The man who trademarked the phrase "Any team can have a bad century" passed away yesterday. His name was Harvey Walken, and I traded e-mails with his office several times last year while I was developing my site Just One Bad Century. Read his obituary at the link. He lived a very interesting life. (Among other things, he was once one of the owners of the Pittsburgh Pirates).
My correspondence with him began when we posted that famous quote "Any team can have a bad century" on our website, but we attributed it to Jack Brickhouse. Mr. Walken's office notified us to let us know that Harvey actually owned the copyright to that, and that we needed to attribute it to him. If you click on the asterisk next to the quote on our home page now, you'll read the whole story.
Mr. Walken was kind enough to send me an autographed copy of his book "Here's Lookin' At Me Kid," which includes lots of great quotes from a very colorful man (the introduction was written by Phil Rosenthal). His autograph reads: "Rick, thanks for your work on MY behalf! Any team have can have a bad century. Let's hope it's only one. Go Cubs! Harvey"
