Word: abner
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...Abner Doubleday, who, legend has it, invented baseball about 140 years ago, would probably have been proud. Last week the mustachioed Union general's great-great-grandnephew Nelson Doubleday, president of one of the U.S.'s biggest book publishers, completed a family sporting circle by leading a syndicate that bid successfully to purchase the National League's last-place New York Mets for $21.1 million. Said Nelson in the new owners' first hot-stove-league pronouncement: "Running a baseball team is like selling a book. If you put a good team on the field, the fans...
...mythical Al Capp creature that provided Li'l Abner and friends with unlimited supplies of milk, butter and eggs...
Capp's Dogpatch was home not only for wide-eyed, molasses-brained Abner Yokum, but for his scrappy, pipe-smoking Mammy, his Pappy and his wonderfully curvaceous inamorata, Daisy...
Their amoozin' but confoozin' antics were eventually syndicated in 900 newspapers with an estimated readership of 90 million. Li'l Abner inspired a Broadway musical, two movies and a television show, earned Capp $500,000 a year at its peak and introduced Sadie Hawkins Day, the Schmoo, Kickapoo Joy Juice and Lower Slobbovia into the American lexicon...
...mouthfuls of caviar, and S.W.I.N.E.-Students Wildly Indignant About Nearly Everything. A favorite target of campus hecklers, Capp received notoriety during a lecture tour in 1971, pleading guilty to attempted adultery after a woman student accused him of making indecent advances. As Capp became more conservative, Li'l Abner's popularity waned, and he was down to 400 subscribing papers at the end. Admitted Capp: "If you have any sense of humor about your strip, and I had a sense of humor about mine, you knew that for three or four years Abner was wrong. Oh hell...