Scott Butherus' "View from the Cheap Seats" spring training blog, Mar. 9: Baseball has a way of keeping people young. It can even save your life: just ask 92-year-old Virginia Bagnall. Virginia was today’s special guest at Dunedin’s Knology Park and had the honor of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch for the hometown Toronto Blue Jays game against the Houston Astros. (And at that age only Roger Clemens has a better fastball.) Afterward I sat down with the 48-year Dunedin resident and Blue Jays fan as she told me how baseball once saved her life. During WWII Virginia was stationed in Iceland, where a German spy assumed her identity in order to infiltrate American forces. The spy looked like Virginia, talked like Virginia and even knew all about Virginia’s background and personal life. The impostor knew the answers to every question posed by American intelligence agents until they asked both women about their favorite sport. Only Virginia, who had grown up as a “rabid Boston Red Sox,†knew the real answer.
This article appears in Mar 7-13, 2007.