Reading John Ernhardt's blog a little while back, I realized that I had always taken Spicer line about Charles de Gaulle being assasinated "before the Yankees winning the pennant" too literally. I thought that the assasination of de Gaulle was part of the prediction, not a statement of the "when pigs can fly" variety. I was about to write John to point out how he had misread the line when I realized that his reading was in fact the more plausible one. He kept asking himself why Spicer didn't think the Yankees would do well, when I thought the poem was saying that the Yankees would in fact clinch--after de Gaulle's death! I realized I can be very literal minded--not necessarily a bad thing I hope. In my defense I can only say that Ernhardt's discussion of how the Yankees actually did that year is equally literal minded.