That's what happens when you peak in the 1st at-bat of the Series (Don Buford's leadoff home run) and then presume that the Series is going to be a cakewalk: You get frosted.
The Mets had won 100 games, but the Orioles had won 109, and most of the players on the team had been on it 3 years earlier, when they won the 1966 World Series in 4 straight over the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers. That was a big upset. No one expected a similar upset this time.
And when, on October 11, the Orioles won Game 1 at their home, Memorial Stadium, 4-1, with Mike Cuellar outpitching Met ace Tom Seaver, everyone figured it was in the bag. But, years later, Seaver said:
I swear, we came into the clubhouse more confident than when we had left it. Somebody, I think it was Clendenon, yelled out, "Damn it, we can beat these guys!" And we believed it. A team knows if they've been badly beaten or outplayed. And we felt we hadn't been. The feeling wasn't that we had lost, but, Hey, we nearly won that game! We hadn't been more than a hit or two from turning it around. It hit us like a ton of bricks.
In other words, the Mets had lost 4-1 on their opponents' turf, hardly a humiliating defeat. They knew their opponents were not unbeatable. It's like Duke Evers (Tony Burton) told Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) after he'd hit Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in Rocky IV: "You cut him! You see? He's not a machine! He's a man!"
And so, while no Met is known to have said the words until relief pitcher Frank "Tug" McGraw yelled them out in the locker room during the frantic 1973 Pennant race, the Mets had already embraced the idea of "You gotta believe!" (More often written as, "Ya gotta believe!")
October 12, 1969: Jerry Koosman had a no-hitter going for 6 innings in Game 2, and got a home run from 1st baseman Donn Clendenon. Ron Taylor -- a member of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals, and thus the only '69 Met who already had a World Series ring -- came on in the 9th to nail down the save, and the Mets hung on, 2-1.
They had come away from the 1st 2 games, on the road, against their much-hyped opponents, and were tied, trailing only 5-3 on aggregate. (Not that aggregate scoring mattered in this competition.) This was not going to be 1960, where one team (in that case, the New York Yankees) won their games by posting blowouts, and the other team (in that case, the Pittsburgh Pirates) won theirs by close margins. The Mets now knew for sure that they belonged on the same field with the O's.
October 14, 1969: Game 3 was the 1st of what would turn out to be 13 World Series games played at the William A. Shea Municipal Stadium in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park in Queens. Tommie Agee would be the hero, leading off the Mets' side of the game with a home run off future Hall-of-Famer Jim Palmer, and making a pair of sensational running catches, robbing Elrod Hendricks in left-center in the 4th inning and Paul Blair in right-center in the 7th. Ed Kranepool hit a home run, and Gary Gentry took a shutout into the 7th and drove in 2 runs with a double int he 2nd.
He was relieved by Nolan Ryan. Nobody had any idea, but, except for the month of October 1969, Ryan would prove to be a bust as a Met, and then a Hall-of-Famer after leaving the team. And yet, this would be the only time in Ryan's career when his team would win a Pennant, never mind a World Series.
October 15, 1969: Seaver and Cuellar started again in Game 4, and Clendenon staked him to a 1-0 lead with a home run in the 2nd. The Mets still clung to a 1-0 lead in the top of the 9th, but the O's got Frank Robinson to 3rd and Boog Powell on 1st with 1 out. Brooks Robinson hit a sinking liner to right field, which looked like a game-winning 2-run double. (In spite of his bulk, Oriole fans have tried to tell me that Boog could run.)
But Ron Swoboda dove and snared it, with a catch even more amazing than Agee's catches the day before (especially given that Swoboda wasn't naturally as good as Agee). Frank still managed to tag up and score the tying run, sending the game to extra innings.
In the bottom of the 10th, tied at 1-1, Met manager Gil Hodges gambled on getting a run now, or good work from his bullpen and a run at some later point, and sent J.C. Martin up to pinch-hit for Seaver. "Tom Terrific" was normally a good hitter by pitchers' standards, but this was no time for that.
This was the one time in the Series the Mets needed some luck and got it. Martin bunted, and Pete Richert, who relieved Cuellar, tried to throw him out at 1st, but his throw hit Martin on the wrist. The ball got away, and Rod Gaspar, who had been on 2nd, came around to score the winning run.
The Mets were now 1 win away from completing their upset, and, interviewed after the game, former Yankee and Met manager Casey Stengel no longer spoke sarcastically when he used the word he so often used to describe the awful early Mets: When interviewed about the current team, he says, "The New York Mets are amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing… "
*
This is what the world was like in mid-October 1969:
Major League Baseball had expanded to 24 teams, but only 1 of them was playing on artificial turf, the Houston Astros. They were also the only one playing under a dome. Baseball had its 1st season of Divisional Play, and its 1st League Championship Series. There had not yet been a players' strike, or the designated hitter, or regular-season Interleague Play. Asian players (with the 1964-65 exception of Masanori Murakami) were still a generation away.
Only 5 MLB teams were still playing in their 1969 ballparks in 2019:
Boston, Oakland, the Chicago Cubs, and both Los Angeles-area teams. Of the 26 NFL & AFL stadiums hosting games in the 1969-70 season, only 3 did so in the 2019 season: The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum,
the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, and Lambeau Field in Green Bay -- and the Oakland Raiders are moving to Las Vegas in 2020, while the
L.A. Coliseum will go back to college football only in 2020 when the new
stadium for the Rams and Chargers is scheduled to open.
The Knicks are the only NBA team, and the Rangers the only NHL team, still
playing where they were in the 1969-70. "The New Madison Square Garden
Center" was in only its 3rd season as their home.
The Mets, playing in the still-new Shea Stadium, had played 7
seasons, none of them winning, until this 8th season changed everything. The Jets were also playing at Shea. The
Yankees and the NFL Giants were both playing at Yankee Stadium, which was in
serious need of repair.
The Nets were in the ABA and playing at
the Long Island Arena in Commack, a place that seated just 6,500, and they
couldn’t fill that. They were sharing it with a minor-league hockey team called
the Long Island Ducks. (The name is now used by a minor-league baseball team.)
The building, built in 1959 and best known for a 1960 John F. Kennedy campaign
rally and some rock concerts, was demolished in 1996. The Islanders and Devils
did not yet exist.
The Seattle Mariners, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Colorado Rockies, the Miami Marlins, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Rays did not yet exist. The Milwaukee Brewers were still the Seattle Pilots. The Texas Rangers were still the "new" Washington Senators. The Washington Nationals were still the Montreal Expos.
The Philadelphia Phillies had been in business since 1883, and had never won the World Series. The Boston Red Sox hadn't won one since 1918. In Chicago, the White Sox hadn't won one since 1917, and the Cubs since 1908.
Of the defining
players of my childhood, Carl Yastrzemski was the only one to have yet established his legend status, with the 1967 Triple Crown and American League Pennant. The 1969 season saw Willie Stargell become the 1st player to hit a home run out of Dodger Stadium, Rod Carew win his 1st batting title, Reggie Jackson hit 47 home runs, and Steve Carlton become the 1st player to strike 19 batters out in a 9-inning game.
Pete Rose and Johnny Bench were still on the rise. Tom Seaver, as mentioned, had become a big pitching star, but Nolan Ryan had not.Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk made their major league debuts that season. Those of Mike Schmidt and George Brett were yet to come.
Of the current managers and head coaches of New York Tri-State Area teams, only Pat Shurmur of the Giants, David Quinn of the Rangers, Kenny Atkinson of the Nets, Barry Trotz of the Islanders and Domènec Torrent of NYCFC had yet been born. Of the managers and head coaches of the teams in place in 1969, only Emile Francis of the Rangers is still alive, at age 93.
The Mets were about to dethrone the Detroit Tigers as World Champions. The Jets had also beaten a Baltimore team in a shocking upset to become World Champions. The Boston Celtics and Montreal Canadiens were also titleholders, a combination that had taken place for the 8th time. (It has now happened 10 times. In fact, for both of the Mets' World Series wins, the Celtics and Canadiens were also reigning champions.) The Heavyweight Champion of the World, at least officially, was Joe Frazier. Muhammad Ali was still "in exile."
The Olympic Games have since been held in America 4 times, Canada
3 times, Japan twice, Russia twice, Korea twice, Germany, Austria, Bosnia,
France, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, Italy, China, Britain and Brazil. The
World Cup has since been held in Mexico and Germany twice each, and once each
in America, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil
and Russia.
There were 25 Amendments to the
Constitution of the United States. You had to be at least 21 years old to vote,
but 18 to be drafted -- as writer P.F. Sloan and singer Barry McGuire put it,
"You're old enough to kill, but not for votin'." There was no
Environmental Protection Agency, Title IX or legalized abortion. The Stonewall
Riot was 5 months away; Ms. magazine, 3 years away.
The President of the United States was Richard Milhous Nixon. Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman were still alive. So were their wives. So were the widows of John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Gerald Ford was the Minority Leader of the U.S. House of
Representatives. Jimmy Carter was a former State Senator in Georgia, about to
run his second, much more successful, campaign for Governor. Ronald Reagan was
in his first term as Governor of California.
George Herbert Walker Bush was a
Congressman from Texas, and his son George had entered the Texas Air National
Guard. Apparently, it was okay for him and his father to support the Vietnam
War even if he didn't have to actually fight in it.
Bill Clinton was at Oxford University on a
Rhodes Scholarship, and Hillary Rodham was about to be named valedictorian at
Wellesley College. Al Gore was in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, while Dan Quayle
was in the Indiana National Guard. Guess which one supported the war, and which
one didn't.
Joe Biden was just admitted to the
Delaware bar, and too old to be drafted. Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich both had
teaching deferments. Rudy Giuliani got a deferment as a law clerk. Donald Trump
got 5 deferments.
Bernie Sanders got a deferment because he
applied for conscientious objector status, and by the time he was finally
turned down, he was too old to be drafted. He had just moved to Vermont, and
was working as a carpenter. It would be quite some time before, like a slightly
older Jewish carpenter, he began to be viewed as a messiah.
John McCain did not have a deferment, and
the Navy pilot was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Mitch McConnell had enlisted
in the U.S. Army Reserve, but early in his service developed an eye problem,
and fairly received a medical discharge.
Nancy Pelosi, as a woman, was not subject
to the draft. She was an aide to her brother-in-law, Ronald Pelosi, a member of
San Francisco's city council, the Board of Supervisors. Her brother, Tommy
D'Alessandro, as was their father before him, was then Mayor of Baltimore. Also not subject to the draft: Elizabeth Warren, a student at the University of Houston; and Kamala Harris, who turned 5 the next week.
The Governor of New York was Nelson
Rockefeller, having made 3 unsuccessful runs for President. The Mayor of New
York City was John Lindsay. The
Governor of New Jersey was Richard J. Hughes, about to wrap up his second term.
Former Governor Robert B. Meyner was trying to get the office back, but would
fail, losing to South Jersey Congressman William T. Cahill.
Bob Menendez was in high school. Mike
Pence and Phil Murphy were in junior high school. Barack Obama, Michelle
Robinson, Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio were in grade school. Sarah Palin was
in kindergarten -- unless she quit. Cory Booker was 6 months old, and Melania Knauss was born the next year.
Canada's Prime Minister was Pierre
Trudeau. He was young (okay, he was 50, but he looked younger), dashing and charismatic. It was as if John F.
Kennedy was singing lead for the Beatles – in French. Canada was also about to
get its first Major League Baseball team, the Montreal Expos. And a group
called The Guess Who was about to become Canada's biggest rock band ever (to
that point). For the first time ever, Canada was hip.
Especially if you were an American worrying about being drafted. Trudeau's son
Justin was born 2 years later.
The Pope was Paul VI. The current Pope, Francis, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio, would not be ordained until later in the year. René Samuel Cassin, President of the European Court of Human Rights, had recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Elizabeth II was Queen of England -- that still hasn't changed -- but she was just 42 years old. Britain's Prime Minister was Harold Wilson. There have since been 10 Presidents of the United States, 9 Prime Ministers of Britain and 5 Popes.
The English Football League was won by
Leeds United. The FA Cup was won by Manchester City, the defending League
Champions, beating Leicester City 1-0 on a goal by Neil Young – no, not that
Neil Young. AC Milan, led by perhaps Italy's greatest player ever, Gianni
Rivera, won their 2nd European Cup by beating Ajax Amsterdam, led by
21-year-old wonderkind Johan Cruijff. Ajax and their
"Total Football" would be back, big-time.
There were still surviving veterans of the
Spanish-American War and the Boer War. None of the Justices on the Supreme
Court at the time are still alive.
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth was published the day of the Jets' Super Bowl win, despite it being a Sunday. Other major novels of
1969 included The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Slaughterhouse-Five by
Kurt Vonnegut, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, The
French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, Rich Man, Poor
Man by Irwin Shaw, and The Seven Minutes, by
Irving Wallace, about a novel, of the same title, that was "the most
banned book in history," containing a woman's thoughts during 7 minutes of
sex.
And there was Naked Came the Stranger, by
Peneleope Ashe, a name used for a composite of 24 authors, led by Newsday columnist Mike McGrady. He got the
idea to see if a novel could be really really bad, but still sell big if it had
a lot of sex scenes in it, a truly late-Sixties kind of experiment – and it
worked.
J.R.R. Tolkein
was still alive. Tom Clancy, rejected by the U.S. Army due to poor eyesight,
had gone to work for an insurance company. Anne Rice was a graduate student at
the University of California, having witnessed the People's Park demonstration
earlier in the year. Stephen King was at the University of Maine. George R.R.
Martin was at Northwestern University. John Grisham was in high school. J.K.
Rowling was 4 years old.
Major non-fiction books included the
career-launching memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by
Maya Angelou and the career-launching historical work Mary, Queen of
Scots by Antonia Fraser.
Major films of the Autumn of 1969 included Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Paint Your Wagon, The Sterile Cuckoo, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Elvis Presley's last 2 feature films: The Trouble with Girls and Change of Habit.
TV shows that had recently debuted included the country-themed variety shows The Johnny Cash Show and Hee Haw; the cartoons Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, and The Archie Comedy Hour, and the live-action kids show H.R. Pufnstuf; Room 222, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Marcus Welby, M.D., Medical Center, The Brady Bunch, and something completely different: Monty Python's Flying Circus. Soon to debut: Sesame Street, Rod Serling's Night Gallery, and The Benny Hill Show.
Gene Roddenberry was looking for new projects to develop, after the cancellation of Star Trek. George Lucas had just married his 1st wife, Marcia Griffin, and had founded American Zoetrope Films, but had not yet directed a feature film. Steven Spielberg directed the pilot episode of Night Gallery, starring Joan Crawford, who was first horrified at the thought, then realized, "Here was a young genius."
The James Bond franchise was in transition, as Sean Connery had
decided not to do any more of the films. George Lazenby, an Australian male
model, was cast in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and opinion on
it, then as now, was very mixed, but extreme: People either loved it or hated
it. Enough people hated it that Lazenby was dropped, and Connery decided to
come back for 1 more film on the basis of having a bundle of money thrown at
him.
The Adam West TV version of Batman had
recently been canceled, and it had already been more than 3 years since Bob Holiday had starred in the Broadway musical It's a Bird...
It's a Plane... It's Superman. Patrick Troughton was playing The
Doctor, but was about to be replaced by Jon Pertwee.
No one had yet heard of
such superheroes as Ghost Rider, Luke Cage, Hong Kong Phooey, the Punisher,
Iron Fist, Cyborg, Ash Williams, John Rambo, He-Man, Goku, the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles, the Terminator, the Ghostbusters, the Thundercats, Robocop, V,
Deadpool, Xena, Ash Ketchum, Master Chief, Katniss Everdeen and Jane
"Eleven" Hopper.
Nor had anyone heard of such more conventional -- in some cases, slightly more -- crimefighters as Harry Callahan, John Shaft, Kwai Chang Caine, Paul Kersey, Spenser, Theo Kojak, Barney Miller, Max Rockatansky, Jason Bourne, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Ryan, John McClane, Dale Cooper, Alex Cross, Andy Sipowicz, Austin Powers, Olivia Benson, Robert Langdon, Jack Bauer, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Rick Grimes, Wynonna Earp, Lisbeth Salander, Sarah Manning and Maggie Bell.
Nor had anyone yet heard of such monsters as Leatherface, Lestat de Lioncourt, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Hannibal Lecter and Freddy Krueger.
Nor had anyone yet heard of Mike & Carol, Archie & Edith, Rocky & Adrian, Mork & Mindy, Sam & Diane (or Jack & Diane, for that matter), Buffy & Angel, Mulder & Scully, Ross & Rachel, Bella & Edward or Castle & Beckett. And, while they weren't couples in the romantic sense, no one had yet heard of Bert & Ernie, Mary & Rhoda, Cheech & Chong, Sanford & Son, Jake & Elwood, Bo & Luke, Mario & Luigi, Cagney & Lacey, Jerry & George, and Jay & Silent Bob.
Nor had they yet heard of Keith Partridge, Bob Hartley, Arthur Fonzarelli, Howard Beale, T.S. Garp, J.R. Ewing, William Adama, Arnold Jackson, Ken Reeves, Arthur Dent, Derek Trotter, Edmund Blackadder, Celie Harris, Forrest Gump, Marty McFly, Bart Simpson, Roseanne Conner, Zack Morris and Hayden Fox.
Nor had they yet heard of Doug Ross, Alan Partridge, Bridget Jones, Carrie
Bradshaw, Tony Soprano, Jed Bartlet, Omar Little, Michael Bluth, Michael Scott,
Don Draper, Walter White, Jax Teller and Leslie Knope. Or any member of the Kardashian family.
The Number 1 song in America was "I Can't Get Next to You" by The Temptations. Frank Sinatra had a hit with Paul Anka's composition "My Way." Eventually, so would Elvis Presley, now headlining in Las Vegas, just as Frank was. The Beatles had just released Abbey Road, but had also just broken up, although no one but the four of them yet knew that. Bob Dylan had released Nashville Skyline. The Jackson 5 were about to make their debut.
Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $6.88 would
buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 6 cents, and a New York Subway ride 20 cents.
The average price of a gallon of gas was 34 cents, a cup of coffee 42 cents, a McDonald's meal (Big
Mac, fries, shake) 79 cents, a movie ticket $1.20, a new car around $2,300, and a
new house $27,100. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 838.77.
The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building in New York. There were cars with telephones in them, but no hand-held portable phones. Computers could still take up an entire wall. ARPANET, the original Internet, had just begun.
The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building in New York. There were cars with telephones in them, but no hand-held portable phones. Computers could still take up an entire wall. ARPANET, the original Internet, had just begun.
Automatic teller machines were still a relatively new thing, and many people
had never seen one. There were heart transplants, liver transplants and lung transplants, and artificial
kidneys, but no artificial hearts. There were birth control pills, but no Viagra. And, just 3 months earlier, man had landed on the Moon.
In the Autumn of 1969, in events unconnected to baseball, there were major protests against the U.S. role in the Vietnam War on October 15 (the day of Game 4 of the World Series) and November 15. The radical group the Weathermen held their "Days of Rage" in Chicago. The My Lai Massacre of February 1968 was revealed to the public. And 14 black players were kicked off the football team at the University of Wyoming for wearing black armbands.
President Richard Nixon announced his "Vietnamization" plan, and appealed "To you, the great silent majority of Americans." Perhaps not a majority, and definitely not silent, "Middle Americans" would be chosen as Persons of the Year by Time magazine.
Wal-Mart and Wendy's were incorporated, and Native American activists seized Alcatraz Island.
Voters chose to change the party in power in West Germany, turning aside the conservative government of Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger for a liberal one led by Willy Brandt, who had been Mayor of West Berlin. But voters in Australia chose to keep the conservative government of Prime Minister John Gorton. There was a coup in Somalia. The Beijing subway system opened. And Britain's top 2 TV networks, BBC1 and ITV, switched to all-"colour" programming.
Joseph P. Kennedy, and Jack Kerouac, and Sonia Henie died. Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Gwen Stefani, and Brett Favre were born.
That's what the world was like on October 16, 1969, 50 years ago today, as the New York Mets took the field, looking to win the World Series for the 1st time.
*
October 16, 1969: A crowd later listed as 57,397 -- including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, her children Caroline and John, and her 2nd husband, Aristotle Onassis -- files into "The William A. Shea Municipal Stadium" for Game 5. The skies on this Thursday afternoon are a mix of Sun and clouds, and the temperature is in the mid-60s throughout the game.
Caroline, John-John, Jackie, Ari
Curt Gowdy calls the game on NBC with the Mets' Lindsey Nelson, and former Yankee Tony Kubek as the field reporter. (For the games in Baltimore, instead of Nelson, Gowdy's partner was the Orioles' Bill O'Donnell.) Pearl Bailey sings "The Star-Spangled Banner." (She would later do so at Yankee Stadium before Game 1 of the 1977 World Series.) At 1:03 PM, home plate umpire Lou DiMuro signals to Koosman, "Play ball!" and Koos throws the game's opening pitch to Buford.
The Orioles do their best to win the game and send the Series back to Baltimore. They take a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the 6th, thanks to the pitching and home run of Dave McNally, and it looks like the Series is going back to Baltimore for at least a Game 6.
Cleon Jones‚ the only Met to have hit .300 that season – in fact, his .340 remained a Met single-season record until John Olerud's .359 in 1998 – is hit on the foot with a pitch, much like the unrelated Nippy Jones of the Milwaukee Braves in the 1957 World Series. And, like Nippy, Cleon is awarded 1st base after his manager proves he was hit, by showing the umpire a shoe-polish stain on the ball.
On the official World Series highlight film, Pearl Bailey can be seen asking if the pitch had hit Jones, and being delighted that it had, she used the slogan: "Did it hit him? Oh, it hit him! It's amazing! It's amazing!"
He is awarded 1st base, and then Clendenon hits a home run to close the Mets to within 3-2. Light-hitting 2nd baseman Al Weis ties it up with a homer in the 7th, and in the 8th, Swoboda doubles, and the Orioles uncharacteristically make 2 errors, leading to Mets 5, Orioles 3.
Koosman goes the distance. Just as the 2000 film Frequency used the '69 World Series as a major plot point, connecting the past with that film's present, so, too, does the final out link the Mets' 2 and, so far, only World Championships. The last Oriole batter is 2nd baseman Dave Johnson. Or, as he was sometimes known, Davey Johnson. And, 17 years before he manages the Mets to the 2nd title, he flies to left, where Cleon Jones is under it. At 3:17 PM -- the game took just 2 hours and 14 minutes -- that's the Mets' 1st title.
As Curt Gowdy says on NBC, "The 2-1 pitch: There's a fly ball to left, waiting is Jones, the Mets are the World Champions! Jerry Koosman is being mobbed! Look at this scene!"
Beats having to meet with Nixon and Rockefeller.
"It's amazing!"
Naming the Most Valuable Player of the World Series was a tough call. Koosman had won 2 games. Agee had won Game 3 with a home run and 2 sensational catches. Weis was a surprising star. In the end, though, the sportswriters decided they couldn't ignore 3 home runs, including the one that got the Mets back into the ballgame in Game 5, and awarded it to Clendenon. Formerly given out by the now-defunct SPORT magazine, in 2017, this award was renamed the Willie Mays Award.
The New York branch of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (the guys who vote for the Hall of Fame) awarded a separate Babe Ruth Award, and had just expanded its scope to cover the entire postseason (and would again in 1995). They gave it to Weis.
It had been 5 years since New York had a World Series appearance. It had been 12 years since Met fans, most of them previously fans of the New York Giants or Brooklyn Dodgers, lost their old teams. It had been 13 years since the Dodgers last won a New York Pennant, 15 years for the Giants. And it had been 14 years since the '55 Dodger title, 15 years since the '54 Giant title.
And New York was in a hell of a mess in '69, with rising crime, bad weather (the February blizzard), poverty, racial discontent, the sense that the whole world was spiraling out of control, and the feeling that Mayor Lindsay didn't know what the hell to do, with anything. But by tying himself to the Mets' World Series win, he managed to get re-elected.
*
On the 40th Anniversary of the event, I wrote a post about the Top 10 Reasons Why the Mets Won the 1969 World Series. Like the U.S. hockey team's win over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, it was called a "Miracle," but it really wasn't one. Nor was the Jets' similar New York massive upset over Baltimore in Super Bowl III 9 months earlier. I did a post about the top 5 reasons you couldn't blame the Colts for losing that game. So it's only fair that I do...
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Baltimore Orioles for Losing the 1969 World Series
First, let's look at a couple of reasons that didn't make the cut: The Best of the Rest.
The Cubs' September Swoon. Even winning 38 of their last 49 regular-season games wouldn't have mattered for the Mets if the Chicago Cubs hadn't collapsed, losing 17 of 25 in one stretch, going from 9½ up on the Mets on August 19 to 8 games back at the end on October 2. That's a 17½-game swing.
If the Cubs had simply split those 17 losses, plus 1 win, going 17-8 instead of 8-17, they would have won the NL East, and the '69 postseason would have been a very different story.
Would the Cubs have beaten the Braves for the Pennant? Would they then have beaten the Orioles for the whole thing? They were the Cubs, so they would have found a way to lose, right?
Ah, but 1969 was the year the Cubs got that image in the first place. They weren't that team yet. Maybe, if their confidence hadn't been shattered, they would have beaten the Braves and the O's, too.
The Braves' pitching. The Atlanta Braves scored 15 runs in the 3 games of the National League Championship Series, or 5 per game. But they allowed 27, an average of 9. A 5-run 8th inning off Phil Niekro in Game 1, getting 11 runs off Ron Reed and 5 Brave relievers in Game 2, and 5 runs in the 4th and 5th to chase Pat Jarvis in Game 3 showed the Braves that the Mets were no fluke.
Would the Braves have beaten the Orioles in the Series? I doubt it.
Now, the Top 5:
5. Defense. The Orioles were known for their defense, their infield of Boog Powell, Davey Johnson, Mark Belanger and Brooks Robinson known as the Leather Curtain. And while Frank Robinson didn't get the headlines that the arms of right fielders Roberto Clemente and Rocky Colavito got in the 1960s, he was pretty good at the position, and, all-around, a better player than either one of them.
But it was the Mets who made the defensive headlines in this Series. The pair of catches by Tommie Agee in Game 3, and the Ron Swoboda catch in Game 4, got the headlines. But it wasn't just that the Mets' fielding was spectacular. It's that it was (almost) completely competent. They did commit 4 errors in their 8 postseason games, but no runs scored as a result.
The Mets allowed only 9 runs in the 5 World Series games, or 1.444 runs per game. None of those 9 runs scored as the result of a Met error. That's right: 5 games, no unearned runs. Throw in the NLCS, and in the '69 postseason, the Metropolitans allowed a total 24 runs in 8 games, or 3 runs per game, and none were unearned.
If your fielders can avoid betraying your pitchers, and your pitchers don't betray themselves, you're going to give your offense the chance to win the game. Which leads to...
4. "Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting." The O's collected only 23 hits, for a .146 batting average. Powell led the Orioles with 5 hits, all singles, no RBIs.
Don Buford collected 2 hits in the opening game, including the leadoff home run against Seaver, but went 0-for-16 the rest of the way. Paul Blair went 2-for-20, Davey Johnson 1-for-15 and Brooks Robinson 1-for-19. (Had Swoboda not made that catch... he would have been 2-for-19 going into Game 6.) The Baltimore offense, the best in the majors in 1969, only managed 4 extra-base hits off Mets pitching in the 5 games.
Earl Weaver described "The Oriole Way" as "Pitching, defense and three-run homers." The only home runs the O's hit in the Series were Buford's leadoff, a solo shot by Frank Robinson in Game 5, and, amazingly, a 2-run shot by McNally (a pitcher! At Shea!), also in Game 5. That's 3 homers, for 4 runs, in 5 games, from a killer lineup. Shades of the 2001-07 Yankees.
Frank Robinson had 1,812 RBIs in his long and distinguished career. He had 4 in 5 games in the '61 Series, 3 in 4 in '66, 4 in 5 in '70 and 2 in 7 in '71. The '69 Series was the only one of 5 he played in, including the other 3 that his teams lost, that he didn't come through.
In addition, the bullpen came through for the Mets. They only needed 5 2/3rds innings of relief, an average of 1 inning per game, which sounds staggering now. But Don Cardwell, Ron Taylor, and a young fireballer from Texas named Nolan Ryan allowed no runs. (Tug McGraw, who ended up having the best relief pitching career of anyone on the Met roster for this Series, did not appear in it.)
A 2.06 ERA for your starters is excellent, but if the bullpen blows it, it won't mean much -- as Met fans found out in the World Series of 2000 and 2015. But in that of 1969, the Met bullpen had a 0.00 ERA. In contrast, the Oriole bullpen blew Game 4 for Mike Cuellar and Game 5 for Dave McNally. If only one of those happened, the Series would have gone back to Baltimore for Game 6, and then, who knows? This might be a very different blog post.
Then again...
3. "Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting, and Vice Versa." Then-Met coach Yogi Berra once said that. Allegedly. One thing he definitely said, after this Series, was, "We were overwhelming underdogs." Unlike a lot of things Yogi allegedly said, this one is not weird at all, and was totally right.
The Mets faced Mike Cuellar in Games 1 and 4, Dave McNally in Games 2 and 5, and Jim Palmer in Game 3. Palmer is in the Hall of Fame, and Cuellar and McNally are not far from Hall-worthiness. Between them, these 3 men won 637 career games in the major leagues: Palmer 268, Cuellar 185 and McNally 184. But the Mets got the hits they needed when they needed them.
2. Gil Hodges. Earl Weaver, the Baltimore manager, ranted and raved and lost his cool. Gil Hodges never, ever lost his cool. Not in the 1952 World Series, when he went 0-for-21 for the Dodgers. Not in the 1955 World Series, when he redeemed himself with some big hits and caught the last out of the only Series that Brooklyn would ever win. Not in the Summer of '69, when the Cubs seemed like sure Division titlists at least, and Met fans would have been overjoyed with a strong, if not especially close, 2nd-place finish.
And Hodges kept his cool in the '69 postseason as well. As a result, he kept the Mets calm, on an even keel, and let them know that they were worthy of this moment, even when few people outside the New York Tri-State Area believed that (and 4 years before McGraw started using the slogan "Ya Gotta Believe").
And maybe that's it, the real reason the Mets won it all:
1. Nothing to Lose. If the Mets had finished 2nd to the Cubs in the new 6-team NL East, after 7 seasons of either 9th or 10th in the single-division 10-team NL, most Met fans would have gladly taken it. If they had won the Division but lost the Pennant to the NL West Champion Braves, it would have been a disappointment, but they would have gotten over it.
And if they had won the Pennant but lost the Series to the overwhelming favorite Orioles, it would have been fairly easy to take, as just being in the World Series is quite an honor – that is, so long as you don't lose it on a bonehead move or play, as the Red Sox did against the Mets in '86 (and I mean John McNamara's managerial decisions and Bob Stanley's wild pitch, not Bill Buckner's error), or as the Mets did against the Yankees in 2000 (the baserunning blunders and Armando Benitez's walk of Paul O'Neill).
Like the New England Patriots against the St. Louis Rams in their 1st Super Bowl win, or the Giants against the Patriots 7 years later, the '69 Mets acted as if there was no pressure, as if the pressure was all on the other guys. It really wasn't on the Mets.
They had fun. And their fans had fun. It was fun they did not expect to have. And sometimes, that's the best kind of fun of all. And that's why the win was not just glorious, but, to use the cliché, Amazin'.
It was also the last Major League Baseball game played before I was born, exactly 9 weeks later. So I was born with both the Mets and the Jets as defending World Champions.
But I still hate the Mets. But that's not why. I hate them because I'm a Yankee Fan.
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The '69 Mets have been lucky, in that, 50 years later, 20 of their players are still alive: J.C. Martin is 82 years old; Al Weis and Ron Taylor are 81; Art Shamsky is 78; Cleon Jones is 77; Jerry Koosman, Jerry Grote and Jack DiLauro are 76; Bud Harrelson, Ron Swoboda, Bobby Pfeil and Jim McAndrew are 75; Tom Seaver, Ed Kranepool and Duffy Dyer are 74; Ken Boswell and Rod Gaspar are 73; Nolan Ryan and Gary Gentry are 72; and Wayne Garrett is 71. Coach Joe Pignatano is also still alive, at 90.
However, there is a cloud over that. This year, it was announced that Seaver had begun to suffer from dementia. And Harrelson has been dealing with it for some time. Kranepool nearly died of kidney failure before he got a transplant a few weeks. ago.
General manager Johnny Murphy died of a heart attack just 3 months later. Manager Gil Hodges died of a heart attack on the eve of the 1972 season, owner Joan Payson of natural causes in 1975, and Danny Frisella in a dune buggy accident while still an active player on New Year's Day 1977.
Coach Rube Walker died of lung cancer in 1992, Cal Koonce of lymphoma in 1993, Tommie Agee of a heart attack in 2001, Tug McGraw of brain cancer in 2004, Donn Clendenon of leukemia in 2005, Don Cardwell of Pick's disease in 2008, coach Eddie Yost of heart disease in 2012 (43 years to the day, today is the anniversary), coach Yogi Berra of old age in 2015, and Ed Charles of heart trouble in 2018.
Only Taylor, with the '64 Cardinals, had won a Series before. Only McGraw, with the '80 Phillies, would again. Harrelson would be the 3rd base coach on the Mets' '86 titlists, and thus the only man in a Met uniform for both. Johnson would be the manager, and Seaver would be in the opposite dugout, running out the string with the Red Sox. The last '69 player still with the Mets would be Kranepool, in '79. The last one still active in the major leagues would be Ryan, in 1993.
In 1986, the Mets needed several clutch plays in Game 6 of the NLCS against the Houston Astros to avoid a Game 7, in the Astrodome, against Mike Scott, who'd not only been one of the few players to beat them that season, but had really had their number. And they needed a meltdown by the Boston Red Sox in the bottom of the 10th inning of Game 6 of the World Series, and another choke by the Sox in Game 7.
Talent-wise, the 1969 Mets were nowhere near as good as the 1986 Mets. But maybe the wrong Met World Series win is being called the "Miracle."
Certainly, the 1969 Mets are the better story. For all that the Yankees have achieved, for all that the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers achieved before moving to California, for all the joy brought to the New York Tri-State Area by the Super Bowl wins of the Giants and the Jets, the Knicks' 1970 NBA Championship, and the Stanley Cups won by the Rangers, the Islanders, and the New Jersey Devils, the 1969 New York Mets remain the most beloved single-season sports team in New York history.
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October 16, 1730: Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, dies in Castelsarrasin, Occitanie, France. He was 72. One of the leaders of what was then known as New France, he founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701, commanded it until 1710, and then served as the Governor of Louisiana Territory until 1716, when a change of government in France led to trouble for him.
King Louis XIV liked him, but he died in 1715, and the new King, his great-grandson Louis XV, was just 5 years old, and his regents weren't happy with Cadillac. He was sent to the Bastille prison upon his 1717 return, but was released and honored in 1718.
The fort he founded became the American city of Detroit. Its main public square and a brand of car would both bear the name Cadillac.
October 16, 1754: Morgan Lewis is born in Manhattan. A lawyer, he was a son of Francis Lewis, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and married Gertrude Livingston, uniting 2 of New York State's most prominent families.
He served in the Continental Army during the War of the American Revolution, including at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga, then in both houses of the State legislature, and was New York's Attorney General (1791-1801) and Governor (1804-07). In fact, his opponent in the 1804 election for Governor was Vice President Aaron Burr, and it was Alexander Hamilton's support for Lewis that led Burr to challenge him to their fateful duel.
When the War of 1812 broke out, President James Madison offered ex-Governor Lewis the post of Secretary of War. He declined, and served instead as Quartermaster General, rising to the rank of Major General (2 stars), and dipped into his vast private fortune to secure the release of prisoners of war. He was among the founders of New York University (NYU) in 1831, and lived until 1844, age 89.
October 16, 1758: Noah Webster Jr. is born in West Hartford, Connecticut. After serving in the Continental Army and the Connecticut House of Representatives, in 1828 he published the American Dictionary of the English Language, which standardized American spelling and eventually evolved into the Merriam-Webster Dictionary that we know today. He died in 1843.
October 16, 1760: Jonathan Dayton is born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The youngest signer of the Constitution of the United States, not quite 27, he later served as Speaker of the House and a U.S. Senator.
He lent money to Aaron Burr, and was thus connected to Burr's treason of 1805-06. He was cleared of participation in Burr's activities, but his political career was over. He died in 1824. Dayton, Ohio and the high school in Springfield, Union County, New Jersey are named for him.
October 16, 1780: The last major "Indian raid" in New England takes place, in what was then the Vermont Republic. British Lieutenant Richard Houghton leads 300 Mohawk warriors in the Royalton Raid, killing 4 Americans and taking 26 prisoners.
October 16, 1785: George Mercer Brooke is born in King William, Virginia. After serving in the War of 1812, in 1824 General Brooke established Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, making him the founding father of the Tampa Bay region.
He commanded the Western Division of the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War, and died in 1851.
October 16, 1793: Marie Antoinette, former Queen of France, is guillotined in Paris, at what's now the Place de la Concorde, 9 months after the same fate befell her husband, King Louis XVI. The former Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, Archduchess of Austria, was 37, but her troubles had prematurely aged her.
She was a patsy, not a villain. She never did anything to harm the people of France. She never said, "Let them eat cake." And if she had, it would have been through obliviousness, not malice.
But the French Revolution wasn't interested in making sense. They weren't even interested in governing or properly serving the people who had once been so oppressed by the House of Bourbon. They just wanted revenge. Revenge and blood. And they got it. Think about that the next time you consider that the Tea Party might have a point.
She's been played in movies by, among others, Norma Shearer, Jane Seymour (who named herself after a Queen of England, the 3rd wife of King Henry VIII), Joely Richardson, Kirsten Dunst and Diane Kruger.
What does she have to do with sports? Nothing, as far as I know, except as a warning: Don't believe everything you hear, and don't be so quick to chop someone's head off for a perceived slight. Although, in the Final of the 2006 World Cup, Zinedine Zidane would replace her and her husband as having the most famous head in France.
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October 16, 1832: George Crockett Strong is born in Stockbridge, Vermont. The Union General was killed at the Battle of Fort Wagner at Morris Island, South Carolina on July 30, 1863.
October 16, 1841: Queen's University is founded in Hamilton, Ontario. Its football team, the Golden Gaels, won 3 straight Grey Cups: 1922, 1923 and 1924. At the time, the "Super Bowl" of Canadian football was open only to amateur teams. Pro football had yet to come to them.
Queen's has remained one of the top performers in CIS, Canadian Interuniversity Sport, Canada's equivalent to the NCAA. Their football team has won the Vanier Cup, the National Championship (first awarded in 1965), in 1968, 1978, 1992 and 2009. So, by a very loose definition, they have been the national champions of Canadian football 7 times.
October 16, 1861: At the Atlantic Grounds on Bedford‚ Long Island (now part of Brooklyn)‚ a crowd of 8‚000 sees the host Atlantics score a record 26 runs in the 2nd inning to beat the Manhattan-based Mutuals‚ 52-27 in 6 innings. Because the 3rd game in the series will not be played‚ the Atlantics retain the "whip-pennant" for 1861.
Flying such a flag over your ground the season after winning a championship is the origin of the word "Pennant." It originated a few years earlier.
No, baseball (still all-amateur at this point -- at least, officially) did not stop for the American Civil War. On the contrary: Soldiers, North and South, got exposed to the game in the East, and took it home with them, helping to spread the game. It had already been first referred to as "the national pastime" as early as in 1856, but the Civil War made that term a lot more practical.
Also on this day, Richard Dudley Sears is born in Boston. He won the 1st 7 titles in the U.S. Open men's tennis tournament, 1881 to 1887 -- and then retired. He died in 1943.
October 16, 1865: Frederick Charles Albert Waghorne is born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, and grows up in Canada. A star in both hockey and lacrosse, he founded what is now the Greater Toronto Hockey League, the largest minor-league hockey organization in the world.
He also became a referee, and introduced the dropping of the puck for a faceoff instead of just lacing it on the ice, and replacing cowbells with whistles. "Old Wag" died in 1956, and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961, and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1965.
October 16, 1875: Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah. Coach LaVell Edwards would turn the Mormon school into a football powerhouse, dominating the Western Athletic Conference in the 1970s and '80s, with quarterbacks like Gifford Nielsen, Marc Wilson, Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer, and Brigham's descendant Steve Young. They moved into the Mountain West Conference in 1999, and have been an independent in 2011.
October 16, 1876: James Hugh Sinclair is born in Swellendam, South Africa. I don't know what makes a cricket player great, but he scored the South African national team's 1st 3 Test centuries, and was the 1st person from any country to score a century and take five wickets in an innings in the same Test. He was a noted long-ball hitter, the equivalent of a great slugger in baseball.
Jimmy Sinclair played from 1892 to 1911, was also regarded as a good rugby player, and appeared in a match for the South Africa soccer team. He died on February 26, 1913, only 36 years old, although I can find no source as to why. This was, however, the pre-antibiotic days.
October 16, 1882: John L. Sullivan knocks S.P. Stockton out in the 2nd round in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Professional boxing was still illegal in America, so "The Great John L." and his handlers, and Stockton and his, and the promoter all had to be very careful about this fight, in which Sullivan defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World. That's why it was held in Fort Wayne, rather than Chicago, Detroit or Indianapolis: It was less likely to attract the wrong kind of attention.
October 16, 1883: William Harridge (no middle name) is born in Chicago. In 1911, American League President Ban Johnson hired him as his personal secretary. In 1927, he became the AL's Secretary, and in 1931 its President. He held that job until 1958, getting the League through the Great Depression and World War II, and overseeing the League's integration, and the moves of the St. Louis Browns to become the Baltimore Orioles and the Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City.
He lived until 1971. The next year, he was elected to the Hall of Fame. The AL's championship trophy is named for him. (The National League's is also named for a longtime League President, Warren Giles.)
October 16, 1884: Martin Joseph Walsh is born in Kingston, Ontario. A center, Marty Walsh won the Stanley Cup with the original Ottawa Senators in 1909 and 1911, and was also a star rugby player. He died of tuberculosis in 1915, only 28 years old. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
October 16, 1885: Dorando Pietri is born in Corregio, Italy. In 1908, he won the right to be Italy's runner in the Olympic marathon in London. Traditionally, the distance of the race was meant to be the distance from the battlefield at Marathon, where Greece defeated Persia at Marathon in 490 BC, to Athens, about 22 miles. Because this time, the distance from the starting line at Windsor Castle, home of King Edward VII, to the Royal Box at White City Stadium in London was 26 miles, 385 yards, a bit longer, this became the standard marathon distance around the world.
But it was July 24, the middle of Summer, and it was hot by British standards. After 24 miles, Pietri took the lead from South African runner Charles Hefferon. When he entered the stadium, he ran the wrong way. When he was redirected, he turned, and fell. British officials, including doctor and Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, helped him up. This happened 5 times. He finished 1st, with a time of 2 hours, 54 minutes, 46 seconds -- needing 10 minutes for the last 350 meters. He barely beat American runner Johnny Hayes.
The Italian flag was quickly run up the pole, and Pietri was quickly announced as the winner. The American team immediately lodged a complaint -- and it was upheld: Pietri was disqualified, and Hayes was given the Gold Medal.
But Pietri became a worldwide celebrity. The King's wife, Queen Alexandra, gave him a silver trophy. Irving Berlin wrote a song about him, "Dorando" -- though it was sung with a thick Italian accent and was very unflattering: "Dorando, he's-a good-a for not."
He was invited to tour America, and outraced Hayes at Madison Square Garden. He raced 22 times in America, winning 17. He went back to Italy, and opened a hotel with his brother with his earnings. It went bust, and he became an auto mechanic, living until 1942.
October 16, 1886: David Grün is born in Płońsk, Poland. As David Ben-Gurion, he is the founding father of the State of Israel, serving as its 1st Prime Minister from 1948 to 1954, and again from 1955 to 1963. He died in 1973, at 87.
As far as I know, he wasn't an athlete, although the Maccabiah Games, a.k.a. "the Jewish Olympics," have been held in Israel since 1932, before independence. Many Jewish Americans have taken part, including some natives of my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey. They will next be held in July 2017.
October 16, 1888: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill is born in Manhattan. As far as I know, the great playwright had nothing to do with sports, although many a sporting event has seen like a Long Day's Journey Into Night. And Yankee Legend Mariano Rivera, Arsenal Legend Dennis Bergkamp, basketball legend George Gervin, pretty much any hockey player, and singer Jerry Butler would be interested in his play titled The Iceman Cometh.
October 16, 1894, 125 years ago: Moshe Shertok is born in Kherson, Ukraine, and grows up in Ein Siniya, in what is now the West Bank. As Moshe Sharett, he was Israel's 1st Foreign Minister, from 1948 to 1956. From January 26, 1954 to November 3, 1955, he was also Prime Minister, succeeding the 1st, David Ben-Gurion. But he was not successful, and Ben-Gurion had to return. He died in 1965.
October 16, 1898: Charles Shipman Payson is born in Falmouth, Maine. He married Joan Whitney, of the fabulously wealthy Whitney family. Joan was on the board of directors of the New York Giants baseball team, and, through her proxy, M. Donald Grant, was the only board member to vote against moving to San Francisco. She was then awarded the expansion franchise that became the Mets.
When Joan died in 1975, Charles inherited ownership. He let their daughter, Lorinda de Roulet, make the decisions. She let Grant make the decisions. The results were disastrous. Charles finally had enough, and fired Grant after the 1978 season. He sold the team to Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon in 1980, and died in 1985. Lorinda is still alive, age 88.
Also on this day, William Orville Douglas is born in Maine Township, Minnesota, and grows up in Yakima, Washington. He went to Yale University, including its Law School, and taught there. He left to serve under Joseph P. Kennedy on the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Kennedy to be U.S. Ambassador to Britain, and Douglas to succeeded him as Chairman of the SEC.
In 1939, FDR appointed Douglas to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was a part of the rulings that struck down public segregation, established "one man, one vote," and other civil liberties. The last major ruling in which he took part was in forcing President Richard Nixon to turn over all the Oval Office tapes. He served until 1975, his 36 years still a record. He died in 1980.
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October 16, 1900: Leon Allen Goslin is born in Salem, New Jersey. A .316 lifetime hitter, "Goose" is the only native of South Jersey to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. (Mike Trout of Millville is off to a great start, but he's got a long way to go.)
He played in the World Series for the Washington Senators in 1933 and for the Detroit Tigers in 1934 and 1935, the last of these being his only World Championship. He and Tiger teammates Hank Greenberg and Charlie Gehringer became known as the "G-Men" in those early days of the FBI. His bottom-of-the-9th single scored Mickey Cochrane to win Game 6 and the Series in '35, for the Tigers' 1st World Championship. He lived until 1971.
October 16, 1901: Fresh off the publication of his memoir Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington, leader of what is now Tuskegee University in Alabama, is invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to have dinner with him at the White House.
The South was outraged. The Memphis Scimitar called it "the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States." Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina -- known as Pitchfork Ben for his declaration as Governor that, while Grover Cleveland was President, Cleveland "is an old bag of beef, and I am going to Washington with a pitchfork and prod him in his old fat ribs" -- said, "We shall have to kill a thousand (N-word)s to get them back in their places!"
Theodore Roosevelt is remembered outside his home State today. So is Booker T. Washington. Ben Tillman is not. And if the Memphis Scimitar, and its successor the Memphis Press-Scimitar, are remembered today, it is for its August 17, 1977 headline, "A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard." It folded in 1983.
October 16, 1902: John P. Carmichael (that was his byline, the P may have stood for Patrick) is born in Madison, Wisconsin. He wrote for the Chicago Daily News from 1932 until 1970, including from 1943 onward as its sports editor. During World War II, he and his staff wrote to various baseball legends and asked them about their career highlights. In 1945, they were collected in the anthology My Greatest Day In Baseball.
Some of these players would later be interviewed by Lawrence S. Ritter for The Glory of Their Times, published in 1966, but some had already died before Ritter began his interviews in 1962, so this was a precursor to Ritter's book.
Ritter decided to start interviewing old players in 1961, when he heard that Ty Cobb had died. Carmichael interviewed Cobb. Ritter interviewed anybody he could find from the 1908 "Fred Merkle Game" who was still alive, which did not include Chicago Cubs legends Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, while Frank Chance had died in 1924; Carmichael got interviews from Tinker, Evers and Brown. Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson and Grover Cleveland Alexander were already dead when Ritter started; Carmichael got them all.
Already dead when Carmichael sent his staff out were the aforementioned Chance, Lou Gehrig, John McGraw, and McGraw's favorite player, Christy Mathewson. But one of the Daily News staff, Lloyd Lewis, included a story about Mathewson that he said was his "greatest day in baseball," and it was included in the book.
Carmichael interviewed new players for an update, published in 1963. I have both books, and consider them both to be treasures. The 2nd round of players included Yankees Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto and Tommy Henrich; and non-Yankees Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn and Jackie Robinson; but not Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, Duke Snider or Hank Aaron, all still active. Carmichael was given the Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink Award for sportswriters in 1974, and lived until 1986.
Also on this day, Herbert Hunt Covington is born in Mayfield, Kentucky. Herb Covington played baseball, football and basketball at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. Living until 1990, he was the last surviving member of the 1921 Centre team that beat Harvard in one of the most renowned upsets in the history of college football. The following year, he was a Second Team All-American at quarterback.
October 16, 1905: Ernst Kuzorra is born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, home of club side Schalke 04 (established a year before he was born). He and his brother-in-law, Fritz Szepan, were the forwards who led Schalke to win the German championship (at the time, a national tournament between 4 regional winners) in 1934, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1942, before World War II made it impossible to continue.
The Nazi regime wanted to use him for propaganda purposes, but he wouldn't go along with it -- not because he didn't believe in fascism, but because it wasn't in his nature to make public appearances off the field. He resumed playing after The War, retiring in 1950. He ran a tobacco shop, and was Schalke's greatest living legend until his death in 1990, at age 84.
October 16, 1909, 110 years ago: Rookie Charles "Babe" Adams comes through with a 6-hit shutout as the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-0. It is his 3rd complete-game World Series victory, and gives the Pirates their 1st World Series win -- if not, technically, their 1st World Championship.
Since there was no World Series in 1901 and 1902, and the NL was widely considered the better League, the present-day Bucs could claim "world championships" for those seasons, the way the New York Giants always did for 1904. However, they do not.
The Pirates and Tigers combine for 34 errors‚ with Detroit contributing 19. Both of these figures remain World Series records. In the battle between the 2 best players in baseball, Pittsburgh's Honus Wanger excels much more than Detroit's Ty Cobb. Adams would be the only Pirate player still on the team when they won their next Pennant and Series, in 1925, 16 years later. By the time the Tigers won another Pennant, in 1934, 25 years later, none would be left.
Adams was the only rookie in the 20th Century to win a Game 7 in the World Series. The next to do it was John Lackey of the Anaheim Angels in 2002. Frank "Spec" Shea in 1947 and Mel Stottlemyre in 1964 would be rookies starting Game 7s for the Yankees, but Mel would lose, and while the Yankees did win in '47, Shea would not be the winning pitcher. Billy Martin was planning on using Ron Guidry had the 1977 Series gone to a Game 7, but the Yankees won Game 6 on Reggie Jackson's 3 home runs and Mike Torrez's complete game.
The last survivors of this World Series? For the Pirates, pitcher Albert "Lefty" Leifield, who lived until 1970; for the Tigers, left fielder Davy Jones, who lived until 1972 -- beating out, by just 2 days, shortstop Owen "Donie" Bush. Ironically, Bush would be the manager of the next Pirate title team. He was also the namesake of the ballpark in his hometown of Indianapolis, home of one of the great teams of Triple-A ball, the Indianapolis Indians, whom he would serve as manager for many years.
Also on this day, with boxing pretty much legal everywhere in America, Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson fights Middleweight Champion Stanley Ketchel in the San Francisco suburb of Colma, California. Talk about "punching above your weight": Ketchel was one of the best middleweights ever, but, absent a lucky punch, there's no way he should have had a chance against Johnson.
And, at first, he knew it. He and Johnson agreed to make it look good, but let it end in a draw, which, under the rules of the time, would be the case if neither fighter quit or was knocked out. That way, Johnson would keep the heavyweight crown (Ketchel's crown was not officially up for grabs), and the big black man from Texas and the wiry Pole, known as the Michigan Assassin, would split the film distribution rights 50-50. It was a good deal.
The problem was, Ketchel was nuts. As boxing historian Bert Sugar put it, he "was half animal, anyway." After 11 rounds, he must have seen a weakness in Johnson (which no one else saw), and decided he could take him. He knocked Johnson down in the 12th -- and may have thought that he'd gotten the lucky punch he needed.
As with later heavyweight champs Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano, knocking Johnson down was the worst thing you could have done with him, because it only made him mad. Jack hit Stanley so hard, he not only went down, but a couple of his teeth became embedded in Johnson's glove. I've seen the film, and the legend is true: Johnson brushed the teeth out of one glove with the other.
Both men came to sad ends: Ketchel was murdered a year later, only 24 years old; while Johnson lost his title in 1915, after 3 years on the run from American authorities, forcing him to fight in other countries, and served a year in prison, eventually being killed in a car crash in 1946, at the age of 68.
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October 16, 1912: Game 8 of the World Series. Game 2 had been called due to darkness while tied – no lights at ballparks in those days – so this will decide it. The greatest pitcher the game had yet seen, Christy Mathewson, hero of the 1905 Series, squares off against Hugh Bedient in quest of his 1st win of this Series.
Matty takes a 1-0 lead into the 7th‚ but with 1 out‚ Boston manager Jake Stahl hits a pop-up to short left field. The ball drops among Art Fletcher‚ Josh Devore‚ and Fred Snodgrass. Heinie Wagner walks‚ and with 2 outs‚ pinch hitter Olaf Henriksen doubles home the tying run. Smoky Joe Wood relieves Bedient‚ and the 2 aces match zeroes until Red Murray doubles and Fred Merkle singles in the 10th to give New York a 2-1 lead. It looks like the Giants will win the Series.
But in the last of the 10th‚ pinch hitter Clyde Engle lifts a can of corn to center fielder Snodgrass‚ who, interviewed about it in 1965, said, "Well, I dropped the darn thing." Engle reaches 2nd base on the error.
In the next at-bat, Snodgrass makes a great catch of a long drive by Harry Hooper. If only Snodgrass had made an ordinary catch of Engle's popup, and let Hooper's drive drop for a hit, the final score would have been exactly the same, but the perception of how the teams got there would have been totally different, and Snodgrass wouldn' have gone down in history as the man who made "The $30,000 Muff," a figure equivalent to the difference between the totals of the winning and losing teams’ shares. (About $775,000 in today's money.)
To be fair, though, Snodgrass wasn't a bad ballplayer at all, and dealt with it far better than teammate Merkle did with his "boner" that helped to cost the Giants the 1908 Pennant. As it is, Merkle has, for the moment, the RBI that will win the World Series, and stands to have been completely redeemed.
But Mathewson, for a decade the very definition of a control pitcher, walks Steve Yerkes, bringing up Tris Speaker. The all-time leader in victories by a National League pitcher, with 373, faces the all-time leader in doubles, with 792, a true classic confrontation.
"Matty" gets "Spoke" to pop a high foul along the first-base line. Catcher John Meyers -- a member of the Cahuilla Indian tribe and thus nicknamed "Chief" -- chases it‚ but it drops a few feet from Merkle‚ who could have taken it easily. Much more so than the 1908 "boner," this is something for which to fairly criticize Merkle.
Reprieved‚ Speaker didn't need a written invitation to put his .345 lifetime batting average to work. He singles in the tying run and sends Yerkes to 3rd. After Duffy Lewis is walked intentionally‚ 3rd baseman Larry Gardner hits a long sacrifice fly to a retreating Devore that scores Yerkes with the winning run.
Just as in the playoff necessitated by the Merkle's Boner game in 1908, Mathewson, often hailed as the greatest pitcher of all time (especially back then), did not get the job done.
The Red Sox win the World Series in their 1st season in Fenway Park. By the time Fenway has hosted 7 seasons, the Sox will have won 4 World Championships there, plus the 1st-ever World Series from when they were playing at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. In their next 85 seasons at Fenway, the Sox will win a grand total of no World Series.
If either Merkle or Meyers had caught Speaker's popup, the Giants might have held on to win. In fact, you can make a better case for Merkle being a "bonehead" on October 16, 1912 than you can for him being such on September 23, 1908. Ordinarily, both he and the Chief were very smart players, but they both blew it big-time on this one.
Then there's Mathewson. Even 107 years later, it seems like sacrilege to blame "The Christian Gentleman" for this loss, but, just as in the Merkle playoff 4 years earlier, if he had pitched like Christy Mathewson, the Giants would have won both games.
Most of all, the Red Sox were better. True, the Giants won 103 games and were defending NL Champions, but the Sox won 105 -- a record for Boston baseball that has never been matched. And the Sox did win 3 of the first 4 decisions in the Series. While the Giants won the Pennant again in 1913 and again in 1917, the Sox would win the World Series again in 1915, 1916 and 1918 -- the Giants wouldn't win another until 1921.
Snodgrass was a standup guy about it all for the last 62 years of his life, becoming a banker in Oxnard, California, and later being elected the city's Mayor. He died on April 5, 1974, at the age of 86.
The last survivors of this Series were: For the Red Sox, Wood, who lived on until 1985, at the age of 95; and, for the Giants, Hall of Fame lefthander Richard "Rube" Marquard, who lived on until 1980, at the age of 93.
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October 16, 1913: Ralph Rose dies of typhoid fever in San Francisco. He won the Gold Medal in the shot put at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, in 1908 in London, and in 1912 in Stockholm. But in those days before antibiotics, he was doomed at age 28.
Also on this day, Herman Robbins (as far as I know, he had no middle name) is born in Manhattan. He was a combat medic in World War II, receiving a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He became one of America's leading orthopedists, working at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Spanish Harlem (it has since moved to the Gramercy Park area), and had an office on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side.
He was a big Yankee Fan, and a tennis player into his old age, living to be 95. The reason I mention him is that he was a friend of Dr. Aaron Goldberg, my mother's uncle, and through this connection, he became my doctor. With birth defects in both hips, he operated on each one twice: The left when I was a baby, and the right on October 28, 1975 and July 12, 1976. It's thanks to him that I can walk at all.
October 16, 1916: Margaret Sanger opens the 1st birth control clinic in America, at 46 Amboy Street in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. Brownsville has long been a ghetto, but, at the time, it was a Jewish one. She is arrested for obscenity, as printing and distributing literature about birth control involved mention of sexual organs and sexual behavior, and mentions of either were then illegal. She was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.
In February 1917, she began publishing a magazine, Birth Control Review. It was, appropriately, published once a month. In 1918, the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed doctors to prescribe contraception. Sanger died in 1966, 15 months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that birth control was part of a person's right to privacy.
October 16, 1917: With the U.S. role in World War I well underway, the day after the Chicago White Sox beat the Giants in the World Series, they play an exhibition game against each other for 600 soldiers at Garden City‚ Long Island. The Sox win‚ 6-4.
October 16, 1921: In defiance of a ban by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis on World Series participants playing postseason exhibitions‚ Yankees Babe Ruth‚ Bob Meusel and pitcher Bill Piercy launch a barnstorming tour in Buffalo. Five days later‚ they cut it short in Scranton. In the meantime, Ruth openly challenges Landis to act.
The Judge does act‚ fining the players their World Series shares -- $3‚362.26, or $49,292 in today's money -- and suspending them until May 20 of the 1922 season.
Also on this day, after playing the 1st season of the NFL, 1920, as the Decatur Staleys in downstate Illinois, the team founded by George Halas plays its 1st home game as the Chicago Staleys. They defeat the Rochester Jeffersons 16-13 at Cubs Park, later to be renamed Wrigley Field, in front of only 8,000 people. This was a typical crowd for the early NFL. The next year, to match the Cubs, Halas would change the name of the team to the Chicago Bears.
Also on this day, Matthew Daniel Batts is born in San Antonio. A catcher, Matt Batts was with the Red Sox when they had their 1948 and '49 end-of-season disappointments. He later ran a printing company and ran baseball clinics at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he died in 2013.
October 16, 1923: Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio is founded in Los Angeles. Walt Disney handled the creative side of things. Roy Disney handled the business side, although Walt had the final say. Thus was what we now call The Walt Disney Company begun.
October 16, 1925: Michael Conrad (no middle name) is born in Manhattan. A "character actor," he became one of those "actors who's on every show." In 1974, he played an imprisoned former New York Giant who coached the inmates' team, the Mean Machine, in The Longest Yard.
But he is best known on the other side of the law, as Desk Sergeant Phil Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues, holding early morning Roll Call, reading morning announcements, and dismissing the officers with the words, "Let's be careful out there!"
The show was on late, Thursday nights at 10:00, and was awfully dark, both in lighting and script. And I was 12 years old when it debuted, and just not into that sort of thing. So I never kept up with it. But my parents loved the show, especially Conrad. calling him "Uncle Mike," because they thought he looked like my grandfather, Michael F. Pacholek, a Newark bartender. The resemblance wasn't as close as they thought. (No, this blog is not named for Conrad. And I never really knew Grandpa Mike. Besides, he was a Mets fan.)
Alas, both Mikes died young of cancer: Grandpa Mike in 1971, just 57; and Michael Conrad in 1983, only 58, at the start of the 3rd season of "The Blues." The character's death was written into the show, but happened very differently: Having previously been divorced, Phil married a much younger woman, and had a heart attack during sex.
October 16, 1926: Charles Francis Dolan is born in Cleveland. He is the founder and owner of HBO and Cablevision. Through HBO, he owns AMC and a half-share (with the BBC) of BBC America.
So, through AMC, he is he boss of the Walking Dead franchise, the Breaking Bad franchise,
Humans and Preacher. Through BBC America, he shows the Star Trek, Doctor Who and Orphan Black franchises.
Humans and Preacher. Through BBC America, he shows the Star Trek, Doctor Who and Orphan Black franchises.
Through Cablevision, he owns ITT, which owns Gulf + Western, which owns Viacom, which owns Paramount Pictures, which owns the Madison Square Garden Corporation, which owns The Garden itself, the NBA's New York Knicks, the NHL's New York Rangers, the WNBA's New York Liberty, the NBA G-League's Westchester Knicks, the American Hockey League's Hartford Wolf Pack (but no longer the XL Center, which used to be the Hartford Civic Center), the Garden's boxing operations, MSG Network, Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theatre, the Chicago Theatre, and has part-ownership of the Wang Theatre in Boston and the Forum in the Los Angeles suburbs.
He leaves actual operation of the Garden and its subsidiaries to his son, James L. Dolan. Which led me to the joke that the Knicks (or the Rangers) are just 1 man away from winning a world championship -- unfortunately, it's Jimmy Dolan. Since Jimmy was given final say over The Garden, 20 years ago, the Knicks and Rangers have won just 1 Finals game between them. In Finals, the Rangers are 1-4, while the Knicks are 0-0. Unlike Ed McCaskey of the Chicago Bears, son-in-law of club founder George Halas, Charles has never "taken the keys" from his son.
October 16, 1927: The Chicago Bears beat the NFL version of the New York Yankees, 12-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Hall of Fame center and (as we would say today) nose tackle George Trafton tackles his once-and-future Bears teammate, Red Grange, the biggest star in football at the time, and wrecks his knee.
That tackle may have changed the history of football: "After that," the Galloping Ghost said, "I was just another straight-ahead runner, and the world is full of straight-ahead runners." The greatest player in the game missed the rest of the 1927 season and all of 1928, before going back to the Bears in 1929, and, like many great athletes forced to go both ways, changed his focus and improved his defense, making a game-saving tackle at the end of the 1933 NFL Championship Game.
That tackle may have changed the history of football: "After that," the Galloping Ghost said, "I was just another straight-ahead runner, and the world is full of straight-ahead runners." The greatest player in the game missed the rest of the 1927 season and all of 1928, before going back to the Bears in 1929, and, like many great athletes forced to go both ways, changed his focus and improved his defense, making a game-saving tackle at the end of the 1933 NFL Championship Game.
But Grange was essentially done as a superstar at age 24, and played his last game at 31. And the reason was that tackle by Trafton. If Grange had failed in his rookie season of 1925, the NFL might well have folded. But, going in the other direction, if Grange had been able to do in New York what he'd done in Chicago, the NFL might have gotten much bigger much sooner -- and maybe, today, we'd have a surviving football team in New York named after baseball's Yankees, not one named after baseball's Giants.
Also on this day, Edith Baines is born in New York. An episode of All In the Family titled "Edith's 50th Birthday" aired on October 16, 1977, so we have to accept this as the birthdate of the eventual Edith Bunker. More about this later.
October 16, 1928: The crew of Germany's airship Graf Zeppelin, having just made the 1st Atlantic Ocean crossing by airship, are given a ticker-tape parade in New York. The following year, it would make the 1st around-the-world flight by an airship. In 1930, it flew over Wembley Stadium in London during the FA Cup Final, which Arsenal won over Huddersfield Town. In 1931, it flew over the North Pole.
The destruction of its sister ship, the Hindenburg, at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937 doomed hydrogen-filled airships, and after returning to home base in Friedrichshaften 2 days later, Graf Zeppelin never flew again. With sufficient helium to get it airborne too impractical to use as a substitute for hydrogen, it was scrapped in 1940, and could not become a weapon of war.
Also on this day, Edith Baines is born in New York. An episode of All In the Family titled "Edith's 50th Birthday" aired on October 16, 1977, so we have to accept this as the birthdate of the eventual Edith Bunker. More about this later.
October 16, 1928: The crew of Germany's airship Graf Zeppelin, having just made the 1st Atlantic Ocean crossing by airship, are given a ticker-tape parade in New York. The following year, it would make the 1st around-the-world flight by an airship. In 1930, it flew over Wembley Stadium in London during the FA Cup Final, which Arsenal won over Huddersfield Town. In 1931, it flew over the North Pole.
The destruction of its sister ship, the Hindenburg, at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937 doomed hydrogen-filled airships, and after returning to home base in Friedrichshaften 2 days later, Graf Zeppelin never flew again. With sufficient helium to get it airborne too impractical to use as a substitute for hydrogen, it was scrapped in 1940, and could not become a weapon of war.
October 16, 1929, 90 years ago: Walter Edward Michaels is born in Swoyersville, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley. The son of a Polish immigrant coal miner, he was a linebacker, debuting with the Green Bay Packers in 1951, and then playing 10 years with the Cleveland Browns, winning NFL Championships in 1954 and 1955. He closed his career with the Jets in 1963.
He remained with the Jets as defensive coordinator, and was on the staff that won Super Bowl III in 1969. Indeed, it was his defense, more than anything the Joe Namath-led offense, that won the game, forcing the Baltimore Colts into lots of mistakes. That Colt team included his younger brother Lou Michaels, a linebacker and placekicker who made 2 Pro Bowls.
After 3 years with the Philadelphia Eagles, he returned to the Jets in 1976, and was named head coach in 1977, taking them to the AFC Championship Game in 1982 -- the closest they would get to the Super Bowl between the 1968 and 1998 seasons. He then resigned to care for his terminally ill mother in Pennsylvania.
In the 1984 and 1985 seasons, he was back at the Meadowlands, as head coach of the USFL's New Jersey Generals -- meaning his boss was Donald Trump. Aside from a team in Helsinki, Finland, in an ill-fated 1989 attempt to start an American-style football league in Europe, he has never coached again.
He is a member of the Virginia Sports and National Polish American Sports Halls of Fame. Walt died on July 10, 2019, at age 89. His brother Lou died in 2016, at 81.
Also on this day, Ivor John Allchurch is born in Swansea, Wales. A forward, he played for hometown team Swansea Town, now known as Swansea City, from 1947 to 1958. That year, he helped Wales reach the World Cup for what remains the only time, and was sold to Newcastle United.
After 4 years on Tyneside, he returned to the Principality, but to Swansea's arch-rivals, Cardiff City. After 3 years there, he returned to Swansea in 1965, and played 3 more seasons. He helped Swansea win the Welsh Cup in 1950 and 1966, and Cardiff win it in 1964 and 1965 -- meaning he won it 3 straight years, but with 2 different teams. He died in 1997. When Swansea City opened the Liberty Stadium in 2005, a statue of him was erected outside. He remains the team's all-time leading scorer.
His brother Len Allchurch (1933-2016) was a Swansea and national side (including '58 World Cup) teammate, also playing for Sheffield United and Stockport County. He never received a caution, or its successor, a yellow card, much less got sent off or received a red card, in a 21-season professional career.
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October 16, 1931: David Michael Sisler is born in St. Louis. The son of Baseball Hall-of-Famer George Sisler, the brother of All-Star Dick Sisler, and the brother of longtime minor-league executive George Sisler Jr., Dave Sisler pitched in the major leagues from 1956 to 1962. He was an original 1961 member of the "new" Washington Senators, the team that became the Texas Rangers in 1972.
He finished with a career record of 38-44. He later became a successful investment banker, and lived until 2011.
Also on this day, Charles W. Murphy dies in Chicago at age 63. Previously a sportswriter in Cincinnati, in 1905 he bought the Chicago Cubs, whom he led through their greatest period, winning 4 National League Pennants in 5 seasons from 1906 to 1910, including the 1907 and 1908 World Series -- until 2016, the only World Series the team had ever won. He sold the team in 1913.
One Charles W. out on this day, one in: Charles Wendell Colson is born in Boston. A lawyer and a Marine officer in the Korean War, he worked on Richard Nixon's 1968 Presidential campaign, served as White House Counsel early in the Nixon Administration, and then ran the White House's Office of Public Liaison into Nixon's 2nd term.
White House Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, who called himself "Richard Nixon's son of a bitch," called Chuck Colson "Richard Nixon's hitman." Colson himself said, "I was willing to be ruthless in getting things done." He was the author of the original version of what came to be known as "Nixon's Enemies List."
He hired some of the men who were involved in planning the break-in at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. He, too, would be indicted for his role in the break-in's cover-up. He made a deal, and pleaded guilty to 1 count of obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison, fined $5,000, and disbarred. He ended up serving 7 months.
The experience reminded him that his parents had tended to prisoners in his youth. No longer permitted to practice law, he began to assist on the other side, becoming an ordained minister and founding Prison Fellowship, which he continued to run until his death in 2012. Another Watergate defendant, Jeb Stuart Magruder, also went into the ministry after being released from prison.
October 16, 1936: Jack Edward Baldschun is born in Greenville, Ohio. He had the ill fortune to be a relief pitcher on the Philadelphia Phillies when they set a post-1900 MLB record with 23 straight losses in 1961, and lost 10 straight games to blow the 1964 National League Pennant.
His bad luck continued: He got to the Cincinnati Reds too late to help them win the 1961 Pennant or make the difference for them in 1964, but left them too soon to be part of the Big Red Machine of the 1970s. And he ended his career with a terrible expansion team, the 1969 and '70 San Diego Padres. He finished with a record of 48-41, plus 60 saves. He moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and entered the lumber business. He still lives there.
October 16, 1937: Fordham University and the University of Pittsburgh play to a scoreless tie at the Polo Grounds, where Fordham played home games that were too big for their on-campus stadium. Both teams finished the season undefeated, Pitt ranked Number 1 in the country, Fordham Number 3.
Pitt were led by two-way back Marshall "Biggie" Goldberg, later a star for the Chicago Cardinals. Fordham were coached by Jim Crowley, who had been one of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame in 1924, and were led by the most famous offensive line in college football history, "The Seven Blocks of Granite." (The Four Horsemen's line had been called the Seven Mules.)
This line featured 2 future Pro Football Hall-of-Famers. Center Alex Wojciechowicz would star in the NFL for the Detroit Lions and the Philadelphia Eagles, but it was one of the guards who would make a bigger impact, and not as a player: Vince Lombardi. A 3rd future Hall-of-Famer, future Giants owner Wellington Mara, was then a student at Fordham.
The Blocks were: Center, Wojciechowicz; guards, Lombardi and Mike Kochel; tackles, Al Babartsky and Ed Franco; and ends, Leo Paquin, replaced in 1937 by Harry Jacunski, and Johnny Druze. Druze lived until 2005, and was the last survivor.
The teams would face each other again in Pittsburgh on October 29, 1938. Fordham weren't so lucky this time: Pitt beat them, 24-13. It was the only game Fordham lost all season.
October 16, 1939, 80 years ago: Billy Frank Parker is born in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. A defensive end who dropped his first name as well as a few ballcarriers, Frank Parker is 1 of the 28 surviving members of the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns. He closed his career with the Giants in 1969.
Also on this day, Amancio Amaro Varela is born in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain. A right wing (in soccer if not necessarily in politics), he starred for hometown club Deportivo de La Coruña, before moving on to Real Madrid.
Known to Madridistas as simply Amancio, or El Brujo (The Wizard), he helped them win 9 La Liga titles from 1963 to 1976, and the 1966 European Cup. He was Spain's leading scorer in 1969 and 1970. He also helped Spain win the 1964 European Championship.
He was Real Madrid's Captain from 1974 to 1976, its manager in the 1984-85 season, and the club president at the time of its 2002 Centennial. He is still alive.
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October 16, 1940: David Albert DeBusschere is born in Detroit. He pitched for the Chicago White Sox in the 1962 and '63 seasons, but he was also a basketball star in his home town, first for the University of Detroit, then for the Pistons, where he became the youngest head coach in NBA history, at 24, from 1964 to 1967.
He is 1 of only 12 athletes to have played in both Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association (or its predecessor, the Basketball Association of America). The others are, in reverse chronological order: Mark Hendrickson (NBA forward 1996-2000, MLB pitcher 2002-11), Danny Ainge, Ron Reed, Steve Hamilton, Gene Conley (the only man to win titles in both sports, with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the 1959, '60 and '61 Boston Celtics), Dick Groat, Cotton Nash, Frank Baumholtz, Dick Ricketts, Howie Schultz, and, better known as an actor, Chuck Connors.
For a long time, Madison Square Garden would host NBA doubleheaders, with the Knicks playing the nightcap but not the opener. When the new Garden opened on February 14, 1968, Dave DeBusschere, playing for the Pistons, scored the new building's 1st basket.
The Knicks traded Walt Bellamy to the Pistons to get DeBusschere, already with a reputation as one of the league’s best defensive players. He led the defense that helped the Knicks win the NBA Championship in 1970 and 1973. He later served as head coach and general manager of the Knicks, and his Number 22 has been retired. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and named to the NBA’s 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.
My generation knows DeBusschere best as the Knick GM who won the 1st pick in the 1st-ever NBA Draft Lottery in 1985, selecting Patrick Ewing. Sadly, the great Double D suffered a heart attack and died in 2003, age 63.
Also on this day, Leonard Barrie Corbin is born in Lamesa, Texas. Better known as Barry Corbin, he's best known for playing Maurice Minnifield, boss of Cicely, Alaska, on the 1990s CBS series Northern Exposure.
He also played a basketball coach on the WB drama One Tree Hill, and, like his fellow Northern Exposure stars John Corbett and John Cullum, is also renowned for his commercial voiceover work. He now has the recurring role of Merle Tucker, Cameron's father, on Modern Family.
October 16, 1941: The destroyer USS Kearny is summoned from its dock in Reykjavik, Iceland to assist a convoy of British and Canadian ships that had been attacked by German U-boats (submarines). The Kearny dropped depth charges, but was hit by a Nazi torpedo. The ship managed to get away and would resume operations after repairs, but 11 men were killed.
In spite of this, President Franklin D. Roosevelt still did not ask Congress for a Declaration of War. But when Germany declared war on America, this incident was one of the reasons cited.
Also on this day, James Timothy McCarver is born in Memphis -- but, like James Paul McCartney Jr., born 8 months later, this James is best known by his middle name. He played from 1959 to 1980, and is the only baseball player to be thrown out of major league games in 4 different decades.
But he was also the catcher on the 1964 and '67 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, and Steve Carlton's "personal catcher" on the Philadelphia Phillies. He had also caught Carlton on the '67 Cards, and has joked that he and Steve will be buried 60 feet, 6 inches apart. (So far, it has not been necessary for either.) Although he did not play in the 1980 postseason, and in fact served as a Phils broadcaster during the NLCS, he received a World Series ring when the Phils won.
But he is best known as a broadcaster, for the Mets and several networks, and has been elected to the broadcasters' wing of the Hall of Fame. He's also written several books about baseball. He is 1 of 18 surviving members of the '64 Cards, and 1 of 14 from the '67 titlists.
The weird thing about McCarver is that the ballpark in his hometown, which served as the home of a series of Memphis teams from 1968 to 1999, was renamed Tim McCarver Stadium in 1978, while he was not only still alive, but still active in baseball. It has since been replaced by a more modern facility, and was demolished in 2005. Like Helen Hayes with the 1st Broadway theater named for her, McCarver has outlived the "playhouse" named for him.
No wonder that, when James Timothy McCarver joined James Paul McCartney Jr. as a recording artist, and recorded Tim McCarver Sings Songs from the Great American Songbook in 2009, one of the songs he chose was the one that Joe Raposo wrote about Ebbets Field for Frank Sinatra: "There Used to Be a Ballpark."
Also on this day, Mel Grant Counts is born in Coos Bay, Oregon. A center, he starred at Oregon State, and was a member of the U.S. basketball team that won the Gold Medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. He won the NBA Championship with the Boston Celtics in 1964 and 1965.
He later reached the NBA Finals with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1973, but was not with them when they won the title in 1972. He was sent in to substitute for Wilt Chamberlain when Wilt needed a breather in Game 7 of the 1969 NBA Finals, but when Wilt told head coach Butch van Breda Kolff he was ready to go back in, VBK kept Wilt on the bench, and let Counts stay in to guard Bill Russell, to whom he was once a backup. This is the greatest coaching miscalculation in NBA history, and it was the last one VBK made as head coach of the Lakers.
Mel Counts was an original member of the New Orleans Jazz in 1974. Oregon State retired his Number 21, and he has been elected to the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. He became a real estate agents, and had 3 sons who became college basketball players, although none reached the NBA. He is still alive.
October 16, 1943: Thomas Gemmell (no middle name) is born in Motherwell, Scotland. A left back, from 1961 to 1971, Tommy Gemmell helped Glasgow soccer team Celtic win 6 League titles, 4 Scottish Cups, and the 1967 European Cup, making him one of the "Lisbon Lions." He also played for Scotland in their shocking win over recent World Cup winners England at Wembley Stadium in 1967.
He came to America in 1973, and played for the Miami Toros of the original North American Soccer League. He later managed Dundee United and, twice, Albion Rovers. He died in 2017.
Also on this day, Paul Rose is born in Montreal. In 1970, along with his brother Jacques Rose and 2 others, members of the terrorist group Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), he kidnapped Pierre Laporte, Minister of Labour for the Province of Quebec, as part of what became known as the October Crisis. On October 17, the day after his 27th birthday, Paul was not with the others when Laporte tried to escape, and the others killed him in the attempt.
Paul Rose was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in 1982. He said, "I regret nothing: 1970, the abductions, the prison, the suffering, nothing. I did what I had to do. Placed before the same circumstances today, I would do exactly the same thing." He later served as leader of the Social Democratic Party of Quebec, and died in 2013.
October 16, 1944, 75 years ago: Kaizer Motaung is born in the Orlando East section of Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa. At the age of 16, he was signed as a forward to Orlando Pirates Football Club, the most popular soccer team in his country. At this time, soccer was seen as the sport of the oppressed black majority, while cricket and rugby were the sports of the minority white government.
He came to America to play for the Atlanta Chiefs, and helped them win the 1968 North American Soccer League title. When he returned to South Africa in 1970, he founded a new team in Johannesburg, named for himself and his American team: Kaizer Chiefs.
In spite of African tribal leaders traditionally being called "chiefs" by Europeans (the word comes from the French "chef," meaning "head" or "leader"), the team's logo, like that of its Atlanta predecessor, shows a Native American in a feathered headdress. The Chiefs and Pirates have the most spirited rivalry in African soccer (with the exception of Cairo, Egypt giants Al-Ahly and Zamalek), and their stadiums are just 4.6 miles apart. Along with Pirates chairman Irvin Khoza, Kaizer founded South Africa's current top league, the South African Premier League.
With Kaizer still being involved with the club as executive chairman to this day, and his son Bobby Motaung as vice-chairman, it has won 14 League titles, most recently in 2014; 15 national cups, also most recently in 2014; and the 2001 African Cup Winners' Cup. The club is the most popular sports team in the country (ahead of the national rugby team, the Springboks, and the national cricket team), and it is remarked that, with their traveling fans, they never truly play an away game.
October 16, 1946: Gordie Howe makes his NHL debut. Wearing Number 15 instead of the familiar 9 that he will start wearing the next season, the 18-year-old right wing scores against Turk Broda, and the Detroit Red Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 3-3 tie at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
The goal will be the 1st of 786 that the man who becomes known as Mr. Hockey will score for the Wings, going on to win 4 Stanley Cups and becoming the greatest player the game has ever known, and I don't want to hear about no Number 99: Gordie was better. We lost him this year, at the age of 88.
Also on this day, Geoffrey Colin Barnett is born in Northwich, Chester, England. The goalkeeper was a career backup, not making enough appearances to qualify for the League title with Liverpool-based Everton in 1963 or North London's Arsenal in 1971, nor the FA Cup with Everton in 1966 or Arsenal in 1971. But in 1972, when Bob Wilson was injured in Arsenal's FA Cup Semifinal win over Stoke City, Barnett had to step in. They lost the Final 1-0 to Leeds United, but don't blame Barnett: Wilson wouldn't have stopped Allan Clarke's diving header, either.
In 1976, he came to America, and played for the Minnesota Kicks of the North American Soccer League, eventually alongside his former teammate, Arsenal legend Charlie George. He managed the team in its final season, 1981, but, through no fault of his, it folded. He returned to England and ran a pub in Cheshire until 2010, then came back to Minnesota, where he is now an official at a golf course.
Also on this day, Suzanne Marie Mahoney is born in San Bruno, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. We know her as Suzanne Somers. She starred in 2 ABC sitcoms, playing Chrissie Snow on Three's Company in the 1970s and Carol Lambert on Step By Step in the 1990s.
Despite being 73 years old and having survived breast cancer, she remains in the phenomenal shape that has allowed her to write several fitness books, make her own exercise videos, and serve as the spokeswoman for the Thighmaster. Which, I suppose, gives her a tangential relationship to sports.
Also on this day, 10 Nazi war criminals, convicted of crimes against humanity, are executed by hanging at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. They include Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler's Foreign Minister; Julius Streicher, Nazi Germany's top propaganda publisher; General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Armed Forces, who had signed the surrender papers on V-E Day; and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
You may have seen the "Hitler Rants Parodies," based on a scene from the 2004 film Downfall, starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler. Christian Redl played Jodl in that scene, and Dieter Mann played Keitel.
October 16, 1947: David S. Zucker -- I can find no record of what the S stands for -- is born in Milwaukee, and grows up in nearby Shorewood, Wisconsin. He, his brother Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams formed one of the top comedic filmmaking teams of the late 20th Century, known by their initials as ZAZ.
Together, they made (all of these are comedies, but not all of these are spoof films) The Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane! Top Secret! Ruthless People, High School High, BASEketball; Scary Movie 3, 4 and 5; Superhero Movie, and the Naked Gun franchise, including the short-lived TV show that launched it, Police Squad! David has also made the serious films A Walk in the Clouds and Phone Booth.
October 16, 1948: Leo David Mazzone is born in Keyser, West Virginia. He was the longtime pitching coach for the Atlanta Braves, and TV cameras frequently showed him rocking back and forth on the dugout bench, which drove Brave-haters crazy.
He was their pitching coach from 1979 to 1990, and they reached the postseason just once. But from 1991 to 2005, they made the postseason every year – except, of course, for 1994, when there was no postseason. In 2006, he was hired as the pitching coach for the Baltimore Orioles, and after two years of being unable to repeat his Atlanta magic, he was fired. He now works as a baseball analyst for Fox.
Also on this day, Richard C. Caster (I can find no record of what the C stands for) is born in Mobile, Alabama. A receiver, he made 3 Pro Bowls with the Jets in the mid-1970s, reached 2 AFC Championship Games with the Houston Oilers in the late 1970s, and closed his career winning Super Bowl XVII with the Washington Redskins in 1983. He is still alive.
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October 16, 1950: Branch Rickey's contract as president, and de facto general manager, of the Brooklyn Dodgers expires. He is still owner of 1/4of the franchise. With the death of quarter-owner John L. Smith, another quarter-owner, Walter O'Malley, buys Smith's share from his heirs, making him the largest owner: O'Malley 50 percent, Rickey 25 percent, and James Mulvey and his wife, Elizabeth "Dearie" Mulvey each having 12.5 percent.
Dearie was the daughter of Steve McKeever, who with his brother Ed ran the construction company that helped former sole owner Charlie Ebbets build Ebbets Field in 1912-13.
O'Malley knew he could dominate the Mulveys, and did so until he finally bought their children out in 1975. But he and Rickey were both very strong personalities, with little in common except cheapness, the Republican Party, the love of a good cigar, and the belief that they always had to be right.
O'Malley hated everything about Rickey, including his favorite player, Jackie Robinson, and his favorite broadcaster, Red Barber; and would force Rickey, Robinson and Barber out of the organization -- all before moving the team, meaning he would have been a dirty bastard even if the team were still in Brooklyn to this day.
O'Malley offered to buy Rickey's quarter-share of the club. Seeing no reason to hold onto it -- he was not going to be offered a new contract as president, and, effectively, general manager with control over transactions and salaries -- Rickey decided to comply.
However, in a final act of spite, Rickey instead offered his percentage of the club to a friend for a million dollars. His chances at complete franchise control at risk, O'Malley was forced to offer more money, and Rickey finally sold his portion for $1,050,000 -- about $10.9 million in today's money. (In the era of free agency and big TV packages, basketball legend Magic Johnson bought the Dodger franchise for $1.4 billion in 2012.)
Rickey's son, Branch Rickey Jr. -- known as "Twig," but never to his face, or to his father's -- was already the Dodgers' farm director. After leaving the Dodgers, Branch Sr. was offered the position of general manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He took it, and took Branch Jr. with him to direct their farm systems. Health problems forced Branch Sr. to retire in 1955, but his contributions, and those of Branch Jr., would help lead to a World Championship for Pittsburgh in 1960.
Oddly, Branch Jr., who had diabetes, died first, in 1961; Branch Sr. died in 1965. Branch Jr.'s son, Branch Barrett Rickey (never "Branch Rickey III," but that's what people call him), now 74, is the president of the Pacific Coast League, having also worked in the Pirates' organization, and also in that of the Cincinnati Reds (which makes sense, since Branch Sr. was from Ohio).
October 16, 1952: India and Pakistan, both having become independent from Britain 5 years earlier, play each other in cricket, a sport they inherited from their former colonial masters and kept because they loved it, for the 1st time. From October 16 to 19, in Dehli, India, they play a traditional 5-day test match, and India win.
I've been told by an Indian who I know online from our shared fandom of London soccer team Arsenal that this is the greatest sports rivalry in the world. It carries with it the weight of history and the influence of religion: Most Indians are Hindu, while Pakistanis are, by definition, Muslim.
Despite India's massive edge in population -- 1.3 billion, as opposed to 215 million -- they've only beaten Pakistan 70 times, while Pakistan has beaten India 86 times. There have been 43 draws. India has won the Cricket World Cup in 1983 and 2011, while Pakistan won it in 1992. (The tournament, which began in 1975, has also been won by Australia 5 times, in 1987, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2015; the West Indies team twice, in 1975 and 1979; Sri Lanka in 1996, and England this year.)
October 16, 1953: Al Sobotka is born. You probably won't recognize his name unless you're from Michigan, or maybe Windsor, Ontario. But he is the building operations manager for 2 Detroit arenas: The old Cobo Hall and the new Little Caesars Arena.
In this role, he is also the zamboni driver for the hockey team that plays at LCA, and before that at Joe Louis Arena, the Detroit Red Wings. He's also the guy who picks up any octopus that's thrown onto the ice, and if the Wings are winning, he'll twirl the octopus around over his head. The Wings have won 4 Stanley Cups while he’s been an employee, and they gave him a ring for each of them.
Also on this day, Paulo Roberto Falcão is born in Abelardo Luz, Santa Catarina, Brazil. A midfielder known by just his last name, he led Porto Alegre club Internacional to League titles in 1975, '76 and '79; and AS Roma to the Coppa Italia in 1981 and '84 and the League title in 1983. He also played for Brazil in the 1982 and 1986 World Cups.
He briefly managed the Brazil and Japan national teams, now manages Sport Club do Recife in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Colombian footballer Radamel García named his son Radamel Falcao (with no accent mark over the 2nd A) in tribute, and the latter became one of the biggest stars in the game.
October 16, 1954: Michael Wayne Dimmel is born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, and grows up in Logansport, Indiana. An outfielder, he played 25 games for the Baltimore Orioles in 1977, and 8 for them in 1978. In 1979, he played 6 games for the St. Louis Cardinals. That was it. He was used as a pinch-runner, and scored 11 runs. But he only got 1 hit in 9 plate appearances. He is now an investor in the Dallas office of Morgan Stanley.
October 16, 1955: Miles Gorrell (no middle name) is born in Edmonton. An offensive lineman, he led the University of Ottawa to Canada's national championship of college football, the Vanier Cup, in 1975. He played 19 seasons in the CFL, made 5 All-Star Teams, won 2 Leo Dandurand Trophies as the league's outstanding lineman, and won the 1986 Grey Cup with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Now a scout with the Toronto Argonauts, he has been elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
October 16, 1956: Jules Rimet dies, 2 days after his 83rd birthday. He was the longtime president of FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the world's governing body for soccer. (The name "soccer" comes from a shortening of "association football" to "assoc.") He was the founder of the World Cup, whose championship trophy is named for him.
Also on this day, Melissa Louise Belote is born in Washington, D.C., and grows up in the nearby suburb of Springfield, Virginia. Just 15 years old, she swam to 3 Gold Medals at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. She swam at Arizona State University, and won the Honda-Broderick Cup as America's best female collegiate athlete for the 1976-77 schoolyear.
Now using her married name of Melissa Belote Ripley, she is a high school swimming coach in the Phoenix suburbs. She is a member of the International Swimming and Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. On my 1st visit to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in 1992, when she was just 35, she was already a member of the stadium's ring of honor, the Washington Wall of Stars.
October 16, 1957: Hall-of-Fame slugger Hank Greenberg is fired as general manager by the owners of the Cleveland Indians. Greenberg‚ one of the architects of the strong Cleveland teams of the early 1950s‚ will be replaced by Frank "Trader" Lane‚ but will continue as a minority shareholder in the team until Bill Veeck, who had hired him for the Indians in 1948, hires him for the front office of the Chicago White Sox when he buys them in 1959. Lane's hiring will be a disastrous one for the Indians.
October 16, 1958: Timothy Francis Robbins is born in the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina, California, and grows up in New York. Despite all his work, he is still best known for playing Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh, a minor-league pitcher with "a million-dollar arm and a 5-cent head," in the film Bull Durham.
On the set, he met Susan Sarandon, who grew up in Edison, New Jersey. They were together for 21 years, although they never got married. They are both fans of the New York Mets and Rangers. Well, nobody's perfect.
Go ahead, Tim, blow out those 61 candles. Just blow 'em out. Don't think, Meat, just blow.
October 16, 1959, 60 years ago: Brian David Harper is born in San Pedro, California. He was the catcher for the Minnesota Twins on their 1991 World Championship team. He was just fired after 3 years as a hitting instructor in the Detroit Tigers' system. His son Brett got as far as AAA ball in the Mets' system. They are not related to Bryce Harper, with whom Brian shares his birthday.
Also on this day, George C. Marshall dies at age 78. The former 5-Star General was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army during World War II, planner of the D-Day invasion, Secretary of State and creator of the plan to rebuild postwar Europe that bears his name, and Secretary of Defense in the early part of the Korean War.
His name is also the reason why America doesn't have the rank of Field Marshal: President Harry S Truman thought he deserved it, but the idea of calling someone "Marshal Marshall" seemed beneath the dignity of the rank.
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October 16, 1960: Arch McDonald dies of a heart attack on a train going from New York to Washington. He was 59. In 1939, he had been the 1st radio voice of the Yankees, but never fit in with New York. That 1 season aside, he was the voice of the Washington Senators from 1934 to 1956, and of the Washington Redskins from their arrival in 1937 until his death.
He may have been the 1st baseball announcer to use the words, "going, going, gone" to describe a home run. Mel Allen, who teamed with him that 1939 season and then led the broadcasts until 1964, adopted it. McDonald would be posthumously awarded the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford Frick Award for broadcasters. (Allen and Red Barber would be its 1st recipients.)
Also on this day, Graeme Marshall Sharp is born in Glasgow, Scotland. A striker, he was a member of the Merseyside-based Everton team that won the FA Cup in 1984, the Football League and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1985, and the League again in 1987.
He played for Scotland in the 1986 World Cup, served as player-manager for Manchester-area team Oldham Athletic, and now hosts a radio show and serves as an Everton club ambassador.
October 16, 1961: Christopher John Doleman is born in Indianapolis, and grows up in York, Pennsylvania. The defensive end was an 8-time All-Pro, and was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the NFL's 1990s All-Decade Team, and the Minnesota Vikings Ring of Honor.
UPDATE: Doleman died on January 28, 2020, in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, Georgia, of cancer at the age of 58.
Also on this day, Paul Leon Vaessen is born in Gillingham, Kent, England. A forward, and the son of Gillingham and South London club Millwall forward Leon Vaessen, he debuted for North London's Arsenal in the UEFA Cup in the Autumn of 1978.
In 1980, only 18 years old, he traveled with Arsenal to Turin, where Italian giants Juventus had not lost a match in any European tournament in 5 years, and, as a late substitute, in the 88th minute, scored the goal that won a European Cup Winners' Cup Semifinal. It was the 1st time any British team had won away to Juventus. (Arsenal would lose the Final to Spanish club Valencia.)
Paul Vaessen was a teenager, living the dream. It turned into a nightmare. He wrecked his knee the next season, and played his last game before he was 21. He turned to drugs to kill the pain. In 1985, in a drug deal gone wrong near Millwall's ground, he was stabbed nearly to death. In 1998, he was charged with assaulting a policeman who'd arrested him for shoplifting in Farnborough, Hampshire.
On August 8, 2001, he died of an overdose in Bristol, Gloucestershire. The most spectacular tragedy in Arsenal's history, he wasn't quite 40 years old.
Also on this day, Kim N. Wayans (I can't find a record of what the N stands for) is born in Manhattan. She is 1 of 2 sisters in the 6-sibling Wayans family, and is best known for working with her brothers on In Living Color.
October 16, 1962: Game 7 of the World Series at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Tony Kubek, who missed much of the season due to military service, grounds into a double play in the 5th inning, but a run scores on the play. The score remains Yankees 1, Giants 0 in the bottom of the 9th. With 2 outs and Matty Alou on 1st‚ Willie Mays rips a double to right off Ralph Terry‚ but great fielding by Roger Maris keeps Alou from scoring.
The Yankees now have a choice to make: Have the righthanded Terry, who gave up Bill Mazeroski's Series-winning homer in Game 7 in 1960, pitch to the next batter, the dangerous lefthander Willie McCovey; or walk him to load the bases and set up the Series-clinching out at any base, and pitch to the equally dangerous but righthanded Orlando Cepeda.
Between them, they would hit 900 home runs in the major leagues: McCovey 521, Cepeda 379. Nobody knows that yet, but everybody knows that both were already All-Stars, and that both had been Rookie of the Year: Cepeda in 1958, McCovey in '59. It's like choosing between the guillotine and the hangman's noose.
Oddly, despite all the talk about whether to pitch to McCovey or Cepeda, removing Terry for a relief pitcher, possibly a lefthander to pitch to the lefthanded McCovey, seems never to have been discussed.
They decide to pitch to McCovey. "Stretch" hits a screaming liner toward right field‚ but 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson takes one step to his left and snares it. Ballgame over, Yankees win, theeeeeeee Yankees win. Barely. It is the 1st World Series Game 7 that ends 1-0. There has since been only one more, in 1991, and that one went 10 innings.
It is the Yankees' 20th World Championship, their 2nd in a row. Terry, who had also won 23 regular season games, Game 5 of the Series, and soon the Cy Young Award, is awarded the Series MVP award. He is fully redeemed for having given up the Series-winning home run to Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates 2 years earlier.
However, the Yankees will not win another World Series for 15 years. The Giants? They would have to wait another 27 years just to get into another Series, and won't win one until 2010.
Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, a Giants fan living in nearby Santa Rosa, soon draws a cartoon having Charlie Brown yell to the heavens, "Why couldn't McCovey's drive have been just three feet higher?" McCovey did his job, and the Giants took the Series to the last out of the last game. They just got beat by a team that was a little bit better.
Still alive from the 1962 World Champion Yankees, 57 years ago, are 11 players: Terry, Richardson, Kubek, Whitey Ford, Jim Coates, Bud Daley, and Hector Lopez; plus Joe Pepitone, Rollie Sheldon, Jack Reed and Jake Gibbs, who never got into any of the Series games. (Jim Bouton died earlier this year.)
Surviving from the Giants are 7 players: Cepeda, Willie Mays, Juan Marichal, Felipe Alou, Gaylord Perry, Bobby Bolin, and, oddly, a man who'd been a Yankee World Series hero, Don Larsen. Billy O'Dell died this past September 12. (McCovey died late last year, and Ernie Bowman earlier this year.)
Also on this day, Manute Bol is born in Turalei, in what is now the Republic of South Sudan. The son of a Dinka tribal chief, he was 7-foot-6, and until Georghe Mursean, also a Washington Bullet, he was probably the tallest player in NBA history. He remains the only player ever to block more shots than he made.
He played for the Bullets, the Golden State Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers (where, naturally, he wore Number 76) and the Miami Heat. On both the Bullets and, previously, for the minor-league Rhode Island Gulls, his teammate was Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues, at 5-foot-3 the shortest player in NBA history.
After working in public relations for Ethiopian Airlines, and with African refugee groups, he was badly hurt in a car crash in 2004, and died of kidney failure in 2010. He was just 47.
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October 16, 1963: Two newly-moved NBA teams play their 1st games in their new cities. The Syracuse Nationals, having ended the era of small-town NBA teams that also included Rochester and Fort Wayne as recently as 1957, take the place of the Philadelphia Warriors, who moved to San Francisco (and adopted their current name, the Golden State Warriors, in 1971), and become the Philadelphia 76ers. With 26 points from Hal Greer, they beat the Detroit Pistons, 117-115 at Cobo Hall in Detroit.
The Baltimore Bullets, who took up the name of the 1946-54 Charm City franchise after 2 seasons as the Chicago Packers and Chicago Zephyrs expansion franchise, aren't so lucky: Walt Bellamy scores 32 points and Terry Dischinger 26, but the Boston Celtics beat them 109-95 at the Baltimore Civic Center (which still stands, now named the Royal Farms Arena).
October 16, 1964: The Cleveland Indians' Board of Directors, after deliberating for 4 hours, decide to keep the team in the Forest City after exploring options to possibly shift the franchise to any of 3 cities that they'd discussed: Seattle, Oakland, or Dallas.
Staying in Cleveland was the best of a few bad choices. Seattle had the 17,000-seat Sick's Stadium, which was eventually expanded to 25,000 seats, and was hardly major league quality even then. And there would always be the threat of rain. (The era of domed stadiums was about to begin.)
The city of Arlington, Texas, about halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, was about to build the 10,000-seat Turnpike Stadium, which eventually became the 43,000-seat Arlington Stadium. But where would the Indians play in the meantime? In 1962, Charlie Finley considered moving the Kansas City Athletics to Dallas and playing in the Cotton Bowl, but that's a football stadium, and either left or right field would have had a ridiculously close fence.
Oakland? The Coliseum was still 2 years away from opening, and Emeryville Park, home of the Pacific Coast League's Oakland Oaks, had already been demolished. Where were they going to play until the Coliseum opened? Would the Giants have given them permission to groundshare at Candlestick Park in the interim? Going from Cleveland Municipal Stadium to Candlestick would have been like going from a lion's den to a snake pit: Not a significant improvement. Finley would move the A's to Oakland in 1968, by which point the Raiders had already played 2 seasons there.
The Tribe signs a 10-year lease to use Municipal Stadium at a reduced rent, which includes an escape clause for the city and the club after any season. Despite the threat of having to move due to poor finances hanging over them through the 1960s, the '70s and the '80s, it would take until 1994 for them to move into a modern, suitable ballpark. And it would be in Cleveland.
Also on this day, Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of Britain, as his Labour Party wins a close election. What made the difference? Was it the mismanagement by the Conservative Party under Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan (1957-63) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64)? Was it the 1963 sex scandal known as the Profumo Affair? Was it simply fatigue from 13 years of Tory governance (also including Winston Churchill, 1951-55, and Anthony Eden, 1955-57)? Or was it the photograph Wilson took, posing with The Beatles? Hard to say.
Also on this day, Francis "Patsy" Callighen dies in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio. The Toronto native was 58, and was a member of the New York Rangers' 1928 Stanley Cup winners.
Also on this day, Jean-Christophe Thomas is born in Châlons-en-Champagne, France. A midfielder, he came on as a late substitute for Olympique de Marseille in the 1993 UEFA Champions League Final, as "L'OM" became the 1st (and still only) French team ever to win the European Cup.
October 16, 1965: Byron Thomas Tolbert is born in Long Beach, California. A member of Arizona's 1st Final Four team in 1988, the power forward played 7 seasons in the NBA. Tom Tolbert now hosts a sports-talk show on San Francisco's KNBR, and is an announcer for ABC's NBA coverage.
October 16, 1966: Stefan Reuter (no middle name) is born in Dinkelsbühl, Bavaria, Germany. A
right back, he helped Bayern Munich win the Bundesliga (German league) in 1989 and 1990, and was selected to play for West Germany in the 1990 World Cup, which they won.
He was signed by Juventus, but had a frustrating 1991-92 season, finishing runner-up in Serie A (the Italian league), the Coppa Italia, and Euro 92 (the 1st international tournament for a unified Germany since the 1938 World Cup). He moved on to Borussia Dortmund, and helped them win the Bundesliga in 1995, 1996 and 2002, and the UEFA Champions League in 1997. He also won Euro 1996 with Germany. He is now the general manager of Bundesliga club FC Augsburg.
October 16, 1967: The Dallas Chaparrals of the American Basketball Association play their 1st game. They beat the Anaheim Amigos 129-125. The Chaps would move in 1973, and become the San Antonio Spurs.
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October 16, 1968: American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, teammates at San Jose State University, win the Gold and Bronze Medals, respectively, in the 200 meters, at the Olympic Games in Mexico City, Mexico. Smith sets a world record, winning the race in 19.83 seconds, the 1st time 20 seconds had been beaten in the race. Peter Norman of Australia wins the Silver Medal.
But when they take the podium to receive their medals, all 3 -- including Norman, a critic of the infamous White Australia Policy (barring non-Europeans from immigrating), accepting Smith and Carlos' request -- are wearing pins of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Smith and Carlos remove their shoes, revealing not bare feet as is usually remembered, but black socks.
It was also complicated by a story most Americans didn't know about: A massacre of protesting students by the Mexican government, just a few days before.
Smith, born in Clarksville, North Texas on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), and raised in Lemoore, Central California, wears a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride. Carlos, a black Cuban from Harlem who was a year minus 1 day younger (born on June 5, 1945), had his tracksuit top unzipped, to show solidarity with all blue-collar workers in the U.S., and wore a necklace of beads, which he described as being "for those individuals who were lynched, or killed, and that no one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the Middle Passage." This term referred to the sea voyage taking slaves from Africa to the Americas, North, Central and South.
They had intended to wear black gloves on each hand, but Carlos forgot his pair. Norman suggested that Smith give Carlos his left glove, and that's why Smith raised his right fist in what was then interpreted as "the Black Power Salute" (Smith has always insisted it was "a human rights salute") as "The Star-Spangled Banner" started playing, while Carlos raised his left, which was not the usual Black Power salute. Both men bowed their heads.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos were the biggest sports-related story -- of the day, and the year. It would have been the biggest sports-related story of the decade, if not for Muhammad Ali refusing to be drafted the year before, and being stripped of the Heavyweight Title because of it.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos were the biggest sports-related story -- of the day, and the year. It would have been the biggest sports-related story of the decade, if not for Muhammad Ali refusing to be drafted the year before, and being stripped of the Heavyweight Title because of it.
The U.S. Olympic Committee kicked Smith and Carlos off the Olympic team immediately. Both received condemnation from the white U.S. media and death threats from anonymous sources. A sportswriter for the Chicago American wrote, "Smith and Carlos looked like a couple of black-skinned storm troopers," and called them "ignoble," "juvenile" and "unimaginative." Even if you believe Smith and Carlos were morally wrong, a rational person could not possibly agree with those 3 adjectives. Especially the last: "Unimaginative"?
That sportswriter's name was Brent Musberger. In 1975, he became the host of CBS' studio show The NFL Today. In 1990, he moved to play-by-play of college football and college basketball for ABC and ESPN, retiring after the January 2017 bowl games. In 1999, he addressed his condemnation from 1968: "I object to using the Olympic awards stand to make a political statement." As if the flying of flags and the playing of the Gold Medalist's National Anthem are not, themselves, political statements.
That sportswriter's name was Brent Musberger. In 1975, he became the host of CBS' studio show The NFL Today. In 1990, he moved to play-by-play of college football and college basketball for ABC and ESPN, retiring after the January 2017 bowl games. In 1999, he addressed his condemnation from 1968: "I object to using the Olympic awards stand to make a political statement." As if the flying of flags and the playing of the Gold Medalist's National Anthem are not, themselves, political statements.
This protest was just 9 days after Jose Feliciano's performance of the National Anthem during the World Series -- which, unlike "The Silent Gesture," was a totally unintentional controversy. It was 7 weeks after the riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 4 months after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, 6 months after that of Martin Luther King, 15 months after the race riots in Newark and Detroit, 16 months after the one in Boston's Roxbury.
It was a little over 2 years after Chicago's West Side and Cleveland's East Side had been hit by riots, 3 years after Bloody Sunday in Selma and the Watts riot in Los Angeles; 4 years after race riots in Harlem and North Philadelphia, and the murder of 3 civil rights workers in Mississippi; and 5 years after Dr. King's "I have a dream speech" and "Letter from Birmingham Jail," the assassinations of John Kennedy and Megar Evers, George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, and Birmingham's police dogs, water cannons and church bombing.
At the time, no white person was willing to stand up and publicly say that Smith and Carlos had a point. Today, nearly everyone, except for the truly delusional, is willing to admit that they had one. In 2005, San Jose State dedicated a statue of the medal podium, with an empty space where Norman would have stood, so that anyone who wants to can stand with Smith and Carlos in a personal re-enactment.
At the time, no white person was willing to stand up and publicly say that Smith and Carlos had a point. Today, nearly everyone, except for the truly delusional, is willing to admit that they had one. In 2005, San Jose State dedicated a statue of the medal podium, with an empty space where Norman would have stood, so that anyone who wants to can stand with Smith and Carlos in a personal re-enactment.
The gesture did not stop Smith and Carlos from becoming 2 among several Olympic sprinters to be drafted by a professional football team in the wake of Bob Hayes, the 1964 Gold Medalist in the 100 meters, making it big with the Dallas Cowboys.
But, like Jim Hines, who won the Gold in the 100 meters the day before (becoming the 1st man ever to run it in under 10 seconds), they didn't do well in football. Smith played just 2 games as a wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals in 1969, catching just 1 pass, albeit for 41 yards. Carlos was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but hurt his knee in his tryout, and then played a season for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League.
Smith went on to teach at Oberlin College, outside Jesse Owens' hometown of Cleveland. It had been the 1st integrated college in America, starting in 1835. He accepted a peace offering from the USOC, a coaching position the U.S. track team at the 1995 Indoor World Championships. Carlos was accepted as part of the organizing committee for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and became a high school track coach.
But, like Jim Hines, who won the Gold in the 100 meters the day before (becoming the 1st man ever to run it in under 10 seconds), they didn't do well in football. Smith played just 2 games as a wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals in 1969, catching just 1 pass, albeit for 41 yards. Carlos was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, but hurt his knee in his tryout, and then played a season for the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League.
Smith went on to teach at Oberlin College, outside Jesse Owens' hometown of Cleveland. It had been the 1st integrated college in America, starting in 1835. He accepted a peace offering from the USOC, a coaching position the U.S. track team at the 1995 Indoor World Championships. Carlos was accepted as part of the organizing committee for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and became a high school track coach.
Smith and Carlos receiving the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage
at the 2013 ESPY Awards
Smith is now 75. Carlos is 74. Both have become paid public speakers regarding their stories. Norman died in 2006, and Smith and Carlos traveled all the way to Melbourne for his funeral, and served as the front pallbearers.
David Cecil, 6th Marquess of Exeter, a.k.a. Lord Burghley, Gold Medal winner in the 1928 Olympics' 400-meter hurdle race, presented the medals to Smith, Norman and Carlos. He died in 1981. John Dominis, who took the famous photo for Life magazine, 1 of 6 Olympiads he photographed for them, and had also worked for them during the Korean War and President Kennedy's 1963 West Berlin speech, lived until 2013.
On September 28, 2016, the 1st black President, Barack Obama, invited Smith and Carlos to the White House, as part of his reception for the 2016 American Olympic athletes. He said, "We're proud of them. Their powerful silent protest in the 1968 Games was controversial, but it woke folks up, and created greater opportunity for those that followed."
Just 4 months later, Donald Trump was sworn into the office of President. Prior to 1865, we had Presidents who were slaveholders. Afterward, we had Presidents who openly made bigoted statements. But no President has ever pandered more to the elements of bigotry in this country.
Trump has actually voiced support for keeping statues of Confederate "heroes," asking if we would next be tearing down statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson because they were slaveholders. No: Whatever else can be said of them, they fought for America, not against it.
We have multiple police brutality cases, and the "Black Lives Matter" movement in response. We have gone from the vilification of Smith and Carlos in 1968, to Michael Jordan refusing to endorse Harvey Gantt against race-baiting Senator Jesse Helms in his home State of North Carolina in 1990 because "Republicans buy sneakers, too," to LeBron James taking the court wearing a hoodie in memory of Trayvon Martin and an "I Can't Breathe" T-shirt in memory of Eric Garner, both in 2014.
More recently, in response to Golden State Warriors' leader Stephen Curry said the Warriors would refuse the usual NBA Champions' invitation to the White House, Trump insulted Curry and said he wasn't welcome. LeBron tweeted, "U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!" In 2019, this problem was solved when the NBA Champions turned out to be Canada's team, the Toronto Raptors.
More recently, in response to Golden State Warriors' leader Stephen Curry said the Warriors would refuse the usual NBA Champions' invitation to the White House, Trump insulted Curry and said he wasn't welcome. LeBron tweeted, "U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!" In 2019, this problem was solved when the NBA Champions turned out to be Canada's team, the Toronto Raptors.
And we have Colin Kaepernick, the now-blacklisted former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, kneeling instead of standing during the playing of the National Anthem, and bigots ripping him for it, in print, on the air, and online. Obama suggested that Kaepernick reconsider his action, saying that it bothers war veterans. But Smith and Carlos publicly backed Kaepernick. "Don't hate the kid because he stood up for something to change," Smith said. "He stood up for the right to exercise Amendment 1."
Carlos added, "Protest is a good thing, because you're trying to expose certain things through protest... In any protest, I think you make a statement to try and reach the far ends of the Earth. What better way to do it than if you're in a sport." Sounds like something that Ali, Gold Medalist in heavyweight boxing in the 1960 Olympics under his birth name of Cassius Clay, would have said.
But Donald Trump called Colin Kaepernick "that son of a bitch." And Trump's supporters say that "taking a knee" during the National Anthem is "disrespecting the flag." And Brent Musberger piped up. On October 8, 2017, the yutz, by then 78 years old, tweeted, "Yo #49ers Since you instigated protest, 2 wins and 19 losses. How about taking your next knee in the other team's end zone ?"
Trump doesn't get it. Musberger doesn't get it. All the people calling Kaepernick and the other protestors "disrespectful to the flag" are either too stupid to get it, or too evil to tell the truth. It is not about the flag, you dumb schmucks. It is about the inalienable right to be treated as a human being, equal to all others.
I am not the first person to say that. Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, a bomber pilot in World War II, and a former Los Angeles policeman, wrote an episode titled "The Omega Glory," imagining a planet paralleling Earth, down to an America with a Constitution and a Stars & Stripes flag, with the exception that a nuclear war was fought in their equivalent to the late 20th Century.
When Captain James T. Kirk (played by William Shatner, a native of Canada but living in America for over 60 years now) sees that the leader of the society that has replaced America won't give his defeated enemies the same rights he claims for his people, he says that the "holy words" the chief proclaims "must apply to everyone, or they mean nothing!"
That episode aired on March 1, 1968, a month before Dr. King was killed, and 7 months before the Smith & Carlos protest. Roddenberry was a middle-aged white man with some power in his field, and a veteran, whose patriotism could not be questioned by a rational person, and he knew.
The 1st Amendment gave Smith and Carlos, their allies then, and Kaepernick and his compatriots, and their allies now, and me, and you -- whether you are their ally or not -- the right to publicly show their discontent with what is being done to your people, or your people-within-a-people.
It does not give you the right to lie about them and defame them, as Trump and his allies do, as Musberger did then and now. If you cannot respect the First Amendment, then THE FLAG MEANS NOTHING.
There is no place in a modern society for the bigotry that made Trayvon Martin (black, murdered in 2012), Matthew Shepard (gay, murdered in 1998) and Brandon Teena (transgender, murdered in 1993) dead and famous. Or treats Alicia Machado and the parents of Captain Humayun Khan as if they are less than full human beings, less than full Americans. Or puts children in cages -- in concentration camps -- because their parents entered America illegally.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood for something. Not because they could, but because someone had to, and their Gold Medal presentation was a golden opportunity.
We don't need a world without Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick. We need a world which makes additions to their actions unnecessary.
On the same day as the Smith & Carlos protest, the Milwaukee Bucks make their NBA debut. They play the team that will become their arch-rivals, the Chicago Bulls, and lose 89-84 at the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA (now the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena).
Also on this day, former Boston Red Sox pitcher Ellis Kinder dies during open-heart surgery, probably complicated by heavy drinking all through his adult life. Kinder was one of the heroes of Boston’s 1948 and 1949 Pennant runs, though both fell short.
Yet despite not becoming a big-league regular until he was 31, he won 102 games and saved 102 others in his career. Had he come along 40 years later, in the era of bullpen specialists and rehab, he might have been one of the best relief pitchers ever. He was only 54. But that's not the biggest sports story of the day.
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October 16, 1970: Adrian Bryan Murrell is born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but grows up in Wahiawa, Hawaii. He went back east to be a running back at West Virginia University, and played for the Jets from 1993 to 1997, including the Rich Kotite debacle of 1995-96. In 1996, he rushed for 1,249 yards, becoming the 1st Jet to rush for 1,000 yards in a season -- in the Jets' 37th season of play. He remained in the NFL through 2003, and rushed for nearly 5,200 yards and 23 touchdowns.
Also on this day, Mehmet Yüksel is born in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. We know him as Mehmet Scholl. He was a star soccer midfielder of Turkish descent in Germany when Mesut Özil was just a small child.
He left hometown club Kalrsruher SC to play for the biggest club in the country, Bayern Munich. With former teammates Oliver Kahn and Bastian Schwiensteiger, he shares the record for most Bundesliga titles won, 8 (in his case: 1994, '97, '99, 2000, '01, '03, '05 and '06). He won 5 German Cups (DFP-Pokal), including League and Cup "Doubles" in 2000 and '03. He won 5 League Cups (DFB-Ligapokal), making for a domestic "Treble" in 2000.
He was a member of the Bayern teams that won the UEFA Cup in 1996 and the UEFA Champions League in 2001, and the Germany team that won Euro 2006. He later managed Bayern's reserves, and is now a studio analyst on German television.
October 16, 1971: All In the Family airs the episode "Flashback: Mike Meets Archie." At least Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner) shaved his beard, if not his mustache, for his 1969 wedding to Gloria Bunker (Sally Struthers). Before, he looked like as much of a caricature of a hippie as Gloria's father Archie (Carroll O'Connor) looked like a caricature of a lower-middle-class WASP bigot.
Elsewhere in Queens on this day, 17-year-old Jerry Seinfeld -- at least, as shown in a flashback on the TV show Seinfeld -- borrows Henry Miller's smutty novel Tropic of Cancer from the New York Public Library. He later claimed that he returned the book on time. Stay tuned for the 1991 entry.
October 16, 1972: Kordell Stewart (no middle name) is born in New Orleans. The quarterback's touchdown pass on the final play of a 1994 game gave Colorado a win known as The Miracle In Michigan. He was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they used him as a backup to Neil O'Donnell, a running back, a receiver and a kick returner. Or, as was said at the time, a quarterback/running back/receiver/kick returner, leading Steeler broadcaster Myron Cope to give him the nickname Slash.
The Steelers won the 1995 AFC Championship, and he played in Super Bowl XXX as a rookie. Had coach Bill Cowher started him at quarterback, instead of O'Donnell, who gave the game away with 2 key interceptions, the Steelers might have beaten the Dallas Cowboys. He was given the starting job for the 1997 season, and he got the Steelers into the AFC Championship Game. He got them back into it in 2001, but after a loss of effectiveness the next season, the Steelers let him go.
He would play for the Chicago Bears in 2003, and the Baltimore Ravens in 2004 and '05, but was cut by both. Only Steve Young, with 43, is a quarterback with more NFL rushing touchdowns than his 36. He later worked as a sideline reporter and a sports-talk host on an Atlanta radio station, and is now an analyst for ESPN.
Also on this day, Darius Kasparaitis is born in Elektrėnai, Lithuania. Probably the greatest hockey player in that former Soviet "republic"'s history, the defenseman with the name that sounds like a dreaded disease played for Dinamo Moscow, the New York Islanders, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Colorado Avalanche, the New York Rangers and SKA St. Petersburg.
In the wake of the Soviet Union's breakup, he won a Gold Medal with the "Commonwealth of Independent States" team (a.k.a. "The Unified Team") at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. He was an NHL rookie on the Islander team that won the Patrick Division Playoff Championship in 1993, but struggled to reach Playoff heights thereafter. In 15 NHL seasons, he scored just 27 goals with 136 assists, and racked up 1,379 penalty minutes.
He now runs a real estate company, diving his time between Miami and Stockholm. Given the weather in each place, I hope he's in Miami during the Winter and Stockholm during the Summer, and not the other way around!
October 16, 1973: The Oakland Athletics win Game 3 of the World Series, 3-2 in 11 innings over the New York Mets. Bert Campaneris gets the winning RBI.
In the bottom of the 10th, Willie Mays pinch-hits for Mets pitcher Tug McGraw against Paul Lindblad, and grounds to short, where Bert Campaneris turns a force play. It is Mays' last major league appearance.
In a private clubhouse meeting‚ Dick Williams tells A's players he will resign after the Series, win or lose. He has had it with the meddling of team owner Charlie Finley. Alvin Dark will succeed Williams.
Also on this day, Donald Trump is mentioned in The New York Times for the 1st time. The story is of a lawsuit filed against the 27-year-old Trump, his father Fred, and their real estate company, by the U.S. Department of Justice, then (at least, for another 4 days) reporting to Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who reported to President Richard Nixon, for housing discrimination in their Queens apartment complexes.
In his 1987 autobiography Trump: The Art of the Deal -- which was actually written by Tony Schwartz, then writing for GQ, and who now correctly calls Trump a "sociopath" -- Trump said, "The idea of settling drove me crazy... I'd rather fight than fold, because as soon as you fold once, you get the reputation of being a folder."
Nevertheless, on June 10, 1975, Fred (who had previously been arrested for attending a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Queens in 1927) and Donald signed an agreement prohibiting them from "discriminating against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling." The decree made it clear that the Trumps did not view the agreement as a surrender, saying the settlement was "in no way an admission" of a violation.
Nevertheless, Trump officially became famous by being exposed as a bigot. And when you're officially too bigoted for Richard Nixon, you've got a problem.
Also on this day, David Gerald Unsworth is born in Chorley, Lancashire, England. A centreback, he played for Liverpool-based Everton, and helpled them win the 1995 FA Cup. He was twice caretaker manager of Lancashire club Preston North End and once (so far) of Everton, and now manages Everton's reserves.
October 16, 1974: A's pitcher Ken Holtzman‚ who, due to the designated hitter, hadn't come to bat all season‚ belts a 3rd-inning home run, and gets the win, with Rollie Fingers in relief. Oakland scores 4 in the 6th to wrap up Game 4, 5-2 over the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Oakland Coliseum. It will be 34 years before another pitcher homers in a World Series game.
Also on this day, the "Papergate" scandal breaks out in the World Football League. The Philadelphia Bell, named for the Liberty Bell, had announced a crowd of 55,534 fans for their home opener at John F. Kennedy Stadium. For their 2nd game, they announced an even bigger crowd, 64,719. For comparison's sake, the NFL's Eagles, playing at Veterans Stadium a couple of blocks to the north, topped that figure only twice in 1974, and only once in 1973.
But when the Bell had to pay city taxes on the attendance figures, it was revealed that they had massively inflated the gate. They had sold block tickets to several area businesses at a discount, and it was not reported. The actual paid attendance for the 1st home game was 13,855, and for the 2nd just 6,200. There were high school games in the Philly area that drew more than that.
And so, with a game scheduled for this Wednesday night, with rain coming down hard on the Delaware Valley, only 750 fans came to JFK Stadium to see the Bell, who lost 30-25 to the Shreveport Steamer. (No S on the end.)
They finished 9-11, including a last-game forfeit by the Chicago Fire, who literally couldn't afford the trip to Philly. But 8 of their 11 losses were by a touchdown or less, and they did qualify for the Playoffs, losing to the Orlando-based Florida Blazers in the Quarterfinals. They were 4-7 in 1975 when the WFL folded.
Also on this day, Paul Tesuhiko Kariya is born in Vancouver, British Columbia. One of the few players of Asian descent ever to play in the NHL, he led the University of Maine to the 1993 National Championship, and won the Hobey Baker Award for national player of the year, "the Hockey Heisman."
He won a Gold Medal with Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and led the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim Ducks to the 2003 Western Conference Championship. In Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, the Devils' Scott Stevens gave him The Cold Shoulder, knocking him out. He returned 5 minutes later, scored a goal, and provided 2 assists to force a Game 7, which the Devils won.
Kariya had been the Ducks' Captain since 1996, but they let him go. He went on to play for the Colorado Avalanche, Nashville Predators and St. Louis Blues, finishing his career with 407 goals and 587 assists, for a total of 989 points, just short of 1,000. A 7-time All-Star, he won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1996 and '97. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame this year.
Also on this day, Jermaine Edward Lewis is born in the Washington suburb of Lanham, Maryland. A receiver, he was a 2-time All-Pro, and was with the Baltimore Ravens when they won Super Bowl XXXV.
October 16, 1975: Game 5 of the World Series at Riverfront Stadium. Cincinnati Reds 1st baseman
Tony Pérez had no hits in the Series up to this point, but hits 2 home runs and drives in 4 runs off Boston Red Sox starter Reggie Cleveland. Don Gullett pitches 8 strong innings and wins with relief help from Rawly Eastwick in the 9th, and the Reds win, 6-2.
The Reds now lead 3 games to 2 as the Series heads back to Boston. But for 3 days -- October 18, 19 and 20 -- rain will postpone Game 6. When it finally begins at Fenway Park on the night of October 21, it becomes one of the epic games in baseball history.
Also on this day, Jacques Kallis (no middle name) is born in Cape Town, South Africa. Now retired, he is the only player in the history of the sport to score more than 10,000 runs and take 250 wickets in both one-day and Test match cricket.
Also on this day, the Journal Square Transportation Center opens in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. It serves the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) subway system that connects Jersey City with Newark, Hoboken and New York City; and local buses in Hudson County.
October 16, 1976: Game 1 of the World Series -- the Yankees' 1st Series game in 12 years and 1 day. The game is played at Riverfront Stadium, home of the defending World Champions, the Cincinnati Reds. Although the Yankees have played away games against the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals (including in this year's ALCS) on artificial turf, this is the 1st time they have done so in the World Series.
Dan Driessen, batting 5th for the Cincinnati Reds, becomes the 1st National League player to be used as a designated hitter. The DH was not employed prior to this year's Fall Classic, although the concept had been adopted and used in the American League since 1973. Joe Morgan hits a home run, Don Gullett outpitches Doyle Alexander, and the Reds win, 5-1. They will go on to sweep the Series.
Also on this day, the Rutgers University football team beats Lehigh 28-21 at the latter's home field, Taylor Stadium in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As it turns out, this is the closest Rutgers comes to losing all season.
October 16, 1977: The Dodgers stay alive in the World Series with a 10-4 victory in Game 5. Steve Yeager and Reggie Smith homer as Don Sutton pitches a complete game. Reggie Jackson, who homered in Game 4, does so again in Game 5.
Also on this day, Cal Hubbard dies of lung cancer in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was just short of turning 77. He was a 2-way lineman, and at 6-foot-5 and 253 pounds, he was enormous for his era. He won NFL Championships with the Giants in 1927 and the Green Bay Packers in 1929, '30 and '31. He was a 4-time Pro Bowler, and was elected to the NFL's 1920s All-Decade, 50th Anniversary and 75th Anniversary All-Time Teams, and to the Louisiana, Missouri, College Football, Pro Football and Green Bay Packers Halls of Fame.
As if that wasn't accomplishment enough for one man, he was also an American League umpire from 1936, the year he retired from playing football, until a hunting accident damaged his right eye in 1951. He officiated at 4 World Series and 4 All-Star Games, and at his size, few players were willing to argue with him.
After his accident, the AL made him their supervisor of umpires, a post he held until retiring in 1969. It was his idea for the game to go from having 3 umpires on the field to 4 in the regular season (1 at each base) and 6 in the postseason (adding 1 to each foul line).
He lived long enough to become only the 5th umpire elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and is the only man in the Halls of Fame of both Baseball and Pro Football -- not counting broadcasters.
Also on this day, All In the Family airs the episode "Edith's 50th Birthday." The episode depicts a man named Lambert (played by David Dukes -- not David Duke) who, while posing as a police detective, attempts to rape Edith (Jean Stapleton).
This happens while her family, unaware of what is happening in the Bunkers' living room, prepares for a surprise party next door at Mike & Gloria's house (formerly the Jeffersons' house), to honor Edith. The scenes following the assault depict Edith struggling to deal with the aftermath, and her family's attempts to both comfort her and help bring her assailant to justice.
References to rape had been mentioned in television before. On a 1963 episode of Ben Casey, Ricardo Montalban played a hospital patient who admitted to a female doctor, hearing a TV report about abused women and bound by doctor-patient privilege not to reveal the information she was about to hear, "I beat those women." The word "rape" couldn't be used on TV at the time, but who was kidding who?
On the 1967 Star Trek episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion," Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) faces a rape attempt, which isn't shown on screen, but Captain Kirk can hear her protests, and it's not until we come back from the commercial break that we learn that she successfully fought off her attacker. But as the current #MeToo Twitter hashtag in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal shows, this still qualifies as "sexual assault."
Nevertheless, Edith Bunker's successful attempt to fend off a rapist was the first time such a thing was shown on-camera on American TV. And, since Stapleton left the successor show Archie Bunker's Place after the 1980 season, and it was written into the show that Edith had died, it can be argued that, while she was not successfully raped, the experience may have hastened her death.
October 16, 1978: As the World Series heads west to Los Angeles for Game 6, Dan Dailey dies at age 62, from complications from hip replacement surgery. He starred in 2 baseball movies, playing Hall-of-Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean in The Pride of St. Louis, and a peanut vendor turned "baseball dad" in the original version of The Kid From Left Field. Both films were directed by Harmon Jones.
Also on this day, Karol Józef Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków in his native Poland, is elected Pope. In memory of his recently deceased, briefly-reigning predecessor, he takes the name John Paul II.
He reshaped the Catholic Church for the better, and delivered Masses at Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and Madison Square Garden in early October 1979, and at Giants Stadium in 1995. He died in 2005. He was canonized in 2014, and is known as Saint John Paul the Great.
October 16, 1979, 40 years ago: Game 6 of the World Series. The Pittsburgh Pirates trailed the Series 3 games to 1 against the Baltimore Orioles, and had to win Game 5 at home at Three Rivers Stadium, and then Games 6 and 7 at Memorial Stadium. But they'd done the exact same thing, at the exact same team, in the exact same stadiums before, in 1971.
Now, having won Game 5 at home, they go back to the stadium that Orioles and Colts fans call "The Insane Asylum on 33rd Street." John Candelaria of Pittsburgh and Jim Palmer of Baltimore both toss goose eggs for 6 innings. But the Pirates break through with an RBI single by Dave Parker in the 7th, and keep it going long enough to win 4-0, and force a Game 7.
Oriole fans do manage a minor victory, though: When the much-despised Howard Cosell, one of the ABC announcers, gets into his limousine after the game, he is pelted with shaving-cream pies. He talks the Baltimore police into giving him extra security for Game 7.
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October 16, 1980: Suzanne Brigit Bird is born in Syosset, Long Island, New York. Sue Bird is one of the premier female basketball players of all time. She led the University of Connecticut to the 2000 and 2002 National Championships, going 114-4 there. She has led the Seattle Storm to the 2004, 2010 and 2018 WNBA Championships, and was a member of the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 U.S. teams that won Olympic Gold Medals.
Her father is an Italian-born Russian Jew -- the family name had been Boorda -- and she played professionally in Russia before returning to the Storm. She is an 11-time WNBA All-Star, including this past season.
She was named to the WNBA's 20th Anniversary All-Time Team, and recently came out, stating that she was dating soccer star Megan Rapinoe. It is a toss-up as to which of them has been the better athlete.
October 16, 1981: Anthony Loza Reyes is born in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, California. A major league pitcher from 2005 to 2009, his career record was 13-26, but he won a World Series with the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals. He retired due to injury in 2011, and is now a firefighter outside Los Angeles.
Also on this day, Alan Gordon (no middle name) is born in the Los Angeles suburb of Long Beach, California. A forward, he helped the Los Angeles Galaxy win "The Double," taking the MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup (America's "FA Cup"), in 2005; Toronto FC the Canadian Championship (Canada's "FA Cup") in 2011, the San Jose Earthquakes the Supporters' Shield (the MLS regular-season title) in 2012, and the Galaxy the MLS Cup again in 2014.
He also helped the U.S. national team win the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup, the continental championship. He retired after the 2018 season.
Also on this day, DeAndrew White (no middle name) is born in Houston. A receiver, he was with the New England Patriots when they won Super Bowl LI. He now plays for the Carolina Panthers.
Also on this day, Moshe Dayan dies of colon cancer in Tel Aviv, Israel. He was 66 years old. One of the founding fathers of the State of Israel, he was Minister of Defense during both the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and Foreign Minister during the Camp David Accords of 1978.
October 16, 1982: Matthew Victor Giordano is born in Fresno, California. A safety, Matt Giordano was with the Indianapolis Colts when they won Super Bowl XLI. He is now retired. His great-grandfather, an Italian immigrant born Raffaele Giordano, boxed under the name Young Corbett III, and was Welterweight Champion of the World for 3 months in 1933.
October 16, 1983: Eddie Murray slams a pair of home runs and Scott McGregor pitches a 5-hitter, as the Baltimore Orioles beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-0 at Veterans Stadium, and win the World Series 4-1. Baltimore catcher Rick Dempsey‚ who hit .385 with 4 doubles and a home run‚ is the Series MVP.
The Orioles win their 3rd World Series, marking a unique double: Edward Bennett Williams, famed trial lawyer, majority owner of the Orioles, and minority owner and former majority owner of the Washington Redskins, becomes the only man ever to be an owner of the current World Series and Super Bowl champions at the same time.
NFL rules prohibit a majority owner from being a majority owner in another sport, so before buying the Orioles, Williams sold some of his stake in the Redskins to Jack Kent Cooke, former owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and Kings, builder of the Forum arena outside L.A., and the last owner of the minor-league baseball team that gave its name to an NHL powerhouse, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
This caps a period where they have finished 1st 8 times in 18 years, and have at least been competitive almost continuously since 1960. But, due to their core players getting old and later mismanagement by owner Peter Angelos, they have not played a World Series game since.
The last out is a line shot to shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., son and namesake of the Orioles' longtime 3rd base coach. He will play another 18 seasons, but never appear in another World Series.
Also on this day, Kelso dies at age 26. A grandson of 1943 Triple Crown winner Count Fleet, he was eligible to run in the Triple Crown races in 1960, but did not do so. But from ages 3 to 8 (8 is not old for a horse, but it's old for a horse to be racing), he won many big races, including 5 straight Jockey Club Gold Cups from 1960 to 1964 and 3 straight Woodward Stakes from 1961 to 1963.
He won the Daily Racing Form Horse of the Year award 5 times. No other horse has even won it 4 times. He was retired in 1966, having won just under $2 million, a record that would stand until 1979. He died just 1 day after being paraded around the track at Belmont Park, prior to the running of the race that was his trademark, the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Perhaps it was too much for him.
Horse racing writer Joe Hirsch wrote, "Once upon a time there was a horse named Kelso. But only once."
October 16, 1985: Baseball gets its 1st intrastate World Series since 1974‚ as the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals win their respective Pennants. Kansas City beats the Toronto Blue Jays 6-2 in Game 7, to cap a comeback from a 3-games-to-1 deficit.
In Los Angeles‚ Jack Clark drills a 3-run home run deep into the left field pavilion, off Tom Niedenfuer with 2 outs in the top of the 9th and first base open to give the Cardinals a 7-5 victory over the Dodgers, and a 4-2 series win.
Also on this day, Jay Beagle (apparently, his entire name) is born in Calgary. A center, he was with the Washington Capitals when they won the 2018 Stanley Cup. He now plays for the Vancouver Canucks.
October 16, 1987: Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson knocks out Tyrell Biggs in the 7th round at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Biggs had won the Olympic Gold Medal in the heavyweight division in 1984, but was no match for Iron Mike, who never competed in the Olympics.
While Floyd Patterson, Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman all won Gold Medals and became Heavyweight Champion of the World (and Evander Holyfield did so after winning a Silver Medal), Biggs would never win a title.
Also on this day, Bobby Gene Rainey Jr. is born outside Atlanta in Griffin, Georgia. A running back, he won Super Bowl XLVII as a rookie with the Baltimore Ravens. He last played with them in 2017.
Also on this day, 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued, 2 days after falling into a well near her home in Midland, Texas. In a time before social media, and before most people yet grasped the idea that there was already 24-hour news coverage (CNN were the only ones doing it in America), this story gripped the nation.
I wonder what half the people cheering the rescue of this little Southern white girl would have thought if they'd known that she would go on to marry a Hispanic man and have 2 kids with him. Today, she is 33 years old, known as Jessica Morales, and still lives in Midland. Well, maybe they'd have stuck with her: Apparently, like her parents, she's still an evangelical.
October 16, 1988: Game 2 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium. Don Baylor becomes the 1st player to participate in 3 consecutive World Series for 3 different teams, when he pinch-hits in the 8th inning of the A's 6-0 loss to L.A. The 39 year-old veteran played with the Pennant-winning Red Sox in 1986 and the World Champion Twins in 1987. He also reached the postseason with the California Angels in 1979 and 1982.
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Just 3 months after that, he was playing in his 1st of now 6 All-Star Games. Just 3 months after that he had helped the Nats win their 1st National League Eastern Division title, and reach their 1st postseason (unless you count 1981 as the Montreal Expos). Just a month after that, he was named NL Rookie of the Year. He would help get the Nats to the Division title again in 2014, 2016 and 2017. In 2015, he led the NL in home runs, and was named Most Valuable Player.
But he couldn't get the Nats into the NLCS, and his contract ran out after 2018. He signed with the Phillies for $330 million over 13 years. The Phils-Nats rivalry became hotter than ever, but the Nats have finally reached the NLCS, and now also the World Series, without him, while the Phils didn't make the Playoffs with him.
Lots of people don't like him, because he's rude and arrogant. Well, if you had a .276 career batting average, a 137 OPS+, 1,071 hits, 219 home runs and 635 RBIs before your 27th birthday, you might be arrogant, too. Along with Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, he is generally regarded as 1 of the top 2 players in baseball today.
But did he make a mistake by not re-signing with the Nats? As the man himself would say, "That's a clown question, bro."
Also on this day, "Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration" is held at Madison Square Garden. Or, as one of the performers, Neil Young, put it, "This one's for you, Bob. Thanks for having Bobfest!" Actually, it was Columbia Records, Dylan's label the whole way, that put the show on.
And what a show it was. It may have been the greatest array of musical talent ever brought together for one show in one building. (Live Aid was 1 show, but in 2 stadiums on 2 continents, and I'm not sure it was a better show, anyway.) The house band consisted of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, with Jim Keltner and World's Most Dangerous Band member Anton Fig filling in for the late Al Jackson Jr. on drums, plus G.E. Smith of the Saturday Night Live Band. Kris Kristofferson, himself one of America's greatest songwriters, was master of ceremonies.
John Mellencamp kicked it off with perhaps Dylan's greatest song, "Like a Rolling Stone." One by one, some serious legends came, each playing a Dylan song or two: Stevie Wonder (singing the gospel-inflected version of "Blowin' in the Wind" that he hit with in 1966), Lou Reed, June Carter and Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Johnny Winter (whose version of "Highway 61" was particularly blistering), Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, Richie Havens (whose acoustic version of "Just Like a Woman" was epic), the Clancy Brothers (Village folkie contemporaries of Dylan's, singing "When the Ship Comes In" with an Irish brogue), Neil Young (who blitzed through "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and made absolutely nobody miss Jimi Hendrix with "All Along the Watchtower"), Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Eric Clapton (who totally tore the place up with a bluesy rendition of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"), the O'Jays, The Band, George Harrison, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds.
The younger generation got in on the act, too: Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready, Tracy Chapman, and a performance of "You Ain't Going Nowhere" by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, and Johnny's daughter (and June's stepdaughter) Roseanne Cash.
Said younger generation included a performer who became the focus of the show's one moment of controversy: Mere days after singing Bob Marley's "War" and tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on SNL, Sinead O'Connor tried to sing Dylan's "I Believe in You," but got booed off the stage. Kristofferson, perhaps anticipating such a reaction, tried to introduce her by saying that, like Dylan, she stood for freedom, including freedom of speech. It was to no avail: Harder than Dylan was at Newport in 1965, she got booed. She walked off and cried on Kristofferson's shoulder, and a microphone picked up him saying to her, "Don't let the bastards get you down."
George Harrison introduced Bob, and the big question everybody had was, "What's Bob going to do?" Not because so many of his great songs had already been done, but because a Bob Dylan show is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you're going to get. Was he going to say something controversial? Was he not going to be understandable as he sang?
There was no issue with him: He sang, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," and he was totally understandable, and he was on his game. In turn, the 6 verses of "My Back Pages" were sung by McGuinn, Petty, Young, Clapton, Dylan and Harrison. Bob closed with "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Girl from the North Country."
I still have most of this concert from the WNEW-FM broadcast. To me, it sounds better than any other recording of it.
Also on this day, Konstantinos "Kostas" Fortounis is born in Trikala, Greece. The winger for Athens-based Olympiacos helped them win the Superleague Greece in 2015, 2016 and 2017; and also the Greek Cup in 2015, for a Double.
October 16, 1994, 25 years ago: The Dallas Cowboys lead the Philadelphia Eagles 24-7 at Texas Stadium in Irving. The Eagles score a touchdown in the 4th quarter to make it 24-13, and head coach Rich Kotite tells his team to attempt a 2-point conversion. It fails, and the 24-13 score holds until the end of the game.
Why go for 2 there? At that point, there was little difference between trailing by 10 and by 9: You still needed a touchdown and a field goal to make the difference. But failing at the 2-pointer meant trailing by 11, so you needed 2 touchdowns. Obviously, the right thing to do was to kick the extra point, and make it 24-14.
Kotite told the media, "The rain made the ink run and blurred the chart, so I couldn't see what was written on it to know what to do." He shouldn't have needed a chart to tell him what to do! But it was worse than that: He knew it was going to rain, and didn't have a plastic sheet to protect his ink and paper. I guess Yankee Fans are lucky that the dugout protected Joe Girardi's infamous binder from the rain.
The loss dropped the Eagles to 4-2. They would get to 7-2, leading the NFC Eastern Division. Then they lost their last 7 games, including to the Giants and the Cincinnati Bengals by 3 points each, the Arizona Cardinals by 6, and the Atlanta Falcons by 7.
Kotite was fired, then got hired by the Jets, and went 3-13 and 1-15 in his 2 seasons with them. In other words, from November 7, 1994 onward, he went 4-35 as a head coach. That's a .103 ercentage, worse than the worst single seasons in the histories of MLB (the 1899 Cleveland Spiders went 20-134, or .134), the NBA (the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, or .110) and the NHL (the 1974-75 Washington Capitals went 8-67-5, or .131).
After the 1996 Jets, he's never worked for another professional football team, in any league. Even the XFL -- both the laughingstock 2001 version and the new edition getting ready to begin play next year -- haven't touched him. That's how radioactive Rich Kotite has been.
October 16, 1995: The Yankees sign former Met superstar pitcher Dwight Gooden‚ who has been on suspension for violation of his substance abuse program. George Steinbrenner likes comeback stories, redemption stories. This one works out for the Yankees, and for Doctor K, at least for 1996.
October 16, 1996: A crowd of 47,000 people attempts to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Nacional Doroteo Guamuch Flores in Guatemala City, for a 1998 World Cup qualifying match between Guatemala and Costa Rica. As many as 84 people are killed (the number varies, depending on the source, but 84 is the highest figure quoted), and 180 injured. Álvaro Arzú, President of Guatemala, orders that the match be postponed.
Built in 1948, and named for a runner, who won the 1952 Boston Marathon and the 1955 Pan American Games Marathon, Estadio Flores still stands, and remains home to the national team and local club Municipal. Its capacity is now listed at 26,000, and is rigidly enforced. Arzú, who had previously been Mayor of Guatemala City, became its Mayor again, but died in 2018.
Also on this day, the 2nd and final debate of the year's Presidential election is held, at the University of San Diego. Conservatives were begging former Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas to hit President Bill Clinton hard, on issues ranging from taxes to foreign policy to the "scandals" of his Administration – the June 1996 "Filegate" story having resurfaced that week.
But Dole, remembering that he came across as mean-spirited in his 1976 Vice Presidential debate with Walter Mondale, was determined to be seen as a calm, mature man in comparison to the "immature" Clinton. Dole did ask, in connection with Filegate, "Who hired Craig Livingstone?"
Livingstone was the director of the White House's Office of Personnel Security, who improperly requested background reports from the FBI, concerning several hundred people, without asking permission from the White House Chief of Staff, at the time Thomas "Mack" McLarty. And yet, the FBI granted him the request and the files.
In the end, who hired him didn't matter, because he hadn't broken any laws. The scandal was so dumb (How dumb was it?), even Special Counsel Kenneth Starr, who despised both Bill and Hillary Clinton, refused to charge anyone in connection with it.
At the debate, President Clinton ignored the question as if it didn't matter, and the audience, in the auditorium and on TV, quickly forgot about it. While he didn’t hurt himself in either 1996 debate, Dole never really laid a glove on Clinton, perhaps the most skilled debater in Presidential history. (He was 5-0. Kennedy didn't go 4-0 against Nixon, Reagan lost both of his debates against Mondale, the George Bushes were 2-9 between them, and even Obama lost his 1st debate against Romney.)
October 16, 1999, 20 years ago: Jean Shepherd dies at age 78. The author and former late-night talk-show host on New York radio station WOR, best known today as the writer and narrator of the film A Christmas Story, was born in Chicago and grew up in nearby Hammond, Indiana.
He was a tremendous Chicago White Sox fan, and hosted the team's 1987 video history. In it, he spoke poetically of his love for the city, the team, its then-home of Comiskey Park, and of his favorite player of all time, 1950s ChiSox sparkplug Nellie Fox.
"If I was a colonel in some awful war," he said in that video, "and there was an enemy pillbox that had to be taken, and it looked like a suicide mission, I'd look out at my men and say, 'Are there any White Sox fans here? Follow me!' And those White Sox fans would follow me, and we'd take that pillbox! Because White Sox fans are special."
Well, Met fans are special. In fact, as my sister would say, they're "especially special." But tonight, in Game 4 of the NLCS, they have reason to be happy. Trailing 3 games to none, the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves‚ 3-2 at Shea Stadium‚ to stay alive. John Olerud drives home all 3 New York runs with a solo homer in the 6th inning‚ and a 2-run single off John Rocker in the 8th. Rick Reed shuts jtlanta out over the 1st 7 innings on a single hit.
Shortly before this series, Rocker, sticking his nose in the Mets-Braves "rivalry," said, "I hate the Mets. I hate their fans. How many times do you have to beat a team to make their fans shut up?" The lunkheaded redneck had a point, but we still don't know the answer.
After this game, hearing the reception Met fans gave him as he headed back to the dugout after being pulled off the mound by manager Bobby Cox, rocker is interviewed in the locker room, and flaps his gums again: "I would say the majority of Met fans aren't even humans. They’re more like... " He paused for an appropriate description, and came up with, "Neanderthals." I've said as much, but to John "Off His" Rocker, we can only say that it takes one to know one.
Yankees Fans have considerably less reason to be happy tonight, after what happened in the afternoon. The Red Sox roll over the Yankees‚ 13-1 at Fenway Park‚ behind the pitching of Pedro Martinez. Nomar Garciaparra gets 4 hits for Boston‚ while John Valentin drives home 5 runs. Garciaparra‚ Valentin‚ and Brian Daubach all homer for the Sox. New York now leads the ALCS‚ 2 games to 1.
Pedro outpitches Roger Clemens, and Sox fans, still thinking of him as a traitor, give him the worst ripping any player has ever received at Fenway Park. One fan holds up a sign: "Roger, thanks for the memories, especially this one." After he leaves the game, a chant goes up: "Where is Roger?" After a few rounds of this, a counter-chant goes up: "In the shower!"
But, as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy would write afterwards, the Sox fans who showed up seemed to think that the point of coming was to stick it to Clemens, and it wasn't: The point was to beat the Yankees. The Sox did beat the Yanks on this day, but that's the only game they win in the series. It turns out to be the only game the Yankees lose in the entire postseason, the last game that they would lose in the 20th Century. Not until April 5, 2000 would they lose another game that counts.
(Wanting to stick it to Clemens first and beat the Yankees second? Met fans would make that same mistake after the 2000 World Series, all the way up to a 2002 Interleague matchup, although, unlike the Sox, they did win the series.)
October 16, 2000: The Mets defeat the Cardinals‚ 7-0 at Shea Stadium behind Mike Hampton‚ to win their 1st pennant since 1986. Hampton takes NLCS MVP honors with his 16 scoreless innings and 2 victories. Todd Zeile drives home 3 runs with a bases loaded double.
It is the Mets' 4th Pennant, following 1969, 1973 and 1986. They got their 5th in 2015. But they're still waiting for their 3rd World Championship.
*
October 16, 2003: Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Pedro Martinez vs. Roger Clemens. In his 1st game at Yankee Stadium since he tried to kill Don Zimmer, Pedro gets the hell booed out of him – and that's a lot of hell. But the Sox take a 4-0 lead over the Yankees in the 4th, before Joe Torre lifts Clemens and brings in Mike Mussina. Making the 1st relief appearance of his career, Mussina stops the bleeding.
Jason Giambi hits 2 home runs to make it 4-2 in the 7th, but David Ortiz – not for the first time, and certainly not for the last (cough-steroids-cough) – hurts the Yankees by blasting a home run off David Wells. It's 5-2 Red Sox.
Pedro gets the 1st out in the bottom of the 8th, but then… Derek Jeter doubles. Then Bernie Williams singles, scoring Jeter to make it 5-3. Pedro is over the 100-pitch mark. From pitches 1 through 99, he throws like Sandy Koufax; from pitch 100 onward, he throws like Sandy Duncan. Red Sox manager Grady Little goes to the mound, but decides to leave Pedro in.
Big mistake. Hideki Matsui hits a ground-rule double down the right-field line, moving Bernie to third. Still, Little does not pull Pedro. Jorge Posada hits a looper into short center, scoring the tying runs. Just 5 outs from the Pennant, and the greatest victory the Red Sox would have since, oh, 1918, and they have choked yet again.
Mariano Rivera pitches the 9th, 10th and 11th for the Yankees. He pitches the top of the 11th pretty much on courage alone. The Yankees need to win it in the bottom of the 11th, because the bullpen situation doesn't look good.
Tim Wakefield, the knuckleballer who won Games 1 and 4 of this series, is on the mound. Leading off the inning is Aaron Boone, the Yankee 3rd baseman.
You know where I was at this moment? I was going from place to place watching the game, and I decided to get on the Subway and head up to The Stadium. Win or lose, I felt I had to be there. But the Subway was crawling, seeming to take forever. I forgot that it was after midnight. Frustrated, I
got off at the 50th Street station of the A train.
Next thing I know, I’m standing in front of 220 West 48th Street, the Longacre Theatre. Do you know who built (in 1912) and owned this theater? Harry Frazee. The very man who broke up the Red Sox and sold off so many of their players to the Yankees, including Babe Ruth. What a place to be standing in as the Yankees and Red Sox battled for the Pennant.
In 1935, Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty debuted at the Longacre. Sox fans were still waiting for Alan Embree, the lefty that Little refused to bring in for Pedro.
It was 12:16 AM, actually October 17, 2003, but since the game started on the 16th, it goes down in history as October 16.
I had my headphones on, and on WCBS 880, I heard Charley Steiner say this:
There's a fly ball, deep to left! It’s on its way! There it goes! And the Yankees are going to the World Series! Aaron Boone has hit a home run! The Yankees go to the World Series for the 39th time in their remarkable history! Aaron Boone down the left field line, they are waiting for him at home plate, and now he dives into the scrum! The Yankees win it, 6-5!
Together, Steiner and John Sterling yelled Sterling's tagline: "Ballgame over! American League Championship Series over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!" Steiner: "I've always wanted to say that!"
The Longacre is at the northern end of Times Square. It sounded like a million car horns went off at once. People poured out of the restaurants and bars in the Square. People were slapping each other on the back, giving high five after high five.
By the time I finally got home at around 2 in the morning, my hair was soaked with sweat, my eyes were aching from being up too late, my voice was shot from screaming, my hands throbbed from shaking and high-fiving, my legs and feet throbbed from all the walking.
I've never felt better in my life.
Boone joined Tommy Henrich (1949 World Series vs. Brooklyn Dodgers), Mickey Mantle (1964 WS vs. St. Louis Cardinals), Chris Chambliss (1976 ALCS vs. Kansas City Royals), Jim Leyritz (1995 AL Division Series vs. Seattle Mariners), Bernie Williams (Game 1 of ALCS in both 1996 and 1999), Chad Curtis (1999 WS), Alfonso Soriano (2001 ALCS) and Jeter (2001 WS) as Yankees who have hit walkoff home runs in postseason play. (It's since been done by Mark Teixeira, 2009 ALDS; and Raul Ibanez, 2012 ALDS.)
And he joined Enos Slaughter (1946 Cardinals), Lou Boudreau (1948 Cleveland Indians), Bob Gibson (1967 Cardinals), Joe Morgan (1975 Cincinnati Reds), and, collectively, the 1978 Yankees (especially Bucky Dent) and the 1986 Mets as Red Sox postseason tormentors.
Jeter said, "We've got some ghosts in this Stadium."
In 2009, it sure looked like they'd made the trip across the street. Now, I'm not so sure.
Clemens, Wells, and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre walk out to the Babe Ruth Monument, and offer the Big Fella some champagne. Clemens slaps the plaque on the tablet, and says, "He's smiling! He's smiling! He's smiling, Mel!"
Grady Little was not smiling. He was fired as Sox manager within days.
The next day's Daily News headline read, "THE CURSE LIVES." For the Sox… once again, it was "Wait Till Next Year."
No, no. Really. They meant it this time.
Boone got hurt in the off-season, leading the Yankees to trade for Alex Rodriguez. Injuries and a heart ailment ended his career after the 2009 regular season, after which he was an analyst on Fox’ postseason broadcasts as the Yankees won their first Pennant since his walkoff. He now works for ESPN.
A lot can change in 16 years. We have now seen Aaron Boone become the Yankees' manager, and get them into an ALCS. Of course, among the less pleasant things, we have seen the Red Sox win 4 World Series, breaking the Curse of the Bambino. And we have now seen them beat the Yankees in not one, but two postseason series.
But we have also seen them exposed as dirty rotten cheaters, and continue to lie about it, meaning we can no longer chant, "NINE-teen-EIGHT-teen! (Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)."
But we can still write "1918*."
*
October 16, 2004: The Yankees maul the Red Sox‚ 19-8 at Fenway Park‚ to take a commanding 3-games-to-none lead in the ALCS. The 19 runs remain an LCS record. Hideki Matsui leads the way for New York with 5 hits‚ including 2 home runs, 5 RBI‚ and 5 runs scored. Alex Rodriguez also scores 5 for the Yankees. Gary Sheffield and Bernie Williams each have 4 hits. Alex Rodriguez and Gary Sheffield also homer for the Yanks, Jason Varitek and Trot Nixon for the Sox.
The Yankees could have wrapped it up the next day with a 4th win in an ALCS. It took them another 5 years to get it, on October 25, 2009.
Also on this day, Arsenal defeat Birmingham team Aston Villa 3-1 at Highbury. Robert Pires scores 2 goals, and Thierry Henry the other. Arsenal have now played 9 Premier League games this season, winning 8 and drawing the other. Their League unbeaten streak, which began on May 7, 2003, has now reached 49 games: Won 36, drawn 13, lost exactly none. But Manchester United will cheat them out of a 50th straight.
Also on this day, Pierre Salinger dies of a heart attack in Le Thor, France, at age 79. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he went to the University of San Francisco, where his roommate was Pete Rozelle.
He became a journalist, and an article he wrote about labor leader Jimmy Hoffa for the magazine Collier's caught the attention of Robert F. Kennedy, who was the lead counsel for the Senate Select Committee investigating corruption in unions, a committee that included his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Bobby convinced Jack to hire Salinger as his press secretary, a post he held during Jack's 1960 Presidential campaign and throughout his Presidency.
After JFK's assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson kept him on for continuity's sake, even though he and the Kennedy advisors rarely trusted each other, but LBJ was so impressed with Salinger that, when he returned to California and accepted Governor Pat Brown's appointment to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Clair Engle, LBJ heartily endorsed him. But in the election to fill the remainder of that term, Salinger lost to former actor George Murphy, one of the few Democratic losses in the 1964 LBJ landslide.
In 1968, Salinger made a guest appearance on Batman, playing a lawyer defending the Joker and Catwoman in court. He then returned to the Kennedys as press secretary for Bobby's campaign. After RFK was assassinated as well, Salinger was so grief-stricken that he moved to his grandparents' homeland of France. In 1976, since he was already in Europe, ABC asked him to commentate on the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. He was then appointed ABC News' Paris bureau chief.
He stayed with ABC until 1990, moved back to Washington, but in 2000, said, "If Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France." George W. Bush did become President, and, as one of the few people with enough means to keep the frequently-heard promise of "If (name of candidate) becomes President, I'm leaving the country," he became one of the very few people who did, and never returned until his death, when he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
October 16, 2005: The White Sox clinch their 1st Pennant in 46 years – the 1st Pennant for either Chicago team since the ChiSox clinched on September 22, 1959 – as they defeat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim‚ 6-3‚ behind Jose Contreras. Joe Crede homers and drives in 3 runs for Chicago, and Paul Konerko is named MVP of the ALCS.
October 16, 2006: Game 5 of the NLCS. Albert Pujols hitting a home run for the Cardinals is no surprise. Chris Duncan, son of Cardinal pitching coach Dave Duncan, hitting one is a big surprise. The Cards win, 4-2, and head back to New York needing 1 win for the Pennant.
The losing pitcher for the Mets is John Maine, which was a surprise at the time, since he'd pitched so well late in the season, but is no longer a surprise in retrospect. The winning pitcher for the Cardinals is Jeff Weaver, which is not merely a surprise, it's a shock. Don't ever get me started on Jeff Bleeping Weaver.
Also on this day, the Chicago Bears beat the Arizona Cardinals 24-23 at University of Phoenix Stadium (now State Farm Stadium) in Glendale, Arizona. The Cards' defense had forced 6 Chicago turnovers, so it wasn't their fault. But when Cards coach Dennis Green was asked after the game if the defense had failed, his usual calm demeanor dissolved into one of the most famous coaching rants in NFL history:
The Bears are what we thought they were. They're what we thought they were. We played them in preseason. Who the hell takes a third game of the preseason like it's bullshit? Bullshit! We played them in the third game. Everybody played three quarters. The Bears ARE who we THOUGHT they were! (Voice rising) That's why we took the damn field! Now, if you want to crown them, then crown their ass! But they ARE who we THOUGHT they were! And we let 'em off the hook!
The next day, Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill fired offensive coordinator Keith Rowen, and replaced him with quarterbacks coach Mike Kruczek. It didn't work: The Cards fell to 1-9, before finishing at 5-11. Green was fired, and never coached in the NFL again. The Bears won the NFC Championship, but lost Super Bowl XLI to the Indianapolis Colts. Apparently, they were what Green thought they were: A very good team.
Bidwill hired Ken Whisenhunt, offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers, as his new head coach. Two seasons later, he got the Cardinals to the NFC Championship. Super Bowl XLIII was the franchise's 1st appearance in an NFL Championship Game, under any name, in any city (they'd moved twice), in 60 years. But they lost -- to the Steelers.
October 16, 2007: Todor "Toše" Proeski, the singer known as "The Elvis Presley of the Balkans," is killed in a car crash near Nova Gradiška, Croatia. He was only 26, but the native of Kruševo, in the country now called North Macedonia, had already become beloved throughout the Balkan Peninsula, including in Greece, Albania, and all the countries that had once made up Yugoslavia.
October 16, 2008: Behind 7-0 in the bottom of 7th, the Red Sox score 8 runs in the last 3 frames to beat the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 of the ALCS at Fenway Park, 8-7. Boston's comeback victory is the biggest postseason rally since the 1929 A's tallied 10 times in the 7th inning to wipe out an 8-run deficit against the Cubs in their 10-8 victory in Game 4 of the World Series.
When this happened, I was sure the experienced Sox would complete yet another comeback, this time from 3 games to 1 down, and win the Pennant. I was sure they were cheating, too, or that the umpires, controlled by the MLB offices and the Fox network, were being told to favor the Sox, so that there would be bigger ratings for New England vs. Philadelphia than there would be for Philly vs. Tampa Bay.
And, sure enough, the Sox did win Game 6 in St. Petersburg, and took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 4th in Game 7, before the Rays finally realized that they were the home team and fought back. I guess you can't always cheat your way to winning it all.
October 16, 2009, 10 years ago: Game 1 of the ALCS. It's been 5 years since the Yankees got this far, and with a new vibe brought by manager Joe Girardi, a revived Alex Rodriguez and Robinson Cano, and new acquisitions Mark Teixeira, Nick Swisher, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, the Yankees are more ready to rumble than at any time since the Aaron Boone Game, 6 years to the day earlier.
CC nearly goes the distance, holding the Angels to 4 hits. Singles in the 1st inning by Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon, an Angel error, a sacrifice fly by A-Rod and a single by Matsui give the Yankees a 2-0 lead, and that's all they need, as they go on to a 4-1 victory. Even sweeter: It's against John Lackey, who'd driven them crazy in the 2002 and '05 ALDS. He would do it to them again for the Red Sox years later, though.
*
October 16, 2010: The Texas Rangers record the 1st Playoff win at home in the 50-year history of the franchise, when they take Game 2 of the ALDS, defeating the Yankees, 7-2. The Rangers Ballpark (now Globe Life Ballpark) victory ends a 10-game postseason losing streak against New York, that includes yesterday's heartbreaking loss in which Texas had an early 5-0 lead over the Bronx Bombers.
If only the Yankees had won this Game 2, it might have stopped the Rangers from winning the 2010 and 2011 Pennants. Oh well.
Also on this day, Rutgers plays Army in football at the new Meadowlands stadium, now named MetLife Stadium. RU had played at Giants Stadium many times, but this was their 1st game at the new stadium. They would beat Army 23-20 on an overtime field goal, but that would prove to be all but meaningless.
In the 4th quarter, Eric LeGrand, a junior defensive tackle from the Avenel section of Woodbridge, New Jersey and Colonia High School, tried to tackle Army kickoff returner Malcolm Brown, and the resulting collision broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed.
His fight to recover became an inspiration, as he has gone into sportscasting, a profession that does not require that he stand up, which he has been able to do with the aid of a special harness. His former coach, Greg Schiano, had taken the head job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the 2012 season, and signed him to a contract, so he could legitimately say he had been a professional football player. LeGrand then "retired" to free up a roster sport. Later that year, Rutgers retired his Number 52, making it the 1st such honor in the program's 143-year history.
October 16, 2011: Dan Wheldon is killed in a crash at the IZOD IndyCar World Championship at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The Englishman was 33, and had won 16 races, including that year's Indianapolis 500. He is the only man to die while still holder of the Indy 500.
October 16, 2012: Game 3 of the ALCS at Comerica Park. This is the closest the Yankees came to winning a game in this series. Phil Hughes pitches well, but the Yankees trail the Detroit Tigers 2-0 going to the 9th. Eduardo Núñez hits a home run to make it 2-1, but former Yankee Phil Coke closes it out. The Tigers go up 3-0 in the series.
The home run by Núñez ended a streak of 30 1/3rd scoreless innings by Tigers starters in the postseason, breaking the 1974 record of 29 innings set by the Oakland Athletics. The Tiger starters had also gone 37 straight innings without surrendering an earned run.
October 16, 2013: Bill Sharman dies from complications from a stroke, at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Redondo Beach. He was 87.
We don't need a world without Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick. We need a world which makes additions to their actions unnecessary.
On the same day as the Smith & Carlos protest, the Milwaukee Bucks make their NBA debut. They play the team that will become their arch-rivals, the Chicago Bulls, and lose 89-84 at the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA (now the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena).
Also on this day, former Boston Red Sox pitcher Ellis Kinder dies during open-heart surgery, probably complicated by heavy drinking all through his adult life. Kinder was one of the heroes of Boston’s 1948 and 1949 Pennant runs, though both fell short.
Yet despite not becoming a big-league regular until he was 31, he won 102 games and saved 102 others in his career. Had he come along 40 years later, in the era of bullpen specialists and rehab, he might have been one of the best relief pitchers ever. He was only 54. But that's not the biggest sports story of the day.
*
October 16, 1970: Adrian Bryan Murrell is born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but grows up in Wahiawa, Hawaii. He went back east to be a running back at West Virginia University, and played for the Jets from 1993 to 1997, including the Rich Kotite debacle of 1995-96. In 1996, he rushed for 1,249 yards, becoming the 1st Jet to rush for 1,000 yards in a season -- in the Jets' 37th season of play. He remained in the NFL through 2003, and rushed for nearly 5,200 yards and 23 touchdowns.
Also on this day, Mehmet Yüksel is born in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. We know him as Mehmet Scholl. He was a star soccer midfielder of Turkish descent in Germany when Mesut Özil was just a small child.
He left hometown club Kalrsruher SC to play for the biggest club in the country, Bayern Munich. With former teammates Oliver Kahn and Bastian Schwiensteiger, he shares the record for most Bundesliga titles won, 8 (in his case: 1994, '97, '99, 2000, '01, '03, '05 and '06). He won 5 German Cups (DFP-Pokal), including League and Cup "Doubles" in 2000 and '03. He won 5 League Cups (DFB-Ligapokal), making for a domestic "Treble" in 2000.
He was a member of the Bayern teams that won the UEFA Cup in 1996 and the UEFA Champions League in 2001, and the Germany team that won Euro 2006. He later managed Bayern's reserves, and is now a studio analyst on German television.
October 16, 1971: All In the Family airs the episode "Flashback: Mike Meets Archie." At least Mike Stivic (Rob Reiner) shaved his beard, if not his mustache, for his 1969 wedding to Gloria Bunker (Sally Struthers). Before, he looked like as much of a caricature of a hippie as Gloria's father Archie (Carroll O'Connor) looked like a caricature of a lower-middle-class WASP bigot.
Elsewhere in Queens on this day, 17-year-old Jerry Seinfeld -- at least, as shown in a flashback on the TV show Seinfeld -- borrows Henry Miller's smutty novel Tropic of Cancer from the New York Public Library. He later claimed that he returned the book on time. Stay tuned for the 1991 entry.
October 16, 1972: Kordell Stewart (no middle name) is born in New Orleans. The quarterback's touchdown pass on the final play of a 1994 game gave Colorado a win known as The Miracle In Michigan. He was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they used him as a backup to Neil O'Donnell, a running back, a receiver and a kick returner. Or, as was said at the time, a quarterback/running back/receiver/kick returner, leading Steeler broadcaster Myron Cope to give him the nickname Slash.
The Steelers won the 1995 AFC Championship, and he played in Super Bowl XXX as a rookie. Had coach Bill Cowher started him at quarterback, instead of O'Donnell, who gave the game away with 2 key interceptions, the Steelers might have beaten the Dallas Cowboys. He was given the starting job for the 1997 season, and he got the Steelers into the AFC Championship Game. He got them back into it in 2001, but after a loss of effectiveness the next season, the Steelers let him go.
He would play for the Chicago Bears in 2003, and the Baltimore Ravens in 2004 and '05, but was cut by both. Only Steve Young, with 43, is a quarterback with more NFL rushing touchdowns than his 36. He later worked as a sideline reporter and a sports-talk host on an Atlanta radio station, and is now an analyst for ESPN.
Also on this day, Darius Kasparaitis is born in Elektrėnai, Lithuania. Probably the greatest hockey player in that former Soviet "republic"'s history, the defenseman with the name that sounds like a dreaded disease played for Dinamo Moscow, the New York Islanders, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Colorado Avalanche, the New York Rangers and SKA St. Petersburg.
In the wake of the Soviet Union's breakup, he won a Gold Medal with the "Commonwealth of Independent States" team (a.k.a. "The Unified Team") at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. He was an NHL rookie on the Islander team that won the Patrick Division Playoff Championship in 1993, but struggled to reach Playoff heights thereafter. In 15 NHL seasons, he scored just 27 goals with 136 assists, and racked up 1,379 penalty minutes.
He now runs a real estate company, diving his time between Miami and Stockholm. Given the weather in each place, I hope he's in Miami during the Winter and Stockholm during the Summer, and not the other way around!
October 16, 1973: The Oakland Athletics win Game 3 of the World Series, 3-2 in 11 innings over the New York Mets. Bert Campaneris gets the winning RBI.
In the bottom of the 10th, Willie Mays pinch-hits for Mets pitcher Tug McGraw against Paul Lindblad, and grounds to short, where Bert Campaneris turns a force play. It is Mays' last major league appearance.
In a private clubhouse meeting‚ Dick Williams tells A's players he will resign after the Series, win or lose. He has had it with the meddling of team owner Charlie Finley. Alvin Dark will succeed Williams.
Also on this day, Donald Trump is mentioned in The New York Times for the 1st time. The story is of a lawsuit filed against the 27-year-old Trump, his father Fred, and their real estate company, by the U.S. Department of Justice, then (at least, for another 4 days) reporting to Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who reported to President Richard Nixon, for housing discrimination in their Queens apartment complexes.
In his 1987 autobiography Trump: The Art of the Deal -- which was actually written by Tony Schwartz, then writing for GQ, and who now correctly calls Trump a "sociopath" -- Trump said, "The idea of settling drove me crazy... I'd rather fight than fold, because as soon as you fold once, you get the reputation of being a folder."
Nevertheless, on June 10, 1975, Fred (who had previously been arrested for attending a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Queens in 1927) and Donald signed an agreement prohibiting them from "discriminating against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling." The decree made it clear that the Trumps did not view the agreement as a surrender, saying the settlement was "in no way an admission" of a violation.
Nevertheless, Trump officially became famous by being exposed as a bigot. And when you're officially too bigoted for Richard Nixon, you've got a problem.
Also on this day, David Gerald Unsworth is born in Chorley, Lancashire, England. A centreback, he played for Liverpool-based Everton, and helpled them win the 1995 FA Cup. He was twice caretaker manager of Lancashire club Preston North End and once (so far) of Everton, and now manages Everton's reserves.
October 16, 1974: A's pitcher Ken Holtzman‚ who, due to the designated hitter, hadn't come to bat all season‚ belts a 3rd-inning home run, and gets the win, with Rollie Fingers in relief. Oakland scores 4 in the 6th to wrap up Game 4, 5-2 over the Los Angeles Dodgers at the Oakland Coliseum. It will be 34 years before another pitcher homers in a World Series game.
Also on this day, the "Papergate" scandal breaks out in the World Football League. The Philadelphia Bell, named for the Liberty Bell, had announced a crowd of 55,534 fans for their home opener at John F. Kennedy Stadium. For their 2nd game, they announced an even bigger crowd, 64,719. For comparison's sake, the NFL's Eagles, playing at Veterans Stadium a couple of blocks to the north, topped that figure only twice in 1974, and only once in 1973.
But when the Bell had to pay city taxes on the attendance figures, it was revealed that they had massively inflated the gate. They had sold block tickets to several area businesses at a discount, and it was not reported. The actual paid attendance for the 1st home game was 13,855, and for the 2nd just 6,200. There were high school games in the Philly area that drew more than that.
And so, with a game scheduled for this Wednesday night, with rain coming down hard on the Delaware Valley, only 750 fans came to JFK Stadium to see the Bell, who lost 30-25 to the Shreveport Steamer. (No S on the end.)
They finished 9-11, including a last-game forfeit by the Chicago Fire, who literally couldn't afford the trip to Philly. But 8 of their 11 losses were by a touchdown or less, and they did qualify for the Playoffs, losing to the Orlando-based Florida Blazers in the Quarterfinals. They were 4-7 in 1975 when the WFL folded.
Also on this day, Paul Tesuhiko Kariya is born in Vancouver, British Columbia. One of the few players of Asian descent ever to play in the NHL, he led the University of Maine to the 1993 National Championship, and won the Hobey Baker Award for national player of the year, "the Hockey Heisman."
He won a Gold Medal with Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and led the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim Ducks to the 2003 Western Conference Championship. In Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, the Devils' Scott Stevens gave him The Cold Shoulder, knocking him out. He returned 5 minutes later, scored a goal, and provided 2 assists to force a Game 7, which the Devils won.
Kariya had been the Ducks' Captain since 1996, but they let him go. He went on to play for the Colorado Avalanche, Nashville Predators and St. Louis Blues, finishing his career with 407 goals and 587 assists, for a total of 989 points, just short of 1,000. A 7-time All-Star, he won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1996 and '97. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame this year.
Also on this day, Jermaine Edward Lewis is born in the Washington suburb of Lanham, Maryland. A receiver, he was a 2-time All-Pro, and was with the Baltimore Ravens when they won Super Bowl XXXV.
October 16, 1975: Game 5 of the World Series at Riverfront Stadium. Cincinnati Reds 1st baseman
Tony Pérez had no hits in the Series up to this point, but hits 2 home runs and drives in 4 runs off Boston Red Sox starter Reggie Cleveland. Don Gullett pitches 8 strong innings and wins with relief help from Rawly Eastwick in the 9th, and the Reds win, 6-2.
The Reds now lead 3 games to 2 as the Series heads back to Boston. But for 3 days -- October 18, 19 and 20 -- rain will postpone Game 6. When it finally begins at Fenway Park on the night of October 21, it becomes one of the epic games in baseball history.
Also on this day, Jacques Kallis (no middle name) is born in Cape Town, South Africa. Now retired, he is the only player in the history of the sport to score more than 10,000 runs and take 250 wickets in both one-day and Test match cricket.
Also on this day, the Journal Square Transportation Center opens in Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. It serves the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) subway system that connects Jersey City with Newark, Hoboken and New York City; and local buses in Hudson County.
October 16, 1976: Game 1 of the World Series -- the Yankees' 1st Series game in 12 years and 1 day. The game is played at Riverfront Stadium, home of the defending World Champions, the Cincinnati Reds. Although the Yankees have played away games against the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals (including in this year's ALCS) on artificial turf, this is the 1st time they have done so in the World Series.
Dan Driessen, batting 5th for the Cincinnati Reds, becomes the 1st National League player to be used as a designated hitter. The DH was not employed prior to this year's Fall Classic, although the concept had been adopted and used in the American League since 1973. Joe Morgan hits a home run, Don Gullett outpitches Doyle Alexander, and the Reds win, 5-1. They will go on to sweep the Series.
Also on this day, the Rutgers University football team beats Lehigh 28-21 at the latter's home field, Taylor Stadium in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As it turns out, this is the closest Rutgers comes to losing all season.
October 16, 1977: The Dodgers stay alive in the World Series with a 10-4 victory in Game 5. Steve Yeager and Reggie Smith homer as Don Sutton pitches a complete game. Reggie Jackson, who homered in Game 4, does so again in Game 5.
Also on this day, Cal Hubbard dies of lung cancer in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was just short of turning 77. He was a 2-way lineman, and at 6-foot-5 and 253 pounds, he was enormous for his era. He won NFL Championships with the Giants in 1927 and the Green Bay Packers in 1929, '30 and '31. He was a 4-time Pro Bowler, and was elected to the NFL's 1920s All-Decade, 50th Anniversary and 75th Anniversary All-Time Teams, and to the Louisiana, Missouri, College Football, Pro Football and Green Bay Packers Halls of Fame.
As if that wasn't accomplishment enough for one man, he was also an American League umpire from 1936, the year he retired from playing football, until a hunting accident damaged his right eye in 1951. He officiated at 4 World Series and 4 All-Star Games, and at his size, few players were willing to argue with him.
After his accident, the AL made him their supervisor of umpires, a post he held until retiring in 1969. It was his idea for the game to go from having 3 umpires on the field to 4 in the regular season (1 at each base) and 6 in the postseason (adding 1 to each foul line).
He lived long enough to become only the 5th umpire elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and is the only man in the Halls of Fame of both Baseball and Pro Football -- not counting broadcasters.
Also on this day, All In the Family airs the episode "Edith's 50th Birthday." The episode depicts a man named Lambert (played by David Dukes -- not David Duke) who, while posing as a police detective, attempts to rape Edith (Jean Stapleton).
This happens while her family, unaware of what is happening in the Bunkers' living room, prepares for a surprise party next door at Mike & Gloria's house (formerly the Jeffersons' house), to honor Edith. The scenes following the assault depict Edith struggling to deal with the aftermath, and her family's attempts to both comfort her and help bring her assailant to justice.
References to rape had been mentioned in television before. On a 1963 episode of Ben Casey, Ricardo Montalban played a hospital patient who admitted to a female doctor, hearing a TV report about abused women and bound by doctor-patient privilege not to reveal the information she was about to hear, "I beat those women." The word "rape" couldn't be used on TV at the time, but who was kidding who?
On the 1967 Star Trek episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion," Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) faces a rape attempt, which isn't shown on screen, but Captain Kirk can hear her protests, and it's not until we come back from the commercial break that we learn that she successfully fought off her attacker. But as the current #MeToo Twitter hashtag in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal shows, this still qualifies as "sexual assault."
Nevertheless, Edith Bunker's successful attempt to fend off a rapist was the first time such a thing was shown on-camera on American TV. And, since Stapleton left the successor show Archie Bunker's Place after the 1980 season, and it was written into the show that Edith had died, it can be argued that, while she was not successfully raped, the experience may have hastened her death.
October 16, 1978: As the World Series heads west to Los Angeles for Game 6, Dan Dailey dies at age 62, from complications from hip replacement surgery. He starred in 2 baseball movies, playing Hall-of-Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean in The Pride of St. Louis, and a peanut vendor turned "baseball dad" in the original version of The Kid From Left Field. Both films were directed by Harmon Jones.
Also on this day, Karol Józef Wojtyła, Archbishop of Kraków in his native Poland, is elected Pope. In memory of his recently deceased, briefly-reigning predecessor, he takes the name John Paul II.
He reshaped the Catholic Church for the better, and delivered Masses at Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and Madison Square Garden in early October 1979, and at Giants Stadium in 1995. He died in 2005. He was canonized in 2014, and is known as Saint John Paul the Great.
October 16, 1979, 40 years ago: Game 6 of the World Series. The Pittsburgh Pirates trailed the Series 3 games to 1 against the Baltimore Orioles, and had to win Game 5 at home at Three Rivers Stadium, and then Games 6 and 7 at Memorial Stadium. But they'd done the exact same thing, at the exact same team, in the exact same stadiums before, in 1971.
Now, having won Game 5 at home, they go back to the stadium that Orioles and Colts fans call "The Insane Asylum on 33rd Street." John Candelaria of Pittsburgh and Jim Palmer of Baltimore both toss goose eggs for 6 innings. But the Pirates break through with an RBI single by Dave Parker in the 7th, and keep it going long enough to win 4-0, and force a Game 7.
Oriole fans do manage a minor victory, though: When the much-despised Howard Cosell, one of the ABC announcers, gets into his limousine after the game, he is pelted with shaving-cream pies. He talks the Baltimore police into giving him extra security for Game 7.
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October 16, 1980: Suzanne Brigit Bird is born in Syosset, Long Island, New York. Sue Bird is one of the premier female basketball players of all time. She led the University of Connecticut to the 2000 and 2002 National Championships, going 114-4 there. She has led the Seattle Storm to the 2004, 2010 and 2018 WNBA Championships, and was a member of the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 U.S. teams that won Olympic Gold Medals.
Her father is an Italian-born Russian Jew -- the family name had been Boorda -- and she played professionally in Russia before returning to the Storm. She is an 11-time WNBA All-Star, including this past season.
She was named to the WNBA's 20th Anniversary All-Time Team, and recently came out, stating that she was dating soccer star Megan Rapinoe. It is a toss-up as to which of them has been the better athlete.
October 16, 1981: Anthony Loza Reyes is born in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, California. A major league pitcher from 2005 to 2009, his career record was 13-26, but he won a World Series with the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals. He retired due to injury in 2011, and is now a firefighter outside Los Angeles.
Also on this day, Alan Gordon (no middle name) is born in the Los Angeles suburb of Long Beach, California. A forward, he helped the Los Angeles Galaxy win "The Double," taking the MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup (America's "FA Cup"), in 2005; Toronto FC the Canadian Championship (Canada's "FA Cup") in 2011, the San Jose Earthquakes the Supporters' Shield (the MLS regular-season title) in 2012, and the Galaxy the MLS Cup again in 2014.
He also helped the U.S. national team win the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup, the continental championship. He retired after the 2018 season.
Also on this day, DeAndrew White (no middle name) is born in Houston. A receiver, he was with the New England Patriots when they won Super Bowl LI. He now plays for the Carolina Panthers.
Also on this day, Moshe Dayan dies of colon cancer in Tel Aviv, Israel. He was 66 years old. One of the founding fathers of the State of Israel, he was Minister of Defense during both the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and Foreign Minister during the Camp David Accords of 1978.
October 16, 1982: Matthew Victor Giordano is born in Fresno, California. A safety, Matt Giordano was with the Indianapolis Colts when they won Super Bowl XLI. He is now retired. His great-grandfather, an Italian immigrant born Raffaele Giordano, boxed under the name Young Corbett III, and was Welterweight Champion of the World for 3 months in 1933.
October 16, 1983: Eddie Murray slams a pair of home runs and Scott McGregor pitches a 5-hitter, as the Baltimore Orioles beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-0 at Veterans Stadium, and win the World Series 4-1. Baltimore catcher Rick Dempsey‚ who hit .385 with 4 doubles and a home run‚ is the Series MVP.
The Orioles win their 3rd World Series, marking a unique double: Edward Bennett Williams, famed trial lawyer, majority owner of the Orioles, and minority owner and former majority owner of the Washington Redskins, becomes the only man ever to be an owner of the current World Series and Super Bowl champions at the same time.
NFL rules prohibit a majority owner from being a majority owner in another sport, so before buying the Orioles, Williams sold some of his stake in the Redskins to Jack Kent Cooke, former owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and Kings, builder of the Forum arena outside L.A., and the last owner of the minor-league baseball team that gave its name to an NHL powerhouse, the Toronto Maple Leafs.
This caps a period where they have finished 1st 8 times in 18 years, and have at least been competitive almost continuously since 1960. But, due to their core players getting old and later mismanagement by owner Peter Angelos, they have not played a World Series game since.
The last out is a line shot to shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., son and namesake of the Orioles' longtime 3rd base coach. He will play another 18 seasons, but never appear in another World Series.
Also on this day, Kelso dies at age 26. A grandson of 1943 Triple Crown winner Count Fleet, he was eligible to run in the Triple Crown races in 1960, but did not do so. But from ages 3 to 8 (8 is not old for a horse, but it's old for a horse to be racing), he won many big races, including 5 straight Jockey Club Gold Cups from 1960 to 1964 and 3 straight Woodward Stakes from 1961 to 1963.
He won the Daily Racing Form Horse of the Year award 5 times. No other horse has even won it 4 times. He was retired in 1966, having won just under $2 million, a record that would stand until 1979. He died just 1 day after being paraded around the track at Belmont Park, prior to the running of the race that was his trademark, the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Perhaps it was too much for him.
Horse racing writer Joe Hirsch wrote, "Once upon a time there was a horse named Kelso. But only once."
October 16, 1985: Baseball gets its 1st intrastate World Series since 1974‚ as the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals win their respective Pennants. Kansas City beats the Toronto Blue Jays 6-2 in Game 7, to cap a comeback from a 3-games-to-1 deficit.
In Los Angeles‚ Jack Clark drills a 3-run home run deep into the left field pavilion, off Tom Niedenfuer with 2 outs in the top of the 9th and first base open to give the Cardinals a 7-5 victory over the Dodgers, and a 4-2 series win.
Also on this day, Jay Beagle (apparently, his entire name) is born in Calgary. A center, he was with the Washington Capitals when they won the 2018 Stanley Cup. He now plays for the Vancouver Canucks.
October 16, 1987: Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson knocks out Tyrell Biggs in the 7th round at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Biggs had won the Olympic Gold Medal in the heavyweight division in 1984, but was no match for Iron Mike, who never competed in the Olympics.
While Floyd Patterson, Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman all won Gold Medals and became Heavyweight Champion of the World (and Evander Holyfield did so after winning a Silver Medal), Biggs would never win a title.
Also on this day, Bobby Gene Rainey Jr. is born outside Atlanta in Griffin, Georgia. A running back, he won Super Bowl XLVII as a rookie with the Baltimore Ravens. He last played with them in 2017.
Also on this day, 18-month-old Jessica McClure is rescued, 2 days after falling into a well near her home in Midland, Texas. In a time before social media, and before most people yet grasped the idea that there was already 24-hour news coverage (CNN were the only ones doing it in America), this story gripped the nation.
I wonder what half the people cheering the rescue of this little Southern white girl would have thought if they'd known that she would go on to marry a Hispanic man and have 2 kids with him. Today, she is 33 years old, known as Jessica Morales, and still lives in Midland. Well, maybe they'd have stuck with her: Apparently, like her parents, she's still an evangelical.
October 16, 1988: Game 2 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium. Don Baylor becomes the 1st player to participate in 3 consecutive World Series for 3 different teams, when he pinch-hits in the 8th inning of the A's 6-0 loss to L.A. The 39 year-old veteran played with the Pennant-winning Red Sox in 1986 and the World Champion Twins in 1987. He also reached the postseason with the California Angels in 1979 and 1982.
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October 16, 1991: The Delta Center opens in Salt Lake City, Utah. The 1st event is a minor-league hockey game, in which the host Salt Lake Golden Eagles lose 4-2 to the Peoria Rivermen. The Eagles will lose money there, and move to a smaller suburban arena in 1994.
But the building, now named the Vivint Smart Home Arena, will be better to the NBA's Utah Jazz, reaching the Playoffs in 17 of the building's 1st 21 seasons -- but none of the last 4. This includes 7 trips to the Western Conference Finals and 2 to the NBA Finals.
Also on this day, the NHL's expansion San Jose Sharks play their 1st regular-season game, against their California arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings win, 8-5, at the Great Western Forum in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood.
Also on this day, Seinfeld airs the episode "The Library." "TV Jerry," played by the real Jerry Seinfeld, is accused by the New York Public Library of borrowing Henry Miller's smutty novel Tropic of Cancer in 1971, 20 years earlier, and never returning it. In spite of the Library's records showing they never got it back, he insists that he returned it.
He tries to prove it, by looking up an old girlfriend, but her memory of the events is completely different, to the point where she says the book Jerry was reading to her, in order to "get her in the mood," was Miller's companion piece, Tropic of Capricorn. Jerry remembers that this was the book he returned, and that he had loaned the other to George Costanza (Jason Alexander). But George can't remember what he did with the book.
Jerry reluctantly pays the fine -- a big one, and he could afford it on his comedian's pay, but that wasn't the point, he thought he shouldn't have to pay because he thought he'd returned it -- and the solution to the mystery of what happened to the book, never revealed to the main cast, is too stupid to explain here.
October 16, 1992: Bryce Aron Max Harper is born in Las Vegas. The right fielder was the 1st pick in the 2010 Major League Baseball Draft. Within 21 months, he had debuted with the Washington Nationals.
Also on this day, the NHL's expansion San Jose Sharks play their 1st regular-season game, against their California arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Kings. The Kings win, 8-5, at the Great Western Forum in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood.
Also on this day, Seinfeld airs the episode "The Library." "TV Jerry," played by the real Jerry Seinfeld, is accused by the New York Public Library of borrowing Henry Miller's smutty novel Tropic of Cancer in 1971, 20 years earlier, and never returning it. In spite of the Library's records showing they never got it back, he insists that he returned it.
He tries to prove it, by looking up an old girlfriend, but her memory of the events is completely different, to the point where she says the book Jerry was reading to her, in order to "get her in the mood," was Miller's companion piece, Tropic of Capricorn. Jerry remembers that this was the book he returned, and that he had loaned the other to George Costanza (Jason Alexander). But George can't remember what he did with the book.
Jerry reluctantly pays the fine -- a big one, and he could afford it on his comedian's pay, but that wasn't the point, he thought he shouldn't have to pay because he thought he'd returned it -- and the solution to the mystery of what happened to the book, never revealed to the main cast, is too stupid to explain here.
October 16, 1992: Bryce Aron Max Harper is born in Las Vegas. The right fielder was the 1st pick in the 2010 Major League Baseball Draft. Within 21 months, he had debuted with the Washington Nationals.
Just 3 months after that, he was playing in his 1st of now 6 All-Star Games. Just 3 months after that he had helped the Nats win their 1st National League Eastern Division title, and reach their 1st postseason (unless you count 1981 as the Montreal Expos). Just a month after that, he was named NL Rookie of the Year. He would help get the Nats to the Division title again in 2014, 2016 and 2017. In 2015, he led the NL in home runs, and was named Most Valuable Player.
But he couldn't get the Nats into the NLCS, and his contract ran out after 2018. He signed with the Phillies for $330 million over 13 years. The Phils-Nats rivalry became hotter than ever, but the Nats have finally reached the NLCS, and now also the World Series, without him, while the Phils didn't make the Playoffs with him.
Lots of people don't like him, because he's rude and arrogant. Well, if you had a .276 career batting average, a 137 OPS+, 1,071 hits, 219 home runs and 635 RBIs before your 27th birthday, you might be arrogant, too. Along with Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, he is generally regarded as 1 of the top 2 players in baseball today.
But did he make a mistake by not re-signing with the Nats? As the man himself would say, "That's a clown question, bro."
Also on this day, "Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration" is held at Madison Square Garden. Or, as one of the performers, Neil Young, put it, "This one's for you, Bob. Thanks for having Bobfest!" Actually, it was Columbia Records, Dylan's label the whole way, that put the show on.
And what a show it was. It may have been the greatest array of musical talent ever brought together for one show in one building. (Live Aid was 1 show, but in 2 stadiums on 2 continents, and I'm not sure it was a better show, anyway.) The house band consisted of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, with Jim Keltner and World's Most Dangerous Band member Anton Fig filling in for the late Al Jackson Jr. on drums, plus G.E. Smith of the Saturday Night Live Band. Kris Kristofferson, himself one of America's greatest songwriters, was master of ceremonies.
John Mellencamp kicked it off with perhaps Dylan's greatest song, "Like a Rolling Stone." One by one, some serious legends came, each playing a Dylan song or two: Stevie Wonder (singing the gospel-inflected version of "Blowin' in the Wind" that he hit with in 1966), Lou Reed, June Carter and Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Johnny Winter (whose version of "Highway 61" was particularly blistering), Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, Richie Havens (whose acoustic version of "Just Like a Woman" was epic), the Clancy Brothers (Village folkie contemporaries of Dylan's, singing "When the Ship Comes In" with an Irish brogue), Neil Young (who blitzed through "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and made absolutely nobody miss Jimi Hendrix with "All Along the Watchtower"), Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Eric Clapton (who totally tore the place up with a bluesy rendition of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"), the O'Jays, The Band, George Harrison, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds.
The younger generation got in on the act, too: Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready, Tracy Chapman, and a performance of "You Ain't Going Nowhere" by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shawn Colvin, and Johnny's daughter (and June's stepdaughter) Roseanne Cash.
Said younger generation included a performer who became the focus of the show's one moment of controversy: Mere days after singing Bob Marley's "War" and tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on SNL, Sinead O'Connor tried to sing Dylan's "I Believe in You," but got booed off the stage. Kristofferson, perhaps anticipating such a reaction, tried to introduce her by saying that, like Dylan, she stood for freedom, including freedom of speech. It was to no avail: Harder than Dylan was at Newport in 1965, she got booed. She walked off and cried on Kristofferson's shoulder, and a microphone picked up him saying to her, "Don't let the bastards get you down."
George Harrison introduced Bob, and the big question everybody had was, "What's Bob going to do?" Not because so many of his great songs had already been done, but because a Bob Dylan show is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you're going to get. Was he going to say something controversial? Was he not going to be understandable as he sang?
There was no issue with him: He sang, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)," and he was totally understandable, and he was on his game. In turn, the 6 verses of "My Back Pages" were sung by McGuinn, Petty, Young, Clapton, Dylan and Harrison. Bob closed with "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Girl from the North Country."
Wood, Harrison, Cash, McGuinn, Dylan
I still have most of this concert from the WNEW-FM broadcast. To me, it sounds better than any other recording of it.
Also on this day, Konstantinos "Kostas" Fortounis is born in Trikala, Greece. The winger for Athens-based Olympiacos helped them win the Superleague Greece in 2015, 2016 and 2017; and also the Greek Cup in 2015, for a Double.
October 16, 1994, 25 years ago: The Dallas Cowboys lead the Philadelphia Eagles 24-7 at Texas Stadium in Irving. The Eagles score a touchdown in the 4th quarter to make it 24-13, and head coach Rich Kotite tells his team to attempt a 2-point conversion. It fails, and the 24-13 score holds until the end of the game.
Why go for 2 there? At that point, there was little difference between trailing by 10 and by 9: You still needed a touchdown and a field goal to make the difference. But failing at the 2-pointer meant trailing by 11, so you needed 2 touchdowns. Obviously, the right thing to do was to kick the extra point, and make it 24-14.
Kotite told the media, "The rain made the ink run and blurred the chart, so I couldn't see what was written on it to know what to do." He shouldn't have needed a chart to tell him what to do! But it was worse than that: He knew it was going to rain, and didn't have a plastic sheet to protect his ink and paper. I guess Yankee Fans are lucky that the dugout protected Joe Girardi's infamous binder from the rain.
The loss dropped the Eagles to 4-2. They would get to 7-2, leading the NFC Eastern Division. Then they lost their last 7 games, including to the Giants and the Cincinnati Bengals by 3 points each, the Arizona Cardinals by 6, and the Atlanta Falcons by 7.
Kotite was fired, then got hired by the Jets, and went 3-13 and 1-15 in his 2 seasons with them. In other words, from November 7, 1994 onward, he went 4-35 as a head coach. That's a .103 ercentage, worse than the worst single seasons in the histories of MLB (the 1899 Cleveland Spiders went 20-134, or .134), the NBA (the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, or .110) and the NHL (the 1974-75 Washington Capitals went 8-67-5, or .131).
After the 1996 Jets, he's never worked for another professional football team, in any league. Even the XFL -- both the laughingstock 2001 version and the new edition getting ready to begin play next year -- haven't touched him. That's how radioactive Rich Kotite has been.
October 16, 1995: The Yankees sign former Met superstar pitcher Dwight Gooden‚ who has been on suspension for violation of his substance abuse program. George Steinbrenner likes comeback stories, redemption stories. This one works out for the Yankees, and for Doctor K, at least for 1996.
October 16, 1996: A crowd of 47,000 people attempts to squeeze into the 36,000-seat Estadio Nacional Doroteo Guamuch Flores in Guatemala City, for a 1998 World Cup qualifying match between Guatemala and Costa Rica. As many as 84 people are killed (the number varies, depending on the source, but 84 is the highest figure quoted), and 180 injured. Álvaro Arzú, President of Guatemala, orders that the match be postponed.
Built in 1948, and named for a runner, who won the 1952 Boston Marathon and the 1955 Pan American Games Marathon, Estadio Flores still stands, and remains home to the national team and local club Municipal. Its capacity is now listed at 26,000, and is rigidly enforced. Arzú, who had previously been Mayor of Guatemala City, became its Mayor again, but died in 2018.
Also on this day, the 2nd and final debate of the year's Presidential election is held, at the University of San Diego. Conservatives were begging former Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas to hit President Bill Clinton hard, on issues ranging from taxes to foreign policy to the "scandals" of his Administration – the June 1996 "Filegate" story having resurfaced that week.
But Dole, remembering that he came across as mean-spirited in his 1976 Vice Presidential debate with Walter Mondale, was determined to be seen as a calm, mature man in comparison to the "immature" Clinton. Dole did ask, in connection with Filegate, "Who hired Craig Livingstone?"
Livingstone was the director of the White House's Office of Personnel Security, who improperly requested background reports from the FBI, concerning several hundred people, without asking permission from the White House Chief of Staff, at the time Thomas "Mack" McLarty. And yet, the FBI granted him the request and the files.
In the end, who hired him didn't matter, because he hadn't broken any laws. The scandal was so dumb (How dumb was it?), even Special Counsel Kenneth Starr, who despised both Bill and Hillary Clinton, refused to charge anyone in connection with it.
At the debate, President Clinton ignored the question as if it didn't matter, and the audience, in the auditorium and on TV, quickly forgot about it. While he didn’t hurt himself in either 1996 debate, Dole never really laid a glove on Clinton, perhaps the most skilled debater in Presidential history. (He was 5-0. Kennedy didn't go 4-0 against Nixon, Reagan lost both of his debates against Mondale, the George Bushes were 2-9 between them, and even Obama lost his 1st debate against Romney.)
October 16, 1999, 20 years ago: Jean Shepherd dies at age 78. The author and former late-night talk-show host on New York radio station WOR, best known today as the writer and narrator of the film A Christmas Story, was born in Chicago and grew up in nearby Hammond, Indiana.
He was a tremendous Chicago White Sox fan, and hosted the team's 1987 video history. In it, he spoke poetically of his love for the city, the team, its then-home of Comiskey Park, and of his favorite player of all time, 1950s ChiSox sparkplug Nellie Fox.
"If I was a colonel in some awful war," he said in that video, "and there was an enemy pillbox that had to be taken, and it looked like a suicide mission, I'd look out at my men and say, 'Are there any White Sox fans here? Follow me!' And those White Sox fans would follow me, and we'd take that pillbox! Because White Sox fans are special."
Well, Met fans are special. In fact, as my sister would say, they're "especially special." But tonight, in Game 4 of the NLCS, they have reason to be happy. Trailing 3 games to none, the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves‚ 3-2 at Shea Stadium‚ to stay alive. John Olerud drives home all 3 New York runs with a solo homer in the 6th inning‚ and a 2-run single off John Rocker in the 8th. Rick Reed shuts jtlanta out over the 1st 7 innings on a single hit.
Shortly before this series, Rocker, sticking his nose in the Mets-Braves "rivalry," said, "I hate the Mets. I hate their fans. How many times do you have to beat a team to make their fans shut up?" The lunkheaded redneck had a point, but we still don't know the answer.
After this game, hearing the reception Met fans gave him as he headed back to the dugout after being pulled off the mound by manager Bobby Cox, rocker is interviewed in the locker room, and flaps his gums again: "I would say the majority of Met fans aren't even humans. They’re more like... " He paused for an appropriate description, and came up with, "Neanderthals." I've said as much, but to John "Off His" Rocker, we can only say that it takes one to know one.
Yankees Fans have considerably less reason to be happy tonight, after what happened in the afternoon. The Red Sox roll over the Yankees‚ 13-1 at Fenway Park‚ behind the pitching of Pedro Martinez. Nomar Garciaparra gets 4 hits for Boston‚ while John Valentin drives home 5 runs. Garciaparra‚ Valentin‚ and Brian Daubach all homer for the Sox. New York now leads the ALCS‚ 2 games to 1.
Pedro outpitches Roger Clemens, and Sox fans, still thinking of him as a traitor, give him the worst ripping any player has ever received at Fenway Park. One fan holds up a sign: "Roger, thanks for the memories, especially this one." After he leaves the game, a chant goes up: "Where is Roger?" After a few rounds of this, a counter-chant goes up: "In the shower!"
But, as Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy would write afterwards, the Sox fans who showed up seemed to think that the point of coming was to stick it to Clemens, and it wasn't: The point was to beat the Yankees. The Sox did beat the Yanks on this day, but that's the only game they win in the series. It turns out to be the only game the Yankees lose in the entire postseason, the last game that they would lose in the 20th Century. Not until April 5, 2000 would they lose another game that counts.
(Wanting to stick it to Clemens first and beat the Yankees second? Met fans would make that same mistake after the 2000 World Series, all the way up to a 2002 Interleague matchup, although, unlike the Sox, they did win the series.)
October 16, 2000: The Mets defeat the Cardinals‚ 7-0 at Shea Stadium behind Mike Hampton‚ to win their 1st pennant since 1986. Hampton takes NLCS MVP honors with his 16 scoreless innings and 2 victories. Todd Zeile drives home 3 runs with a bases loaded double.
It is the Mets' 4th Pennant, following 1969, 1973 and 1986. They got their 5th in 2015. But they're still waiting for their 3rd World Championship.
*
Jason Giambi hits 2 home runs to make it 4-2 in the 7th, but David Ortiz – not for the first time, and certainly not for the last (cough-steroids-cough) – hurts the Yankees by blasting a home run off David Wells. It's 5-2 Red Sox.
Pedro gets the 1st out in the bottom of the 8th, but then… Derek Jeter doubles. Then Bernie Williams singles, scoring Jeter to make it 5-3. Pedro is over the 100-pitch mark. From pitches 1 through 99, he throws like Sandy Koufax; from pitch 100 onward, he throws like Sandy Duncan. Red Sox manager Grady Little goes to the mound, but decides to leave Pedro in.
Big mistake. Hideki Matsui hits a ground-rule double down the right-field line, moving Bernie to third. Still, Little does not pull Pedro. Jorge Posada hits a looper into short center, scoring the tying runs. Just 5 outs from the Pennant, and the greatest victory the Red Sox would have since, oh, 1918, and they have choked yet again.
Mariano Rivera pitches the 9th, 10th and 11th for the Yankees. He pitches the top of the 11th pretty much on courage alone. The Yankees need to win it in the bottom of the 11th, because the bullpen situation doesn't look good.
Tim Wakefield, the knuckleballer who won Games 1 and 4 of this series, is on the mound. Leading off the inning is Aaron Boone, the Yankee 3rd baseman.
You know where I was at this moment? I was going from place to place watching the game, and I decided to get on the Subway and head up to The Stadium. Win or lose, I felt I had to be there. But the Subway was crawling, seeming to take forever. I forgot that it was after midnight. Frustrated, I
got off at the 50th Street station of the A train.
Next thing I know, I’m standing in front of 220 West 48th Street, the Longacre Theatre. Do you know who built (in 1912) and owned this theater? Harry Frazee. The very man who broke up the Red Sox and sold off so many of their players to the Yankees, including Babe Ruth. What a place to be standing in as the Yankees and Red Sox battled for the Pennant.
In 1935, Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty debuted at the Longacre. Sox fans were still waiting for Alan Embree, the lefty that Little refused to bring in for Pedro.
It was 12:16 AM, actually October 17, 2003, but since the game started on the 16th, it goes down in history as October 16.
I had my headphones on, and on WCBS 880, I heard Charley Steiner say this:
There's a fly ball, deep to left! It’s on its way! There it goes! And the Yankees are going to the World Series! Aaron Boone has hit a home run! The Yankees go to the World Series for the 39th time in their remarkable history! Aaron Boone down the left field line, they are waiting for him at home plate, and now he dives into the scrum! The Yankees win it, 6-5!
By the time I finally got home at around 2 in the morning, my hair was soaked with sweat, my eyes were aching from being up too late, my voice was shot from screaming, my hands throbbed from shaking and high-fiving, my legs and feet throbbed from all the walking.
I've never felt better in my life.
Boone joined Tommy Henrich (1949 World Series vs. Brooklyn Dodgers), Mickey Mantle (1964 WS vs. St. Louis Cardinals), Chris Chambliss (1976 ALCS vs. Kansas City Royals), Jim Leyritz (1995 AL Division Series vs. Seattle Mariners), Bernie Williams (Game 1 of ALCS in both 1996 and 1999), Chad Curtis (1999 WS), Alfonso Soriano (2001 ALCS) and Jeter (2001 WS) as Yankees who have hit walkoff home runs in postseason play. (It's since been done by Mark Teixeira, 2009 ALDS; and Raul Ibanez, 2012 ALDS.)
And he joined Enos Slaughter (1946 Cardinals), Lou Boudreau (1948 Cleveland Indians), Bob Gibson (1967 Cardinals), Joe Morgan (1975 Cincinnati Reds), and, collectively, the 1978 Yankees (especially Bucky Dent) and the 1986 Mets as Red Sox postseason tormentors.
Jeter said, "We've got some ghosts in this Stadium."
In 2009, it sure looked like they'd made the trip across the street. Now, I'm not so sure.
Clemens, Wells, and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre walk out to the Babe Ruth Monument, and offer the Big Fella some champagne. Clemens slaps the plaque on the tablet, and says, "He's smiling! He's smiling! He's smiling, Mel!"
Grady Little was not smiling. He was fired as Sox manager within days.
The next day's Daily News headline read, "THE CURSE LIVES." For the Sox… once again, it was "Wait Till Next Year."
No, no. Really. They meant it this time.
Boone got hurt in the off-season, leading the Yankees to trade for Alex Rodriguez. Injuries and a heart ailment ended his career after the 2009 regular season, after which he was an analyst on Fox’ postseason broadcasts as the Yankees won their first Pennant since his walkoff. He now works for ESPN.
A lot can change in 16 years. We have now seen Aaron Boone become the Yankees' manager, and get them into an ALCS. Of course, among the less pleasant things, we have seen the Red Sox win 4 World Series, breaking the Curse of the Bambino. And we have now seen them beat the Yankees in not one, but two postseason series.
But we have also seen them exposed as dirty rotten cheaters, and continue to lie about it, meaning we can no longer chant, "NINE-teen-EIGHT-teen! (Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)."
But we can still write "1918*."
*
The Yankees could have wrapped it up the next day with a 4th win in an ALCS. It took them another 5 years to get it, on October 25, 2009.
Also on this day, Arsenal defeat Birmingham team Aston Villa 3-1 at Highbury. Robert Pires scores 2 goals, and Thierry Henry the other. Arsenal have now played 9 Premier League games this season, winning 8 and drawing the other. Their League unbeaten streak, which began on May 7, 2003, has now reached 49 games: Won 36, drawn 13, lost exactly none. But Manchester United will cheat them out of a 50th straight.
Also on this day, Pierre Salinger dies of a heart attack in Le Thor, France, at age 79. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he went to the University of San Francisco, where his roommate was Pete Rozelle.
He became a journalist, and an article he wrote about labor leader Jimmy Hoffa for the magazine Collier's caught the attention of Robert F. Kennedy, who was the lead counsel for the Senate Select Committee investigating corruption in unions, a committee that included his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Bobby convinced Jack to hire Salinger as his press secretary, a post he held during Jack's 1960 Presidential campaign and throughout his Presidency.
After JFK's assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson kept him on for continuity's sake, even though he and the Kennedy advisors rarely trusted each other, but LBJ was so impressed with Salinger that, when he returned to California and accepted Governor Pat Brown's appointment to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the death of Clair Engle, LBJ heartily endorsed him. But in the election to fill the remainder of that term, Salinger lost to former actor George Murphy, one of the few Democratic losses in the 1964 LBJ landslide.
In 1968, Salinger made a guest appearance on Batman, playing a lawyer defending the Joker and Catwoman in court. He then returned to the Kennedys as press secretary for Bobby's campaign. After RFK was assassinated as well, Salinger was so grief-stricken that he moved to his grandparents' homeland of France. In 1976, since he was already in Europe, ABC asked him to commentate on the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. He was then appointed ABC News' Paris bureau chief.
He stayed with ABC until 1990, moved back to Washington, but in 2000, said, "If Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France." George W. Bush did become President, and, as one of the few people with enough means to keep the frequently-heard promise of "If (name of candidate) becomes President, I'm leaving the country," he became one of the very few people who did, and never returned until his death, when he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
October 16, 2005: The White Sox clinch their 1st Pennant in 46 years – the 1st Pennant for either Chicago team since the ChiSox clinched on September 22, 1959 – as they defeat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim‚ 6-3‚ behind Jose Contreras. Joe Crede homers and drives in 3 runs for Chicago, and Paul Konerko is named MVP of the ALCS.
October 16, 2006: Game 5 of the NLCS. Albert Pujols hitting a home run for the Cardinals is no surprise. Chris Duncan, son of Cardinal pitching coach Dave Duncan, hitting one is a big surprise. The Cards win, 4-2, and head back to New York needing 1 win for the Pennant.
The losing pitcher for the Mets is John Maine, which was a surprise at the time, since he'd pitched so well late in the season, but is no longer a surprise in retrospect. The winning pitcher for the Cardinals is Jeff Weaver, which is not merely a surprise, it's a shock. Don't ever get me started on Jeff Bleeping Weaver.
Also on this day, the Chicago Bears beat the Arizona Cardinals 24-23 at University of Phoenix Stadium (now State Farm Stadium) in Glendale, Arizona. The Cards' defense had forced 6 Chicago turnovers, so it wasn't their fault. But when Cards coach Dennis Green was asked after the game if the defense had failed, his usual calm demeanor dissolved into one of the most famous coaching rants in NFL history:
The Bears are what we thought they were. They're what we thought they were. We played them in preseason. Who the hell takes a third game of the preseason like it's bullshit? Bullshit! We played them in the third game. Everybody played three quarters. The Bears ARE who we THOUGHT they were! (Voice rising) That's why we took the damn field! Now, if you want to crown them, then crown their ass! But they ARE who we THOUGHT they were! And we let 'em off the hook!
The next day, Cardinals owner Bill Bidwill fired offensive coordinator Keith Rowen, and replaced him with quarterbacks coach Mike Kruczek. It didn't work: The Cards fell to 1-9, before finishing at 5-11. Green was fired, and never coached in the NFL again. The Bears won the NFC Championship, but lost Super Bowl XLI to the Indianapolis Colts. Apparently, they were what Green thought they were: A very good team.
Bidwill hired Ken Whisenhunt, offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers, as his new head coach. Two seasons later, he got the Cardinals to the NFC Championship. Super Bowl XLIII was the franchise's 1st appearance in an NFL Championship Game, under any name, in any city (they'd moved twice), in 60 years. But they lost -- to the Steelers.
October 16, 2007: Todor "Toše" Proeski, the singer known as "The Elvis Presley of the Balkans," is killed in a car crash near Nova Gradiška, Croatia. He was only 26, but the native of Kruševo, in the country now called North Macedonia, had already become beloved throughout the Balkan Peninsula, including in Greece, Albania, and all the countries that had once made up Yugoslavia.
October 16, 2008: Behind 7-0 in the bottom of 7th, the Red Sox score 8 runs in the last 3 frames to beat the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 of the ALCS at Fenway Park, 8-7. Boston's comeback victory is the biggest postseason rally since the 1929 A's tallied 10 times in the 7th inning to wipe out an 8-run deficit against the Cubs in their 10-8 victory in Game 4 of the World Series.
When this happened, I was sure the experienced Sox would complete yet another comeback, this time from 3 games to 1 down, and win the Pennant. I was sure they were cheating, too, or that the umpires, controlled by the MLB offices and the Fox network, were being told to favor the Sox, so that there would be bigger ratings for New England vs. Philadelphia than there would be for Philly vs. Tampa Bay.
And, sure enough, the Sox did win Game 6 in St. Petersburg, and took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 4th in Game 7, before the Rays finally realized that they were the home team and fought back. I guess you can't always cheat your way to winning it all.
October 16, 2009, 10 years ago: Game 1 of the ALCS. It's been 5 years since the Yankees got this far, and with a new vibe brought by manager Joe Girardi, a revived Alex Rodriguez and Robinson Cano, and new acquisitions Mark Teixeira, Nick Swisher, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, the Yankees are more ready to rumble than at any time since the Aaron Boone Game, 6 years to the day earlier.
CC nearly goes the distance, holding the Angels to 4 hits. Singles in the 1st inning by Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon, an Angel error, a sacrifice fly by A-Rod and a single by Matsui give the Yankees a 2-0 lead, and that's all they need, as they go on to a 4-1 victory. Even sweeter: It's against John Lackey, who'd driven them crazy in the 2002 and '05 ALDS. He would do it to them again for the Red Sox years later, though.
*
October 16, 2010: The Texas Rangers record the 1st Playoff win at home in the 50-year history of the franchise, when they take Game 2 of the ALDS, defeating the Yankees, 7-2. The Rangers Ballpark (now Globe Life Ballpark) victory ends a 10-game postseason losing streak against New York, that includes yesterday's heartbreaking loss in which Texas had an early 5-0 lead over the Bronx Bombers.
If only the Yankees had won this Game 2, it might have stopped the Rangers from winning the 2010 and 2011 Pennants. Oh well.
Also on this day, Rutgers plays Army in football at the new Meadowlands stadium, now named MetLife Stadium. RU had played at Giants Stadium many times, but this was their 1st game at the new stadium. They would beat Army 23-20 on an overtime field goal, but that would prove to be all but meaningless.
In the 4th quarter, Eric LeGrand, a junior defensive tackle from the Avenel section of Woodbridge, New Jersey and Colonia High School, tried to tackle Army kickoff returner Malcolm Brown, and the resulting collision broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed.
His fight to recover became an inspiration, as he has gone into sportscasting, a profession that does not require that he stand up, which he has been able to do with the aid of a special harness. His former coach, Greg Schiano, had taken the head job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for the 2012 season, and signed him to a contract, so he could legitimately say he had been a professional football player. LeGrand then "retired" to free up a roster sport. Later that year, Rutgers retired his Number 52, making it the 1st such honor in the program's 143-year history.
October 16, 2011: Dan Wheldon is killed in a crash at the IZOD IndyCar World Championship at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The Englishman was 33, and had won 16 races, including that year's Indianapolis 500. He is the only man to die while still holder of the Indy 500.
October 16, 2012: Game 3 of the ALCS at Comerica Park. This is the closest the Yankees came to winning a game in this series. Phil Hughes pitches well, but the Yankees trail the Detroit Tigers 2-0 going to the 9th. Eduardo Núñez hits a home run to make it 2-1, but former Yankee Phil Coke closes it out. The Tigers go up 3-0 in the series.
The home run by Núñez ended a streak of 30 1/3rd scoreless innings by Tigers starters in the postseason, breaking the 1974 record of 29 innings set by the Oakland Athletics. The Tiger starters had also gone 37 straight innings without surrendering an earned run.
October 16, 2013: Bill Sharman dies from complications from a stroke, at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Redondo Beach. He was 87.
William Walton Sharman was born in Abilene, Texas, and grew up in Porterville, Central California. Bill Walton, the Redhead Deadhead, may not have been the best basketball player named William Walton.
Bill Sharman served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Although called up in 1951, he was not put into a game. On September 27, the entire Dodger bench, Sharman included, was thrown out of the game for arguing with the umpire -- making Sharman, to this day, the only MLB player thrown out of a game but never appearing in one.
He found better luck a guard for the Boston Celtics, and the best shooter of his era. He won 4 NBA Championships with them: 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961. He then coached the Utah Stars to the 1971 ABA Championship, and the Los Angeles Lakers to the 1972 NBA Championship, including a 33-game winning streak that remains a North American major league sports record. Apparently, he knew so well how to defend Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West that he knew how to coach them to avoid those traps.
(For those of you who are British "football" fans: That's not 33 straight games undefeated, that's 33 straight games won. For context, when Arsenal went 49 straight undefeated in League play, there were 13 draws, plus defeats in other competitions.)
Sharman and Alex Hannum were the only coaches to win titles in the NBA and the ABA. Sharman, John Wooden, Tommy Heinsohn and Lenny Wilkens are the only people elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and again as a coach.
The Celtics retired his Number 21, and in 1996 he was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. He remains the only man to be legitimately a legend for both of the top 2 franchises in NBA history, the Celtics and the Lakers. (Shaquille O'Neal played for both teams, but was well past it by the time he became a Celtic.)
October 16, 2014: Game 5 of the NLCS at AT&T Park. Joe Panik and Michael Morse hit home runs for the San Francisco Giants, but the St. Louis Cardinals get homers from Matt Adams and Tony Cruz, and the game goes to the bottom of the 9th tied.
The Giants get 2 men on against Michael Wacha, MVP of the previous year's NLCS, and then Travis Ishikawa -- with considerably less pressure, as the Giants lead the Cards 3 games to 1 -- does what Bobby Thomson did, 63 years earlier and 2,910 miles to the east: He hits a home run that means, "The Giants win the Pennant! The Giants win the Pennant! And they're going crazy! They're going crazy!"
Also on this day, Salvador Pérez hits a home run, Edinson Vólquez pitches 6 shutout innings, and the Kansas City Royals beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-0, and take Game 1 of the ALCS at Kauffman Stadium.
Also on this day, comedian Hannibal Burress does a standup routine attacking comedy legend Bill Cosby, comparing Cos' admonitions to young black men to act, speak and dress better to Cosby's history of raping women. He does this in Cosby's hometown, no less, at the Trocadero Theatre in Center City Philadelphia. (Burress, also black, was then 31 years old, so he was in the generation in question at the time Cosby began making those admonitions.)
Burress had been doing this for about 6 months. This time, it was posted on Philadelphia magazine's website, and it went viral from there. People began looking things up, and found accusations from women that had previously gone nowhere.
Soon, cable networks that had been airing Cosby's films and reruns of his various TV shows (The Cosby Show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, I Spy, etc.) began dropping them from their programming. In December 2015, he was indicted on 3 charges. In June 2017, his trial ended in a mistrial. On April 26, 2018, his 2nd trial ended when he was found guilty on all 3 charges. He was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary.
Somebody said recently that the future didn't turn out like we thought it would in the 1980s: Bill Cosby, O.J. Simpson and Pete Rose went to prison, Rose has been banned from baseball, Mel Gibson is a pariah, and Donald Trump is President.
October 16, 2018: Game 4 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium. Gio Gonzalez of the Milwaukee Brewers and Rich Hill of the Los Angeles Dodgers get into a pitcher's duel, and the game remains 1-1 going into the bottom of the 13th inning. With 1 out, Manny Machado singles. With 2 outs, he advances to 2nd base on a wild pitch, and Cody Bellinger singles him home, to give the Dodgers a 2-1 win, and a 2-2 tie in the series.
Bill Sharman served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Although called up in 1951, he was not put into a game. On September 27, the entire Dodger bench, Sharman included, was thrown out of the game for arguing with the umpire -- making Sharman, to this day, the only MLB player thrown out of a game but never appearing in one.
He found better luck a guard for the Boston Celtics, and the best shooter of his era. He won 4 NBA Championships with them: 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961. He then coached the Utah Stars to the 1971 ABA Championship, and the Los Angeles Lakers to the 1972 NBA Championship, including a 33-game winning streak that remains a North American major league sports record. Apparently, he knew so well how to defend Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West that he knew how to coach them to avoid those traps.
(For those of you who are British "football" fans: That's not 33 straight games undefeated, that's 33 straight games won. For context, when Arsenal went 49 straight undefeated in League play, there were 13 draws, plus defeats in other competitions.)
Sharman and Alex Hannum were the only coaches to win titles in the NBA and the ABA. Sharman, John Wooden, Tommy Heinsohn and Lenny Wilkens are the only people elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and again as a coach.
The Celtics retired his Number 21, and in 1996 he was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. He remains the only man to be legitimately a legend for both of the top 2 franchises in NBA history, the Celtics and the Lakers. (Shaquille O'Neal played for both teams, but was well past it by the time he became a Celtic.)
October 16, 2014: Game 5 of the NLCS at AT&T Park. Joe Panik and Michael Morse hit home runs for the San Francisco Giants, but the St. Louis Cardinals get homers from Matt Adams and Tony Cruz, and the game goes to the bottom of the 9th tied.
The Giants get 2 men on against Michael Wacha, MVP of the previous year's NLCS, and then Travis Ishikawa -- with considerably less pressure, as the Giants lead the Cards 3 games to 1 -- does what Bobby Thomson did, 63 years earlier and 2,910 miles to the east: He hits a home run that means, "The Giants win the Pennant! The Giants win the Pennant! And they're going crazy! They're going crazy!"
Also on this day, Salvador Pérez hits a home run, Edinson Vólquez pitches 6 shutout innings, and the Kansas City Royals beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-0, and take Game 1 of the ALCS at Kauffman Stadium.
Also on this day, comedian Hannibal Burress does a standup routine attacking comedy legend Bill Cosby, comparing Cos' admonitions to young black men to act, speak and dress better to Cosby's history of raping women. He does this in Cosby's hometown, no less, at the Trocadero Theatre in Center City Philadelphia. (Burress, also black, was then 31 years old, so he was in the generation in question at the time Cosby began making those admonitions.)
Burress had been doing this for about 6 months. This time, it was posted on Philadelphia magazine's website, and it went viral from there. People began looking things up, and found accusations from women that had previously gone nowhere.
Soon, cable networks that had been airing Cosby's films and reruns of his various TV shows (The Cosby Show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, I Spy, etc.) began dropping them from their programming. In December 2015, he was indicted on 3 charges. In June 2017, his trial ended in a mistrial. On April 26, 2018, his 2nd trial ended when he was found guilty on all 3 charges. He was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in the Pennsylvania State Penitentiary.
Somebody said recently that the future didn't turn out like we thought it would in the 1980s: Bill Cosby, O.J. Simpson and Pete Rose went to prison, Rose has been banned from baseball, Mel Gibson is a pariah, and Donald Trump is President.
October 16, 2018: Game 4 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium. Gio Gonzalez of the Milwaukee Brewers and Rich Hill of the Los Angeles Dodgers get into a pitcher's duel, and the game remains 1-1 going into the bottom of the 13th inning. With 1 out, Manny Machado singles. With 2 outs, he advances to 2nd base on a wild pitch, and Cody Bellinger singles him home, to give the Dodgers a 2-1 win, and a 2-2 tie in the series.
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