“Try to remember,” as they say in the song, “the kind of September, when,” when what? Ah yes, when you didn’t have to answer a bunch of damnfool questions. Sadly, this will not be one of those happy, bygone Septembers, as it is time for another round of the incessant botheration known as Odd Man Out. Can I get a “hoop-tee-doo?” All right, then, how about just a “hoop” for now, and the rest for one of those rare mornings when you manage to get up on the right side of the bed?
Do not despair, though. Since September is National Be Generous to the Severely Bewildered Month (Bet you didn’t know that.), I will be throwing my readers nothing but bones, throughout the entire quiz. No gristle, no scrap metal, only bones.
Group 1
Delerium tremens
Habeas corpus
In flagrante delicto
Sine die
Group 2
Hooray for Hollywood
Donald Duck
Tyrone Power
Porky Pig
Group 3
Monopoly
Botticelli
Scrabble
Trivial Pursuit
Group 4
Churchill Downs
Fairmount Park
Hialeah
Pimlico
Group 5 (Consisting of one of those annoying oversized groups about baseball)
Muggsy McGraw
Kid Gleason
Silver Bill Phillips
Joe Tinker
Jimmy Collins
And now, we come to the part of the exercise everybody can understand, possibly even your narrator himself: the intervening dumb joke.
A man stopped for gas at an isolated, three-pump station, out in the middle of nowhere. As he was filling up, he noted there was a pig with a wooden leg in a pen beyond the station. When he went inside to pay up, he remarked about the pig to the guy behind the counter.
“I’ll tell you what, you got no idea how smart that pig is,” the counterman told him. “One time, he saved my life. Yessir, that’s what he done, all right. Y’see, I was fast asleep, and my house caught fire. Why, if it wasn’t for that there pig squealing up a storm, I’da been roasted like a dang marshmallow.
“They was another time, the neighbors’ vicious Doberman done got loose and was comin’ straight for me. This pig, well, he growled and snarled and scared that dog plum away.
“Another time, I was tryin’ to fix my car, when I forgot where I had set my wrench down. Without me sayin’ a word about it, that pig come trottin’ up with the wrench in his mouth.”
“Gosh, that’s pretty remarkable,” said the traveller. “I wonder, though, why does he have a wooden leg?”
“Mister,” the proprietor chuckled, shaking his head at the city-slicker’s obvious stupidity, “you don’t eat a pig like that all at once.”
Okay, now that we’re done with the tomfoolery, let us do as we once did back in the days of Odd Man Out 19 and get to the answers.
Group 1
Delerium tremens
Habeas corpus
In flagrante delicto
Sine die
Say, what’s going on here, you may well wonder. Here you promised us nothing but bone questions, and you start off by throwing in a bunch of Latin. Something’s fishy, and this ain’t Wednesday! Relax, he implored them with a friendly arch of his (or someone’s) brow. These are all well-known terms, even if they are in an otherwise defunct language.
A mong them, habeas corpus (“You may have the body”), in flagrante delicto (“in blazing offence”) and sine die (“without day,” meaning, not to be continued at a later date) are all legal terms.. Delerium tremens, as you all undoubtedly know from your own painful experience is long for “the DTs.” That is a medical, rather than a legal term, which makes it the Odd Man Out.
Group 2
Hooray for Hollywood
Donald Duck
Tyrone Power
Porky Pig
Your narrator is a-brim with confidence that you, the veteran OMO sleuth, have followed his earlier advice and first checked the Supporting Links, which often supply a major clue when there is a musical group in the mix. Lo and behold, your wisdom has borne fruit as you quickly conclude that, among all the items mentioned in the Johnny Mercer hit, “Hooray for Hollywood,” that last one has no place. His cartoon counterpart, the second item, gets a nod in the first verse of the song, with the line, “Go out and try your luck; you might be Donald Duck.”
Group 3
Monopoly
Botticelli
Scrabble
Trivial Pursuit
Arrest your forward progress, Nellie! Not only is this group the boniest of the bones, your narrator will accept either of two reasons for the isolation of the oddball. Deals like this do not come around every day. You should go out on strike while the iron is hot.
All four of these items are games, which, while they may not require the intense mental strain of, say, Candyland, can provide some eats for thought. The thing is that one of them fails to conform to the other three in either of two ways. That nonconformist is the second item, Botticelli, which, unlike the other three games, requires no board on which to play it. In fact, you would seem a bit foolish if you asked where the Botticelli board might be. The other acceptable criterion is that, unlike Botticelli, the other three games were developed by Bonnie’s famous siblings, the Parker Brothers.
Group 4
Churchill Downs
Fairmount Park
Hialeah
Pimlico
Here is one for all you racetrack touts out there. All of these items are places where the “sport of kings” (not brothel-hopping; the other one) has been known to take place. The thing is, you can venture out to Churchill Downs in Kentucky, Fairmount Park (Illinois, but close to St. Louis) or Pimlico (Maryland) and plop down your mighty two-buck bet on whatever steed you know perfectly good-and-well is going to come in last. At Hialeah, in Florida, though, you will have to wait a good long time for old Gluesocks to come galumphing across the finish line. The park closed in May of 2001.
Group 5
Muggsy McGraw
Kid Gleason
Silver Bill Phillips
Joe Tinker
Jimmy Collins
Okay, let’s see now, all of these guys were big-league managers, and all of them played in the majors to a greater or lesser extent. Gleason and Phillips were pitchers, while McGraw, Tinker and Collins were infielders. Three of them are in the Hall of Fame, but the other two are not. So what is the oddity? Let’s keep thinking.
All of them won at least one pennant, but wait, he exclaimed (!), something here is not congruent. Four of these guys won a major league pennant during the modern era of baseball, but did not get to lead the pennant-winner into the World Series.
In one instance, the failure to participate in the Fall Classic was the fault of the manager himself. That was John J. (“Muggsy”) McGraw, who had enough power in his position that he could refuse to allow his New York Giants, the year after the World Series was established, to play in such a contest against the upstart American Leaguers from Boston, who, that year, were managed by Jimmy Collins. In 1914 and 1915, a group of sporting entrepreneurs established the Federal League, which is recognized today as a major league. On the other hand, the Feds were frozen out of postseason play by the people who ran the show in the other two leagues. As a result, when Silver Bill Phillips won the pennant in 1914,and Joe Tinker won in 1915, that’s as far as they went.
Kid Gleason, who won with the Chicago White Sox in 1919, is the odd man in this group because he and his team did get to play in the World Series that year. On the other hand, Gleason was somewhat cheated out of his postseason glory in that eight of his top players took a dive that cost him the championship.
Although your narrator is not given to sentimentality in these quizzes, I wish to note that I threw this one in to get Bill Phillips mentioned. His grandson, Dick Phillips, was my brother’s father-in-law. He passed away, earlier this summer. He was a good man and a good friend to all who knew him
I will see all you good people next month with another ridiculously-easy quiz.
Sources
Wikipedia
The Encyclopedia of Baseball