A McCreachery Card Theory

[cyseymour]

Joe,

I feel that you are way off base. As new information arises, I am willing to integrate it. Many people had different ideas on the card. It was a collaborative effort by the board. Sure, some posters delivered ideas that were later disproven, i.e. the drinking or the downfall of the Wolverines comments, but that is part of the process to find the truth as other posters chime in with new information. You drum up a bunch of old posts from the thread, but it doesn't disprove anything I'm saying now about the name McCreachery or the answer to the riddle.

If I stuck rigidly to old, disproven ideas of the card as new information became available, would you consider that more commendable? You ask me, is my final answer ready? Well, my final answer is ready. It was a riddle - the name was a double-entendre based on McCrea/Chery and Chreach, "Mc" meaning son, Crea being "God" and "Chery" meaning dear/sweet , making McCree/Chery mean Dear Son of God/Sweet Jesus, and then "Creach" a reference to aging as a fall from the Grace of God. It is very clever and fits perfectly within the context of the joke on the card seeing that he is presented as being a manager.

I realized the double-entendre on the second page of this thread and have stuck with it as the answer, for good reason. You disproved the notion posted by David N. that it was in reference to the downfall of the Detroit Wolverines, and I accepted that. As I demonstrated in my post #71 at 12:10PM yesterday, the type of downfall suggested by the term creach refers to a fall from grace via aging. It fits perfectly with your own suggestion in the OJ book regarding White being tabbed the Indy Mgr as a joke on his age.

I have outlined a tremendous amount of historical, social and etymological evidence to support my theory. Not only has no one been able to disprove it, nor present a credible alternate theory, but it is clear that "Dear Son of God/Fall from Grace" is highly logical and humorous, and it fits directly within the context of the card and the social and historical backdrop of the era. Can you find any legitimate reason why the riddle would not be true?

If you do revise the book, and mention therein that it's a riddle, which I feel you have an obligation to do, then please be sure to also explain it was a double-entendre based on the root words McCrea/Chery and Creach, meaning "Dear Son of God/Fall from Grace" so that people can understand it. It's only fair, and I feel you owe that to me as the discoverer of the riddle. Without an decent explanation, it pays short shrift to the discovery, as well as to the card itself.

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As for your little quip about the Delahanty card, I'm not sure why you would want to come on and take a shot at my card. It clearly has nothing to do with the thread. I probably shouldn't have gotten drawn into it, but I do consider Buck Ewing and King Kelly to be the greatest catchers of the 19th Century, and the statistics bear that out. White wasn't quite on that level, but he was very good. Many 19th cent. catchers suffered from dementia (there was a recent article in the NYTimes on that), and that may have been the source of some of White's strange ideas later on, which is sad. As for Delahanty, he led the league in OPS four times and posted an OPS above 1.000 six times, and was the greatest field player of his era.

Just a personal point - I am not out here trying to be your nemesis. From everything I can tell, you seem to be a pretty good guy. But if someone sends a zinger my way, whether about a Delahanty card, Rodney Dangerfield line, etc., then they should expect to receive a zinger right back. Within the lines of civility and decency, of course. It's only fair and part of a lively exchange. But hopefully we can all work together to share information and ideas as part of an online community of collectors, and conversation doesn't have to be restricted to the intellectual realm of solely a few book authors.