Today’s installment of my “Oslo Journal” is Part V, but I’d like to go back to Part III for a sec. I made sort of a whimsical comment. Tomas van Houtryve, the Belgian-American photojournalist, had pointed out that approximately 1.5 billion people still live under Communism, with the vast majority of those, of course, being in China. “Or, to put it another way,” he said, “1 in 5 people on this planet currently live under Communist Party rule.”
I wrote, “I’m sorry, but I think of something funny: For decades, a great baseball trivia question was, ‘What is the winningest brother-brother combination among pitchers?’ The answer was Christy Mathewson and his brother Henry. Christy won 373 games; Henry won either one or none, depending on the source you consult.” Later, the Mathewsons were passed by the Perry brothers and the Niekro brothers (who are the champeens).
A reader writes, “Don’t forget the Aarons! Hank hit 755 homers, and Tommie 13 — making them the homerest-hitting brothers of all time.”
We could have further fun with this — for example, WFB and I, combined, have published about 60 books.