinbad and CBS were quick to point out that Hillary’s visit to Tuzla was slightly less eventful. Hillary was greeted with open arms by the President of Bosnia, his eight-year old daughter and enough friendly military personnel to overrun Thermopylae at the Hellespont.

First Lady Clinton can be seen in old CBS video clips strolling casually from her transport to a greeting ceremony, exchanging kisses with her well-wishers and standing on stage with (insert joke here) Sinbad and Cheryl Crow. The old clips are all perfectly juxtaposed to Hillary on the campaign trail last week recounting the “sniper fire” she was under during the visit.

While Clinton’s anecdote was supposed to show her experience and strength, it seems to have missed its target. Instead, the scandal has turned into one of the hottest internet videos around, a major blunder in Hillary’s ever decreasing attempt to secure the Democratic nomination.

Sensational as Sniper Firegate has become, it still lacks substance- much like the Reverend Wrightgae, American Flag Lapel Pingate, Typical White Womangate and the other media blitzes in the campaigns so far. To be fair, Hillary has been talking non-stop for the past year at whistle stop after whistle stop. So she exaggerated the story a bit. The fish she caught was this big, not this big.

Even though the mashed-together clips of the most calm moments of her trip prove she wasn’t dodging bullets, isn’t it possible that she still actually remembers being under duress- having read about it, and over the years meshed it into her own understanding of the day? What was it, 20 years ago?

Besides, there are even reports in credible newspapers that indicate there was enemy fire in the hills above the airport where she touched down.

Which leads us to Bill Richardson’s draft record. In 1967, about the same time Dick Cheney was dodging another kind of draft, Bill Richardson was a standout pitcher for the Cotuit Kettleers, a Cape Cod League team that was a farm for Major League Baseball talent. Richardson was trying to get drafted to pursue his baseball career just as hard as his father was trying to get young Billy to go to college. In the end, Richardson decided to attend Tufts University, where he was a great pitcher until his arm started to fail near the end of his college career. Like most NCAA athletes, Bill Richardson went pro on something other than sports.

However, for decades Bill Richardson has maintained that he was drafted in 1967 by the Kansas City Athletics (the franchise later moved to Oakland). Part of Richardson trivia for years and years, the fact that he was a drafted Major League Baseball player was something that gave Richardson an extra bit of character- as if he needed any. The New York Times, CNN, the New Republic, the Albuquerque Journal, USA Today, Time magazine the National Review have all reported this as fact.

It’s not hard to imagine Bill Richardson mentioning his baseball playing days in Havana’s Estadio del Cerro, a baseball park where he chatted with Fidel Castro during his second congressional term.

But a closer look at the hard facts indicate that Bill Richardson was never formally drafted by the A’s or any other Major League Baseball team. American baseball is one of the most chronicled sports in the world. Yet records from both Major League Baseball’s headquarters in New York City as well as the reference work for Baseball America magazine’s “The Baseball Draft: The First 25 Years” spanning from the mid to late 1960s have no mention of any Bill Richardson drafted to play for any MLB team.

If there were neat video clips of Richardson’s slider getting belted out of a summer league ballpark while disappointed scouts looked on- shaking their heads and scribbling mean things in their notebooks- this would have been a real internet sensation.

However, unlike the Clinton misremember, this error in cognizance is much quieter. But there are many similarities. For instance, the Clinton campaign has shot back with newspaper clippings reporting that the Senator’s memory was not so far from the truth.

A report dug up from the Charleston Gazette states: “Protected by sharpshooters, Hillary Clinton swooped into a military zone by a Blackhawk helicopter…”

And in a dusty basement, an old baseball manager has something that might clear up the controversy. For Richardson might recall that in a 1967 minor league baseball program, the name Bill Richardson appears. Next to it in an old typewriter font is a brief paragraph about the player, “Right handed pitcher for Tufts University. Born: November 14, 1967; Pasadena, California. Middlesex Prep School. Best pitch: Curveball. Drafted: K. C. Athletics.”