Shame on you both, Kathy and Hal, for not sticking to the texts to support
your points.

Let us now consider SLC and baseball dispassionately:

--Most obviously, he wrote an entire book about a Yankee (indeed, a book in
which baseball is played by men in armor).  And yet it seems to me his
Yankee by no means emerges as a hero.  Like the Bronx Monsters, he is a
destroyer.

--As a Coloradoan, I would of course love to find affinities between SLC
and my own team.   But when I ponder honestly what he said of his brief
time of  toil in the mines and mills  (see Roughing It),  I can't in good
conscience make any case for affection for the Rockies.

--In that same Yankee book, he hoots at anyone silly enough to believe in
Giants.  And it is one of several books that reveal how deeply Mark Twain
despised   Royals of every stripe.

--Hal, when you calmly consider his treatment of the Medieval church, I
truly don't think you can make any case at all for Cardinals .

--Yes, Tom and Huck's yearning to become Pirates runs deep, and yet it is
surely something Twain associates with childishness.  Similarly, his
memories of his own days as a Cub were loving and warm; and yet there too
we have a strong whiff of immaturity.

....Having surely now said enough to start the entire Forum thinking along
proper scholarly lines, I shall leave the remaining detailed analysis  to
others.  . . . Adding only that once you have put your absurd local
prejudices aside, I am sure that  the correct answer will strike you
quickly:

When we consider  the entire pattern of his literary preoccupations--all
those switched identities, disguises, false claimants in book after
book--it is impossible for the detached  student to imagine Mark Twain
rooting for anyone but Those Extraordinary TWINS.

Yours for objective analysis,
Mark Coburn
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