Football vs. Football

The New York Jets went to London, and got embarrassed by the Atlanta Falcons.

The Atlanta Falcons.

The New York Giants aren't doing much better.

Face it: The "New York" football teams are making the New York baseball teams look good.

I've hardly watched football this year. But plenty of baseball, and plenty of soccer.

A 2010 article from the Wall Street Journal featured a study that revealed that an average NFL game contains just 11 minutes of actual action.

Eleven minutes. Or, roughly the amount of time it takes to watch the last "one minute" of an NBA game.
In other words, a game that is comprised of 60 minutes on the clock, and takes over 3 hours to broadcast, consists of about 1 hour of commercials; maybe 75 minutes of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage, or just generally walking around between snaps; over 1 hour of showing replays; and 11 minutes of actual game play.
Unlike baseball (which has no clock), basketball and hockey, football can have the clock to run for long periods of time while nothing is happening.
It's bad enough when it's on television. But when you pay to get into the stadium? And the NFL has the highest ticket prices of the big four -- the big five if you count MLS.

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In 2011, I did a post on the Top 10 reasons why soccer -- football in the British Isles, fútbol in Spanish-speaking countries, fußball in German-speaking ones, calcio in Italy -- is better than the sport the rest of the world calls "American football." I will summarize here:

I grew up with the typical pre-MLS American attitude toward soccer: "It's too boring." " "It's too foreign." "There's not enough offense."

Even though I had the New York Cosmos playing just 35 miles away at Giants Stadium, with Pele, Carlos Alberto, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Neeskens and Giorgio Chinaglia, and opponents like Eusebio, George Best and Johan Cruyff coming in, I wasn't hooked on it. I would watch it on television, but I wouldn't go to a game.

The 2006 World Cup hooked me -- exactly how, is a story for another time. Slowly, but surely, I began to realize what a great game soccer is. And my exposure to London's Arsenal, Spain's Barcelona (before I started hating them -- with good reason), the Netherlands' Ajax Amsterdam, Italy's AC Milan and Portugal's Sporting Lisbon, finally brought me over to the side of the world's football.

Which, yes, is better than American football.

Here's my top 10 reasons why:

10. Size doesn't matter nearly as much. But soccer is still a human-sized sport.

9. Fewer commercials. The running clock means no TV time-outs. Commercials before the game, after it, and in halftime, but not during the game.

True, they wear "commercials" on their uniforms, but do you really want to see an ad for yeast-infection cream after a touchdown? Or, at the other end, Viagra after your team has fumbled the ball away? (In such an event, I don't think Viagra is going to help – and your team's players may already be a bunch of stiffs, and not in a good way.)

8. Overtime is not messed-up. Except for cup ties, there's no overtime at all. Is that a good thing? (I'll get to that in a moment.) In cup ties, there isn't sudden-death overtime (although, under some conditions, there has been a "golden goal"). If you allow a goal in extra time, you can still tie (or "equalise"), or even win. This happened to Arsenal in the 1971 FA Cup Final, against Liverpool: It was 0-0 at the end of the regulation 90 minutes plus injury time (a.k.a. stoppage time), then Liverpool scored first, from Steve Heighway in the 92nd minute. But Eddie Kelly tied it up for Arsenal in the 101st, and then, in the 111th, Charlie George drilled one into the net, and Arsenal had won the Cup – and, having already won the League, won "The Double."

True, penalty kicks often seem like an unfair way to settle a cup tie -- especially if you're from either England or the Netherlands. But it's better than the NFL's version, which is based on a coin toss. (Which is done by the referee. If you watch English soccer, you know where I'm going with this: In England, many of the referees are tossers.) The team that wins the coin toss wins 60 percent of the time -- in contrast, home field advantage has little effect in overtime, just 51 percent of home teams winning.

7. Proper punishment. Granted, soccer has futzed-up officiating as much as any other sport, and not even the Dallas Cowboys have gotten as many dubiously favorable calls as England's Manchester United, Spain's Real Madrid and Barcelona, Germany's Bayern Munich and Italy's Juventus. But you do something egregious in soccer, and not just you, but your team gets seriously punished.

A penalty in American football? Except for some pass interference calls, you hardly ever see more than a 15-yard penalty; the soccer equivalent would be a free kick. In hockey, a penalty puts your team down a man for 2 minutes. But an infraction worthy of a game misconduct is rare in hockey, and even then, someone gets sent into the penalty box to serve the penalty of the player who's been thrown out of the game, and then, when the penalty is over, that player can return to the ice to make it 5-on-5 agian.

In contrast, in soccer, if you get 2 yellow cards, equaling a red card, or even a straight red, your team is down a man for the entire rest of the game.

In other words, if you pull the kind of shit the Oakland Raiders and the Philadelphia Flyers pulled regularly in the 1970s and 1980s, then, assuming the ref is not paid off in your team's favor, it's 10 vs. 11 for the rest of the game. And if that happens early, try being a man down for over an hour. Hell, except for baseball, North American sports don't even last an hour unless they go to overtime.

6. A tie is not meaningless. In league play, or in group stage play in international tournaments, a win gets you 3 points, but a tie (or a "draw," as they would say) gets you 1 point. So if you work hard, but don't win, you can still get ahead.

5. Relegation and promotion. The bottom 3 teams in a national soccer league get "relegated," dropped down to the next highest division. The top 2 teams in the next highest division, and the winner of a playoff between teams 3 through 6, get promoted to the spots of the former higher teams.

In other words, if you're the owner, and you don't spend enough money to improve your team, you get punished for it; if you do spend enough money to improve your team, and it works (it might not), you get rewarded for it.

4. Lesser injuries. There are no 300-pound men (except in the stands), and the only ones who come at you, rather than the ball, are those "Dirty Northern Bastards" at teams like Stoke City and Sunderland and Wolverhampton Wanderers, and they never win anything anyway.

Furthermore, the rapid increase in the size of the American football player has resulted in some repeated awful collisions that have led to brain damage, including dementia that resembles Alzheimer's disease. This in men not yet 50 years old.

3. Multiple competitions. You can fail to win your league, and still have a chance to win something. There is your country's national league (not to be confused with baseball's National League), the national cup tournament (think NCAA "March Madness," except it runs all season long), the national "league cup" tournament (in terms of importance, think the Preseason NIT), and then there's continental play.

2. It's a world game. Usually, the only NFL players born and raised in other countries are the placekickers – who weren't good enough to make it as soccer players. But on a soccer team, you can get players from around the world – for the better ones, players from the club's country of origin tend to be few and far between.

1. Fan reactions and interactions. At a North American sporting event, you might hear variations on the bias or blindness of the officials. Other than that, the imagination of the sports fan is generally limited to "You suck, asshole!"

But in soccer, regardless of country, songs are made up. Yes, songs – some current hits, some classics. These get turned into braggadocio for your squad, or for individual players thereof, and swipes at the opposition.

Some are good-natured, known in England as "taking the piss." Some are not. References to a player's pecadillos, such as arrests, substance abuse, business troubles, and sexual practices (real or imagined), and the same for his family, get turned into musical numbers. Sometimes vile. Sometimes hilarious. Sometimes both.

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October 12, 1492: Christoffa Corombo – as he was known in his native Genoa, or Christophorus Columbus as he was known in Latin, or Cristobal Colon as his patron, Queen Isabella I of Spain, calls him -- finally gets his ships to land. He believes he has reached South Asia. He names the island on which he lands San Salvador, after Jesus. Eventually, the island will be taken over by the English, and renamed Watling Island. Today, it is a part of the Bahamas.

Eventually, the man the English-speaking world knows as Christopher Columbus will make 4 voyages west, never fully realizing he was in what became known as "the New World," always thinking he was in Asia. But he does start the wave of European exploration that will make the Americas -- eventually named for rival Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci – possible.

Yet, considering previous voyages of the Vikings (and, some believe, the Chinese), it is disingenuous to say, "Columbus discovered America." In fact, he never set foot on the soil of the continental U.S., coming the closest when he reached Puerto Rico.

As far as I can tell, it was Juan Ponce de Leon, who came with Columbus on his second voyage in 1493, who was the 1st European to set foot on present-day U.S. soil, reaching Florida in 1513. (Vespucci did reach land in what’s now called South America, but not North America. The Vikings reached present-day Canada, and possibly present-day Maine.)

It's also not true that Columbus "proved the world is round." By 1492, most people already believed that. Even so, it would be 1522, and the conclusion of the Ferdinand Magellan expedition, before anyone sailed all the way around the world and back to his starting point, and proved through firsthand experience that the world was round.

What does this have to do with baseball? Today, there is a Triple-A minor league baseball team in Columbus, Ohio, and a Double-A team in Columbus, Georgia. And a major league team in Washington, District of Columbia. And, of course, there is a tremendous amount of talent in lands that Columbus revealed to the Old World, including the places now known as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

October 12, 1565: Jean Ribault, leader of France's early expeditions to the New World, is executed by the Spanish at their settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously-occupied (by people of European descent, anyway) place in America. He was believed to be 45 years old.

The new Spanish governor of La Florida, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, was, like his King, Philip II, a militant Catholic, and Ribault and most of his followers were Protestant. Over 700 Frenchmen were killed by the Spanish in the Autumn of 1565.

Florida would remain under Spanish rule until 1763, when Spain traded it to Britain for control of Havana, Cuba. Britain sold Florida back to Spain in 1783, and Spain held it until the military victories of General Andrew Jackson (later President of the United States) convinced them to sell it to America in 1821. It gained Statehood in 1845, seceded from the Union to join the Confederate States of America in 1861, and, following the Union victory in the American Civil War, was readmitted to the Union in 1868.

Maybe it shouldn't have been.

October 12, 1692: Sir William Phips, colonial Governor of Massachusetts, orders that the witch trials in Salem be stopped. There had been 20 executions, although none were, as the legend says, burned at the stake.

In other words, the Boston Red Sox aren't the cause of New Englanders being messed-up. They, their failures, the angst those failures have caused, and their turning to cheating, are by-products of New England already being messed-up.

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October 12, 1896, 125 years ago: Volatile New York Giants owner Andrew Freedman is found guilty of an April 22 assault on baseball writer Edward Hurst. He receives a suspended sentence -- most likely, because he was rich, and the judge didn't want to put a rich man in jail.

Freedman was a piece of work. He was a director of the Interborough Rapid Transit company (IRT), which ran horse-drawn carriage lines in New York, and built the City's 1st Subway in 1904. He raced yachts. He seemed to be a respectable New York businessman.

But in 1895, he bought the Giants, and became New York's 1st fabulously wealthy but eccentric sports-team owner, preceding Donald Trump (who owned the USFL's New Jersey Generals) by nearly 90 years, George Steinbrenner by nearly 80, and Larry MacPhail by over 40.

He underpaid his players, even by the standards of the day. His star pitcher Amos Rusie sat out the entire 1896 season, rather than accept a pay cut. Freedman suspected anyone who opposed him of anti-Semitism -- and was the target of some genuine anti-Jewish bigotry. Finally, in 1902, he sold the Giants to John T. Brush, and was out of baseball, and all of baseball rejoiced. He died in 1915, only 55, but worth over $4 million -- about $103 million in today's money.

October 12, 1899: The American League is founded by Byron Bancroft "Ban" Johnson, a Cincinnati sportswriter. It plays as a minor league in 1900, and goes all-out as a major league in 1901.

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October 12, 1907: At Detroit's Bennett Park, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown throws a 2-0 shutout, beating the Tigers to capture the World Championship for the Cubs. Although Game 1 ended in a 3-3, 12-inning tie, Chicago becomes the first club to sweep a Fall Classic.

The last surviving member of the Cubs' 1907 World Champions was rookie 3rd baseman Henry "Heinie" Zimmerman, who was also the last survivor of their 1908 World Champions. He lived until 1969.

Also on this day, Philip Weintraub (no middle name) is born in Chicago. The 1st baseman had a minor-league batting average of .337, and a major-league average of .295. Phil played 8 games for the New York Giants near the end of their World Championship season in 1933, but did not make their World Series roster.

Despite his hitting, he was out of baseball after 1938, only returning to the Giants in 1944 and '45 due to the manpower drain of World War II. Anti-Semitism has been suspected. He played in the "Tricornered Game" of the 3 New York teams for war bonds in 1944. He became a successful businessman, and lived until 1987.

October 12, 1913: Following the World Series, which his New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, John McGraw hosts a reunion for Hughie Jennings and the 1892-99 NL version of the Baltimore Orioles.

After a night of heavy drinking‚ McGraw blames his longtime friend‚ business partner and teammate Wilbert Robinson, perhaps baseball's 1st great pitching coach, for too many coaching mistakes in the 1913 Series. "Uncle Robbie" replies that McGraw made more mistakes than anybody. McGraw fires him. Eyewitnesses say Robbie doused McGraw with a glass of beer and left.

Six days later, Robbie will begin a legendary 18 years as manager of the crosstown Brooklyn franchise‚ replacing Bill Dahlen. The team will carry the nickname Robins‚ as well as Dodgers‚ during his tenure.

Robbie and Mac won't speak to each other for 17 years, and after winning 3 straight Pennants together, McGraw will win just 1 Pennant in the next 7 years, while Robbie will win 2, in 1916 and 1920 -- the only Pennants the Brooklyn team will win between 1900 and 1941.

This is not the beginning of the rivalry between the Giants and the Dodgers, not by a long shot. That rivalry had its beginning in rivalries between clubs of New York (Manhattan) and Brooklyn when they were separate cities prior to 1898, even going back to the days of amateur baseball in the 1850s and '60s. And the rivalry between Manhattan and Brooklyn would have happened even if baseball had never been invented. (But what cruel person would want to live in such a world?)

But the McGraw-Robinson bustup is the beginning of a rivalry that ruined one of baseball's great friendships, not resolved until both men were retired and near death. Still, they both ended up in the Hall of Fame -- neither lived to see the Hall's establishment, though -- and are buried in the same Baltimore cemetery.

Somebody should write a book about it: We've seen books about the Giants, about the Dodgers, about the Dodger-Giant rivalry, about McGraw, and even about the old Orioles -- but the McGraw-Robinson relationship is a fascinating one. They're like the John Adams and Thomas Jefferson of baseball: Great friends in a great cause, then a nasty split and a nastier rivalry, and the relationship was repaired and the great friendship restored toward the end.

October 12, 1916: The Red Sox defeat the Dodgers/Robins, 4-1, and win the World Series by the same margin. After winning back-to-back World Series – still the only manager in the history of Boston baseball to do so – Bill Carrigan announces his retirement. He will return to the post in 1927, but, without future Hall-of-Famers such as Speaker, Harry Hooper and, uh, Babe Ruth, he will finish at the bottom of the American League instead of the top.

The last surviving member of the 1916 Red Sox was pitcher Ernie Shore, who lived until 1980.

October 12, 1918: There were 8 Major League Baseball players, all of them Americans, who died serving their country in World War I, and 2 of them did so on this day.

Lieutenant Alexander Thomson Burr, U.S. Army Air Service, a Chicagoan known as Tom Burr as a pitcher, played just 1 game in the majors, in the outfield for the Yankees in 1914, and never got to bat -- a true "Moonlight Graham." He is killed in a plane crash, in Cazaux, France.

It was an accident: Rather than being shot down, another U.S. pilot crashed into him -- what became known as "friendly fire." His plane caught fire, and crashed into a lake. It took 12 days to find his body. He wasn't quite 25 years old.

There is no mention of him at Yankee Stadium, not in Monument Park, and not in the Yankees Museum. You would think that, for all his nods toward American patriotism, George Steinbrenner would have done something to honor the one and only Yankee who ever died in the service of his country. I wonder if he even knew.

Also on this day, Private Harry Melville Glenn, U.S. Army Signal Corps, a Shelburn, Indiana native known in baseball as "Husky" Glenn, played a portion of the 1915 season as a catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, in the middle of an 8-year run of professional play, mostly with the St. Paul Saints.

He did not die in combat or in an accident: He developed pneumonia and, in those pre-antibiotic days, died in a St. Paul Hospital. He was 28.

Also on this day, the Cloquet Fire breaks out in northern Minnesota. It is believed to have caused 453 deaths and the rendering of 52,000 people homeless.

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October 12, 1920: The Cleveland Indians win their 1st World Series, in Game 7 of the best-5-out-of-9 Series, 3-0 over Uncle Robbie's Dodgers/Robins, as Stan Coveleski outduels fellow future Hall-of-Famer Burleigh Grimes, for his 3rd win of the Series. It will be 21 years before the Dodgers get back into the Series; for the Indians, 28 years.

The last survivor of the 1920 Indians was rookie Joe Sewell, who took over at shortstop for Ray Chapman after he was hit in the head by a pitch from Carl Mays of the Yankees on August 16, and died the next day. Sewell went on to a Hall of Fame career as a 3rd baseman, and ended up with the Yankees, winning another Series in 1932. He lived until 1990.

Also on this day, a match race is held at Kenilworth Park in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit. The previous year, Sir Barton had become the 1st horse to win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes, the combination that would become known as the Triple Crown. Man o' War was the dominant horse of the time, having entered only the Belmont among the 3 in 1920, and won it. Sir Barton was unused to hard tracks like Kenilworth, and couldn't keep up. Man o' War won the race by 7 lengths.

October 12, 1921, 100 years ago: Game 7 of the World Series -- not the deciding game, as this one was best-5-out-of-9. Phil Douglas outpitches Carl Mays, and the New York Giants beat the Yankees 2-1. The Giants can wrap it up tomorrow in Game 8.

Also on this day, Jaroslav Drobný is born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). He survived the Nazi occupation of his homeland to become one of the world's top athletes: A great tennis player, and a hockey player who led his country to the 1947 amateur World Championship and a Silver Medal at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. But he didn't like how the subsequent Communist government was using him for propaganda, and he defected while at a tournament in Switzerland in 1949.

Egypt offered him citizenship. He is the only citizen of an African nation ever to win a Grand Slam tennis tournament: The French Open in 1951 and 1952, and Wimbledon in 1954. He had sustained an eye injury in hockey, so he wore glasses on the tennis court. He is the only man to win major championships in both tennis and what we in North America would consider one of the "Big Four" sports. He is also the only man to win Wimbledon while wearing glasses. (Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova did so, but by the time he won it in 1975, Arthur Ashe had switched to contact lenses.)

He soon moved to London, became a British citizen, married an Englishwoman, and wrote a memoir,
Champion in Exile. He died in 2001, shortly before his 80th birthday.

Also on this day, Leslie Horvath (no middle name) is born in South Bend, Indiana. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame, but, despite being born in South Bend, he didn't go to the University of Notre Dame.

Shortly after he was born, his family moved to the Cleveland suburb of Parma, Ohio, and he grew up there, and went to Ohio State University, winning the National Championship as a sophomore in 1942 and the Heisman Trophy as a senior in 1944, the Buckeyes' 1st Heisman winner. His Number 22 was retired.

He played for the Los Angeles Rams in 1947 and 1948, and for his hometown Cleveland Browns in 1949, winning the Championship of the All-America Football Conference. He then left pro football, deciding to enter the profession for which his degree qualified him: Dentistry. Dr. Les Horvath lived until 1995.

Also on this day, Senator Philander C. Knox of Pennsylvania dies in office, at age 68 in Washington. He had previously served in the Cabinets of 3 Presidents: William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt as Attorney General, and William Howard Taft as Secretary of State.

October 12, 1923: In front of the largest paying crowd in baseball history to that point, 62,430 fans are on hand at Yankee Stadium. They see Casey Stengel hit his 2nd home run of the World Series. The round-tripper proves to be the difference when Giant hurler Art Nerf outduels Yankee starter Sam Jones in Game 3 of the Fall Classic, 1-0.

The Giants now lead 2 games to 1. They will not win another game that counts until April 15, 1924.

October 12, 1926: John Irvin Kennedy is born in Jacksonville, Florida. A shortstop, he played in the minor leagues from 1951 to 1961. On April 22, 1957, he became the 1st black player for the Philadelphia Phillies. This made the Phillies the last team in the National League to integrate, and left the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox of the American League the only teams not yet having done so.

Given that, 10 years earlier, the Phillies, then managed by Ben Chapman, heaped so much racist abuse on the 1st black player of the modern era, Jackie Robinson, it is appropriate that Kennedy's debut takes place at Robinson's home ballpark, Ebbets Field. It is also appropriate that Kennedy, wearing Number 8, enters the game in the 8th inning as a pinch-runner for Solly Hemus, who would later be revealed as one of the era's nastiest baseball racists. Kennedy is stranded at 2nd base, and is not put into the field. The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Phillies, 5-1.

Kennedy, already 30 years old, makes only 5 appearances for the Phillies, coming to the plate twice without reaching base, and is sent back down to the minors in May. He died in 1998, just 72 years old.

He should not be confused with John Edward Kennedy, a white infielder (mostly 3rd base), who played in the major leagues from 1962 -- playing in Washington while John Fitzgerald Kennedy was President there -- until 1974, including winning a World Series ring with the 1965 Dodgers, and playing for the Yankees in 1967 and the infamous Seattle Pilots of 1969.

Also on this day, Mkrtych Pogosovich Simonyan is born in Armavir, in the Soviet Union. Of Armenian descent, he took the Russian name Nikita Pavlovich Simonyan. A striker, from 1949 to 1959, he starred for the most popular sports team in the USSR, Spartak Moscow.

He helped them win Soviet Top League titles in 1952, 1953, 1956 and 1958, and the Soviet Cup in 1950 and 1958 (meaning they "did the Double" in 1958). He is the all-time leading scorer for the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian 1st division. He helped the USSR win the Olympic Gold Medal in 1956, and reach the Quarterfinals of the 1958 World Cup.

He didn't stop there. He managed Spartak to the Soviet Top League title in 1962 and 1969, and the Soviet Cup in 1963, 1965 and 1971. Returning to his native Armenia, he led Ararat Yerevan to the Soviet League and Cup Double in 1973. He managed the Soviet national team from 1977 to 1979.

At age 95, he is the greatest-ever athlete of Armenian descent, and the greatest living Soviet or Russian soccer player.

October 12, 1929: Game 4 of the 1929 World Series, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, remains one of the wildest in postseason history. Having started a seemingly washed-up Howard Ehmke in Game 1 and having it work, this time, Philadelphia Athletics owner-manager Connie Mack starts 45-year-old Jack Quinn. (Already approaching his 67th birthday, Mack was not yet known as "The Grand Old Man of Baseball," but, apparenlty, he already had an affinity for veterans.)

This seems to work, too, until the 6th inning, when the Chicago Cubs start scoring. By the time they stop, they lead, 7-0. Cub manager Joe McCarthy starts Charlie Root, who would later become a victim of McCarthy's Yankees, including Babe Ruth’s "called shot," though this quirk of history/legend does not do Root justice, as he was a fine pitcher for many years. Root enters the bottom of the 7th with an 8-0 lead.

Then the A's come storming back. It's already 8-4 Cubs when Hack Wilson, a great slugger but not the best of outfielders even when not drunk or hungover, misjudges a fly ball from Mule Haas, and it turns into a 3-run inside-the-park home run, making the score 8-7 Cubs.

One of the runners scoring on the play is Al Simmons, and the great slugger storms into the dugout, yelling, "We're back in the game, boys!" and his momentum causes him to crash into Mack – as I said, nearly 67, if not the elderly figure some of us imagine him to have always been. Simmons apologizes profusely, but Mack, a former big-league catcher and familiar with ballplayers crashing into him, is just as enthused and tells him, "That's all right, Al."

The A's score a Series record 10 runs in the inning, and ace Lefty Grove comes in to relieve and finish the Cubs off, as 10-8 remains the final score. The A's close down the shellshocked Cubs the next day.

Also on this day, Sanford Stadium opens in Athens, Georgia. Named for Dr. Steadman Vincent Sanford, an English professor and an early supporter of the school's athletic program, the University of Georgia opens it with 15-0 win over Yale in front of 30,000 fans. Since UGa had been founded by missionaries from Yale, and had also borrowed Yale's team name of Bulldogs, they were the invited guests.

Known for the privet hedges that surround the field, and the end zone containing the crypts for the deceased Uga the Bulldog mascots, Sanford Stadium has seen several expansions and renovations that have put its current seating capacity at 92,746. It hosted the soccer games of the 1996 Olympics, even though Athens and Atlanta, despite being in the same State, are not all that close.

With stars like Frankie Sinkwich, Charlie Trippi, Theron Sapp, Fran Tarkenton, Jake Scott, Herschel Walker, Garrison Hearst, Champ Bailey and Knowshon Moreno, the Georgia Bulldogs have won 15 Southeastern Conference Championships since moving in, most recently in 2017, as well as the 1942 and 1980 National Championships. They've also had All-Americans named Johnny Carson (not the talk show host), Randy Johnson (not the baseball pitcher) and George Patton (not the general).

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October 12, 1931, 90 years ago: Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) is dedicated, overlooking Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 98-foot-high statue (124 feet, counting its pedestal) was designed by French sculptor Paul Landowski and built by Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa. It is the most famous structure in South America, even more than the city's largest soccer stadium, the Maracanã.

So the 2 most famous statues in the Western Hemisphere were both designed by Frenchmen: This one, and the Statue of Liberty in New York by Frédéric Bartholdi.

October 12, 1935: Anthony Christopher Kubek is born in Milwaukee. The American League Rookie of the Year with the 1957 Yankees, he played shortstop in the World Series against his hometown team (not that they were there while he was growing up), the Milwaukee Braves, in his 1st 2 seasons, losing in 1957 and winning in 1958, and excelling in both Series.

In Game 7 of the 1960 Series, the day after his 25th birthday, he was hit in the throat by a ground ball that took a bad hop off a pebble on the Forbes Field infield dirt. That led to a Pittsburgh Pirates rally, and the Pirates won the game on Bill Mazeroski's home run.

But in 1961, Kubek and 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson formed one of the best double-play combinations in baseball history, as the Yankees won the Series, aided by Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs. They won the Series again in 1962, although Kubek missed much of the season due to military service. They won Pennants again in 1963 and '64, but lost the Series both times. Kubek had been in the majors for 8 seasons, and had won 7 Pennants and 3 World Series.

A back injury in 1965 convinced him to retire at age 30, and he went into broadcasting, a career that would see him given the Ford Frick Award, the Baseball Hall of Fame's award for broadcasters. He worked regular-season games for NBC for 24 years, including 12 World Series, and also did games for the expansion Toronto Blue Jays. When NBC lost its TV rights after the 1989 season, he rejoined the Yankees on the Madison Square Garden Network.

He quit broadcasting during the Strike of '94, and claims not to have even watched a game since: "I hate what the game's become: The greed, the nastiness. You can be married to baseball, give your heart to it, but when it starts taking over your soul, it's time to say, 'Whoa.'"

He attended his Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2009, but has never returned to Yankee Stadium, old or new. Indeed, only once has he participated in an Old-Timers' Day ceremony: In 1986, celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the 1961 team -- and plugging the book he wrote with Cleveland-based sportswriter Terry Pluto: Sixty-One: The Team, the Record, the Men.

He is 1 of 4 surviving players from the Yankees' 1958 World Champions; 8 from their 1961 World Champions; and 9 from their 1962 World Champions.

Also on this day, Donald Howe (no middle name) is born in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England. He was a talented right back, but his hometown soccer team, Wolverhampton Wanderers, a.k.a. Wolves, weren't interested in him. Their arch-rivals, West Bromwich Albion, were, and he played for them from 1952 to 1964.

He played for England in the 1958 World Cup, and moved to North London club Arsenal in 1964 -- ironically, then managed by Wolves' greatest player ever, Billy Wright. But in 1966, he broke his leg in a game, and his playing career was over at age 30.

The next season, Arsenal fired Wright (a great player but a terrible manager), and hired Bertie Mee as manager. Mee made Howe his assistant coach, and, together, they built the team that won the League and FA Cup "Double" in 1971.

Howe built a tough defense, with goalkeeper Bob Wilson, right back Pat Rice, left back Bob McNab (father of actress Mercedes McNab), centrebacks Frank McLintock and Peter Simpson, and defensive midfielder Peter Storey. With the midfield also having George Graham and George Armstrong -- future Arsenal manager and reserves manager, respectively -- and a forward line of John Radford, Ray Kennedy, and the iconic long-haired Charlie George, Arsenal were a juggernaut in 1970-71.

A lot of it involved changing positions: Graham was moved from forward to midfield, Storey from right back to midfield, and McLintock, the team Captain, from midfield to central defense. McLintock, a lantern-jawed Scotsman, was the team's rock, and they followed his lead as much as Bertie's and Don's.

As McLintock put it, "Once we were one-nothin' up, that was it. You could go get yer fish 'n' chips, yer cup o' tea, get on yer bike. Because I don't think we gave up a 1-0 lead all season." I checked, and he was right: They didn't. They did, however, come from behind a few times, including in extra time in the Cup Final against Liverpool.

After that annus mirabilis, Howe's old club, West Brom, wanted him as manager. "I can't take it back," he said. "That was the time when I left when I should have stayed, because that team, the Double team, had more in them." He was probably right: Arsenal came close to the League title again in 1972 and '73, and lost the FA Cup in the '72 Final and the '73 Semifinal. With his guidance, they could have won more trophies.

He left West Brom after 4 years to become head coach at Turkish giants Galatasaray, and then an assistant at Leeds United under his former England teammate Jimmy Armfield (not to be confused with his former England teammate and Arsenal player Jimmy Bloomfield), and then returned to Arsenal in 1977, under his former defense partner Terry Neill. They reached 4 cup finals in 3 years, but only won 1, the 1979 FA Cup.

When Neill was fired in 1983, Howe was promoted to the manager's role. "That's the time when I stayed when I should have left!" he said, making the point that he ended up using pretty much the same system that Neill had, so it wasn't really a change.

This was after several of the club's better players had been sold off, resulting in the 4th-to-7th-place side (the Football League Division One then had 22 teams) that became known as "Boring, Boring Arsenal." In 1986, despite having won 4 straight matches and not being threatened with firing, he decided he'd had enough, and resigned. From that time onward, very few managers of English clubs have left their jobs by their own choice.

He helped former Arsenal teammate Bobby Gould lead South London club Wimbledon to the 1988 FA Cup, in a stunning run that ended with a grand upset of Liverpool in the Final. He assisted another former England teammate, Bobby Robson, on the England team at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, also assisting Terry Venables with England at Euro '96. He and Gould switched places to manage and assist, respectively, at West London's Queens Park Rangers, and, in his last managing job, he got Coventry City promoted to the Premier League in 1993.

He coached Arsenal's youth team from 1997 to 2003, and then retired for good, having sent to the big club such players as Ashley Cole and Cesc Fabregas. He taught them about defending and passing, but it's a shame he couldn't teach those 2 about loyalty. He became a pundit for the BBC and Channel 4, and died on December 23, 2015, at the age of 80.

Also on this day, Luciano Pavarotti (no middle name) is born in Modena, Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy. The most famous opera singer of all time, and the only non-rock performer to bring 500,000 people to a concert in New York's Central Park, he had sports connections.

He (a fan of Rome soccer team AS Roma), Plácido Domingo (a Madrid native and a Real Madrid fan) and José Carreras (a Barcelona native and an FC Barcelona fan) made their debut as "The Three Tenors" at a concert at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1990, celebrating the next day's World Cup Final at the Olympic Stadium. The live album of this show became the best-selling album in the history of classical music.

They also sang at the ceremonies before the World Cup Finals in 1994 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles (the final itself was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena), in 1998 at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and in 2002 at International Stadium Yokohama. Pavarotti died of cancer in 2007. His last performance was the year before, at the Winter Olympics in Turin.

October 12, 1948: The Yankees hire Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel as their manager. Stengel had just managed the Oakland Oaks -- including former star big-league catcher Ernie Lombardi and a 20-year-old sparkplug local boy from West Berkeley named Billy Martin -- to the Pacific Coast League Pennant, so chances were that some big-league team would have snapped him up in the next year or two if the Yankees didn't.

But his 2 previous big-league managing jobs, with the Brooklyn Dodgers (managing them in between Wilbert Robinson and Leo Durocher) and the Boston Braves, were terrible. In Brooklyn in 1935, it was quipped that overconfidence might cost the Dodgers 6th place.

In Boston in 1943, Casey was slightly injured when hit by a cab, and a sportswriter called the driver the man who had done the most for Boston baseball that season. One man wrote an open letter to Casey, sending it to a Boston newspaper, saying, "There is a train leaving Boston at 6:00 tonight. Be under it." Not on it, under it.

He was 58 years old in 1948, and, like Connie Mack, he always looked even older than he was. And he had a reputation as a "clown," for such antics as tipping his cap and letting a bird fly out from under it, and protesting the weather to an umpire by walking out of the dugout with an umbrella. This was not a man who would manage "the Yankee way," sportswriters said.

Then again, Casey really didn't have the players in Flatbush or in Allston. Once he proved everyone wrong by winning the 1949 Pennant, he said, with a mixture of pride and humility, "I couldn't have done it without my players."

Finally having the horses in The Bronx, Casey went on to manage the Yankees for 12 years, winning 10 Pennants and 7 World Series. As Newark Star-Ledger sportswriter Jim Ogle, later director of the Yankees Alumni Assciation, said, "Well, the clown did pretty well. He made the Yankee legend and mystique grow volumes."

He then managed the Mets in their first 4 years, 1962-65, prompting Warren Spahn, running out the string with the Mets after 22 years with the Braves, to say, "I'm the only man who played for Casey both before and after he was a genius."

Yogi Berra, by then one of Casey's coaches, came out of retirement and played a few games, including behind the plate. Someone asked him if he and Spahn were the oldest "battery" -- pitcher-catcher combination -- in baseball history. Yogi told him, "I don't know if we're the oldest, but we're certainly the ugliest."

Casey is still the most successful manager in baseball history. He was fast-tracked to election to the Hall of Fame after his retirement, the Yankees dedicated a Plaque in Monument Park to his memory, and he lived to see both the Yankees and the Mets retire his Number 37. The parking lot at Shea, and now at Citi Field, is named Casey Stengel Plaza, and the Long Island Rail Road yard across Roosevelt Avenue is named the Casey Stengel Depot.

*

October 12, 1954: The American League owners approve the shift of the Philadelphia Athletics franchise to Kansas City. Roy and Earle Mack, sons of the now-senile 92-year-old Connie Mack, sell the A's to Arnold Johnson, a Chicago-based trucking magnate, 25 years to the day after the team’s magnificent 10-run inning in the '29 World Series.

Johnson's bid is $3‚375‚000 -- about $34.3 million in today's money -- for the team and the stadium‚ Shibe Park, recently renamed Connie Mack Stadium. He says he will sell the stadium to the Phillies for $1‚675‚000, although Phils owner Bob Carpenter, a very wealthy man as a member of both the Carpenter and the duPont families, says, "I need Shibe Park like I need a hole in the head."

One of the offers for the team is from a wealthy Texas group that proposes to move the A's to Los Angeles, but Kansas City, long a hotbed of minor league and Negro League baseball, gets major league status for the first time since the Kansas City Packers of the Federal League in 1915 – or, if you don't count that, since the Kansas City Cowboys of the old American Association in 1889.

The A's had won AL Pennants in 1902, 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1929, 1930 and 1931. They had won the World Series in 1910, 1911, 1913, 1929 and 1930. Connie Mack had built 2 dynasties, then broke them up because he needed money.

Unlike in Boston, where the Red Sox stayed and the Braves left, and St. Louis, where the Cardinals stayed and the Browns left, in Philadelphia, the more historically successful team was the one that moved. The A's then had 9 Pennants to the Phillies' 2, and 5 titles to the Phils' none. But the Phils had money, and the A's didn't, and since both teams couldn't survive in the city, the one without the money went.

October 12, 1955: The St. Louis Cardinals fire manager Harry "the Hat" Walker, and replace him with former big-league pitcher Fred Hutchinson. Walker, like his brother, former Dodger slugger Fred "Dixie" Walker, was a really good hitter in his day. But he was not such a good manager. He would return to the Cards as a coach, and later manage the Pittsburgh Pirates, and would also take the Houston Astros into their 1st Pennant race in 1969. But his day as a player was done.

He had used himself as a pinch-hitter in the '55 season, but his firing means that, for the first time in the history of baseball, there are no current player-managers.

There have been only 5 player-managers since: Solly Hemus of the 1959 Cardinals, Frank Robinson of the 1975-76 Indians, Joe Torre of the 1977 Mets, Don Kessinger of the 1979 White Sox, and Pete Rose of the 1985-86 Reds. But, from 1955 onward, player-managers would be frowned upon. The last player-manager to get his team into a Pennant race was Lou Boudreau with the '51 Red Sox. The last to win a Pennant, much less a World Series, was Boudreau, with the '48 Indians.

October 12, 1958: For the 1st time since the Giants moved to San Francisco a year earlier, Willie Mays plays baseball in New York City. At Yankee Stadium, 3 days after the conclusion of the World Series, the Say Hey Kid leads a team of National League All-Stars that also includes former Brooklyn Dodgers Gil Hodges and Johnny Podres, plus future Hall-of-Famers Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Richie Ashburn and Bill Mazeroski -- but not, oddly, Hank Aaron. I guess Hank, just beaten by the Yankees in Milwaukee, didn't want to go back to Yankee Stadium so soon.

They play a team of American League All-Stars captained by Mickey Mantle, including his Yankee teammates Whitey Ford and Elston Howard, and former teammate Billy Martin, plus Hall-of-Famer Nellie Fox and All-Stars Rocky Colavito (a Bronx native) and Harvey Kuenn. All of them, including Mays and Mantle, had Frank Scott as their agent.

The game was not broadcast, on either television or radio, and 21,129 fans came out -- which doesn't sound like much, especially in the 1st year with the Dodgers and Giants gone, but it was more than any of the 3 teams that had been in New York the year before had averaged that year.

And most of those fans were cheering for the NL team -- whether it was because they missed the Giants and Dodgers in general, or Willie in particular, or they simply hated the Yankees, or whether Yankee fans couldn't be bothered to show up for a game that didn't count for anything but filling the players' pockets, I don't know. (And that was the reason the game was played: Both Mantle and Mays were having money problems at the time. Maybe Scott wasn't such a good agent.)

The NL team won, 6-2. Mays went 4-for-5. Mantle went 1-for-2 before taking himself out.

*

October 12, 1961, 60 years ago: Miguel Porlán Noguera is born in Totana, Murcia, Spain. Known as Chendo, he was the right back on 7 of Real Madrid's La Liga titles from 1986 to 1997, and the 1998 Champions League title.

October 12, 1962: Charles Sidney Fernandez is born in Honolulu. Usually called Sid, he wore Number 50 because Hawaii is the 50th State -- which would be repeated by a later Mets postseason hero from Hawaii, Benny Agbayani.

A 2-time All-Star, the 1st Hawaiian native ever to appear in the All-Star Game, "El Sid" was 114-96 in a career that included the Mets' 1986 World Series win and 1988 Division title, and closed his career with another division title on the 1997 Houston Astros. He was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series. John Franco and Noah Syndergaard are the only Mets to be winning pitchers in a World Series game since.

He later worked in Hawaii State government, and went into coaching. A "portly portsider" and a "hefty lefty" during his career, subsequent '86 Mets reunions have shown that, while his ex-teammates Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling have put on a lot of weight since then, Sid has noticeably lost weight.

October 12, 1963: At the last baseball game played at the historic Polo Grounds, the Latin stars from the NL beat their AL peers, 5-2, in the 1st and only "Hispanic Major League All-Star Game."

The postseason exhibition, in which Twins 1st baseman Vic Power, a native of Puerto Rico, is honored as the top Latin American player during a pregame ceremony, includes future Hall of Famers Luis Aparicio, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente, and Juan Marichal.

October 12, 1964: Game 5 of the World Series. The game goes to extra innings, but in the top of the 10th, Pete Mikkelsen wastes a nice Mel Stottlemyre effort, by allowing a home run... to Tim McCarver. Yes, that Tim McCarver. Bob Gibson goes all 10 innings, and the Cardinals beat the Yankees, 5-2. The Cardinals now need to win only 1 of the 2 possible games in St. Louis.

Also on this day, Odessa Turner (no middle name) is born in Monroe, Louisiana. A receiver, he was with the Giants when they won Super Bowl XXV.

October 12, 1967: Baseball and the Summer of Love converge on Fenway Park in Boston for Game 7 of the World Series, as a fan holds up a sign saying, "THE RED SOX ARE VERY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE."

But the prediction made the day before, after a Game 6 win, by Sox manager Dick Williams, of "Lonborg and champagne," does not happen: On only 2 days' rest, Gentleman Jim has nothing, and gets shelled. Even opposing pitcher Bob Gibson, himself on only 3 days rest (and having won Game 7 in '64 on just 2) hits a home run off him. The Cardinals win, 7-2, for Gibson's 3rd win of the Series, the team's 2nd title in 4 seasons, and their 7th World Championship.

For the Red Sox, "the Impossible Dream" came to an end a game too soon, but the season did revitalize the franchise, restoring its profitability and its place of veneration among the people of New England. They lost the World Series, but they cannot be called a failure. Without this season, the Red Sox might have ended up leaving Fenway Park, sharing a stadium out in Foxboro with the NFL's Patriots. Or owner Tom Yawkey, who really wanted out of Fenway, might have moved them out of Boston entirely.

So, even more than 2004, this is the most important season in Red Sox history. Years later, after the Red Sox failures of 1975, 1978 and 1986, but before the tainted triumphs of 2004, 2007 and 2013, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy would write that, of all Red Sox teams, this one is absolved from criticism by "Red Sox Nation" -- which, he says, essentially began that summer.

By the same -- pardon my choice of words here -- token, this was an incredibly important season in St. Louis. The holdovers from the 1964 season proved it was no fluke, and, much more so than the '64 team, the '67 team, with its mixture of white stars (Tim McCarver, Dal Maxvill and an aging but still power-hitting Roger Maris), black stars (Gibson, Lou Brock and Curt Flood) and Hispanic stars (Orlando Cepeda and Julián Javier) showed St. Louis, still thinking of itself as a Southern city, what integration could really do. Fans in Brooklyn had learned that 20 years earlier.

Yet, somehow, the 1964-68 Cards, as good as they were, have not been celebrated by Baby Boomers as much as have the 1950s and ’60s Yankees, the 1950s Dodgers, the '60 and '71 Pirates, the 1962-66 Dodgers, the 1962-66 Giants, the 1966-71 Orioles, the '67 Red Sox, the '68 Tigers and the '69 Mets. Hopefully, that's mainly because St. Louis was, and is, one of baseball's smallest markets. Still, the Cardinals were then, and are now, one of baseball's most profitable and most admired franchises.

This was also the last game for Elston Howard, who had been traded by the Yankees to the Red Sox in midseason. In his last at-bat, against Gibson, he flied to left field in the 5th inning, being removed for a pinch-hitter.

There are 12 surviving players from the '67 Cards, 54 years later: Cepeda, McCarver, Maxvill, Javier, Steve Carlton, Mike Shannon, Ray Washburn, Eddie Bressoud, Bobby Tolan, Ed Spiezio, Dick Hughes and Larry Jaster.

October 12, 1969: The Mets win a World Series game for the 1st time, taking Game 2 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Al Weis' 9th-inning single breaks up a pitchers' duel between the Mets' Jerry Koosman (who is relieved in the bottom of the 9th by Ron Taylor) and the Orioles' Dave McNally.

The film Frequency tells the fictional tale of an atmospheric phenomenon that allows a 1999 NYPD Detective and Met fan, John Sullivan, played by Jim Caviezel, to use his father's old ham-radio set to talk to his father, Frank, a 1969 fireman, played by Dennis Quaid.

October 12, 1969 was the day Frank died in a fire, when "Johnny" (or "Little Chief," as Frank then called him) was just 6, and the grown John is able to warn him from the future. The result is that Frank tries a different path out of the burning building, so that he and the teenage girl he would have failed to rescue from the fire get out alive.

But the interference with time means that, because she wasn't preparing for her husband's funeral, the cop's mother, Julia Sullivan, a nurse, played by Elizabeth Mitchell (who, unlike Quaid, is actually younger than Caviezel), goes to work, and saves the life of a serial killer who would otherwise have died, and several more women end up dying – including Julia herself.

Now, instead of having his mother but not his father from 1969 to 1999, John now has his father but not his mother from 1969 to 1989 – Frank living long enough to see the John graduate from the police academy, but dying from smoking before John makes Detective.

Using the ham radio, father and son, roughly the same age as each other, track down the killer, played by Shaun Doyle, a Canadian actor who appeared on the series Lost, Big Love and Lost Girl. He was so creepy in Frequency that he really should have played the Joker in The Dark Knight, and not just to save Heath Ledger's life. Seriously: Look at his face and his hair (in the 1969 sequence) at the end of the film, and tell me he wouldn't have made a good Joker.

The kicker is that, as a result of his 1969 confrontation with the killer, Frank begins to be suspected for the killings (which do not yet include his wife) by a young cop, Sergeant Satch DeLeon (nicknamed after baseball legend Satchel Paige), who will be John's mentor and boss in 1999. He is played by Andre Braugher.

The way that Frank gets out of this, and back on the killer's trail, is that Game 5 of the Series is being shown on a TV behind them. Having been told what's going to happen by John from 30 years in the future, he tells Satch about the Cleon Jones shoe-polish incident and the subsequent Donn Clendenon home run.

When Satch sees that sequence happen on TV, he realizes that Frank really is telling the truth about these messages from his son from the future, releases him, and… well, you'll just have to see the movie. It’s a fantastic thriller, and I highly recommend it -- even though the Mets are glorified in it.

*

October 12, 1971, 50 years ago: Anthony James Fiore is born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. Tony Fiore didn't last long as a major league pitcher, but he did reach the Playoffs with the 2002 Minnesota Twins.

October 12, 1972: The Oakland Athletics defeat the Detroit Tigers, 2-1, and take the American League Pennant. The winning run is scored by Reggie Jackson on the front end of a double-steal, but Reggie tears his hamstring, and is unable to play in the World Series. He will make up for that many times, as he is the only man to win World Series MVPs with two different teams: The A's in '73 and the Yankees in '77.

After the game, in spite of the joy of the Pennant, Johnny "Blue Moon" Odom and Vida Blue give new meaning to the team's nickname, "the Swingin' A's," when the starting pitcher and the game's closer begin to brawl in the clubhouse. Odom, who left after 5 innings having allowed a run on 2 hits, takes exception to the universal choke sign made by Vida Blue, when the reliever used the gesture to answer his own question, "How come you starters can't finish what you begin?"

Also on this day, the New England Whalers made their debut, in the World Hockey Association. They defeated the Philadelphia Blazers 2-0 at the Boston Garden. They would win the 1st WHA title in 1973. Tired of being mistreated by their landlords, the NHL's Bruins, they would move to Hartford in 1974.

In 1979, following the WHA's collapse, they were allowed into the NHL, and changed their name to the Hartford Whalers. In 1997, they moved to become the Carolina Hurricanes, winning the Stanley Cup in 2006.

Also on this day, the Winnipeg Jets, the team that came to define the WHA in so many ways, debuted. So did the obligatory New York Tri-State Area franchise in the league, the New York Raiders. Christian Bordeleau scored 4 goals, including the club's 1st, and the Jets won, 6-4. Only 6,273 fans come out, mainly because the legal maneuvering that would allow Bobby Hull to play for the Jets had not yet been settled, and he wasn't available.

The Raiders wanted the new Nassau Coliseum, but got pushed around by the expansion Islanders. The Garden was willing to take them in, but they were low priority. Marvin Milkes, the Seattle Pilots general manager made infamous by Jim Bouton's book Ball Four, was their GM -- that should tell you what kind of organization they were. Their main radio announcer was a young John Sterling.

By midseason, their ownership had bailed, the league took them over, they spent the 1973-74 season in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill as the Jersey Knights -- the only South Jersey team ever to be remotely considered "major league," and folded.

The Jets would be considerably luckier, settling the situation with Hull (the Golden Jet, for whom the team was named), reaching the 1st WHA Finals (where they lost to the Whalers), and winning the title in 1976, '78 and '79.

Taken into the NHL, and stripped of their big stars (Hull played out the string in Hartford, while Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson were sold to the Rangers), they collapsed immediately, set an NHL record for longest winless streak, and became known as Lose-ipeg. They would recover somewhat, but never got close to a Stanley Cup, and became the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996 and the Arizona Coyotes in 2014. The Atlanta Thrashers became the new Winnipeg Jets in 2011.

October 12, 1977: The Dodgers pounce on aching Yankee starter Catfish Hunter, and win Game 2, 6-1, and tie up the Series. Billy Martin is criticized for putting Catfish on the mound when he'd been injured and hadn't pitched in a month, but it allowed Billy to start Mike Torrez in Game 3, rookie sensation Ron Guidry in Game 4, and Don Gullett in Game 5, all on full rest.

During the ABC broadcast, the camera on the Goodyear blimp caught the image of an abandoned school on fire, just a few blocks east of Yankee Stadium. Legend has it that ABC's Howard Cosell said, on the air, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: The Bronx is burning." This became the title of Jonathan Mahler's book about life in New York City in 1977, and of the ESPN miniseries about it. Except the broadcast survives, and it proves that he didn't say it.

October 12, 1979: The much-hyped opponents from the previous March's collegiate National Championship game make their NBA debuts. Earvin "Magic" Johnson scores 26 points, and veteran Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scores 29, and the Los Angeles Lakers need them all to defeat the San Diego Clippers, 103-102 at the San Diego Sports Arena.

Larry Bird has a quieter debut, scoring 14 points, but the Boston Celtics have an easier game, overcoming 31 points from Moses Malone and defeating the Houston Rockets 114-106 at the Boston Garden. This is also the day the 3-point field goal finally enters regular-season NBA play, after having previously been used in the American Basketball League (1961-63) and the American Basketball Association (1967-76). The Celtics' Chris Ford is the 1st player to attempt one, and the 1st player to make one.

The arrivals of Magic and Larry are said to have "saved the NBA." This is nonsense. The league already had Kareem, and Julius "Dr. J" Erving, and Bill Walton, and plenty of other great players.

Also on this day, the Utah Jazz make their debut, after 5 seasons without making the Playoffs as the far more sensibly-named New Orleans Jazz. It doesn't go much better, getting pounded 101-85 by the Portland Trail Blazers at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

Coach Frank Layden will eventually right the ship in Salt Lake City, and make them a consistent Playoff team and a model franchise, though they've never won a title. 

He would also remark that the team, and the Minneapolis Lakers, had names that made sense in their original cities, but not anymore. He suggested that they switch names, as "Los Angeles Jazz" and "Utah Lakers" both made much more sense.

*

October 12, 1980: The Phillies win the Pennant with a 10-inning 8-7 win over the Houston Astros in the deciding Game 5 at the Astrodome. Each of the last 4 games of this epic series was decided in extra innings. Down by 3 runs to Nolan Ryan in the 8th‚ the Phils rally to tie, and center fielder Garry Maddox makes up for his Playoff goof of 2 years earlier by doubling home the winning run and catching the final out. His teammates ran to him, and carried him off the field.

Although Tug McGraw had been on the mound when the Phils clinched the Division in Montreal, and would be on the mound when they clinched the World Series at home 9 days later, he was already out of the Pennant-clincher before it ended. Dick Ruthven, the Phils' Number 2 starter behind Steve Carlton, turned out to be the pitcher on the mound at the end. This was the Phils' 1st Pennant in 30 years, and only the 2nd by a Philadelphia team in the last 49.

October 12, 1981, 40 years ago: Thomas John Guiry is born in Trenton, New Jersey. He grew up in the Trenton suburb of Hamilton, and, through his acting proceeds, his parents were able to send him to the prestigious, preppy Lawrenceville School.

Best known for playing Scotty Smalls, the protagonist of The Sandlot, he still acts. All together now: "Yer killin' me, Smalls."

Also on this day, Marcel Hossa (no middle name) is born in Ilava, Slovakia. A left wing, he played 7 seasons in the NHL, including 3 with the New York Rangers. He represented Slovakia in the 2006, 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. He has since played in the national leagues of Slovakia, Czechia, Russia, Latvia and Sweden. 

He is the younger brother of Marián Hossa, and both played for their father, František Hossa, an assistant coach with the Slovakia national team and the current head coach of the hockey program at Spartak Moscow, better known for its soccer team. Marián scored 525 NHL goals, Marcel only 31.

Also on this day, Foluwashola Ameobi is born in Zaira, Nigeria. The longtime forward for soccer club Newcastle United helped them win their most recent title of any kind, the 2006 Intertoto Cup, and remains a beloved figure in the North-East of England. "Shola" played for Nigeria in the 2014 World Cup. He is currently a free agent, but has not announced his retirement.

October 12, 1982: The Milwaukee Brewers win the 1st World Series game the franchise has ever played, clobbering the Cardinals, 10-0 at Busch Memorial Stadium. Paul Molitor sets a Series record, becoming the 1st player to collect 5 hits in a game. Robin Yount gets 4 hits.

Shea Stadium was active on this day, and the next, but it wasn't for postseason baseball, as the Mets stunk at the time. And, despite being Autumn, Jets season, it wasn't for pro football, either, as it was a Wednesday and a Thursday. The Clash played, and their performance of "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" at Shea was filmed for the song's official video.

Called "The Only Band That Matters" by their fans, The Clash were actually the opening act on this night. It takes balls to ask The Clash to be your opening act. Who was the headliner? As Bud Abbott would say, "Yes." No, not the band Yes: The Who. It was their farewell tour. You know, their 1st one.

October 12, 1986: Game 5 of the ALCS. One loss away from elimination, and trailing 5-2 entering the 9th‚ the Red Sox stage one of the most improbable comebacks in postseason history.

After Don Baylor's 9th-inning home run reduces the deficit to 5-4‚ reserve outfielder Dave Henderson slugs a 2-out‚ 2-run homer off Donnie Moore to give Boston a 6-5 lead. California ties the score with a run in the bottom of the 9th but Henderson‚ who had appeared to be the goat when he dropped Bobby Grich's long fly ball over the fence for a home run in the 7th inning‚ delivers a sacrifice fly in the 11th for the winning run. Red Sox 7, Angels 6.

The Sox would win the Pennant 3 days later. Three years later, still despondent over having given up the home run that blew the Pennant for the Angels, Moore shot his wife, then himself. She lived, he didn't. A loss in a baseball game may be a terrible disappointment, but there is a difference between disappointment, however great, and tragedy.

Henderson would also hit the home run that appeared to give the Sox Game 6 of the World Series, and their 1st title in 68 years. That they did not finish the job, and how they failed, has become legend. If they had, Henderson would have become a god in New England, as David Ortiz eventually did. That he is not is no fault of his.

Hendu would later help Oakland with 3 straight Pennants, and he was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball before Game 3 of the 2009 ALDS between the Red Sox and Angels. Unfortunately for the Sox, it didn't work any more than the Yankees bringing out Bucky Dent to do the honors before Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS between the Yanks and the Sox. He died of a heart attack in 2015, only 57 years old.

October 12, 1987: The Minnesota Twins defeat the Detroit Tigers, 9-5, and win their 1st Pennant in 22 years. This was a major upset, as the Twins had won just 85 games in the regular season, while the Tigers had won an MLB-leading 98, and many people (including myself) were picking them to win it all. We did not reckon with the power of the Metrodome. Fortunately, it has since been demolished, and no one will ever have to reckon with it again.

This is the 1st Pennant ever won by a team playing its home games indoors. The Twins' 1965 Pennant was won while they still played outdoors, in the suburb of Bloomington, at Metropolitan Stadium.

October 12, 1988: Orel Hershiser shuts out the Mets, and the Dodgers win Game 7 and the Pennant, 6-0. New York -- the National League "half" of it, anyway, the half that should have cared about this -- finally had a chance to stick it to the evil O’Malley family, and they blew it.

The Mets, whose fans did not realize that their "dynasty" had ended without really becoming one, would not return to the NLCS for 11 years – but that’s sooner than did the Dodgers, who waited 20 years.

October 12, 1989: The most stunning trade in NFL history is made. The Dallas Cowboys, having just been bought by Jerry Jones, who hired Jimmy Johnson as head coach, are going nowhere. The Minnesota Vikings think they can go to the Super Bowl if they can just get an elite running back.

So the Cowboys send the Vikings the 1 real asset they have, superstar running back Herschel Walker, along with their 3rd and 10th round picks in the 1990 NFL Draft, and their 3rd round pick in the 1991 Draft. The Vikings send the Cowboys running back Darrin Nelson, defensive end Alex Stewart, linebackers Jesse Solomon and David Howard, cornerback Issiac Holt; and a whopping 8 draft picks: the Vikings' 1st, 2nd and 6th round picks in 1990; their 1st and 2nd round picks in 1991; and their 1st, 2nd and 3rd round picks in 1992. 

Nelson refuses to report to Dallas, so the Vikings send him to the San Diego Chargers, in exchange for the Bolts' 5th round pick in 1990. But everyone thinks that the Cowboys just doomed themselves to a decade of mediocrity, and that the Vikings have just traded for a Super Bowl win.

It worked the other way around, and then some. Viking management had no idea of what to do with Herschel, and wouldn't change their offensive scheme to one that utilized his talents. He was cut after the 1991 season, helped the Philadelphia Eagles make the 1992 Playoffs, and even returned to the Cowboys in 1996 -- having missed the team's entire renaissance.

That renaissance came in large part because they began trading those draft picks among other teams, enabling them to acquire running backs Emmitt Smith and Alonzo Highsmith, defensive tackle Russell Maryland, and cornerbacks Darren Woodson, Kevin Smith and Clayton Holmes. This haul, along with the picks they already had, which helped net them quarterback Troy Aikman and receiver Michael Irvin, resulted in 3 Super Bowl wins in 4 years. Herschel's lousy luck: By the time he got back, it was over.

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October 12, 1990: Game 6 of the NLCS is played at Riverfront Stadium. In order to win and force a Game 7, Pirates manager Jim Leyland gambles by starting Ted Power, a setup reliever, to keep Reds manager Lou Piniella from using his successful platoon.

This early attempt at an "opener" works very well: Power, Zane Smith, Stan Belinda and Bill Landrum do their job, holding the Reds to 2 runs. But Danny Jackson pitches the game of his life, holding the Pirates to 1 run over 6 innings. In the 9th, Carmelo Martinez nearly hits a go-ahead homer off Randy Myers, but right fielder Glenn Braggs makes a great catch, and the Reds win, 2-1.

It is the Reds' 1st Pennant in 14 years, since their "Big Red Machine." They haven't won one since. Neither have the Pirates.

Also on this day, Mr. Destiny premieres. Along with Taking Care of Business, it is 1 of 2 films released this year starring Jim Belushi in which baseball is not the main subject, but is an important plot point.

In Taking Care of Business, released on August 17, Belushi -- like his legendary late brother John, a Chicago Cubs fan in real life -- plays Jimmy Dworski, a convicted car thief, mere days away from completing a prison sentence. But he uses a prison phone to win tickets to Game 6 of the World Series, between the Cubs and the team then known as the California Angels, in Anaheim, and escapes so he can attend.

At Los Angeles International Airport, he gets mixed up with advertising executive Spencer Barnes, played by Charles Grodin, and ends up with Spencer's Filofax, a personal organizer that couldn't do 1/10th of what a smartphone can do now. Spencer yells, "My whole life is in there!" Sure enough, Jimmy is able to use it to get all the perks that Spencer was meant to get on his business trip.

One thing leads to another, and Jimmy gives Spencer his extra ticket to the game. The Cubs win, as Mark Grace hits a home run off Bert Blyleven. They play themselves, and Joe Torre plays one of the broadcasters. Star Trek: The Next Generation actors Gates McFadden and John de Lancie also appear. Spencer helps Jimmy sneak back into prison to complete his sentence, and then, after his release, starts him on a new life.

In Mr. Destiny, Belushi plays Larry Burrows, and he's not as happy as Jimmy Dworski, even though Jimmy was in prison. Larry has a lousy job, and a beautiful but boring wife, played by Linda Hamilton, fresh off her success in Terminator 2. In what has to be a nod to another sci-fi monster fighter, Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films, her character's maiden name is Ellen Ripley.

Larry blames all his problems on striking out in a high school baseball game 20 years earlier. There's an old saying: "Be careful what you wish for. You may get it." Michael Caine plays an angel who does a "reverse It's a Wonderful Life" on him, showing him his life if he had hit a home run that day. That teenage sports success got him some breaks, and as a result, he's more successful and more respected. He's even married to the woman he knew as his boss' wife, played by Rene Russo.

But that's just on the surface: Things are actually much worse. Due to the moves his counterpart in this world made, his real-life best friend, played by Jon Lovitz, has lost his job, and is threatening to jump off the building because Larry ruined his life, and Larry has to convince him that he hasn't betrayed him -- which, in this world, is a lie. And shenanigans are going on at the company that he, not being in high management before, didn't know about.

Also, in spite of being married to a woman who looks like Rene Russo, his counterpart has a mistress, played by a pre-Friends Courteney Cox. And he still wants to get back together with his real-life wife, who has the same job she had before, but a different husband. Now, his counterpart's wife, mistress and underlings all want to kill him. He survives long enough to get his old life back, and thwarts the shenanigans, saves the company, and is rewarded for it.

October 12, 1991, 30 years ago: Saturday Night Live debuts the sketch "Coffee Talk." Mike Myers plays the host, Linda Richman, based on, at the time, his own mother-in-law.

On the February 22, 1992 installment, Roseanne Barr plays a friend of Linda's, and Madonna -- not announced as appearing on the show that night -- plays the friend's daughter. The subject of Madonna comes up, and the daughter tells the truth, saying Madonna is a tramp.

The subject of the talk show -- when Linda isn't getting verklempt, and asking the audience to "Talk amongst yourselves" -- was Barbra Streisand. Executive producer Lorne Michaels surprises everyone by sending the real Streisand onto the stage. As surprised as they are, all 3 performers stay in character, and Myers says, "I can die now!" (For the record, everyone involved in the sketch is still alive, as is the real Richman, who was in the audience that night. She didn't know Streisand was going to be on, either.)

October 12, 1992: Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, the Democratic Party's nominee for President, visits Philadelphia on the heels of his victory in the previous night's debate with President George H.W. Bush in St. Louis.

I was there. Perched on the back of a flatbed truck at 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue, between famed cheesesteak stands Pat's and Geno's, he panders to the crowd in the Italian Market neighborhood and says, "Every day that goes by, I feel more and more like Rocky Balboa." Big cheer.

When the speech was over, he shook as many hands as he could as the truck moved forward at about 2 miles an hour. One was mine. I held up my right hand. He was grabbing hands with both of his, and reached with his left. I yelled, "Bill, New Jersey loves you!" He had a huge smile on his face. I have no idea if he heard me, or if his smile was for the vote of confidence from a State he needed, or if he was just smiling over a very successful speech. It didn't matter: For the 1st time, I had touched someone who could have been President -- and, as it turned out, became one.

I was not the first in my family: On September 15, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy spoke at City Hall in Newark, and later made his way up Broad Street, past Military Park. One of the hands he shook there belonged to my father, John Pacholek, then a 17-year-old freshman at the Newark College of Engineering (now the New Jersey Institute of Technology). After JFK was assassinated, at about the spot where he and my Dad met, a column was raised, with a bust of him on top. JFK, that is, not my father.

Also on this day, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired the episode "Relics." I got home from Philadelphia (the rally was at 11:30 AM) in plenty of time to watch it with my father, because it had been advertised that original Trek actor James Doohan would return to play engineering wizard Montgomery Scott. It was one of the best episodes of the series.

October 12, 1993: The Florida Panthers, representing Miami-Fort Lauderdale, make their NHL debut. Scott Mellanby scores their 1st goal, but they lose 2-1 to the Pittsbugh Penguins at Miami Arena.

October 12, 1995: The Rose Garden opens in Portland, Oregon, the "Rose City," next-door to the Portland Memorial Coliseum. The NBA's Portland Trail Blazers move in within days. In 2013, it was renamed the Moda Center.

October 12, 1996, 25 years ago: For the 1st time, North London's Arsenal Football Club take the field with Arsène Wenger as their manager. He had been hired on September 30, as he was running out his contract with Japanese club Nagoya Grampus Eight, and an international break fell in between. Arsenal visit Lancashire club Blackburn Rovers, and win 2-0 at Ewood Park, with Ian Wright scoring both goals.

To that point, The Arsenal had won 10 League titles, including fairly recently, in 1989 and 1991. They had won 6 FA Cups, most recently in 1993. They had won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1994. But their League form had slipped, dropping to 12th place in 1995. They finished 5th in 1996, and a change was needed.

No non-British manager had ever won England's top division, under either the name Football League Division One or, since 1992, the Premier League. But Wenger revolutionized the team's training, its training ground, its exercise, its diet, and its acquisitions.

Working with established players Wright, David Seaman, Tony Adams, Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn and Dennis Bergkamp, he led them to 3rd place in his 1st season, then added Patrick Vieira, Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit, and won both the League and the FA Cup in 1998, known as "doing The Double."

As the older players left, "Le Boss" brought in new ones. He made stars of Robert Pires, Ashley Cole, Kolo Toure, and the man who would replace Wright as Arsenal's all-time leading scorer, Thierry Henry. He signed Sol Campbell, the captain of Arsenal's North London arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, whom Campbell felt had treated him badly, so he ran out his contract and crossed the divide.

He won The Double again in 2002, won another FA Cup in 2003, and managed the entire Premier League season without a loss in 2003-04, leading to the team being called "The Invincibles." This included clinching the title at Tottenham's stadium, White Hart Lane. (Arsenal had done that in 1971 as well -- and had now won the League at The Lane as many times as "Spurs" had, 2.) The unbeaten streak eventually reached 49, and he led them to another FA Cup in 2005 and the UEFA Champions League Final in 2006.

All this winning led to enough revenue to replace Highbury, their stadium, which only seated about 38,000, first hosted them in 1913 and whose East Stand and West Stand had been built in the 1930s, with the 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium 500 yards away.

Wenger believed that, in the long run, a huge modern stadium would provide enough revenue to keep the club financially secure for the rest of the 21st Century. But in the short term, he had to sell off several great players to pay off the stadium debut, and, infamously, didn't win another trophy for 9 years.

Finally, in 2014, Arsenal beat Hull City in extra time at the new Wembley Stadium in London, to win the FA Cup. In 2015, they repeated as Cup winners, defeating Aston Villa of Birmingham in the Final. In 2016, after years of "settling" for 4th place or better since it kept Arsenal qualifying for the Champions League, Arsenal finished 2nd.

In 2017, injuries led to the team falling to 5th, out of Champions League qualification, and finished lower than local rivals Tottenham Hotspur -- all 1st-time occurrences under Wenger. They still won the FA Cup again, beating the League Champions, West London's Chelsea, in the Final. In 2018, they fell to 6th, and Wenger resigned.

A small but very loud minority of Arsenal fans wanted Wenger out. They said that the game had passed him by, that he wasn't willing to spend enough money to bring in "world-class" players -- with most of their suggestions turning out to be flashes in the pan, and most of their suggestions as his replacement ending up flopping. These charges were ridiculous.

They said that trophies matter, until he started winning trophies again. Suddenly, to borrow a phrase from American football, they moved the goalposts: Now, winning the League is all that matters to them. By that definition, every year, 19 teams should fire their managers. These people are idiots, and in a game late in the 2015-16 season, they unfurled a "WENGER OUT" banner, and got drowned out by 50,000 people singing, "One Arsène Wenger, there's only one Arsène Wenger!"

And, with the stadium debt close to being paid off, he had spent big on world-class talent, no longer riddled with cheap players who, as he would say in his clear but off-grammared English, "lack a little bit the confidence." The players he assembled had, as Le Boss puts it, "the quality" and "the mental strength."

New manager Unai Emery did not reap the benefits, and was fired, replaced by Mikel Arteta, a player Wenger had brought to Arsenal. He took Emery's 8th place team, and won the 2020 FA Cup.

Wenger turns 72 in a few days, and he looks like a former President: A lot older, but a lot happier and more relaxed.

Also on this day, the Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles 8-4 at Camden Yards, to take a 3-1 lead in the ALCS. Darryl Strawberry hits 2 home runs, and homers are added by Bernie Williams and Paul O'Neill. They can take the Pennant tomorrow night.

October 12, 1998: Matthew Shepard, an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming, dies 5 days after being beaten and tied to a wooden fence post -- a filthy twist on the Crucifixion -- in the University's town of Laramie. He was a few weeks short of his 22nd birthday. His killers were convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, where they remain.

As it happened, after he was found, he was taken to a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. Fort Collins is the home of Colorado State University -- which the University of Wyoming considers their arch-rival in sports. (And likewise. The University of Colorado is each's secondary rival, but considers its own biggest rival to be the University of Nebraska.)

His murder helped to create a new generation of gay rights activists, one not old enough to remember the depth of the AIDS epidemic, much less the Stonewall Riot or the assassination of Harvey Milk. It also inspired hate-crime legislation. In 2014, when basketball player Jason Collins became the 1st major league athlete to come out while still active, he switched his uniform number to 98 in Matthew's memory.

October 12, 1999: Wilt Chamberlain dies of heart disease at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was only 63, but had lived the lives of 10 men. If you haven't already, I recommend that you read his 1991 memoir Wilt: A View From Above. And I mean the entire book, not just the chapter about his encounters with women. Wilt was a fascinating guy with a lot to say, and knew how to say it.

At the 1997 All-Star Game in Cleveland, the NBA celebrated its 50th Anniversary by introducing its 50 Greatest Players. Well, 47 of them: Pete Maravich had already died, Jerry West was in the hospital, and the still-active Shaquille O'Neal was injured, and chose not to come. The still-active Patrick Ewing was injured, but did care enough to show up and take his ovation, which may have been exaggerated in order to send Shaq a message, as was the booing Shaq's name got.

In the locker room before the ceremony, Michael Jordan was telling anyone who would listen that he was the greatest basketball player of all time. Wilt had heard that before, and he walked over, and told Jordan the truth: "Michael, my man, when you played, they changed the rules to make it easier for you. When I played, they changed the rules to make it harder for me. And it didn't work." And Wilt walked off. Talk about "dropping the Mike."

Wilton Norman Chamberlain was the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Anybody who says it's Jordan, or LeBron James, or anyone else, doesn't know what the hell they're talking about.

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October 12, 2010: Behind the complete-game effort by Cliff Lee, the Texas Rangers beat Tampa Bay, 5-1, in the decisive Game 5 of the ALDS at Tropicana Field, for the 1st Playoff series victory in franchise history.

They are the last major league club to accomplish the task -- unless you count the fact that the Montreal Expos, who did it in the strike-forced split-season format of 1981, didn't do it until 2019, as the Washington Nationals.

The Rangers, who will take on the Yankees for the AL flag, lost their 3 previous playoff appearances, with 1st-round losses to the Bronx Bombers in 1996 and 1998-99.

October 12, 2012: The biggest game in Washington baseball in 79 years is Game 5 of the NLDS at Nationals Park. The Nationals lead the Cardinals, 7-5 going into the 9th inning. But Nats reliever Drew Storen implodes, allowing a double to Carlos Beltran, a walk to Yadier Molina, another walk to David Freese, a single to Daniel Descalso, a stolen base by Descalso, and a single to Pete Kozma. 

The Nats go down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 9th, and the Cards win, 9-7, and advance to the NLCS. The Nats went from having, according to Baseball-Reference.com, a 93 percent chance of winning the game to losing it.

Concerned about putting too much stress on his arm after coming back from Tommy John surgery at the start of the season, the Nats had shut down ace pitcher Stephen Strasburg for the season after September 7, at which point he had pitched 159 innings. I wonder what Nats management would have given to have Strasburg pitch to just 1 batter: Descalso, when there were 2 outs and the score was still 7-5.

Keeping Strasburg off the postseason roster was a major blunder. It took the Nats another 7 years to get their 1st postseason series win since they were the 1981 Montreal Expos.

Earlier in the day, CC Sabathia shows he's the biggest man in baseball, and that's got nothing to do with his physical size. He goes the distance for the Yankees, allowing just 1 run on 4 hits with 9 strikeouts, and getting out of a bases-loaded, 1-out jam in the 6th inning. A Curtis Granderson home run is the offensive highlight of the Yankees' 3-1 win over the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium II, giving the Pinstripes the deciding Game 5 of the ALDS.