Sweetbread Bailey: Presidents and Pastries (In it for the dough)...

...which is also the title of my new band's debut release. It's a mix of early New Wave dance beats with underpinnings of pop art and minimalism. Our biggest influences are Jean-Paul Sartre, ironic mustaches and money from our suburban dads. And we all dress like it's 1983, which is actually 8 years before we were born. Our live performances are eye-opening, but the bourgeoise types wouldn't get it. We haven't had our record reviewed by Pitchfork yet, but we're confident it will score at least a 7.6.

Wait, what?

This is a baseball blog. Ostensibly, anyway. Sometimes I write a little bit and then discover that it's clever and I digress. Imagine that: A self-indulgent blog¹. But we'll save that discussion for a later, much more self-referential post.

Today's GNIB post covers the life and times of Abraham Lincoln Bailey, a native of the, well, Land of Lincoln. That's hardly surprising, I guess; Illinois has an infatuation for the 16th commander in chief. The name puts in him some good company with other players named after presidents.

But Abe Bailey actually played under the auspices of Sweetbread Bailey, a name which adds him to the All-Time Pastry Team: Cookie Lavagetto, Pie Traynor, Jim "Cakes" Palmer, Doughnut Bill Carrick, Danny Tartabull, minor leaguer Christopher Danish, minor leaguer Russell Loafman and Baklava Van Troy.

As a young phenom in Joliet, Sweetbread passed up an opportunity to pitch for the Chicago Cubs in 1917, instead serving in World War I with the 72nd Field Artillery in the army². Upon returning, however, the Cubs signed him to pitch for the club. Bailey pitched in relief for the Chicago Cubs from 1919 to 1921, when he was traded to the Brooklyn Robins. His career was over after the 1921 season.

Sadly, Bailey died in 1939 at the young age of 44 in the same town in which he was born. Naturally, coffee and sweet rolls were served after the burial.



¹ If your blog isn't sufficiently self-involved, then you're doing it wrong.

² Bailey is alleged to have invented the bread helmet during the Great War, a device that would not gain popularity for nearly another 100 years.