More "Amazin' Mets"

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

AMAZIN' METS (revised)

   I've now looked through the New York Times, Post, Daily News, World-Telegram & Sun, Herald Tribune, and Journal-American.
   There's no basis for saying that "Amazin' Mets" came after their first spring training victory, in a newspaper of Monday, 12 March 1963.  That statement is made in Paul Dickson's NEW BASEBALL DICTIONARY, but I couldn't find the phrase on Monday.
   However, on Tuesday, 13 March 1963, after a second spring training victory, from Dick Young's column in the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, pg. 50, col. 1:

   The past two days here, Cincy took 8-2 and 10-3 wallopings from the Chisox, whereupon the Amazin' Mets moved heroically into this unbeaten camp this afternoon, and belted Chi, 8-4, with the wind and the rain in their hair.

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POPIK'S LAW (forever continued)

   From the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 2 April 2001, pg. A13:

   "There's so many jokes about what goes into them," said Bruce Kraig, a culinary historian who has made an academic career of frankfurters. (...)
   ...frank fanatic Kraig, professor emeritus of history at Roosevelt University in Chicago...
   Kraig, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, has spent 12 years studying the history and culture of hot dogs.  He writes learned papers about them.  He uses terms like "flavor profile" and "paradigmatic American food" to describe them and doesn't even giggle.
   "I get a lot of ribbing," he said.  "But it's a fascinating topic.  It goes to the heart of American culture."
   Although close cousins to the wursts and sausages of Europe, hot dogs, like baseball, are distinctly American.  Much of their early history is surrounded in folklore, myuthology and tall tales because no one found it important enough to jot the information down before Kraig came along.
   The first sausage was forked into a bun in the 1880s, but just who deserves credit for the feat is the topic of debate.  Frank fans and historians also question just who coined the term "hot dog."
   Credit is generally given to a New York cartoonist who sketched a vendor hawking "dachshund sausages"--long and skinny--at the Polo Grounds.  The cartooonist couldn't spell dachshund, the story goes, and so called them hot dogs.
   Problem is, no one's ever found that cartoon, said Kraig.

(NO!  THAT'S NOT THE PROBLEM!  THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU'RE AN IDIOT!!!!  THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU NEVER LOOKED AT THE _OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY_, OR THE _RANDOM HOUSE HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG_, OR THE _SMITHSONIAN_ MAGAZINE "HOT DOG" ARTICLE, OR DAVID GRAULICH'S _HOT DOG_ BOOK...--ed.)