I think I came across this particular IMDb absurdity when I was doing research for my review of the Willie Mays doc a few months back. Mays was one of several baseball stars—usually Dodgers or Giants—who made appearances on family-friendly sitcoms in the 1950s and 1960s, and, on IMDb, I was checking exactly who was on what.

I was first struck by this bio:

So IMDb thinks Duke Snider was an actor? Known for that one episode of “The Rifleman”?

But of course not. IMDb doesn't think. The above is just a template IMDb/Amazon uses for lesser bios since apparently it's too cheap to hire anyone to write or police any of this. The template goes:

• [Name] was born on [date] in [place].
• He [is/was] an actor, known for [top 3 known fors].
• He is/was married to [wife/former wife].
• If applicable: He died [date] in [place].

That's how IMDb does the bios for Don Drysdale and Willie Mays, too. It's not how they do the bios for other sports stars like Joe Namath (“The son of a steel worker from...”) or Jim Brown (“Often mentioned as the greatest player in NFL history...”), but then both men actually starred in movies. They didn't just make a guest appearance on “The Donna Reed Show.”

Wait, I just checked a couple more. It's also not how they do the bios for Reggie Jackson (“Reggie Jackson is a baseball Hall of Famer nicknamed 'Mr. October'...”) or Ken Griffey Jr.  (“Ken Griffey Jr. is considered by many experts to be the best player in baseball...”). And why is Junior's in the present tense, as if he were still playing? As if it were written in 1998 and no one's bothered to update it in IMDb's Amazon era? 

Sigh.

Anyway, that's not the part I wanted to bitch about. This is. It's in Duke Snider's trivia section:

Besides being an actor, Duke Snider somehow played baseball, too? Wow. And apparently at a pretty high level!

Seriously, no one's minding the store.