People began to wonder if this stock market crash would do what the one in 1929 did, and start a new depression. A cartoonist, remembering President Ronald Reagan's previous career as an actor, drew him "in his last and greatest role: The Herbert Hoover Story."
Ironically, the great conservative was saved by the heavy hand of the federal government: The Federal Reserve Board, chaired by Paul Volcker, appointed by Reagan's much-maligned predecessor, Jimmy Carter, stepped in, supplying banks with liquidity, and convincing them to lend to securities firms. As a result, the next day, the Dow had its largest one-day point gain ever, 102 points. Two days after that, the record was broken again, with the Dow rising 186 points. When 1987 ended, the Dow was still up 0.6 percent for the year.
Madison Central, another neighbor and EB's main geographic/athletic rival, now known as Old Bridge, had the week off. So athletes from both schools, not playing on that Friday night, came to watch a game that could be a Playoff preview. (EB ended up making the Central Jersey Group IV Playoffs, WWP didn't.)
South River and Madison had no rivalry. The 2 towns don't border each other. The most that they have in common is that they both go to East Brunswick's Brunswick Square Mall to shop. But something started a fight. I was one of the people who tried to get closer, to get a better look, and I was hit in the head -- by a raw egg.
I was wearing an EB baseball cap, so I didn't even feel the impact. But I sure felt the raw egg dripping down from my cap into my left ear, and that was disgusting. And for 30 years, I've wondered: Who brings raw eggs to a football game -- when your team isn't even playing in it?
October 19, 1991, 20 years ago: Game 1 of the World Series. On July 7, umpire Steve Palermo had been shot, and, while he recovered, his umpiring career was over. He was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball for this game. Despite still being on crutches, he was able to do it.
The Minnesota Twins do not lose postseason games at the Metrodome. (At least, not until they start playing the Yankees there.) Greg Gagne and Kent Hrbek hit home runs to back Jack Morris, and the Twins beat the Atlanta Braves 5-2.
In the bottom of the 11th, the Braves load the bases, and Met manager Bobby Valentine, instead of bringing in righthanded reliever Octavio Dotel to pitch to righthanded hitter Andruw Jones, brings in lefthander Kenny Rogers. Rogers has been one of the top pitchers in baseball in regular-season play the last few years, but his postseason experience has been limited to some terrible outings for the Yankees in 1996 and '97. For whatever reason, Valentine brings him in to face the Braves'
kinderwonder from the Netherlands Antilles.
I watched this game on TV with my father, who was a nominal Met fan (the only sports team he really cared about was Rutgers football), and it was this series, with all its twists and turns, that led him to finally understand what lunatics like me see in the game of baseball. And I remember telling him, late in the game, that this game and this series deserved to end with a hero, and that it would be a shame if it ended with a goat.
Did it end with a hero or a goat? It involved the Mets, so take a wild guess. With a 3-2 count on Jones, Rogers threw a pitch low and outside. Ball 4. 10-9 Braves. Winning run forced home. Pennant dream over.
If Jones had gotten a hit, to drive home the Pennant-winning run, he would have been a hero, and you couldn't really criticize anyone on the Mets. They had fought gallantly, at moments even brilliantly, from a 3-games-to-none deficit.
Of course, no one had ever come back from such a deficit to win a postseason series. Not in baseball, anyway. None had even forced a Game 7. None had even forced a Game 6 until the Braves themselves did it the year before against the San Diego Padres in the NLCS.
Back from 3-0 to win the series? That was
never going to happen in baseball. Everybody who had ever watched baseball was thinking that in October 1999. If only it had stayed that way for 5 more years, plus a couple more days.
Was the goat Rogers, for pitching poorly when his team needed him to get one more out and get out of the 11th-inning jam? Or was the goat Valentine, for yet another dimwitted bullpen move? (Paging Mel Rojas, and that was in a game with far less significance.)
Did this move convince him to leave Leiter in to face Luis Sojo in Game 5 of the next year’s World Series after 141 pitches? Who knows. Bobby V himself probably doesn’t know.
What is known is that the Mets had taken their fans on a thrilling ride, their first October ride in 11 years, and provided them with treasured moments on the ride... and then they crashed. What a way for the Mets and their fans to end the 20th Century.
*
October 19, 2001, 20 years ago: Woody Dumart dies in Boston at age 84. A left wing, he, center Milt Schmidt, and right wing Bobby Bauer were all from Kitchener, Ontario, a city that had a lot of German immigrants, and was originally named Berlin. During World War I, the name was changed in memory of the Earl Kitchener, Britain's Secretary of State for War, who died on a ship sunk by a mine in 1916.
Dumart, Schmidt and Bauer were on a forward line together starting in 1937, and, because of their ancestry, were nicknamed the Kraut Line. After the U.S. got into World War II, and Germany was once again an enemy, they began to be called the Kitchener Line. After helping the Bruins win the 1939 and 1941 Stanley Cups, all 3 enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force at the conclusion of the 1941-42 season.
All 3 returned from The War in 1945, and all 3 would play in the 1st official NHL All-Star Game in 1947. Bauer played just 2 more years with the Bruins, before making a 1-game comeback in 1952. Dumart remained with the Bruins through 1954, Schmidt through 1955. Dumart scored 211 goals in his career, a pretty good total considering that a regular season was 50 games for most of his career.
All 3 would be elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Bauer was the 1st to die, in 1964; Schmidt lived on until 2017.
October 19, 2003: The Yankees bounce back behind Andy Pettitte to tie the World Series at 1 game apiece, with a 6-1 triumph over the Florida Marlins in Game 2. Hideki Matsui's 3-run homer in the 1st inning is all Pettitte needs. Alfonso Soriano also homers. Mark Redman takes the loss for the Marlins.
Nobody knows it at the time, and it would seem truly shocking to those fans still on a high after the Aaron Boone homer 3 days earlier, but this is the last World Series game the Yankees would ever win at the House That Ruth Built.
*
October 19, 2004: Game 6 of the ALCS. The Yankees had been 3 outs away from a sweep and the Pennant in Game 4. But the Sox had come from behind in both that game and Game 5 to make it a 3-2 series.
No matter, the series had come back to Yankee Stadium, home of Mystique and Aura and 39 American League Pennants and 26 World Championships. All the Yanks had to do was win tonight, and all those brand-new Sox memories would have been as wasted as Carlton Fisk's home run that won Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.
Except Curt Schilling was pitching for the Sox. So badly hurt that he couldn't pitch well in Game 1, he'd had a special surgery on his ankle that allowed him to pitch tonight.
And the Yankees refused to test that ankle by bunting on him. John McGraw would have done it. Casey Stengel would have done it. Earl Weaver (not a New York manager but a crafty one) would have done it. You can be damn sure that Billy Martin would have done it. Joe Torre didn't do it. What good is "class" if you lose? Especially to The Scum?
Schilling pitched 7 solid innings, and Mark Bellhorn (cough-steroids-cough) hit a home run. It was a reverse of the Jeffrey Maier play in 1996: The ball hit a front-row fan in the chest and bounced back onto the field. It was an obvious home run, but the umpires ruled it went off the wall. Sox manager Terry Francona appealed, and the ruling was (sadly, but correctly) changed to a homer.
The Sox still led 4-2 in the bottom of the 8th, but the Yankees got Derek Jeter on 1st. With 1 out, Alex Rodriguez came to the plate. While he hadn't gotten a key hit that could have won Game 4 or Game 5, he does not yet have the reputation as a player who can't handle the postseason or other clutch situations. And the pitcher is Bronson Arroyo, Captain Cornrows (cough-steroids-cough), whose purpose pitch to A-Rod's back at Fenway back in July led to a nasty brawl.
Alex hits a weak grounder back to the mound. If he'd just gotten the ball over the infield for a hit, what happened next would have been avoided.
As Arroyo tries to make the tag just before 1st base, he (or so it first appears) drops the ball. It's been 18 years (minus 6 days) since the Bill Buckner Game. Now, at another New York ballpark in October, a ball rolls away from 1st base down the right-field line, and a run scores against the Red Sox! It's 4-3 Boston, and A-Rod is on 2nd with the tying run! The Stadium is going bananas! Red Sox fans are in full "Oh, noooo, not again! It can't be happening again!" mode.
Except this call is reversed as well. It's The Slap Play. A-Rod slapped the ball out of Arroyo's glove. It met baseball's legal definition of interference, and he was called out.
What's more, Jeter was sent back to 1st. That's the part that bothers me, ruling-wise: Jeter had nothing to do with the interference, and he would have had 2nd legitimately even if A-Rod had done nothing out of the ordinary, and Arroyo had been allowed to properly tag him out. It wasn't Jeter's fault: 2nd base was rightfully his, interference or no, even if 3rd and home were not.
This killed the rally, but, as mad as I was at the umpires, A-Rod was rightfully the real target of Yankee Fans' wrath, including my own. This was the beginning of A-Rod's image as "a player who screws the Yankees over in the clutch," and he did not shake it until October 2009. Though he did his damnedest to restore it in the next 3 Octobers, and again in 2015. (So how many bad Octobers does one good October excuse? Apparently, at least 8.)
The Sox held on to win by that same 4-2 score, and the series was tied, the 1st time a Major League Baseball team had ever come back from 3-games-to-none down to force a Game 7.
For the first time since I became aware of the Curse of the Bambino, I believed it was not going to work. As the man who popularized the Curse, Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, pointed out, the kinds of things that usually went against the Red Sox and/or in the Yankees' favor were now working the other way around.
As bad as the next night was, Game 6 was really the day that any curse, jinx, hex, hoodoo, hammer, whammy, whommy, whatever you want to call it, that the Yankees had over the Red Sox came to an end.
And those of us who are old enough to remember could feel it coming. I had no confidence at all that the Yankees would win Game 7, not even at home, especially with their starting pitching options so messed-up. As the aforementioned Doris Kearns Goodwin,a Brooklyn Dodger fan as a kid but a Red Sox fan since going to Harvard, likes to say, "There's always these omens in baseball." This was an omen to rival Damien Thorn.
Had the Yankees won Game 6, there would have been no Game 7. David Ortiz's "heroics" of Game 4 and Game 5 would have been meaningless, as they were the year before. They would have been no more consequential than Fisk's homer in '75, or Jim Leyritz's Playoff homer against the Seattle Mariners in the 1995 AL Division Series was for us, or Robin Ventura's "Grand Slam Single" for the Mets against the Braves in the 1999 NLCS: Thrilling, but not preventing the ultimate loss of the series. The Yankees would have prepared for the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, and probably won it.
If that had happened, you can be damn sure that the outcry from Red Sox fans (and fans of other teams that hate the Yankees) that, due to the steroid use of A-Rod, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, "The Yankees cheated" and should be stripped of their Pennant and title. And their willing accomplices in the media would have gone along with it. There would have been a cloud over the Yankees, the way there never has been over the Red Sox, who, through Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, were far more reliant on performance-enhancing drugs, and, from 2003 to 2016, the Big Papi Years, probably wouldn't even have made the Playoffs, much less won 3 World Series.
The Yankees wouldn't have gotten away with it, as the Red Sox always have.
Still, having that cloud over us -- which we essentially had put over us anyway -- would have been preferable to the insufferable unearned arrogance of the Boston fans of the last 15 years, especially the bandwagoners.
And I still want the blood on Schilling's sock tested! I think he was using steroids, too! And somebody else must think so. It can't be only his rotten personality, his politics, and his post-retirement business shenanigans that's keeping him out of the Hall of Fame. If anything, those things, as bad as they are, should be irrelevant as to whether he belongs in Cooperstown.
*
October 19, 2005: The Houston Astros clinch the 1st Pennant in their 44-season history, as they defeat the St. Louis Cardinals‚ 5-1‚ to win the NLCS 4-games-to-2. Roy Oswalt gets the victory for Houston, while Jason Lane hits a home run. Oswalt is named the series MVP for his 2 victories.
This was the 1st major league Pennant ever won by a Texas-based team. Texas League Pennants had been won by the Houston Buffaloes 17 times between 1889 and 1957, 11 by teams from Dallas and 12 by teams from Fort Worth. But this was the 1st at the major league level.
It was also the last sporting event ever held at Busch Memorial Stadium in its 40 seasons of operation.
It had hosted the baseball Cardinals since 1966, the football Cardinals from 1966 to 1987, the Rams for 3 games before their dome opened in 1995, and a few short-lived pro soccer teams.
October 19, 2006: Game 7 of the NLCS at Shea Stadium. Mets and Cardinals for the Pennant. In the top of the 6th, Met starter Oliver Perez has held the Cards to a 1-1 tie, but Scott Rolen blasts a drive to deep left field. It looks like a 2-run home run, the kind of big-game shot that fans of the losing team will lament for the rest of their lives.
Except Endy Chavez jumps up, reaches over the top of the wall, and snares it. He then fires back to the infield to double Jim Edmonds off 1st and end the threat. Shea erupts in fan noise.
It seemed like one of "these omens in baseball," that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin likes to talk about. It is the greatest catch made by a Met since Tommie Agee and Ron Swoboda in the 1969 World Series. It is, potentially, the most important defensive play made by a Met since the "Ball Off the Wall Play" against the Pittsburgh Pirates on September 20, 1973, by Cleon Jones, Wayne Garrett and Ron Hodges.
This was a sign. This was
it. This was
the Mets' year. And the Yankees had already been eliminated. They're taking New York back. They're taking New York back
tonight!In the top of the 9th, the score still 1-1, the Cards had a man on, and catcher Yadier Molina stepped up against Met reliever Aaron Heilman. If Heilman could just get out of this inning, the Mets would have the meat of their order coming up in the bottom of the 9th. And while Molina is one of the best defensive catchers of our time, he was not, then, regarded as much of a hitter.
But he hits a drive to left, and Chavez can't reach this one. No one can. Home run. Cards 3, Mets 1, and the Mets are down to their last 3 outs.
In the bottom of the 9th, Jose Valentin and Chavez lead off with singles off rookie closer Adam Wainwright. The tying runs are on base, and the Pennant-winning run at the plate, with nobody out. And Shea is buzzing again, as if the Molina homer hadn't happened.
But Wainwright strikes Cliff Floyd out looking, and gets Jose Reyes to fly out. Wainwright walks Paul Lo Duca to bring up Carlos Beltrán with the bases loaded, with the Pennant-winning run on 1st, and 2 men out.
Wainwright throws a curve on the outside corner. Just like Floyd, Beltrán never even takes the bat off his shoulder. Strike 3. Ballgame over. Pennant dream over. Mets lose. Theeeeeeee Mets lose.
For the 2nd time, the Cardinals have a Pennant-winning top of the 9th home run. The 1st time was Jack Clark against the Dodgers in Game 6 of the 1985 NLCS.
This was an absolutely crushing defeat. How could the Mets blow it? After all, they were the best team in baseball, right? Certainly, the 97-win Mets were better than the 83-win Cards, right? Beyond any doubt, the Mets were now the best team in New York, better than the Yankees, right? How could this happen?
It could happen because the Mets choked. Again. Game 7 of the '06 NLCS was the last postseason game played at Shea Stadium. Then came the near-misses of the next 2 years, and a dreary down period. Then came a thrilling run to the 2015 Pennant, and blowing all 5 games of the World Series, including the one they ended up winning, followed by a Wild Card berth in 2016, and then this year's collapse. The Curse of Kevin Mitchell lives.
Ironically, the temporary hero Chavez and the permanent goat Heilman would end up being traded away together, the Mets sending them to the Mariners after the 2008 season. And, in October 2013, Carlos Beltrán played in the World Series... for the Cardinals.
*
October 19, 2008: Behind the solid performance of starter Matt Garza and the stellar relief work of rookie David Price to finish the game, which included striking out J.D. Drew with the bases loaded to end the 8th, the Tampa Bay Rays beat the defending World Champion * Red Sox, 3-1, in the decisive Game 7 of the ALCS, to win their 1st Pennant.
After posting the worst record in baseball in the preceding season, the Rays advance to the World Series, and will host the Phillies in Game 1 of the Fall Classic at Tropicana Field.
This was the 1st major league Pennant won by a baseball team in the Tampa Bay region. Florida State League Pennants had been won by teams from Tampa 5 times and St. Petersburg 7 times.
October 19, 2009: Game 3 of the ALCS at Angel Stadium. The Yankees hit 4 home runs against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: Derek Jeter to lead off the game, Alex Rodriguez to continue his postseason hot streak, Johnny Damon and Jorge Posada. The problem is, they're all solo home runs.
Howie Kendrick hits a solo homer off Andy Pettitte in the 5th inning, and Vladimir Guerrero hits a 2-run shot in the 6th. Posada's homer ties it in the 8th. The Angels load the bases with 1 out in the 10th, but Mariano Rivera gets out of it.
In the 11th, David Robertson gets the 1st 2 outs. Then Joe Girardi looks into his binder, and decides to remove Robertson for Alfredo Aceves. Aceves had been one of the Yankees' bullpen heroes that season. Not this time: He gives up a single to Kendrick and an RBI double to Jeff Mathis. Angels 5, Yankees 4.
Aceves had also given up a go-ahead run in the 11th inning of Game 2, which had been erased by an A-Rod homer. This time, he doesn't get away with it. The winning pitcher is the aforementioned Ervin Santana.
The other Los Angeles team also blows a postseason lead on this day. In Game 4 of the NLCS at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, the Dodgers lead the Phillies 4-3 going to the bottom of the 9th. Cliche Alert: Walks can kill you. Jonathan Broxton walks Matt Stairs, and hits Carlos Ruiz with a pitch. He gets the 2nd out, but Jimmy Rollins doubles into the gap in right-center, and the Phillies win 5-4.
It was later reported that Manny Ramirez, then with the Dodgers, left the dugout and started taking a shower before the game was over. Not the most bizarre episode of "Manny Being Manny," but a very disrespectful one.
*
October 19, 2010: The Yankees pay tribute to Freddy Schuman, a fan favorite at the ballpark since 1988 due to his signs and the rhythmic banging of a spoon against a skillet, by putting some of his memorabilia inside Gate 4 at the Stadium, and with a moment of silence prior to Game 4 of the ALCS.
The fans also show their appreciation of 85-year old iconic "Freddy Sez" when they photograph friends banging his displayed pan, and with their chanting of "Fred-dy! Fred-dy!" during the contest against the Rangers.
The Yankees blow a 3-2 lead, and lose 10-3. The Rangers have now blown the Yankees out 3 games in a row, and are 1 win away from the 1st Pennant in their 39-season history.
October 19, 2019: Game 6 of the ALCS at Minute Maid Park. The Yankees need to beat the Houston Astros to force a Game 7. Both teams are doing the "bullpen game" or "opener" thing. Brian Cashman picks Chad Green to start, and Aaron Boone follows orders. Green allows 3 runs in the 1st inning.
Brad Peacock starts for the Astros, and the Yankees score 1 run on him in the 2nd. Gio Urshela hits a home run in the 4th to make it 3-2 Houston. J.A. Happ pitches a scoreless 2nd and 3rd. Cashman selects Luis Cessa to pitch the 4th and the 5th, making every Yankee Fan cringe, but he gets the job done. Tommy Kahnle pitches the 6th, and allows a run, and this turns out to be critical.
Cashman selects Adam Ottavino to pitch the 7th, making every Yankee Fan cringe, but he gets the job done. Zack Britton pitches a scoreless 8th, but it's still 4-2 Houston.
In the top of the 9th, with the Yankees down to their last out of the season, DJ LeMahieu ties it with a 2-run homer. Aroldis Chapman gets the 1st 2 outs in the 9th, but the bullpen is depleted, and we don't know wh o would pitch in extra innings.
It doesn't get that far. Cliche Alert: Walks can kill you. Chapman walks George Springer. And then he serves an absolute meatball up to José Altuve, and he crushes it for a Pennant-winning home run, 6-4.
When he approaches his celebrating teammates at home plate, Altuve tells his teammates not to rip his jersey open. Was it because there was a hidden device to let him know what pitches were coming?
In the off-season, the Astros' cheating was revealed. The team's punishment was minimal -- really, only slightly more than the absolute nothing the Red Sox have gotten for their 4 stolen World Series in this Century. Altuve himself was not punished at all.
There will always be a cloud over the Astros' achievements from 2015 onward. But that cloud is insufficient. If MLB did things the way the NCAA does, the Red Sox and Astros would have been stripped of their titles, banned from postseason play for a year or two, and even banned from appearing on national television for a time. Indeed, in relation to the Astros, that very punishment was given to the University of Houston football program in 1989.
And yet, it would have mattered considerably less had Cashman acquired the starting pitching that would have won the Pennant. He didn't. It also might have mattered less had Cashman allowed Boone to manage his own games. He didn't. He still doesn't. And the Yankees are still looking for their 1st Pennant since 2009.
October 19, 2032: According to "One Small Step," an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, this was the date on which Ares IV became the 1st manned mission intended to land on the planet Mars. It goes wrong when a graviton ellipse sucks in the command module, including the commanding officer, Lieutenant John Kelly (played by Phil Morris), leaving the other 2 astronauts on the Martian surface. They end up having to be rescued.
Kelly lives for another 10 days before his life support runs out, and records a log entry in which he laments that, as a Yankee Fan, he's going to die without finding out who wins the World Series.
The crew of the USS Voyager find the command module, including Kelly's body, and give him a proper funeral. Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), having looked up the result of the 2032 World Series, stands over Kelly's coffin, says, "The Yankees, in 6 games." She does not mention who their opponents were.
A novelization of the episode states that the opponents were the London Kings. Despite the Yankees' real-life regular-season games with the Boston Red Sox in 2019, and a previous Deep Space Nine episode having the Kings be in existence since at least 2015, winning the World Series that year, instead of the Kansas City Royals as in real life, I doubt that there will be a MLB team in London, or anywhere else off the North American continent, by 2032.
