November 3, 1951: The 1st "Crossover" Hit Song

November 3, 1951, 75 years ago: Tony Bennett succeeds himself at Number 1 on Billboard magazine's popular music singles chart, the leading survey of the era, as his recording of "Because of You" gives way to his recording of "Cold, Cold Heart."

It was the first exposure outside the South for the latter song's writer, Hank Williams. Hank called Tony and asked, "Tony, why did you ruin my song?" Hank had to assure him he was only joking: He loved it.

Born in Queens on August 3, 1926, Anthony Benedetto served in the U.S. Army, and saw combat near the end of World War II. "Because of You" was his 1st big hit. It was written in 1940 by Arthur Hammerstein (son of composer Oscar Hammerstein I and nephew of composer Oscar Hammerstein II) and Dudley Wilkinson. It was not a hit then, but it became one in 1951 because of its use in the film I Was an American Spy.

After "Cold, Cold Heart," Bennett hit Number 1 again in 1953 with "Rags to Riches," and kept singing standards in the "Big Band" style, even as rock and roll took over, becoming a regular on The Ed Sullivan Show.

In 1962, he recorded George Cory and Douglass Cross' song "I Left My Heart In San Francisco," and while it only reached Number 19 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart (which replaced its former chart in 1958), it became one of the most beloved songs of the 1960s, and his signature song.

In 1970, upon the advice of Columbia Records' Clive Davis, he recorded Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today! It flopped. He spent the 1970s going around record companies, and developed a cocaine addiction. His son Danny realized that they had opposite problems: Tony could sing, but couldn't handle the business side of things; while Danny had a head for business, but had no luck performing with his rock band. So Danny became Tony's manager, and got him clean. By 1986, Tony was back with Columbia and recording successful albums.

Tony began the trend of older singers recording standards in "Great American Songbook" albums, including one of songs associated with Frank Sinatra in 1992, titled Perfectly Frank. Sinatra returned the compliment by calling Tony his favorite singer. In 2008, Billy Joel invited him to the stage at the last concert at Queens' Shea Stadium, and he sang "New York State of Mind."

Tony began recording with up-to-date performers like Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and, in his final records, Lady Gaga. He and Gaga, both New Yorkers of Italian descent, born 60 years apart, adored each other.

He never intended to retire, but had to in 2021, at the age of 95, as he had become frail and had begun decline into dementia, having trouble remembering lyrics as he was recording them. He died on July 21, 2023, shortly before what would have been his 97th birthday.

November 3, 1936: President Franklin D. Roosevelt Is Re-Elected

November 3, 1936, 90 years ago: President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats his Republican opponent, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, winning 46 out of 48 States, all but Vermont and Maine. He wins 523 Electoral Votes; Landon, just 8. FDR wins 60.8 percent of the popular vote, to Landon's 36.5 percent.

Landon's next-best States? He won almost 48 percent in New Hampshire, almost 46 percent in his native Kansas, almost 45 percent in Delaware. If he had won those States, the Electoral Vote would have been 507-24 Roosevelt.

There were 8 other States where he got at least 40 percent. But even if he had won all of those, it would still have been 406-125 Roosevelt.

FDR increased his 1932 totals in part because black voters, still sticking with Herbert Hoover because he represented "the Party of Lincoln," saw that, while the Great Depression hit them harder than white people, as all economic slowdowns do, the New Deal helped them tremendously. (Though not fully: There was sharp criticism over a refusal to hire black people, including officials, in the various "Alphabet Soup" agencies.) Black voters gave Hoover a majority of their vote in 1932, but gave Roosevelt 71 percent of it in 1936.

In addition, Roosevelt broke the back of the Socialist movement in America. Norman Thomas, the Presbyterian minister who was the Socialist Party's nominee for President in every election from 1928 to 1948, was asked in 1936 if he thought Roosevelt had "carried out the Socialist platform." He said, "No, unless you mean he carried it out on a stretcher."

With Socialist labor leaders like Sidney Hillman, who ran the left-leaning Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), leading the way, people who had been voting Socialist voted Democratic. Thomas got 2.2 percent of the vote in 1932, but just 0.41 percent in 1936.

He actually finished 4th, behind the 1.9 percent of William Lemke, a former Republican Congressman from North Dakota. His Union Party was supported by such agitators as Father Charles Coughlin, the Detroit-based "radio priest" who turned on FDR for his seeming ingratitude in making the difference for him in 1932 (a delusion, as Coughlin's support made absolutely no difference); Gerald L.K. Smith, a Disciples of Christ minister from Wisconsin, who started out as a leftist populist like Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, whose Presidential ambitions died with his assassination in 1935, but turned far-right, and who was one of the few public figures in America willing to be as publicly anti-Semitic as Coughlin; and Francis Townsend, a California physician known for a pension plan that presaged the Social Security Act that FDR signed in 1935.

In other words, the Union Party couldn't decide whether it wanted to be far-left (like Townsend or Long) or far-right (like Coughlin and Smith), an early example of what would come to be known as "Horseshoe Theory": That each extreme began to resemble the other.

Aside from his home State of North Dakota, where he got 13 percent, Lemke's best performance was 6.6 percent in neighboring Minnesota. Thomas topped out at 1.5 percent in New York.

Seeing the array of would-be candidates for 1936 in 1935, including the still-living Long, who was bold enough to say, "I can take him," FDR said, "Gosh, everyone seems to be against me. Everyone but the people."

Because Maine had previously held its Presidential election a few weeks earlier, and it usually matched the vote in the country overall, there was a saying: "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." In November 1936, that became, "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont." Indeed, those would be the only 2 States that FDR never won. (Times have changed: Neither of those States have voted for the Republican Presidential nominee since 1988.)

A prankster put up a sign on the Badger's Island Bridge, over the Piscataqua River, connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire with Kittery, Maine. Intended to be seen by people going to Maine, it read, "You are now leaving the United States."

Let the record show that Thomas did not swing a single State from Landon to Roosevelt. Nor did Lemke, with the possible exception of the other northern New England State, New Hampshire, where FDR got 49.7 percent, Landon got 48.0 percent, Lemke got 2.2 percent, and Thomas wasn't even on the ballot.

This election is notable for the poll in The Literary Digest, which was based on questionnaires mailed to readers and potential readers; 2.3 million were returned. The magazine had correctly predicted the winner of the last 5 elections, and announced in its October 31 issue that Landon would win 370 electoral votes.

The cause of this mistake has often been attributed to improper sampling: More Republicans subscribed to the magazine than Democrats. The version I heard in school was that it was a phone poll, and that more Republicans than Democrats were likely to own phones.

However, a 1976 magazine article showed that the 2.3 million "respondents who returned their questionnaires represented only that subset of the population with a relatively intense interest in the subject at hand... The minority of anti-Roosevelt voters felt more strongly about the election than did the pro-Roosevelt majority." This mistake proved to be devastating to the magazine's credibility, and, founded in 1890 the magazine went out of existence in 1938, just a year and a half after the election.

Also in 1936, George Gallup, an advertising executive who had begun a scientific poll, predicted that FDR would win, based on a quota sample of 50,000 people. He also predicted that the Literary Digest would mis-predict the results. His correct predictions made public opinion polling a critical element of elections for journalists and indeed for politicians. The Gallup Poll would become a staple of future presidential elections, and remains one of the most prominent election polling organizations.

The Great Depression wasn't nearly as bad as it was in 1932, but by no means was it over. FDR winning was understandable -- but why by that much?

Well, the American people still did not trust the Republican Party. It had been just 4 years since the depth of the Depression. Plus, there were crazy people on the right wing back then, as there are now; and they made the GOP look not like the bunch of moderates their big names claimed to be, and Landon actually was, but like a bunch who couldn't be trusted with power.

Then there was the media. The major newspaper chains were all Republican-owned, and behind Landon. And in an era when they were the entirety of the media, Landon might have been a great candidate. He was smart, honest, and understood that he served the public, not the other way around. But this was now the era of radio and newsreels. He wasn't well-suited to it. FDR was.

The GOP didn't have anyone else who could beat FDR, either. Most of their big guns who had been elected in the Congressional elections of 1918, '20, '24 and '28 had been beaten in the elections of 1922, '26, '30, '32 and '34.

Finally, credit must be given to FDR: He was the master politician of his era, and his New Deal worked. Not perfectly, of course, but for the people for whom it did work, it was the difference between destitution and a living.

A story FDR liked to tell as he ran for a 2nd term in 1936 was this:

A wealthy man in a fine suit and top hat fell into deep water. He didn't know how to swim, and was on the verge of drowning. Hearing his cries, another man dove into the water, and saved him, as his top hat floated away. The man who had almost drowned regained his breath, and, for a moment, seemed grateful.

Three years later, though, he returned, and denounced his rescuer for not saving his hat, too!

The very rich, and their hired spokesmen, said FDR was trying to "destroy capitalism." Sound familiar? Their successors have said it about every Democratic President since.

Presidential candidates have frequently held rallies close to the election, sometimes in New York, sometimes in their hometowns. FDR, from Hyde Park, in Dutchess County, actually closer to Albany than to Midtown Manhattan, did have a home in Manhattan, so New York, for practical purposes, could be called his hometown. And so he had his close-to-Election Day rally at Madison Square Garden, arguably already, even though it did not use the slogan until well after its 1968 replacement was built, the world's most famous arena. Among other things, he said:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that, in it, the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that, in it, these forces met their master!

And so they did. To turn Archie Bunker's theme song on its head: Mister, we could use a man like FDR today.

FDR would be elected to a 3rd term in 1940, and a 4th in 1944, dying in office in 1945. Landon would serve out his term as Governor, return to the oil industry where he had made his money, and never ran for office again. He lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1987. His daughter, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, served Kansas in the U.S. Senate from 1978 to 1997.

November 2, 2016: The Chicago Cubs Win the World Series

November 2, 2016, 10 years ago: To paraphrase Shirley Povich of The Washington Post, when the Brooklyn Dodgers finally did it 61 years earlier...

Please don't interrupt, because, unless you are over the age of 110, you have not heard this one before: The Chicago Cubs are the World Champions of baseball.

In the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II, the Cubs were shown winning the 2015 World Series, against a team from Miami with an alligator logo, obviously in the American League. It was meant as a joke, a very easy and cheap joke, because the Cubs never won the World Series. They never even won the Pennant. It seemed like a wild guess about the future, played for laughs.

It became less funny in 1991, when Miami was awarded an expansion team, to begin play in 1993, and to originally be known as the Florida Marlins, for the National League, making Cubs vs. Miami in the World Series impossible. It became considerably less funny in 2003, when a Cub collapse gave the Marlins the Pennant. And it became less funny still in the actual 2015, when the Cubs did make it to the NLCS, but lost to the New York Mets.

Somehow, in 2016, they bounced back, winning 103 game to take the NL Central Division, then beating the San Francisco Giants in the NLDS, and then beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, to win their 1st Pennant since 1945. Or, as songwriter Steve Goodman, a Cubs fan who died during their ill-fated run to the 1984 Playoffs, put it...

You know the law of averages says

anything will happen that can.

But the last time the Cubs won a National League Pennant

was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan.

Their opponents in the World Series were the Cleveland Indians, who had the longest World Series drought in the AL: They hadn't won since 1948. This was their 4th Pennant in 68 years. Both teams were said to be "cursed." Only one could win. Something had to give.

In Cleveland, the Indians won Game 1, 6-0; but the Cubs won Game 2, 5-1. In Chicago, the Indians won Game 3, 1-0, and Game 4, 7-2. They only needed to win 1 more to end their curse, and extend the Cubs'. But the Cubs won Game 5, 3-2. Back in Cleveland, the Cubs won Game 6, 9-3, to tie the Series.

Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, played at Progressive Field in Cleveland. One team, looking to end a title drought of 108 years; the other, 68 years. Both having made too mainly painful memories for their fans in the interim. It was time for one of them to make one more, and for the other to finally put an end to such misery.

Dexter Fowler, Javier Baez and David Ross hit home runs for the Cubs, and Rajai Davis hit one for the Cleveland Indians. But the Cubs made 3 errors, the Indians 1. The Cubs blew leads of 1-0 in the 3rd inning, and 6-3 in the 8th, and their fans must have thought that it was never going to happen, even though they had already come back from being 3 games to 1 down in this Series.

The game went to extra innings, and then it rained. And home-field advantage hadn't meant much: The Indians had taken 2 of 3 in Wrigley, and the Cubs had, so far, taken 2 of 3 in Cleveland. So each of these seemingly cursed teams had, at least in theory, an equal chance.

Kyle Schwarber led off the top of the 10th with a single, and was replaced by pinch-runner Albert Almora. Kris Bryant flew out to center, but Almora got gutsy, and tagged up and got to 2nd. Anthony Rizzo was walked intentionally to set up the double play, but the strategy didn't work: Ben Zobrist hit an RBI double into the left field corner, the biggest hit in the Cubs' 142-season history. Addison Russell was walked intentionally, and Miguel Montero singled him home to make it 8-6. Cub fans could feel it finally happening after 108 years.

But the Indians weren't going down without a fight. In the bottom of the 10th, after Carl Edwards Jr. pitched the Cubs to within 1 out of glory, he walked Brandon Guyer, who took 2nd on defensive indifference.

Davis singled him home to make it 8-7, and Cub fans were staring at the choke to end all chokes, the Billy Goatiest Curse of the Billy Goat ever. But manager Joe Maddon brought Mike Montgomery on to relieve, and he got Michael Martinez to ground to 3rd, and Bryant threw him out to end it.

Going in, I had no preference as to which team won. Both sets of fans had waited long enough, and had endured too much. I just wanted the story of the game to be a hero, not a goat (a terrible mistake) or a villain (an umpire making a bad call).

Zobrist and Montgomery were the heroes for the Cubs. This was not one of the greatest games of all time. Indeed, it was sloppy, as if neither team really wanted to win, when both teams really had to win.

But it was great theater. And providing such theater on a regular basis is why baseball is the greatest game of them all.

Thankfully, Cub fans did not follow up the end to their drought by acting like bastards, the way Red Sox fans did after 2004 and New York Ranger fans did after 1994.

It was 6 days before the Presidential election. Barack Obama was still President. There was a terrible possibility that Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton, and plunge America into 4 years of nightmare, but if the Cubs -- of whom Hillary once claimed to be a fan -- could win the World Series, then we could avoid a Trump Presidency, right?

We didn't. The Cubs' World Series win was the last good moment of a good age. Before the dark times.

One more note: Ever since the WGN-nationally-televised Ryne Sandberg and Rick Sutcliffe Division title season of 1984, even when the crosstown Chicago White Sox are doing well on the field, and the Cubs aren't, the Cubs aren't, the Cubs have had a higher attendance. The White Sox last won the American League Pennant in 1959, more recently than the Cubs' most recent NL Pennant; broke the Playoff drought before the Cubs did, in 1983; and won the Pennant and the World Series before the Cubs did, in 2005. But the White Sox have always gotten short shrift from the Chicago media and fans. Even in 2005, and in 2006, when there should have been some spillover effect, the Cubs did better in attendance.

So it should have been clear that the following move was a really, really dumb one on the White Sox' part: During the 2016 World Series, they announced that the naming rights to their ballpark had been bought from telecommunications company U.S. Cellular, by insurance company Guaranteed Rate. What had opened in 1991 as the new Comiskey Park would now be named Guaranteed Rate Field. Doing this while the Cubs were in the World Series was a major public relations blunder, and reminded everyone of why the South Siders will always be the second team in the "Second City." (In 2025, it was changed to simply "Rate Field.")

Jerry Koosman, 1942-2026

The situation comedy Growing Pains, which aired on ABC from 1985 to 1992, was produced by Met fans. It must have been: The show focused on a family named Seaver, and the family next door was named Koosman. The families were named for the pitching aces of the Mets in the late 1960s and into the mid-1970s: Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman.

Jerome Martin Koosman was born on December 23, 1942 in Appleton, Minnesota, about 150 miles west of Minneapolis -- closer to Fargo, North Dakota and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He graduated from the West Central School of Agriculture, now part of the University of Minnesota Morris. While serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, Texas, he played on a team whose catcher, John Lucchese, was the son of an usher at Shea Stadium, home of the Mets. They signed him after his discharge.

On April 14, 1967, he made his major league debut, wearing Number 47. After Jack Fisher had been knocked out of the box, he finished the 3rd inning, and pitched the next 2. He allowed no hits or runs, though he walked 2, and struck out 2. But the game was already lost, as Chris Short pitched well, and the Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

Switching to Number 36, Koosman only made 9 appearances, going 0-2 with a 6.04 ERA, and was sent back down to the Jacksonville Suns, where he led the Class AAA International League in strikeouts. He made the starting rotation in 1968, and, at age 25, he was reading, going 19-12 with a 2.08 ERA. He made his 1st All-Star Game, and finished 2nd to Johnny Bench of the Cincinnati Reds in the National League's Rookie of the Year voting.

In 1969, he made the All-Star Game for the 2nd time -- and, as it turned out, the last. He went 17-9 with a 2.28 ERA. The Mets were in their "Miracle" season, winning the NL Eastern Division title. He started Game 2 of the NL Championship Series, and while the Mets win it, he was not the winning pitcher.

But he was the winning pitcher in Games 2 and 5 of the 1969 World Series, over the Baltimore Orioles. To close out Game 5, and the Series, on October 16, 1969, he pitched a complete game, winning 5-2, and getting Oriole 2nd baseman Dave Johnson -- later to be known as "Davey Johnson," and as the manager of the Mets' other World Championship team. Although Tom Seaver was the team's ace, and Donn Clendenon was named the Series' Most Valuable Player, the award could have gone to Koosman.

He went 12-7 in 1970, but then had losing records: 6-11 in 1971, 11-12 in 1972, and 14-15 in 1973, despite a 5-0 start and a team record 31 2/3rds consecutive scoreless innings late. But in that 1973 season, the Mets won another Pennant. He pitched a complete-game victory against the Reds in Game 3 of the NLCS, the game where Pete Rose picked a fight with the much smaller Met shortstop Bud Harrelson. The Mets won the series in 5 games. Koosman started Games 2 and 5, for a no-decision and a win against the Oakland Athletics, but they lost in Game 7.

He went 15-11 in 1974 and 14-13 in 1975. In 1976, he went 21-10, becoming only the 2nd Met pitcher after Seaver, and the 1st Met lefthander, to win 20 games in a season. He finished 2nd to Randy Jones of the San Diego Padres (a future Met) in the voting for the NL Cy Young Award.

He also co-starred with teammate Ed Kranepool in a commercial for Sports Phone, a sort of proto-Internet service run by New York Telephone, that let people know up-to-the-minute sports news, for a 50-cent charge on your phone bill. (The Yankees' Lou Piniella also did an ad for them.) Interviewed by the Long Island newspaper Newsday in 2015, New York Rangers broadcaster John Giannone said, "Everyone 45 and over can recite the number." As I was then 45, I can back this up: 999-1313, later changed to 976-1313. The arrival of SportsRadio WFAN in 1987 pretty much killed it, but it was fun while it lasted.

But the team that had won 2 Pennants in 5 years was being broken up, and as the team fell, it took "Koos" with them. They crashed to last place in 1977, and he went 8-20. He remains the last pitcher to win 20 one seasons and then lose 20 the next. In 1978, they finished last again, and he went 3-15. His age was about to match his uniform number, and so, on December 8, he was traded, to his home-State team, the Minnesota Twins.

The Twins, having just let their best player, Rod Carew, go, were going nowhere. But getting out of Flushing Meadow seemed to revive Koosman, as he went 20-13 in 1979, and 16-13 in 1980. It wasn't a typical boneheaded Met trade, though: They got Jesse Orosco, who went on to become the best relief pitcher in team history. It also led to a weird turn of events: They traded the pitcher who got the last out in their 1st World Series win for the pitcher who got the last out in their 2nd World Series win. And the player who made that last out in 1969 managed them to that title in 1986.

There was one moment in Minnesota that Koosman might have regretted, though: On May 4, 1980, against the Yankees at Metropolitan Stadium, he threw a brushback pitch that knocked Reggie Jackson down, and Reggie took his next pitch over the center field fence for a home run. It was the start of a battering that Koosman took, as the Yankees won, 10-1.

In 1981, at 38, it appeared that Koosman could no longer keep age at bay: He went 3-9 in the strike-shortened season, and the Twins traded him to the Chicago White Sox. He finished the season 4-13, to become, to date, the last pitcher to lead each League in losses.

But he bounced back again. He went 11-7 for the White Sox in 1982, and had the same record in 1983, as he helped them win the AL West title. He appeared in 1 game in the AL Championship Series, and was hit hard.

In 1984, at 41, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, and went 14-15 with a good 3.25 ERA for an underachieving team. He went 6-4 the next season, and retired, with a career record of 222-209, a 3.36 ERA, a 1.259 WHIP, and 2,556 strikeouts. Not quite Hall of Fame numbers, but a good career. His 140 wins with the Mets rank him 3rd in team history behind Seaver's 198 and Dwight Gooden's 157.

In 1989, the Mets inducted him into their team Hall of Fame. He attended reunions of the 1969 team on their 20th, 25th, 30th, 40th and 50th Anniversaries, the last game at Shea Stadium in 2008, and the 1st game at Citi Field in 2009.

However, he was under a cloud during that opening, as he was under indictment for income tax evasion. He admitted to being "suckered" by anti-tax rhetoric, and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison, and served at the Federal Prison Camp, Duluth in his home State from September 3, 2009 to June 30, 2010.

He married LaVonne Sorum in 1967. They had daughter Danielle and sons Shawn and Michael, and were divorced in 2003.

On August 28, 2021, the Mets retired his uniform Number 36, making him only the 3rd player they'd honored, after Seaver's 41 and Mike Piazza' 31. By this point, his health was beginning to fail. He died yesterday, November 1, 2026, at his home in Osceola, Wisconsin, about 50 miles northeast of Minneapolis, at the age of 83.

With his death, there are now 17 surviving players from the 1969 World Champion New York Mets: J.C. Martin (89 years old), Al Weis (88), Art Shamsky (85), Cleon Jones (84), Jim Gosger (83), Bobby Pfeil (83), Bob Johnson (83), Ron Swoboda (82), Ken Boswell (80), Duffy Dyer (81), Rod Gaspar (80), Gary Gentry (80), Nolan Ryan (79), Amos Otis (79), Bob Heise (79), Wayne Garrett (78) and Jesse Hudson (78).

Danny Frisella, a pitcher who appeared in only 3 games that season, was the 1st '69 Met to die, in a dune buggy accident in Arizona on New Year's Day 1977. He was only 30 years old. Tommie Agee died in 2001, Cal Koonce in 2003, Tug McGraw in 2004, Donn Clendenon in 2005, Don Cardwell in 2008, Kevin Collins in 2016, Ed Charles in 2018, Tom Seaver and Les Rohr in 2020; Bud Harrelson, Jim McAndrew, Jerry Grote, Ed Kranepool and Jack DiLauro in 2024; Ron Taylor in 2025. Al Jackson, an original 1962 Met, was on the 1969 Mets, but was traded away in midseason, and died in 2019.

November 2, 1976: Jimmy Carter Is Elected President

Note the 2nd line of the headline:
Gotta get that local angle in.

November 2, 1976, 50 years ago: Former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia edges incumbent President Gerald Ford, to reclaim the White House for the Democratic Party.

Ford had been Vice President when President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. He was left with a recession he struggled to get under control, and the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down. A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon for all crimes he committed, or may have committed, as President. That infuriated people who wanted to believe that Ford would be the honest man that Nixon wasn't.

Carter capitalized on that, telling voters, "I will never lie to you." It seemed to work: That statement, and the fact that he wasn't a "Washington insider" like so many other candidates for the Democratic nomination, made Carter stand out from the pack. At the Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden, he took one of those insiders, Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota, as his Vice Presidential nominee. The Carter-Mondale ticket left New York with a 33-point lead in the polls.

It didn't help Ford that he had waffled on a federal bailout for New York City's government, which was close to bankruptcy. At first, he refused, leading to the famous Daily News headline: "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." That scared New York State officials, so they stepped in and helped the City get its house a little closer to being in order. That convinced Ford that a smaller bailout was okay.

So now, Ford had ticked off people in the City who thought he didn't care, and he'd ticked off conservatives in the Republican Party who didn't want any bailout for the city they hated the most. (Yes, conservatives hate New York more than they hate Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago or Boston.) To try to win the conservatives back, Ford announced that his original choice for Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, himself a former Governor of New York, would not be the Party's nominee for the office in 1976.

That wasn't good enough. Ronald Reagan, who had been an actor and then Governor of California, was the darling of the conservative movement, and he challenged Ford in the Republican Primaries, and got almost enough Delegates to dethrone him at the Republican Convention at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City. (The building is now named the Hy-Vee Arena.) Ford chose Senator Bob Dole of Kansas as his new running mate.

Twenty years later, himself nominated for President, Dole would seem too moderate for current Republicans. But in 1976, he was considered acceptable by the Reagan wing of the Party. Which shows just how far to the right the Party had shifted, even by 1996.

Before the Republican Convention, Carter led Ford in the polls by a whopping 33 points. But things began to turn Ford's way. He went on a railroad "whistle-stop tour" like Harry Truman in 1948, because his "Rose Garden strategy" of staying in the White House and "acting Presidential" wasn't working.

He shored up support in the South, the Midwest and the West, leading conservative New York Times columnist William Safire, who had been a speechwriter for Nixon, to coin the phrase "The Winning West," saying that it had become more important than "The Solid South." Dole brought some supporters back. The economy finally began to improve, after the 1st-ever combination of unemployment and inflation, a.k.a. "stagflation," in American history in 1973, '74 and '75.

And the Carter campaign made enough minor mis-steps that Carter's drop in the polls mirrored what might have happened if he'd had one major mis-step. Indeed, it could be argued that, despite winning the Presidency, Carter's political stock was never higher than during the 1976 Democratic Convention.

And while he was pro-civil rights, there was still a stigma: No Southerner had been elected President without first being the Vice President since Zachary Taylor in 1848. (Woodrow Wilson had been born in Virginia, but was a New Jersey-based politician. And he was the only Southern-born politician even nominated between 1848 and 1976.)

There were some zingers, but nothing really nasty. Ford questioned Carter's experience, and Carter responded by saying that, if experience were the deciding factor, "we would have kept Richard Nixon." There was a brief question about Ford's taxes, and the special counsel investigating decided there was not enough evidence to recommend charges. But before that decision, Carter addressed it very deftly: "I don't know what the facts are about Mr. Ford and his income tax. He does!" The implication being, "What's he hiding? Haven't we had enough of that?"

Ford attacked what he perceived to be Carter's weakness and indecisiveness: "He wanders, he wavers, he waffles, and he wiggles!" He also said, "There was a great, great President, many years ago, named Teddy Roosevelt, who said, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick.' Jimmy Carter speaks loudly, and carries a fly swatter!" One day, he delivered his stump speech 10 times. By the 9th time, he was so tired, it came out "fly swapper"; on the 10th try, "fly spotter." Still, each man seemed to be enjoying himself on the campaign trail.

But the debates doomed Ford. In one, he was asked about Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, and said, "There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford Administration." This statement was meant to suggest that he wouldn't let it happen. But most people knew that it had already happened, long before he took office, and it fed into the idea that Ford -- a graduate of the University of Michigan and Yale Law School, 2 of America's finest institutions of higher learning -- was dumb.

And in the Vice Presidential debate, Dole attacked the Democrats by saying that World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were "all Democrat wars." This was completely stupid: The Vietnam War started under Dole's idol, fellow Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower; and the others, once Democratic Presidents got America involved, Republicans in Congress wholeheartedly supported the war efforts. Indeed, with World War I, Republicans wanted it more than Democrats; and in World War II, Republicans didn't want to get involved at first, because they supported the fascist Axis against the Soviet Union.

On Election Day, November 2, the race was a virtual dead heat in the final poll. When the votes were tallied, it was definitive, but just barely. Carter got 40.8 million votes, Ford 39.1 million; Carter got 50.1 percent of the popular vote, Ford 48.0; Carter won only 23 States, to Ford's 27; but Carter's States added up to 297 Electoral Votes, Ford's to 240.

How close was it? Carter won Mississippi's 7 EVs by 15,000 votes, Wisconsin's 11 by 36,000, and Missouri's 12 by 61,000. Shift those 122,000 votes to Ford, and the EV count would have been Ford 271, Carter 267.

Carter won Pennsylvania by 123,000 votes. But shifting that 1 State, with 27 EVs, wouldn't have been enough to swing the election to Ford. Shifting New York would have been: Carter won it by 288,767 votes. Shift its 41 EVs, and it would have been Ford 281, Carter 256.

Ford's supporters were left to wonder. If only:

* Nixon had resigned a little sooner, giving Ford more time to turn things around.

* Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, killing off some of the massive goodwill with which he began his Administration.

* Ford had given New York City the bailout at first, he could have won New York -- but he might not have won close States like Oregon, Maine, Virginia, and, most notably, Reagan's home State of California with its 45 EVs.

* Reagan had dropped out of the Primaries after losing Illinois, where he was born and raised, to Ford, allowing Ford to consolidate his intraparty support sooner.

* The economy had begun to improve, even a little bit sooner.

* Ford had come up with a better debate answer on Eastern Europe.

* Dole had come up with a better debate answer on foreign policy.

Had any one of those things happened, instead of what did happen, Ford could well have won, and continued as President all the way until January 20, 1981.

Already having big majorities in both houses of Congress, there wasn't much for the Democratic Party to gain there: They added just 1 seat in the House, giving them 292 seats; and 1 in the Senate, giving them 61. Neither major party has had that many since.

Among the new Senators elected were Democrats Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio (who beat Bob Taft Jr., son of a Senate Majority Leader and grandson of a President), Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan of New York; and Republicans Richard Lugar of Indiana, Orrin Hatch of Utah, John Heinz of Pennsylvania (of the Pittsburgh condiment-making family), and Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico (who walked on the Moon on the Apollo 17 mission).

Maybe Ford was better off for having lost: Carter was left with the energy crisis, a hard situation in Iran, and a new round of recession and inflation. If Ford had what amounted to a 2nd term, he might have struggled just as much (if not with exactly the same attempted solutions), and he might now be considered one of the country's worst Presidents, if a well-meaning one.

Time magazine named Carter their Man of the Yar for 1976. He started his Inaugural Address by thanking "my predecessor, for all he has done to heal our land." That healed some of the bitterness that had come up between them during the campaign, and the two men remained on friendly terms for the rest of Ford's life, which came to a close in 2006, at the age of 93. At the time, Ford was the longest-lived President in American history.

The 1976 campaign remains the last one to date that was relatively civil. In 1980, Reagan and the Republicans ran a campaign that terribly mocked Carter, and it worked. As time has gone by, Presidential elections gotten nastier and nastier. The zingers that Ford and Carter traded in the Bicentennial Year now seem rather quaint by comparison.

Also on Election Day 1976, New Jersey voters approved casino gambling in Atlantic City. This would one day have repercussions in another Presidential race, as Donald Trump ran in 2016 despite building 3 casino-hotels in A.C., and having them all go bankrupt. Some businessman he turned out to be.

There's a Jimmy Carter Presidential Parkway and a Jimmy Carter Boulevard in his home State of Georgia. A statue of him stands outside the State Capitol in Atlanta. The city is also home to his Presidential Library, and the Carter Center, an institute dedicated to peaceful change all over the world. They opened on October 1, 1986, his 62nd birthday. Given his U.S. Navy experience, it was appropriate that a nuclear-powered submarine was named the USS Jimmy Carter, SSN-23, in service since 2004.

While he was born and raised in Los Angeles, actor Richard Paul had become known for his impressions, and his impression of Carter led to him being cast as Mayor Teddy Burnside in the sitcom Carter Country, which aired on ABC in the 1977-78 and 1978-79 TV seasons. In a retroactive irony -- Bill Clinton was first elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978 -- the name of the fictional Georgia town on the show was Clinton Corners. The TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, based in a fictional Georgia County, also debuted during Carter's Presidency. While it was filmed in 1976, the Georgia-based movie Smokey & the Bandit premiered in 1977.

Statue, State House, Atlanta, Georgia

Carter remains the only President born in, or representing, Georgia.

Carter has been played by Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live, Ed Beheler in Sextette in 1978 and Hot Shots! Part Deux in 1993, and Brad Maynard in the pilot of the 1st live-action TV version of the superhero comedy The Tick in 2001. (A Soviet robot had been programmed specifically to kill Carter, not whoever was currently President, and was revived in what was then the present day.)

His work with Habitat for Humanity brings up a comparison with Trump. When Jimmy Carter built a wall, he built four of them. And a roof. And when he built a residence, he did it for comfort, not for luxury, and let it be open to anyone, regardless of race or religion. And then he did it again. And again. And again.

And the only thing that stopped him wasn't old age, but very old age. Carter became the 1st President to live to be 100 years old, on October 1, 2024. He had said he wanted to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in the election on November 5. He did. He died on December 29.

November 1, 1946: The 1st NBA Game

The 1946-47 New York Knicks

November 1, 1946, 80 years ago: The the 1st NBA game is played, at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. (Until 1949, the National Basketball Association was known as the Basketball Association of America, or the BAA.) A crowd of 7,090 -- about half of capacity -- attends, and the New York Knickerbockers beat the Toronto Huskies, 68-66.

For the Knicks, coached by Neil Cohalan, 41, and formerly head coach at Manhattan College:

* Number 6, guard Ossie Schectman, 27, from Kew Gardens, Queens, and Long Island University in Brooklyn, where he was coached by Hall-of-Famer Clair Bee, scored the 1st NBA basket, and ended up with 11 points on the night.

* Number 9, guard Leo Gottlieb, about to turn 26, from The Bronx, never went to college, led all scorers with 14.

* Number 7, forward Stan Stutz, 26, from Worcester, Massachusetts, and the University of Rhode Island, scored 9.

* Number 5, forward Ralph Kaplowitz, 27, from The Bronx, where he was a teammate of Gottlieb at DeWitt Clinton High School, and also played for Hall-of-Famer Howard Cann at New York University, scored 7.

* Number 11, center Jake Weber, 28, from Rushville, Indiana, and Purdue University, scored 6. At 6-foot-6, he was the tallest player on the team.

* Number 12, Hank Rosenstein, 26, from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and played for Hall-of-Famer Nat Holman at City College of New York, scored 5.

* Number 15, guard Dick Murphy, 25, from College Point, Queens, and played for Cohalan at Manhattan College, scored 5.

* Number 4, forward Nat Militzok, 23, from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and Cornell University, scored 5.

* Number 14, forward Tommy Byrnes (not to be confused with Yankee pitcher Tommy Byrne), 23, from The Bronx, another Clinton High graduate but too young to have played with Gottlieb and Kaplowitz, scored 4.

* Number 8, guard Sidney "Sonny" Hertzberg, 24, from Flatbush, Brooklyn, and a CCNY teammate of Rosenstein, scored 2.

* And Number 10, guard Bob Mullens, on his 24th birthday, from Staten Island, and Fordham University, played, but scored none. In a weird twist of fate, before the season was out, Mullens would be traded to the Huskies. So would Militzok.

So that's 11 players, only 2 of them from outside New York City, 3 of them Irish and the rest Jewish. This would not have been odd for a college team from New York at that time, so it's not odd for the 1st real major league team from The City.

For the Huskies: Ed Sadowski scored 18, George Nostrand 16, Charlie Hoefer 8, Mike McCarron (from Elmhurst, Queens, and Seton Hall) 6, Ray Wertis 6, Dick Fitzgerald 6, his brother Bob Fitzgerald (both from Elmhurst, and Fordham) 4, Harry Miller (from West Orange, New Jersey, and Seton Hall) 1, Frank Fucarino (from Astoria, Queens, and an LIU player) 1, Roy Hurley none, and Hank Biasatti none. (I wonder if anyone attended the game thinking they were actually getting a recent college star, Stanford's Hank Luisetti.)

Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, site of the 1st NBA game

This film purports to be from that first game. Is it? It could be: The teams are the Knicks and the Huskies, and the Huskies are wearing white as home teams tend to do in basketball. However, the Knicks did make 2 more visits that season, winning both, on December 20, 1946 and March 28, 1947, so this film could be from any of those 3 games.

The Knicks are 1 of only 2 charter NBA teams still playing in their current city. The other is the Boston Celtics. These 2 teams have just started their 81st season. The Celtics started their 1st on November 2, 1946, losing to the Providence Steamrollers, 59-53 at the Rhode Island Auditorium in Providence.

Neither, however, is pro basketball's oldest franchise. The Philadelphia SPHAs were founded in 1917, as the team of the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association. They, too, were a charter BAA/NBA team, as the Philadelphia Warriors. They are still playing today, as the Golden State Warriors, having moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1962. On November 7, the Warriors made their debut, beating the Pittsburgh Ironmen, 81-75 at the Philadelphia Arena.

The Knicks went 33-27, good enough to make the Playoffs. The Huskies went 22-38, going through 4 head coaches, the last being former New York Yankees 3rd baseman Red Rolfe, who lasted the longest, going 17-27. They missed the Playoffs, and went out of business after just 1 season. The NBA did not return to Toronto until 1995 with the Raptors.

Maple Leaf Gardens, built for the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs in 1931, closed in 1999, the last of the NHL's "Original Six" arenas in use. It has been converted into retail space, like its great rival, the Montreal Forum.

Also missing the Playoffs: The Celtics, who took a few years to get going; the Providence Steamrollers, named for a 1920s football team, and went out of business after the 1948-49 season; the Detroit Falcons, who folded after that 1st season; and the Pittsburgh Ironmen, whose 15-45 record was the worst in the league, and also folded after the 1st season.

The NBA has never returned to Pittsburgh, although the Pipers won the 1st ABA Championship, in 1967-68. The Ironmen's most notable attribute is that their players included Petar Maravich, known as "Press" because he had delivered The Pittsburgh Press newspaper as a boy. If his name sounds familiar, it's because, 20 years later, at Louisiana State, he was the head coach, and his players included his son, Peter Press Maravich, a.k.a. Pistol Pete.

In the 1st Round of the Playoffs, the Knicks defeated the Cleveland Rebels, who folded after that 1st season. The Warriors eliminated the St. Louis Bombers, who lasted through the 1949-50 season.

In the Semifinals, the Warriors eliminated the Knicks. And the Chicago Stags beat the Washington Capitols, whose 49-11 record had been the best in the league. They lasted through the 1950-51 season.

In the Finals, the Warriors beat the Stags, 4 games to 1, clinching the title on April 22, 1947, at the Philadelphia Arena: Warriors 83, Stags 80. Joe Fulks of the Warriors was the league's 1st scoring champion.

As I mentioned, Ossie Schectman of the Knicks scored the 1st NBA basket. He died on July 30, 2013, at the age of 94. He was the last surviving player from the original Knicks. Jerry Rullo, a Philadelphia native who played for the Warriors, was the last surviving player from the NBA's 1st season, living until the 70th Anniversary, October 21, 2016, age 93.

October 31, 2001: Derek Jeter Becomes Mr. November

October 31, 2001, 25 years ago: Game 4 of the World Series. It's not just Halloween -- the 1st time a Major League Baseball game has been played on the day, due to the postponement of a week of games following the 9/11 attacks -- it's also a night of a Full Moon.

During batting practice at Yankee Stadium, Arizona Diamondbacks 1st baseman Mark Grace, who so long played for the Chicago Cubs without winning a Pennant and is enjoying his 1st World Series, could be seen on the official Series highlight film looking up, and saying, "Full Moon! You know what that means: Strange things happen!"

The Yankees trailed the Diamondbacks 3-1 in the bottom of the 9th, and were about to fall behind in the World Series by the same margin of games. This was due in large part to the fine pitching of Curt Schilling, who was asked about the "mystique" of Yankee Stadium. He said, "Mystique, Aura, those are dancers in a nightclub." Schilling had outpitched the Yankees' Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. Grace had homered for the Snakes, Shane Spencer for the Yankees.

(Three years later, pitching for Boston, he would prove he was still not intimidated by Yankee Stadium, saying, "I can't think of anything better than making 55,000 Yankee fans shut up.") 

Byung-Hyun Kim, a "submarine" style pitcher from Korea, tried to close the Yankees out. But Paul O'Neill singled, and, after Bernie Williams struck out, Tino Martinez came to the plate as the Yankees' final hope. Tino electrified the crowd by slamming a drive toward the right-center-field Bleachers. The home run tied the game, and sent it into extra innings.

On the video, a fan in the front row of the Bleachers tried to catch the ball, but it bounced off his hand. Now, imagine you are that fan: Are you excited that the Yankees have come back in this World Series game, or are you mad that you were unable to catch this historic homer (and probably hurt your hand in the process)?

As the clock struck midnight, for the 1st time ever, a Major League Baseball game was played in the month of November. It was the bottom of the 10th, and Derek Jeter stepped to the plate against Kim. A fan held up a sign saying, "Mr. November."

Michael Kay, broadcasting this game for the Yankees on radio station WABC, later asked, "How did he know to hold up that sign for Jeter?" The answer is easy: He didn't hold it up specifically for Jeter. Jeter was just the batter when the clock struck 12, making him the first batter for whom it could be held up.

At 12:03 came a typical Jeter hit, an inside-out swing to right-center, and it just... barely... got over the fence for a game-winning home run. Kay yells out, "See ya! See ya! See ya!" Yankees 4, Diamondbacks 3. The Series was tied. The old ballyard was shaking. The "Yankee Mystique" had struck again. It was hits like this that got Jeter the nickname "Captain Clutch."

The next night, the 1st game to officially be played in the month of November, a fan made up a sign that said, "BASEBALL HISTORY MADE HERE" on what looked like an ancient scroll. Another fan made up a sign that said, "MYSTIQUE AND AURA APPEARING NIGHTLY." (Two years later, in what became known as the Aaron Boone Game, that same fan made up one that said, "MYSTIQUE DON’T FAIL ME NOW." It didn't.)

In 2022, Major League Baseball ranked its Top 20 Games of all time -- and by "all time," they meant games for which they had a complete record, so they could broadcast it in full. In other words, from about 1975 onward. This game ranked 12th.

The Yankees needed to win just 1 game in Arizona. They didn't.