Sunday, September 30, 2018

How to Be a Red Bulls Fan In San Jose -- 2018 Edition

The New York Red Bulls beat Atlanta United 2-0 at home today. This coming Saturday night, they will visit the San Francisco Bay Area to play the San Jose Earthquakes. Yes, as Burt Bacharach (through New Jersey's own Dionne Warwick) would say, they do know the way to San Jose.

Before You Go. The San Francisco Bay Area has inconsistent weather. San Francisco, in particular, partly because it's bounded by water on three sides, is the one city I know of that has baseball weather in football season and football weather in baseball season. Or, as Mark Twain, who worked for a San Francisco newspaper during the Civil War, put it, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."

The websites of the San Jose Mercury News and the Oakland Tribune, and SFgate.com, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle, should be checked before you leave. For next Wednesday, they're predicting mid-70s during the day and high 50s at night. So a scarf, a traditional soccer accoutrement, might be appropriate for the night game, but not in daylight.

San Jose, the Bay Area as a whole, and the entire State of California are in the Pacific Time Zone, 3 hours behind New York and New Jersey. Adjust your timepieces accordingly.

Tickets. The Earthquakes are averaging 19,492 fans per home game this season, a sellout. But this is soccer, and tickets are set aside for visiting fans, so you have a chance. Section 134, at the upper right corner of the horseshoe, is where away supporters are assigned. Tickets are $30.

Getting There. It's 2,906 miles from Times Square in Midtown Manhattan to Union Square in downtown San Francisco, and 2,925 miles from Red Bull Arena in Harrison to Avaya Stadium in San Jose. This is the 2nd-longest Red Bulls roadtrip, behind only Vancouver. In other words, if you're going, you're flying.

You think I'm kidding? Even if you get someone to go with you, and you take turns, one drives while the other one sleeps, and you pack 2 days' worth of food, and you use the side of the Interstate as a toilet, and you don't get pulled over for speeding, you'll still need over 2 full days. Each way.

But, if you really, really want to drive... Get onto Interstate 80 West in New Jersey, and – though incredibly long, it's also incredibly simple – you'll stay on I-80 for almost its entire length, which is 2,900 miles from Ridgefield Park, just beyond the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge, to the San Francisco end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

If you're driving directly to San Jose (i.e., if your hotel is there), then, getting off I-80, you'll need Exit 8A for I-880, the Nimitz Freeway – the 1997-rebuilt version of the double-decked expressway that collapsed, killing 42 people, during the Loma Prieta Earthquake that struck during the 1989 World Series between the 2 Bay Area teams. From I-880, you'll take Exit 3, for Coleman Avenue.

Not counting rest stops, you should be in New Jersey for an hour and a half, Pennsylvania for 5:15, Ohio for 4 hours, Indiana for 2:30, Illinois for 2:45, Iowa for 5 hours, Nebraska for 7:45, Wyoming for 6:45, Utah for 3:15, Nevada for 6:45, and California for 3:15. That's almost 49 hours, and with rest stops, and city traffic at each end, we're talking 3 full days.

That's still faster than Greyhound and Amtrak. Greyhound does stop in San Jose, at 70 S. Almaden Avenue at Post Street. But the trip averages about 80 hours, depending on the run, and will require you to change buses 2, 3, 4 or even 5 times. And you'd have to leave no later than Wednesday afternoon to get there by Saturday gametime. Round-trip fare is $548, but it can drop to $421 with advanced purchase.

On Amtrak, to make it in time for a Saturday night kickoff, you would leave Penn Station on the Lake Shore Limited at 3:40 PM on Wednesday, arrive at Union Station in Chicago at 9:50 AM Central Time on Thursday, and switch to the California Zephyr at 2:00 PM, arriving at Emeryville, California at 4:10 PM Pacific Time on Saturday. Round-trip fare is a whopping $892 -- possibly more than flying. Then you'd have to get to San Jose by 7:30 PM local time.

Amtrak service has been restored to downtown Oakland, at 245 2nd Street, in Jack London Square. Unfortunately, it's a half-mile walk to the nearest BART station, at Lake Merritt (8th & Oak). For A's and Raiders games, the station at the Coliseum site, which is part of the BART station there, might be better. 700 73rd Street. And yet, for either of these stations, you'd still have to transfer at Emeryville to an Amtrak Coast Starlight train.

Getting back, the California Zephyr leaves Emeryville at 9:10 AM, arrives in Chicago at 2:50 PM 2 days later, and the Lake Shore Limited leaves at 9:30 PM and arrives in New York at 6:23 PM the next day. So we're talking a Wednesday to the next week's Wednesday operation by train.

Newark to San Francisco is sometimes a relatively cheap flight, considering the distance. This time, a round-trip flight could cost less than $600. BART from SFO to downtown San Francisco takes 30 minutes, and it's $8.65. However, San Jose does have its own airport, named for the still-living former Congressman Norman Y. Mineta, and round-trip flights (again, nonstop) can be had for under $700. And Avaya Stadium is right next to that airport.

If you're trying to get from downtown San Francisco to San Jose, a 48-mile trip, CalTrain takes an hour and a half, and it's $19.50 round-trip to Diridon Station, 65 Cahill Street, 2 blocks south of the arena.

Once In the City. San Francisco was settled in 1776, and named for St. Francis of Assisi. San Jose was settled the next year, and named for Joseph, Jesus' earthly father. Both cities were incorporated in 1850. Oakland was founded in 1852, and named for oak trees in the area.

With the growth of the computer industry, San Jose has become the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a little over 1 million people. San Francisco has about 875,000, and Oakland 420,000. Overall, the Bay Area is home to 8.7 million people and rising, making it the 4th largest metropolitan area in North America, behind New York with 23 million, Los Angeles with 18 million, and Chicago with just under 10 million.

San Francisco doesn't really have a "city centerpoint," although street addresses seem to start at Market Street, which runs diagonally across the southeastern sector of the city, and contains the city's 8 stops on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway system.

Most Oakland street addresses aren't divided into north-south, or east-west. The city does have numbered streets, starting with 1st Street on the bayfront and increasing as you move northeast. One of the BART stops in the city is called "12th Street Oakland City Center," and it's at 12th & Broadway, so if you're looking at a centerpoint for the city, that's as good as any. San Jose's street addresses are centered on 1st Street and Santa Clara Street. Interstates 280 and 680 form a "beltway" for San Jose, but San Francisco and Oakland don't have them.
A BART train

A BART ride within San Francisco is $1.75; going from downtown to Daly City, where the Cow Palace is, is $3.00; going from downtown SF to downtown Oakland is $3.15, and from downtown SF to the Oakland Coliseum complex is $3.85. In addition to BART, CalTrain and ACE -- Altamont Commuter Express -- link the Peninsula with San Francisco and San Jose. (The BART system switched from subway tokens to farecards in 2005.)
CalTrain

The sales tax in California is 6.5 percent, and it rises to 8.75 percent within the City of San Francisco and the City of San Jose. It's 9 percent in Alameda County, including the City of Oakland. In San Francisco, food and pharmaceuticals are exempt from sales tax. (Buying marijuana from a street dealer doesn't count as such a "pharmaceutical," and pot brownies wouldn't count as such a "food." Although he probably wouldn't charge sales tax -- then again, it might be marked up so much, the sales tax would actually be a break.)

ZIP Codes for San Francisco start with the digits 940 and 941, and the Area Code is 415, overlaid by 628. ZIP Codes for the South Bay area, including San Jose and Santa Clara, start with the digits 943, 944, 950, 951 and 954. The Area Codes are 408 and 831, overlaid by 669.

San Francisco's electric company is called Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). In addition to being the wealthiest metro area in the country, ahead of New York and Washington, the Bay Area is one of the most ethnically diverse, with 32 percent of the population being foreign-born.

Of the 9 Counties usually included in "the Bay Area," 42 percent of the population is white, 24 percent Hispanic (the vast majority of those being of Mexican descent), 18 percent East Asian (highest in the world outside of Asia, except for Vancouver), 7 percent black, 4 percent South Asian, 4 percent Middle Eastern, and half a percent each Native American and Pacific Islander.

San Francisco became well-known for its Chinatown, as Chinese and Chinese Americans are the largest ethnic group in San Francisco itself, with 21 percent. Daly City, just south of the city, home to the Cow Palace arena, is 58.4 percent Asian, the highest percentage in the U.S. outside of Hawaii. San Jose has more Filipinos than any city outside the Philippines, and more Vietnamese than any city outside Vietnam. In total numbers of Asians, New York ranks 1st in the nation, Los Angeles 2nd, San Jose 3rd and San Francisco 4th.

The City also became well-known for its North Beach neighborhood, which became its "Little Italy," and the West Coast hub of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. The Mission District, once mostly Irish, is now mostly Central American, particularly Salvadoran and Guatemalan.

Despite its name, Russian Hill hasn't had much of a Russian presence in over 200 years. That was not the case with the Castro District, where even after Russia sold Alaska to the U.S. in 1867, there were significant numbers of people from the Russian Empire, including, at the time, Finland. In the early 20th Century, it was known as Little Scandinavia, because Norwegians, Swedes and Danes joined the Finns there.

During the Great Depression, just as Southerners went to Southern California in search of work, working-class people of Irish, Italian and Polish descent went to San Francisco, especially the Castro. And many closeted soldiers and sailors, returning from the Pacific Theater of World War II, decided to stay instead of going home, and built the largest gay village in America except for New York's Greenwich Village. Just as Haight-Ashbury led the way for the Hippies, for gay America, the Seventies were their "Sixties."

Oakland has a black majority, and became known as the birthplace of the Black Panther Party and, along with South Central Los Angeles, the West Coast rap scene. As recently as 1970, 1 out of 7 San Franciscans was black, but as the black middle class grew, they were able to afford better places to live, and, in recognition of Oakland's role, abandoned "The Harlem of the West," once the home of a thriving jazz scene (part of what attracted the Beat writers), and headed for the East Bay. San Jose has a Hispanic plurality, which may be a big reason why Major League Soccer put a team there, instead of in San Francisco or Oakland.

Important to note: Do not call San Francisco "Frisco." They hate that. "San Fran" is okay. And, like New York (sometimes more specifically, Manhattan), area residents tend to call it "The City." For a time, the Golden State Warriors, then named the San Francisco Warriors, actually had "THE CITY" on their jerseys. They will occasionally bring back throwback jerseys saying that.

Going In. Avaya Stadium, named for a local communications technology company, opened in 2016 at 1123 Coleman Avenue & Newhall Drive. It is 3 1/2 miles from downtown San Jose, 41 miles from downtown Oakland, and 46 miles from downtown San Francisco. It is between San Jose's Norman Y. Mineta International Airport (named for a former Congressman) and Santa Clara University.
If you're driving, parking is $25. If you're taking public transportation, you take ACE (Altamont Commuter Express) to Great America-Santa Clara.

The stadium it is soccer-specific and seats 18,000 people. They do not share it with anyone. The stadium is a horseshoe, with the open end pointing northeast, and its surface is natural grass.
It has hosted matches of the U.S. women's soccer team, but not yet the men's team. It has also hosted rugby. Last year, it hosted the MLS All-Star Game, with North London giants Arsenal defeating the MLS All-Stars 2-1.

Food. San Francisco, due to being a waterfront city and a transportation and freight hub, has a reputation as one of America's best food cities. San Jose's arena benefits from this.

Avaya Stadium is said to feature "the largest outdoor bar on the West Coast." I don't know if that's true, but the possibility will appeal to some of you. There are concession stands all over, but nothing particularly specialized aside from a Beers of the World stand, and no chains. The team website specifically mentions:
  • Vegan Pizza: Pizza crust topped with a roasted squash purée, hummus, fennel, mushrooms, onions and herbs
  • BBQ Pulled Pork/Brisket Mac N' Cheese: Creamy Macaroni and Cheese topped with a choice of house-smoked pulled pork or beef brisket
  • Asian Chicken Wrap: Tender grilled chicken, broccoli Brussel sprout slaw, and Thai basil dressing all wrapped up in a spinach tortilla
  • Grilled Big Dog: Ten inch all-beef hotdog with grilled peppers and onions, sauerkraut and mustard on a freshly baked roll
  • Portobello Sliders: Fresh Portobello mushrooms marinated in Balsamic, herbs and olive oil with roasted Poblano Chilies and pesto served on mini Brioche rolls
Team History Displays. Like the Seattle Sounders, the Portland Timbers, the Vancouver Whitecaps, and the Small Club In Brooklyn (formerly Hempstead), the Earthquakes use the name of a team in the old North American Soccer League, in a vain attempt to convince people that their history precedes MLS.
In San Jose's case, it's a bad idea, since not only was the new version, founded with MLS, known as the San Jose Clash from 1996 to 1999, but it has been more successful than the old one. They've won the MLS Cup in 2001 and 2003, and the Supporters' Shield in 2005 and 2012. (Actually, Quakes 2.0 was moved after the 2005 season to become the Houston Dynamo. Quakes 3.0, while officially having the history of Quakes 2.0, began in 2009.) But there doesn't seem to be any representation of that in the spectators' viewing area. They do, however, wear 2 stars, for the 2 MLS Cups, on their club crest.

Nor do they have any retired numbers. They do have a team Hall of Fame, which includes "Builders" Milan Mandaric and Peter Bridgewater, and 9 players:

* From the old Earthquakes: England's Paul Child and Chris Dangerfield, Scotland's Johnny Moore and Croatia's Momčilo "Gabbo" GavrićGavrić also played for the 1967 Oakland Clippers, Champions of the National Professional Soccer League, one of the forerunners of the old NASL. Northern Ireland legend George Best briefly played for the old Quakes, but is not in the team Hall of Fame.

* From the new Clash/Quakes: Americans John Doyle, Troy Dayak, Ramiro Corrales and Joe Cannon, and El Salvador's Ronald Cerritos. Dayak, Corrales, Cannon and Cerritos played for the '01 MLS Cup winners. Dayak and Corrales also played for the '03 MLS Cup winners. Johnny Moore was also the general manager of the new Quakes, including during the '03 MLS Cup win.

The Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (BASHOF) is unusual in that its exhibits are spread over several locations. No induction plaques are on display at Avaya Stadium, and no Earthquake players, old version or new, have yet been inducted. Indeed, the only soccer figures yet elected are Stephen Negoesco, a North Jersey native who was the longtime coach at the University of San Francisco and was widely involved in youth soccer in the Bay Area; and San Jose native Brandi Chastain, famed for her penalty kick that won the 1999 Women's World Cup for the U.S., and who played most of her club career in Northern California.

Of course, these honors will eventually include Landon Donovan, who may have been the greatest American soccer player ever (so far), and was a forward for the Quakes from 2001 to 2004, including both of their MLS Cups. The fact that he also played for arch-rival L.A. complicates things.
The rivalry between the Earthquakes and the L.A. Galaxy is called the California Clásico, and it may be the nastiest in MLS, taking on, as it does, the old enmity between Northern California and Southern California: The San Francisco Seals vs. the Los Angeles Angels in the old Pacific Coast League, the Giants and the Dodgers from 1958 onward, the 49ers and the Rams, the Golden State Warriors and the Lakers, the San Jose Sharks and the Kings, San Francisco's old money (old by Western standards, anyway) vs. L.A.'s nouveau riche, Bay Area liberalism and Southern California conservatism (particularly in Orange and San Diego Counties, but that overlooks L.A.'s black, Hispanic, gay and entertainment communities).

There's no trophy that goes back and forth with each meeting, or to the team that wins the season series. At this stage of the 2018 season, the Galaxy have won 42 games, the Earthquakes 30, and there's been 13 draws. The season series, decided by aggregate goals, has been won by L.A. 13 times, San Jose 7.
The Earthquakes and the Seattle Sounders, each team's secondary rival (the Sounders' primary rival is the Portland Timbers), play for a trophy whose name reflects their imagined lineage from the old NASL: The Heritage Cup. It's been awarded 9 times since the Sounders came into MLS for the 2009 season, and the Sounders lead, 5-4, having won it the last 2 years. A Sounders win or a draw on October 28 will make it 6-4 Sounders, but a Quakes win will tie it up 5-5.
The Heritage Cup

Stuff. There are 6 Team Stores located throughout the stadium. There is no 20th -- or even 40th -- Anniversary team history video. But, in 2016, in conjunction with the new stadium opening, Gary Singh published The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy, which looks at the history of Bay Area soccer all the way through.

During the Game. This is not a Raider game, where people come dressed as pirates, biker gangsters, Darth Vader, the Grim Reaper, and so on. Nor is this a Giant game, where you might be wearing Dodger gear. This is an Earthquakes game. While they despise their fellow Golden Staters the L.A. Galaxy, you will be safe wearing your Red Bulls colors.

The Quakes' supporters groups, including the San Jose Ultras, the 1906 Ultras (named for the San Francisco Earthquake of the same year), Club Quake, Soccer Silicon Valley, The Casbah and The Faultline, take violations of visitors' safety seriously: In April 2013, at Buck Shaw Stadium, a Portland Timbers fan taunted them, and a Quakes fan assaulted him. The Quakes fan was arrested, and the Ultras kicked him out of the group.

The groups do, however, make a lot of noise. Like South American soccer fans -- and Sharks fans, and college football fans at the University of Mississippi -- they are known for ringing cowbells. And, while they don't tolerate violence from their groups, they can get mean.
They have, however, forgotten that Pamela Anderson
is from Vancouver, not Seattle.

Lars Frederiksen wrote a theme song for the Earthquakes, "Never Say Die," and recorded it with his band, which certainly sounds like a British soccer hooligan firm: The Old Firm Casuals. He says they're "the most punk rock team in MLS."

I'm not sure about that: When you think of the Bay Area and music, you think jazz in the 1950s, psychedelic rock in the 1960s, heavy metal in the 1970s and 1980s, and grunge in the 1990s (though they were secondary to Seattle in that regard). Punk? Well, the Sex Pistols did play their last concert at Winterland in San Francisco in 1978. Though San Fran psychedelic band Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" could easily be tweaked into a soccer chant.

The "Casbah" firm name comes from the fact that the current version of the team was originally named the Clash, and The Clash (certainly a punk band) had a song titled "Rock the Casbah." San Jose fans' songs include some originals, such as "Since I Was Born," with its "Oh, San Jose" chorus.

They hold auditions for National Anthem singers, instead of having a regular. The mascot is Q, a blue thing with white hair. He kind of looks like a Muppet version of Bernie Sanders.
After the Game. Again, Quakes fans are not Raider fans. And Avaya Stadium is far from any crime issues. Don't antagonize anyone, and you'll be fine.

If you want to go out for a postgame meal or drinks, In-N-Out Burger, MOD Pizza and Smart Cookies are all just to the east of the stadium. Lillie Mae's House of Soul Food is just up the block at 1290 Coleman Avenue (albeit with a Santa Clara address, not San Jose).

There are three bars in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco that are worth mentioning. Aces, at 998 Sutter Street & Hyde Street in San Francisco's Lower Nob Hill neighborhood, is said to have a Yankee sign out front and a Yankee Fan as the main bartender. It's also the home port of Mets, NFL Giants, Knicks and Rangers fans in the Bay Area.

R Bar, at 1176 Sutter & Polk Street, is the local Jets fan hangout. And Greens Sports Bar, at 2239 Polk at Green Street, is also said to be a Yankee-friendly bar. Of course, you'll have to get back to San Francisco to get there.

A recent Thrillist article on the best sports bars in every State named as California's the Kezar Pub, at 770 Stanyan Street, opposite the new Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park. Number 7 bus.

Lefty O'Doul's, named for the legendary ballplayer who was the longtime manager of the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals, was at 333 Geary Street, corner of Powell Street, just 3 blocks from the Powell Street BART station and right on a cable car line. But a dispute between the operators of the restaurant and the owners of the building meant that it closed on February 3, 2017. 

On June 7, 2018, the last operator, Nick Bovis, announced a deal for a new Lefty O'Doul's, to open at Fisherman's Wharf, at 145 Jefferson Street. Light Rail E or F to Jefferseon & Powell.

As soccer fans, you may also be fans of a European team. If you visit the Bay Area during the season, which we are now in, here's where you would go -- all of these being in San Francisco proper unless otherwise stated, and the buses in question leaving from downtown San Francisco:

* Arsenal and Manchester City: Maggie McGarry's, 1353 Grant Avenue. Bus 30. Arsenal also meets at Jack's Bar and Lounge, 167 East Taylor Street, San Jose. Trolley 901 from downtown.

* Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain: The aforementioned Kezar Pub, 777 Stanyan Street. Bus 7.

* Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and Eintracht Frankfurt: Danny Coyle's, 668 Haight Street. MUNI N Line or Bus 6.

* Chelsea: Nickie's, 466 Haight Street. MUNI N Line or Bus 6.

* Newcastle United: The Mad Dog in the Fog, 530 Haight Street. MUNI N Line or Bus 6. The Mad Dog, Nickie's and Danny Coyle's are all within 2 blocks of each other. The Mad Dog and the Kezar Pub are owned by the same people.

* Everton and Crystal Palace: McTeague's Saloon, 1237 Polk Street. Bus 3.

* Celtic: The main Celtic Supporters' Group meets at Fiddler's Green, 333 El Camino Real, Millbrae. BART from San Francisco, or commuter rail from San Jose, to Millbrae (same station). This bar is also a known Liverpool pub. Also known to host Celtic fans is the Abbey Tavern, 4100 Geary Blvd., about halfway between the Presidio to the north and Golden Gate Park to the south. Bus 38.

* Real Madrid: The Chieftain, 198 5th Street. BART to Powell Street.

* Barcelona: South Beach Cafe, 800 The Embarcadero, near AT&T Park. MUNI N Line.

If you don't see your club listed, most likely, you can find it at one of the top 4 above: Maggie McGarry's, Kezar Pub, the Mad Dog or Danny Coyle's.

Sidelights. The San Francisco Bay Area, including the South Bay (which includes San Jose), has a very rich sports history.

UPDATE: On November 30, 2018, Thrillist published a list of "America's 25 Most Fun Cities," and, as you might expect from the nation's 4th largest metropolitan area, the San Francisco Bay Area came in 4th.

Here are some of the highlights:

* SAP Center. Named the San Jose Arena from its 1993 opening until 2001, the Compaq Center at San Jose until 2002, and the HP Pavilion at San Jose until 2013, the SAP Center at San Jose, a.k.a. the Shark Tank, is easily identifiable by its triangular, "shark-toothed" roof.
The arena also hosts the San Jose Barracuda of the American Hockey League. The Golden State Warriors played the 1996-97 season there, while their arena at the Oakland Coliseum complex, now named the Oracle Arena, was being renovated. The San Jose SaberCats of the Arena Football League played there, making the Playoffs 16 times, winning 10 Division titles and 4 ArenaBowls: 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2015. And yet, despite being the current holders of the league title, the SaberCats have suspended operations.

In the entire world, only Madison Square Garden, the Manchester Evening News Arena in England, and the Air Canada Centre in Toronto are stadiums or arenas that sell more tickets to non-sporting events, including concerts and wrestling.

If you're a fan of the TV show The West Wing, this was the convention center where the ticket of Matt Santos and Leo McGarry was nominated. The official address is 525 W. Santa Clara Street, and it's right downtown. From San Francisco, ACE to San Jose Diridon Station.

* AT&T Park. Home of the Giants since 2000, it has been better for them than Candlestick -- aesthetically, competitively, financially, you name it. Winning 3 World Series since it opened, it's been home to The Freak (Tim Lincecum) and The Steroid Freak (Barry Bonds).

It's hosted some college football games, and a February 10, 2006 win by the U.S. soccer team over Japan. 24 Willie Mays Plaza, at 3rd & King Streets downtown.

UPDATE: In 2019, it was renamed Oracle Park.

* Oakland Coliseum complex. This includes the stadium that opened on September 18, 1966, and has been home to the A's since 1968 and to the NFL's Oakland Raiders from 1966 to 1981 and again since 1995; and the Oracle Arena, a somewhat-renovated version of the Oakland Coliseum Arena, home to the NBA's Golden State Warriors on and off since 1966, and continuously since 1971 except for a one-year hiatus in San Jose while it was being renovated, 1996-97.

The Oakland Clippers, the only champions the National Professional Soccer League would know, played at the Coliseum in 1967 and 1968, beating the Baltimore Bays 4-1 in the 2nd leg of the 1967 NPSL Final to win 4-2 on aggregate, before the NPSL merged with the North American Soccer League the next year. The Bay Area's former NHL team, the Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals, played at the arena from 1967 to 1976.

The Oakland Coliseum Arena opened on November 9, 1966, and became home to the Warriors in 1971 -- at which point they changed their name from "San Francisco Warriors" to "Golden State Warriors," as if representing the entire State of California had enabled the "California Angels" to take Los Angeles away from the Dodgers, and it didn't take L.A. away from the Lakers, either.

The arena also hosted the Oakland Oaks, who won the American Basketball Association title in 1969; the Oakland Seals, later the California Golden Seals (didn't work for them, either), from 1967 to 1976; the Golden Bay Earthquakes of the Major Indoor Soccer League; and select basketball games for the University of California from 1966 to 1999. It's also been a major concert venue, and hosted the Bay Area's own, the Grateful Dead, more times than any other building: 66. Elvis Presley sang at the Coliseum Arena on November 10, 1970 and November 11, 1972.

In 1996-97, the arena was gutted to expand it from 15,000 to 19,000 seats. (The Warriors spent that season in San Jose.) This transformed it from a 1960s arena that was too small by the 1990s into one that was ready for an early 21st Century sports crowd. It was renamed The Arena in Oakland in 1997 and the Oracle Arena in 2005.

The Warriors plan to move into a new arena in San Francisco, the Chase Center, for the 2019-20 season. They will keep the "Golden State" name.

(UPDATE: On November 28, 2018, the A's announced that they'd chosen the Howard Terminal as the site for a 34,000-seat ballpark, which, presuming they clear all the necessary permissions, and come up with all the funding themselves as they say they will -- no government money and therefore no taxes -- they can begin construction in time to open for the 2023 season. 1 Market Street, 3 blocks west of the Clay Street Ferry Terminal, 5 blocks west of Jack London Square, and 8 blocks south of downtown. From Oakland City Center: Bus 72 to Jack London Square. By BART: Lake Merritt Station, then Bus 62 or 72 to 7th & Market, then 8 blocks south.)

* Seals Stadium. Home of the PCL's San Francisco Seals from 1931 to 1957, the Mission Reds from 1931 to 1937, and the Giants in 1958 and '59, it was the first home professional field of the DiMaggio brothers: First Vince, then Joe, and finally Dom all played for the Seals in the 1930s.

The Seals won Pennants there in 1931, '35, '43, '44, '45, '46 and '57 (their last season). It seated just 18,500, expanded to 22,900 for the Giants, and was never going to be more than a stopgap facility until the Giants' larger park could be built. It was demolished right after the 1959 season, and the site now has a Safeway grocery store.

Bryant Street, 16th Street, Potrero Avenue and Alameda Street, in the Mission District. Hard to reach by public transport: The Number 10 bus goes down Townsend Street and Rhode Island Avenue until reaching 16th, but then it's an 8-block walk. The Number 27 can be picked up at 5th & Harrison Streets, and will go right there.

* Candlestick Park. Home of the Giants from 1960 to 1999, the NFL 49ers since 1970, and the Raiders in the 1961 season, this may be the most-maligned sports facility in North American history. Its seaside location (Candlestick Point) has led to spectators being stricken by wind (a.k.a. The Hawk), cold, and even fog.

It was open to the Bay until 1971, including the 1962 World Series between the Yankees and the Giants, and was then enclosed to expand it from 42,000 to 69,000 seats for the Niners. It also got artificial turf for the 1970 season, one of the 1st stadiums to have it – though, to the city's credit, it was also the 1st NFL stadium and the 2nd MLB stadium (after Comiskey Park in Chicago) to switch back to real grass.

It is easily the most-hated venue in the history of North American sports. But its finest hour came on October 17, 1989, just before Game 3 of the World Series, when the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck. Over 60,000 people were inside the stadium, and they all got out okay, because the stadium's reinforced concrete held, with only minor damage.

The Giants only won 2 Pennants there, and never a World Series. But the 49ers won 5 Super Bowls while playing there, with 3 of their 6 NFC Championship Games won as the home team. The NFL Giants did beat the 49ers there in the 1990 NFC Championship Game, scoring no touchdowns but winning 15-13 thanks to 5 Matt Bahr field goals. ABC and ESPN hosted Monday Night Football at Candlestick 36 times, the most of any stadium.
The Beatles played their last "real concert" ever at the 'Stick on August 29, 1966 – only 25,000 people came out, a total probably driven down by the stadium's reputation and John Lennon's comments about religion on that tour. The Giants got out, and the 49ers have now done the same, with Levi's Stadium ready for the 2014 season.

The U.S. national soccer team played their 4th and final match there in 2014, a win over Azerbaijan. MLS' San Jose Earthquakes are scheduled to do so on July 27, which ended up being the last competitive sporting event held there. On July 12, nearly 30 years after their Super Bowl XIX matchup, legendary quarterbacks Joe Montana of the 49ers and Dan Marino of the Miami Dolphins led teams in a flag football game there, with the proceeds going to charity. And Paul McCartney, having played its 1st concert with the Beatles 48 years earlier, played its last concert on August 14, the last scheduled show before the place was demolished.

A plan to build retail and housing units on the site has stalled, and it remains vacant. Ironically, since it replaced the original Kezar Stadium, 5,000 of Candlestick's seats went to the new Kezar.

The best way by public transport isn't a good one: The KT light rail at 4th & King Streets, at the CalTrain terminal, to 3rd & Gilman Streets, and then it's almost a mile's walk down Jagerson Avenue. So unless you're driving/renting a car, or you're a sports history buff who has to see the place, I wouldn't blame you if you crossed it off the list.

In spite of the Raiders' return, the 49ers are more popular -- according to a 2014 Atlantic Monthly
article, even in Alameda County. This is also true for the Giants, more popular in Alameda County than the A's. The Raiders remain more popular in the Los Angeles area, a holdover from their 1982-94 layover, and also a consequence of L.A. not having had a team since, although that has since changed.

* Kezar Stadium. The 49ers played here from their 1946 founding until 1970, the Raiders spent their inaugural 1960 season here, and previous pro teams in the city also played at this facility at the southeastern corner of Golden Gate Park, a mere 10-minute walk from the fabled corner of Haight & Ashbury Streets.

High school football, including the annual City Championship played on Thanksgiving Day, used to be held here as well. Bob St. Clair, who played there in high school, college (University of San Francisco) and the NFL in a Hall of Fame career with the 49ers, has compared it to Chicago's Wrigley Field as a "neighborhood stadium."

After the 49ers left, it became a major concert venue. Rocky Marciano defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World there on May 16, 1955, knocking British fighter Don Cockell out in the 9th round.

The original 60,000-seat structure was built in 1925, and was torn down in 1989 (a few months before the earthquake, so there's no way to know what the quake would have done to it), and was replaced in 1990 with a 9,000-seat stadium, much more suitable for high school sports. The original Kezar, named for one of the city's pioneering families, had a cameo in the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry. Frederick & Stanyan Streets, Kezar Drive and Arguello Blvd. MUNI light rail N train.

* Emeryville Park. Also known as Oaks Park, this was the home of the Pacific Coast League's Oakland Oaks from 1913 until 1955. The Oaks won Pennants there in 1927, '48, '50 and '54.

Most notable of these was the 1948 Pennant, won by a group of players who had nearly all played in the majors and were considered old, and were known as the Nine Old Men (a name often given to the U.S. Supreme Court). These old men included former Yankee 1st baseman Nick Etten, the previous year's World Series hero Cookie Lavagetto of the Brooklyn Dodgers (an Oakland native), Hall of Fame catcher Ernie Lombardi (another Oakland native), and one very young player, a 20-year-old 2nd baseman from Berkeley named Billy Martin. Their manager? Casey Stengel. Impressed by Casey's feat of managing the Nine Old Men to a Pennant in a league that was pretty much major league quality, and by his previously having managed the minor-league version of the Milwaukee Brewers to an American Association Pennant, Yankee owners Dan Topping and Del Webb hired Casey to manage in 1949. Casey told Billy that if he ever got the chance to bring him east, he would, and he was as good as his word.

Pixar Studios has built property on the site. 45th Street, San Pablo Avenue, Park Avenue and Watts Street, Emeryville, near the Amtrak station. Number 72 bus from Jack London Square.

* Frank Youell Field. This was another stopgap facility, used by the Raiders from 1962 to 1965, a 22,000-seat stadium that was named after an Oakland undertaker – perhaps fitting, although the Raiders didn't yet have that image. Interestingly from a New York perspective, the first game here was between the Raiders and the forerunners of the Jets, the New York Titans.

It was demolished in 1969. A new field of the same name was built on the site for Laney College. East 8th Street, 5th Avenue, East 10th Street and the Oakland Estuary. Lake Merritt BART station.

* Cow Palace. The more familiar name of the Grand National Livestock Pavilion, this big barn just south of the City Line in Daly City has hosted just about everything, from livestock shows and rodeos to the 1956 and 1964 Republican National Conventions. (Yes, the Republicans came here, not the "hippie" Democrats.)
The '64 Convention is where New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller refused to be booed off the podium when he dared to speak out against the John Birch Society – the Tea Party idiots of their time – and when Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was nominated, telling them, "I would remind you, my fellow Republicans, that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And I would remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." (Personally, I think that extremism in the defense of liberty is no defense of liberty.)

Built in 1941, it is one of the oldest remaining former NBA and NHL sites, having hosted the NBA's Warriors (then calling themselves the San Francisco Warriors) from 1962 to 1971, the NHL's San Jose Sharks from their 1991 debut until their current arena could open in 1993, and several minor-league hockey teams. It hosted 1 fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, with Ezzard Charles defending the title by beating Pat Valentino on October 14, 1949.
A Sharks game at the Cow Palace

The 1960 NCAA Final Four was held here, culminating in Ohio State, led by Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek (with future coaching legend Bobby Knight as the 6th man) beating local heroes and defending National Champions California, led by Darrall Imhoff.

The Beatles played here on August 19, 1964 and August 31, 1965, and Elvis Presley sang here on November 13, 1970 and November 28 & 29, 1976. It was the site of Neil Young's 1978 concert that produced the live album Live Rust and the concert film Rust Never Sleeps, and the 1986 Conspiracy of Hope benefit with Joan Baez, Lou Reed, Sting and U2. The acoustics of the place, and the loss of such legendary venues as the Fillmore West and the Winterland Ballroom, make it the Bay Area's holiest active rock and roll site. 2600 Geneva Avenue at Santos Street, in Daly City. 8X bus.

In addition to the preceding, Elvis sang at the Auditorium Arena (now the Kaiser Convention Center, near the Laney College campus in Oakland) early in his career, on June 3, 1956 and again on October 27, 1957; and the San Francisco Civic Auditorium (now the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, 99 Grove Street at Polk Street) on October 26, 1957.

While Fresno is nearly 200 miles southeast, it's closer to San Jose than it is to Los Angeles. Elvis sang at Fresno's Selland Arena on April 25, 1973 and May 12, 1974. 700 M Street at Ventura Street.

* Levi's Stadium. The new home of the 49ers, whose naming rights were bought by the San Francisco-based clothing company that popularized blue jeans all over the world, is about to open at 4701 Great America Parkway at Old Glory Lane in Santa Clara, next to California's Great America park, outside San Jose. ACE (Altamont Commuter Express) to Great America-Santa Clara.

The Sharks lost to their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Kings, in an NHL Stadium Series outdoor hockey game there on February 21, 2015. On February 7, 2016, it hosted Super Bowl L, and the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers. The U.S. soccer team lost a Copa America game there to Colombia on June 3, 2016. It will host the National Championship game for the 2018-19 college football season. It has been selected by the U.S. Soccer Federation as a finalist to be one of the host venues for the 2026 World Cup.
* Previous Earthquakes Stadiums. The current team is actually the 3rd version of the San Jose Earthquakes. The 1st one played in the original North American Soccer League from 1974 to 1984, at Spartan Stadium.

This has been home to San Jose State University sports since 1933, it hosted both the old Earthquakes, of the original North American Soccer League, from 1974 to 1984. It was a neutral site hosting Soccer Bowl '75, in which the Tampa Bay Rowdies beat the Portland Timbers 2-0.

It was home to the San Jose CyberRays of the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA). It's hosted 3 games of the U.S. national team, most recently a 2007 loss to China. It also hosted games of the 1999 Women's World Cup. Brandi Chastain, who scored the deciding penalty in that game, is from San Jose and also played for the CyberRays.
Spartan Stadium, San Jose

1251 S. 10th Street, San Jose. San Jose Municipal Stadium, home of the Triple-A San Jose Giants, is a block away at 588 E. Alma Avenue. From either downtown San Francisco or downtown Oakland, take BART to Fremont terminal, then 181 bus to 2nd & Santa Clara, then 68 bus to Monterey & Alma.

UPDATE: On November 19, 2018, Moneywise compiled a list of their Worst College Football Stadiums, the bottom 19 percent of college football, 25 out of 129. Spartan Stadium, now named CEFCU Stadium, came in 5th: The article called the New Deal era stadium "tired," and cited bad concessions and the fact that the field was Astroturf, the original artificial turf that has proven so dangerous, and not a more modern, safer synthetic grass like FieldTurf.

San Jose State was also the alma mater of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the Gold and Bronze Medalists in the 200 meters at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, who then gave their glove-fisted salute for civil rights (most people still don't understand that it wasn't a "Black Power" salute) on the medal platform, to short-term anger and long-term praise.

In 2005, SJSU dedicated a statue commemorating the occasion, with the Silver Medal part of the platform, where Australian runner Peter Norman would have stood, empty so people can pose with the Smith and Carlos figures. Outside Clark Hall, where 6th and San Antonio Streets would have met.
Smith and Carlos at their statue

The 2nd version of the Quakes played at Spartan Stadium from 1996 to 2005, but ran into financial trouble, and got moved to become the Houston Dynamo. The 3rd version was started in 2008, and until 2014 played at Buck Shaw Stadium, now called Stevens Stadium, in Santa Clara, on the campus of Santa Clara University. Also accessible by the Santa Clara ACE station.
Buck Shaw/Stevens Stadium

Despite all its contributions to women's soccer, the Bay Area no longer has a professional women's team. The San Jose CyberRays of the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), captained by 1999 penalty hero Brandi Chastain, played at Spartan Stadium from 2001 to 2003, winning the 2001 league title.

FC Gold Pride won the 2010 title in the league named Women's Professional Soccer (WPS), but couldn't sustain itself financially, and folded immediately thereafter. Pioneer Stadium, Hayward. 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd., on the campus of California State University-East Bay, in Hayward. About 28 miles from San Francisco, 19 from Oakland, 28 from San Jose. BART to Hayward, then Bus 60.

* Stanford Stadium. This is the home field of Stanford University in Palo Alto, down the Peninsula from San Francisco. Originally built in 1921, it was home to many great quarterbacks, from early 49ers signal-caller Frankie Albert to 1971 Heisman winner Jim Plunkett to John Elway. It hosted Super Bowl XIX in 1985, won by the 49ers over the Miami Dolphins – 1 of only 2 Super Bowls that ended up having had a team that could have been called a home team. (The other was XIV, the Los Angeles Rams losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Rose Bowl.)
Old Stanford Stadium

It also hosted San Francisco's games of the 1994 World Cup, a match of the 1999 Women's World Cup, and the soccer games of the 1984 Olympics, even though most of the events of those Olympics were down the coast in Los Angeles. It hosted 10 games by the U.S. national team, totaling 4 wins, 2 losses, 2 draws.

The original 85,000-seat structure was demolished and replaced with a new 50,000-seat stadium in 2006. Arboretum Road & Galvez Street. Caltrain to Palo Alto, 36 miles from downtown Oakland, 35 from downtown San Francisco, 19 from downtown San Jose.
New Stanford Stadium

* California Memorial Stadium. Home of Stanford's arch-rivals, the University of California, at its main campus in Berkeley in the East Bay. (The school is generally known as "Cal" for sports, and "Berkeley" for most other purposes.) Its location in the Berkeley Hills makes it one of the nicest settings in college football. But it's also, quite literally, on the Hayward Fault, a branch of the San Andreas Fault, so if "The Big One" had hit during a Cal home game, 72,000 people would have been screwed. With this in mind, the University renovated the stadium, making it safer and ready for 63,000 fans in 2012. So, like their arch-rivals Stanford, they now have a new stadium on the site of the old one.

The old stadium hosted 1 NFL game, and it was a very notable one: Due to a scheduling conflict with the A's, the Raiders played a 1973 game there with the Miami Dolphins, and ended the Dolphins' winning streak that included the entire 1972 season and Super Bowl VII. 76 Canyon Road, Berkeley. Downtown Berkeley stop on BART; 5 1/2 miles from downtown Oakland, 14 from downtown San Francisco, 48 from downtown San Jose.

* Chase Center. The new home of the Warriors is expected to open for the 2019-20 season -- that is, next year. It will seat 18,064, and be located off the Central Basin of San Francisco Bay, on land bordered by South Street, 3rd Street (north-south), 16th Street (east-west) and Terry A. Francois Blvd., across from the campus of the University of California at San Francisco, and 8 blocks south of the Giants' AT&T Park. Light Rail K or T to UCSF/Mission Bay.

* Mechanic's Pavilion. Knowing that the drying up of the Gold Rush had put many of the original "Forty-Niners" out of work, with no educational background to support them, a group of charitable San Franciscans opened the Mechanics' Institute in 1854. It offered classes in woodworking, mechanical drawing, industrial design, electrical science, applied mathematics and ironwork. It is often said to be the predecessor of the University of California system.

In 1865, the adjoining Mechanic's Pavilion was built, hosting several major events, including a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt on his 1902 tour of the country.

This also included 4 fights for the Heavyweight Championship of the World, each time with a Californian defending the title: "Gentleman Jim" Corbett against Tom Sharkey on June 24, 1896 (a draw, thus allowing Corbett to retain the title); Jim Jeffries against Gus Ruhlin on November 15, 1901; Jeffries against Corbett on August 14, 1903 (the 10th-round knockout turning out to be Corbett's last fight); and Jeffries against Jack Munroe on August 26, 1904 (after which Jeffries retired, only to return and get clobbered by Jack Johnson in Reno in 1910).

The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed Mechanic's Pavilion, but the men running the Mechanics' Institute kept it going and helped with the rebuilding of the city. Today, membership in the Institute is still open to the pubic, offering the full services of the library, and to the chess room, home of the oldest continuously operating chess club in the Western Hemisphere. 57 Post Street, off Kearny Street, downtown.

Yankee Legend Joe DiMaggio, who grew up in San Francisco and later divided his time between there and South Florida, is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, on the Peninsula. 1500 Mission Road & Lawndale Blvd. BART to South San Francisco, then about a 1-mile walk.

The Fillmore Auditorium was at Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, and it still stands and hosts live music. Bus 38L. Winterland Ballroom, home of the final concerts of The Band (filmed as The Last Waltz) and the Sex Pistols, was around the corner from the Fillmore at Post & Steiner Streets. And the legendary corner of Haight & Ashbury Streets can be reached via the 30 Bus, taking it to Haight and Masonic Avenue and walking 1 block west.

San Francisco, like New York, has a Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), at 151 3rd Street, downtown. The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is probably the city's most famous museum, in Lincoln Park at the northwestern corner of the city, near the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge. (Any of you who are Trekkies, the Presidio is a now-closed military base that, in the Star Trek Universe, is the seat of Starfleet Command and Starfleet Academy.) And don't forget to take a ride on one of them cable cars I've been hearing so dang much about.

Oakland isn't much of a museum city, especially compared with San Francisco across the Bay. But the Oakland Museum of California (10th & Oak, Lake Merritt BART) and the Chabot Space & Science Center (10000 Skyline Blvd., not accessible by BART) may be worth a look.

The San Jose Museum of Art is at 110 S. Market Street. The Tech Museum of Innovation, something you might expect to see in the capital of Silicon Valley, is a block away at 201 S. Market. Both are downtown.

The tallest building in Northern California is the new Salesforce Tower, downtown, at 415 Mission Street, rising 1,070 feet. Another new skyscraper, slightly higher, recently opened in Los Angeles, slightly higher, so the Salesforce Tower isn't the tallest building in California, much less the American West. But, in San Francisco, it did supersede the iconic Transamerica Pyramid, 853 feet high, opening in 1972 at 600 Montgomery Street, also downtown.

Unlike its anchor to the north, San Jose isn't a big skyscraper city. Its tallest building is "The 88," at 88 San Fernando Street, just 286 feet high.

No President has ever been born, or has ever grown up, in the San Francisco Bay Area. But Herbert Hoover, 1929-33, was part of the 1st class at Stanford, from 1891 to 1895, and he and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, maintained a home there from 1920 until her death in 1944, at which point he moved to the Waldorf Towers in New York. The house is now the official residence of the president -- of Stanford. It is not open to the public. 623 Mirada Avenue, across the campus from the stadium.

Stanford runs a think tank named for the 31st President, the Hoover Insitution, and exhibits inside the Hoover Tower on campus. 550 Serra Mall.

Earl Warren, then Governor, was nominated for Vice President by the Republicans in 1948, before becoming Chief Justice of the United States, but, while he went to Berkeley and lived in Oakland, he grew up in Bakersfield. Pat Brown, whom Warren crossed party lines to support for San Francisco District Attorney, was elected to 3 terms as Governor, but his 1960 Presidential bid fizzled. His son Jerry was both the youngest (1975-82, 36) and the oldest (2011-present, almost 78) Governor in the State's history, but his 1976, '80 and '92 Presidential runs also went nowhere. And no Bay Area politician has even gotten that close since.

As I said earlier, the Republicans had their 1956 and 1964 Conventions at the Cow Palace, nominating Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully and Barry Goldwater unsuccessfully, respectively, for President. The Democrats had their 1920 Convention at the aforementioned Civic Auditorium, nominating Governor Jim Cox of Ohio, who lost to Warren Harding in a massive landslide. They returned in 1984, to the Moscone Convention Center, named for Mayor George Moscone, elected in 1975 assassinated in 1978, along with Supervisor Harvey Milk. 747 Howard Street, downtown.

The Palace of Fine Arts isn't just an art museum, it has a theater that hosted one of the 1976 Presidential Debates between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter -- the one where Ford said, "There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe." 3301 Lyon Street. Bus 30.

While San Francisco has been the setting for lots of TV shows (from Ironside and The Streets of San Francisco in the 1970s, to Full House and Dharma & Greg in the 1990s), Oakland, being much less glamorous, has had only one that I know of: Hangin' With Mr. Cooper, comedian Mark Curry's show about a former basketball player who returns to his old high school to teach. The 2010-15 NBC series Parenthood, loosely based on the 1989 film of the same name, was set in Berkeley. And San Jose hasn't had even that much.

In contrast, lots of movies have been shot in Oakland, including a pair of baseball-themed movies shot at the Coliseum: Moneyball, based on Michael Lewis' book about the early 2000s A's, with Brad Pitt as general manager Billy Beane; and the 1994 remake of Angels In the Outfield, filmed there because a recent earthquake had damaged the real-life Angels' Anaheim Stadium, and it couldn't be repaired in time for filming.

Movies set in San Francisco often take advantage of the city's topography, and include the Dirty Harry series, Bullitt (based on the same real-life cop, Dave Toschi); The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart; Woody Allen's Bogart tribute, Play It Again, Sam; The Lady from Shanghai, the original version of D.O.A.48 Hrs., and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home -- with the aircraft carrier USS Ranger, at the Alameda naval base, standing in for the carrier Enterprise, which was then away at sea.

The Fan, about a fan's obsession with a Giants player, filmed at Candlestick Park. So did Experiment In Terror, Freebie and the Bean, and Contagion.

The 1936 film San Francisco takes place around the earthquake and fire that devastated the city in 1906. And Milk starred Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, America's 1st openly gay successful politician, elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977 before being assassinated with Mayor George Moscone the next year.

Movies set in San Francisco often have scenes filmed there and in Oakland, including Pal Joey, Mahogany, Basic Instinct, the James Bond film A View to a Kill, and Mrs. Doubtfire, starring San Francisco native Robin Williams.

In contrast, San Jose has not yet been a major location for TV shows and movies. Alfred Hitchcock filmed Vertigo and The Birds in and around San Francisco, but did go to San Jose's Diridon Station to film the Connecticut-based train scene for his 1964 film Marnie.

For legal reasons, the CBS medical drama Trapper John, M.D., starring former Bonanza star Pernell Roberts as Dr. John McIntyre, was said to be a sequel to the film version of M*A*S*H, where Trapper was played by Elliott Gould, not the TV show, where he was played by Wayne Rogers. Thus we have the oddity of Trapper working in a hospital in San Francisco, the hometown (well, the neighboring suburb of Mill Valley, in Marin County, was) of the man who replaced him at the 4077th MASH, B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell).

Wayne Rogers did play a doctor in a series set in San Francisco, after leaving M*A*S*H, starring with Lynn Redgrave in the 1979-82 sitcom House Calls, set it what was then the present day. Other series set in San Francisco include (separated by category, then by chronological order) the police dramas Ironside, The Streets of San Francisco, McMillan and Wife, Hooperman, Nash Bridges and Monk; the sci-fi/fantasy shows Sliders and Charmed; the family drama Party of Five; and the sitcoms Phyllis, Too Close for Comfort, My Sister Sam, Suddenly Susan, Dhrama & Greg, and Disney's That's So Raven.

The 1957-63 CBS Western Have Gun - Will Travel established the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco as the base of operations for the man known only as Paladin (Richard Boone). Today, there is a hotel by that name in the city, at 1075 Sutter Street in the Nob Hill section.

*

So, if you can afford it, go on out and join your fellow Red Bulls fans in going coast-to-coast, and take on the San Jose Earthquakes. Just be nice to your hosts, and (if you're also a Devils fan) hope that ex-Devils coach Peter DeBoer, now coaching the Sharks, doesn't come of, and you should be all right.

September 30, 1978: Veinte Para Figgy

September 30, 1978, 40 years ago: Ed Figueroa becomes the 1st pitcher born in Puerto Rico to win 20 games in a season, pitching a 5-hit shutout. The Yankees knock Cleveland starter Mike Paxton out of the box before he can get an out, and Rick Wise pitches the rest of the way, with Reggie Jackson homering off him in the 5th inning. (Mr. October was pretty good in September, too.) Given the boost, Figgy cruises to a 7-0 victory at Yankee Stadium.

The next day is the last day of the regular season. All the Yankees need to do is beat the Indians again, or have the Boston Red Sox lose to the Toronto Blue Jays at Fenway Park, and the Yankees will win their 3rd straight American League Eastern Division title.

They didn't get the win, and they didn't get the Boston loss. It would go to a Playoff at Fenway. Well, we know how that story ends, don't we?

Figueroa was just short of his 30th birthday. In a major league career that lasted from 1974 to 1981, and also included playing for the California Angels, the Texas Rangers and the Oakland Athletics, he went 80-67. He had almost pulled off the feat in his 1st season with the Yankees, 1976, going 19-10 but he did help the Yankees win the Pennant. In 1977, he went 16-11, helping the Yankees win the World Series. He finished the 1978 season 20-9, going 13-2 down the stretch, and a World Champion again.

Injuries struck him, and he was traded. As he did with the '77 Yanks, he helped Billy Martin reach the Playoffs with the '81 A's, but injury prevented him from pitching in the AL Championship Series -- against the Yankees, who won.

Today, almost 70, he owns a pair of restaurants, one in Old San Juan, and one near San Juan's Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. He remains the only Puerto Rican-born pitcher to win 20 games in a season. The only one to win twenty -- or veinte. That's got less to do with Puerto Ricans than with the major leagues' switch from the 4-man rotation common in his time to the 5-man rotation in the early 1990s.

*

September 30, 1399: Having deposed King Richard II, his 1st cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby and Northampton, Duke of Hereford and Duke of Lancaster, is proclaimed Henry IV, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland.

Whether King Richard II should have been deposed -- and killed a year later -- is a separate debate. But the rise of King Henry IV set in motion what would become England's Wars of the Roses, between 2 branches of the House of Plantagenet: The House of Lancaster, whose symbol was a red rose; and the House of York, whose symbol was a white rose.

These 2 families, each representing one of England's historic counties, would fight on and off between 1455 and 1485, until King Richard III was killed in battle, ending the Yorkists' reign, and Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond and a direct descendant of King Edward III (grandfather of Richard II and Henry IV), was proclaimed King Henry VII, and reunited the houses by marrying Princess Elizabeth of York, daughter of Richard's brother, King Edward IV.

What does this have to do with sports? Well, Lancaster and York still harbor deep resentments toward each other, over 600 years since the start of the conflict and over 500 years since the Wars of the Roses. In sports, this is most evidence in soccer rivalries. Manchester United, now in the separate "metropolitan county" of Greater Manchester but formerly in Lancaster (as was Liverpool, now in the metropolitan county of Merseyside), developed a rather nasty rivalry with the biggest team in Yorkshire, Leeds United.

Even the roses live on in soccer: Leeds United have a white rose in their crest, while Blackburn Rovers, one of the larger Lancashire clubs, have a red rose in theirs.

September 30, 1833: Matthew Stanley Quay is born in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, outside York. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1863. The rest of his life was considerably less heroic.

He became a part of Pennsylvania's corrupt Republican Party machine, and served as Secretary of the Commonwealth from 1873 to 1882, State Treasurer from 1886 to 1887, U.S. Senator from 1887 to 1899, and as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1888 to 1891, while serving in the Senate. (Then, as now, this was legal.)

This last post turned out to be key. In 1888, he became campaign manager to Republican Presidential nominee Benjamin Harrison. In the popular vote, the incumbent Democrat, President Grover Cleveland, came out slightly ahead. But the Electoral Vote went to Harrison, 233-168.

Harrison won his home State of Indiana by 2,348 votes, New Hampshire by 2,272, California by 7,087, and Quay's home State of Pennsylvania by 79,458 votes. Those close votes gained him 57 EVs, which could have swayed the election to Cleveland, 225-176. Pennsylvania alone would have made it 203-198, meaning 1 more State could have given Cleveland the win.

Harrison, a deeply religious man, said, "Providence has given us the victory." He wasn't talking about the capital of Rhode Island, another fairly closely-won State. Quay said, "He ought to know that Providence didn't have a damned thing to do with it!" In other words, as they had in 1876, and might have done in 1880, and would do again in 1968, 2000, 2004 and 2016, the Republicans stole it.

Having been accused of a separate scandal in 1899, Quay was not allowed to return to his Senate seat, and a special election was held. He won, and died in office in 1904, at age 70.

September 30, 1861: William L. Wrigley Jr. is born in Philadelphia. (I can find no reference to what the L stands for.) His father sold soap, but he didn't want to sell soap. In 1891, at 29, with $32 (about $800 in today's money), he moved to Chicago, and sold... soap. He managed to get his hands on some baking powder, and found it sold better than soap. In 1893, he began giving his customers 2 packages of chewing gum for each can of powder, and found that this was more popular still. Thus was born the Wrigley chewing gum empire.

By 1916, he was fabulously wealthy, and bought part-ownership of the Chicago Cubs. As the other owners' businesses failed, he bought them out, and by 1925, he was sole owner. That same year, for the Cubs' top farm team, the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League, he built a stadium that was a near-duplicate for Cubs Park. He named it Wrigley Field. He soon renamed Cubs Park "Wrigley Field" -- so L.A. had a Wrigley Field before Chicago had one, even though the Chicago park was older.

He developed Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of L.A., as a resort and a nature preserve. For a while, the Cubs had their Spring Training there. In 1924, he built the Wrigley Building, on North Michigan Avenue, overlooking the Chicago River. In 1931, he built the Wrigley Mansion and the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, leading him to move the Cubs' Spring Training to Phoenix. The Cubs have trained in the Phoenix area ever since, and William Wrigley is thus the founding father of Spring Training in Arizona, a.k.a. the Cactus League.

But he didn't enjoy his Mansion long, dying in 1932 at age 70. Under his ownership, the Cubs won Pennants in 1918 and 1929, but no World Series. His son, Philip K. Wrigley, owned the gum company and the Cubs until his death in 1977. His son, William Wrigley III, sold the Cubs to the Tribune Company in 1981. His son, William Wrigley Jr. II, a.k.a. Bill Wrigley, about to turn 55, is executive chairman of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, but is retired as CEO. The family no longer owns any piece of the Cubs.

September 30, 1878: The baseball season ends, and the National League has its 1st Triple Crown winner. Paul Hines, a center fielder for the Providence Grays, led the NL in batting average with .358, home runs with 4, and RBIs with 50.

He would be the next season's batting champion as well, and help the Grays win the 1879 Pennant. He retired with a .302 average, and died in 1935, at the age of 80.

September 30, 1899: Admiral George Dewey, the naval hero of the previous year's Spanish-American War for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines, becomes the recipient of one of New York City's earliest ticker-tape parades.

*

September 30, 1904: John Thomas Allen is born in Lenoir, North Carolina. A pitcher, he helped the Yankees win the World Series as a rookie in 1932. He was an All-Star with the Cleveland Indians in 1938, won another Pennant with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1941, and closed his career with the New York Giants in 1944. He pitched for the Giants in the "Tricornered Game" against the Yankees and the Dodgers to raise war bonds.

How good was he? Ask a couple of Hall-of-Famers: Al Simmons said Johnny Allen was the toughest pitcher he ever faced; and Hank Greenberg called him 1 of the top 5 he faced. He finished with a career record of 142-75. He died in 1959.

September 30, 1908, 110 years ago: Lewis Edward Hayman is born in Manhattan, and grows up in Paterson, Passaic County, New Jersey. Lew played football and basketball at Syracuse University, and kept going north, becoming head coach of the Toronto Argonauts, leading them to 4 Grey Cup wins: 1932, 1937, 1938 and 1942. He hired one of the CFL's earliest black players, Herb Trawick; and one of its earliest black assistant coaches, Green Bay Packer Hall-of-Famer Willie Wood.

In 1946, he became the general manager of one of the charter teams in the NBA, the Toronto Huskies, hosting the league's 1st game at Maple Leaf Gardens, losing to the Knicks. In 1949, he coached a 5th Grey Cup winner, the Montreal Alouettes. He later served as President of the CFL, and died in 1984, having lived long enough to see his election to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

September 30, 1917: Benjamin Hatskin (no middle name) is born in Winnipeg. One of the 1st Canadian students to win an athletic scholarship to an American university, he played football at the University of Oklahoma, and later for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, winning the Grey Cup in 1939 and 1941.

He also played junior hockey, and raised racehorses. He tried to get in on the NHL's expansions of 1967, 1970 and 1972, but was denied each time. So he followed the lead of Lamar Hunt, who founded the AFL when the NFL wouldn't let him buy in: He became one of the founders of the World Hockey Association, and signed the league's 1st star, Bobby Hull, naming his team the Winnipeg Jets after Hull's nickname, the Golden Jet.

The Jets reached the WHA Finals in their 1st season, and won the title in 1976, 1978 and 1979. The trophy for best goaltender, equivalent to the NHL's Vezina Trophy, was named the Ben Hatskin Trophy in his honor. But when the merger with the NHL came in 1979, he couldn't afford the entry fee, and sold the Jets, and lived until 1990. They hung on as long as they could with their small market, and moved to Arizona in 1996. In 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers became the new Winnipeg Jets.

He was elected to the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame, and when the World Hockey Association Hall of Fame was established in 2010, he was an inaugural inductee. But he is not in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. He should be.

Also on this day, Bernard Rich (no middle name) is born in Brooklyn. Buddy Rich has been called the greatest drummer who ever lived, having backed the "Big Bands" of Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Count Basie in the 1940s and '50s.

In 1981, he guest-starred on The Muppet Show, and Kermit the Frog called him "the world's greatest drummer." He had a drum battle with Animal, the drummer for the house band, Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem. Rich won. Animal knew it, but he didn't like it. Rich survived this, but died of cancer in 1987.

September 30, 1922: The University of Alabama defeats Marion Military Insitute of Marion, Alabama, in football, 110-0. It is the highest point total, and the highest margin of victory, in the long and glorious history of Crimson Tide football.

Also on this day, the Yankees clinch their 2nd American League Pennant, and their 2nd straight. They beat the Boston Red Sox 3-1 at Fenway Park, to eliminate the St. Louis Browns, who probably had their best team ever, a more talented one than the 1944 team that won the only Browns Pennant.

September 30, 1926: Robin Evan Roberts is born in Springfield, Illinois. He was the captain of the basketball team at Michigan State University in 1950, but it would be in baseball where he would make his mark. He was the biggest reason the Philadelphia Phillies' "Whiz Kids" won the 1950 National League Pennant.

He was a 7-time All-Star, and 7 times won 20 or more games, 6 seasons in a row. In 1952, he won 28 games, a feat not achieved by any major league pitcher since, with 1 exception: Denny McLain with 31 in 1968. His career record, despite pitching for some terrible Phillies teams, was 286-246.

He is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the team halls of fame of the Phillies and the Baltimore Orioles. Phillies fans elected him their greatest all-time player in a 1969 poll, and named him to their Centennial Team in 1983.

The Phillies made his Number 36 the 1st they ever retired, made him their 1st inductee into the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame (along with longtime Athletics owner and manager Connie Mack), and dedicated a statue of him outside Citizens Bank Park. A minor-league ballpark in Springfield is named Robin Roberts Stadium, and he is also in the Philadelphia Sports, Pennsylvania Sports and Michigan State University Athletics Halls of Fame.

He died in 2010, having lived to see their 1976-83 quasi-dynasty, the replacement of Connie Mack Stadium with Veterans Stadium, the replacement of The Vet with The Bank, the dedication of his statue, and their 2008 World Championship and 2009 Pennant.

He was also, sort of, the subject of this commercial, filmed at Veterans Stadium with the unrelated Leon "Bip" Roberts, and Hall-of-Famer Tony Gwynn.

He is not related to Robin René Roberts, the African-American ABC journalist who got her start doing sports on ESPN. She played basketball at Southeastern Louisiana University. Like Robin Evan (17), Robin René got her college basketball uniform number retired (21).


September 30, 1927: George Herman "Babe" Ruth hits a drive down the right field line at Yankee Stadium, off Tom Zachary of the Washington Senators. It is his 60th home run of the season, breaking the record of 59 that he set in 1921. The Yankees win the game 4-2. Herb Pennock is the winning pitcher, in relief of George Pipgras.


If you've ever seen film footage purporting to be from this game, it's not: There were no cameras, not even the newsreels. If you've ever heard a radio broadcast of it, that's also fake, a recreation: The Yankees didn't broadcast their games until 1939.


When the Sultan of Swat gets back to the dugout, he says, "Sixty! Count 'em, sixty! Let's see some other son of a bitch match that!"




Not until 1961 -- 34 years and 1 day later -- would another player match it. Roger Maris, also a right fielder for the Yankees, did, and surpassed it. Much is made of the small crowd when Maris hit Number 61, but when Ruth hit Number 60, only 8,000 showed up on a Saturday afternoon. It should be noted though that, in each case, the Yankees had already wrapped up the American League Pennant.


This game is notable for another reason: It was the last major league playing appearance for Walter Johnson, the Senators pitcher who would, like Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner and Christy Mathewson, be 1 of the 1st 5 players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Oddly, he did not appear as a pitcher, although he could have, had the Senators tied it and sent it to the bottom of the 9th: The Big Train pinch-hit for Zachary. He did not reach base.



Babe Ruth, baseball's greatest player;

and Walter Johnson, perhaps baseball's greatest pitcher.



No, I don't know why the Great Bambino and the Big Train are holding roosters in that photo. But at they seemed to be friends. That was not the case between Ruth and Cobb, although they came around later. Cobb and Johnson were great admirers of one another.



I once saw a photo of Cobb, in street clothes, talking with Mathewson in the Giants' dugout in the 1911 World Series. Later, they served together in the same Army unit in World War I. Despite a professional rivalry, Cobb and Wagner were friends. I know nothing of the relationships, if any, between Ruth and Mathewson, Ruth and Wagner, or Wagner and Mathewson.



I do know that, when the 1st Hall of Fame induction ceremony was held in 1939, Mathewson was already dead, and Cobb was delayed and didn't make it to the ceremony on time, but Ruth, Johnson and Wagner had no issue with posing together.



*



September 30, 1931: Angeline Brown (no middle name) is born in Kulm, North Dakota, and grows up in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, California. We know her as Angie Dickinson. Starting in 1956, she was one of the most glamorous actresses in the business, and, due to her work with Frank Sinatra and his pals in several films, she is often called the last surviving member of The Rat Pack.



In 1974, she began starring as Sergeant Leeann "Pepper" Anderson on Police Woman, making her the 1st woman to star in a cop show. She hasn't acted since 2009. For a time, she was married to songwriter Burt Bacharach.


It's been suggested that, if she ever wrote her memoirs, they would be the biggest-selling in history, because she is believed to have had affairs with both Sinatra and President John F. Kennedy. She has denied the fling with JFK.

September 30, 1932: John Joseph Podres is born in Witherbee, Essex County, New York. A 4-time All-Star, he shut the Yankees out in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series, giving the Brooklyn Dodgers their only World Championship before their move to Los Angeles. He was given the Babe Ruth Award as World Series Most Valuable Player, and Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year.

He led the NL in ERA in 1957, and also helped the Dodgers win the 1959, 1963 and 1965 World Series, and the 1966 National League Pennant. He was an original San Diego Padre in 1969, and closed his career that season, with a 148-116 regular-season record.

He married figure skater Joni Taylor, and was a longtime major league pitching coach, including with the 1993 National League Champion Philadelphia Phillies. He died in 2008, age 75.

September 30, 1934: The regular season ends, with the Yankees losing 5-3 to the Senators at Griffith Stadium in Washington, despite a home run from Lou Gehrig. Babe Ruth goes 0-for-3, and it turns out to be his last appearance for the Yankees.

The Yankees finish 2nd in the AL, 7 games behind the Detroit Tigers. This is in spite of having players winning both the batting and the pitching Triple Crown. Gehrig batted .363, with 49 home runs and 165 runs batted in. Lefty Gomez won 26 games (against just 5 losses, and no Yankee has matched those 26 wins since), had a 2.33 earned-run average, and struck out 158 batters. All of those figures led the League.

So why didn't the Yankees win the Pennant? Yes, the Tigers had a great team, but that didn't usually stop the Yankees between 1921 and 1964. Part of the problem was injuries. Center fielder Earle Combs hit his head on an unpadded outfield wall, played only 63 games, and was never the same. In addition, 3rd baseman Red Rolfe played only 89 games.

And while Gomez and Red Ruffing were, as usual, the best lefty-righty combo in AL pitching, there wasn't really a good 3rd starter, let alone a 4th. Between them, center fielder Myril Hoag, 3rd baseman Jack Saltzgaver, and starting pitchers Johnny Broaca, Johnny Allen and Johnny Murphy (usually the team's top reliever) were not, well, Johnny-on-the-spot.

Gehrig was the 1st Yankee to win the Triple Crown. Only one has done it since, as you'll see a little later.

Also on this day, Alan A'Court is born in Rainhill, Merseyside, England. A winger, he starred for hometown team Liverpool Football Club, but mostly during the 1950s, a down period for them. When they finally won the Football League in 1964, he had missed the entire season due to injury. He made just 1 appearance the next season, when they won the FA Cup, so he didn't get a winner's medal for that, either.

He played for England at the 1958 World Cup, and later managed Norwich City, Stoke City and Nantwich Town. He is still alive.

September 30, 1935: John Royce Mathis is born outside Dallas in Gilmer, Texas, and grows up in San Francisco. Johnny is one of the last surviving big singers of the 1950s, and also one of the last surviving singers of notable Christmas recordings.

September 30, 1936: Game 1 of the World Series. George Selkirk hits a home run, but that's the only run Carl Hubbell, in the middle of his 24-game regular-season winning streak, allows, as the New York Giants beat the Yankees 6-1 at the Polo Grounds. Dick Bartell homers for the Jints.

Also on this day: Wayne Harrison Walker is born in Boise, Idaho. A linebacker, his Number 55 was retired by the University of Idaho, and he made 3 Pro Bowls for the Detroit Lions. He died on May 19, 2017.

September 30, 1939: For the 1st time, a football game is broadcast on television. W2XBS, the RCA-owned station that will become WNBC-Channel 4, sets their cameras up at Triborough Stadium on Randall's Island in New York, and shows Fordham University, of The Bronx, beat Waynesburg University of Southwestern Pennsylvania, 34-7.

Triborough Stadium was renamed J.J. Downing Stadium in 1955, and hosted Negro League games, the New York Cosmos in 1974 and '75, and the New York Stars of the 1974 World Football League. The 22,000-seat horseshoe was demolished in 2002, and Icahn Stadium opened on the site 2 years later.

*

September 30, 1942: Game 1 of the World Series. Red Ruffing of the Yankees takes a no-hitter into the 8th inning against the St. Louis Cardinals, before Terry Moore breaks it up with 2 out. In the bottom of the 9th, the Cardinals score 4 runs, and then manage to load the bases, bringing Stan Musial -- then a rookie, a few years away from getting his nickname "Stan the Man," but already one of the game's top hitters -- to the plate as the winning run.

Yankee manager Joe McCarthy brings Spurgeon "Spud" Chandler in to relieve. He gets Musial to ground out. Final score: Yankees 7, Cardinals 4.

As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, 3 months away from being born, would later say, "There's always these omens in baseball." Going into that bottom of the 9th, the Yankees led 7-0. Over the rest of the Series, including that bottom of the 9th, the Cardinals outscored the Yankees 21-11.

September 30, 1943, 75 years ago: Marilyn McCoo (no middle name) is born in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey, and grows up in Los Angeles. The lead singer of vocal group The 5th Dimension, she has long been married to fellow group member Billy Davis Jr., and they still perform together. 

September 30, 1944: James Connolly Johnstone in born in Viewpark (now Uddingston), a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland. (James Connolly is a common name for Irishmen, for a martyr of the Easter Rising of 1916.) An outside right (a right winger in today's formations), Jimmy Johnstone, a.k.a. Jinky Johnstone, played for hometown soccer team Celtic from 1961 to 1975, winning 9 League titles and 4 Scottish Cups, and was voted the club's greatest player ever by its fans.

In 1967, he was the big star of their team that became the 1st British side to win the European Cup (the tournament now known as the UEFA Champions League), defeating Internazionale Milano at Lisbon, Portugal, earning the team the nickname the Lisbon Lions. Later that year, he played for the Scotland national team that beat World Cup holders England, leading Scottish fans to proclaim their team "World Champions." (Boxing works that way, but soccer does not.)

In 1975, he played for the original San Jose Earthquakes, in the original North American Soccer League. He died in 2006.

September 30, 1945: Hank Greenberg, recently discharged from the U.S. Army, hits a grand slam off Nelson Potter in the top of the 9th inning, and gives the Detroit Tigers a 6-3 win over the St. Louis Browns at Sportsman's Park, clinching the American League Pennant, which the Browns had won the previous season, for the only time in their history.

Also on this day, John Sissons (no middle name) is born in Hayes, Middlesex -- now a part of West London. A forward, he was a member of the West Ham United team that won the 1964 FA Cup (becoming the youngest player to score in an FA Cup Final at the old Wembley Stadium) and the 1965 European Cup Winners' Cup. He briefly played in America, helping the Tampa Bay Rowdies win the 1975 North American Soccer League title. He is still alive.

Also on this day, Ehud Olmert is born in Binyamina, a suburb of Haifa, in present-day Israel. He served as Mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003, and Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, when his government collapsed due to allegations of corruption. Ironically, his replacement was Benjamin Netanyahu, who had previously held the office and lost it due to corruption.

But Netanyahu did not go to prison. Maybe he should, for the way he has led Israel the 2nd time around has been even worse than the 1st, but he hasn't. Olmert did, and served 16 months.

September 30, 1946: Bernardus Adriaan Hulshoff is born in Deventer, Netherlands. We know him as Barry Hulshoff. Playing for Amsterdam soccer team AFC Ajax, the centreback won 7 national league (Eredivisie) titles, 4 national cups (KNVB Beker), and 3 straight European Cups (the tournament now known as the UEFA Champions League), in 1971, '72 and '73.

Despite his playing pedigree, he only played 14 times for the Netherlands national team, and never made their World Cup squad. He later managed Ajax and several teams in the Netherlands and Belgium, but has been out of soccer since 2002.

September 30, 1947: Game 1 of the World Series. The Brooklyn Dodgers have won the Pennant, and, all together, Jackie Robinson and his 24 white teammates, stand on the 3rd-base line at Yankee Stadium, hearing the National Anthem.

Jackie would write in his memoir I Never Had It Made that this was the highlight of his career: It was not only that he had played in the white major leagues, but that he had been accepted by his teammates, and, together, they had succeeded. They were the National League Champions.

But they still had a World Series to play, in front of 73,365 people -- over twice the capacity of Ebbets Field. Dodger Captain Pee Wee Reese scores all the way from 2nd base on a wild pitch by rookie starter Frank "Spec" Shea in the 7th inning. But that's the only real highlight for the Dodgers, as the Yankees batter 21-year-old 21-game winner Ralph Branca for 5 runs in the 5th, and go on to win 5-3.

September 30, 1948, 70 years ago: Rosendo Torres Hernández is born in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and grows up in The Bronx. We know him as Rusty Torres. An outfielder, he debuted with the Yankees in 1971, and closed his career with the Kansas City Royals in 1980, but was released and did not appear on their postseason roster. His lifetime batting average was just .212.

He played in the 3 most recent forfeited games in the American League. On September 30, 1971 -- his 23rd birthday -- he was with the Yankees during the last Washington Senators home game. More on that later. On June 4, 1974, he was with the Cleveland Indians on Ten-Cent Beer Night, and was on 2nd base, standing to be the winning run, against the Texas Rangers -- the team the Senators became. But the fans rushed the field, and the game was forfeited to the Rangers.

And on July 12, 1979, he was with the Chicago White Sox when Disco Demolition Night was held between games of a doubleheader at Comiskey Park. He had scored the only run in the Pale Hose's 4-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers in the opener. When fans rushed and tore up the field following the blowing-up of the records in center field, the umpires realized the field was unplayable, and forfeited the game to the Tigers.

He later founded a charity that brings at-risk teenagers into sports, but was arrested in 2012, on what once would have quaintly been called "morals charges." In 2014, he was convicted on 5 counts, and served 3 years in prison.

Also on this day, Edith Roosevelt dies at Sagamore Hill, the Roosevelt family home, overlooking Oyster Bay on New York's Long Island. She was 87. The wife of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, she was the 1st First Lady to have an official staff, and was one of the most popular First Ladies of all time, just as TR was one of the most popular Presidents. She outlived him by nearly 30 years. They had 5 children together, and also raised TR's daughter Alice from his tragic 1st marriage.

Although she put up with her husband's and children's "Strenuous Life" shenanigans, as far as I can tell, she was uninterested in athletic endeavors of any kind. While some subsequent First Ladies have accompanied their husbands to sporting events, she was not one of them.

*

September 30, 1950: As they had 28 years to the day earlier, the Yankees clinch the Pennant at Fenway Park, beating the Red Sox 6-5.

Also on this day, two new college football stadiums open. Byrd Stadium opens on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park, outside Washington, D.C. Maryland defeats the nearby U.S. Naval Academy 35-21.

It still stands, and the Terrapins still use it, but it is now named Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium. The playing surface's naming rights were sold, but the name of the stadium itself was changed upon objections to Harry "Curley" Byrd, who served the University as football coach, athletic director and eventually president, having been a segregationist.

It was also the home field for the USFL's Baltimore Stars in 1985. Having moved from Philadelphia, they wanted to fill the gap left by the Colts' move to Indianapolis, but, for legal reasons, they couldn't use Memorial Stadium that year, so they used Byrd Stadium, which is considerably closer to D.C. (The USFL's Washington Federals had moved to become the Orlando Renegades, so they weren't a block to it.) The Stars won the USFL title, and a deal was reached to allow them to play at Memorial Stadium from 1986 onward. But there would never be another USFL game.

I visited Byrd Stadium on September 26, 2009, and saw Rutgers beat Maryland 34-13. It rained all game long, and the steep grade of the stands and the rain made it treacherous. It may not be a bad stadium when it's dry, but if UMd wants to replace it, I won't mind a bit.

On this same day, Baylor Stadium opens in Waco, Texas, home to Baylor University. Baylor defeats the University of Houston 34-7. In 1988, it was renamed Floyd Casey Stadium, after Casey's son Carl donated the money needed to renovate it. Baylor moved into the new McLane Stadium in 2013, and the old stadium was demolished in 2017.

On the same day, Lynn St. John dies in Columbus at age 73. He was Ohio State University's basketball coach from 1911 to 1919, its baseball coach from 1913 to 1928, and its athletic director from 1912 to 1947. Ohio State's arena was named for him in 1956, and he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1962.

September 30, 1951: After being 13 1/2 games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 11, the New York Giants think they have the Pennant won, as they beat the Boston Braves 3-2 at Braves Field in Boston. The hero, with a home run, is 3rd baseman Bobby Thomson.

But the Dodgers, having blown that huge lead, aren't done yet. At Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Jackie Robinson makes a sensational catch at 2nd base in the bottom of the 12th inning, then hits a home run in the top of the 14th, and the Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies 9-8. There will be a best-2-out-of-3 Playoff for the National League Pennant, starting the next day.

A coin is tossed to determine home-field advantage. The Dodgers win the toss -- and elect to host Game 1 at Ebbets Field, thus letting the Giants host Games 2 and 3 at the Polo Grounds. This will turn out to be one of the greatest blunders in the history of baseball.

In the meantime, the American League Champions, the Yankees, wait to see whom they will face in the World Series. Mickey Mantle, the Yankees' rookie right fielder their center fielder in waiting, asks his teammates who he should root for. He's told it should be the Giants, since Ebbets Field seats only 31,000 people, while the Polo Grounds seats 56,000, and the gate receipts, and thus the winners' share, will be much bigger if the Giants win.

September 30, 1953: Game 1 of the World Series. Gil Hodges, George "Shotgun" Shuba and Jim "Junior" Gilliam hit home runs for the Dodgers. It's not enough, as Yogi Berra and Joe Collins do the same for the Yankees, who win 9-5.

Johnny Sain is the winning pitcher. The Yankees gave up Lew Burdette to get Sain from the Boston Braves. Burdette would help the Braves, by then in Milwaukee, drive the Yankees crazy in the 1957 and '58 Series. But Sain helped the Yankees big-time, so it was an even trade.

September 30, 1955: Game 3 of the World Series. The Dodgers get back into the Series, thanks to the pitching of Johnny Podres and a home run by Roy Campanella. They beat the Yankees 8-3, and close to within 2 games to 1.

September 30, 1956: The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-6 at Ebbets Field, and clinch the National League Pennant. Duke Snider and Sandy Amoros each hit 2 home runs. Jackie Robinson adds 1, Vern Law is knocked out of the box in the 1st inning, and Don Newcombe gets the win.

As it turns out, Jackie's home run is the last he will hit, and this is the last Pennant won by a National League team in New York City for 13 years.

Also on this day, the Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-4 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Wayne Belardi hits a home run, and Billy Hoeft wins his 20th game of the season.

The losing pitcher is Bob Feller, who falls to 0-4 on the season, and 266-162 for his career, with 2,581 strikeouts, despite missing nearly 4 full seasons due to military service. Nearly 38, this is the last major league appearance for perhaps the best pitcher of his generation. It is interesting that it happens on the 29th Anniversary of Walter Johnson's last appearance.

Also on this day, Mickey Mantle finishes a season in which he batted .353, hit 52 home runs, and had 130 RBIs. He led both Leagues in all 3 categories, and that hasn't happened since. He was the 2nd Yankee, after Gehrig, to win the Triple Crown. None has done it since. Babe Ruth didn't do it. Nor did Joe DiMaggio, nor Reggie Jackson, nor Don Mattingly, nor Derek Jeter, nor Alex Rodriguez.

September 30, 1957: Anthony Wayne Green is born in Cape May City, New Jersey, and grows up in nearby Woodbine, Cape May County. Bubba Green starred in football and track at North Carolina State University, and was drafted by the Baltimore Colts as a defensive tackle in 1981.

He played the 1st 15 games of his rookie season, starting 10, but injured his knee, and never played again. He remained in the Baltimore area, and continues to live there.

UPDATE: He died of cancer on June 21, 2019, at age 51.

Also on this day, Francine Joy Drescher is born in Flushing, Queens, New York City, and grows up a couple of neighborhoods away in Kew Gardens. In 1975, 2 future CBS sitcom stars graduated from Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens: Fran Drescher of The Nanny and Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond. In real life, her N'Yawk accent is slightly better than on The Nanny.

September 30, 1958, 60 years ago: The Rifleman premieres on ABC. Chuck Connors, a former MLB and NBA player, plays Lieutenant Lucas McCain, a Civil War veteran who recently lost his wife, and takes his 12-year-old son Mark, played by former Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer Johnny Crawford, to a ranch outside the fictional North Fork, in what was then the New Mexico Territory.

McCain's signature weapon was a customized rapid-fire rifle, which Connors used to fire 13 shots in the show's famous opening. Although the show was set in the 1870s and 1880s, the actual rifle didn't go that far back: It was an 1892 Winchester that fired .44-caliber bullets.

The show runs for 5 seasons. In 1965, Connors began starring in another Western, Branded. This time, the Irish-American former Army officer he plays is Captain Jason McCord, disgraced for his actions in a Native massacre of a U.S. fort. Except, as Alan Alch, who both wrote and sang the theme song said, "He was innocent, not a charge was true." He took the fall to preserve a peace treaty and to protect the reputation of his senile commanding officer.

The opening sequence shows McCord getting his buttons and epaulets torn off, as he is literally drummed out of the corps. Then the fort's new commander takes his sword, breaks it over his knee, and tosses the handle part out of the fort. Connors said he wanted another "gimmick" weapon, like McCain's Winchester. The broken sword filled that need. The show lasted 2 years. Connors lived until 1992.

*

September 30, 1962: David Joseph Magadan is born in Tampa, a cousin of Lou Piniella. In 1983, the 3rd baseman batted .525 for the University of Alabama, still a Southeastern Conference record, and earned one of college baseball's player of the year awards, the Golden Spikes Award.

He made his major league debut with the Mets in September 1986, too late to appear on their World Series roster. He was an original Florida Marlin in 1993, and bounced around a bit before ending his career with the 2001 San Diego Padres, with a .288 batting average. He has coached for the Padres, the Boston Red Sox (winning a World Series ring in 2007), the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Also on this day, Franklin Edmundo Rijkaard is born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The son of immigrants from the Netherlands' South American colony of Surinam (now an independent country), the Jheri-curled midfielder helped hometown club Ajax win 5 Eredivisie (Dutch league) titles and the 1995 Champions League.

This was in 2 separate stints with the club. In between, he played in Italy for AC Milan, along with fellow Dutchman Marco Van Basten and fellow Dutch-Surinamese Ruud Gullit. Together, they combined Dutch totalvoetbaal, South American samba, and Italian catenaccio defense to form perhaps the best club side in soccer history, winning 2 Serie A (Italian league) titles, and the European Cup in 1989 and 1990 -- still the last team to win the tournament now named the Champions League back-to-back.

The 3 Milan players also helped the Netherlands win their only international tournament to date, Euro 1988. Rijkaard also managed Barcelona to the 2005 and 2006 La Liga (Spanish league) titles and the 2006 Champions League. He, his Milan teammate Carlo Ancelotti, and Zinedine Zidane are the only men to win the Champions League as both a player and a manager.

September 30, 1964: The Philadelphia Phillies complete what remains the most stunning regular-season collapse in Major League Baseball history, losing their 10th straight game, losing 8-5 to the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Tim McCarver hits a home run for the Cards, while Alex Johnson hits one for the Phils.

Ironically, the winning pitcher for the Cards is Curt Simmons, whose drafting into the Korean War in 1950 cost him the chance to pitch for the Phils in their last World Series to this point, in 1950.

Going into the games of September 21, the Phillies led the National League by 6 1/2 games. Now, they are 2 1/2 behind the Cardinals, while the Cincinnati Reds are 1 game back. The Phils have 2 games left, the Cards 3, the Reds 4. The Phils could still win the Pennant if they win their last 2 games, although a 3-way tie for the Pennant is still possible.

Also on this day, Monica Anna Maria Bellucci is born in Città di Castello, Umbria, in Central Italy. One of the most beautiful actresses of her generation, in 2015 she played Lucia Sciarra in the James Bond film Spectre, making her, at 51, the oldest "Bond Girl" ever. She still has the face and the body for it.

September 30, 1966: The Yankees lose 6-5 to the Chicago White Sox in 11 innings at Comiskey Park. In the 9th inning, Roger Maris pinch-hits for Dooley Womack -- yes, the Dooley Womack -- and hits a home run. But a single by Johnny Romano drives in Wayne Causey, and makes a 20-game loser out of Mel Stottlemyre.

This drops the Yankees' record to 68-89, and assures that they will finish in 10th place in the single-division American League. This is the 1st time in 54 years that the Yankees have finished in last place. They have only done so once more, in 1990.

After the season, the final insult of the Webb-Topping regime -- they sold their last shares to CBS soon after -- was delivered, trading Roger even-up to the St. Louis Cardinals for Charlie Smith. And if you're asking, "Who?" I'm answering, "Exactly."

Also on this day, a rare trade is made in English "football." Usually, there are sales, a player for cash. This time, 2 London clubs trade players and cash. George Graham goes from Chelsea in West London to Arsenal in North London, while Tommy Baldwin goes from Arsenal to Chelsea, along with £50,000.

Graham had helped Chelsea win the 1965 League Cup, and would be a key figure in Arsenal's wins in the 1970 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and the 1971 League title and FA Cup. He would later go into management, and the fun-loving player was gone, replaced by a man so strict, his own players called him "The Ayatollah." He freely admitted, "The player I was couldn't have played for the manager I am."

He managed Arsenal to the League Cup in 1987, the League title in 1989 and 1991, both the FA Cup and the League Cup in 1993 (the 1st time the "Cup Double" had ever been down), and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1994. Arsenal had to let him go the next season due to financial improprieties. He would later manage Arsenal's North London arch-rivals, Tottenham, to the 1999 League Cup. He is still alive, at age 73.

September 30, 1967: The Boston Red Sox host the Minnesota Twins at Fenway Park on the next-to-last day of the season. They and the Detroit Tigers are all still eligible for the AL Pennant.

Oddly, NBC is not televising it as the Game of the Week. Fortunately, Boston's Channel 5, then WHDH, a CBS affiliate (it's now WCVB and part of ABC), is televising it, and keeps a copy. As far as we know, this is the earliest surviving entire color TV broadcast of a Major League Baseball game.

Twins starter Jim Kaat is cruising until the 3rd inning, when he is injured, and has to leave the game. Jim Perry comes in, and holds the Sox off until the 5th. Reggie Smith leads off with a double, and Dalton Jones singles. Perry strikes out opposing pitcher Jose Santiago and Mike Andrews, but Jerry Adair and Carl Yastrzemski use back-to-back singles to turn a 1-0 Twins lead into 2-1 Red Sox.

The Twins tie the game in the 6th, but home runs by George Scott in the 6th and Yaz in the 7th make it 6-2 Sox. Harmon Killebrew homers for the Twins in the 9th, but Gary Bell (later to become famous as Jim Bouton's Seattle Pilots roommate in Ball Four) shuts them down, and the Sox win, 6-4.

The Sox and Twins are now tied. Whichever wins tomorrow will have at least a tie for the Pennant. The Tigers are rained out, and will play a doubleheader tomorrow. If they sweep, a Playoff will be necessary. If they only split, or lose both, the Sox-Twins winner takes the flag.

Also on this day, Philadelphia's new arena, The Spectrum, opens across from the north end zone at John F. Kennedy Stadium. To the north of The Spectrum, construction is underway on Veterans Stadium, to be the new home of MLB's Phillies and the NFL's Eagles.

The 1st event at The Spectrum is the Quaker Jazz Festival. Over the next few weeks, the NBA's 76ers and the NHL's Flyers will move in. Villanova University will also use it for games whose ticket demand exceed their on-campus arena. The building will be home to 4 championship teams: The back-to-back Stanley Cups of the Flyers in 1974 and 1975, the 76ers' 1983 NBA title, and Villanova's 1985 NCAA Championship.

It will be replaced as home of the Sixers, Flyers and 'Nova, and as the Delaware Valley's leading concert center, in 1996, by the building now known as the Wells Fargo Center, which will be built on the site of JFK Stadium. It will be demolished in 2010.

September 30, 1968, 50 years ago: Bull Tales is first published in the Yale Daily News, a.k.a. the Daily Yalie, the official newspaper of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The lead character of the comic strip is "B.D.," the quarterback of the Yale football team, based on real-life quarterback Brian Dowling. He had led the Bulldogs to the Ivy League title in 1967, and would lead them to a share of another in 1968, the season ending with the famous tie with Harvard.

The strip was drawn by Garry Trudeau. In 1970, it would be retooled and nationally syndicated, but Trudeau would rename it for B.D.'s roommate at fictional Walden College, Michael J. Doonesbury.
Doonesbury still runs today.


*

September 30, 1971: The last Washington Senators game is played, against the Yankees at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. Team owner Bob Short, having already moved the NBA's Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960, has announced he's moving the Senators to the Dallas area, to become the Texas Rangers. He complains about the low attendance, despite having the highest ticket prices in the American League, and no subway access to RFK Stadium. (Washington's Metro would not open until 1976.)

Frank Howard, the Senators' most popular player in their 2nd go-around of 1961-71, hits the last home run. Dick Bosman starts, and stands to be the winning pitcher as the Senators lead 7-5 with 1 out left in the 9th. All he has to do is get Bobby Murcer out.

But he can't, through no fault of his own. Angry fans from the "crowd" of 14,461 people storm the field. The umpires cannot restore order, and they forfeit the game to the Yankees.

The next April, Bosman also starts the team's 1st game as the Rangers. Major League Baseball will not return to the Nation's Capital, except for the occasional preseason exhibition game, until the 2005 season. Only 2 AL games have been forfeited since, both promotions that turned into fiascos: The Cleveland Indians' Ten-Cent Beer Night in 1974, and the Chicago White Sox' Disco Demolition Night in 1979. As I mentioned, Rusty Torres, who turned 23 on this day, was also in uniform on each of those occasions.

Also on this day, the Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-1 at Shea Stadium. Tom Seaver gets the win, his 20th of the season, and will go on to win his 2nd Cy Young Award. A young right fielder named Ken Singleton, who had grown up in New York as a Met fan, hits 2 home runs. But he will become better known for playing for the Baltimore Orioles, and broadcasting for the Yankees.

No one knows it at the time, but this is the last game the Mets will play with Gil Hodges as their manager. At the end of Spring Training in 1972, he suffers a heart attack and dies, not quite 48 years old.

September 30, 1972: The Mets lose to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-0 at Three Rivers Stadium. Roberto Clemente hits a double off Jon Matlack, for his 3,000th career hit. A quote, which may be apocryphal given what happened 3 months later, suggests Roberto's determination: "I have to get that hit this year. I might die."

Also on this day, Martin Stadium opens in Pullman, eastern Washington. Washington State University loses the 1st game at its new stadium, 44-25 to the University of Utah.

A new stadium was necessary because Wazzu's previous home field, Rogers Field, burned down on April 4, 1970. It was soon generally accepted that the cause was arson. The Cougars played the 1970 and '71 seasons at Joe Albi Stadium in nearby Spokane while Martin Stadium was built on the site of Rogers Field.

Clarence D. Martin Jr. donated the money necessary to build it, on the condition that it be named for his father, a former Governor of the State. Ironically, Clarence Sr. was a graduate of WSU's arch-rivals, the University of Washington. At 32,952 seats, Martin Stadium is the smallest football facility in the league now known as the Pacific-12 Conference.

September 30, 1973: The last game is played at Yankee Stadium before its renovation. The Yankees lose 8-5 to the Detroit Tigers. Duke Sims hits the last home run, but Lindy McDaniel implodes in the 8th inning, allowing 6 runs, making a winning pitcher of John Hiller. The last play is Mike Hegan hitting a fly ball to, appropriately, center field, once patrolled by Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, this ball caught by Mickey Stanley. Attendance: 32,238, in a Stadium whose capacity was then listed as 65,010.

Lasting until 1980, Fred Stanley was the last remaining Yankee who had played a home game at the pre-renovation Stadium, although Bobby Murcer had been traded away and reacquired, and played his last game on June 11, 1983, nearly 10 years later.

After the game, manager Ralph Houk resigns, tired of the meddling of the team's 1st-year owner, George Steinbrenner. The next day, the renovation begins. Claire Ruth, the Babe's widow, receives home plate. Eleanor Gehrig, Lou's widow, receives the 1st base that was used in the last game. The Yankees will play the 1974 and '75 seasons at Shea Stadium, and Yankee Stadium will reopen on April 15, 1976, and will remain open until September 21, 2008.

The 1923-73 version of The Stadium saw 27 Pennants and 20 World Championships in 51 seasons -- the 1st 2 Yankee Pennants coming at the Polo Grounds. The 1976-2008 version saw 10 Pennants and 6 World Championships in 33 seasons.

Also on this day, the Buffalo Bills play their 1st game at their new stadium, south of the city, in suburban Orchard Park, New York. Originally known as Rich Stadium, for the Rich family of meat-product producers, O.J. Simpson and his teammates beat the Jets, 9-7.

The stadium will be renamed Ralph Wilson Stadium for the team's founding owner in 1998, and, in 2015, was renamed New Era Field, as naming rights were bought by the New Era sports cap company. The Bills' new owners are looking to build a new stadium, and New Era's naming rights will carry over.

September 30, 1975: Happy Days airs the episode "Fearless Fonzarelli." In 1956, the Fonz (Henry Winkler) tries a what would, by 1975, be considered "an Evel Knievel stunt" on his motorcycle. He does it, but pays the price.

September 30, 1977: Del Pratt dies in Texas City, Texas at age 89. A 2nd baseman, he debuted with the St. Louis Browns in 1912, and led the American League in RBIs in 1916. In 1918, the Yankees traded pitcher Urban Shocker to get him.

While Pratt was a decent player, this trade was a big mistake. In his 1979 book This Date In New York Yankees History, Nathan Salant called it the worst trade in Yankee history to that point, saying that not having Shocker, whom they later reacquired, cost the Yankees the 1920 and 1924 Pennants, and almost cost them the one in 1922, when the Browns nearly beat the Yankees out.

Essentially, to replace Shocker, the Yankees traded Pratt to the Red Sox in 1921, for Waite Hoyt, who became a Hall-of-Famer. Pratt played until 1924, batting .292 lifetime. He also served as head baseball and assistant football coach at the University of Michigan.

Also on this day, Michael Stuart Solwold is born in the Milwaukee suburb of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. A center, Mike Solwold was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when they won Super Bowl XXXVII.

September 30, 1979: The Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-2 at Busch Memorial Stadium. This is the last game for Lou Brock, who goes 0-for-4 to end his career with 3,023 hits and, then a major league record and still a National League record,  938 stolen bases. The Cardinals retire his Number 20.

It is also the last game for Ed Kranepool, the last original Met from 1962. He pinch-hits for pitcher John Pacella in the top of the 7th, and doubles off Bob Forsch. It is the 1,418th hit of his career, which will remain a Met record until surpassed by David Wright. He remains the Mets' all-time leader in games played with 1,853, and in at-bats with 5,436. He hit .261 lifetime, with an OPS+ of 98, and 118 home runs.

The commercial he did for Gillette Foamy was correct: From 1962 to 1970, he batted .227. From 1971 to 1977, he batted .283. Whether he actually shaved every other inning after that, only he knows. He did make the All-Star Team in 1965, and won the World Series with the Mets in 1969 and the Pennant in 1973.

Also on this day, the Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Chicago Cubs, 5-3 at Three Rivers Stadium, and clinch the NL East title. Willie Stargell, the "Pops" of this "Family," hits a home run to back the pitching of Bruce Kison.

That night, NBC airs a baseball-themed TV movie, The Kid from Left Field, a remake of a 1953 film. Gary Coleman, of the same network's Diff'rent Strokes, plays the son of a former major leaguer now down on his luck, making ends meet as a food vendor for the San Diego Padres, played by Robert Guillaume, of the ABC sitcom Benson. The film also stars Gary Collins, Ed McMahon, Tricia O'Neal, and Tab Hunter, who had been the star of the film version of the musical Damn Yankees.

The 1953 original starred Billy Chapin and Dan Dailey in the Coleman and Guillaume roles, respectively.

*

September 30, 1981: The Kansas City Royals beat the Minnesota Twins 5-2. It is the last game at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota. Pete Mackanin hits a home run for the Twins, but Clint Hurdle of the Royals hits the last home run. The next season, the Twins will move to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis.

September 30, 1982: NBC airs the pilot episode of Cheers, "Give Me a Ring Sometime." It introduces Sam Malone, a former relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and a recovering alcoholic, who owns a bar in Boston's Back Bay section -- and his motley crew of employees and customers.

A photograph of a Sox pitcher hangs on a post at the bar, purported to be Sam. It's actually an earlier Sox pitcher, Jim Lonborg, the American League Cy Young Award winner when the Sox won their "Impossible Dream" Pennant in 1967. This establishes Sam's uniform number as Gentleman Jim's, 16. In reality, on the Pennant-winning Sox of 1975, 16 was worn by outfielder Rick Miller.

September 30, 1985: Fasheed Rashad Najm is born in Tallahassee, Florida. The rapper abbreviated his hometown, and took the nom de rap T-Pain. He recently played Stevie Wonder on Epic Rap Battles of History, against Indian-Canadian YouTube personality Lilly Singh as Wonder Woman. Wonder vs. Wonder.

UPDATE: In February 2019, he won the 1st season of Fox's U.S. version of the Korean-born franchise The Masked Singer, as "The Monster," in an effort to prove that he can sing without autotune.

September 30, 1986: Olivier Giroud (no middle name) is born in Chambéry, Rhône-Alpes, France, and grows up in nearby Froges, near the 1968 Winter Olympic city of Grenoble. The forward starred for local club Grenoble 38 Foot and Tours FC, before leading the national league, Ligue 1, in scoring in 2011-12, and leading his club, Montpellier, to an improbable title.

That convinced Arsène Wenger, manager of North London team Arsenal, to sign him. There are many Arsenal fans, for whom 2nd place is "failure" and 4th place (out of 20 in the English Premier League) is "midtable mediocrity," with constant complaints about him: That he doesn't score enough, that he isn't "world-class" or "clinical," and that he doesn't have enough "pace," and is "useless unless the ball is put right on his foot" -- ignoring all the goals scored with what NBC Sports announcer Arlo White calls "the meaty French forehead of Olivier Giroud!"

Nevertheless, the man known as Oli G, who makes women swoon and men "confused," scored 105 goals in 253 appearances for The Arsenal over 5 1/2 seasons, before being sold to West London team Chelsea. He also helped get the French national team to the Final of Euro 2016, and to win the 2018 World Cup.

When he scored, the Arsenal fans sang, to the Beatles' "Hey Jude," "Na, na na, na na na na... Na na na na... Giroud!" They also sang, to "The Roof Is On Fire" by Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three, "Giroud! Giroud! Giroud is on fire!" He makes women swoon with his face and physique, and makes goalkeepers cry with his feet and his meaty French forehead.

Chelsea? I refuse to believe such a beautiful player can play for such an ugly organization. I prefer to believe that he is unavailable to Arsenal due to injury. This is a lie, of course, but, given Arsenal's recent history, it's a very believable lie.

Also on this day, Quinn Marcus Johnson is born in New Orleans, and grows up in nearby Edgard, Louisiana. A running back, he was with the Green Bay Packers when they won Super Bowl XLV. He last played in 2014, with the Tennessee Titans, but has not announced his retirement.

September 30, 1988, 30 years ago: The Yankees are eliminated from the American League Eastern Division race, losing to the Detroit Tigers, 6-2 at Tiger Stadium. They finish only 3 1/2 games behind the Red Sox, but in 5th place behind the Sox, the Tigers, the Brewers and the Toronto Blue Jays.

This turns out to be Willie Randolph's last game as a Yankee player, and he goes 0-for-4. He will remain in the major leagues until 1992, and will coach for the Yankees, Baltimore and Milwaukee, and manage the Mets to a Division title in 2006.

September 30, 1989: The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-3 at the new SkyDome in Toronto, and clinch the AL East title. The O's, who had lost 107 games the season before, had a remarkable rebound season under their former star player, now manager, Frank Robinson.

They had to sweep the Jays 3 straight in Toronto on the final weekend to win the Division, just as the Yankees had to do in 1985 at the Jays' previous home, Exhibition Stadium. The pattern held, as the O's won the Friday night game. Unfortunately, the pattern held for the rest of the series as well, as the Jays won the Saturday afternoon game before losing the Sunday afternoon game.

This was the last NBC Game of the Week. Aside from a few postseason games from 1995 to 1999, and the 1996 and 1998 All-Star Games, NBC has never televised baseball again.

Also on this day, Neil Young is the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. The Toronto native wears 2 Toronto Maple Leafs patches on his jeans, and sings his 1972 anti-drug song "The Needle and the Damage Done" and his current hit, "Rockin' in the Free World."

*

September 30, 1990: The Chicago White Sox play the last game at Comiskey Park, closing the 81st and final season of what is, for the moment, Major League Baseball's longest-lasting stadium. Having opened in 1910, it is the last remaining ballpark in which Cy Young pitched. Ironically, the final opponent is the newest team in the American League, the Seattle Mariners.

Longtime coach Minnie Miñoso presents the final lineup card. Mayor Richard M. Daley, son of the longtime Mayor Richard J. Daley, and a lifelong resident of the Bridgeport neighborhood in which Comiskey was built, throws out the ceremonial first ball. (When the new ballpark opens, the first ball will be thrown out by the outgoing Governor, Jim Thompson, who got the bill providing for its construction through the Illinois legislature, thus saving the team from being moved to Tampa Bay.)

The ChiSox trail 1-0 in the bottom of the 6th, but Lance Johnson leads off with a triple, is singled home by rookie sensation Frank Thomas, and Thomas is tripled home by Dan Pasqua, once a highly-touted Yankee prospect who didn't pan out.

That's it for the scoring, as Jack McDowell goes 8 innings, and Bobby Thigpen finishes it off with his 57th save of the season, a new major league record. The last play is Harold Reynolds grounding to 2nd, with Scott Fletcher throwing to 1st, to Steve "Psycho" Lyons, in as a defensive replacement for Thomas. The Pale Hose defeat the M's 2-1.

To a full house of 42,849, organist Nancy Faust plays one last rendition of "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" -- to the season (in which the White Sox made a gallant but short run at the AL Western Division title), to the ballpark, and to the fans, who will, with the team, move across the street into the new Comiskey Park the next year. It is now Guaranteed Rate Field.

September 30, 1991: Star Trek: The Next Generation airs the episode "Darmok." The crew of the USS Enterprise-D encounters a species on whom their universal translator is virtually useless, since their language is based on storytelling and myth.

Their Captain, Dathon (played by Paul Winfield, who previously played a Federation starship Captain in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), has himself and Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) beamed down to a planet, in the hopes of using the situation there, similar to their ancient story "Darmok and Jelad at Tenagra," to make a communications breakthrough.

Picard cannot save Dathon from being killed by the analog to "The Beast of Tenagra," but Dathon lives long enough to keep talking, to the point that Picard figures it out, in time to save his ship from attack and to make an official diplomatic "first contact."

September 30, 1992: Ezra Matthew Miller is born in Wyckoff, Bergen County, New Jersey. He plays Barry Allen, the Flash, in the DC Comics film universe. He should not be confused with the star of the TV show The Flash, Grant Gustin, who is... wait for it... Better Than Ezra.  

September 30, 1994: The film The Scout premieres. Albert Brooks plays a scout that the Yankees banish to the Mexican League after one of his signings goes bust. He finds a hotshot pitcher played by Brendan Fraser, who comes with his own problems.

This film is totally fiction, and it's a comedy. Judged on that basis, it's okay. The old Yankee Stadium looks great. And George Steinbrenner does all right playing himself. But if you're looking for Yankee glory, well, look elsewhere.

20th Century Fox scheduled it for release just as the 1994 MLB Playoffs were supposed to begin, but then came the strike. Despite the success of Ken Burns' nostalgia-tugging Baseball documentary
miniseries on PBS, nobody was interested in spending $4.00 to watch a baseball movie. It would have been better if they had held until the following Summer.

September 30, 1995: The FleetCenter opens in Boston, right behind the Boston Garden. The new home of the NBA's Celtics and the NHL's Bruins is now named the TD Garden.

Also on this day, Saturday Night Live premieres its 21st season. It is the debut of castmembers Darrell Hammond, Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri, Jim Breuer, David Koechner and Nancy Wells.

September 30, 1996: His contract with Japanese soccer team Nagoya Grampus Eight having run out, Arsène Wenger is free to manage another team, and he officially takes charge as manager of Arsenal Football Club of North London.

Wenger wasn't much of a player, winning Ligue 1 as a defensive midfielder at his hometown club, Racing Club Strasbourg Alsace (usually just listed as "Strasbourg"), in 1979. But as manager of AS Monaco, which is in the French league even though Monaco is a separate (but tiny) country, he won Ligue 1 in 1988 and the national cup, the Coupe de France, in 1991. He led Nagoya to Japan's national cup, the Emperor's Cup, in 1995.

Just short of his 47th birthday, and already successful as a manager, he seemed like a good choice for The Arsenal, who had won 6 trophies from 1987 to 1994, but had struggled in the Premier League, finishing 10th in 1993, 4th in 1994, 12th in 1995, and 5th in 1996.

But, at the time, it was rare for a manager not from the British Isles to manage in England. One newspaper printed the headline, "ARSENE WHO?" No less a personage than Arsenal's captain, centreback Tony Adams, asked, "What does this Frenchman know about English football?"

Wenger knew enough to know that Adams had recently made a public admission of being a recovering alcoholic. He straightened out the team's diet (including no booze the night before a game) and exercise program.

He also brought in several European players, including fellow Frenchmen Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit and Nicolas Anelka, and Dutchman Marc Overmars. Together with already-present Dutch star Dennis Bergkamp, and the club's English core of Adams, David Seaman, Lee Dixon, Steve Bould, Nigel Winterburn, Martin Keown, David Platt, Ray Parlour and the legendary striker Ian Wright, in 1996-97, he finished his 1st season in charge in 3rd place. In 1998, he won the Premier League and the FA Cup, a.k.a. "doing The Double."

He finished runner-up in both in 1999, and Anelka, only 19 years old, thought his performances demanded a big raise, or a sale to a bigger club. Wenger sold him to Real Madrid, and used half the profits to build a new training ground, and the other half to buy young French winger Thierry Henry, whom he converted into a striker, who broke Wright's club record for career goals.

Wenger would also sign a great pair of wingers in Sweden's Freddie Ljungberg (in 1998) and France's Robert Pires (in 2000), develop great young defenders in Ashley Cole and Kolo Toure, and make the stunning acquisition (in 2001) of English centreback Sol Campbell, who had been captain of Arsenal's North London arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur.

Wenger finished 2nd and lost the UEFA Cup Final in 2000, finished 2nd and lost the FA Cup Final in 2001, won The Double again in 2002, finished 2nd and won another FA Cup in 2003, and, in the 2003-04 season, did something that had not been done since the League had only a 22-game season: He went unbeaten. As the broadcaster Jon Champion (appropriately named for the occasion) said after it was achieved: "Played 38, won 26, drawn 12, lost exactly none!" He would win another FA Cup in 2005, and reach the Final of the UEFA Champions League in 2006.

But the Arsenal Stadium, nicknamed Highbury after its neighborhood, only seated 38,000, and its east and west stands had been built in the 1930s. A modern stadium was needed if Arsenal was to compete, but paying for it meant that transactions needed to be made, perhaps sacrificing trophies for expediency.

The new Emirates Stadium opened in 2006, and here's what happened: Arsenal lost the League Cup Final in 2007, finished 2nd in the League in 2008, reached the Semifinals of the Champion League and the FA Cup in 2009, lost the League Cup Final in 2011, just barely scraped into Champions League qualification in 2012 and 2013, were struck by several injuries in just about every season, and had to sell several players because of financial concerns: Vieira in 2005, Pires in 2006, Henry in 2007, Manuel Almunia and Gilberto Silva in 2008, Toure and Emmanuel Adebayor in 2009, Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri in 2011, and Robin van Persie in 2012.

But Wenger built another great team: Signing Theo Walcott and Tomas Rosicky in 2006, Bacary Sagna in 2007, Aaron Ramsey in 2008, Laurent Koscielny in 2010, Per Mertesacker and Héctor Bellerín in 2011, Olivier Giroud and Santi Cazorla in 2012, Mesut Özil and Nacho Monreal in 2013, Alexis Sánchez in 2014, Petr Čech in 2015, Mohamed Elneny in this year's January transfer window, and, just this summer, Granit Xhaka, Shkodran Mustafi and Lucas Pérez. The result has been continuous Champions League knockout round qualification, and the FA Cup in 2014, 2015 and 2017.

Wenger is known for his clichés, which seem a little grammatically odd when they move from his French mind to his English words: A player who is good, "He has the quality"; if he's smart, "He has the mental strength"; if he's unsure of himself, "He lacks the confidence"; and dropping the qualifier "a little bit" into phrases, i.e., "He lacked a little bit the confidence." He doesn't like it when opposing players foul his, but when one of his players is charged, he tells the media, "I did not see it."

He left Arsenal at the end of last season, after 22 years in charge, 3 League titles, 7 FA Cups, the new stadium, and with a world-class setup in place. His critics are glad he is gone, but anything new manager Unai Emery does will be built on Wenger's foundation.

Whereas some managers want to win in the worst way, he wanted to win in the best way. He is a remarkable man, an idealist in a cynical age. I hope he will not turn out to be the last such idealist.

September 30, 1997: Game 1 of the American League Division Series at Yankee Stadium. What is expected to be a pitchers' duel between wily veterans David Cone of the Yankees and Orel Hershiser of the Cleveland Indians does not develop.

The Indians torch Coney for 5 runs in the 1st inning. In the bottom of the 6th, it is 6-3 Cleveland. But Tim Raines, Derek Jeter and Paul O'Neill hit 3 straight home runs, to win the game 8-6, with Ramiro Mendoza getting the win in relief.

September 30, 1998, 20 years ago: Dan Quisenberry dies of brain cancer in the Kansas City suburb of Leawood, Kansas. He was only 45. The "submarine style" relief pitcher gave the Kansas City Royals the bullpen stopper they were missing in their 1976, '77 and '78 Playoff losses to the Yankees, enabling them to win the 1980 American League Pennant (finally beating the Yankees in the AL Championship Series) and the 1985 World Series. He finished his career with a record of 56-46, and 244 saves.

September 30, 1999: The San Francisco Giants, who nearly moved because Candlestick Park was so bad, to Toronto for 1976 and to Tampa Bay for 1993, play their last game at the big wind tunnel. They lose to their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 9-4. Marvin Bernard homers for the Giants, but Raul Mondesi of the Dodgers hits the last home run, making a winner of Jeff Williams over Shawn Estes.

The Giants will move into what is now AT&T Park. The difference? Besides the location, the transport access, the sight lines, and the atmosphere (both literal and figurative) all being far better? In 40 seasons at The 'Stick, the Giants made 5 postseasons, winning 2 Pennants, and no World Series. In their 1st 19 seasons at The Phone Booth, they've made 7 postseasons, winning 3 Pennants, and taking the World Series all 3 times.

*

September 30, 2004: The Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins 6-4, and clinch the AL East title. No one had any idea at the time, but this would be the last clincher at the Yankee Stadium: The Division titles of 2005 and 2006, the ALDS win of 2004, and the Wild Card clincher of 2007 would all be on the road.

September 30, 2006: On Arsène Wenger's 10th Anniversary in charge, Arsenal visit South London club Charlton Athletic, and win 2-1. Robin van Persie scores a wonder goal.

van Persie could have been an all-time legend at Arsenal if he had stayed, or at his hometown club, Feyenoord in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, had he stayed there. 

Instead, he got greedy, and demanded to be sold. He was sold to Manchester United, where he won the League title in 2013, then saw manager Alex Ferguson retire, leaving the club in a bit of a mess. He moved on to Fenerbahçe of Istanbul, one of Turkey's greatest teams, but won nothing there. He has returend to Feyenoord, and helped them win last season's KNVB Beker (the Dutch version of the FA Cup).

He could have been a legend at Feyenoord. He could have been a legend at Arsenal. Instead, he has become a footnote in the history of every team for whom he's played. That is what he got along with that 1 League title. Was it worth it?

Also on this date, Julio Franco breaks his own record as the oldest player ever to hit a home run in a major league game. He's 48 years old as he takes Beltran Perez deep in the 2nd inning. David Wright, Shawn Green, Ramon Castro and Endy Chavez also homer for the Mets, who beat the Washington Nationals, 13-0 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington.

The Mets are the Champions of the National League Eastern Division -- the only time they will finish 1st between 1988 and 2015. They are the favorites for the NL Pennant as the regular season comes to an end.

September 30, 2007: One of the darkest days in Mets history. This is the game that got Tom Glavine branded "The Manchurian Brave" by Met fans.

Having led the NL East by 7 games with 17 to go, the Mets have collapsed, but they go into the regular-season finale, against the Florida Marlins at Shea Stadium, needing a win or a Philadelphia Phillies loss to clinch their 2nd straight NL East title, and a win or a Colorado Rockies loss to at least win the 1 Wild Card available at the time.

Glavine starts. He walks Hanley Ramirez. He gets Dan Uggla to ground into a force play at 2nd base. So far, not terrible. But the roof caves in. He gives up a single to Jeremy Hermida. He gives up a single to Miguel Cabrera, scoring Ramirez. He gives up a double to Cody Ross, and when the ball comes back to him in the infield, he tries to throw Ross out at 3rd, and makes a bad throw, and Ross becomes the 3rd run of the at-bat.

He allows a single to Mike Jacobs. He walks Matt Treanor. He gives up a single to future Met Alejandro de Aza, loading the bases. He faces the opposing starting pitcher, Dontrelle Willis, and hits him, forcing Jacobs in. Manager Willie Randolph has seen enough, and removes him with the score 5-0. He'd faced all 9 batters in the Marlin starting lineup, and had gotten exactly 1 of them out.

Jorge Sosa is the new pitcher, and he strikes Ramirez out. But he allows a double to Uggla, who drives in Treanor and de Aza, both of whose runs are charged to Glavine. When he finally gets Hermida to ground to 1st, it is Marlins 7, Mets 0.

By the time the game mercifully ends, the Mets have used 8 pitchers, and lost 8-1. The Phillies beat the Nationals, 6-1 at Citizens Bank Park, and win a Playoff berth and the Division for the 1st time in 14 years. And the Rockies complete their own amazing surge, beating the Arizona Diamondbacks, 4-3 at Coors Field. It's not enough to win them the NL West, but it's enough to get them a tie with the San Diego Padres for the Wild Card berth, instead of it going to the Mets.

"I'm not devastated," Glavine says after the game. "I'm disappointed, but devastation is for much greater things in life." Feeling pretty devastated themselves, Met fans never forgive him for this, and he never pitches for them again. He is released, and returns to Atlanta for a final season.

One of the pitchers the Mets used was former Yankee star Orlando Hernández, who pitches the 3rd inning, allowing 2 long fly outs, a triple to Willis, and then a foul pop to end the threat. It turns out to be the last MLB appearance of El Duque's career.

All the way across the country from Shea, Met legend Mike Piazza plays his last game on this day. He leads off the bottom of the 9th for the Oakland Athletics, who are tied with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at the Oakland Coliseum. He singles, and is replaced by pinch-runner Shannon Stewart. Marco Scutaro bunts Stewart over to 2nd. Jack Hannahan singles to load the bases with nobody out. Kurt Suzuki singles to give the A's a 3-2 win. So Piazza is far luckier on this day than his old team is.

Also on this day, the Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves 3-0 at Minute Maid Park. It is the last game for future Hall-of-Famer Craig Biggio, who goes 1-for-4.

September 30, 2009: The Mets lose to the Washington Nationals, 7-4 at Nationals Park. It is the last major league game for Gary Sheffield, playing for the Mets, the team for whom his uncle, Dwight Gooden, once starred. He pinch-hits for pitcher Tim Redding in the top of the 7th, and draws a walk.

Sheff retires with 509 home runs. He is eligible for the Hall of Fame, but the steroid cloud hanging over him has kept him out thus far.

Also on this day, the Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-1 at Great American Ball Park. It is the last major league game for Atlanta Braves legend John Smoltz, who starts and loses the game for the Cards.

September 30, 2012: Barbara Ann Scott dies in Amelia Island, Florida. She was 84. Known as "Canada's Sweetheart," the Ottawa native won the women's figure skating Gold Medal at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. She later became a champion equestrienne.

September 30, 2014: The current and former Kansas City teams face off in the American League Wild Card game at Kauffman Stadium. The Oakland Athletics score 5 runs in the top of the 6th inning to take a 5-2 lead over the Kansas City Royals, but the Royals score 3 in the bottom of the 8th to stun the A's and send the game to extra innings.

It looked like the A's have it won in the top of the 12th, as Josh Reddick leads off with a walk, gets bunted to 2nd by Jed Lowrie, advances to 3rd on a wild pitch by Jason Frasor, and then scores on a single by Alberto Callaspo.

But in the bottom of the 12th, Eric Hosmer triples with 1 out, and Christian Colon singles him home with the tying run. Colon steals 2nd, and Salvador Perez singles him home with the run that puts the Royals in the Playoffs proper, 9-8.

September 30, 2015: The Toronto Blue Jays clinch their 1st AL East title, and their 1st Playoff berth, since 1993. They beat the Baltimore Orioles 15-2 at Camden Yards. And the St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates 11-1 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, to clinch the NL Central title.

September 30, 2016: The Golden 1 Center opens in downtown Sacramento, built to save the NBA's Sacramento Kings from moving. They almost moved to Anaheim in 2012 and Seattle in 2013, before the deal to build this new arena, to replace the Sleep Train (formerly ARCO) Arena, was done in 2014.

September 30, 2017: Andrew Romine, an infielder for the Detroit Tigers, plays all 9 positions, including the 4th pitching appearance of his career. The Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins, 3-2 at Target Field.

He is the 5th player to do so in an MLB game, following Bert Campaneris of the 1965 Kansas City Athletics, Cesar Tovar of the 1968 Twins (against Campaneris and the now-Oakland A's), Scott Sheldon of the 2000 Texas Rangers, and Shane Halter of the 2000 Tigers.

The son of former Red Sox outfielder Kevin Romine, and the brother of Yankee catcher Austin Romine, he now plays for the Seattle Mariners. He made 3 pitching appearances in 2018, and now has a career record of 0-0, a 12.75 ERA, a WHIP of 2.647, 1 strikeout and 5 walks in 5 2/3rds innings pitched.

Also on this day, Saturday Night Live premieres its 43rd season. It is the 15th for cast member Kenan Thompson, a new record, surpassing the 14 of Darrell Hammond, who replaced the late Don Pardo as the show's announcer. This means that Thompson has been on the show for exactly 1/3rd of its existence (14 out of 42 seasons). He has now made it 15 out of 43.