The 2020 Major League Baseball regular season is over. The Yankees finished 33-27, for a winning percentage of .550. Had that been over a traditional 162-game schedule, it would have been a record of 89-73.
That might have been enough to make the Playoffs under the usual format. But, since the Yankees finished with the 6th-best record in the American League, they would have been on the outside looking in.
Instead, with the COVID-19-induced truncating of the season, but an expanding of the Playoffs, here's what we got:
* The following teams ended as Division Champions: AL East, Tampa Bay Rays; AL Central, Minnesota Twins; AL West, Oakland Athletics; NL East, Atlanta Braves; NL Central, Chicago Cubs; NL West, Los Angeles Dodgers.
* The top 2 teams in each Division made the Playoffs, regardless of rank of record in comparison to the League as a whole. The 2nd-place teams were, respectively: The Yankees, the Cleveland Indians, the (no longer cheating?) Houston Astros, the Miami Marlins, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the San Diego Padres.
* After that, then the next-best 2 teams in each League made it: In the AL, the Chicago White Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays; in the NL, the Cincinnati Reds and the Milwaukee Brewers.
* The Astros and the Brewers, both 29-31, became the 1st teams to make the MLB Playoffs with losing records. It happens every year in the NBA and the NHL, where 16 teams make it; but only once in the NFL, where it's limited to 12 teams. Baseball only had 2 from 1903 to 1968, 4 until 1993, 8 until 2011, and 10 since, with this year hopefully being the only exception.
* The Mets finished 26-34, which would have extended to 70-92. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been anywhere near the Playoffs. Under this format, they finished only 3 games out of the 8th and last NL seed.
* DJ LeMahieu batted .364, to win the AL batting title. He joins the following Yankees as batting champions: Babe Ruth in 1924, Lou Gehrig in 1934 (Triple Crown), Joe DiMaggio in 1939 and 1940, George "Snuffy" Stirnweiss in 1945, Mickey Mantle in 1956 (Triple Crown), Don Mattingly in 1984, Paul O'Neill in 1994 (also a shortened season), and Bernie Williams in 1998.
* Luke Voit hit 22 home runs (a 59-homer pace for the man wearing uniform Number 59), to lead the AL. He joins the following Yankees as AL home run leaders: Wally Pipp in 1916 and 1917, Ruth 10 times between 1920 and 1931, Bob Meusel in 1925, Gehrig 3 times from 1931 to 1936, DiMaggio in 1937 and 1948, Nick Etten in 1944, Mantle 4 times between 1955 and 1960, Roger Maris in 1961, Graig Nettles in 1976, Alex Rodriguez in 2005 and 2007, and current Yankee Aaron Judge in 2017.
As things currently stand: Tonight and tomorrow night, both at 7:00, the Yankees will play the Indians at Progressive Field in Cleveland. If a Game 3 is necessary, it will be played on Thursday night in Cleveland.
If the Yankees advance, they will play the winner of the Rays-Jays series. Both teams gave the Yankees fits this season. The Twins play the Astros, the A's play the White Sox, the Dodgers play the Brewers, the Padres play the Carinals, the Braves will play the Reds, and the Cubs play the Marlins. (Gee, you think the name of Steve Bartman will come up?)
Whether a fan thinks that a Pennant, and maybe also a World Series, won this year will be "legitimate" probably corresponds with how he feels about the teams that win said Pennants. If the Yankees win, I will happily take it.
But who's kidding who? This is a team assembled by Brian Cashman. Injuries. Letdowns. And no consistency. They started off 8-1, and looked unbeatable. Then they went 2-5. Then they won 6 straight. Then they lost 7 straight. Then they went 5-3. Then they lost 5 straight. Then they won 10 straight. Then they closed the season by going 2-6.
They went 4-2 in games that went to extra innings, so that dumb "start the inning with a man on 2nd" rule didn't help them much, but it helped more than it hurt. The experimental rule of doubleheader games being 7 innings hurt, though: Without an 8th and 9th inning in which to come back, the Yankees went 7-7 in such games.
They went 15-0 when scoring 8 or more runs, but went 0-8 when allowing 9 or more runs. They were only shut out twice, but went 2-13 when scoring 2 or fewer runs, and 5-20 when scoring 3 or fewer. Of the 27 losses, 7 were by 1 run.
Given how much money was coming off the Yankees' books for 2019, and the development of Cashman's precious prospects, last year was supposed to be the year. You could blame the Astros for cheating the Yankees out of a Pennant, but you could also say that it shouldn't matter how much anyone cheats: The Yankees have enough resources to build a team that can beat anybody and win the World Series, fair and square.
I fully expect Cashman's Gutless Wonders to fail again. I do not expect him to be punished for it. In each case, this is based on experience. I also don't expect manager Aaron Boone to be fired. He might eventually be the scapegoat, but not yet.
The failure this season, if it happens, will be blamed on the season's format. Cashman will be back to make adjustments for 2021.
But, if said failure happens, this will still be the 11th year in a row that the Yankees have failed, under 3 different managers. It's all on Cashman. How many more years of failure is Hal Steinbrenner willing to put up with?
Aaron Judge. Giancarlo Stanton. Gleyber Torres. DJ LeMahieu. Luke Voit. Gary Sanchez. Gio Urshela. Aaron Hicks. Clint Frazier. Adam Ottavino. Masahiro Tanaka. Gerrit Cole (who, remember, was with the Astros when they lost the World Series last year, but not when they won it in 2017). Aroldis Chapman (who, remember, was a big help in the Cubs winning the NL Pennant in 2016, but nearly blew the World Series for them).
Aaron Boone. Brian Cashman.
Legacies are on the line. Again.
Who gets the credit if the Yankees win? All of them. Who gets the blame if they don't? Not Cashman. But he should.
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September 29, 1621: What we now call "The First Thanksgiving" is held at Plymouth, Massachusetts, about 40 miles southeast of present-day Boston. Attending the feast were 53 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans of the Wampanoag tribe.
The foods served that day included items we would now recognize as traditional in Thanksgiving dinners: Turkey, berries, fruit, and various squashes, including pumpkins. Also served at that meal were some items which would not become traditional to Thanksgiving, but would become traditional to what would become known as New England. These included fish, lobster and clams.
Since no game that would later be called "football" was brought over by the Pilgrims, it's unlikely that such a game was played at Plymouth Plantation that day. There may have been games of some kind, but not football.
September 29, 1793: Samuel Powel dies in the yellow fever epidemic that hit Philadelphia that year. He was 55. He was Mayor of the city from 1775 until 1790, a period that included the adoption of the Declaration of Independence there in 1776, the occupation by the British in 1777-78, and the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
September 29, 1829: The Metropolitan Police Service is founded in London. They are often known as simply The Met.
Since they were established by a bill written by Sir Robert Peel, then Home Secretary, and later Prime Minister (1834-35 and 1841-46), his nickname "Bobby" becomes theirs. Eventually, all British policemen get nicknamed "Bobbies."
They also get nicknamed "The Old Bill," for a policeman who figured in a cartoon regularly printed in a late Victorian Era magazine. This is the nickname, sometimes shortened to just "The Bill," preferred by English soccer hooligans, who tend to verbally abuse them -- from a distance, of course. The antipathy is very much mutual.
However, "Scotland Yard" refers to not the policemen, or even the department, but their London headquarters. It would be like calling the New York Police Department "One Police Plaza" or "1PP."
September 29, 1859: David L. Orr (I can find no record of what the L stands for) is born in Brooklyn. A 1st baseman, Big Dave Orr sure didn't look like an athlete: Records show that he was 5-foot-11 and 250 pounds, way out of shape even by the standards of the 1880s.
But he batted .342 in his career. He played 1 game for the 1883 New York Gothams, making him an original member of the team now known as the San Francisco Giants. But he played his best years with the New York Metropolitans of the American Association, the 1st team to be called the New York Mets.
In 1884, he led the AA in batting average, hits and RBIs, and helped the Mets win the Pennant, before losing a postseason championship series to the National League Champions, the Providence Grays. He led the AA in triples again in 1885 and 1886, and also led it in hits in 1886. But he suffered a stroke in 1890. He regained enough movement to walk again, but not enough to lay ball again.
Hall-of-Famer Dan Brouthers, himself a .342 career hitter, said in 1894, "The greatest hitter that ever played ball was old Dave Orr. He didn't care whether they were over the plate or not. If they were within reach of that long bat of his he would hit them out, and when he hit them there was no telling whether they would be found again or not. I have always held that Dave Orr was the strongest and best hitter that ever played ball."
Orr was well enough to become the gatekeeper at the Polo Grounds, the caretaker at Ebbets Field in its 1st season of 1913, and was manager of the press box at Washington Park, the Dodgers' former home, which had become the home of the Brooklyn Tip-Tops of the Federal League. He still held that job when he died of another stroke in 1915, only 55 years old.
September 29, 1883: David G. Taylor (I can find no record of what the G stands for) is born in Glasgow, Scotland. A left back, he won the FA Cup with Yorkshire team Bradford City in 1911. With Lancashire team Burnley, he won the 1914 FA Cup and the 1920 Football League title. He died in 1949.
September 29, 1887: Sport-Club Germania is founded in Hamburg, the 2nd-largest city in Germany and the country's largest port. It began to play soccer in 1891. In 1919, it merged with Hamburger Sport Club to form Hamburger Sport-Verein e.V. The current team, usually shortened to "Hamburg" or "HSV" nonetheless traces its origin to 1887.
In Germany's amateur football era, they won a record 10 Northern German Football Championships, and won the German Championship in 1923, 1928 and 1960. With the founding of the Bundesliga on August 24, 1963, each winner's previous German Championships are counted as "league titles." So Hamburg's Bundesliga titles of 1979, 1982 and 1983 mean they have "won the league" 6 times.
They have also won the DFB-Pokal, the German version of the FA Cup, 3 times: In 1963, 1976 and 1987. They won the European Cup, now known as the UEFA Champions League, in 1983, after losing the Final in 1980. They won the now-defunct European Cup Winnters' Cup in 1977, after losing the Final in 1968. And they reached the Final of the UEFA Cup, now known as the UEFA Europa League, in 1982.
Notable players include 1954 World Cup hero right back Josef Posipal, 1966 World Cup hero forward Uwe Seeler, 1980s midfielder Felix Magath, and 1980s goalkeeper Uli Stein. But West Germany won the World Cup in 1974 and 1990, and its successor Germany won it in 2014, without a single HSV player on the roster.
Their home, the Volksparkstadion, had a clock that showed the time, down to the second, that the team had been in the Bundesliga since its foundation. It ran out in 2018, as they were relegated. They are now in their 3rd straight season in Germany football's 2nd division.
September 29, 1891: A statue of Diana, the Roman goddess of the Moon and hunting, equivalent in Greek mythology to Artemis, is placed atop the 485-foot tower at Madison Square Garden, at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, overlooking Madison Square itself.
The building, the 2nd to bear the name after the 1879 version, was designed by renowned architect Stanford White, who put his penthouse apartment atop the tower, and commissioned the statue on top of that. The 18-foot-high statue, topping a complex that also includes an 8,000-seat arena, a 1,500-seat concert hall, and a 1,200-seat theater, was sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and shows Diana pulling back her bowstring, ready to fire an arrow. It also acts as a weather vane.
The tower of the 2nd Garden, topped by the Diana statue
White and Saint-Gaudens decide that it's too big, and Saint-Gaudens replaces it in 1893 with a 13-foot version. The original was given to the World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago, the World's Fair designed to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World (in 1492, so it was a year late). That statue was lost in a fire the next year.
Both statues are nudes, and the era's critics and self-appointed moral arbiters hated them. In particular, a critic from Philadelphia ripped the original in a newspaper. Ironically, when the 2nd Garden was torn down in 1925 to make way for the New York Life Building, the 2nd Diana was donated to... the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Yes, the building whose steps Sylvester Stallone ran up in the Rocky movies. It's still there.
Neither White nor Saint-Gaudens lived to see the demolition of their work. White was murdered in 1906, in the rooftop theater he'd built, by Harry Thaw, who found out that White had seduced his wife, actress Evelyn Nesbit -- before she and Thaw had ever even met. White was 52 years old, would probably have died soon anyway (an autopsy showed liver and kidney disease), and one of the worst-kept secrets in New York was that he was a molester, at least of teenage girls and possibly of boys as well. After 2 mistrials, Thaw was found not guilty by reason of insanity. And Saint-Gaudens died of cancer a year after Thaw, just 59.
Boxing promoter George "Tex" Rickard built the 3rd Madison Square Garden at 50th Street and 8th Avenue in 1925. It became what the Madison Square Garden Corporation now claims the current building is, "The World's Most Famous Arena," but, unlike its 1891-1925 predecessor, it was not an architectural marvel. The current Garden, at 32nd Street and 7th Avenue, opened on February 11, 1968, so it's now past its 50th Anniversary.
September 29, 1894: The National League season ends, and the Baltimore Orioles have won their 1st Pennant, finishing 3 games ahead of the New York Giants, and 8 games over the 3-time defending Champions, the Boston Beaneaters (forerunners of the Atlanta Braves).
But Boston center fielder Hugh Duffy has one of the best seasons in baseball history, batting .440 (125 years later, this is still a single-season major league record), hitting 18 home runs, and 145 RBIs, leading the NL in all 3 categories, thus giving him the Triple Crown.
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September 29, 1901: Verne Clark Lewellen is born in Lincoln, Nebraska. The 2-way back won 3 straight NFL Championships for the Green Bay Packers, in 1929, 1930 and 1931.
Green Bay is in Brown County, Wisconsin. He and teammate LaVern "Lavvie" Dilweg were both practicing attorneys. In 1928, they ran against each other for Brown County District Attorney, and Lewellen won. He was re-elected in 1930, but defeated in 1932. Dilweg would later be elected to Congress in 1942, but was defeated in 1944. After their defeats, neither ever ran for public office again.
Dilweg died in 1968, Lewellen in 1980. Both are in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, but neither is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Both should be, but the Hall voters have given short shrift to the League's pioneer players.
Dilweg died in 1968, Lewellen in 1980. Both are in the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, but neither is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Both should be, but the Hall voters have given short shrift to the League's pioneer players.
Also on this day, Enrico Fermi (no middle name) is born in Rome. In 1939, already Italy's greatest physicist, he came to America to work on the Manhattan Project, to build the atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could. On December 2, 1942, in a laboratory underneath Stagg Field, the football stadium at the University of Chicago, he conducted the 1st self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
He died of cancer in 1954, having lived to see his work turned into a usable bomb, World War II ended because of it, the Cold War started because of it, the development of the hydrogen bomb, and the Soviet Union obtaining both the uranium and the hydrogen version.
September 29, 1903: William Criswell Owen is born in Aline, Oklahoma. An offensive lineman, he was first a teammate of his brother Steve Owen on the original New York football Giants, and then played while "Stout Steve" coached. He played for the Giants in 3 NFL Championship Games, winning in 1934. He died in 1975.
September 29, 1907: Orvon Grover Autry is born in Tioga, Texas, and grows up in Ravia, Oklahoma. He got his 1st job working at a telegraph at a radio station, and the station manager heard him singing, and gave him a show. Encouraged by no less an Oklahoma entertainer than Will Rogers, by 1929 he was "Gene Autry," and a national radio and records star. His film career as "The Singing Cowboy" began in 1934, and in 1950 he became one of the earliest television stars.
By that point, he had become owner of the Golden West Network, including radio stations KSFO in San Francisco, KMPC in Los Angeles, and KOGO in San Diego. It also included Los Angeles' Channel 5, KTLA.
He had also became a part-owner of the Pacific Coast League's Hollywood Stars, who were forced out of town by the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957-58. But the arrival of the New York Giants in San Francisco at the same time led him to buy the broadcast rights to their games, and they were on KSFO through the 1978 season. (They have been on KNBR since then.)
In 1960, the American League established an expansion team in L.A. Gene, going back to his roots, wanted to buy the radio broadcast rights. But MLB officials were so impressed with his approach, they offered to sell him the team. He owned it for the rest of his life, even though this created a conflict of interest in owning the station that broadcast the Giants' games.
The team was named after the former PCL team that had been the Stars' rivals, the Los Angeles Angels. They played at the L.A. version of Wrigley Field in 1961, then began sharing the new Dodger Stadium in 1962. Tired of Walter O'Malley treating him like crap (It wasn't personal: O'Malley treated everyone like crap), Gene made a deal with the suburban City of Anaheim, and built Anaheim Stadium for the 1966 season. He renamed the team the California Angels.
Gene knew that his friendly rival among singing cowboys, Roy Rogers, had his late horse Trigger stuffed and mounted at the gate to his Double R Bar Ranch outside Apple Valley, California (the closest city is San Bernardino). When his horse Champion died, he called and asked how much it would cost to stuff and mount him. Hearing an exorbitant figure, he asked how much it would cost to simply bury the horse. When told, he said, "Bury the son of a bitch!"
But he wasn't afraid to spend money, if he thought it would bring results. When free agency arrived after the 1976 season, and the Angels had not yet made the Playoffs in 16 seasons, he opened the vault and signed Joe Rudi and Bobby Grich. He later signed future Hall-of-Famers Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew, Don Sutton and Bert Blyleven, and near-Hall-of-Famers Tommy John and Fred Lynn.
But while they won AL Western Division titles in 1979, 1982 and 1986, they couldn't win a Pennant. Indeed, their losses -- not just on the field, but 6 active Angels died of various causes between 1965 and 1989 -- led to talk of "The Curse of the Cowboy," though it's hard to imagine what Gene could have done to bring it on.
In 1995, battling lymphoma, he sold a quarter share of the team to Anaheim's biggest employer, the Walt Disney Company, with a provision that the rest would go to them after his death. That came on October 2, 1998, just after his 91st birthday -- and on his wife Jackie's 57th birthday.
In 2002, by then known as the Anaheim Angels, in their 42nd season, they broke the curses: They won their 1st postseason series, their 1st Pennant, and their 1st World Series -- with a slight irony, over the Giants. They became known as the Los Angeles Angeles of Anaheim in 2005, after Disney sold the team to Arte Moreno. In 2014, Moreno dropped the "Anaheim," and, as they were in their 1st 5 seasons, they are again the Los Angeles Angels.
The Angels have retired Number 26 for Autry, as the "26th Man" with a 25-man roster, and dedicated a statue of him outside what's now named Angel Stadium of Anaheim. He is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he should be. His widow, Jackie Autry, about to turn 77, served as President of the American League from 2000 to 2015.
September 29, 1908: Thomas Edward Tolan is born in Denver. Though only 5-foot-7 and 143 pounds, Eddie Tolan won Gold Medals in the 100 and 200 meters at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. He died in 1967.
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September 29, 1913: The New York Giants defeat the Boston Braves 5-3 at the Polo Grounds, and clinch the National League Pennant.
Also on this day, Silvio Piola is born in Robbio, Lombardy, Italy. A striker, he starred for Italian soccer teams Pro Vercelli and Novara of Piedmont, Lazio of Rome, and both major Turin clubs, Torino and Juventus,
He was not selected for the Italy team that won the World Cup on home soil in 1934, but he was selected for the 1938 World Cup in France, and scored 2 goals in the Final against Hungary to help the Azzurri repeat. To this day, only Giuseppe Meazza and Gigi Riva have scored more goals for the Italian national team. He was also 1 of 5 Italians on the "Rest of Europe" team that played England in the Football Association's 75th Anniversary match at Arsenal Stadium (Highbury) in 1938. He died in 1996, at the age of 83. Stadiums in the cities of Novara and Vercelli are named after him.
Also on this day, Rudolf Diesel disappears. The 55-year-old German scientist who invented the Diesel engine in Berlin in 1895 had intended to attend a meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Company in London, and boarded the steamer SS Dresden in Antwerp, Belgium. He had dinner on board the ship, gave word to be called the next morning at 6:15, and went to his cabin at 10:00 PM. He was never seen alive again.
When crewmembers went to wake him at 6:15, they found his cabin empty. His bed had not been slept in, but his nightshirt was neatly laid out on it, and his hat and overcoat were found beneath the afterdeck railing. It all appeared as though he had gone to the bathroom as a last stop before going to bed, but he wasn't there.
On October 9, in the North Sea near Norway, the Dutch boat Coertzen found a floating corpse. It was unrecognizable, and they didn't bring it aboard, but recovered personal items from it: An I.D. card, an eyeglass case, a pocket knife and a pill case. On October 13, Eugen Diesel identified the items as belonging to his father Rudolf.
The case remains unsolved, with none of the suggested theories being all that convincing. He had given only one suggestion of suicide: Before he left, he marked a cross as the only entry in his diary for September 29, 1913. His wife Martha found a bag he had left her, telling her not to open it for a week. In it, she found 200,000 marks in cash, worth about $1.2 million today, but also financial statements showing that their bank accounts had been emptied -- and the cash was probably the result.
Those who believe he was murdered -- perhaps thrown overboard -- point to his refusal to grant the German Empire the exclusive rights to using his invention, and suggest that he was actually going to meet with Britain's Royal Navy, to discuss the possibility of powering British submarines with Diesel engines, to better equip them against Germany's "U-boat" submarines." Barring the discovery (or declassification) of further evidence, we may never know.
September 29, 1915: Frederick Page -- no middle name -- is born in Port Arthur, now part of Thunder Bay, Ontario. As president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, the tours he led stoked the love of the sport in Europe. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993 and the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame in 2001, and died in 1997.
September 29, 1917: Jesse Bernard Renick is born in Hickory, Oklahoma, and grows up in nearby Marietta. A guard, he starred on the basketball team at Oklahoma A&M University (now Oklahoma State), alongside 7-foot center Bob Kurland.
Together, they played on the Phillips 66ers, the top amateur team of the era (since pro basketball was not yet big business), sponsored by Phillips Petroleum, which gave amateur hoop stars nominal jobs; and the U.S. team that won the Gold Medal at the 1948 Olympics in London. "Cab" Renick was the 2nd Native American to win an Olympic Gold Medal -- and the 1st to get to keep it, after Jim Thorpe was stripped of the 2 he won in 1912. Renick was elected to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, and lived until 1999.
September 29, 1918: With the addition of the American Expeditionary Force, the British Third and Fourth Armies and the French First Army break through the Hindenburg Line in northeastern France, and begin to push the German Army back behind its own border.
With the Bolshevik Revolution having taken Russia and the Eastern Front out of World War I, the German Empire could throw all its forces onto the Western Front, seemingly saving themselves from running out of men and supplies, saving their country from severe economic hardship, and possibly bringing France to its knees and Britain to the bargaining table.
But the entry of America into the war provided a fresh manpower advantage, and a supply advantage, that the Germans simply could not overcome. Even Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, for whom the Line was named, the commander of all German forces, answerable only to Kaiser Wilhelm II, later admitted that, once the American troops got in, the war was lost.
This would be obscured in the years to come by the Nazis' lie that Communists and Jews, especially on the home front, were responsible for Germany's defeat. Adolf Hitler would find out what happens when America steps in to help Britain and France against Germany.
September 29, 1919: Tottenham Hotspur beat North London arch-rivals Arsenal 1-0 in a friendly. While "Spurs" were angry about Arsenal's move from South to North London in 1913, they were still willing to play a friendly against them.
This suggests that the alleged move by Arsenal to buy their way into Division One at Spurs' expense the preceding off-season didn't happen. After all, if it had, why would Spurs play Arsenal in anything other than a scheduled League match? Spurs fans often say that Arsenal "cheated" their way into Division One. In 100 years, no one has proven this to be true.
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September 29, 1920, 100 years ago: The Yankees beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 7-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Babe Ruth hits his last home run of the season, his 54th, nearly doubling the old record of 29, which he had set the season before.
No, his home runs didn't "save baseball" following the Black Sox Scandal, which broke the day before. Baseball would have survived anyway. But they sure helped.
September 29, 1921: The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-1 at Forbes Field. Making his major league debut for the Pirates is Hazen Shirley Cuyler. With a name like that, the 23-year-old Michigan native needs a nickname, so they play off his surname and call him "Kiki" Cuyler. Batting 4th and playing right field, he goes 0-for-4.
He got better. He batted .321 for his career, and led the National League in stolen bases 4 times. He helped the Pirates win the 1925 World Series and the 1927 NL Pennant; then helped the Chicago Cubs win the Pennant in 1932. In 1934, he was named to the All-Star Game. He died of a heart attack in 1950, only 51 years old, and was later elected to the Hall of Fame.
September 29, 1926: Charles Henry Cooper is born in Pittsburgh. While Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton was the 1st black player to sign an NBA contract, and Earl Lloyd was the 1st black player to get into a regular-season game, Chuck Cooper was the 1st black player to be drafted by an NBA team. All of "the NBA's 3 Jackie Robinsons" arrived in the 1950-51 season.
Not to be confused with an earlier black star known as Chuck "Tarzan" Cooper, this Chuck Cooper starred at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University, which retired his Number 15, before playing for the Boston Celtics prior to their dynasty years. He died of cancer in 1984, and was finally elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.
Also on this day, Peter R. Elliott (I can find no reference as to what the R stood for) is born in Bloomington, Illinois. A quarterback, Pete Elliott led the University of Michigan to the 1947 and 1948 National Championships. He also played basketball, making All-Big Ten in 1948, and golf. He is the only Michigan athlete to have earned 12 varsity letters.
Pete was not drafted by an NFL team, so he went into coaching, including on Bud Wilkinson's staff at Oklahoma. In 1956, he got his 1st head coaching job, at Nebraska. In 1957, he was hired at the University of California, and led them to the 1958 title in the American Association of Western Universities, which has since evolved into the Pac-12. In 1960, he was hired at Illinois, and led them to the 1963 Big Ten title. As far as I know, he is the only coach ever to win the title in both the Big 10 and the Pac-12. He lost the 1959 Rose Bowl for Cal to Iowa, but won the 1964 Rose Bowl for Illinois over Washington.
He later served as head coach and athletic director at the University of Miami, finishing his coaching career with a record of 56-72-1. His only pro coaching job was as an assistant on the 1978 St. Louis Cardinals. From 1979 to 1995, he was executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He lived until 2013.
On the 1947 Michigan team, Pete was a teammate of his older brother, Chalmers "Bump" Elliott. Bump was head coach at Michigan from 1959 to 1968, winning the Big Ten title in 1964, and going 51-42-2. He later served as athletic director at the University of Iowa from 1970 to 1991. He is still alive, age 93. Both brothers were elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
September 29, 1928: William Andrew Robinson is born in Pittsburgh. A running back, Bill Robinson played for the Green Bay Packers in 1952, played semi-pro football for a few years, and was an original New York Titan (Jet) in 1960. He died in 2016.
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September 29, 1931: Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg is born in Malmö, Sweden. After appearing in silly science fiction films, such as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Anita Ekberg moved to Italy, and starred in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, each making the other legend. She died in 2015.
September 29, 1932: Game 2 of the World Series. The Chicago Cubs take a 1-0 lead in the 1st inning, but the Yankees score 2 in the bottom half, and Lefty Gomez handles the Cubs the rest of the way. The Yankees win, 5-2, and take a 2 games to 0 lead as the Series heads out to Chicago.
Also on this day, Paul Robert Giel is born in Winona, Minnesota. At the University of Minnesota, he was an All-American in baseball and football, winning the Chicago Tribune Silver Football as the Big Ten Conference's most valuable player in 1952 and 1953. In 1953, the halfback was runner-up in the Heisman Trophy voting.
Despite being offered a big contract by the Canadian Football League, he signed with baseball's New York Giants for their biggest bonus up to that time, $60,000. He made only 6 appearances in 1954, and was not put on their World Series roster. He had a decent season in 1955, but missed the next 2 seasons because he was drafted into the U.S. Army. His home-State Minnesota Twins traded for him in their 1st season in 1961, and he retired after the season, with a record of 11-9.
He then became a broadcaster for the Minnesota Vikings, and later served as the University of Minnesota's athletic director. He was named to the College Football and Minnesota Sports Halls of Fame, and died in 2002.
September 29, 1935: The Yankees lose to the Boston Red Sox, 4-3 at Yankee Stadium. Earle Combs is used as a pinch-runner for Bill Dickey, but does not score. He was still dealing with the effects of a head injury the season before, and retired at age 36. This was his last game.
Also on this day, Robert Carl Anderson is born in East Chicago, Indiana. A pitcher, Bob Anderson went 36-46 from 1957 to 1963, mostly for the Chicago Cubs. He was the pitcher for the June 30, 1959 play against the St. Louis Cardinals where 2 balls ended up in play. He died in 2015.
Also on this day, Howard William Bedell is born in Clearfield, Pennsylvania. An outfielder, Howie Bedell played professional baseball from 1957 to 1969. In 1961, with the Louisville Colonels, he batted .327, and had a 43-game hitting streak, tying the American Association record, and it still holds, since the AA folded in 1997.
But he didn't do much in the major leagues. He played 58 games with the 1962 Milwaukee Braves, and 9 more with the 1968 Philadelphia Phillies. That was it: He batted 28-for-145, for a .193 batting average. But he is still alive.
Also on this day, Jerry Lee Lewis is born in Ferriday, Louisiana. Like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins, the wild pianist behind the late 1950s hit songs "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire" got his start at Sun Records in Memphis.
Somehow, since Cash's death in 2003, he's been the last survivor of that group, despite everything that's happened to him, much of it self-inflicted. This includes alcoholism, tax charges, and 7 marriages, including 23 days of the 1st and the 2nd at the same time, the 3rd time to a 13-year-old cousin (but it lasted 13 years), the 4th one drowning, and the 5th one dying after just 77 days. It also includes 6 children, one dying at age 3 (also a drowning), another at 19 (a car accident).
September 29, 1936: Roger Duane Smith is born in Walker Springs, Alabama. A guard, "Zeke" Smith was a member of Auburn University's National Championship team in 1957, winning the Outland Trophy as the nation's "best interior lineman." He played for the Baltimore Colts in 1960 and the New York Giants in 1961. He was elected to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and died in 2016.
Also on this day, Silvio Berlusconi is born in Milan. A television executive, he owned legendary soccer team A.C. Milan from 1986 to 2017, a period that included 8 Serie A (Italian league) championships, the 2003 Coppa Italia (national cup), and 5 UEFA Champions League wins, in 1989, 1990, 1994, 2003 and 2007.
Berlusconi parlayed his TV and soccer fame into a political career. On May 10, 1994, he became the 1st person to be Prime Minister of Italy despite never having served in public office. He served 8 months; then regained the office in 2001, serving nearly 5 years; then regained the office again in 2008, serving 3 1/2 years, for a total of about 9 years. It wasn't just that his policies were far-right, it's that post-World War II Italy has a habit of turning its governments out much more regularly than most democracies do.
But his life came crashing down around him in 2013, not so much due to the sex scandal he was hit with (at age 77, mind you), but due to tax fraud. Under Italian law, because he was past the age of 70, his prison sentence was suspended.
A fabulously wealthy, but corrupt businessman, using his fame from sports ownership and television, to reach the highest office in the land, without ever having previously served in public office, pursuing right-wing policies that hurt a lot of people, besieged by a sex scandal, and ultimately brought down by tax charges? Sound like Donald Trump?
The parallels don't go further than that: Berlusconi was a success in both business and sports, while Trump was a failure; Berlusconi admits that he's bald, and his tax fraud charge has already come to a conclusion. We're still waiting on Trump's.
September 29, 1937: Ray Ewry dies on Long Island at age 63. He was America's 1st great Olympic medalwinner, albeit in standing jumps, events that are no longer contested. He won 8 Gold Medals: The standing long, high and triple jumps at Paris in 1900; all 3 again at St. Louis in 1904; and the long and high jumps at London in 1908.
This is also the day on which a photograph taken by private investigator Jake Gittes, implicating Hollis Mulwray, chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, in an affair, appear in a newspaper, setting in motion the events of the film Chinatown.
Gittes is played by Jack Nicholson, who was born in 1937. Although his move to Hollywood made him the most famous of all Los Angeles Lakers fan, the native of Neptune, Monmouth County, New Jersey remains a Yankee Fan.
September 29, 1938: Michael Francis McCormick is born outside Los Angeles in Pasadena, California. A 4-time All-Star, the pitcher led the National League in ERA in 1960 and in wins in 1967, winning the latter year's NL Cy Young Award. He won a Pennant with the San Francisco Giants in 1962, and is a member of their team Wall of Fame. In 1968, he gave up Hank Aaron's 500th career
home run.
He finished his career, which included a brief stopover with the Yankees in 1970, with a 134-128 record. He later worked for copier companies, and with the Giants as a Spring Training instructor. During the Loma Prieta Earthquake that interrupted the 1989 World Series in San Francisco, his Cy Young Award was damaged. He considered getting it fixed, but says, "It has more character now." He died this past June 13.
September 29, 1939: Arthur T. Williams (I can find no reference as to what the T stands for) is born outside Dallas in Bonham, Texas, and grows up in San Diego. A guard, "Art" or "Hambone" Williams debuted in the NBA in 1967, for his hometown team, the San Diego Rockets, making him an original member of the team now known as the Houston Rockets.
He was a member of the Boston Celtics team that won the NBA Championship in 1974, and closed his career back in his hometown with the 1975 San Diego Conquistadors of the ABA. He was named to the San Diego Hall of Champions (the city's version of a sports hall of fame), and died in 2018.
Also on this day, James Curran Baxter is born in Hill of Beath, Fife, Scotland. A left half (today, we would say "left winger"), he starred for Glasgow soccer team Rangers, winning the Scottish League title in 1961, '63 and '64; the Scottish Cup in 1962, '63 and '64, including a "Double" in '63 and '64; and the Scottish League Cup in 1961, '62, '64 and '65, making for a "Treble" in '64.
He played in 2 memorable matches at Wembley Stadium: The 1963 match hosted by Englad's Football Association to celebrate its Centenary, with Baxter playing against England for a "Rest of the World" team, losing 2-1; and a 1967 qualifying match for the 1968 European Championships, with Scotland stunning recent World Cup winners England.
He had briefly played in the North American Soccer League, on loan to the Vancouver Royal Canadians, in 1967. A broken leg shortened his career, ending in 1970. He was admired enough in the sport that even fans and players of arch-rival Celtic cheered him.
He is considered Rangers' greatest player, and the man often considered Celtic's greatest player, Jimmy "Jinky" Johnstone (who, for whatever reason, wasn't on that 1967 Scotland team) said, "He was a great man, and a genius on the ball." Alex Ferguson, a Rangers teammate from 1967 to 1969 and later the Manchester United manager, called him, "arguably the best player to play in Scottish football."
But, like many other players of his era, he became addicted to drinking and gambling, compromising his health and ruining his finances. He died of pancreatic cancer in 2001, so it might not have mattered if he'd stayed sober. Statues of him now stand in his hometown and outside Rangers' Ibrox Stadium.
Also on this day, Sidney Thomas Boyce is born in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1959, he waited outside ats Domino's hotel room, unti Fats came out, and presented Fats with a song he'd written, "Be My Guest." Fats recorded it, and hit the Top 10 with it. Tommy Boyce was on his way as a songwriter.
In 1961, Boyce and Curtis Lee wrote "Pretty Little Angel Eyes," a hit for Lee. Boyce soon met Bobby Hart, and formed a songwriting team with him. They wrote "Come a Little Bit Closer" for Jay & the Americans.
That got the attention of Don Kirschner, who was putting together a band and TV show both titled The Monkees. Boyce and Hart wrote the theme song and the Number 1 hit "Last Train to Clarksville." In 1968, under their own names, they had a Top 10 hit with "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight."
After touring for a time with The Monkees' Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones, as "Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart" (because, legally, the 1st 2 couldn't use the Monkees name without bandmates Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork), Boyce and Hart split up. They were not nearly as successful apart. Boyce's health began to fail, and he took his own life in 1994, at age 55. Hart is still alive, at 81.
Also on this day, Lawrence Lavon Linville is born in Ojai, California, and grows up in Sacramento. After several TV cameos, including a recurring role as a Los Angeles Police Lieutenant on Mannix, he played Major Frank Burns on M*A*S*H from 1972 to 1977. Unlike the moralizing but immoral, hyper-patriotic, paranoid and incompetent surgeon he played, Larry was said by all of his castmates to be a nice guy.
On a 1976 episode, Frank used the fact that Armed Forces Radio broadcast baseball games live in the middle of the night, Korea time, and then rebroadcast them later in the day, to place sure-thing bets. Hawkeye (Alan Alda) discovers this, and outfoxes him.
He left the show after 5 seasons because he, correctly, felt that Frank was the only character that wasn't showing any growth: In his words, Frank was "a cartoon." He returned to his former status as a cameo actor -- I remember him playing a genie on Fantasy Island -- and died of cancer in 2000.
*
September 29, 1940, 80 years ago: The film Strike Up the Band premieres. This was the 2nd in a series of musicals, directed by Busby Berkeley, that Mickey Rooney starred in with Judy Garland. Rooney plays Jimmy Connors. No, not the tennis player, who wasn't born until 1952.
Rooney's Connors is a drummer in his high school's marching band, and wants to form a jazz band. Garland's Mary Holden helps him, and they win $500 (about $9,300 in today's money) in a Chicago contest. Paul Whiteman and his band, one of the top "Big Bands" of the time, have a cameo.
September 29, 1941: Joe Louis defends the Heavyweight Championship of the World at the Polo Grounds in New York. He knocks Lou Nova out in the 6th round.
Also on this day, Richard Benjamin Reese is born outside Toledo in Leipsic, Ohio. A 1st baseman, he was with the Minnesota Twins when they won the 1965 American League Pennant, and the 1969 and '70 AL Western Division titles. He played for them when the Twins lost the 1967 Pennant-deciding finale to the Boston Red Sox, and in Catfish Hunter's perfect game for the Oakland Athletics in 1968. He is still alive.
Also on this day, Nazi troops kill 33,771 Jews in a ravine outside Kiev, Ukraine. It becomes known as the Babi Yar Massacre. Over the course of World War II, up to 150,000 people -- Jews and others -- would be killed by the Nazis at Babi Yar.
September 29, 1942: David Wilcox (no middle name) is born in Ontario, Oregon, and grows up in nearby Vale. A linebacker, Dave Wilcox was a 7-time Pro Bowler for the San Francisco 49ers, and is in the Pro Football and Bay Area Sports Halls of Fame.
He is still alive. He, his brother Johnny, and his sons Justin and Josh all played at the University of Oregon. Justin Wilcox is now the head coach at the University of California.
Also on this day, Madeline Gail Wolfson is born in Boston. We knew her as Madeline Kahn. One of the greatest comedic actresses of the latter half of the 20th Century, she became a legend in Mel Brooks' films Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety and History of the World, Part I.
In Oliver Stone's 1995 film Nixon, she played the wife of Attorney General and Richard Nixon campaign director John Mitchell, Martha Mitchell, whose antics threatened to blow the lid off the Watergate scandal. Stopping Martha didn't stop the blowing, though. Sadly, Madeline died of cancer in 1999.
September 29, 1943: Wolfgang Overath is born in Siegburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. A midfielder for FC Köln, he helped them win the 1st Bundesliga title in 1964, and the DFB-Pokal (Germany's version of the FA Cup) in 1968 and 1977.
He competed for Germany in 3 World Cups, losing to England in the 1966 Final, finishing 3rd in 1970, and winning it on home soil in 1974. He is still alive.
Also on this day, Lech Wałęsa is born in Popowo, Poland. In 1980, the electrician, working at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, formed the 1st independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, Solidarność
(Solidarity). He was imprisoned. In 1981, Time magazine named him its Man of the Year. He was freed soon afterward. In 1989, Poland had its 1st free election in over 50 years, and he was elected President.
So conservatives, who say Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War," have to live with the fact that the Cold War was won not by what Reagan became, a conservative politician; but by what Reagan used to be, the head of a labor union.
(Solidarity). He was imprisoned. In 1981, Time magazine named him its Man of the Year. He was freed soon afterward. In 1989, Poland had its 1st free election in over 50 years, and he was elected President.
So conservatives, who say Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War," have to live with the fact that the Cold War was won not by what Reagan became, a conservative politician; but by what Reagan used to be, the head of a labor union.
He served as President from 1990 to 1995, and turned out to be too conservative for Poles' taste, as he was defeated for re-election. He is still alive.
September 29, 1944: Daniel G. Archer (I can find no record of what the G stands for) is born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A guard, Dan Archer was on the 1967 AFL Champion Oakland Raiders. The next season, he became an original member of the Cincinnati Bengals. He became an architect, and is still alive.
Also on this day, Leland Michael Postil is born outside San Francisco in Berkeley, California. We can debate what the greatest TV show theme song is, and it may be one of his. But there is no debate: Mike Post is the greatest TV show theme song composer who will ever live.
When he was just 24, he was named the musical director on The Andy Williams Show. He frequently teamed up with TV producers Stephen J. Cannell, Steven Bochco, Donald P. Bellisario and Dick Wolf.
Which means he's written the theme songs for their shows, which are included in the following list: The Rockford Files, CHiPs, The White Shadow, Magnum, P.I., The Greatest American Hero, Hill Street Blues, The A-Team, L.A. Law, Hunter, Wiseguy, Quantum Leap, The Commish, Doogie Howser, M.D., and the Law & Order series. He is still alive and composing.
September 29, 1946: The Rams, who played in Cleveland from 1936 to 1945, play their 1st home game in Los Angeles, making them the city's 1st real major league sports team. (Previous pro football teams had "Los Angeles" as their name, but their leagues could hardly be called "major.") The defending NFL Champions lose to the Philadelphia Eagles, 25-14.
This game is even more significant than L.A.'s debut on the major league stage, because it is the NFL debut for halfback Kenny Washington and end Woody Strode, both of whom had played for UCLA at the Rams' new home, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. They became the 1st black players in the NFL in 13 years, ending the color bar.
Marion Motley and Bill Willis of the Cleveland Browns were doing the same in the All-America Football Conference that Autumn, so pro football had "four Jackie Robinsons," a few months before baseball had one. (Robinson had also played football at UCLA, and ran in the same backfield as Washington in 1939 and '40.)
Also on this day, the Yankees close out a lackluster regular season with the sweep of a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-0 and 2-1 at Shibe Park. These are the last games for Ed Barrow as general manager: Every bit as unhappy as recently resigned manager Joe McCarthy was with the new ownership of Del Webb, Dan Topping and Larry MacPhail, he resigns as GM on December 31.
September 29, 1948: Jim Sherrit (the only name I have for him) is born in Glasgow, Scotland. But instead of staying in his homeland and becoming a soccer player, he moved with his family to Canada, He never played in the NHL, but was a member of the Houston Aeros team led by Gordie, Mark and Marty Howe that won the World Hockey Association title in 1974 and 1975. He is still alive.
September 29, 1949: Steven Lee Busby is born outside Los Angeles in Burbank, California. In 1973, Steve Busby pitched the 1st no-hitter in Kansas City Royals history. In 1974, he pitched the 2nd, and won 22 games
Then in 1976, he tore his rotator cuff, and he was never the same. He was unable to contribute much to the Royals' 5 postseason runs in 6 years, throwing his last major league pitch in 1980 and finishing 70-54.
He became a broadcaster for the Texas Rangers, and was elected to the Royals' team hall of fame and the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. He is still alive.
September 29, 1951: Duke University defeats the University of Pittsburgh, 19-14 at Pitt Stadium. NBC broadcasts the game. It is the 1st nationwide television broadcast of a live sporting event. Four days later, they will do the same of the deciding game of the Dodger-Giant playoff.
September 29, 1953: Warren Livingston Cromartie is born in Miami Beach, Florida. An outfielder, he starred for the Montreal Expos, and then made 3 Al-Star Games in Japan, helping the Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants to the 1989 Japan Series and winning the Central League's Most Valuable Player award.
He returned to his hometown and broadcast for the Florida Marlins. He now runs a baseball school in Miami, and also the Montreal Baseball Project to bring Major League Baseball back to the city.
*
September 29, 1954: Willie Mays makes the most famous defensive play in the history of sports, remembered as simply The Catch -- Capital T, Capital C.
It was Game 1 of the World Series. The New York Giants had won the National League Pennant, beating out their crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Cleveland Indians had won the American League Pennant, winning League record 111 games to beat out the Yankees, who had won the last 5 World Series. Indeed, the last 8 AL Pennants had been won by the Indians (1948 & '54) and the Yankees (1947, '49, '50, '51, '52 & '53).
Game 1 was played at the Polo Grounds in New York. The game was tied 2-2 in the top of the 8th, but the Indians got Larry Doby on 2nd base and Al Rosen on 1st with nobody out. Giant manager Leo Durocher pulled starting pitcher Sal Maglie, and brought in Don Liddle, a lefthander, to face the lefty slugger Vic Wertz, and only Wertz.
Liddle pitched, and Wertz swung, and drove the ball out to center field. The Polo Grounds was shaped more like a football stadium, so its foul poles were incredibly close: 279 feet to left field and 257 to right. In addition, the upper deck overhung the field a little, so the distances were actually even closer. But if you didn't pull the ball, it was going to stay in play. Most of the center field fence was 425 feet from home plate. A recess in center field, leading to a blockhouse that served as both teams' clubhouses -- why they were in center field, instead of under the stands, connected to the dugouts, is a mystery a long-dead architect will have to answer -- was 483 feet away.
Mays, at this point in his career, was already a big star. Just 23 years old, he had won that season's NL batting title. He had been NL Rookie of the Year in 1951, but had missed most of the 1952 season and all of 1953 serving in the U.S. Army, having been drafted into service in the Korean War. He had become known for playing stickball in the streets of Harlem with local boys in the morning, and then going off to the Polo Grounds to play real baseball in the afternoon. This raised his profile, and made him an accessible figure to City kids. His cap flying off as he ran around the bases, his defensive wizardry, and his yelling of, "Say hey!" endeared him to Giant fans.
While he made the "basket catch" nationally popular, he didn't invent it. In fact, he wasn't even the 1st Giant to use it, as 3rd baseman Bill Rigney, who would succeed Durocher as manager in 1956, was using it in the 1940s.
Even so, the days when the Giants were the team in New York sports were long gone, this week's events notwithstanding. At this moment, Mays was, in the public consciousness, where Babe Ruth was in May 1920, where Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams were in May 1941, where Mickey Mantle was in May 1956, where Reggie Jackson was in September 1977, where Roger Clemens was in April 1986, where Derek Jeter was in September 1996, where David Ortiz was in September 2004: A star, well-known and popular, but not yet a legend.
Mays ran back to try to catch the ball. In mid-stride, he thumped his fist into his mitt. His teammates, who had seen this gesture before, knew that this meant that he thought he would catch it. But most fans, who didn't watch him every day, didn't know this. Watching on television (NBC, Channel 4 in New York), they figured the ball would go over his head, scoring Doby and Rosen, and that Wertz, not exactly fleet of foot, had a chance at a triple, or even an inside-the-park home run.
Willie has said many times that he was already thinking of the throw back to the infield, hoping to hold Doby to only 3rd base. With his back to the ball all the way, he caught the ball over his head, stopped, pivoted, and threw the ball back to the infield. Doby did get only to 3rd.
The announcers were Jack Brickhouse, who normally did the home games for both of Chicago's teams, the Cubs and the White Sox, but was the lead announcer for NBC in this Series; and Russ Hodges, the usual Giants announcer, made nationally famous 3 years earlier when Bobby Thomson's home run made him yell, "The Giants win the Pennant!" over and over again.
Brickhouse: "There's a long drive, way back in center field, way back, back, it is... Oh, what a catch by Mays! The runner on second, Doby, is able to tag and go to third. Willie Mays just brought this crowd to its feet with a catch which must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people. Boy! See where that 483-foot mark is in center field? The ball itself... Russ, you know this ballpark better than anyone else I know. Had to go about 460, didn't it?"
Hodges: "It certainly did, and I don't know how Willie did it, but he's been doing it all year."
It has been argued by many, including Bob Feller, the pitching legend sitting on the Indians' bench that day, that the reason so much is made of this catch is that it was in New York, it was in the World Series, and it was on television. "It was far from the best catch I've ever seen," Feller said. Mays himself would say he'd made better catches. But none more consequential.
Durocher yanked Liddle, and brought in Marv Grissom. Upon reaching the Giant dugout, Liddle told his teammates, "Well, I got my man." Yeah, Don. You got him. As Jim Bouton, then a 15-year-old Giant fan who'd recently moved from Rochelle Park, Bergen County, New Jersey to the Chicago suburb of Chicago Heights, Illinois, would later say, "Yeah, surrrre!"
Grissom walked Dale Mitchell to load the bases with only 1 out. But he struck out Dave Pope, and got Jim Hegan to fly out, to end the threat. When the Giants got back to the dugout, they told Willie what a hard catch it was. He said, "You kiddin'? I had that one all the way."
The game went to extra innings. Future Hall-of-Famer Bob Lemon went the distance for the Tribe, but in the bottom of the 10th, he walked Mays, who stole 2nd. Then he intentionally walked Hank Thompson to set up an inning-ending double play. It didn't happen: Durocher sent Dusty Rhodes up to pinch-hit for left fielder Monte Irvin, and Rhodes hit the ball down the right-field line. It just sort of squeaked into the stands.
On the film, it looks a little like a fan reached out, and it bounced off his hand. A proto-Jeffrey Maier? To this day, no one has seriously argued that the call should be overturned.
The game was over: Giants 5, Indians 2. The Indians, heavily favored to win the Series, never recovered, and the Giants swept. The Series ended on October 2, tied with 1932 for the 2nd-earliest end to a World Series. (In 1918, the season was shortened due to World War I, and ended on September 11.)
Victor Woodrow Wertz, a native of Reading, Pennsylvania, was a right fielder and 1st baseman. He made his name with the Detroit Tigers, hit 266 home runs in his career, had 5 100-plus RBI seasons, and made 4 All-Star Teams. He went 4-for-5 with 2 RBIs in this game. He should be remembered as more than a man who hit a 460-foot (or so) drive that was caught, while another guy in the same game hit a 260-foot drive that won the game as a home run. He died in 1983, aged only 58.
Willie Howard Mays Jr., a native of Fairfield, Alabama, outside Birmingham, became one of baseball's greatest legends. He hit 660 home runs, collected 3,283 hits, made 24 All-Star Games (there were 2 every season from 1959 to 1962), won a Gold Glove the 1st 12 seasons it was given out (1957 to 1968), won the 1954 and 1965 NL Most Valuable Player awards, and played on 4 Pennant winners -- but 1954 would be his only title.
The Giants, with whom he moved to San Francisco in 1958, retired his Number 24, dedicated a statue to him outside AT&T Park, and made its official address 24 Willie Mays Plaza. He played with the Giants until 1972, when he was traded to the Mets, going back to New York at age 41. He retired in 1973, and the Mets have rarely given out Number 24 since.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility, 1979. In 1999, he was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, and The Sporting News put him at Number 2 on its list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players -- 2nd only to the long-dead Babe Ruth, so Willie was tops among living players. No player has since come along to suggest otherwise -- not later Giant Barry Bonds, not Derek Jeter.
Willie is 89 years old. He is the last living player from this game, 66 years later.
*
September 29, 1955: Game 2 of the World Series. Tommy Byrne goes the distance and singles in a run, as the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4-2. The Yankees have a 2-games-to-0 lead as the Series goes to Brooklyn. Dem Bums is in deep trouble.
Also on this day, Eurico Monteiro Gomes is born in Santa Marta de Penaguião, Portugal. A centreback, he not only played for, but won trophies at, all of his country's Big Three professional soccer teams. For Lisbon-based Benfica, he won the Premeira Liga in 1976 and 1974. For Lisbon-based Sporting Clube de Portugal, he won the Liga in 1980 and 1982, and the Taça de Portugal (Portuguese Cup) in 1982, for a "Double." For Porto, he won the Taça in 1984, the Liga in 1985 and 1986, and the European Cup (now the UEFA Champions League) in 1987. He helped his national team finish 3rd in at Euro 84.
He later managed teams in several countries, including winning Portugal's 2nd division with Tirsense in 1994. His most recent managing job was with Cova da Piedade of Portugal's 2nd division in 2018.
Also on this day, Gwendolyn L. Ifill (apparently, the L didn't stand for anything) is born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, and grows up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Gwen Ifill was a journalist for the Baltimore Evening Sun, The Washington Post and The New York Times, covering the White House for the Times from 1991 to 1994.
That's when she was hired by NBC News, as their Capitol Hill reporter -- a job denied her by the Post in 1991, leading her to leave for the Times. In 1999, PBS hired her to host Washington Week in Review, making her the 1st black woman to host a national news show on American television. NBC would still regularly invite her to appear as a panelist on Meet the Press, for which she had occasionally served as substitute host for Tim Russert.
In 2004, and again in 2008, she served as the moderator for the Vice Presidential debate. Both times, Saturday Night Live featured rapper Queen Latifah doing a near-perfect impersonation in its parody sketch of the event. In 2013, PBS promoted her to co-host of The PBS NewsHour, making her the 1st black woman to host a nightly newscast in America. However, she died of cancer in 2016.
Her cousin Sherrilyn Ifill is currently the President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a position once held by Thurgood Marshall, who went on to become the 1st black Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
September 29, 1956: Carol Ann Blazejowski is born in Elizabeth, Union County, New Jersey, and grows up in neighboring Cranford. "The Blaze" is on the short list for the title of greatest female basketball player ever. In 1978, playing for Montclair State College, she set a Madison Square Garden (old or new) record for points in a college game, by a person of either gender, with 52 against Queens College. That season, she was awarded the 1st Wade Trophy for women's player of the year.
(The pro record for points at the old Garden was 73 by Wilt Chamberlain, breaking the famous record of 71 by Elgin Baylor; at the new one, 61 by Kobe Bryant; by any Knick, 60 by Bernard King. Remember: For Wilt, Elgin and Blaze, there was no 3-point field goal.)
She was too young to play on the 1976 U.S. Olympic team, and the boycott kept her out of the 1980 Olympics. When the Women's Pro Basketball League was formed in 1980, she was signed by the New Jersey Gems, and was, at $50,000, the league's highest-paid player. It lasted just the 1 season, and she never played again.
She then worked in the NBA's front office, was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994, and when the NBA created the WNBA in 1997, she was named general manager of the New York Liberty. She now works for her alma mater, since renamed Montclair State University. She is a member of the New Jersey Sports Hall of Fame and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, but, unfairly, not yet the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Also on this day, Sebastian Newbold Coe is born in Hammersmith, West London. He won the Gold Medal in the 1500 meters at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. He later served in Britain's House of Commons, now serves in the House of Lords (as Baron Coe), and organized Britain's bid to host, and then its hosting, of the 2012 Olympics. He is now the president of the IAAF, the world governing body for track & field.
September 29, 1957: The Giants play their last game at the Polo Grounds, their owner Horace Stoneham having already announced that they're moving to San Francisco. Unlike the Brooklyn Dodgers, who played their last home game at Ebbets Field 5 days earlier, they have a farewell ceremony, including Blanche McGraw, widow of longtime manager John, who said that the move would have broken his heart.
There are 6 men still alive who played in this game. For the Giants, Mays and Ray Crone. For the Pirates, Bill Mazeroski, Dick Groat, Bob Skinner and Frank Thomas. (That's the Big Donkey, not the later Big Hurt.)
As for the Dodgers: Their last game as a Brooklyn team is also on this day, and it is a 2-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium. Ed Bouchee homers for the Phils, and Seth Morehead outpitches Roger Craig.
Since moving to the site in 1890, including replacing the original stadium that burned down in 1911, the Giants had won 15 National League Pennants, and won the World Series 5 times: In 1905, 1921, 1922, 1933 and 1954.
The Pittsburgh Pirates, unable to even score off the Dodgers on Tuesday night, beat the Giants on Sunday afternoon, 9-1. The crowd is a pathetically small 11,606, and storms the field after the game. At one point, they gather at the center field blockhouse that included both teams' locker rooms, chanting for Mays, "We want Willie!" And, to the tune of "Good Night, Ladies," they sing, "We want Stoneham! We want Stoneham! We want Stoneham, with a rope around his neck!"
Stoneham had already said that the fans had no one to blame but themselves, as they hadn't shown up in sufficient numbers, borne out by the small crowd at the finale: "I feel bad for the kids, but I haven't seen too many of their fathers lately."
The last pitch by a Brooklyn Dodger is thrown by an erratic (so far) reliever from Brooklyn, Sandy Koufax. The last Brooklyn play is left fielder Bob Kennedy flying to center fielder Richie Ashburn. Koufax, Roger Craig and Joe Pignatano, all Dodgers, are the last surviving players from this game.
It is also, though no one foresees the Winter's tragedy, the last game for Roy Campanella, and his last at-bat is also a fly to Ashburn. With both teams well out of the race, only 9,886 attend the Brooklyn Dodgers' semi-official funeral.
That is not the case at the 1st game at the new City Stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as the Packers move out of the old one, which was too small, and 32,132 see them beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Bears, 21-17.
The stadium was renamed Lambeau Field after team founder Earl "Curly" Lambeau died in 1965. By that point, capacity was be 50,861. That's how many people attended the 1967 NFL Championship Game on New Year's Eve, known as the Ice Bowl: Despite a gametime temperature of -15 degrees Fahrenheit, without the wind chill factor, there wasn't an empty seat in the house. The capacity became 55,000 by 1970, 58,000 by 1990, 60,000 by 1995, 70,000 by 2005, and is now 81,411.
Since moving to Lambeau Field in 1957, the Packers have made the Playoffs 27 times, won 14 Division titles, reached the NFL (1957-69) or NFC (1970-2016) Championship Game 13 times (including last season), won 8, reached 5 Super Bowls, and won 4 of them: I, II, XXXI and XLV -- meaning they have been World Champions for the seasons of 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1996 and 2010.
Lambeau Field is the oldest active stadium in the NFL. The Chicago Bears' Soldier Field went up in 2002, replacing the same of the same name on the same site that went up in 1924, although the Bears have only played on the site since 1970.
Also on this day, Mark L. Attanasio is born in The Bronx, and grows up just across the Hudson River, in Tenafly, Bergen County, New Jersey. (I can find no record of what the L stands for.) Since 2005, he has been the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. They have now made the Playoffs more times in 14 seasons as they did under their previous owners, the Selig family, in 35 seasons: 3-2.
September 29, 1959: Game 2 of the National League Playoff, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Only 36,528 fans come out to the 93,000-seat bowl on the edge of South Central, by the campus of the University of Southern California.
Like in 1946, but not 1951, the Dodgers make sure the Playoff series doesn't go to a Game 3. Unlike both of those times, it ends in their favor. They score 3 runs in the bottom of the 9th to send the game to extra innings. With 2 outs in the 12th, 1st baseman Gil Hodges draws a walk, catcher Joe Pignatano singles, and right fielder Carl Furillo singles home Hodges with the Pennant-winning run, 6-5.
The Dodgers had won the 1st Pennant by any team west of St. Louis. The City of Milwaukee has had just 1 Pennant winner in the 60 years since, the 1982 Brewers; and the Braves wouldn't win another Pennant for 32 years, and by that point they were in their 26th season in Atlanta.
This '59 Pennant, and the subsequent World Series win, for the Los Angeles edition of the Dodgers must have felt like a gut-punch for the fans the team left behind in Brooklyn. Especially since some of their Brooklyn heroes were still there: Hodges, Furillo, center fielder Duke Snider, 2nd baseman Jim Gilliam, left fielder Sandy Amoros, and pitchers Carl Erskine, Clem Labine and Johnny Podres. Former Captain Harold "Pee Wee" Reese and former manager Charlie Dressen were on manager Walter Alston's coaching staff. (Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale were already on the team before the move, but they didn't become heroes in Brooklyn.)
There are 13 men who played in this game are still alive. For the Dodgers: Shortstop Maury Wills, catcher Joe Pignatano, pinch-hitters Don Demeter and Chuck Essegian, and pitchers Stan Williams and Sandy Koufax. For the Braves: Right fielder Hank Aaron, catcher Del Crandall, 2nd basemen Felix Mantilla and Chuck Cottier, left fielders John DeMerit and Al Spangler, and pitcher Joey Jay. (UPDATE: Hank Aaron, Stan Williams and Del Crandall have died within the last year, reducing the number of survivors from this game to 8.)
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September 29, 1960, 60 years ago: Robert George Deer is born outside Los Angeles in Orange, California. A right fielder, he was an all-or-nothing slugger, hitting 230 home runs in just 13 years, but having just 600 RBIs and a .220 lifetime batting average. The Milwaukee Brewers named him to their team hall of fame. He later coached with the Chicago Cubs, and is still alive.
September 29, 1961: Julia Eileen Gillard is born in Barry, Wales. As a child, she suffered from bronchial pneumonia, making the United Kingdom not an ideal climate for her. Her parents were advised to take her someplace drier. In 1966, they settled in Adelaide, in the State of South Australia.
In 1998, she was elected to Australia's Parliament. From June 24, 2010 to June 27, 2013, she was her country's Prime Minister -- its 1st woman to hold the post. For reasons beyond her control, she had to lead a minority government, and couldn't hold it together, and retired from politics before the 2013 election, which her party lost.
She is now a visiting professor at the University of Adelaide, and a nonresident senior fellow at America's Brookings Institution. She is a supporter of the Australian rules football team, the Western Bulldogs; and the rugby league team, the Melbourne Storm.
September 29, 1962: Alouette 1 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base outside Lompoc, California. Designed to study Earth's ionosphere, it was built by the Canadian government, making Canada the 4th nation to have an object sent into space, following the Soviet Union, America and Britain. It functioned for 10 years.
September 29, 1963: The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds 3-2 at Sportsman's Park, in the regular season finale. Dal Maxvill doubles home the winning run in the bottom of the 14th inning.
It is the last game for retiring Cardinal legend Stan Musial, and his Number 6 is retired. In the bottom of the 6th, the 42-year-old Stan the Man singles Curt Flood home. It is the 3,630th hit of his career, a National League record. In one of the neatest coincidences in sports history, he got exactly 1,815 hits in home games, and 1,815 hits in away games.
It is the last game for retiring Cardinal legend Stan Musial, and his Number 6 is retired. In the bottom of the 6th, the 42-year-old Stan the Man singles Curt Flood home. It is the 3,630th hit of his career, a National League record. In one of the neatest coincidences in sports history, he got exactly 1,815 hits in home games, and 1,815 hits in away games.
The single goes between 1st and 2nd base, past the Reds' diving 2nd baseman, soon to be named NL Rookie of the Year, and just 5 months old when Stan made his major league debut on September 17, 1941, 22 years and 12 days earlier. His name is Pete Rose. In 1981, Pete will surpass Stan as the NL's all-time hit leader. In 1985, he will surpass Ty Cobb as the major leagues' all-time hit leader. In 1989... um, let's move on.
Also on this day, David John Andreychuk is born in Hamilton, Ontario. A left wing, he starred for the Buffalo Sabres and the Toronto Maple Leafs, before 3 disappointing seasons (1996-99) with the Devils. In 2004, at age 40, he finally reached his 1st Stanley Cup Finals, and captained the Tampa Bay Lightning to their 1st Cup win.
He retired with 640 goals, including 274 on power plays, a record that not even Wayne Gretky can match. He now works in the Lightning's front office, and is a member of the Sabres' team hall of fame and the overall Hockey Hall of Fame.
September 29, 1964: The Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies 4-2 at Sportsman's Park. It is the 9th of the 10 straight games the Phils will lose in their epic late-season collapse.
It is also the last game for Philadelphia-area native Bobby Shantz, the former Philadelphia Athletics pitcher who won the 1952 American League Most Valuable Player, and helped the Yankees win the 1958 World Series. He gets 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th, but has to be relieved. "The Little Lefty" (5-foot-6, 140 pounds) had just turned 39, does not pitch in the last 3 games of the season, and finishes 119-99 for his career.
September 29, 1966: Star Trek, in only its 5th week, airs the episode "The Naked Time." It has a reference to sports, if you count Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) waving a fencing foil.
Also on this day, Kenneth Howard Norton Jr. is born in Jacksonville, Illinois, and grows up in Los Angeles. The son of a boxer who would go on to beat Muhammad Ali and later reign as WBC Heavyweight Champion, he was an All-American linebacker at the University of Southern California, and a 3-time Pro Bowler.
He was with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1992 and 1993 seasons, and the San Francisco 49ers in the 1994 season -- making him the only human being who has ever lived to win the Super Bowl in 3 consecutive seasons: XXVII, XXVIII and XXIX.
He returned to USC to begin his coaching career, rising to assistant head coach in 2009. Before the head coaching job could open up, he was offered the job of linebackers coach for the Seattle Seahawks. As such, he won a 4th Super Bowl ring, after Super Bowl XLVIII. He is now the defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks. Presumably, this makes him the head coach in waiting if Carroll leaves. He is married with 3 children, including a son named Ken Norton III.
Also on this day, Hersey R. Hawkins Jr. is born in Chicago. (I can find no reference to what the R stands for.) A guard, he starred at Bradley University, where he was twice named Mountain Valley Conference Player of the Year, led the nation in scoring in 1988, and had his Number 33 retired.
He played 13 seasons in the NBA. He was an All-Star with the 1991 Philadelphia 76ers, and reached the NBA Finals with the 1996 Seattle SuperSonics. He went into coaching, and now works in the front office for the Portland Trail Blazers.
September 29, 1967: The Prisoner premieres on British network ITV. It is shown in syndication in America starting on June 1, 1968. It runs only 17 episodes, but its story of a retired British secret agent, kidnapped by his superiors and stuck in "The Village" (filmed in Portmeirion, on the west coast of North Wales) to keep him from telling all that he knows, struck a chord with TV viewers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
The agent, known here only as "Number Six," was played by Patrick McGoohan, who had starred as John Drake on Danger Man, the show known as Secret Agent in America. Fans of both shows tend to believe that Number Six was Drake.
September 29, 1968: Baseball's regular season ends its "Year of the Pitcher." As he did the year before, Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox leads the American League in batting average. But where he hit .344 in 1967, in 1968, he hit just .3005 -- rounded up to .301, the lowest league-leading batting average ever. Next-best in the AL is Danny Cater of the Oakland Athletics, at .290. The AL as a whole batted just .237.
The National League leader has a more acceptable leading average: .335, by Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds.
September 29, 1969: Ray Kennedy makes his 1st appearance for Arsenal, as Arsenal lose an Inter-Cities Fairs Cup match to Glentoran of Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1-0. Arsenal still win the tie on aggregate, 3-1.
Kennedy would become vital for Arsenal, scoring a key goal away to Belgian side Anderlecht in the away leg of the Fairs Cup Final, and then being Arsenal's leading scorer in the 1970-71 League season, including scoring the late goal away to Tottenham that clinched the title on the final night of the season.
But in 1974, manager Bertie Mee foolishly sold him to Liverpool, the team Arsenal beat in the 1971 FA Cup Final for the Double. With the Mersey Reds, Kennedy would win 4 League titles, the 1976 UEFA Cup, the 1981 League Cup, and the European Cup in 1977, 1978 and 1981. He began to slow down, and was sold to Swansea City, helping them win the 1982 Welsh Cup.
His slowing was due to encroaching Parkinson's disease. Arsenal and Liverpool held a testimonial match for him in 1991, but his medical expenses became so bad that in 1993 he sold his memorabilia. He is still alive at age 67, but rarely appears in public.
Also on this day, Orenthial James Brigance is born in Houston. O.J. Brigance was named after another football player, then a rookie with the Buffalo Bills and the most recent awardee of the Heisman Trophy, Orenthal James Simpson. (Note the extra I in Brigance's name.)
A linebacker, he is one of the few football players from Rice University in his hometown to make an impact in pro football. He debuted in 1991 with the BC Lions, the Vancouver team in the Canadian Football League. In 1994, when the CFL began its short-lived extension into the United States, he played for the Baltimore Stallions. In 1995, they won the Grey Cup. In 1996, he made his NFL debut with the Miami Dolphins.
In 2000, he signed with the Baltimore Ravens, and they won Super Bowl XXXV. A few players have won both the Super Bowl and the Grey Cup, but Brigance is, and is likely to remain, the only player ever to win both in the same city.
Then his luck ran out. He appeared in Super Bowl XXXVI with the St. Louis Rams, but they lost the Super Bowl to the New England Patriots. Then he was traded to the Patriots, but he was cut after the 2002 season -- the only season between 2001 and 2004 that the Pats didn't win the Super Bowl.
He never played another pro down. In 2007, he was diagnosed with ALS, the motor neurone affliction commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He is still alive, and is officially part of the Ravens' front office. He was given another ring after the Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII.
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September 29, 1974: Dedric Lamar Ward is born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A receiver, he played 4 years for the Jets under Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, including their 1998 team that came within a half of winning the AFC Championship.
In 2003, Belichick brought him to the Patriots, where he helped them win Super Bowl XXXVIII. After coaching at both the college and the pro level, he is now a high school teacher.
Also on this day, Douglas Gordon Brown is born in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster, British Columbia. A star defensive tackle at the Vancouver area's Simon Fraser University, Doug played 2 seasons with the Washington Redskins, then returned to Canada and made 8 CFL All-Star Teams with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
He helped the Bombers reach the 2001, 2007 and 2011 Grey Cups, although they lost all 3. They have gone longer without winning the Cup than any current team, since 1990. He has been elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
September 29, 1975: Casey Stengel dies of cancer in his adopted hometown of Glendale, California, in the Los Angeles suburbs. "The Ol' Perfesser" was 85. He first wore a major league uniform in 1912, and last in 1965. In between, in those 54 seasons, as a player and a manager, he had been a part of 14 Pennant winners and 9 World Championships. He had last appeared in a major league ballpark on June 28, for the Mets' Old-Timers Day. Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Well, God is certainly getting an earful tonight."
Also on this day, Dick Clark's Good Ol' Rock and Roll Revue is held at the Latin Casino, in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In the middle of the song that launched him to stardom in 1959, "Lonely Teardrops," Jackie Wilson sings the line, "My heart is crying, crying... " and collapses onstage.
Like Elvis Presley and James Brown, both of whom had copied him to an extent, Wilson was known for his onstage histrionics, earning him the nicknames "Mr. Excitement" and "The Guy With a Tear in His eye." He was also known to take salt tablets before going onstage, because he thought women liked to see men sweating when they sang onstage. All this, and an all-around wild lifestyle, had given him a heart attack.
What's worse, his reputation was such that, at first, nobody realized that it wasn't part of the act. By the time the paramedics got to him, his brain had been deprived of enough oxygen to leave damage. He never recovered, spending the rest of his life in hospitals and nursing homes. One of the greatest R&B singers of all time, Jackie was forcibly retired at age 41, and died at age 49, on January 21, 1984.
Later that year, singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father. Gaye had been one of the big stars of Motown Records, founded by Berry Gordy Jr., who got his start writing songs for Jackie Wilson. Another Motown group, The Commodores -- Lionel Richie had gotten his start as their lead singer, but had since gone solo -- recorded "Nightshift," a song that saluted both Gaye and Wilson. It hit Number 3 early in 1985.
It wasn't the 1st song to salute Wilson: In 1972, while he was still alive and performing, Irish singer Van Morrison had a hit song titled "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)."
September 29, 1976: The San Francisco Giants beat the Atlanta Braves, 9-0 at Fulton County Stadium. John "the Count" Montefusco pitches a no-hitter, and is backed a sacrifice fly of his own, and by 2 hits each from Larry Herndon, Gary Matthews Sr., Bobby Murcer, Gary Thomasson and Johnny LeMaster. No home runs, though.
Attendance for this meaningless midweek end-of-season game in a city where baseball has never been the most popular sport? 1,369. That is not a misprint: One thousand, three hundred and sixty-nine.
Also on this day, Andriy Mykolayovych Shevchenko is born in Dvirkivschyna, Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. The striker led Dynamo Kyiv to the Ukrainian Premier League title in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999; and to the Ukrainian Cup in 1996, 1998 and 1999 (all 3 of them League and Cup "Doubles").
He moved on to AC Milan, winning the Coppa Italia and the Champions League in 2003, and Serie A (Italy's national league) in 2004, also winning the Ballon d'Or as world player of the year. At West London club Chelsea, he won the FA Cup and the League Cup in 2007, known as the "Cup Double."
In 2016, he was appointed the manager of the Ukraine national team, and is regarded as the country's greatest player ever. On October 6, they will play Kosovo in a qualification match for next year's World Cup. They should win it. But on October 9, they host Croatia, the current group leader, and may have to win it to qualify.
He is married to Polish-American model Kristen Pazik. They met at a party held by the Giorgio Armani company, and speak Italian to each other. They have 4 sons.
Also on this day, the CBS sitcom Good Times airs the episode "The Big Move." Newark native John Amos, who played James Evans was angry that the writers were making Jimmie Walker's character, James Jr. or "J.J.," not merely the focus of the show, but dumber than he should be. Amos was fired, and this episode revealed that he had died.
His wife, Florida, played by Esther Rolle, holds up well until the end, finally yelling, "Damn, damn, damn!" This was about as far as language could go on American TV in the Seventies.
September 29, 1977: Billy Joel releases his album The Stranger, including the title track, "Just the Way You Are," "Only the Good Die Young," "She's Always a Woman," and perhaps his best (if not his most-played) song, "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant," a.k.a. "The Ballad of Brenda and Eddie." Or "Brender 'n' Eddie." It is one of the greatest albums in history.
This album wouldn't seem to have anything to do with sports, but the cover does show a pair of boxing gloves hanging from a nail on the wall. Billy was an amateur boxer, but discovered that music did less damage to his face.
On the same day, at Madison Square Garden, a building Billy now owns as much as Willis Reed or Mark Messier ever would, Muhammad Ali barely hangs onto the Heavyweight Championship of the World, needing to win the 15th and final round to win by a close decision over Earnie Shavers.
September 29, 1978: The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-2 at Riverfront Stadium. George Foster and Pete Rose hit home runs, both off Jim Bouton, who winds up as the losing pitcher.
Bouton, 39, had made a comeback, 8 years after last appearing in a major league game. On the one hand, the knuckleballer proved he could do it. On the other hand, this defeat, in what turns out to be his last major league game, dropped his career record to 62-63, so it turned him from a plus-.500 pitcher (61-60) to a sub-.500 pitcher. Be careful what you wish for: You might get it.
After Bouton published Ball Four, his diary of the 1969 season with the Seattle Pilots and the Houston Astros, early in the 1970 season, he pitched against the Reds, and Rose, not the most eloquent of men, yelled, "Fuck you, Shakespeare!" from one dugout to the next. In 1978, Rose collected his 3,000th career hit, had a 44-game hitting streak, and hit that homer off Bouton.
So he got the last laugh, right? Well, Bouton died this past July 10, at the age of 80, still eligible to participate in professional baseball. Rose, 78 is still permanently banned from it.
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September 29, 1980, 40 years ago: Christopher Pierre Hope is born in Rock Hill, South Carolina, outside Charlotte, North Carolina. A safety, he was a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers when they won Super Bowl XL. He now runs a charitable fund in Rock Hill.
Also on this day, Zachary Levi Pugh is born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Concluding that having a name that sounds like "pew" wouldn't work, he dropped it, and is professionally known as Zachary Levi. He played the title role in the NBC series Chuck. In spite of his professed Christian faith, he specializes in playing characters with basis in mythology. He voices Flynn Rider in the animated Tangled franchise, played Asgardian warrior Fandral in the Thor films, and, in 2019, debuted as Captain Marvel in Shazam!, the 1st film based on the character since 1941.
He has been married once, to Missy Peregrym, who plays Special Agent Maggie Bell on the CBS drama FBI. I don't know why they split up, but if I had a wife who looked like her, I wouldn't need superpowers.
September 29, 1981: Bill Shankly dies of a heart attack in Liverpool at age 68. As a player, the Scotsman was a good defender, helping Lancashire club Preston North End win the 1938 FA Cup. But, like contemporaries Matt Busby and Stan Cullis, also good players at the time, he truly made his mark as a manager.
He became manager of Liverpool Football Club in 1959, and got them promoted to the Football League Division One in 1962, and they have never left. He led them to League titles in 1964, 1966 and 1973; the 1965 and 1974 FA Cups; and the 1973 UEFA Cup. His last match before retiring was the 1974 Charity Shield, England's annual season-opening match between the previous season's winners of the League and the Cup. Liverpool beat Leeds United, but the match was marred by a fight between Liverpool's Kevin Keegan and Leeds' Billy Bremner.
Although his assistant-turned-successor Bob Paisley led Liverpool to more glories, "Shanks" is still the most beloved figure in the club's history. A statue of him now stands outside the stadium, Anfield, which also has an entrance known as the Shankly Gates. The biggest LFC supporters' group is known as Spirit of Shankly.
September 29, 1982: The Chicago Tylenol Murders begin. Over the next few days, 7 people die after taking Tylenol-branded acetaminophen capsules that had been laced with potassium cyanide. James William Lewis, a New Yorker, would be convicted of extortion, for sending Johnson & Johnson a letter claiming credit, and demanding $1 million to stop them. But no one has ever found evidence tying him to the poisonings themselves. It remains a great unsolved mystery.
J&J repackaged their capsules to prevent tampering, and introduced "caplets," a combination of tablets and capsules. But the bottles have become more "child-proof" than ever. Or, to put it another way: Seven people died from tainted Tylenol, and we can't get the damn bottles open anymore; but thousands of people die from gun violence, and guns get easier to get, not harder.
September 29, 1983: The San Francisco Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 11-7 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. In the bottom of the 5th inning, Johnny Bench comes off, well, the bench, pinch-hits for pitcher Ted Power, and singles to left off Mark Calvert, driving in 2 runs. Gary Redus is sent in to pinch-run for him, and that's the end of Bench's playing career.
September 29, 1984: The Seoul Olympic Stadium opens in Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea, 4 years ahead of the 1988 Olympic Games it was meant to host. In between, it hosted the 1986 Asian Games, Asia's continental mini-Olympics.
The 69,950-seat stadium is also the home field of the South Korea national soccer team, and pro soccer teams Seoul United and Seoul E-Land (named for the real estate management company that owns it).
Also on this day, Per Mertesacker (no middle name) is born in Hannover, Lower Saxony, Germany. The 6-foot-6 centreback starred for hometown club Hannover 96, then won the 2009 DFB-Pokal at Werder Bremen, before moving to North London's Arsenal in 2011.
Arsenal fans -- fans of "The Gunners" are known as "Gooners" -- immediately embraced the man they called, in a nod to Roald Dahl's novel, the BFG. In the novel, it stands for "Big Friendly Giant"; to Gooners, it stands for "Big Fucking German." He helped lead the club to the 2014 and 2015 FA Cups, and Captained it to the 2017 FA Cup. He also won the World Cup with Germany in 2014. He retired after last season, and now manages the club's academy.
September 29, 1985: Calvin Johnson Jr. (no middle name) is born outside Atlanta in Newnan, Georgia. The Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year for 2006 at Georgia Tech, "Megatron" retired after the 2015 season, but not before catching 731 passes for 11,619 yards and 83 touchdowns.
He made 6 Pro Bowls, and in 2012 set an NFL record with 1,964 receiving yards in a season. He has been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame and the NFL's 2010s All-Decade Team, and will be eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021. (UPDATE: He was elected.)
September 29, 1986: Jordan Shea Rashad Norwood is born in Honolulu. A receiver, he won the 2008 Big Ten Championship with Penn State and Super Bowl 50 with the Denver Broncos. He retired after the 2016 season.
September 29, 1988: Kevin Wayne Durant is born in Washington, D.C. A 6-time All-Star, he played in an NBA Finals for the Oklahoma City Thunder (2012) and won an NBA MVP award (2014). He now plays for the Golden State Warriors, and helped them win the 2017 and 2018 NBA Championships.
An Achillies heel injury put the Warriors' 2019 title hopes in doubt. He was cleared to return for Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Toronto Raptors, and scored 11 points in the 1st quarter, before aggravating the injury in the 2nd quarter. The Warriors still won Game 5, but, without Durant, the Raptors won the title in Game 6.
His contract having run out, and angry at his treatment by the medical staff, Durant signed with the Brooklyn Nets, even though he wouldn't be able to play the 2019-20 season for them. The Warriors still announced that they would retire Number 35 for him. He is probably the most prominent athlete to have contracted COVID-19, and has recovered. He is also a 5 percent owner of Major League Soccer's Philadelphia Union -- instead of his hometown team, D.C. United.
Some fans hate him for abandoning Oklahoma City. These are people who are mad that he helped beat LeBron James, who walked out on Cleveland, then walked out on Miami, and has now walked out on Cleveland again. So they're hypocrites.
Also on this day, Marshall Edward Newhouse is born in Dallas. An offensive tackle, he grew up in the hometown of the Cowboys, who called themselves "America's Team." He won Super Bowl XLV, played in his hometown (well, in Arlington), in the Cowboys' stadium -- but with the real America's Team (at least, in football), the Green Bay Packers, defeating the other legitimate contender for that title, the Pittsburgh Steelers. He is currently a free agent.
September 29, 1989: The San Francisco Giants beat the San Diego Padres, 7-2 at Jack Murphy Stadium, and clinch the National League Western Division title, their 2nd in the last 3 years. They hit no home runs in support of Mike LaCoss and 3 relievers, but Ernie Riles and Candy Maldonado combine for 5 hits and 6 RBIs.
Also on this day, August Anheuser Busch Jr. dies of pneumonia in his native St. Louis. "Gussie" was 90. The chairman of Anheuser-Busch brewing had owned the St. Louis Cardinals since 1953, overseeing 6 National League Pennants and 3 World Series wins, and building the 1966 version of Busch Stadium.
Although he let personal feelings get in the way sometimes, as with Curt Flood and Harry Caray in 1969, and Steve Carlton in 1971, his word was good. When Roger Maris told him after the 1967 World Series win that he wanted to retire, Gussie asked him to play 1 more season, in exchange for an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship. Roger helped the Cards win another Pennant, and Gussie gave the Maris family a distributorship in Gainesville, Florida, which they held on to well after Roger's death.
Gussie is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but, for all his flaws, he was that rare team owner who was beloved by both is players and the local fans. The Cards' board of directors retired Number 85 for him on his 85th birthday (reasoning that the number would never be chosen by a player anyway).
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September 29, 1990, 30 years ago: Saturday Night Live premieres its 16th season. This was the debut of castmembers Chris Farley and Chris Rock, launching both to stardom. Sadly, Farley would follow John Belushi's path, going from SNL to drug abuse to movie stardom to death at age 33. Rock is still alive, but being a Mets fan may have made him wish for the mercy of death on a few occasions.
September 29, 1991: The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Minnesota Twins, 2-1 at the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre). But the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-4 at Milwaukee County Stadium. This clinches the AL West for the Twins, making the last-place team of 1990 the 1st "worst-to-first" team in baseball history
If the Jays felt good about beating the Twins tonight, that went away quickly, as the Twins beat them in the AL Championship Series.
September 29, 1994: Seinfeld airs the episode "The Big Salad." It parodies the O.J. Simpson case, then ongoing. The writers substituted a baseball star (Steve Gendason, played by Dean Hello) for the football legend, a caddy for the ex-wife, a golf tee for the bloody glove, Kramer (Michael Richards) for Al Cowlings, and the Palisades Interstate Parkway for the San Diego Freeway.
Also on this day, Ashley Nicolette Frangipane is born in Washington, Warren County, New Jersey. She took the stage name Halsey, after seeing it on a street sign in Brooklyn, and realizing that it's an anagram of "Ashley." Since releasing her 1st album, Badlands, in 2015, she has gotten bigger and bigger.
September 29, 1996: At the Rogers Centre, the Blue Jays beat the Baltimore Orioles 4-1. The lone O's run comes on a home run by center fielder Brady Anderson, his 50th of the season. In 14 other major league seasons, he never topped 24, and only twice topped 18. He hit 210 home runs in those 15 seasons, so 23.8 percent of his homers were hit in this season alone.
He finished the season with 110 RBIs. His next-highest seasonal total was 81. He was never caught using steroids. He was, however, a 3-time All-Star, so it's not like he was a bad player. And Oriole Park at Camden Yards has a close right-field fence. But this season, a Playoff season for the O's, was very suspicious.
September 29, 1998: Tom Bradley dies in Los Angeles from the effects of a stroke. He was 80. A hero cop in the city, he was elected to the City Council in 1961, ran to become the city's 1st black Mayor in 1969, but lost to incumbent Sam Yorty, who won with a racist campaign. Bradley tried again in 1973, and won, because Yorty's racist outreach no longer worked, and people were tired of him anyway.
Bradley grew the city tremendously, including landing the 1984 Olympics. During his tenure, the Dodgers won 5 Pennants and 2 World Series, the Raiders moved in and won a Super Bowl, the Rams reached a Super Bowl, the Lakers won 5 NBA Championships, and the Clippers moved in. But the conditions for the Rams and Raiders moving out were in place, and the 1992 South Central riot doomed his hopes of winning a 6th term in 1993.
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September 29, 2000, 20 years ago: The Yankees lose to the Orioles 13-2 at Camden Yards, but the Red Sox lose to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 8-6, so the Yanks back into the AL East title. This was in a stretch where the Yankees lost 13 out of 16, including Game 1 of the ALDS, and many of us, myself included, were afraid they would blow the Division title.
Also on this day, the Xcel Energy Center opens in St. Paul, Minnesota, on the site of the old St. Paul Civic Center. It is home to the NHL's Minnesota Wild, and the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx used it as their home court while the Target Center underwent Summer renovations in 2017, much as the New York Liberty had to play at the Prudential Center while Madison Square Garden did the same.
Also on this day, the film Remember the Titans premieres. Denzel Washington plays Herman Boone, football coach at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. (Thomas Chambliss Williams had been superintendent of the city's public schools.)
In 1971, Alexandria consolidated its 3 high schools: The centrally-located Williams became the only high school, and George Washington and Francis C. Hammond (the latter named for a local Korean War hero) were converted into middle schools. Contrary to the film, though, all 3 were integrated when Williams opened in 1965 -- as were all of their opponents. A new, larger building for Williams opened in 2007, and the school seen in the film was demolished.
The film correctly shows that Williams went 13-0 and won the State Championship, but it suggests that several of Williams' 1971 games were close. Most games were blowout wins. And the car accident that paralyzed linebacker Gerry Bertier occurred after the season, not between the Semifinal and the Final. So the film didn't even remember the Titans with full accuracy.
September 29, 2001: Saturday Night Live premieres its 27th season, on time, despite the 9/11 attacks having taken place just 18 days before. The show begins with Mayor Rudy Giuliani introducing Paul Simon, born in Newark but raised in Queens, and a longtime friend of SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels, singing his 1969 hit "The Boxer" with New York policemen and firemen on the stage.
Then Giuliani tells Michaels it's okay to begin the show. Michaels, not wanting to seem insensitive, asks, "Can we be funny?" The audience laughs lightly. Giuliani: "Why start now?" The audience cracks up, followed by Rudy yelling the tagline, "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!" (In the 1st season, 1975-76, the title was just Saturday Night, now Saturday Night Live, and they never changed the line.)
The host is Reese Witherspoon, and the musical guest is Alicia Keys, who sings "Fallin'" -- the Number 1 song in the country when the World Trade Center fell. If anyone connected with the show made the connection between the title and the attack, they didn't think it worth dropping the song.
September 29, 2002: The Pittsburgh Steelers trail their arch-rivals, the Cleveland Browns, 13-6 at Heinz Field when Tommy Maddox comes off the bench, and throws a game-tying touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with 2 minutes to go. It is the biggest catch of Burress' career -- so far.
In overtime, Maddox throws an interception, but Phil Dawson of the Browns misses a 45-yard field goal. Reprieved, Maddox gets the Steelers close enough for Todd Peterson to try a 31-yard field goal, and the Steelers win 16-13.
The teams would play each other again in the Playoffs, and again it would be close. The Steelers won 36-33 at Heinz Field. This remains the only Playoff game the Browns have played since their 1995 move and their 1999 reinstatement. The Steelers lost in overtime to the Tennessee Titans in the next round.
September 29, 2003: The new Soldier Field opens in Chicago, on the site of the old one. Only the south gate and the columns on each side remain from the original 1924 structure. The Chicago Bears lose to their arch-rivals, the Green Bay Packers, 38-23.
September 29, 2004: Although the announcement that the Montreal Expos were moving to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Nationals next season was not a surprise, the timing of it was: On the morning of the Expos' last home game ever, during the season finale into a French-Canadian wake.
The Expos go down quietly, losing 9-1 to, of all teams, the Florida Marlins, the team that Expos owner Jeffrey Loria was allowed to buy, and giving the Expos back to Major League Baseball, having stripped the franchise of pretty much its entire front office, and even its broadcast team, including Hall-of-Famer Dave Van Horne.
To make matters worse still, the winning pitcher for the Marlins was an Ex-Expo, Carl Pavano. The last Expos play was Terrmel Sledge, batting against Rudy Seanez, popping up to 3rd baseman Mike Mordecai. A crowd of 31,395 came to say Au revoir.
Although the Olympic Stadium has since held preseason games, involving Canada's remaining MLB team, the Toronto Blue Jays, and both the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland Athletics have struggled in their bids to keep their fans and build new ballparks to replace inadequate stadiums, it is unlikely that a new team -- expansion or moved -- will be placed in Montreal until the City, or the Province of Quebec, is will to spend the money to build a new ballpark there. And that's not going to happen anytime soon.
September 29, 2007: Basketball star LeBron James hosts the Season 33 premiere of Saturday Night Live. Kanye West is the musical guest.
September 29, 2008: The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 777 points, in the wake of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy 2 weeks earlier. It is the biggest drop, in terms of points (though not as a percentage of value) in the Dow's history to that point.
The Crash of 2008 had so spooked the nation that Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee for President, had announced after the Lehman Brothers collapse that he was suspending his campaign and dropping out of the September 26 debate with the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, to return to Washington and help broker a bailout deal for the American economy with Congress and the term-limited President George W. Bush.
In hindsight, this was a noble thing to suggest. But there were problems with it. For one thing, McCain's expertise was in foreign policy and defense matters, not the economy: As a "Navy brat" who joined the Navy himself, and essentially went straight from the Navy into politics, he'd been living on the American federal government's dime his entire life, except for the 5 years he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He'd also married Cindy Hensley, whose family got rich in the brewery industry. So he didn't have a clue what it was like to be poor in America.
It also didn't help that he was an old white Republican running for President against a young black Democrat, and that the debate was at "Ole Miss," which in 1962 became a flashpoint of the Civil Rights Movement. McCain was talked into going to the debate anyway.
When the September 29 crash happened, McCain again made a brief trip to Washington to lobby for a bailout bill, and one was crafted on October 1. Whatever else one can say about McCain, his dedication to his country cannot be questioned. How he has carried it out can be, and that's what politics is all about. But his patriotism was not at issue -- unlike with Donald Trump, as McCain himself would later suggest.
September 29, 2010, 10 years ago: The Yankees beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-1 at the Rogers Centre, and clinch the AL's Wild Card berth. Whoopee.
Also on this day, acting legend Tony Curtis dies at his home outside Las Vegas. He was 85. He starred in the films Sweet Smell of Success (1957, with Burt Lancaster), The Defiant Ones (1958, with Sidney Poitier), Some Like It Hot (1959, with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe), Spartacus (1960, with Kirk Douglas), and The Boston Strangler (1968, as the title role, Albert DeSalvo).
In 1985, he appeared in Insignificance, set in 1954, playing "The Senator," meant to be a stand-in for Senator Joseph McCarthy -- no relation to the former Yankee manager of the same name. Gary Busey played "The Ballplayer," meant to be Joe DiMaggio. Theresa Russell played "The Actress," meant to be DiMaggio's then-wife, Marilyn Monroe. Michael Emil played "The Professor," meant to be Albert Einstein.
From 1951 to 1962, Tony Curtis was married to actress Janet Leigh, who co-starred with him in
Houdini in 1953. They were the parents of actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis.
September 29, 2014: The Kansas City Chiefs clobber the New England Patriots 41-14 at Arrowhead Stadium. The Monday Night Football broadcast registered the crowd noise at 142.2 decibels, the loudest in NFL history -- without the benefit of a dome to hold in the noise. To put that in perspective, the "threshold of pain" is usually considered to be 120 decibels.
September 29, 2015: The Los Angeles Dodgers win their 3rd straight National League Western Division title, and away to their arch-rivals, no less. Clayton Kershaw pitches a 1-hit, 13-strikeout, 1-walk shutout, and the Giants beat the San Francisco Giants, 8-0 at AT&T Park. However, the Dodgers still have Don Mattingly as manager. The Curse of Donnie Baseball will strike again.
On this same day, across the Bay, the Oakland Athletics announce the hiring of Dr. Justine Siegal, to pitch batting practice for their off-season Instructional League team, in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, Arizona. This makes her the 1st female coach to be hired by a Major League Baseball team. This is the closest any woman has ever gotten to a major league roster. But she would be surpassed as such in 2020, when the Giants hired Alyssa Nakken as a conditioning coach, even giving her a uniform, Number 92.
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