Morsch/Sands

Tuesday, July 20, 2010
A chat with 'Salty' Sands

Thank goodness! Just when it looked like a Tuesday would go by without a Morsch post, here comes this gem, with an embedded video of what looks like an elderly lady. Can Morsch really pass off an interview with an old woman as one of "life's little stupidities"?

Sarah Jane “Salty” Sands and some of the other original players of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League were a little concerned when Madonna was cast for the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.”

I'll be honest - I never would have suspected a baseball angle. How will Morsch reconcile the seemingly incompatible worlds of baseball (full of men, hot dogs, and poor laundry skills) and woman (full of wisdom, humor and social tact)?

“She didn’t have such a good reputation,” said Sands during a break in signing autographs last Saturday at an event that featured five of the original women players at the Days Inn in Horsham.

This is obviously a terrible sentence. Did Morsch even look at it before hitting "Publish"?

The event, sponsored by the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society, which has a museum and gift shop in Horsham (www.philadelphiaathletics.org), was the second such autograph show the society has had in as many years featuring the professional women baseball players.

And ANOTHER terrible sentence. You can't write this poorly unless you actively try to.

Sands, from Orangeville, PA, played two seasons for the Rockford Peaches as an outfielder and catcher. She got her nickname as a child from her father, who said she dressed like another “Salty,” one of the town’s more eccentric residents.

I hate to point this out, but we're getting dangerously close to the end of the story and we've had one sentence from Ms. Sands. Where exactly is the "chat"?

“A League of Their Own,” which stars Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell and was directed by Penny Marshall,

Who cares? Do readers really, really need to know all four primary actors as well as the director?

reintroduced the nation to a part of baseball history that had been forgotten during World War II and brought renewed attention back on the women who played.

And that part of baseball history was...? Classic Morsch: provide a ton of info about useless crap (i.e. the actors and director of a movie), but none about anything interesting (i.e. the topic of the article).

Sands did appear in the movie as herself, at the end during the movie’s credits where some of the original players are scrimmaging on Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y.

As for those concerns about Madonna and her reputation: “She did a wonderful job in the movie,” said Sands.

Aww, what a heartwarming story! Unfortunately, you won't find that story (or anything of interest) in Morsch's video. It's 2:37 long, and only 1:14 of that is an actual "interview." Morsch asks two questions - "What's it like to have played baseball" and "How did you get your nickname."

You might think that second one isn't a bad question. Unfortunately, it's a question that some anonymous guy at the event HAD ALREADY ASKED HER. IN THE VIDEO. So we hear the same story twice. This is no Frost/Nixon.

I just love listening to ballplayers tell their stories.

Labels: Mike Morsch, Montgomery Newspapers, Outta Leftfield

"Baseball"? "Salty Sands"? "A League of Their Own"? Literally anything that might allow a reader to find this story?