Mark Plotkin, the impatient, pugilistic political commentator, died in September 2019. But three years later, most of Plotkin’s cremated ashes remain dumped inside a gallon-size Ziploc baggie stuffed into a plastic funeral urn. His final resting place is far from certain.
Though Mark and I had a long time relationship, it was also far from typical. For example, he opened an interview with me on the DC radio station WTOP this way: "How do you respond to those who say you're just outrageous, off the wall, beyond normal?"
I responded saying that if you go back and read what I wrote ten, twenty or thirty years ago, it’s hard to see what the problem was. That’s the way Mark and I talked on the air.
For about a quarter century or so, Mark Plotkin and I would have occasional lunches with Eugene McCarthy. Plotkin had been McCarthy's campaign manager when he ran as an independent for president in 1976. During that campaign, while McCarthy and Plotkin were in Florida, Bill Veeck announced that he was reactivating Minnie Minoso for eight at-bats so he could claim to have played over four decades. Veeck was always coming up with ideas. Some weren't so great, like putting his players in short pants, but some became traditions like having the announcer sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch. When Chicagoan Plotkin read the Minoso story he quickly came up with another idea for Veeck: have him reactivate former Soo Leaguer Eugene McCarthy. Gene was excited and Plotkin made the call. Veeck had just one question: "Can he hit?" Plotkin assured him that McCarthy was a strong hitter. There was a long pause and then the reply, "Nah. . . Daley would kill me."
Why it has taken so long to bury Mark is described in another Tom Sherwood piece a year ago. It’s a complicated tale but this will give you a sense of what what happened to the urn where his cremated ashes were put:
At Weisskopf’s house in Northwest, they decided they would open the urn. They wanted to spread some of the ashes at local sites here, especially the Rose Park tennis courts in Georgetown “where he loved to play tennis,” Weisskopf remembers. But they couldn’t get the damn urn open, no matter how hard they tried. “The seal of the urn was some incredibly tight glue,” Friedberg recalls. Frustrated, they went out to the back alley of Weisskopf’s home. “I threw the thing from over my head to the pavement and shattered the urn,” Friedberg admits, “and we retrieved the ashes.”
Even a few years after his death, Mark was still providing good stories.
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