I am a confessed Wikipedia user. For some time it’s become taboo for people to admit this because someone out there has spread the rumor that you can’t rely on its truthfulness because the they had done something like embed that some famous person had died when it was obviously not true. A point well made, sort of. People go into schools and on occasion start blasting away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t trust the education system. There is plenty to complain about with Wiki, mainly the fact that the format varies so greatly from entry to entry that you get things like, Leonardo Da Vinci competing head-to-head with, say, Jennifer Lopez, in terms of numbers of words used to cover their lives. About 8,500 a piece. Then there is Tom Walsh, born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1886, and played professional baseball for the Chicago Cubs in 1906. Here are his stats:
MLB debut: August 15, 1906, for the Chicago Cubs
Last MLB appearance: September 26, 1906, for the Chicago Cubs
Number of Games: 2
Batting Average: .000
Here’s his bio as lifted verbatim from the page:
Thomas Joseph Walsh was a Major League Baseball player. He was a catcher who played for the Chicago Cubs in the 1906 season. He was born on February 28, 1886 in Davenport, Iowa. Tom played just 2 games in his career, going 0 for 2 in just 2 plate appearances and, an average of .000. He died on March 16, 1963 in Naples, Florida.
What is not mentioned between that late September day and the moment he passed away due to a stroke was the time he invested running a construction company that helped build such memorable structures as the Grand Coulee Dam, Yankee Stadium, The Queens Midtown Tunnel, and the United Nations Headquarters, all achievements that could have earned him a place in digital eternity…but didn’t. Instead, people can read about his rather stunted career behind the plate and modest performance while wielding a bat. Word had it he wanted to stay on, but when he sent his father tickets to the World Series, his old man declined saying he wanted him to drop his aspirations to excel on the diamond and return to the family business. That wasn’t an entirely cockeyed request back then seeing that baseball wasn’t the glamorous sport we know it to be today. It was a shame, though, because the Cubs lost that series, but went on to win in 1907 and 1908. It is, to date, the last time they would be crowned champions.
Who was Tom Walsh and why in hell is he there? Why the hell is he being mentioned here? He was my grandfather, and while I am proud to see his brief stint in professional sports recognized by some evidently very, very avid baseball buff with a lot of free time on his hands, he really has no business appearing. Not for those reasons, at least. But what the heck. This is Wikipedia.
Nor should Victor Cucurull, for that matter. But he is. Victor belongs to the ANC, which does not stand for the African National Congress in this case, but rather the Asamblea Nacional Catalana, an organization devoted to promoting Catalan independence. That’s fair enough, as people who wish to secede from Spain are naturally going to want to do so in an orderly fashion. Victor is a professor and I get the feeling he is, unless someone can otherwise prove me wrong, an instutionalized liar. And he probably knows it. Either that, or he is a lunatic. Either that, or he’s a brillant provacateur coming up with outlandish claims just to piss the rest of the Spaniards off. A look at his Youtube videos suggests the first two to be the most likely. In any event, here are a number of his positions on a very revised history of just about everything:
The legendary lost civilization of Tartessos, placed by every serious scholar to be located somewhere in southern Spain, was really founded in the otherwise modest Catalan city of Tortosa. I believe the relative similarity in the letters used constitutes definitive proof. Other jaw-dropping assertions include Catalonia being the world’s first nation, Ancient Rome reaching its greatness thanks to the incorporation of Catalonia, Catalonia rising as the world’s most powerful nation in the 16th Century, America being discovered by Catalans, and so on.
But wait, there’s more. Like what? Well, famous Catalans were (but really aren’t) St. Ignatius Loyola, Christopher Columbus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Amerigo Vespucci, and Miguel de Cervantes. To name just a few. Speaking of Cervantes, apparently Don Quijote was penned in Catalan, translated into English and finally Spanish.
These preposterous claims certainly trigger laughter, but they also instill a deep sense of sadness and indignation. It’s pathetic to have to lie about your past to give it prestige. It’s dangerous that people do it. It represents the extreme to which the nationalists will sometimes go to justify their existence. I should add that no entry for the Catalan version of Wikipedia about this man has ever been posted, thus suggesting that not even his own people take him seriously. And they shouldn’t.
Nor should the person who added his bio to the global resource website. He was obviously pro-Spain and clearly doing his best to ridicule the man. And while Cucurull probably deserves it, using a formal fact-finding website normally devoted to truly encyclopedia-worthy individuals, as a way of networking your frustration defeats the purpose and does little for your cause. Plus, it gives publicity and importance to someone who is about as worthy of such an honor as my poor grandfather, who essentially did little more than toss a few baseballs back to the pitcher.
