*RING*
ME— Tri-Metro County Library?
BIRTHDAY LADY— Do you know when that baseball player with the Yankees who just died was born?
ME— (Reigning state champion of sports cluelessness) I'm not sure who that is.
BIRTHDAY LADY— The name is spelled R-I-Z-Z-U-T-O.
(I Google up a selection of pages referring to him. The first I see is a NY Times article that lists the year of his birth as 1917.)
ME— Looks like 1917.
BIRTHDAY LADY— Yes, but when was he born?
ME— (Slowly) Nineteen seventeen.
BIRTHDAY LADY— Yes, but what was his birthday?
(I suddenly think, "Oh, yeah. That's why she always calls, hence her name. Duh." So I look to the Wikipedia article on Rizzuto, which lists his birthday as September 25, 1916.)
ME— Um, well, this says September 25, 1916.
BIRTHDAY LADY— The paper said 1917.
ME— Yeah. That's what the NYTimes page said too. I think I'd go with what the paper said.
BIRTHDAY LADY— Then that's what I'll put.
(Wikipedia has since been revised to say 1917.)
5 comments:
Here's added fun: Biography Resource Center says September 25, 1918! (Almanac of Famous People, 8th ed. Gale Group, 2003.)
Something's up.
Ha ha ha...go to my blog and search under Dead Celebrities lady...I think we have cousins that are calling our libraries. I like to imagine that my lady has a list of famous people and calls to confirm that she can cross someone off. :)
I like nndb.com for that sort of stuff. However, it says his birthday is September 25, 1916
The Baseball Hall of Fame says 1917.
That's annoying, 'cause, you know, we PAY Gale to give us quality online resources.
To really toss a wrench in her little list, call her back with the updated NYT article by Murray Chass.
He states that Rizzuto lied about his age and was really 90.
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