Morning Walk-thru - Let Everyone Wear 42, that's a Tribute

Torii Hunter just wants to feel special...As you may have seen on PTI yesterday, Hunter is a bit disappointed by the number of people who'll be donning #42 in honor of Jackie Robinson on Sunday. Even though Torii told Michael Wilbon yesterday that he didn't say that players were wearing the number to "be cool", according to this article, he did:

This is supposed to be an honor, Hunter said, and just a handful of guys wearing the number. Now you've got entire teams doing it. I think we're killing the meaning.

It should be special wearing Jackie's number, not just because it looks cool.

Does Hunter have a point? Yes, and maybe there are some people who will wear #42 on Sunday and not have an appropriate amount of reverence, but the part that troubles me is the whole "just a handful of guys."

How should we determine who is included in this handful? Will there be a Jackie Robinson test? Only UCLA alumni? Point is, you can't limit it. In fact, the league probably should just put everyone in #42 this weekend.

That would be a true honor. Baseball's history is too long, and me too lazy, to actually look this up, but I doubt it's ever happened before, a day in baseball where everyone wore the same number.

You want to honor someone, make history. The photographs of the backs of the starting line-ups would be historic and all involved would have to at least pause for a second when they pulled their jersey on that day because everyone would be aware of the historic nature of it all.

As it is now, I feel bad for the poor bastards wearing their own number. Don't they care about Jackie Robinson?

Bud, let's make this happen and be done with this story so we can get to what's actually important.

Mas No Mas...I know I just linked here the other day, but No Mas has another brilliant feature running right now around the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Movie Festival.

The site will be providing coverage of the event, including reviews of little-known sports movies from a score of writers.

Should be a great event and some even better writing.

R.I.P. Kurt...A bit late on this but Kurt Vonnegut is dead. I'm not trying to be crass, I fancy Vonnegut quite a bit, but I just feel like dressing up that sentence with the phrase "passed on" or some such nonsense would only do the man a disservice. "He would've wanted it this way" and meeting the expectations of the dead is always easy and a goal of mine.

Anyway, in light of his death came a fascinating story from the Wade Blogs detailing Kurt's short stint at Sports Illustrated. They quote from a 1998 review of Michael MacCambridge's book, The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine:

Kurt Vonnegut worked briefly at SI until being told to write a story about a race horse that had jumped the rail and terrorized the infield at a local track. Vonnegut stared at his desk for what seemed like hours before finally departing the building without a word. Inside his deserted typewriter was this: ''The horse jumped over the fucking fence."

And that's why we should all go out and read some Vonnegut right now.