Bob Feller Career

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

It seems to be a thing the last ~25 years where biographers are mostly interested in the downsides of their subjects rather than their virtues. I believe this was true for DiMaggio, and a number of the stars who got drafted (or enlisted shortly before they were due to be drafted). Williams 39 combat missions in Korea is nothing to be ashamed of. As I understand it he was a physical fitness instructor in the army, and bitter about having to play ball for them on base teams. Considering his father was treated as an enemy and had his rights removed as a former Italian, needing to get special permission to travel more than 5 miles from his residence, I can't really fault Joltin Joe here at all. I sure wouldn't want my family treated like an enemy by a government forcing me to throw the baseball around for the entertainment and egos of generals.

Well, you don't like the hagiographic ones either.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Well, you don't like the hagiographic ones either.

I feel like there's a middle ground, one that we used to call 'objectivity' and at least pretended to desire

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

I feel like there's a middle ground, one that we used to call 'objectivity' and at least pretended to desire

IMO Robert Caro's series on Lyndon Johnson is both stunningly well done and fairly objective.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

IMO Robert Caro's series on Lyndon Johnson is both stunningly well done and fairly objective.

My only real objection to Caro's work is the selfish one that he is 86 and we still need the final volume 5, 40 years after the first one came out.

I got my undergraduate and masters degrees in History (don't do that kids, pick STEM or business) in the early 2010's. Objectivity was treated with near-universal open contempt as an old-fashioned Germanic idea; the post-modern notion that objectivity is impossible to achieve (probably true in the literal sense) and thus is silly to aim for was taught to and preached by the students instead. The role of the Historian, as it was taught, was to shape moral opinion and to advance the correct interpretations of the past, that always coincidentally suit certain agendas and worldviews. Got myself into a fair bit of social trouble for declining to accept that the historian as propagandist is the proper way, and that one should withhold moral judgement and simply stick to the facts, the what, and the questions of the why things happened.

I will go flagellate myself now for again drifting with human conversation off the strict OP.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

My only real objection to Caro's work is the selfish one that he is 86 and we still need the final volume 5, 40 years after the first one came out.

I got my undergraduate and masters degrees in History (don't do that kids, pick STEM or business) in the early 2010's. Objectivity was treated with near-universal open contempt as an old-fashioned Germanic idea; the post-modern notion that objectivity is impossible to achieve (probably true in the literal sense) and thus is silly to aim for was taught to and preached by the students instead. The role of the Historian, as it was taught, was to shape moral opinion and to advance the correct interpretations of the past, that always coincidentally suit certain agendas and worldviews. Got myself into a fair bit of social trouble for declining to accept that the historian as propagandist is the proper way, and that one should withhold moral judgement and simply stick to the facts, the what, and the questions of the why things happened.

I will go flagellate myself now for again drifting with human conversation off the strict OP.

Yes but even when you're sticking to facts, value judgments invariably come into play on which ones you deem important, how and in what sequence you portray them, and so forth. And once you hit they why questions, I don't see how one can do that fully objectively.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Yes but even when you're sticking to facts, value judgments invariably come into play on which ones you deem important, how and in what sequence you portray them, and so forth. And once you hit they why questions, I don't see how one can do that fully objectively.

It may not be entirely achievable, one may not be fully able to remove themselves from what they see, but one should strive for objectivity, and take a step back. Otherwise, one is doing no more than preaching propaganda, and has strayed away from truth.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

It may not be entirely achievable, one may not be fully able to remove themselves from what they see, but one should strive for objectivity, and take a step back. Otherwise, one is doing no more than preaching propaganda, and has strayed away from truth.

Another reason it's hard to write history is that the writer always knows how things turned out, and there's a huge hindsight bias. In other words a tendency to see events over time as some inevitable progression. I once had a brilliant teacher who asked, what if the 1933 German election wasn't some inevitable step in the rise of Nazism, but at the time was just the product of normal electoral forces?