By historical fact, Monday is George Washington's actual birthday, but on the perpetual baseball calendar, it is merely the 74th anniversary of the game's most notable contribution to Washington-inspired goofiness.

On Feb. 22, 1936, we're asked to believe, Walter "Big Train" Johnson, as part of Washington D.C.'s sesquicentennial celebration, threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Md., in an attempt to duplicate Washington's childhood feat of throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac.

We presume you'll be celebrating responsibly as we prepare to commemorate the anniversary with this, our own humble exercise in myth-juggling.

After Jim Bibby died last week, someone called Bob Pompeani and me on the Subway Nightly Sports Call with a story about the former Pirates pitcher. Bibby, the caller said, would intimidate opposing hitters by walking off the back of the mound before the first hitter stepped in, wind up, and throw the ball over the center-field fence.

Uh-huh.

And not only that; it was a slider.

"No," former Bibby teammate Kent Tekulve said on the phone from Florida on the weekend. "Never saw it. I saw Bob Veale, at an old-timer's game in the early '80s, walk off the mound and throw it over the left-field fence at Three Rivers. But I never saw Bibby do it, and there's no way he'd do it before the start of a game."

A quick canvas of other Bibby contemporaries in Pittsburgh drew no confirmation, but nobody said he couldn't have done it.

As the center-field fence marker at old TRS read 400, we're talking about a throw of roughly 330 feet.

"He could probably do it," Teke said.

That would be like Clemente taking one off the right-field wall at the foul pole (335 feet), turning and throwing it to the plate on the fly.

"Clemente could do that," Teke said. "Dave Parker could probably do it. Ellis Valentine could probably do it."

Bibby was a man of tremendous proportions. Enormous shoulders and hands. Nearly half a foot taller than his NBA brother, Henry. But he was not an intimidator by mound personality.

Could he have? Probably. Did he? Probably not.

It's not so easy with George Washington and Walter Johnson, it turns out.

It would have been hard for Washington to throw a silver dollar across the Potomac, as silver dollars didn't exist until he was 62 years old, by when, some say, he'd pretty much lost his fastball. It's possible he threw another coin, at a much younger age, but at that time in his career, George's location was an issue.

George had great command during the War of Independence, but not always with the old two-seamer.

The Potomac is a mile wide or more on average, but not more than a couple hundred feet just north of Riverside. True, Washington could have gotten there. It's easy; it's right off the George Washington Parkway. More likely, Washington whipped something -- a piece of slate according to some historians -- across the Rappahannock near his boyhood home, which explains the Big Train re-enactment.

Still, tourists in D.C. are aware that tour guides continue to get away with pointing out where Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac. If someone says, "That's impossible, it has to be a mile wide," the guide simply responds, "Well, a dollar went a lot farther in those days."

There are actual journalistic accounts of Johnson's attempt, however, few noting that in 1936, he hadn't pitched for the Senators in nine years. Though he had won 417 games, punched out more than 3,500 hitters, and posted a 21-year earned run average of 2.17, he was 49 years old the day they handed him that silver dollar on the muddy banks of the Rappahannock.

Nonetheless, The Big Train apparently rocked back and whipped it some 270 feet, those accounts go. Later accounts, however, have him throwing a baseball across the river. Probably a four-seamer.

How far somebody can throw something is a notion for almost perpetual myth-making.

Would you believe John Elway could get on both knees at the 50-yard line and throw a football through the uprights?

Would you believe the 35?

How about a silver dollar?

Certain disciplines take all the fun out of things by actually measuring in real time. Yeah, imagine.

I mean somebody was there Nov. 12, 1978, in Jewett, Texas, when Johnie Dell Foley threw an egg 323 feet, 2 inches. At least his cousin was there, because his cousin caught it. C'mon it's on the Internet. There are no myths on the Internet.

But when it comes to baseball, there is still one distance no one seems able to conquer, a distance that seems more and more to result in debilitating injury to those crazy enough to attempt it: 60 feet, 6 inches.

In the future, if there are newspapers, they will no longer list the dates on which the various teams' pitchers and catchers report to spring training. Catchers will report first by themselves. Pitchers will report directly to the disabled list.

Try this fun activity on the Fourth of July. Print out the names of the pitchers on the disabled lists of both leagues in two-inch block letters. Lay the names end to end.

Jim Bibby couldn't throw it that far.

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