Especially over the same period of time. Number one. Number two, truman was famous for being a walker. Every day he took his constitutional. Referring to the speed of the pedestrians in the competitive races, i think, and its hard to tell, we have no photographs much less moving pictures. Its a shame. Still the age of line drawings and engravings. The way people described westins walk sounds similar to what race walking is today. They said he had a wobbly walk, that he moved his hips. He swung his hips. I have a feeling that he walked fast. Much like modern race walkers do. As far as truman, you mentioned harry truman. He walked, i forget what it was. What was his old military pace of 60 steps a second or 60 steps a minute or something . He was famous for his walks. Liked to walk around washington. There is a good story where the secret service hated it. The secret service had been protecting fdr, you know, for 12 years and really didnt have to worry about fdr going on long walks. So they overall were used to sitting around smoking all day. Harry bounds out of the office. Hes got to deposit his check at the bank. It took two minutes to catch up with him. The secret service decided they were going to fix the traffic lights so he would always hit the walk signal whenever he was out on one of his walks in washington. Of course, soon as he found that out, he was furious that they would do that. He kept walking. He returned to independence, missouri, and walked right up to the very end. He died in 73. I think he was 88 years old. Right up until the end, he was still walking. He was a Firm Believer in walking. In fact, he was probably7 enough, i think he remembers the 1884 elected. At least he would have heard from his parents or other older people about the great walking matches that had taken place about ten years before he was born. Okay. One more. How did timing work in terms of when athletes would take a nap. How would they keep track of that, that no one had advantage over them . How would timing work when athletes took a nap. You were on your own when you took a nap. You could sleep as long as you wanted, but you were sacrificing all that time on the track. In the arenas, especially the major arenas, i know in new york and chicago, there was a large clock on the wall. So everybody could kind of keep track about how long people slept, how long they were on the track, that sort of thing. Nobody really kept statistics on exactly how long somebody was on the track or exactly how long somebody slept. If you took a nap, you were really taking your chances because the rest of the field could just continue walking. Its interesting. The idea of timing and timing to the second and minute. You cant really trust all the times you hear sometimes, where somebody would say, oh, i walked 500 miles in five days, 14 hours and 23 minutes. Well, how good was the clock . They didnt have quartz timing or anything. A lot of that in the book i kind of try to take with a grain of salt when people say, oh, he walked 100 miles in 19 hours. Its not always easy to be sure. Yes . [ question inaudible ] how did they eat . They ate while they walked. They were allowed to have an attendant who would help them. I dont know, cut the steak while walking. I dont know what they did they took their meals and they took their drinks while they walked. Obviously, to save time. Maybe they would have a big old piece of rare meat and just chew on it and that was it. I dont know how would you eat the greasy eel broth while walking without burning yourself. Yeah. Meals were taken while they walked. All right. Thank you so much again. I really appreciate your attention. While congress is on its summer break, we are presenting this during the day. Coming up, the history of the Kansas City Monarchs Negro League team and the impact it had on baseball. Thats followed by a discussion of racism in sports over the years. Bill russell and jim brown tell their stories. Then a look when walking was the nations most popular spectator sport. Here is a great read to add to your Summer Reading list sundays at eight a collection of stories from the most influential people over the past 25 years. There was a risk and i decided to take it. Whether its illusion or not, i dont think it is, it helped my concentration. It stopped me being bored. Stopped other people being boring, to some extent. It would keep me awake. Would make the evening go on longer for good long conversation, to enhance the moment. If i was asked, would i do it again . The answer is probably yes. Id have quit earlier, possibly, hoping to get away with the whole thing. Easy for me to say. Not very nice for my children to hear. Sounds irresponsible. If i say, yeah, id do all that again to you. The truth is, it could be hypocritical to say, no, id never touch the stuff if i didnt no. I did know. Everyone does. Soviet system in Eastern Europe contained the seeds of its own destruction. Many of the problems we saw at the end begin at the very beginning. I spoke already about the attempt to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political life and social life. One of the problem is when you do that, when you try to control everything, then you create opposition and potential dissidence everywhere. If you tell all artists they have to paint the same way and one artist says, no, i dont want to paint that way, i want to paint another way. You just made him into a political dissident. If you want to subsidize housing in this country, and we want to talk about it and the populous agrees that its something we should subsidize, then put it on the balanlot she and make everyone away how much its costing. When you deliver it through these thirdparty enterprises, fannie mae and freddie mac, deliver it through a Public Company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of that subsidy for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing homeownership. Christopher hitchens, anne applebaum, sundays at eight now available at your Favorite Book seller. Baseball historian phil dixon on the kansas city longest, the longestrunning baseball franchise in negro league history. Mr. Dixon discusses how the monarchs created a number of hall of famers and brought new innovations to the game, include lights for night games. The dwight d. Eisenhower president ial library and museum hosted this hour long event. First i want to say good afternoon, and i want to thank some people, of course, tim for giving me this opportunity to come down and speak with you today. Im really excited about it and samantha who handled a lot of the publicity for the event. She did just a wonderful job and without people like that, also there was a local Radio Station that did a great interview, and between newspaper, radio, im always appreciative of all the people who support your visit and so i want to thank all of them before i get started. Im going to jump right into it and tell you a little bit about why im here. The kansas city monarchs were a Negro League Baseball team and most of you have heard of them. Maybe you heard of Jackie Robinson or Satchel Paige. They were organized in 1920, 4 1924 they won the first world championship. That was 90 years ago. I was trying to figure a way to honor these great men who purely played for the love of the game because they didnt make great salaries back then, and so i decided i was going to visit 90 cities to basically commemorate the monarchs efforts as a Negro League Baseball team. Now they played in more than 90 cities, so im going to 90 cities and believe me that just scratches the is your facilitates all the places that the kansas city monarchs did. They were great ambassadors for the game. For me my journey started a long time ago. As a child i collected baseball cards and i kind of went nuts with that. So i found out about baseball and i just kept collecting, collecting, collecting and the collection kept growing, growing, growing. And my knowledge grew. And so not only did i know about the baseball statistics but the thing that captured me the most were baseball stories. So i liked to read the backs and whatever stories they had and then i gravitated to books and just kept growing. And finally, this kind of brings me home to abilene and heres what happened. I got my first full time job working for a retail store. I was out of college and they bounced me around to a few places. I was in colorado springs, albuquerque for a little while, wichita and i ended up in topeka, kansas. I always talked baseball, no matter where i went. I always talked baseball. Somebody mentioned there was a negro leaguer that had played ball who lived in topeka. And i got to know this negro leaguer, his name was carroll ray and he was on that 24 team. He later passed. But through that association i decided to do a little tribute to him. So in doing this tribute, you know, once again being that kind of person who loves to collect information, you know, i challenged myself. I said im going to find every game the kansas city monarchs ever played. That was pretty aggressive idea back in that 1980. There was no internet at that time. So if you wanted to know the name of the library say if they played in abilene, you write to the library, had to go the library. They had a big book with all the library addresses, i write them down. I would write letters. I had all these letters. It was a labor of love and a passion that just kept on growing. And needless to say, i was able to find games that were played in abilene because of that. So, as a tribute to the kansas city monarchs who were way in kansas city, what im doing now is going to towns that they played and name of my program is the kansas city monarchs and our home town. Now, give you a little bit of overview of the kansas city monarchs as i said a moment ago they were organized in 1920. And they were charter members of the Negro National league. And they won their first championship in 1923 p. M. At that time they didnt have a world series. So 1924 they played the eastern colored league, hilldale team and the monarchs won. In 1925 they returned to the world series but they didnt win. Hilldale won. They were the best team in the eastern colored league. The kansas city monarchs continued to play and by 1929 they won another championship by the leadership of another guy bullet rogan. The kansas city monarchs played exhibition games. In the negro league they had a regular schedule. You had eight teams and they had a regular schedule. But most of those games would be on the weekend when they could draw the largest audience. So they would play friday, saturday, sunday and then sometimes on monday. Well in between that if youre coming from kansas city going to st. Louis, theres a lot of cities in between and remember were talk about the golden age of town baseball. And these are grown fellows who are playing baseball and some of them were, you know, workers in the town but they loved baseball as well. These are grown men playing baseball. As you can see, the monarchs during the 1920s, this is an article from the kansas city kansas daily traveller, you see they only lost three times in over 400 exhibition games. The towns had good teams but the monarchs were hard to beat. During that time when they were barnstorming of course the first time they came to abilene was in 1923 and they were on trains but in 1925 there was a highway act and they started building up the highways, connecting all the major cities and some not so major together and so the owner of the kansas city monarchs being this Creative Genius he was, his name was j. L. Wilkinson decided he would use a bus to transport his players and they could go places on a different schedule than the railroad, get more games in, they could go to cities who werent along the railroad lines. So in that he became the first in the kansas city monarchs first team to travel exclusively by bus. The other thing that i think is always interesting is that the kansas city monarchs in 1930, they popularized night baseball. You think of night baseball you dont think of the monarchs. Most people remember the date, i think it was may 24th, 1935, when they talk about cincinnati lighting up its park. Thats the date i learned as a child. This is when night baseball started in the major leagues. But actually with the kansas city monarchs it started in 1930. Wilkinson being the baseball innovator and genius he was he wanted to make night baseball popular. He patterned it after what he had seen with carnivals and circuses who had lights. He worked on it and he created some towers he could take on trucks from city to city and he popularized this night baseball. Now the major leagues were skeptical of the night baseball, so its been recorded that ben johnson president of the American League said it was a passing fad, it would never last. And wilkinson said that lights will be to baseball what talkies are to movies. Another bit of interesting bit of history is that the first all night world series where all the games were played in the night was 1985 when the Kansas City Royals played the st. Louis cardinals. So it took that long. As a matter of fact, the first weekends game at night wasnt until 1971 and back in the 1930s the monarchs were popularizing that. As a matter of fact, their pitcher, one of them pitched the first nohitter back in 1930 under the lights. Ip so this is one of his greatest innovations and one he doesnt get credit for but he should because it revolutionized major baseball and baseball every where. The monarchs spent a lot of time barnstorming. And in 1930, the depression had pretty much hit most of the major cities that were in the league. So st. Louis, st. Louis, chicago, all those cities were in depressions. And so wilkinson decided to pull his team out of the league and go 100 barnstorming. So what he was able to do through that is to take the monarchs to places that they couldnt go in between their schedule. So like in between their schedule he could come out to western kansas, take a week, take a few days and come back to kansas city. Well, when he went, got out of the league they went as far as the pacific coast, they went to portland, washington state, idaho, they went down to mexico, went over the border into mexico. They went up to canada. They went all the way to saskatchewan, alberta. They were in canada. They went all over the place. Going to all those places you can see they rarely lost. This was an awfully good team. But the barnstorming is the part that most people had the opportunity to see the kansas city monarchs. This is the way that most baseball fans had a chance to see the kansas city monarchs especially outside of the major cities. This picture here is a barnstorming picture. You can see the towns teams they knew how great the monarchs were and most a ball player can recognize another ball player, no doubt about it. So when they saw the kansas city monarchs they recognized how good these players were. And this picture right here, this game was played in blue rapids kansas. Thats the 1939 and that shows how popular they were, teams were willing to pose with the kansas city monarchs and this is at a time when racial divide could be pretty tough. But the kansas city monarchs were welcomed almost every place they went. So because of his great innovations, j. L. Wilkinson we have pictured here is now a member of the Baseball Hall of fame in cooperstown, new york. One of his pitchers i might mention wilkinson also when they organized the Negro National league he was the only white manager in the league or white owner in the league and how that came about was because in 1911 he organized a team called the all nations. And the all nations had many nationalities on one team traveling together. So jose mendez was them. And he was cuban. They had John Donaldson an africanamerican out of missouri, one of the greatest lefthanders that ever lived. They had an italian guy, they had a couple of guys that played formerly in the major league. They had whites, blacks, a native american that played with them, and the first professional japanese player played on wilkinsons team. So that team played right up until world war i and they were pretty much decimated by the draft in world war i. So when the opportunity comes in 1920 because of his goodwill and friendliness and his relationships with various races, he was picked to organize a team and thats how he became the only white owner in the negro league. Mendez, outstanding player. Monarchs first manager. He started with wilkinson years ago. He also has been enshrined in cooperstown, new york. Also, along the way they had other players that joined them. This gentleman by the name of andy cooper. Andy cooper was born in waco, texas, but raised in wichita, kansas. 1920 he plays for the detroit stars in the Negro National league and in 1920 wilkinson traded two players to get him and he comes to the kansas city month marks and remains there and died while he was the manager of the monarchs in 1940. But he comes. And because he was such an outstanding player, he too is in the major League Baseball hall of fame at cooperstown, new york. But of all the greatest players, especially during the 1920s, there was none greater than wi willber bullet roga ber bulb. Many people to this day have not heard of rogans name. If i had the same group of people here in 1920 and i was to mention rogans name they would know exactly who i was talking about. He was widely publicized and heres the reason why i personally think he was the greatest all around baseball player that ever lived. You know right before, you know, we went and started this whole new decade and new century they did all these polls of the greatest Baseball Players of our time. Of course everybody picks babe ruth. Let me tell you what rogan was able to do. First of all rogan like ruth was a pitcher. He actually invented a pitch, rogan did called the palm ball which is change of pace. Rogan was a great pitcher. As a pitcher he won over 400 games. As a pitcher. Also he was a great batter. And he hit with home run power and he was 57. He hit over 400 home runs as a batter. He was a consistent. 300 hitter. As for average, he also played the outfield when he wasnt pitching, and was a gold glove outfielder, tremendous arm. He was a fast runner. He could run a 100 yard dash in less than ten seconds or right in ten seconds in that area. And on top of that he managed the monarchs and he led them to the pennant in 1929 and in 1934 they had a record of 134 wins and 14 losses and he managed that team and when he wasnt doing a