[greymule]

The best part of the SI survery of pro ball players is that some of them listed Babe Ruth as the best living player.

I believe it. I know some former MLB players whose ignorance of the history of the game is almost beyond belief. There are all-time greats these guys have never heard of, and not just dead-ball-era players. Sometimes I think the knowledge these former players have of MLB is less than that of the average fan.

Years ago, a newspaper reporter in New York was amazed to learn that Vince Coleman of the Mets had never heard of Jackie Robinson and was unaware that blacks had ever been excluded from MLB. The reporter was doubly surprised when interviews with other players around the league revealed similar non-awareness.

But it's not just ballplayers. Surveys show that few American 17-year-olds can place the Civil War in the correct half-century, identify Thomas Jefferson, and so on. A college history professor I know told me that, in one of his classes, not a single student was aware that there had been a World War I (though some were familiar with the term World War II).

But I'm not singling out the U.S. of A. In the UK, only 11% of 18-year-olds could identify Winston Churchill.