Klugh: Bubble wrapping history: The search for a new South Jersey baseball hall of fame

From Justin Klugh at The Hardball Times on March 8, 2019:

In the early hours of July 16, 1945, the United States government put aside any passing concerns for the citizens of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and went ahead with the first nuclear bomb test in human history.

Almost exactly three years later, on a much less eventful morning in Greenwich Village, Bell Labs revealed its latest production: the transistor, a component that would replace the vacuum tube in radio transmissions and further the reach of humanity’s communications.

In The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner marks this pair of developments as the beginning of “the two most important technologies of the twentieth century.” With one of them, America introduced the world to heinous destruction on a biblical scale. With the other, America’s pastime was able to reach a new generation. That pastime being baseball, not heinous destruction on a biblical scale.

Read the full article here: https://tht.fangraphs.com/bubble-wrapping-history-the-search-for-a-new-south-jersey-baseball-hall-of-fame/



Originally published: March 14, 2019. Last Updated: March 14, 2019.