Blow Out the Candles June 11

Hall of Fame catcher Roger Bresnahan was born in Toledo, Ohio on this date in 1879

Line-Up for Yesterday

B is for Bresnahan

Back of the plate;

The Cubs were his love,

and McGraw his hate.

— Ogden Nash, Sport magazine(January 1949)

"Out at Home" by Fletcher C. Ransom 1905

Bresnahan tagging out the runner while Christy Mathewson looks on.

Four time Super Bowl Champion Joe Montana is celebrating his 56th birthday today.

 Joe at Notre Dame

Cover Joe

Painter John Constable was born in Suffolk, East Anglia, England on this date in 1776.

"I know very well what I am about and that my skies have not been neglected, though they often failed in execution – and often no doubt from over anxiety about them..."

"Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but experiments?"

"The sky is the source of light in Nature and it governs everything."

"There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, – light, shade, and perpective will always make it beautiful."

"I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand..
..How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment."

"I have likewise made many ‘skies’ and effects – for I wish it could be said of me as Fuselli (painter from Austria, fh) says of Rembrandt, “he followed nature in her calmest abodes and could pluck a flower on every hedge – yet he was born to cast a steadfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature”… …We have had noble clouds & effects of light & dark & color."

Actor Gene Wilder is celebrating his 79th birthday today.