Yanks Escape Chicago, Make Important Trades at Deadline

New Yankee Luis García Jr.

Seven days in Chicago, seven games for the Yankees. They split four with the White Sox, their fellow American Leaguers. Now, it was time for three with the National League's Cubs.

And the Thursday afternoon finale with the South Siders was followed by a Friday afternoon game on the North Side, at Wrigley Field.

The Yankees got solo home runs by Amed Rosario in the 4th inning and Spencer Jones in the 5th -- and that was it. Fortunately, they also got a fantastic start by Will Warren: 6 2/3rds innings, no runs, 4 hits, no walks, and 7 strikeouts. Paul Blackburn finished the 7th and pitched the 8th, and David Bednar finished a 5-hit shutout. Yankees 2, Cubs 0.

The Yankees would not be so fortunate on Saturday night. They got an RBI single by José Caballero in the 5th, and another Homer by Jones in the 7th. (Not to be confused with the late Homer Jones, the New York Giants receiver who invented spiking the football in the 1960s, or the character in Jerry Reed's 1971 country classic "When You're Hot, You're Hot.")

But a great start by Max Fried was wasted: 5 1/3rd innings (remember, he's still being worked back up after his injury), 1 run, 2 hits, 1 walk and 7 strikeouts. But Fernando Cruz blew the game in the 7th inning. Cubs 5, Yankees 2.

So the Sunday afternoon game felt like a must-win. Gerrit Cole sure pitched like it, going 5 1/3rd innings, allowing 1 run on 4 hits and 3 walks, with 5 strikeouts. This time, the bullpen held, allowing no runs, no hits and 3 walks the rest of the way.

Ryan McMahon led off the top of the 3rd eith a single, and Caballero hit a home run. That was all the Yankees got, but, with that pitching, that was all they would need, beating the Cubs, 2-1.

So they won 2 out of 3 at Wrigley, despite scoring only 6 runs. I guess the famous wind there was blowing in, except when they needed it to blow out.

They won 5 of 7 in Chicago. Counting the earlier series in Philadelphia, they won 6 of 10 on the long roadtrip. Considering that Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger are all injured, that's not bad.

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So here's how things stand as we come into August: The Yankees are 63-49, 2 1/2 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League Eastern Division, 3 in (Cliché Alert) the all-important loss column. The Boston Red Sox are 5 games back, the Baltimore Orioles 11 1/2, and the Toronto Blue Jays 13 1/2.

Today was the trading deadline. Brian Cashman did some good: He got rid of relief pitchers Camilo Doval, Jake Bird and Yovanny Cruz. Cliché Alert: Great trades, who did we get?

For Doval, they got catcher-1st baseman Omar Alfonzo and outfielder Luis Cruz (no relation to Yovanny). Those two are at Somerset now, so they won't help this season. I'm just glad to be rid of Bird and, to a lesser extent, Cruz. To fill a bullpen spot, they called Kervin Castro up from Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Then, today, Cashman really filled a need, for a big bat. He got Luis García Jr., the 26-year-old 1st baseman for the Washington Nationals, who was leading the National League in slugging percentage, for Yovanny Cruz; Bird; Jack Cebert, a starting pitcher, who was at Class AA Somerset and looked like he wasn't going to make it; and Ben Grable, a reliever, who was also at Somerset, and had a better chance, but was unlikely to help this season. That is an absolute steal. Outfielder Max Schuemann was sent down to even out the roster slots. Cruz was given the Number 26, last worn on the team by DJ LeMahieu.

Also today, the Yankees made a trade with the San Francisco Giants, sending pitcher Henry Lalane and shortstop Kaeden Kent, both of them at Class A, for Heliot Ramos, a 26-year-old Puerto Rican left fielder with righthanded power. That should also help.

But there were other notable trades. The Los Angeles Dodgers got Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers, one of the best pitchers in the game, for next to nothing. That won't affect the Yankees much, but at least he didn't go to the Rays, the Red Sox, or the Houston Astros.

But the Red Sox did get Adley Rutschman, All-Star catcher, from the Orioles. That's going to hurt, as the Sox are on a tear. It's almost as if their new way to cheat has kicked in. The Astros got All-Star center fielder Daulton Varsho from the Jays. 

The Rays? They got Freddy Peralta from the Mets. Peralta was supposed to be the ace that was going to help the Mets get off the deck and back into the postseason. It didn't work out that way. Now, with him in their rotation, suddenly, the Rays look like less of a favorite to win the Division.

The Mets also traded former Yankee Clay Holmes to the Cubs. Cliché Alert: They may well be blowing it all up and starting over.

The Cleveland Guardians, another contender for the AL Pennant, also made a deal with the Nationals, getting pitcher Foster Griffin. And the Phillies got 3-time batting champion Luis Arraez from the Giants. Whether either will help remains to be seen.

There are 50 games left in the regular season. The Yankees start them at home, with an Interleague series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Come on you Pinstripes!

August 3, 1966: The Death of Lenny Bruce

Yes, he made jokes about the Catholic Church.

No, here, he's not dressing like a priest to make a point.

He's wearing a "Nehru jacket," made popular

by the late Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India.

August 3, 1966, 60 years ago: Comedian Lenny Bruce is found dead at his home in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. He was 40 years old.

He was born Leonard Alfred Schneider on October 13, 1925, the same day as Margaret Thatcher. He didn't live to see her rise to power, and God only knows what the "Iron Lady" (or, more accurately, the "Iron" "Lady") would have thought if she knew about this fact.

He was born in Mineola, Long Island, New York, and grew up in nearby Bellmore. While Alan King moved to Long Island after growing up in Brooklyn and becoming famous, Bruce was the 1st Long Island native to make it big in comedy, preceding such names as Eddie Murphy, Joy Behar, Rosie O'Donnell, Jerry Seinfeld, Kevin James and Jim Breuer.

He was the 1st comedian to get big by using profanity and "sick humor." Typical of his material: "My wife caught me in bed with her mother. She said, 'You're sick!' I said, 'Why? She's your mother, not mine!'"

Bruce would joke about anything. Especially sex. And religion. Particularly the Catholic Church. In his routine, he called Pope John XXIII "John Baby." That, plus the fact that he was Jewish, pissed off a lot of conservative people in "the establishment."

He was often arrested for obscenity, for using "dirty words" onstage, or for talking about sex onstage. In a rare TV appearance, on The Steve Allen Show on April 5, 1959, he said, "There are words that offend me. Uh, let's see: 'Governor Faubus,' 'segregation' offend me. Uh, 'nighttime television' offends me. Some nighttime television. Uh, the shows that exploit homosexuality, narcotics and prostitution, under the guise of helping these societal problems."

October 13, 1960 was his 35th birthday. Dick Schaap was doing a profile on him for Newsweek magazine. At the same time, Schaap was covering the World Series. He invited Bruce to sit with him in the press box at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh for Game 7. Bruce admitted that he had never been to a baseball game before. It turned out to be one of the greatest games of all time, with Bill Mazeroski hitting a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning, giving the Pittsburgh Pirates a 10-9 win over the New York Yankees, and winning the Series in a major upset. Bruce told Schaap he'd enjoyed the game. But in his memoir, Schaap said that, as far as he knew, Bruce never went to another.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, if "the establishment" decided you needed what we would now call "canceling," it meant you wouldn't get hired. And any place that would hire you might get closed down. It also meant that you could get arrested for using profanity onstage. That was the conservatives closing you down. The conservatives doing the canceling.

Bruce was convicted of obscenity in New York on November 4, 1964. He was sentenced to 4 months in a workhouse. He appealed, and was freed pending that appeal.

That appeal was never heard: On August 3, 1966, at age 40, he was found with a needle in his arm at his home in the Hollywood Hills. It was known that he had a drug problem, but this was a little too convenient for his fans. They came to believe that he was murdered.

In 1972, Julian Barry staged the play Lenny on Broadway. Cliff Gorman won a Tony Award as its star. In 1974, Bob Fosse, better known for his dance-filled musicals, directed a film version. Dustin Hoffman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

In 2003, Governor George Pataki of New York gave Bruce a posthumous pardon. In 2004, the cable-TV network Comedy Central aired a special on the 100 greatest standup comedians of all time. Bruce was ranked 3rd. Coming in 2nd was George Carlin, who had once been arrested along with Bruce. Carlin called him "a brilliant comedian, who influenced me as much as a man in my moral thinking and attitudes as he did as a comedian." Coming in 1st was Richard Pryor, who had once said that hearing Bruce for the first time "changed my life."

August 3, 1936: Jesse Owens Beats Aryan Supremacy

August 3, 1936, 90 years ago: Nazi Germany's myth of racial supremacy is shattered by a black American.

The International Olympic Committee had awarded the 1936 Olympic Games to Germany in 1931, when it was still governed by the Weimar Republic. The Winter Games went to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Bavaria, on the nation's southern border, with Austria. The Summer Games went to the national capital, Berlin.

But in 1933, the National Socialist German Workers' Party -- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpar, or "Nazi" Party -- came to power, and Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. Within another year, he had total control, and instituted the party's ideology, fascism: Nationalism, militarism, bigotry, and letting big business do whatever it wanted.

He also instituted his ideal of an "Aryan" "master race": White, blond hair, blue eyes, tall, physically strong. He, himself, was white, but not the other things.

And he falsely blamed Communists and Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I. Well before most people know what a "holocaust" was (originally, the word was used to mean a large fire), he was cutting Jewish people out of German society.

Like most dictators, he was not especially interested in sports. But, like many of them, someone talked him into using sports as propaganda for his ideals. And so, the 1936 Olympics, especially the Summer Games in Berlin, would be a spectacle celebrating "Aryan supremacy."

But a story which may be apocryphal (I hope it's true) shows that even his power was not absolute. In the Olympic Stadium (Olympiastadion) he had constructed for the Games, the restrooms had signs saying, "Dogs and Jews are not allowed." A representative of the International Olympic Committee told him to take it down.

Hitler: "When you come into a man's house, you don't tell him what he can and cannot put up!"

IOC official: "Excuse me, Mr. Chancellor, but when that five-ringed flag goes up over the stadium, it is no longer Germany. It is Olympia. And we are the masters there."

The signs came down.

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James Cleveland Owens was born on September 12, 1913 in Oakville, Alabama. One thing Southern white people and Southern black people have in common is frequently addressing boys by their initials, so Owens was usually called "J.C."

When he was 9, the family moved north, as part of the "Great Migration" of African-Americans seeking to leave the segregated South in search of less prejudice and better jobs in the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West Coast. The fact that they moved to Cleveland, both his and his father's middle name (Henry Cleveland Owens), appears to have been a coincidence.

Upon arrival in school in Cleveland, the boy was asked his name. He said, "J.C. Owens." The teacher misheard this, and said, "Your name is Jesse?" Not wanting to contradict her, he said it was. And so he was Jesse Owens from then on.

He became Ohio's biggest high school track star. On May 25, 1935 -- the day after the 1st night game in Major League Baseball -- he competed for Ohio State University at the Big Ten Championships at Ferry Field, the former football facility at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

He ran the 100-yard dash in 9.4 seconds, tying the world record. He set world records in the long jump (26 feet, 8 1/4 inches, a world record that would last for 25 years), the 220-yard sprint (20.3 seconds), and the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds). These 4 records were all set within a span of 45 minutes.

So when the U.S. Olympic Team set sail -- flying across the Atlantic Ocean was still too risky at that point -- for Germany in July 1936, Owens was considered one of the favorites in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, and the long jump. (Most of the world was now racing using the metric system, although the United States, as yet, was not.)

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The Games began on August 1, and were the 1st sporting event ever televised, though only a few people in Germany had sets on which to watch it. The Nazis instituted many of the things we now associate with the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, including the torch relay from Olympia, Greece into the stadium and the lighting of the cauldron; and the release of doves as a symbol of peace, although they used pigeons instead. When a cannon was fired as a salute, it literally scared the shit out of the pigeons, and many of the athletes got pooped on.

Established from the beginning in 1896 was the host country's head of state speaking before the crowd, and declaring the Games open. Hitler did this, in German, rather than French, the official language of the Olympics (he hated the French as much as he hated anyone else), or in English, by this point the semi-official language of the world. (As far as historians have been able to determine, German was the only language he spoke fluently.)

It's not always the head of state that does it. Sometimes, someone else is designated. In 1932, in Los Angeles, President Herbert Hoover sent Vice President Charles Curtis. In 1960, in Squaw Valley for the Winter Games, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent Vice President Richard Nixon to his native California to do it. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter sent Vice President Walter Mondale. President Ronald Reagan did it himself in his adopted home State in Los Angeles in 1984, President Bill Clinton did it in Atlanta in 1996, and President George W. Bush did it in Salt Lake City in 2002.

When Britain has hosted: King Edward VII did it in 1908, King George VI did it in 1948, and Queen Elizabeth II did it in 2012, despite being 86 years old. When Australia hosted in 1956 and 2000, and when Canada did it in 1976 for the Summer Games, and 1988 and 2010 for the Winter Games, it was the Queen's representative, the Governor-General, who did it, even though the Queen was in attendance in Montreal in 1976, as her daughter, Princess Anne, was competing in the equestrian events.

The Parade of Nations had also been established from the beginning, and many of the countries' delegations followed the tradition of dipping their flag before the host nation's head of state. The American delegation refused to do this with the Stars & Stripes, and it had nothing to do with said head of state being a Fascist maniac. They were criticized for this, but stood their ground.

On August 2, Owens ran in the qualifying heats for the 100 meters. In the 1st, he tied the Olympic and world record. In the 2nd, he broke it. On August 3, the final was held, and Owens won it with a time of 10.3 seconds. Finishing 2nd was another black American, Ralph Metcalfe, who would later serve the South Side of Chicago in Congress from 1971 until his death in 1978.

Owens was now an Olympic Gold Medalist, and, by winning the Olympic 100-meter dash, he became recognized unofficially as "the fastest man in the world."

On August 4, Owens won the long jump, with 26 feet, 5 inches. Finishing 2nd was Luz Long of Germany, who did fit the Aryan profile. Owens was missing the tape and fouling, and, in a great display of sportsmanship, Long advised Owens to jump a bit short of the tape, just to be sure. It worked, and he had a 2nd Gold Medal.

On August 5, he won the 200 meters in 20.7 seconds. Finishing 2nd was a runner from UCLA, Matthew MacKenzie "Mack" Robinson. He had a younger brother, who went on to star in track, and other sports, at UCLA: Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson. So Owens now had 3 Gold Medals, fulfilling his goal.

On the 1st day, Hitler shook hands with the German victors only, and then left the stadium. International Olympic Committee president Henri de Baillet-Latour told him that he had to greet every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for none at all, and skipped all further medal presentations.

His refusal to congratulate Owens had nothing to do with hating black people, or hating Americans. Nor was it personal. Owens was not "snubbed by Hitler." Owens responded to these claims at the time:

Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters race began at 5:45 PM. But before he left, I was on my way to a broadcast, and passed near his box. He waved at me, and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the "man of the hour" in another country.

The final of the 4x100-meter sprint relay was to be held on August 9. The intended American competitors were Frank Wykoff (Des Moines, Iowa and of Dutch descent, having already taken Gold Medals in the event in 1928 and 1932), Foy Draper (from Texas and of English descent, and would be listed as missing in action in World War II), and 2 Jewish runners, Marty Glickman from New York and Sam Stoller from Cincinnati. (Glickman went on to become the 1st great New York sportscaster.)

But the President of the U.S. Olympic Committee was Avery Brundage, a racist and an anti-Semite, who was just fine with the Nazis. He decided that, since Hitler's boys had already been beaten by black men, it would be worse if they were beaten by Jews. So he benched Glickman and Stoller, and told Owens and Metcalfe that they would run in those men's places. Owens objected. Coach Dean Cromwell told him, "You'll do as you're told." With no recourse but to drop out, which would have been much worse, he ran the anchor leg, and the U.S. team won.

Owens had his 4th Gold Medal -- possibly the most unwelcome medal in Olympic history. This feat -- winning the Gold Medals of the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the 4x100-meter relay, and the long jump -- has only been done once since, by Carl Lewis in Los Angeles in 1984.

From a distance, Owens was hailed as a hero upon his return to America. Up close, he was still treated like any other black person in the 1930s. He found it difficult to make a living -- "You can't eat four gold medals," he said -- and took part in demeaning stunts to raise money. During World War II, the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense appointed Owens as director of a national fitness program for African Americans, but he lost this job when peace came. Like his contemporary, Joe Louis, the Heavyweight Champion of the World, he fell into trouble over his taxes. Unlike Louis, he eventually got out of it.

He became what he called "a professional good example." He became an American representative at the Olympics, and was particularly honored the next time a free and democratic Germany hosted, in Munich in 1972. He even did an American Express "Do you know me?" commercial. He died on March 31, 1980, of cancer, at age 66. He is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.

The Olympiastadion still stands, having undergone some renovations. It is the home of the biggest soccer team in the German capital, Hertha Berlin. It hosted 3 games in the 1974 World Cup, and 6 games in the 2006 World Cup, including the Final and a Quarterfinal. It hosted the 2015 UEFA Champions League Final, and the Final of Euro 2024. Having seated over 100,000 upon its opening, renovations and wider seats have brought capacity down to 74,475, but it is still the largest stadium in any German-speaking country.

In fact, the Olympiastadion in Berlin is 1 of 4 stadiums to have hosted an Olympic Games, a World Cup Final and a UEFA European Cup/Champions League Final. The others are the Olympiastadion in Munich, the old Wembley Stadium in London, and the Stade de France outside Paris.

August 2, 1876: The Death of Wild Bill Hickok

August 2, 1876, 150 years ago: James Butler Hickok is shot and killed in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, now in the State of South Dakota. He was 39 years old.

He grew up on the Illinois plains, in what's now the Chicago suburb of Troy Grove. At age 18, he thought he'd killed a man in a fight, and fled, taking his father's name, William Hickok. Knowing that his father had used the family house as part the Underground Railroad, assisting fleeing slaves, he joined the Union Army, and later served as a U.S. Army scout. "Wild Bill" served several towns as a lawman, but his chief means of income appears to have been gambling, especially cardplaying.

There are so many legends about the Wild West, including the belief that any saloon you could walk into would have a poker game going on. Poker was Hickok's favored game, but the most common card game in the Wild -- or "Old" -- West was a different game played with a standard deck of cards, faro.

To play bridge in the Wild West was to risk ridicule, as that was considered a game for gentlemen -- and gentlemen were considered more "gentle" than "men," in the West, and had to work harder to prove themselves to the men, as Theodore Roosevelt would eventually find out. Faro, a game dating to 17th Century France, was popularly with manly men, but poker overtook it as such in the early 20th Century, around the time that "the frontier closed," and "dime novels" telling tales of the Wild West began to surpass reality.

Hickok was good at poker, better than he was at enforcing the law. Fortunately for him, he was also a good marksman. Nevertheless, the English writer Joseph G. Rosa (1932-2015), who published They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok in 1974, and is considered the foremost authority on him, has been able to document "only" 6 kills. (Among Rosa's other books are The Gunfighter: Man Or Myth?, and books about the guns such men used.)

On August 1, 1876, having had a run of bad luck, Hickok went to Deadwood, home of Nuttal & Mann's saloon. There, he had a good game, taking a gambler named Jack McCall for all he had. As McCall turned to leave, Hickok gave him back the money, and suggested that McCall get something to eat.

Instead of comforting McCall, as it could have, it infuriated him, and he had Hickok set up. Knowing how many enemies he had made, Hickok always sat with his back to the wall when he played cards. But on his visit to Nuttal & Mann's for another poker game the next day, every chair with a back to the wall was taken. So he couldn't see who was coming in.

McCall came in. He shot Hickok in the back of the head, killing him instantly, and freezing his face in a smile. Hickok was holding two pairs: The aces and eights of spades and clubs, all black. This became known as "The Dead Man's Hand."

(In my hometown in New Jersey, I once saw a car with a personalized license plate: "ACESN8S.")

Hickok was a friend of Martha Jane Canary, the frontierswoman and scout known as Calamity Jane. Those who love the legends of the Wild West like to imagine that they were lovers, and that Wild Bill was the father of at least one of Jane's children. Certainly, she cared enough about him to try to avenge him, going after McCall with a meat cleaver, later claiming it was because she had left her guns at her rooming house and it was the only weapon available.

Calamity Jane at Wild Bill's grave, sometime in the 1890s

A native of Kentucky, McCall was hanged for the crime on March 1, 1877. He was 24 years old. Calamity Jane, a native of Missouri, and also 24 at the time of Wild Bill's death, later joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and died from the effects of her drinking in 1903, at 51.

In 1941, a woman named Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick came forward, claiming to be the daughter of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. The documentation she came up with -- which gave September 25, 1873 as both the date of their marriage and the date of her birth, making her almost 68 years old at the time of her claim -- have been disputed ever since, and she got no government benefits from it.

James Butler Hickok, a.k.a. Wild Bill, has been played by William S. Hart in the 1923 silent film Wild Bill Hickok, Wild Bill Elliott in the 1940 film Prairie Schooners, Guy Madison and later Andy Devine in the 1951-58 CBS series The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, Lloyd Bridges on a 1964 episode of The Great Adventure, Jeff Corey in the 1970 film Little Big Man, Charles Bronson in the 1977 film The White Buffalo, Josh Brolin in the 1989-92 ABC series The Young Riders, William Russ in a 1995 episode of Legend, Sam Shepard in the 1999 TNT film Purgatory, and Luke Hemsworth in the 2017 film Hickok.

Martha Jane Canary, a.k.a. Calamity Jane, has been played by Jane Russell in the 1948 film The Paleface, Norma Crane on an 1961 episode of Have Gun -- Will Travel, Stefanie Powers on a 1963 episode of Bonanza (which pairs her up with not Wild Bill but John "Doc" Holliday, whom she appears never to have met in real life), and Catherine O'Hara in the 1995 Disney film Tall Tale: The Unbelievable Adventures of Pecos Bill. (Pecos Bill was a fictional cowboy and folk hero, something of a Wild West version of Paul Bunyan.)

And, together, they were portrayed in the 1936 film The Plainsman by Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur, in the 1940 film Young Bill Hickok by Roy Rogers and Sally Payne, in the 1953 film Calamity Jane by Howard Keel and Doris Day, on a 1966 episode of Death Valley Days by Rhodes Reasons and Fay Spain, in the 1984 CBS movie Calamity Jane by Frederic Forrest and Jane Alexander, in the 1995 film Wild Bill by Jeff Bridges (Lloyd's son) and Ellen Barkin, in the 1995 CBS movie Buffalo Girls by Sam Elliott and Anjelica Huston, and by Keith Carradine and Robin Weigert in the 2004-06 HBO series Deadwood (and Jane by Weigert again in its 2019 film sequel).

Stephen Amell, who played Oliver Queen, a.k.a. the superhero Green Arrow, and Emily Bett Rickards, who played his crimefighting associate and later wife Felicity Smoak, on the TV show Arrow, played Hickok and Canary in the 2024 film Calamity Jane.

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August 2, 1876 was a Wednesday. Only one game was played that day, in the National League. The Hartford Dark Blues beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 15-5 at the Hartford Ball Club Grounds in the Connecticut capital. Neither of these teams would survive the 1877 season, and the A's founded in Philadelphia in 1901, who have been in Oakland since 1968, have no connection to them besides name.

But, thus far, "Wild Bill" has been a nickname for 14 Major League Baseball players, most notably William Edward Donovan, who won 185 games, pitching mostly for the 1900s and 1910s Detroit Tigers; and William Anthony Hallahan, who won 102 games, and was with the St. Louis Cardinals when they won the World Series in 1926, 1931 and 1934. 

August 1, 2001: The Death of Korey Stringer

August 1, 2001, 25 years ago: Pro Bowl offensive tackle Korey Stringer dies of heat stroke, a day after collapsing at the Minnesota Vikings' training camp, at Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minnesota, 80 miles southwest of downtown Minneapolis. He was 27.

Korey Damont Stringer was born on May 8, 1974 in Warren, Ohio, outside Cleveland. At Ohio State University, he played on an offensive line with future Hall-of-Famer Orlando Pace, blocking for 2 All-American running backs, 1995 Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George and Stringer's future Vikings teammate Robert Smith.

The Vikings selected him in the 1st round of the 1995 NFL Draft. In 6 seasons, out of a possible 96 regular-season games, he played in 93 and started in 91. He was a member of the Vikings team that went 15-1 in 1998, but lost the NFC Championship Game. He was selected for the Pro Bowl after the 2000 season, and signed his appearance check over to a youth football program in Warren.

Minnesota is famous for being cold, but when the Vikings opened their 2001 preseason training camp at Mankato on July 30, it was around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Stringer was unable to complete the first practice session, due to exhaustion, and did not participate in that day's afternoon session, but he vowed to return the next day to complete the morning session, which was conducted in full pads.

Although he vomited 3 times, he did complete the morning practice session on July 31, which lasted 2½ hours. But he walked to an air-conditioned shelter after the session, where he became weak and dizzy. At 11:30 AM, when practice ended, the heat index had reached 99 °F. It peaked later that day at 110 °F, with a high actual temperature of 90 °F. (In other words, it was 90, but it felt like 110.)

Stringer was taken to Immanuel St. Joseph's-Mayo Health System Hospital in Mankato, where his body temperature was 108 °F upon arrival. He was unconscious from the time he was admitted until his death at 1:50 AM on August 1. An autopsy confirmed that Stringer died from organ failure resulting from heat stroke.

(Stringer's death was how I learned that "heat stroke" was two words. I'd previously thought it was one word: "Heatstroke.")

His death brought about major changes regarding heat stroke prevention throughout the NFL. It also addressed complications of pressuring players to "bulk up" to well over 300 pounds. Stringer, at the time of his death was 6 feet 4 inches, and weighed 335 pounds, and that was at the lowest weight he had ever been in his pro career. Many professional football teams now train in light color uniforms, water and shade are made readily available, and a team doctor and an ambulance are at practice sessions at all times.

The Vikings retired his Number 77, and named him to their Ring of Honor. He has been eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame since 2006, but, given that he only played 6 seasons, making just 1 Pro Bowl, it is unlikely he will ever be elected. Had conditions allowed him a full career, it might have been different.

August 1, 1966: The Texas Sniper

August 1, 1966, 60 years ago: Guns, insanity, Texas, and toxic masculinity: A dangerous combination under any conditions. Never more so than on this day.

Charles Joseph Whitman was born on June 24, 1941, in the Miami suburb of Lake Worth, Florida. His father was physically and verbally abusive to his wife and children. He was also a firearms collector who taught his sons the proper use and care of guns. He later said of his namesake, "Charlie could plug the eye out of a squirrel by the time he was sixteen."

Young Charles was intelligent enough to make Eagle Scout within 2 years after joining the Boy Scouts. At 14, he had saved up enough money from a newspaper route to buy a motorcycle. But a month before graduating from high school, his father beat him up and threw him into the pool. So, after graduation, he ran away, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. In the Marines, "Sniper" is a category that must be achieved, and he never achieved it, despite his later characterization as "the Texas Sniper." But he did score very high in marksmanship.

In 1961, as part of the Naval Enlisted Science and Education Program (NESEP), an initiative designed to send enlisted personnel to college to train as engineers, and after graduation, be commissioned as officers, the Corps allowed him to return to civilian life, and to study mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, in Austin. (Then, as now, the Marines required a college degree to promote someone to officer, although it can be through this process, or through the Army or Naval War College.)

The University's Main Building is a 307-foot, 27-story tower, opened in 1937, 5 blocks west of the University's famed Memorial Stadium. Whitman was not a good student, and the Marines considered his grades insufficient for continuing his scholarship, and recalled him to active duty in 1963 -- but not before he looked up at the Main Building, and remarked to a fellow student, "A person could stand off an army from atop of it before they got him."

With his return to the Corps, his college credits got him a promotion to Lance Corporal. But he had become a compulsive gambler, and in November 1963 -- the same month in which another man who had been a Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested for assassinating President John F. Kennedy -- Whitman was court-martialed on various charges related to his gambling. He was sentenced to 30 days' confinement and 90 days' hard labor, and busted back down to buck Private. Nevertheless, on time, he was honorably discharged, and returned to UT, and his wife, Kathleen Leissner.

He began experiencing headaches, and abusing amphetamines. His mother finally left his abusive father, and his younger brother went with her, both going to Austin to be close to Charles. On two occasions, Charles hit Kathleen, and he began to be afraid he would turn out like his father. He saw several doctors, including a psychiatrist who prescribed Valium.

On the night of July 31, 1966, at the age of 25, he typed out a suicide note, saying, "I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts. These thoughts constantly recur, and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful and progressive tasks."

In this note, he asked for an autopsy to be performed, to find out if there was a medical cause for his actions, not that he would ever know. And he said that he was going to kill his mother and his wife, not out of any anger toward them, but to relieve them of their suffering. But he did not mention using the Main Building's tower.

He killed his mother shortly after midnight on August 1, and his wife at around 3:00 AM, both by stabbing them in the heart. At 11:35 AM, he told a security guard at the Main Building that he was there to deliver equipment. He got to the observation deck on the 28th floor, killing 3 people along the way, took out his rifle, and started shooting.

For 1 hour and 36 minutes, he kept firing, before Patrolman Houston McCoy of the Austin Police Department fired a shot that killed him. There were 14 victims from his rifle, with 31 others suffering non-fatal wounds. In total, Whitman had killed 19 people in a little over 12 hours.

The following day, an autopsy was performed, and a "pecan-sized" brain tumor was found, pressing against Whitman's amygdala, a part of the brain related to anxiety and "fight or flight" responses.

Just 18 days before Whitman's shooting, Richard Speck had killed 8 nursing students in Chicago. This seemingly back-to-back occurrence would seem routine today, but, at the time, it was terribly shocking. On March 18, 1968, running for President, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, his life already touched by gun violence, gave a speech at the University of Kansas:

Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods, and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs that glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Just 16 days after that, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. And, 62 days after that, so was RFK. Crime was out of control -- but, in the case of Charles Whitman, it was, as it so often seems to be these days, both a medical and a mental health issue.

The University of Texas increased security for the Main Building, but has kept it in use. In 1972, Harry Chapin released a song titled "Sniper," a mostly-fictionalized account of the events, and put in on an album he titled Sniper and Other Love Songs. In 1975, Kurt Russell starred in the film The Deadly Tower.

August 1, 1876: Colorado Is Admitted As the 38th State

The State Flag

August 1, 1876, 150 years ago: Colorado is admitted to the Union as the 38th State.

Colorado is in the Rocky Mountains, which include the State's most famous physical feature, the 14,115-foot-high Pikes Peak. The Colorado Territory had been separated from the Kansas Territory, which was obtained as part of the Louisiana Purchase. It has become known for gold mining (a gold rush in 1859 helped start the movement for Statehood) and skiing (Aspen and Vail are world-famous ski resorts).

In politics, it was traditionally Republican until 1992, when a large influx of Hispanic voters switched it to being usually Democratic. Still, there is a bit of a divide: Denver and Boulder, the latter having a Hippie image, make for "The People's Republic of Boulder." The rest of the State is so conservative, it might as well be called "West Nebraska" or "East Utah."

No Colorado native has ever become President. Its highest-ranking politician has been Federico Peña, who served as Mayor of Denver (1983-91), and, in the Administration of President Bill Clinton, served as Secretary of Transportation (1993–1997) and Secretary of Energy (1997–1998). Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, was born in Denver, and was the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, but lost. Mamie Eisenhower, wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, grew up in Denver.

It is home to the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado State University in Fort Collins, the University of Denver (multi-time National Champions in hockey), and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Its capital, Denver, is also its largest city. Denver is home to MLB's Colorado Rockies, the NFL's Denver Broncos, the NBA's Denver Nuggets, the NHL's Colorado Avalanche, MLS' Colorado Rapids, and, having started this year, the NWSL's Denver Summit began play in 2026.

Denver has never hosted a Super Bowl, although the Broncos have been in 8; and was not selected as a host city for the World Cup in either 1994 or 2026. The Broncos have won the Super Bowl in 1998, 1999 and 2015; and the Avalanche have won the Stanley Cup in 1996, 2001 and 2022. The Rockies have won the National League Pennant in 2007, but never the World Series. The Nuggets won the 2023 NBA Championship. And the Rapids won the 2010 MLS Cup.