They last won the World Series in 1988, 32 years ago. That's 4 full Presidencies (Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama) -- and, hopefully 5 (Trump).
In 1991, they missed the National League Western Division title by 1 game. Had the current format been in place then, the Atlanta Braves would have won the Eastern Division, and the Dodgers would have won the West.
In 1994, they were leading the NL West when the Strike hit. In 1995, they won the Division, and won the NL Wild Card in 1996, but got swept in the NL Division Series each time. They missed a Playoff berth by 2 games in 1997.
They didn't make the Playoffs again until 2004, winning the West, but lost the NLDS. They won the Wild Card in 2006, but got swept in the NLDS -- by the Mets. How low can you go? They won the West in 2008 and 2009, and swept the NLDS both times. But, each time, they lost the NL Championship Series to the Philadelphia Phillies.
They have made the Playoffs every season since 2013. That year, they lost the NLCS. In 2014 and 2015, they lost the NLDS -- in '15, again to the Mets. In 2016, they did something that no team had ever done: They lost an NLCS to the Chicago Cubs.
In 2017, they won 104 games (1 short of their franchise record, set in 1953 in Brooklyn), and finally won their 1st Pennant in 29 years. They beat the Houston Astros in Game 1, but in Game 2, at home, they blew a 2-run lead in the 8th inning, and lost in 11 innings.
In Houston, they lost Game 3, then won Game 4. Game 5 was wild: The Dodgers led 4-0 in the bottom of the 4th, led 7-4 in the bottom of the 5th, led 8-7 in the bottom of the 7th, trailed 12-9 in the top of the 9th, tied it, and then lost 13-12 in the 10th.
They won Game 6 at home, but fell behind 5-0 after 2 innings, and were never really in Game 7, losing 5-1. Two years later, it was revealed that the Astros had cheated, but the title was not stripped from the Astros and given to the Dodgers, or to anyone else.
The Dodgers won the Pennant again in 2018, and faced the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Aside from Game 3, the longest game in Series history, won on a home run by Max Muncy in the bottom of the 18th inning, the Dodgers didn't win a game in the Series. They had a 5th-inning lead in Game 2 and an 8th-inning lead in Game 4, but blew both. Since it was the Red Sox who beat them, we can presume the Dodgers were cheated out of a title this time, too.
In Game 5, again, they lost a clinching game 5-1 at home. And despite setting a new franchise record with 106 wins in 2019, they lost the NLDS.
So here they are, back in the World Series in 2020, the year of COVID-19, with American League Playoff games being played at Dodger Stadium, but NL Playoff games bweing played in Texas, and the entire World Series being played at Globe Life Field in Arlington, the ne home of the Texas Rangers, with fan admissions limited to 11,000-well-spaced fans.
Since 2010, the key figure for the Dodgers has been lefthanded starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw. In regular-season play, he is 175-76, for a winning percentage of .697. If he can maintain this, it would break a record held by the late Whitey Ford. His ERA is 2.43, which would also put him ahead of Whitey and make him 1st among pitchers in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era.
His ERA is 158, highest among active pitchers. His WHIP is 1.003, lowest among active pitchers. He has struck out 2,526 batters, made 8 All-Star Games, won 3 NL Cy Young Awards, and was named NL Most Valuable Player in 2014. At age 32, his Hall of Fame resume isn't yet ironclad, but it's pretty strong.
But, as with Alex Rodriguez until 2009, his postseason record is the elephant in the room. In fact, a year ago, I even wrote a post titled "Clayton Kershaw Is the A-Rod of Pitchers." He's 6-4 in Division Series play, 3-6 in the League Championship Series, and, coming into this year's Fall Classic, he'd been 1-2 in the World Series. His ERAs in each round are as follows: 4.02, 4.84 and 5.40.
So the Dodgers as a team, and Kershaw as an individual, really needed to complete redemption arcs s they faced the Tampa Bay Rays in this World Series.
Kershaw certainly did his job in Game 1, allowing just 1 run over 6 innings, while Cody Bellinger (son of former Yankee Clay Bellinger) and Mookie Betts (who helped the Red Sox beat the Dodgers in the '18 Series) hit home runs, and the Dodgers won 8-3.
Dodger manager Dave Roberts, one of the heroes of the 2004 Red Sox title run, now manages the Dodgers, and he blew it in Game 2, starting Tony Gonsolin, who got knocked out of the box in the 2nd inning. The Rays won 6-4. The Dodgers jumped out to a 5-00 lead in Game 3, and coasted to a 6-2 win.
Game 4 was looking good for the Dodgers. They led 4-2 going into the bottom of the 6th. Then the Rays took a 5-4 lead. The Dodgers came back as well, and led 7-6 going into the bottom of the 9th. They had the Rays down to their last strike.
But Kenley Jansen, who had already blown 3 saves in World Series play, was on the mound. He had already allowed a single to Kevin Kiermaier. Cliche Alert: Walks can kill you. Jansen walked Randy Arozrena, putting the tying run on 2nd and the winning run on 1st.
Then came the weirdest last play of a World Series game since the interference call at the end of Game 3 in 2013. Jansen gave up a single to Brett Phillips. Chris Taylor, who had started the game in left field but was now in center, ran over to field the ball, and bobbled it. Kiermaier scored easily. Muncy, in right field, picked up the ball and threw it home.
But, while the Dodgers' catcher is named Will Smith and he lives in Los Angeles, he's no resh Prince, of Bel Air or anywhere else. Muncy's throw reached him, and Arozarena should have been a dead duck at the plate, because he'd tripped and fallen. He was perhaps 2 seconds -- and 1 Dodger extra-inning run -- away from being the biggest goat in the history of Tampa Bay sports.
Except Smith botched the throw, and it bounced off his glove and rolled away. Arozarena scored anyway. Final core: Rays 8, Dodgers 7.
This was the 1st World Series game to end on an error since 1986 Game 6, the Bill Buckner Game. But this is the 1st time I have ever seen a game, at any level, at any time of year, end on two errors.
So now, the Dodgers as a whole needed to redeem themselves; and, individually, so did Kershaw, Gonsolin, Jansen, Taylor and Smith -- and manager Roberts.
Kershaw got his chance immediately, starting Game 5. He pitched into the 6th inning, and got home runs from Joc Pederson in the 2nd and Muncy in the 5th. It made me think that Muncy is trying to becoming the Jim Leyritz of his generation. This time, the L.A. bullpen got the job done, and the Dodgers won, 4-2.
The Dodgers are now 27 outs away from winning their 6th World Series in Los Angeles. Counting the 1955 World Series and their pre-World Series titles in Brooklyn, it would be their 10th World Champoinship.
But they've got to get that one more win first. Even without a travel day being necessary, Game 6 won't be until tomorrow night. If a Game 7 is necessary, it will be on Wednesday night.
Don't think that Roberts isn't already considering using Kershaw for a few innings on 2 days' rest, which may be why he took him out in the 6th in Game 5. Given the Dodgers' postseason bullpen issues since 2013 -- hell, since 1995 -- it might be poetic justice to have Kershaw on the mound to get the final out.
Imagine that: Me, a Yankee Fan and the grandson of a Brooklyn Dodger fan, rooting for the Los Angeles baseball team. Well, I hate Florida. At least, until November 3. I'll reassess after the election, which is now just 8 days away.
*
October 26, 1697: John Peter Zenger is born in Impflingen, in what was then the Holy Roman Empire, now in the State of Rhineland-Palatinate of Germany. His family moved to New York in 1710, and he became a printer. In 1733, he began printing The New York Weekly Journal, which voiced opinions critical of the British-appointed colonial governor, William Cosby. (Sheesh, even then, guys named William Cosby were trouble.) In 1734, Zenger was arrested for libel.
His lawyers won the case, and established the precedent in American law that a statement is not to be considered libel if it can be proven true. A jury acquitted him after deliberating for only 10 minutes. He lived on until 1746, and has remained a hero in the story of freedom of the press. Without him, the Journal went out of business in 1751.
October 26, 1757: Charles Pinckney is born in Charleston, South Carolina. Like the Carolinas themselves, Charleston was named not for him but for England's King Charles I. He served in the Continental Army at the Siege of Savannah, and when the British captured Charleston, they held him as a prisoner of war until the war ended.
He was returned to the Continental Congress, and served at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. On the one hand, he was responsible for putting in the words banning any religious test for public office in America. On the other hand, he was also responsible for inserting the Fugitive Slave Law into the Constitution.
He was elected Governor of South Carolina, and then to the U.S. Senate. President Thomas Jefferson appointed him U.S. Minister to Spain. He died in 1824.
His first cousin once removed, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, was also a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and was the Federalist Party's nominee for President against Jefferson in 1804 and James Madison in 1808.
October 26, 1800, 220 years ago: Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke is born in Parchim, Germany. For 30 years, he was the Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army, and, with his fascination with railroads, used them to move troops and equipment more effectively than any military leader on Earth before him. In so doing, he led Prussia to victory in the Second Schleswig, Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian Wars, making the unification of Germany in 1871 possible.
Perhaps more than any other individual, he is responsible for giving the German Army, especially within Germany itself, the image of being well-organized and unbeatable, a reputation that somehow survived World War I, in which his nephew, Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, began as commander of the Army. They are historically known as Moltke the Elder and Moltke the Younger, respectively. The elder lived until 1891.
October 26, 1806: John Graves Simcoe dies in Exeter, Devon, England at age 54. In Canada, he is known as the founder of Fort York, what became the city of Toronto. In America, he is remembered for his battles against George Washington: Losing the Siege of Boston, assisting Lord Howe in the conquest of New York, winning the Battle of Brandywine, losing the Battle of Monmouth, and helping to lose the Battle of Yorktown.
In the TV series Turn: Washington's Spies, he was played by Samuel Roukin as one of the show's main villains, but the surviving evidence does not back up the show's portrayal of him as sadistic.
October 26, 1824: Andrew Jackson finishes 1st in the Presidential election, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral Vote. But he doesn't get a majority of either: The Electoral Vote goes 99 for Jackson, America's greatest living military hero, and a servant of Tennessee in both houses of Congress; 84 for John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State to outgoing President James Monroe, and the son of President John Adams; 41 for William H. Crawford, then the Secretary of the Treasury, a former Secetary of War, and a former Senator from Georgia; and 37 for Henry Clay, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives, from Kentucky.
According to the Constitution of the United States, this throws the election into said House. Crawford dropped out due to ill health. Clay threw his support to Adams, and Adams won 87-74, making him the 6th President of the United States. Adams then appointed Clay to be his Secretary of State -- at the time, tantamount to being chosen as heir apparent. (Adams had so served Monroe, Monroe had so served Madison, Madison had so served Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson had so served George Washington, though was not his immediate successor.)
Jackson and his supporters cried foul: The term "corrupt bargain" entered the American lexicon. But despite his anger, Jackson did the right thing: Instead of acting like an ass, like Donald Trump has done, he went home, and said little, and let his supporters paint him as the wronged man. This allowed him to paint himself as the reasonable alternative, provided that Adams' Presidency did not go well.
It didn't. By most standards, Adams' Presidency was a disaster. Jackson rode a wave of popular frenzy and won the rematch, and defeated Clay in 1832. Clay would run again in 1844, losing for a 3rd time.
Jackson and his supporters cried foul: The term "corrupt bargain" entered the American lexicon. But despite his anger, Jackson did the right thing: Instead of acting like an ass, like Donald Trump has done, he went home, and said little, and let his supporters paint him as the wronged man. This allowed him to paint himself as the reasonable alternative, provided that Adams' Presidency did not go well.
It didn't. By most standards, Adams' Presidency was a disaster. Jackson rode a wave of popular frenzy and won the rematch, and defeated Clay in 1832. Clay would run again in 1844, losing for a 3rd time.
October 26, 1825: The Erie Canal opens, connecting Buffalo on the Niagara River with Albany on the Hudson River, and thus connecting the Great Lakes to New York City. This goes on to make New York the biggest and richest city in the country, but it also enriches Great Lakes cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. It also makes the sports teams eventually founded there commercially viable.
October 26, 1859: Frank Gibson Selee is born in Amherst, New Hampshire. He never played professional baseball, but managed the Boston Beaneaters (forerunners of the Atlanta Braves) to National League Pennants in 1891, 1892, 1893, 1897 and 1898.
He moved on to the Chicago Cubs, but was overcome with tuberculosis in 1905, and replaced by 1st baseman Frank Chance, who then won the next 3 Pennants. He died in 1909, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999. He has also been elected to the New Hampshire Sports Hall of Fame.
October 26, 1860, 160 years ago: Frank Boardman Eaton is born in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1875, he went west, and became one of the best shooters around, earning him the nickname "Pistol Pete." He not only survived the worst of the West, he lived until 1958.
His nickname would later be used for sports legends Harold Reiser and Pete Maravich, and for the mascots at Oklahoma State, New Mexico State, and the University of Wyoming.
October 26, 1863: The Football Association is formed at the Freemasons Tavern in Holborn, Central London. Although there were football clubs (soccer teams) in England already (and a few of these are still in operation, though most on an amateur level), the rules of the game across the country were not uniform. So the founding of the FA is considered the "birthday" of English football.
The meeting was held after Ebenezer Cobb Morley, chairman of Barnes Football Club in South London, and possessor of a name the still-living Charles Dickens could have thought up had Morley not been born in 1831, before Dickens was ever published, wrote a letter to Bell's Life, a London newspaper, suggesting that football should have a unified set of rules.
Morley drafted the first "Laws of the Game," was hired as the FA's 1st secretary, and its 2nd president, serving from 1867 to 1874. And he was still a player, though 35 years old: He played for Barnes against Richmond in the 1st game played under his rules. (As opposed to Alexander Cartwright, who, in 1846, was the umpire in the 1st non-intrasquad baseball game played under the rules he has been widely credited with writing.)
Morley was a lawyer, was also active in rowing, and later served as a member of the Surrey County council and a Justice of the Peace. He died in 1924.
October 26, 1866: Joseph Andrews Sommers is born in Cleveland. A catcher, "Pete" Sommers played in the major leagues from 1887 to 1890, including brief stays with the American Association's New York Metroplitans (yes, they were known as the Mets for short) and the National League's New York Giants. He died in 1908, by accidnetally poisoning himself: He didn't know that the butter he was eating had expired years earlier.
October 26, 1867: Parke Asel Wilson is born in Keithsburg, Illinois, in the "Quad Cities" region centered on Davenport, Iowa. A catcher, Parke played for the Giants from 1893 to 1899, but as only a starter in 1896. He batted .265, and lived until 1934.
October 26, 1868: A crowd of 10‚000 is at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn to see the Mutual Club of New York capture the national amateur baseball championship of the year by defeating the Atlantics of Brooklyn for the 2nd time‚ 28-17.
This is the 1st time that a New York City club has won a postseason series designed to crown the national champions of baseball – or, if you prefer, the “World Champions.” However, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings declare themselves openly professional next year, it makes this the last "world championship" won by an amateur baseball team.
October 26, 1870, 150 years ago: In a rematch of the game that finally ended their unbeaten streak at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn the previous June, the Cincinnati Red Stockings take on the Atlantics of Brooklyn‚ on neutral ground in Philadelphia. Led by 1st baseman Joe Start, the Atlantics score 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th to beat the mighty Reds‚ 11-7.
This was, effectively, the end of the 1st era of organized baseball, the all-amateur era. The next season, the National Association, the 1st professional league, began play. The Boston Red Stockings were formed, taking about half of the Cincinnati players, and they continued to dominate baseball in the 1870s. The National League came along in 1876. The Boston club won NA Pennants in 1872, '73, '74 and '75, and NL Pennants in 1877 and '78, before poachings from other teams finally forced them off their perch. They won just 1 Pennant between 1878 and 1891, before starting a new dynasty.
The Atlantics weren't so lucky, as they refused to join the NA, and lost most of their good players to that league. They continued to play an independent schedule until folding in 1882, baseball's first great team (founded in 1855) going out not with a bang, but with a whimper.
It would be the late 1880s before Brooklyn had another championship-quality team, the one that would eventually become the Dodgers. While Brooklyn outpaced Manhattan in the 1860s and the early 1870s, it would be the other way around until the late 1890s. The Dodgers (then the Superbas) won Pennants in 1899 and 1900.
But in 1902, John McGraw became Giants manager, and Manhattan ruled the City (with the brief exception of the 1916 and 1920 Brooklyn Pennants) until the original Yankee Stadium opened in The Bronx in 1923, and the northernmost Borough ruled until the 1969 Met Miracle. So Queens ruled NYC baseball in the first half of the 1970s and the latter half of the 1980s. Other than that, it's been all Bronx since the end of the Harding Administration. The Mets' 2015 Pennant and 2016 Wild Card berth hasn't changed that.
October 26, 1877: What we would later call "Major League Baseball" suffers its 1st scandal. Charles Chase, vice president of the club known as the Louisville Eclipse, confronts George Hall‚ the National League home run leader in 1876 with 5‚ and pitcher Jim Devlin with charges that they threw road games in August and September of this past season.
Both admit to throwing non-league games -- an exhibition game in Lowell‚ Massachusetts on August 30, and another in Pittsburgh on September 3 -- and implicate teammates Al Nichols and Bill Craver. Hall implicates Devlin, saying that the 2 helped in losses to the NL's Cincinnati Reds (no connection to the current team of that name) on September 6, and to the minor league Indianapolis Blues on September 24‚ but he argues, that since the Reds were about to be suspended and the games nullified‚ it amounted to an exhibition game. The accused players will end up being permanently banned from baseball.
Also on this day, Eustace James Newton is born in Indianapolis. A pitcher, "Doc" Newton pitched in the major leagues from 1900 to 1909, including 1905 to 1990 with the New York Highlanders, the team that became the Yankees in 1913. His career record was 54-72, and he died in 1931.
*
October 26, 1881: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the initials stood for "Old Kindersley") is fought in Tombstone, Arizona Territory -- actually on Fremont Street, a couple of blocks from where the Corral was.
October 26, 1881: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the initials stood for "Old Kindersley") is fought in Tombstone, Arizona Territory -- actually on Fremont Street, a couple of blocks from where the Corral was.
While the Earp brothers and Dr. John Holliday were no angels -- by the standards of the time, the Earps were a lot like a Mob family (just as Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, killed in the New Mexico Territory earlier that year, was essentially a hitman) -- the Clanton Gang, a.k.a. "The Cowboys," was worse. So if there were any "good guys" in this fight, it was the Earps, and they won.
For the record: Wyatt Earp was not hit, Morgan Earp was hit in the shoulder but recovered quickly, Virgil Earp was shot through the calf and also recovered quickly, and Doc Holliday (a dentist, so it wasn't just a nickname) was saved when a bullet hit his holster, allowing him to escape with only a bruise; Cowboys leader Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne were both unarmed, and ran away from the scene without being hit, while the other 3 -- Tom's brother Billy Clanton and the brothers Frank and Tom McLaury -- were killed. (Frank was 33, Tom was 28, Billy Clanton just 19.)
As was the case in the major cities of the East in those days, there was a partisan divide reflected in competing newspapers. The Tombstone Nugget took the Cowboys' side, saying, "Blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttle cock." The Tombstone Epitaph (one of the best newspaper names ever) took the Earps' side, saying, "The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the Marshal was entirely justified in his efforts to disarm these men, and that being fired upon they had to defend themselves which they did most bravely."
Since the Epitaph had gotten the sanction of the Associated Press, that's the version that the public outside Arizona would come to accept as the truth. The coroner's report backed it up, essentially proving that Billy Clanton did not have his hands raised, thus making Ike Clanton a liar when he said Billy was trying to surrender, thus vindicating the Earps from the charge that it was murder instead of self-defense.
It didn't help the Cowboys' case that none of them lived past 1887 (Ike was shot while resisting arrest for stealing a horse, age 40; Billy Claiborne was killed by Frank Leslie a year after the Corral shootout, just 22), while both Wyatt and Virgil Earp lived into the 20th Century, with Wyatt spreading tall tales about his deeds all the way up to his death in 1929, 48 years after the shootout. (He was 80. Virgil died in 1905, age 62.)
And while there would be setbacks -- in the next year, Morgan would be killed (30) and Virgil badly wounded -- today, the Clantons would be forgotten if things had been settled peacefully. Then again, so might the Earps and Doc Holliday. (The Doc was already suffering from tuberculosis, and died in 1887, age 36. His last words were a comment on the fact that he was dying in bed, with bare feet, rather than in a gunfight with his boots on: "This is funny.")
The incident inspired the films My Darling Clementine in 1946, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, and both Wyatt Earp and Tombstone in 1994. It also inspired, ironically, TV science fiction, first with an episode of Doctor Who in 1966; and, more recently, with Wynonna Earp, with a supernaturally-immortal Holliday helping Wyatt's great-great-granddaughters fight monsters (and having a baby with the titular Wynonna, a choice forced on the scriptwriters by star Melanie Scrofano's real-life pregnancy).
In the 1983-84 TV season, NBC aired a series titled The Rousters, starring Chad Everett as Wyatt Earp III, who ran both a carnival and a bounty-hunting business. In spite of that show and the later Wynonna Earp, in real life, Wyatt is not known to have had any children.
DeForest Kelley played Ike Clanton in a TV version of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on a 1955 episode of You Are There, played Morgan Earp in the 1957 film adaptation, and in the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun," his Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy was forced by an alien to stand in for Tom McLaury.
That episode nearly aired on the anniversary: October 25, 1968. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) was forced to stand in for Ike Clanton, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) as the considerably younger Billy Clanton, Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as Frank McLaury, and Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) as Billy Claiborne.
Tombstone, founded in 1879, was a frontier boomtown of 5,300 people, due to nearby silver mines, with a population of about 14,000 by the time of the gunfight -- a huge amount for a town in the West in that era. An 1886 fire ended the boomtown status, but its status as a County Seat saved it from being completely abandoned by the time Arizona gained Statehood in 1912.
In 1964, Detroit-based investors bought the Corral and several other historic buildings, and turned Tombstone into a "living history museum," a Wild West counterpart to Colonial Williamsburg. They also bought The Tombstone Epitaph. In 1975, the daily paper was converted into a weekly. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona.
Today, the population of "The Town Too Tough to Die" is listed as 1,380 -- and they may get that population doubled in tourists. It is 184 miles southeast of Phoenix, 70 miles southeast of Tucson, and 35 miles north of the Mexican border.
*
October 26, 1895, 125 years ago: West Virginia University defeats the Western University of Pennsylvania, 8-0 in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1908, WUP becomes the University of Pittsburgh. These 2 schools, about 80 miles apart, one "city" and one "country," develop a deep rivalry that becomes known as the Backyard Brawl.
From the founding of the Big East Conference (for football) in 1991 until 2011, Pitt and West Virginia were league rivals. Because they are no longer in the same league -- the Panthers went to the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Mountaineers to the Big Twelve -- they haven't played since 2011. They have agreed to a 4-year renewal of the series, starting in 2022. Until then, Pitt leads the series, 61-40-3. And their 2017 basketball game was the 1st such game between them since 2012.
The Panthers-Mountaineers rivalry is mean! (How mean is it?) In 1994, the public-address announcer at Pitt Stadium announced, "There is no smoking allowed inside Pitt Stadium, and that includes corncob pipes!" He later announced, "There is a tractor in the parking lot with its lights on, West Virginia license plate EIEIO!" (As if great swaths of Pennsylvania aren't rural as hell, hence the term "Pennsyltucky.")
October 26, 1898: Harold Oliver (no middle name) is born in Selkirk, Manitoba. A right wing, Harry "Pee-Wee" Oliver helped the Calgary Tigers win the West Coast Hockey League title in 1924, although they lost the Stanley Cup Finals to the NHL Champion Montreal Canadiens.
He helped the Boston Bruins win the Stanley Cup in 1929, dethroning the defending champion New York Rangers. He retired in 1937, after 19 seasons, was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1967, and died in 1985. He is also a member of the Manitoba Sports and Manitoba Hockey Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1899: William Julius Johnson is born in Snow Hill, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and grows up in Wilmington, Delaware. Without question, "Judy" Johnson is the greatest baseball player ever to come from the State of Delaware.
So why are some of you saying, "I've never heard of him"? Because he played long ago, and in the Negro Leagues. Even those of you who have heard of him may be asking, "Why was he called Judy?" Because he resembled an earlier Negro League player, Judy Gans of the Chicago American Giants. I don't know why he was called "Judy." I thought perhaps his real name was Jude, but it was Robert.
Judy Johnson starred in the 1920s for the closest Negro League team to Wilmington, the Philadelphia Hilldales. He was considered the best-fielding 3rd baseman in Negro League history, and 4 times hit .390 or higher, once hitting .401. Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, once told Johnson, "If you were a white boy, you could name your own price."
In 1930, as a player-coach for the Homestead Grays, Johnson discovered the legendary slugging catcher Josh Gibson. Johnson and Gibson, as well as Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell, played for the powerful Pittsburgh Crawfords of the mid-1930s. Johnson's play, and his proximity to the Pittsburgh Pirates, led to easy comparisons to their .300-hitting, slick-fielding hot-corner man, then considered the best one in the majors: Just as Gibson was called "the Black Babe Ruth," and 1st baseman Buck Leonard was called "the Black Lou Gehrig," Judy Johnson was called "the black Pie Traynor."
Once the color barrier was broken in the majors by Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, Mack signed Johnson as the 1st black person in the front office of any major league team. Mack didn't promote a black player to the majors until 1949, but that's 8 years sooner than the Phillies did, playing in the same ballpark, let alone city.
Johnson moved to Kansas City with the A's, but the Phillies, much slower to integrate than the A's,
For the record: Wyatt Earp was not hit, Morgan Earp was hit in the shoulder but recovered quickly, Virgil Earp was shot through the calf and also recovered quickly, and Doc Holliday (a dentist, so it wasn't just a nickname) was saved when a bullet hit his holster, allowing him to escape with only a bruise; Cowboys leader Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne were both unarmed, and ran away from the scene without being hit, while the other 3 -- Tom's brother Billy Clanton and the brothers Frank and Tom McLaury -- were killed. (Frank was 33, Tom was 28, Billy Clanton just 19.)
As was the case in the major cities of the East in those days, there was a partisan divide reflected in competing newspapers. The Tombstone Nugget took the Cowboys' side, saying, "Blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttle cock." The Tombstone Epitaph (one of the best newspaper names ever) took the Earps' side, saying, "The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the Marshal was entirely justified in his efforts to disarm these men, and that being fired upon they had to defend themselves which they did most bravely."
Since the Epitaph had gotten the sanction of the Associated Press, that's the version that the public outside Arizona would come to accept as the truth. The coroner's report backed it up, essentially proving that Billy Clanton did not have his hands raised, thus making Ike Clanton a liar when he said Billy was trying to surrender, thus vindicating the Earps from the charge that it was murder instead of self-defense.
It didn't help the Cowboys' case that none of them lived past 1887 (Ike was shot while resisting arrest for stealing a horse, age 40; Billy Claiborne was killed by Frank Leslie a year after the Corral shootout, just 22), while both Wyatt and Virgil Earp lived into the 20th Century, with Wyatt spreading tall tales about his deeds all the way up to his death in 1929, 48 years after the shootout. (He was 80. Virgil died in 1905, age 62.)
And while there would be setbacks -- in the next year, Morgan would be killed (30) and Virgil badly wounded -- today, the Clantons would be forgotten if things had been settled peacefully. Then again, so might the Earps and Doc Holliday. (The Doc was already suffering from tuberculosis, and died in 1887, age 36. His last words were a comment on the fact that he was dying in bed, with bare feet, rather than in a gunfight with his boots on: "This is funny.")
The incident inspired the films My Darling Clementine in 1946, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, and both Wyatt Earp and Tombstone in 1994. It also inspired, ironically, TV science fiction, first with an episode of Doctor Who in 1966; and, more recently, with Wynonna Earp, with a supernaturally-immortal Holliday helping Wyatt's great-great-granddaughters fight monsters (and having a baby with the titular Wynonna, a choice forced on the scriptwriters by star Melanie Scrofano's real-life pregnancy).
In the 1983-84 TV season, NBC aired a series titled The Rousters, starring Chad Everett as Wyatt Earp III, who ran both a carnival and a bounty-hunting business. In spite of that show and the later Wynonna Earp, in real life, Wyatt is not known to have had any children.
DeForest Kelley played Ike Clanton in a TV version of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on a 1955 episode of You Are There, played Morgan Earp in the 1957 film adaptation, and in the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun," his Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy was forced by an alien to stand in for Tom McLaury.
That episode nearly aired on the anniversary: October 25, 1968. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) was forced to stand in for Ike Clanton, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) as the considerably younger Billy Clanton, Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as Frank McLaury, and Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) as Billy Claiborne.
Tombstone, founded in 1879, was a frontier boomtown of 5,300 people, due to nearby silver mines, with a population of about 14,000 by the time of the gunfight -- a huge amount for a town in the West in that era. An 1886 fire ended the boomtown status, but its status as a County Seat saved it from being completely abandoned by the time Arizona gained Statehood in 1912.
In 1964, Detroit-based investors bought the Corral and several other historic buildings, and turned Tombstone into a "living history museum," a Wild West counterpart to Colonial Williamsburg. They also bought The Tombstone Epitaph. In 1975, the daily paper was converted into a weekly. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona.
Today, the population of "The Town Too Tough to Die" is listed as 1,380 -- and they may get that population doubled in tourists. It is 184 miles southeast of Phoenix, 70 miles southeast of Tucson, and 35 miles north of the Mexican border.
*
October 26, 1895, 125 years ago: West Virginia University defeats the Western University of Pennsylvania, 8-0 in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1908, WUP becomes the University of Pittsburgh. These 2 schools, about 80 miles apart, one "city" and one "country," develop a deep rivalry that becomes known as the Backyard Brawl.
From the founding of the Big East Conference (for football) in 1991 until 2011, Pitt and West Virginia were league rivals. Because they are no longer in the same league -- the Panthers went to the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Mountaineers to the Big Twelve -- they haven't played since 2011. They have agreed to a 4-year renewal of the series, starting in 2022. Until then, Pitt leads the series, 61-40-3. And their 2017 basketball game was the 1st such game between them since 2012.
The Panthers-Mountaineers rivalry is mean! (How mean is it?) In 1994, the public-address announcer at Pitt Stadium announced, "There is no smoking allowed inside Pitt Stadium, and that includes corncob pipes!" He later announced, "There is a tractor in the parking lot with its lights on, West Virginia license plate EIEIO!" (As if great swaths of Pennsylvania aren't rural as hell, hence the term "Pennsyltucky.")
October 26, 1898: Harold Oliver (no middle name) is born in Selkirk, Manitoba. A right wing, Harry "Pee-Wee" Oliver helped the Calgary Tigers win the West Coast Hockey League title in 1924, although they lost the Stanley Cup Finals to the NHL Champion Montreal Canadiens.
He helped the Boston Bruins win the Stanley Cup in 1929, dethroning the defending champion New York Rangers. He retired in 1937, after 19 seasons, was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1967, and died in 1985. He is also a member of the Manitoba Sports and Manitoba Hockey Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1899: William Julius Johnson is born in Snow Hill, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and grows up in Wilmington, Delaware. Without question, "Judy" Johnson is the greatest baseball player ever to come from the State of Delaware.
So why are some of you saying, "I've never heard of him"? Because he played long ago, and in the Negro Leagues. Even those of you who have heard of him may be asking, "Why was he called Judy?" Because he resembled an earlier Negro League player, Judy Gans of the Chicago American Giants. I don't know why he was called "Judy." I thought perhaps his real name was Jude, but it was Robert.
Judy Johnson starred in the 1920s for the closest Negro League team to Wilmington, the Philadelphia Hilldales. He was considered the best-fielding 3rd baseman in Negro League history, and 4 times hit .390 or higher, once hitting .401. Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, once told Johnson, "If you were a white boy, you could name your own price."
In 1930, as a player-coach for the Homestead Grays, Johnson discovered the legendary slugging catcher Josh Gibson. Johnson and Gibson, as well as Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell, played for the powerful Pittsburgh Crawfords of the mid-1930s. Johnson's play, and his proximity to the Pittsburgh Pirates, led to easy comparisons to their .300-hitting, slick-fielding hot-corner man, then considered the best one in the majors: Just as Gibson was called "the Black Babe Ruth," and 1st baseman Buck Leonard was called "the Black Lou Gehrig," Judy Johnson was called "the black Pie Traynor."
Once the color barrier was broken in the majors by Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, Mack signed Johnson as the 1st black person in the front office of any major league team. Mack didn't promote a black player to the majors until 1949, but that's 8 years sooner than the Phillies did, playing in the same ballpark, let alone city.
Johnson moved to Kansas City with the A's, but the Phillies, much slower to integrate than the A's,
allowed him to "come home" as one of their scouts, and for them he discovered the man then known as Richie Allen. Dick Allen may have been as talented as Johnson's other great find, Josh Gibson, but he was also a parallel for Gibson in the personal difficulties department, thankfully managing to overcome these as Gibson did not, and live, thus far, to the age of 74.
Johnson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and was the 1st person elected to the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame, whose display is located at the home field of the State's only professional sports team, the Wilmington Blue Rocks of the Class A Carolina League. The ballpark is named Judy Johnson Field at Daniel S. Frawley Stadium. (Frawley was the Mayor who brought the team in and got the ballpark built.)
Johnson did not live to see this honor, dying in 1989 at the age of 89. His daughter married Billy Bruton, an All-Star outfielder for the Milwaukee Braves, and another player that Johnson discovered.
*
October 26, 1902: Joseph Paul Zukauskas is born in Binghamton, New York, and moved to Boston after serving in the U.S. Navy, having tried to enlist to fight in World War I but being turned down due to his age, finally being let in after the war. It was in the Navy that he learned how to box.
Although a Lithuanian-American, he tapped into his adopted hometown's Irish fan base by changing his name to the more Hibernian-sounding Jack Sharkey. He was the last major fighter beaten by Jack Dempsey, in the 1st heavyweight fight at Yankee Stadium, in 1927, in between Dempsey's 2 title fight defeats to Gene Tunney.
In 1930, Sharkey came back to Yankee Stadium to fight Max Schmeling, the winner to receive the title vacated by Tunney's retirement. But in the 4th round, Sharkey hit Schmeling with a low blow, and was disqualified. For the 1st and (so far) only time, a major boxing title changed hands as the result of a disqualification.
In 1932, Schmeling and Sharkey fought again, this time at the Madison Square Garden Bowl in Long Island City, Queens, and Sharkey won a controversial split decision to take the title. And he never successfully defended the title, as just 1 year later, he fought for the 1st time as sitting champion, and lost (see the 1906 entry).
Like many of boxing's former champions, he later opened a restaurant in his hometown. He also became a boxing and wrestling referee and an accomplished fly fisherman, and occasionally fished with another Boston sports legend, Ted Williams. When asked if he liked fishing better than boxing, he said, "It doesn't pay as much, but then, the fish don't hit back." He died in 1994, age 91.
October 26, 1906: Primo Carnera is born in Sequals, Udine, Italy. The only citizen of Italy ever to win the heavyweight title, he won it by knocking Sharkey out at the MSG Bowl in 1933. Had Don King promoted the fight, he wouldn't have held it on June 29, he'd have held it on October 26 and called it "The Birthday Bash."
Carnera remains the tallest and heaviest man ever to win an undisputed boxing world championship, although there have recently been bigger men, Russians and Ukrainians, who have won the divided, quite disputed heavyweight title.
But he, too, defended the title only once, also at MSG Bowl, and was knocked out by Max Baer in 1934, leading someone to say about the Bowl, "The place is jinxed!" Baer, too, would wait almost exactly one year to defend his title, and do it at the Bowl, and lost in one of boxing's great upsets to Jim Braddock. "Cinderella Man" Braddock was smarter: He waited a whole 2 years, and then defended his title in Chicago's Comiskey Park instead of Long Island City, but it didn't work, as he got clobbered by Joe Louis.
Carnera got to the top by a lot of boxers "taking dives," encouraged to do so by the Mob, who wanted an Italian heavyweight champ, as Carnera was not very bright and easily manipulated. The 1st time there was an Italian-American heavyweight champ, Rocky Marciano, he didn't need no help from the wiseguys. In fact, they idolized him, because he was what they wanted to be: The toughest guy in the world.
Carnera moved to Los Angeles, and became yet another boxer to open a restaurant, but ended up dying young, age 60, not because the Mob became unhappy with him, but because of diabetes and drinking.
Johnson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and was the 1st person elected to the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame, whose display is located at the home field of the State's only professional sports team, the Wilmington Blue Rocks of the Class A Carolina League. The ballpark is named Judy Johnson Field at Daniel S. Frawley Stadium. (Frawley was the Mayor who brought the team in and got the ballpark built.)
Johnson did not live to see this honor, dying in 1989 at the age of 89. His daughter married Billy Bruton, an All-Star outfielder for the Milwaukee Braves, and another player that Johnson discovered.
*
October 26, 1902: Joseph Paul Zukauskas is born in Binghamton, New York, and moved to Boston after serving in the U.S. Navy, having tried to enlist to fight in World War I but being turned down due to his age, finally being let in after the war. It was in the Navy that he learned how to box.
Although a Lithuanian-American, he tapped into his adopted hometown's Irish fan base by changing his name to the more Hibernian-sounding Jack Sharkey. He was the last major fighter beaten by Jack Dempsey, in the 1st heavyweight fight at Yankee Stadium, in 1927, in between Dempsey's 2 title fight defeats to Gene Tunney.
In 1930, Sharkey came back to Yankee Stadium to fight Max Schmeling, the winner to receive the title vacated by Tunney's retirement. But in the 4th round, Sharkey hit Schmeling with a low blow, and was disqualified. For the 1st and (so far) only time, a major boxing title changed hands as the result of a disqualification.
In 1932, Schmeling and Sharkey fought again, this time at the Madison Square Garden Bowl in Long Island City, Queens, and Sharkey won a controversial split decision to take the title. And he never successfully defended the title, as just 1 year later, he fought for the 1st time as sitting champion, and lost (see the 1906 entry).
Like many of boxing's former champions, he later opened a restaurant in his hometown. He also became a boxing and wrestling referee and an accomplished fly fisherman, and occasionally fished with another Boston sports legend, Ted Williams. When asked if he liked fishing better than boxing, he said, "It doesn't pay as much, but then, the fish don't hit back." He died in 1994, age 91.
October 26, 1906: Primo Carnera is born in Sequals, Udine, Italy. The only citizen of Italy ever to win the heavyweight title, he won it by knocking Sharkey out at the MSG Bowl in 1933. Had Don King promoted the fight, he wouldn't have held it on June 29, he'd have held it on October 26 and called it "The Birthday Bash."
Carnera remains the tallest and heaviest man ever to win an undisputed boxing world championship, although there have recently been bigger men, Russians and Ukrainians, who have won the divided, quite disputed heavyweight title.
But he, too, defended the title only once, also at MSG Bowl, and was knocked out by Max Baer in 1934, leading someone to say about the Bowl, "The place is jinxed!" Baer, too, would wait almost exactly one year to defend his title, and do it at the Bowl, and lost in one of boxing's great upsets to Jim Braddock. "Cinderella Man" Braddock was smarter: He waited a whole 2 years, and then defended his title in Chicago's Comiskey Park instead of Long Island City, but it didn't work, as he got clobbered by Joe Louis.
Carnera got to the top by a lot of boxers "taking dives," encouraged to do so by the Mob, who wanted an Italian heavyweight champ, as Carnera was not very bright and easily manipulated. The 1st time there was an Italian-American heavyweight champ, Rocky Marciano, he didn't need no help from the wiseguys. In fact, they idolized him, because he was what they wanted to be: The toughest guy in the world.
Carnera moved to Los Angeles, and became yet another boxer to open a restaurant, but ended up dying young, age 60, not because the Mob became unhappy with him, but because of diabetes and drinking.
October 26, 1907: The Carlisle Indian School, with Jim Thorpe as a freshman, pulls off its 1st major upset, beating the University of Pennsylvania 26-6, before 20,00 people at the original version of Franklin Field. In 1911, they upset Harvard. In 1912, they upset Army.
October 26, 1908: Canada holds a federal election. It is the 1st in which Alberta and Saskatchewan, which gained the status of Province in 1905, can vote. The Liberal Party loses 4 seats in the House of Commons, but still holds a majority, so their Leader, Wilfrid Laurier, remains Prime Minister. It will take 3 more years before the Conservative Party can win a majority and make their leader, Robert Borden, the Prime Minister.
The Bank of Canada has included a portrait of Laurier, the 1st French-Canadian PM, on the $5 bill since 1972; and one of Borden, PM during World War I, on the $100 bill since 1975.
*
October 26, 1910, 110 years ago: The Washington Post headlines a rumored trade that, had it gone through, would have been the biggest in baseball history in terms of the one-for-one names involved, with Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators going to the Detroit Tigers for Ty Cobb.
Tigers president Frank Navin scoffs at the story‚ saying he would never trade Cobb‚ but praising Johnson "as the best pitcher in the country." Cobb was about to turn 24 and had just finished his 5th full season of baseball; Johnson was 23 and had just finished his 4th season. This would have been like trading Mike Trout for Clayton Kershaw in 2013.
Also on this day, John Joseph Krol is born in Cleveland. Cardinal Krol was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, a period that included the construction of Veterans Stadium and The Spectrum, the 76ers' NBA Championships of 1967 and 1983, the Flyers' Stanley Cups of 1974 and 1975, the Phillies' World Series win in 1980, and Villanova's 1985 National Championship. He died in 1996.
October 26, 1911: The Philadelphia Athletics win their 2nd straight World Series. Chippewa pitcher Albert "Chief" Bender cruises to his second victory‚ a 4-hit 13-2 breeze. The A's cap the win with a 7-run 7th‚ battering three tired Giant hurlers‚ Red Ames‚ Hooks Wiltse‚ and Rube Marquard.
Overall‚ the Giants manage just 13 runs and a .175 batting average off Bender‚ Jack Coombs and Eddie Plank, gaining revenge for the Christy Mathewson-dominated Series of 1905 when the Giants embarrassed the A's.
Because of the NL's extended playing season‚ and a record 6-day rain delay, this is the latest ending ever for a World Series‚ and would remain so until the strike-delayed 1981 Series.
The last survivor of the 1911 A's was center fielder Amos Strunk, who lived until 1979.
Also on this day, Sidney Gillman (no middle name) is born in Minneapolis. With the Los Angeles Rams, Sid Gillman used the passing game of Norm Van Brocklin to Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch and Tom Fears to win an NFL Championship as an assistant coach in 1951 and a Western Division title as head coach in 1955.
He became the 1st head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1960 (they played their 1st season in Los Angeles before moving down the Coast), coaching quarterbacks like Jack Kemp, Tobin Rote and John Hadl, and receiver Lance Alworth, and reached 5 of the 1st 6 AFL Championship Games, in 1960, '61, '63, '64 and '65, winning in 1963 – still the only time in major league sports that a San Diego team has gone as far as their league allowed them to go. (They did not play the NFL Champion Chicago Bears, and if they had, it might have been the AFL's best chance to make a statement until Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Colts 5 years later.)
It was Gillman's wide-open passing game that helped to give the AFL its first positive reviews and its reputation as a League where anything could happen at any time, contrasting with the NFL, then comparatively very conservative despite having such quarterbacks as Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen and Bart Starr.
Gillman later served as an assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles, helping head coach Dick Vermeil develop Ron Jaworski, and with the Los Angeles Express of the USFL, where he helped to develop Steve Young.
NFL coaches who played or coached under him include Vermeil, George Allen, Al Davis, Chuck Noll and Chuck Knox. Coaches who played or coached under those men include: With Davis' Oakland Raiders, John Madden, Tom Flores, Art Shell, Bill Walsh and Jon Gruden; with Allen’s Redskins, Jack Pardee, Richie Petitbon and Joe Bugel; with Noll's Steelers, Bud Carson and Tony Dungy; with Vermeil's Eagles, Herman Edwards. Walsh's "coaching children," and thus Gillman's "grandchildren," include Mike Holmgren, Jim Fassel, Sam Wyche, George Seifert and Dennis Green; through them, Gillman's "great-grandchildren" include Andy Reid, John Fox, Mike Shanahan, Jeff Fisher, Brian Billick, Lovie Smith and Mike Tomlin.
Gillman was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983, one of the 1st primarily-AFL figures to be so honored. He is also a member of the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame and the San Diego Hall of Champions.
Also on this day, Mahalia Jackson (no middle name) is born in New Orleans. She is often regarded as the greatest singer of gospel music ever, of any race, of any gender, of any era. As far as I know, she had nothing to do with sports, but I want to mention her anyway.
She sang at the March On Washington in 1963, and, supposedly, saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was wrapping up his speech, and she remembered a previous speech of his, and said to him, "Martin, tell them about the dream." He did so, and a strong call for social justice became something larger than even all the people on that stage, which also included A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis, Daisy Bates, Rosa Parks, Walter Reuther, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee, Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, Mary Travers, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
If that story is true, then Mahalia performed a greater service to the human race than most people ever do to the God who created it, and to whom she sang so superbly.
October 26, 1916: Francois Mitterand is born. He was President of France from 1981 to 1995, and died in 1996.
October 26, 1917: Miller Huggins‚ a former "good-field, no-hit" 2nd baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, who managed the St. Louis Cardinals to a 3rd-place finish this season‚ is signed to manage the Yankees by owner Jacob Ruppert.
Co-owner Til Huston‚ who favored Brooklyn Dodger boss Wilbert Robinson for the job‚ has a falling out with partner Ruppert, and will sell his half interest to Ruppert in 1923. Huston had tried throughout the 3 men's common tenure to get rid of Huggins, to the point that, when Ruppert finally bought Huston out and announced it to the press, the next words out of his mouth were "Miller Huggins is my manager." And Huggins remained Yankee manager until his death in 1929, along the way leading the club to its 1st 6 Pennants and its 1st 3 World Championships.
October 26, 1921: Joseph Franklin Fulks is born in Birmingham, Kentucky. Jumpin' Joe starred at Murray State University in his home State, and they retired his Number 26. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II.
When the NBA was founded as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, he played for the Philadelphia Warriors, and averaged 23.2 points per game to become the league's 1st scoring champion. He led the Warriors to the 1st Championship of the league, beating the Chicago Stags 4 games to 2 in the Finals, clinching on April 22, 1947, at home at the Philadelphia Arena.
From the dawn of the league until Elgin Baylor's 64 points in a 1959 game, Fulks held the NBA single-game point-scoring record, topping out at 63 on February 10, 1949, against the Indianapolis Jets. He played in the 1st 2 NBA All-Star Games, in 1951 and 1952, and retired after the 1954 season.
He worked as the recreation director of the Kentucky State Penitentiary until March 21, 1976. Ironically, it was a crime outside the prison walls that killed him: His girlfriend, Roberta Bannister, had a son named Gregg, and they argued over a gun, and Gregg shot Joe with it. Joe was only 54 years old.
On a 1996 ESPN Classic broadcast, sports columnist and basketball historian Bob Ryan tried to put the pre-24-second-shot-clock era (1946-54) into perspective, and said, "I'm not gonna kid you: I don't think Jumpin' Joe Fulks makes it in today's NBA, except maybe as a 12th man."
Nevertheless, Fulks was named to the NBA's 25th Anniversary Team in 1971, and was posthumously elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978. He is also a member of the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. But the Warriors have not retired the Number 10 he wore for them. (They moved to the Bay Area in 1962, and the Syracuse Nationals became the Philadelphia 76ers the next season. The Sixers have retired 10, but for Maurice Cheeks, and they don't acknowledge the Dubs' achievements in their city.)
Also on this day, Roland Joseph McLenahan is born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. A defenseman, he was one of the players more or less frozen out by the NHL's 1942-67 6-team structure. He played 8 games for the Detroit Red Wings in 1946, but that was it. On the other hand, he played for minor-league teams in Washington, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo and Cincinnati from 1935 to 1957, and was a 4-time All-Star at that level.
In 1957-58, his 1st season after retiring as a player, he coached the Rochester Americans to the Calder Cup, the championship of the American Hockey League. He served as a scout with the Montreal Canadiens, and served his country and his Province in youth sports until his death in 1984. He was elected to the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, and that Hall gives out an annual Roly McLenahan Award to an outstanding amateur athlete from the Province.
Also on this day, Frances Scott Fitzgerald is born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She would be the only child born to either F. Scott Fitzgerald or his wife Zelda Sayre. "Scottie" became a journalist, writing for The Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine. She married twice, and had 4 children, all with her 1st husband, and died of cancer in 1986.
Also on this day, the Chicago Theatre opens, inside the Loop at 175 North State Street. The 3,880-seat theater was a big movie palace, straddling the silent and talking eras, and also featured live jazz, making it not at all a surprise when its famed marquee became the logo for the 2003 film version of the musical Chicago, which was set in 1927. Since 2007, it has been owned by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.
October 26, 1923: Thomas Giatano Glaviano is born in Sacramento. A 3rd baseman, he played for the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies from 1949 to 1953, batting .257. He died in 2004.
October 26, 1926: Richard Werner Bokelmann is born outside Chicago in Arlington Heights, Illinois. A pitcher, he had cups of coffee with the Cardinals in 1951, '52 and '53, finishing 3-4 with a 4.90 ERA. He died in 2019.)
October 26, 1928: Charles Edward Brown is born in San Luis Obispo, California. Ed Brown was one of the earliest in a long line of men who tried to follow Sid Luckman as the starting quarterback of the Chicago Bears, but didn't live up to the standard.
But he did make 2 Pro Bowls, and lead the Bears into the 1956 NFL Championship Game, where they, and especially he, got clobbered by the New York Giants. In 1963, he was named NFL Comeback Player of the Year for nearly getting the Pittsburgh Steelers into the Playoffs. He died in 2007, and the Bears just named him one of their 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players.
October 26, 1929: The Taming of the Shrew premieres, the 1st sound film of a play by William Shakespeare. It stars the movies' 1st great husband-and-wife team: Douglas Fairbanks Sr. plays Petruchio, and Mary Pickford plays Katherina.
Seating 92,000, it hosted the Cotton Bowl Classic from 1937 to 2009. It was home to Southern Methodist University football from 1932 to 1978, and SMU used it for home games again from 1995 to 1999. Two short-lived teams called the Dallas Texans used it, the NFL team of 1952 that became the Baltimore Colts the next year, and the AFL team of 1960 to 1962 that became the Kansas City Chiefs. Those Texans won the 1962 AFL Championship there.
It was the 1st home of the Dallas Cowboys, from 1960 to 1971, when Texas Stadium opened. The North American Soccer League's Dallas Tornado used it in 1967 and 1968, and the Major League Soccer team formerly known as the Dallas Burn, now just "FC Dallas," used it from 1996 to 2005.
Today, with both the Cowboys and the Cotton Bowl Classic playing at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the Cotton Bowl is mainly the host of 2 games: The annual Red River Rivalry between the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma every 2nd Saturday in October, during the Texas State Fair; and the Heart of Dallas Bowl.
Also on this day, Harry Payne Whitney dies at age 58. His fortune is estimated at $62.8 million -- about $979 million in today's money. He was a member of one of America's richest families, and had married into another, the Vanderbilts. He was a champion polo player and yacht racer, but his biggest contribution to sports was in horse racing.
His stable bred 12 winners of Triple Crown races, including 2 Horse of the Year honorees: Burgomaster in 1906, and Regret, the 1st filly to win the Kentucky Derby, in 1915. He was also the great uncle of the Mets' 1st owner, Joan Whitney Payson, who also bred champion horses.
Also on this day, Leslie Alan Richter is born in Fresno, California. A linebacker, he made 8 Pro Bowls, and helped the Los Angeles Rams reach the 1955 NFL Championship Game. He later ran Riverside International Raceway in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and served as a NASCAR executive. He died in 2010, reminding people of how great a football player he was, and was then posthumously elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was also elected to the College Football and Motorsports Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1931: Charles Comiskey dies of heart disease at age 72. One of the great players of the 1880s with the St. Louis Browns (forerunners of the Cardinals), he practically invented the way 1st base was played, and he was a major figure in the Players' League revolt of 1890.
But when offered the chance to start, own and run a team in the new American League in 1901, which became the Chicago White Sox, he betrayed the players who followed him by pinching pennies, much as later hockey greats Art Ross, Conn Smythe, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux would do.
Known as "the Old Roman" despite being of Irish descent, he built the ballpark that would bear his name, Comiskey Park, and built a franchise that would win 4 Pennants and 2 World Series in his lifetime. But he also indirectly caused, and made much worse, the greatest scandal in sports history, the Black Sox Scandal of 1919-21. His reputation as a great player and a smart, canny executive has been wiped out, replaced by one as a cheap, nasty old bastard.
On this same day, the Frankford Yellow Jackets defeat the Chicago Bears, 13–12 at Wrigley Field. Due to the Great Depression, this turned out to be the last game the Jackets ever played. The next day, the team's owner, the Frankford Athletic Association of Northeast Philadelphia, returned the franchise to the NFL, and the Frankford Yellow Jackets were out of business.
On July 9, 1933, former University of Pennsylvania football teammates Bert Bell and James Ludlow "Lud" Wray bought the territorial rights to a Philadelphia team from the NFL. And their new team, named the Eagles after the Blue Eagle symbol of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, at first wore the Jackets' colors, powder blue and gold, switching to green and white in 1954.
But they did not purchase the Yellow Jackets team itself, only the local rights to a team. As a result, the NFL does not consider the Eagles to be a continuation of the Jackets, and the Eagles do not claim the Jackets' 1926 NFL Championship as one of their titles, along with those they won in 1948, 1949, 1960 and 2017.
This 1931 game also marked the last time a Philadelphia-based NFL team would win an away game over the Bears until October 17, 1999, when the Eagles defeated the Bears 20–16 at Soldier Field.
Also on this day, Marshal Philippe Pétain, "The Lion of Verdun," perhaps the greatest French military hero of World War I, is given a ticker-tape parade in New York, 4 days after his Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, got one. Both of these parades would become an embarrassment in 1940, as both men collaborated with the Nazi conquest of France.
The Nazis named Pétain Chief of the French State, and he held that post until the liberation in 1944. Like Laval, he was tried for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. Unlike Laval, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, due to his age. He died in 1951, at 95.
October 26, 1933: Joseph Childress (no middle name) is born in Robertsdale, Alabama. A running back, Joe Childress played 10 seasons in the NFL, all with the same franchise. He was with the Chicago Cardinals when they played the 1st-ever game between NFL and CFL teams, a 55-26 win over the Toronto Argonauts at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto on August 5, 1959.
He was still with the Cardinals in 1960, when they moved to St. Louis, and when they played in the "Playoff Bowl" in 1964. A versatile player by the standards of his time, he finished his career with 2,210 yards rushing and 1,700 yards receiving. He later coached with the Houston Oilers, but developed cancer, and died in 1986, only 52. He was posthumously elected to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
October 26, 1934: Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith sells his shortstop and manager, Joe Cronin, to the Boston Red Sox for shortstop Lyn Lary and $225‚000 (about $4.4 million in today's money). Recently married to Mildred Robertson‚ Griffith's niece and adopted daughter‚ Cronin is signed to a 5-year contract, a real rarity in those days.
This trade not only helps return the Red Sox to contention for the first time since Harry Frazee sold off several stars to the Yankees from 1919 to 1923, but it also helps wreck the Senators franchise, which had won the Pennant just 1 year earlier: For 77 years, from 1934 to 2011, only once, in 1945, had a Washington baseball team been in a major league Pennant race; only twice had they finished as high as 2nd, only 3 times as high as 3rd, and only 5 times had they had winning seasons.
This includes the "old Senators" from 1935 to 1960 (when they moved to become the Minnesota Twins), the "new Senators" from 1961 to 1971 (when they moved to become the Texas Rangers), the Washington Nationals who had been terrible with flashes of fun since arriving in 2005, and the 1972-2004 interregnum when D.C.-area fans either had to go up to Baltimore, go to only the occasional exhibition game at RFK Stadium, check out minor-league teams (the Maryland cities of Salisbury, Frederick and Hagerstown, or Virginia teams like nearby Prince William), or stick to TV and go without live major league ball. It took the Nats until last year to finally bring D.C. its 1st Pennant since 1933 -- 86 years.
Also on this day, Rodney Clark Hundley is born in Charleston, West Virginia. "Hot Rod" was a star guard at West Virginia University, preceding his future pro teammate Jerry West there. The Cincinnati Royals made him the 1st pick in the 1957 NBA Draft, but immediately traded his rights to the Minneapolis Lakers.
He moved with them to Los Angeles in 1960, made the NBA All-Star Game in 1960 and 1961, and retired in 1963, having reached the NBA Finals with them in 1959, 1962 and 1963 -- but not winning a title. He wore Number 33 on the Lakers long before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did.
On November 15, 1960, his Laker teammate Elgin Baylor scored 71 points, a league record, albeit one that didn't stand for long, as Wilt Chamberlain raised it to 100 in 1962. Rod was fond of saying, "The highlight of my career was when Elgin Baylor and I combined for 73 points."
He went into broadcasting, and was the 1st voice of the expansion New Orleans Jazz in 1974. He moved with them to Utah in 1979, and until retiring in 2009, he became as identified with the Jazz as Frank Layden, Karl Malone or John Stockton. He died in 2015, in Phoenix, from the effects of Alzheimer's disease. He was 80, and a member of the West Virginia and Utah Sports Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1936: The Ohio State University Marching Band first performs their Script Ohio
formation. It is based on the sign at the Loew's Ohio Theatre in downtown Columbus, although the capital O now resembles the block O in Ohio State's logos.
At the conclusion of the formation, the drum major leads a sousaphone player to the top of the lower case i in "Ohio," and he "dots the i." This is considered the highest honor at Ohio State. Honorary i-dotters have included former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, and such prominent Ohio natives as Bob Hope, golfer Jack Nicklaus, Heavyweight Champion James "Buster" Douglas, and astronaut and Senator John Glenn.
Also on this day, Elio Chacón Rodríguez is born in Caracas, Venezuela. A backup 2nd baseman on the 1961 National League Champion Cincinnati Reds, Elio Chacón scored the winning run against the Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series -- the only Red to score a winning run in a Series game between 1940 and 1970.
But they left him unprotected in the 1962 expansion draft, and he was chosen by the Mets. Platooning at shortstop with Félix Mantilla, he kept crashing into veteran center fielder Richie Ashburn on bloops to short center field. It was explained to Ashburn that Chacón didn't understand English, thus didn't understand when Ashburn yelled the classic fielder's line, "I got it!" Ashburn was told that the Spanish equivalent was, "¡Yo la tengo!"
The next game, there was a popup to short center. Ashburn moved up. Chacón moved back. Ashburn yelled, "¡Yo la tengo!" Chacón backed off. But left fielder Frank Thomas, who didn't understand Spanish, came over, and crashed into Ashburn. After they got up, Thomas yelled at Ashburn, "What the hell is a yellow tango?" Years later, a rock band made up of Met fans named themselves Yo La Tengo for this incident.
Chacón led the Mets in stolen bases that season, but he never appeared in the major leagues again, finishing with a .232 batting average. He went back to Venezuela, and died in 1992, at the age of 55.
October 26, 1937: David Roy Gavitt is born in Westerly, Rhode Island. Having served Dartmouth College in New Hampshire as both player and coach, he coached the basketball team at Providence College in his home State from 1969 to 1979, taking them to the 1973 Final Four with star guard Ernie DiGregorio.
In 1979, the Big East Conference was formed, and Dave Gavitt was named its 1st Commissioner, serving until 1990. He made the league one of the best in college basketball history, taking 3 of the Final Four slots in 1985: St. John's, Georgetown, and National Champions Villanova. He later served on the U.S. Olympic Committee, and built the 1992 "Dream Team," and then served as CEO of the Boston Celtics.
He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, the 1st Rhode Island native so honored. He was also elected to the Rhode Island Sports Hall of Fame. The court at Providence's arena, the Dunkin Donuts Center, is named for him. He lived to see each of these honors, dying in 2011.
Also on this day, Hugh Nelson Durham is born in Louisville. A guard, he starred in high school basketball in Kentucky, but, like Dave Cowens later would, turned down all colleges in the Bluegrass State and instead played at Florida State University.
He was not selected in the 1959 NBA Draft, so his FSU coach, Bud Kennedy, named him an assistant coach, since he still knew the players. Kennedy died of cancer in 1966, and Durham was named head coach. Among the players he recruited to FSU was Cowens.
He got the Seminoles to the 1972 National Championship Game, losing to UCLA. Florida State is in Tallahassee, in the Florida Panhandle, so he took a cultural risk with his roster: 12 black men, and 1 white man, John Amick, who put his long hair in a ponytail. They were good enough to get to the last game, but not good enough to beat a Bruins team coached by John Wooden and starring a sophomore named Bill Walton, whose struggles with Wooden over his hair, regular and facial, might have made him momentarily jealous of Amick.
In 1978, while FSU was still an independent in football, he won the Metro Conference title in basketball. He was then hired by the University of Georgia, and coached them for 17 years. In 1983, he led them to their 1st Southeastern Conference Tournament win, their 1st NCAA Tournament berth, and their 1st trip to the Final Four. He also led them to their 1st SEC regular-season title in 1990, and was named SEC Coach of the Year 4 times.
He retired in 1995, but returned 2 years later to rebuild the program at Jacksonville University, restoring them to respectability. He retired in 2005, with an overall coaching record of 634-430. He remains the only man to coach the Florida State Seminoles to the NCAA Final Four, and the only man to coach the Georgia Bulldogs that far. He is still alive, and a member of the Kentucky, Florida and Georgia Sports Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1938: The Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury after its North London neighborhood, hosts a match between the England national team and a team representing "The Rest of Europe." The game commemorates, on the actual anniversary day, the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the Football Association. A crowd of 40,185, including King George VI, sees England win 3-0. It was the 2nd full England match to be shown live on British television.
The England team consisted of Arsenal's left back Eddie Hapgood (Captain) and left half Wilf Copping, Chelsea's goalkeeper Vic Woodley, Tottenham's right back Bert Sproston and inside right Willie Hall, Huddersfield's right half Ken Willingham, Wolverhampton Wanderers' centre half (and future title-winning manager) Stan Cullis, Stoke City's outside right Stanley Matthews, Everton's centre forward Tommy Lawton and outside left Walter Boyes, and West Ham United's inside left Len Goulden. Hall, Lawton and Goulden scored.
The Rest of Europe team included 5 players from recent World Cup winners Italy, 2 Germans, a Frenchman, a Belgian, a Hungarian, and a Norwegian. Only 1 of the 5 Italians was on the forward line, so even then, Italy was a defense-first footballing nation. It was Silvio Piola, considered too young for their 1934 World Cup winners, but starred on the 1938 version while playing his club soccer for Lazio in Rome. The Belgian, Ray Braine, was his country's 1st professional footballer, when he signed for Sparta Prague in 1930.
The last survivor of each team was Cullis, who lived until 2001; and Pietro Rava of Italy and Juventus, who lived until 2006.
Also on this day, for the 1st time, an ice hockey match is televised. Oddly, this does not occur in Canada, or in America, or in any of the European nations that we now associate with the game, such as Russia or Sweden. It is in England, on the BBC, between Harringay Racers of North London and Streatham Redskins of South London. The broadcaster, at least, was a Canadian: Winnipeg-born Stuart MacPherson.
I don't have a record of the result, although Harringay finished ahead of Streatham in the English National League in the 1938-39 season. Harringay won it the preceding season, 1937-38, and Streatham had won it in 1934-35. Harringay folded in 1957, and have since been replaced by a new team using the name. Streatham are still in business.
In 1940, New York station W2XBS (forerunner of WNBC-Channel 4) would become the 1st TV station to broadcast an NHL game, a 6-2 New York Rangers win over the Montreal Canadiens at the old Madison Square Garden. Just 3 days after that, they would broadcast the 1st televised basketball game, also at the old Garden. That station had already done, all in New York City in 1939, the 1st TV broadcasts of baseball, at Ebbets Field; college football, at Columbia University's Baker Field; and the NFL, at the Polo Grounds.
In 1952, CBC would bring Hockey Night In Canada from radio to TV, and it quickly became, and remains, Canada's favourite (that's how it's "spelt" up there) TV show. But the U.S. -- ABC/ESPN, NBC and Fox have all tried -- has never really gotten hockey broadcasts right. "Glow puck," anyone?
Also on this day, Timoslav Nikolayevich Meshcheryakov is born in Harbin, Manchukuo, controlled by the Japanese Empire from 1932 to 1945, but part of China. The Meshcheryakovs had fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but going to Manchukuo didn't help much, as they were taken to a Japanese interment camp near Tokyo during World War II.
After The War, the family moved to San Francisco. During the Red Scare of the early 1950s, the family name was changed, and Timoslav's name was changed to Thomas Nicholas Meschery. Tom became a basketball star at Lowell High School, and helped St. Mary's University, in the East Bay town of Moraga, reach what we would now call the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament as a sophomore in 1959. In 1961, he was named West Coast Conference Player of the Year. St. Mary's retired his Number 31.
A power forward, he was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors. Convenient for him, if for few others, they moved to San Francisco in 1962. In 1963, he was named an All-Star. He helped them win the Western Conference title in 1964 and 1967, but lost the NBA Finals both times. In 1967, he was lost in the expansion draft, and was an original Seattle SuperSonic until 1971.
He briefly coached the ABA's Carolina Cougars, and became a published poet and a high school English teacher. The team now known as the Golden State Warriors retired his Number 14. He is still alive.
Also on this day, Ross William Fichtner is born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. A cornerback, he is a surviving member of the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns. His son Randy Fichtner is a longtime assistant coach with the Browns' arch-rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and also has a championship ring, from Super Bowl XLIII. He is now their offensive coordinator.
October 26, 1939: William Stevenson (no middle name) is born in Leith, Scotland. A left back, Willie Stevenson was part of Liverpool FC's Scottish connection in the 1960s, which also included manager Bill Shankly. With him, they won the League in 1964 and 1966 and the FA Cup in 1965.
In 1974, he played for the original Vancouver Whitecaps of the old North American Soccer League. He closed his career with Macclesfield Town, and still lives in Macclesfield, retired from running a contract cleaning company.
*
October 26, 1940, 80 years ago: Detroit Tigers outfielder Hank Greenberg is named the Most Valuable Player of the American League. Greenberg won the MVP honors in 1935 as a 1st baseman, but had played mostly left field this season, as another big slugger, Rudy York, was being tried at 1st, and there was then no designated hitter at which to put either one.
Greenberg will soon become the 1st big-name player to enlist in the U.S. armed forces in anticipation of World War II, and when he returns in 1945, York has gone to Boston, and Greenberg plays the rest of his career at his former position of 1st base. Nevertheless, he is the 1st player to win MVP awards while playing at 2 different positions. He has since been joined only by Robin Yount (shortstop and center field) and Alex Rodriguez (shortstop and 3rd base). No National League player has yet accomplished the feat.
Also on this day, James Darel Carrier is born in Bowling Green, Kentucky. A guard, Darel Carrier dropped his first name, and starred for the basketball team at Western Kentucky University, which is in Bowling Green. They retired his Number 35.
He never played in the NBA, but he was a 3-time All-Star in the ABA, for his home-State Kentucky Colonels and the Memphis Tams. He was named to the ABA All-Time Team, and was the league's all-time leader in 3-point field goal percentage. He is still alive.
October 26, 1941: The 1st Superman movie premieres -- sort of. For Paramount Pictures, Max Fleischer produces, and his brother Dave Fleischer directs, Superman, a.k.a. The Mad Scientist. It runs 10 minutes, and is the 1st of 17 cartoon serials produced by Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios. They are still known as "the Fleischer Superman Cartoons."
This 1st one begins by detailing Superman's origin: Born on Krypton, sent to Earth by his scientist father to escape the planet's explosion, he is found and adopted by the Kents, discovers his powers growing up as Clark Kent, gets a job as a reporter for the Daily Planet newspaper in Metropolis, and fights crime and stops disasters as Superman.
This intro borrows a few Superman clichés that had debuted on radio the year before: "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!" "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" And Clark's role as a "mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper." And "a never-ending battle for truth and justice!" The 1952-58 TV series The Adventures of Superman would use all of these, expanding the last to "...for truth, justice and the American Way!" This serial also debuts the nickname "the Man of Steel," and the idea of Clark changing clothes in a Planet storeroom. (The phone booth idea would come later.)
The voice of Superman is Bud Collyer, who had already played him on radio, and would later host the TV game show To Tell the Truth. Lois Lane is voiced by Joan Alexander, and Perry White by Julian Noa, also reprising their radio roles, but the character of Jimmy Olsen does not appear.
Another fictional strongman whose cartoons were produced by Fleischer, Popeye, was voiced by Jack Mercer, who plays the mad scientist here -- but he is not named, and it is never suggested that he is the man who is already Superman's nemesis, Lex Luthor. The narrator is Jackson Beck, who voiced Popeye's nemesis, Bluto (listed as "Brutus" on occasion).
October 26, 1944: John Elliott (no middle name) is born in Beaumont, Texas. A defensive tackle, he was a rookie on the Jets team that won Super Bowl III in 1969. He continued with them through 1973, and played for the New York Stars in the World Football League in 1974. He died in 2010.
He was not related to the Pro Bowl offensive lineman John Elliott who won a Super Bowl with the Giants, and later played for the Jets. The later one was nicknamed Jumbo, after the legendary Villanova University track & field coach; the earlier one was not.
October 26, 1945, 75 years ago: Jacquelyn Ellen Smith is born in Houston. From 1976 to 1981, Jaclyn Smith played Kelly Garrett on Charlie's Angels. She's also played Sally Fairfax, Florence Nightingale and Jacqueline Kennedy. Last year, after just 1 role in 7 years, she appeared in the TV-movie Random Acts of Christmas.
October 26, 1946: Columnist Westbrook Pegler, writing for the Hearst Corporation's papers, including the New York Journal American, writes a critical piece about the off-field relationship between Brooklyn Dodger manager Leo Durocher‚ actor George Raft and well-known gamblers. This is the first of a few articles that will lead up to the suspension of Durocher for the entire 1947 season.
Pegler was an alcoholic and a lunatic, who had already called for the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which nearly happened in 1933. In the 1950s, due to her civil rights activism, he would call for the assassination of FDR's widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. And one of his last public acts would be to do the same in 1968, for Robert Kennedy, which did happen. After that, he couldn't be hired by anyone except the John Birch Society -- the Tea Party/MAGAts of their day -- and, finally, even they fired him for being too extreme. But, in the case of Durocher, and in a few others, Pegler turned out to be right.
The recent movie 42, about Jackie Robinson and his introduction to the white major leagues, suggested that Durocher was actually suspended by Commissioner A.B. "Happy" Chandler because the local Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) was threatening to boycott the Dodgers due to Durocher's affair with actress Laraine Day (whom he married as soon as his divorce from his current wife became final).
Another factor is that, while Durocher was associating with known gamblers (big mistake), and didn't think it should be considered a big deal (bigger mistake, at least as far as his baseball career was concerned), he suggested that Yankee co-owner Larry MacPhail was doing the same, and accused Chandler of a double standard: Durocher was being targeted for it, while MacPhail was getting away with it. The fact that MacPhail had previously been the Dodgers' president, and thus Durocher's boss, and that their relationship was always stormy, didn't help.
Another of the Yankee ownership triumverate, Del Webb, definitely had Mob ties, through his construction empire. The 3rd member, Dan Topping, was no angel, but he was almost certainly not mobbed up. With MacPhail, it was possible, but less likely than with Webb. Yet Durocher accused MacPhail, not Webb. Whatever the truth may have been, Durocher was suspended for what Chandler called "conduct detrimental to the game."
He would return for the 1948 season, then, when Mel Ott was fired as manager of the Dodgers' arch-rivals, the New York Giants, the Giants called Dodger president Branch Rickey, and asked him if they could offer Durocher the job. Rickey, one of the great moralizers of the era, who had kept Durocher as long as he could stand him, was happy to offer permission, and Leo took the job.
Durocher was fully authorized, and completely within his rights, to jump ship. But Dodger fans didn't understand this, which made him the most-hated figure in the history of Dodger fandom, a traitor, a turncoat. Sort of like Sol Campbell going from Tottenham captain to Arsenal star -- if, that is, the Dodgers had been actively pushing Durocher out, which they hadn't. So it's more like Roger Clemens going from the Red Sox to the Yankees -- if Clemens hadn't spent 2 years in Toronto in between.
Also on this day, Gran Estadio de La Habana opens in the Cuban capital of Havana. A full house of 31,000 sees a game between Havana teams Almendares (named for a Havana neighborhood and popularly known as the Scorpions) and Cienfuegos (named for a team from that city, but playing home games in Havana and known as the Oilers). Almendares win, 9-1.
The aforementioned Branch Rickey used it as the Dodgers' Spring Training headquarters in 1947, to ease the pressure on Jackie Robinson. He would use it again in Spring Training 1953, when he was president of the Pittsburgh Pirates. From 1954 to 1960, it was the home of the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class AAA International League. But in 1961, Fidel Castro banned professional sports in Cuba. There are those who believe that, if Cuba had never gone Communist, eventually, Major League Baseball would have expanded to Havana.
Later known as Estadio Cerro, and now as Estadio Latinoamericano, the ballpark, with its short fences (poles 325 feet away, power alleys just 345) is home to the Cuban national team, and to one of the state-sponsored (and thus not really "amateur") teams, Industriales, which has won so much and has gained so many fans all over the country, they are considered "the Yankees of Cuba."
Estadio Latinoamericano and the national team also hosted exhibition games against the Baltimore Orioles in 1999 (preceded by a visit of the Cuba team to Baltimore's Camden Yards) and the Tampa Bay Rays in 2016, the latter attended by the respective Presidents, Barack Obama and Fidel's brother Raul Castro.
Also on this day, Patrick Leonard Sadjak is born in Chicago. We know him as Pat Sajak, a simplification of the pronunciation of his birth name. Since 1981, he has been the host of the syndicated TV game show Wheel of Fortune. If he continues to host through 2026, he will surpass Bob Barker, formerly of The Price Is Right, as the longest-running host of any singe game show.
I used to say that he bore a resemblance to Vice President Dan Quayle, who was born a few months later. As it turns out, they share crazy right-wing politics, too.
October 26, 1947 Hillary Diane Rodham is born in Chicago, and grows up in the nearby suburb of Park Ridge. And, yes, growing up, she was a Cub fan. In 1994, then First Lady, Hillary Clinton was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Day at Wrigley Field.
I knew she was never really a Yankee Fan. But then, Michael Bloomberg was honest about having been a Red Sox fan, and I'd sooner trust Hillary to be Mayor of New York, let alone President.
Donald Trump claims to be a Yankee Fan. Can't we trade him? To a team on Mars, or further away?
Next-to-last was his former Ranger teammate Jeff Burroughs, and together, with players like Mike Hargrove and Ferguson Jenkins, managed by Billy Martin, they finished 2nd in 1974, the best finish the Senators/Rangers franchise had yet had in 14 years of existence. They wouldn't win the AL West until 1994 – ironically, after Harrah's brief tenure as Rangers manager had ended.
In 1976, despite playing both games at shortstop, he went through an entire doubleheader without a single fielding chance. Despite this, he was generally regarded as a good defensive player, who also managed to hit 195 home runs despite being a middle infielder and playing his entire career in pitchers' parks: Arlington Stadium, Cleveland Municipal Stadium (the Rangers had traded him to the Indians for 3rd baseman Buddy Bell, a trade which worked out well for both teams, though neither is known for making good trades) and, for 1 season, in the old Yankee Stadium with its "Death Valley" in left and center making it hard on a righthanded hitter
He became known as The Human Rain Delay for his antics at the plate. After every single pitch, he would step out of the batter's box, adjust his batting helmet, adjust his batting glove with careful attention to the thumb, pulling his uniform sleeves up, and wiping each hand on his pants. To make matters worse, he was one of these guys, like Hall-of-Famers Luke Appling and Richie Ashburn, and recent Yankee Legend Paul O'Neill, who was capable of fouling off multiple pitches in a row.
In 1991, he was named the Indians' manager, and he led them to AL Central Division titles in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999, including the Pennant in 1995 and 1997. The Indians have elected him to their team Hall of Fame. He also managed in Baltimore and Seattle, and now works in the Indians' front office.
Also on this day, Stephen Douglas Rogers is born in Jefferson City, Missouri. No, not Captain America. This Steve Rogers plied his trade in Canada, as an All-Star pitcher for the Montreal Expos, and remains the all-time leader in several pitching categories for the franchise now known as the Washington Nationals.
Unfortunately, the furthest that franchise had ever gotten until this month was a tie game in the 9th inning of the 5th and deciding Game of the 1981 NLCS, when Rogers, who had won Game 3 but was now pitching in relief on just 2 days rest, gave up a Pennant-winning home run to the Dodgers’ Rick Monday. In Game 5 of the Strike-forced NLDS, he drove in the winning run.
He deserves to be remembered for more than his fateful pitch on "Blue Monday," as he, not Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez (neither of whom stayed in Montreal for very long) was the greatest pitcher in that franchise's history, and even if Stephen Strasburg or Max Scherzer does more for them than Rogers did in an Expo uniform, Rogers will still be the greatest pitcher the city of Montreal has ever had. (Former Dodgers manager and Montreal Royals lefty Tommy Lasorda may dispute that, but the Royals were the minors, the Expos – no matter how inept they sometimes were on the field and in the front office – were the majors.)
He was a 5-time All-Star, won 158 games in the major leagues, had a 3.17 ERA, and now lives not far from me, in West Windsor, New Jersey, employed by the players' union, the Major League Baseball Players Association.
Also on this day, James Thomas Kelley Jr. is born in Buffalo. Before Jim Kelly began quarterbacking the Buffalo Bills, Jim Kelley was writing a sports column for The Buffalo News. He hosted a TV show titled Hockey Night In Buffalo, and was honored by the Hockey Hall of Fame with its equivalent to election for media figures, the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award. He was also elected to the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. He died in 2010.
Also on this day, Emil Liston dies of a heart attack in Baldwin, Kansas at age 59. The longtime basketball and football coach at Baker University, a Christian school in Baldwin, he was posthumously elected to the Basketball Hall Fame but being the 1st executive director of the NAIA, which handles collegiate sports for those schools big enough to have athletic departments, but too small to be members of the NCAA.
*
October 26, 1950, 70 years ago: Branch Rickey resigns as president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Walter O'Malley succeeds him. Rickey sells his 25 percent interest in the club for a reported $1.05 million. O'Malley had tried to push Rickey out, and got his chance when another partner died and his heirs wanted to sell his shares. O'Malley, in this as in everything else a money-grubbing bastard who didn't care who he hurt in the process, tried to lowball Rickey, offering him only his original investment in the club, the $350,000 he had paid in 1942.
But Rickey and O'Malley, despite some stark differences, were more alike than either cared to admit. One way in which they were alike that both, as was once said of Rickey, "had money and players, and didn't like to see them mix." Another is that both were lawyers who knew all the tricks.
But Rickey knew a trick that O'Malley didn't know. He knew that an agreement in the Dodger partnership said that if any of the partners got an offer for their shares, and another partner wanted to buy, that other partner had to match the offer. Rickey found someone willing to pony up a million bucks, and so O'Malley had to pay through the nose: The $350,000 of '42 was worth $515,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars, while, in reverse, the $350,000 of '50 was worth just $237,000, so O'Malley was really offering Rickey a 54 percent loss. Instead, O'Malley had to pay Rickey a 104 percent profit.
Today, Rickey's original '42 investment is worth $5.6 million, O’Malley's '50 offer $3.8 million, and Rickey's $1.05 million becomes $11.3 million. In 1969, O'Malley admitted his holdings in the Dodgers were worth $24 million, which is $170 million in 2020 dollars.
At his death in 1979, at which point his son Peter became owner, they were said to be worth $50 million, or today's $179 million. When Peter sold the Dodgers in 1998, it was for $311 million, or today's $497 million. When Magic Johnson bought the Dodger franchise, including Dodger Stadium, in 2012, the price was rumored to be about $2 billion.
Also on this day, Marcus Wayne Garland is born in Nashville. Dropping his first name, and not entering his hometown's leading industry -- although Mark Garland would have been a good name for a country singer -- Wayne Garland went 20-7 for the Baltimore Orioles in 1976, and looked like he would be one of the top pitchers in baseball over the next few years.
That Autumn, in the 1st free agent market, the Cleveland Indians offered him a 10-year contract for $230,000 a year -- a big one for the time, but worth just over $1 million today. In Spring Training the next year, he tore his rotator cuff, and, wanting to live up to the contract, he tried to pitch through it. He was released after just 5 years, having gone 28-48 for the Indians, for a career record of 55-66. He later served as a minor-league manager, but remains, at age 70, the patron saint of big-contract pitchers who, for whatever reason (their own fault or, in his case, otherwise), don't pan out.
Marciano goes back to his dressing room and cries over what he has done to his greatest hero, and even goes over to see him and says, "I'm sorry, Joe." Sugar Ray Robinson, then Middleweight Champion, was in Louis' dressing room to console him, and was also crying.
Eleven months later, Marciano knocked Jersey Joe Walcott out to become the Heavyweight Champion. Louis, still needing money, humiliated himself as a professional wrestler, and not a very good one. Both men's lives ended badly: Marciano's in a plane crash in 1969, just before his 46th birthday; Louis' in a wheelchair, unable to pay his medical bills, with Frank Sinatra hosting a benefit concert for him in Las Vegas in 1978, which kept Louis afloat until he finally passed away in 1981, at 67.
As a Sergeant in the U.S. Army in World War II, he was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, on the order of President Ronald Reagan, and with Sinatra delivering the eulogy.
October 26, 1952: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants 14-10, thanks in part to the efforts of Norm Willey, a 24-year-old defensive end from West Virginia. There appears to be no surviving film of this game, but Hugh Brown of the Philadelphia newspaper The Evening Bulletin
wrote, "Willey awed inhabitants of the Polo Grounds by dumping New York Giants quarterback Charlie Conerly 17 times as he attempted to pass."
The term "sack" hadn't yet been used to describe such a play. It would be years before Los Angeles Rams defensive end Deacon Jones came up with the term. Since passing ahead of the line of scrimmage is illegal, those 17 attempts could only have happened behind it -- therefore, they were sacks. So unless Brown got it really wrong, "Wild Man" Willey sacked Conerly 17 times. In one game. To paraphrase a later Philly sports legend, "Not a season, not a season, not a season: We talkin' 'bout a game."
Willey wasn't huge, not even by the standards of his time: He was 6-foot-2 and 224 pounds. He must have been fast, though. At a time when seasons were 12 games long, he appears to have gotten 20 to 30 sacks a season.
Officially, the single-game record is 7, by Derrick Thomas of the Kansas City Chiefs in 1990; the single-season record is 22 1/2, by Michael Strahan of the Giants in 2001; and the career record is 200 by Bruce Smith, from 1985 to 2003. If Brown was even half-off with his account, Thomas' record goes by the wayside, and Strahan's record may be wrong as well.
Willey played for the Eagles from 1950 to 1957. He remained in the Philadelphia area, coaching at Pennsville Memorial High School in Salem County, on the New Jersey end of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. He died in 2011, outliving Thomas, a victim of a car crash.
October 26, 1955: The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio -- Olympic Ice Stadium -- opens in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Veneto, in the Italian Alps, near the border with Austria. It was the main stadium for the 1956 Winter Olympics, then seating 65,000.
With just 5,842 people according to Italy's most recent census, Cortina is one of the smallest municipalities ever to host an Olympic Games. Nevertheless, it has been selected again, as the site of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio still stands, and will host the curling events at the '26 Games. But, having been converted to an all-seater facility, its capacity is down to 27,958, and so a larger stadium will be built for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
October 26, 1956: Margarita Ibrahimoff (with a name like that, she hardly needs a middle name) is born in Hollywood. Her mother was Greek, and her father was a Bulgarian Muslim, who converted to Greek Orthodox Catholicism upon marrying. He changed the family name after seeing a local street, and thus Margarita has since been known as Rita Wilson.
She appeared as Nurse Lacey in 2 episodes of the last season (1982-83) of M*A*S*H, and also guested on Bosom Buddies, where she met Tom Hanks. They've been married since 1988, and Tom based his character Viktor Navorski in The Terminal on her father. She produced the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, seeing much of her mother's family in that of the story's writer and star, Nia Vardalos. Although she and Tom have worked together on several movies, they haven't both appeared in any of them.
Fans of the Cheers franchise know her as Dr. Hester Crane, mother of Frasier and Niles, in flashback sequences, and as Mia Preston, a girlfriend who looks just like Hester, but Frasier is the only one who doesn't see it, until it's nearly too late.
October 26, 1957: The Cincinnati Royals play their 1st regular-season game after moving from Rochester. They beat the Syracuse Nationals 110-100 at the Cincinnati Gardens.
Despite having future Hall-of-Famers in Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and Jack Twyman, they never won a title, only getting as far as the 1963 and 1964 NBA Eastern Conference Finals.
In 1972, they moved again, to Kansas City. Since that city already had a baseball team named the Royals, they didn't want to make the same mistake that the NFL's Chicago Cardinals made when they moved to St. Louis, so they changed the name but kept the royalty theme, and became the Kansas City Kings. In 1985, they moved again, and became the Sacramento Kings.
Being small markets, neither Rochester, nor Cincinnati, nor Kansas City has ever regained an NBA team.
Also on this day, Robert Perry Golic is born in Cleveland. An Ohio State Champion wrestler at Cleveland's St. Joseph’s High School, Bob Golic played defensive tackle for his hometown Browns, and was a member of the team that lost back-to-back AFC Championship Games to the Denver Broncos in the 1986 and '87 seasons.
He and his brother Mike Golic, also a former NFL player, are both hosts of sports-talk shows on radio (although not together), and while Mike does NutriSystem commercials that show him losing 50 pounds, Bob, using a different diet, lost 140, and is back to his high-school weight of 245 pounds.
October 26, 1958: The Boeing 707 makes its 1st commercial flight, from Idlewild Airport in New York to Le Bourget Airport in Paris. It makes a fuel stop in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada.
Idlewild was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1963. Le Bourget, where Charles Lindbergh landed in 1927, and Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West in 1961, was rendered Paris' secondary airport in 1974, upon the opening of Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Boeing stopped building 707s in 1979, and U.S. airlines stopped using them for passenger flights in 1983. Today, only a few of them are left, mostly in military usage.
*
October 26, 1961: Keith B. Griffin is born in Columbus, Ohio. (I can find no record of what the B stands for.) Despite being born in the hometown of Ohio State University, and being the younger brother of O-State's Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin, the running back instead attended the University of Miami. He was the player shown on the cover of Sports Illustrated after Miami's shocking win over Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl gave them the National Championship.
He wasn't done winning. He played 5 seasons for the Washington Redskins, and was a member of their Super Bowl XXII winners. Archie's pro career was an injury-induced bust. He did reach Super Bowl XVI with his home-State Cincinnati Bengals, but they lost. He lost a fumble during the game, but that ended up not mattering.
Also on this day, Mark Anthony McDermott is born in the New York suburb of Waterbury, Connecticut. We know him as Dylan McDermott. He played Bobby Donnell on The Practice. He also starred in each of the 1st 2 seasons of American Horror Story, although as different characters, as each season of that show tells a different story.
Also on this day, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is born in Nairobi, Kenya. The son of Jomo Kenyatta, the country's founding father and 1st President, he was elected its 4th President in in 2013, and re-elected in 2017.
The Swahili word "uhuru" means "freedom." It is for this reason that the black African character on the original Star Trek series was named Uhura. There was also a Jamaican reggae band named Black Uhuru.
October 26, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis has everyone on edge. Someone forgot to tell the staff at Vandenberg Air Force Base outside Lompoc, California to cancel a regularly-scheduled test of a Titan II missile. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but, under the circumstances, it was still a stupid thing to let it go forward.
It could have been worse. Another missile test, later that day, went forward at Cape Canaveral, outside Cocoa Beach, Florida, not especially far from Cuba itself. This time, even other U.S. bases didn't know about it, so both governments -- all 3, if you count Cuba -- had to wonder if this was it. It wasn't. How the hell did the world make it to November 1962, with such stupidity?
Millville is noted for its team name, the Thunderbolts, and for having the oldest Thanksgiving Day football rivalry in New Jersey, with neighboring Vineland. In the old days, they would meet twice a year. Vineland has won the last 5 games, 67 overall, to Millville's 62, with 15 ties.
Notable Millville graduates include current Princeton University football coach Bob Surace and baseball star Mike Trout, a.k.a. the Millville Meteor.
Also on this day, Tony Steven Casillas is born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A defensive tackle, he helped the University of Oklahoma win the 1985 National Championship, and the Dallas Cowboys win Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII. He later played for the Jets, and hosted a radio sports-talk show. He has been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Also on this day, Craig Robert Shakespeare is born in Birmingham, West Midlands, England. A midfielder, he played in England from 1981 to 2000, mostly for West Midlands clubs Walsall and West Bromwich Albion, and Yorkshire club Sheffield Wednesday, but never won a trophy.
He went into coaching, and served as West Brom's caretaker manager in 2006, and began serving on Leicester City's staff in 2008, serving as manager for most of calendar year 2017 after the firing of Claudio Ranieri, less than a year after Ranieri had led Leicester to the Premier League title. His namesake William Shakespeare might have said that Leicester management, with Ranieri and Craig, was demonstrating a comedy of errors. Craig Shakespeare is now a coach at Liverpool-based Everton.
Also on this day, Natalie Anne Merchant is born in Jamestown, New York. She was the lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs -- not to be confused with a capoultra, who leads "Ultra" groups in European soccer.
October 26, 1966: Jeanne Zelasko is born in Cincinnati. She was the host of Fox's baseball pregame shows from 2001 until its cancellation in 2008, twice taking time off to have children. She now hosts a radio show on KFWB, formerly one of Los Angeles' great Top 40 stations. She is also a survivor of thyroid cancer.
A lot of baseball fans don't like her, but I do. She knows the game and is a very good interviewer. But at the 2005 All-Star Game in Detroit, she wore an orange dress, to match the host Tigers' colors. She was pregnant at the time, and orange is not a good color for a maternity dress. But she still did her job well that night, and it certainly wasn't as poor a choice as the night Hannah Storm, working the 1997 NBA Finals for NBC, did an interview with Dennis Rodman, exposing her unborn child to his weirdness. (As far as I know, both of the children in question are okay.)
Also on this day, the 1st half of the most-watched episode in the history of the Batman TV show airs on ABC, "The Devil's Fingers." The next night, the 2nd half airs, "The Dead Ringers." (On that show, episode halves usually rhymed.) Why was this the most-watched show? Because the "Special Guest Villain" was played by Liberace.
Or, rather, Villains. Władziu Valentino Liberace (1919-1987) -- half-Italian and half-Polish, and known as Walter to his family and Lee to his friends -- plays identical twin brothers: Chandell, a concert pianist obviously based on his real personality -- but apparently straight -- who had been forced by an injury to cheat his way through a career-making White House performance years earlier; and Harry, a small-time crook who threatened to reveal Chandell's cheating unless Chandell committed crimes for him.
During his concerts, Chandell would rig his piano to send signals to female accomplices with musical stage names: Doe (a redhead played by former Playboy Playmate Marilyn Hanold), Rae (a brunette, Edy Williams, also a Playmate and ex-wife of director Russ Meyer) and Mimi (a blonde, Swedish actress Sivi Aberg), and they would perform the actual robberies.
Knowing that it would take $5 million -- over $40 million in 2020 money -- to get Harry to call off his blackmail, Chandell decided to romance Harriet Cooper, Dick Grayson's aunt, and then have Dick and his guardian, Bruce Wayne, killed, so that he could marry Harriet and gain control of the Wayne family fortune.
Also on this day, Nicholas John Collison is born in Orange City, Iowa, and grows up in nearby Iowa Falls. A forward, he became the leading scorer in the history of Big 12 Conference basketball, and with Kirk Heinrichs helped the University of Kansas reach the Final Four in 2002 and 2003. He is a member of the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame.
He was drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics, and moved with them the become the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008, but has kept his residence in the Seattle area. He helped them reach the 2012 NBA Finals. Both Kansas and the Thunder have retired his Number 4, making him the Thunder's 1st retired number.
(The Thunder have kept the numbers retired by the Sonics out of circulation, but do not hang banners for them. If the Sonics are restored, through an expansion or a move, their history will also be restored, and the Thunder can then give those numbers out.)
Also on this day, Christian Eugen Chivu is born in Reșița, Romania. A left back, he won league titles with Ajax Amsterdam in 2002, and with Internazionale Milano in 2008, 2009 and 2010; national cups with Ajax in 2002 (a Double), AS Roma in 2007, and Inter in 2010 (a Double) and 2011; and the UEFA Champions League in 2010 (Italy's only "European Treble" to date -- for all their achievements, neither AC Milan nor Juventus have done it).
He played for Romania in Euro 2000 and Euro 2008, but never in the World Cup. He retired after the 2014 season. He has gone into coaching.
October 26, 1983: Mike Michalske dies in Green Bay, Wisconsin at age 80. A guard and a defensive tackle, he starred for Penn State long before Joe Paterno came along, and was a 7-time All-Pro for the Green Bay Packers, helping them win the NFL Championship in 1929, 1930 and 1931. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NFL's 1920s All-Decade Team. He later went into coaching, assisting on the staffs of the Packers, Chicago Cardinals and Baltimore Colts, and was head coach at Iowa State from 1942 to 1946.
Also on this day, Francisco Liriano is born in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. The Minnesota Twins' lefthander reached the All-Star team in 2006 aged just 22, but an elbow injury has hampered his career ever since. He pitched a no-hitter in 2011.
His career record is 112-114, and he has reached the Playoffs with the Twins in 2009 and '10; the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2013, '14 and '15; the Toronto Blue Jays in '16, and won the World Series with the Houston Astros in '17. That's 5 straight seasons, and in 7 of 9. Resistance is futile!
And yet, in one respect, the movie was only off by a year: The Cubs reached the NLCS in 2015, and reached the World Series in 2016!
Perhaps Marty should have warned the Cardinals about what was going to happen in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, starting at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, about 19 hours after his trip back into time.
The Cards lead the cross-State Royals 1-0, and need just 3 more outs to win the World Series. Jorge Orta hits a ground ball to 1st baseman Jack Clark. Clark flips to reliever Todd Worrell, who is covering the base. Orta is unquestionably out. The instant replay cameras and the photograph above confirm this. Except 1st base umpire Don Denkinger blows the call, and calls Orta safe.
The next batter, Steve Balboni, pops up, and Clark can’t handle it, and Balboni singles on his next swing. A passed ball by Darrell Porter, a Royal postseason hero from 1980 but now the Cardinal catcher (having been their postseason hero in 1982), makes it men on 2nd and 3rd, and Hal McRae is intentionally walked. Dane Iorg steps up, and singles home Orta and Balboni, and the Royals have a 2-1 walkoff win to force a Game 7 at home.
The Cardinals are furious. So are their fans. Understandably so. They all think Denkinger stole the World Series from them. They still think so, 35 years later.
There's just one problem with this theory: There was still 1 game to go. If the Cardinals had won Game 7, Denkinger's blown call would have been just a footnote.
So Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog should have taken his team into the clubhouse and said, "Men, we got screwed tonight, but there's nothing we can do about it now. So let's win this thing tomorrow, and what happened tonight won't matter." Instead, the White Rat whined about the call to the media, and let it get into his head, and into his team's heads.
The shock isn't that the Cards lost Game 7 by a whopping 11-0. The shock is that the Royals won it by only 11 runs. It is the biggest blowout in Game 7 history, previously reached only by, oddly enough, the Cardinals, when they beat the Detroit Tigers in 1934 (the Joe Medwick Game).
In 2015, someone did a "Win Expectation" study of that game. Before the swing, the Cardinals had an 81 percent chance of winning the game -- meaning a 1 in 5 chance of losing. That's hardly ridiculous. If the right call had been made, giving the Cardinals an out, they would have had an 89 percent chance -- a 1 in 11 chance of losing, unlikely but still not outrageous for the Royals to have come from behind to win. Even with the call blown, the Cards had a 67 percent chance -- a 2/3rds chance. They still should have won it.
Don Denkinger was still respected enough by the baseball establishment to be put behind the plate for the 1987 All-Star Game, and named crew chief for the 1988 American League Championship Series, the 1991 World Series, and the 1992 ALCS, before retiring in 1998 after 30 season in the majors, 22 as a crew chief. He is now 84 years old, and still lives in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa.
The Cardinals have since won 3 World Series. For those among their fans who have not yet done so, it's time to move on.
On the same day of the real-life World Series umpiring miscue and the fictional time-travel experiment, the Montreal Canadiens pay tribute to one of their 1950s heroes, retiring the Number 2 of Hall of Fame defenseman Doug Harvey. They beat the Hartford Whalers, 5-3 at the Montreal Forum.
Also on this day, Bob Scheffing dies in Phoenix at age 72. He was a major league catcher, mostly for the Chicago Cubs, from 1941 to 1951, although he missed the Cubs' 1945 Pennant due to serving in World War II. He managed the Cubs from 1957 to 1959, and the Detroit Tigers from 1961 to 1963.
He then served the Tigers as a scout and a radio broadcaster, before being hired to succeed the late Johnny Murphy as Mets general manager in 1970. He traded Nolan Ryan to the California Angels for Jim Fregosi after the 1971 season, one of the all-time bonehead trades. But he did help the Mets build a Pennant winner in 1973. He was fired in 1975, but remained in the Met organization as a scout for the last 10 years of his life.
Also on this day, Clarence B. Vaughn (I don't have any reference to what the B stands for) is born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and grows up in Colorado Springs. A safety, "Chip" Vaughn was with the New Orleans Saints when they won Super Bowl XLIV. He won the Grey Cup in 2013, with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He has gone into coaching.
When host Christian Slater comes out, he sees the entire audience doing the Braves' Tomahawk Chop and War Chant. He turns and sees McLaughlin and executive producer Lorne Michaels watching the game, rather than watching hthe show they're actually working on, doing the Chop with the big red foam Tomahawks, and wearing Indian headdresses. With the game in extra innings, Michaels says, "Braves in 6." McLaughlin says, "Wrong! Braves in 7!"
They're both wrong: Kirby Puckett makes a great catch and hits a dramatic home run in the bottom half of the 11th inning, to give the Twins a 4-3 win, and tie the Series. What has been shaping up as one of the best World Series ever will go to a Game 7 that will be worthy of it.
Also on this day, Jordan Morris (no middle name) is born in Seattle. A forward, he helped his hometown Seattle Sounders win the 2016 and 2019 MLS Cups, and the U.S. national team win the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup - but did not qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
He plays despite having diabetes. His father, Michael Morris, is the Sounders' team doctor.
October 26, 1995, 25 years ago: Game 5 of the World Series at Jacobs (Progressive) Field in Chicago. What shapes up as a pitcher's duel between Greg Maddux of the Atlanta Braves and Orel Hershiser, a Los Angeles Dodger hero of the 1988 World Series, now pitching for the Cleveland Indians, turns into a home run battle.
It was also home to the WNBA's Seattle Storm and the basketball teams of Seattle University. But it is about to be replaced with the 3rd arena on the site, for the Seattle Kraken, an expansion team debuting in the NHL for the 2021-22 season. Seattle also hopes it will become the home of a moved or expansion NBA team that will become the new Sonics. Until it reopens, the Storm are playing at Hec Edmondson Pavilion on the campus of the University of Washington.
Also on this day, Mario Lemieux scores his 500th career goal, at the Nassau Coliseum. It helps the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the New York Islanders, in their awful new "Gorton's Fisherman" logo jerseys, 7-5. These awful uniforms will last just 2 seasons.
October 26, 1997: Game 7 of the World Series at whatever the combined Marlins-Dolphins stadium in the Miami suburbs was called at the time. The Cleveland Indians jump out to a 2-0 lead over Florida‚ and are just 2 outs away from winning their 1st World Series in 49 years.
But Jose Mesa, not for the first time nor for the last, blows the save, and the Marlins claw their way back and tie the score in the bottom of the 9th on a sacrifice fly by Craig Counsell. In the last half of the 11th‚ Edgar Renteria gets his 3rd hit of the game‚ driving home Counsell with the winning run‚ as Florida wins Game 7 by a score of 3-2.
This was, after 1962, only the 2nd World Series where neither team won back-to-back games: The Marlins won Games 1, 3, 5 and 7; the Indians won Games 2, 4 and 6. This was also the Series with the greatest extremes of weather: The 4 games in South Florida were the 4 warmest on record for Series games, while the 3 in Cleveland were 3 of the 4 coldest (the previous coldest, in New York in 1976, remains 3rd), and Game 4 is the only Series game to be played in a snowfall except for one in Chicago in 1906.
The Marlins, in just their 4th season of existence (as opposed to the Indians, in their 97th), thus become the fastest team in baseball history to win a World Series title‚ 3 years quicker than the 1969 Mets. Livan Hernandez, the pitcher who fled Cuba (and would soon be followed by his brother Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez) is named Most Valuable Player of the Series.
This Series is sweet vindication for manager Jim Leyland, who lost 3 straight NLCS while managing the Pittsburgh Pirates; for Bobby Bonilla, who played for Leyland on those Pirates, bad-attituded his way out of his native New York with the Mets, and flopped the year before with the Baltimore Orioles; for Alex Fernandez, who pitched for the talented Chicago White Sox team that fell just short in 1990, lost the ALCS in ’93 and was screwed over by the strike in ’94, and was injured and unable to pitch in the postseason, so his teammates put his Number 32 on their caps; and for Gary Sheffield, who was already gaining a reputation as a bad apple that nobody wanted to keep around for very long, despite his obvious talent for power hitting, and this remained his only World Series win.
For the Indians, who hadn't won a Series since 1948, went from 1954 to 1995 without winning a Pennant, went from 1959 to 1994 without even being in a Pennant race, stood to be the AL's Wild Card if the standings at the time of the Strike of '94 had held to the end of the season, lost the '95 Series despite winning 100 of 144 games in the regular season, lost the '96 ALDS to an inferior Oriole team, and won just 86 games in this regular season but had defeated the favored Yankees and the Seattle Mariners before this crushing defeat, it is not just a crushing defeat, where they came closer to winning the World Series without doing so than any team ever had except the '86 Red Sox (and now the 2011 Texas Rangers).
No, this loss meant that, like the Red Sox, the Indians now have a reputation of being a choking team. They have never shaken it, despite return trips to the postseason in 1998, '99, 2001 and '07 – blowing a 2-1 lead in the '98 ALCS, 3-1 leads in the '07 ALCS and the '16 World Series, and a 2-0 lead in the '17 ALDS.
Also on this day, D.C. United wins its 2nd MLS Cup, in the league's 2nd season, beating the Denver-based Colorado Rapids, 2-1 on home soil at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Jaime Moreno and Tony Sanneh score the goals.
October 26, 1999: Game 3 of the World Series. Andy Pettitte did not have his good stuff, but Tino Martinez, Chad Curtis and Chuck Knoblauch helped the Yankees come from 5-1 down to send the game to extra innings. Curtis led off the bottom of the 10th, and knocked one out for a 6-5 win.
The following night, the Yanks wrapped up the sweep, the 25th World Championship, the title of Team of the Decade (it ain't about Division Titles, Braves fans), and the title, as NBC's Bob Costas said that next night, of "Most Successful Franchise of the Century."
Like fellow late 1990s Yankee Dynasty players Roger Clemens and John Wetteland, Curtis was among the most faith-vocal players of his era. Also like Clemens and Wetteland, he would later be accused of what would once have been quaintly called "morals charges," relating to his time as a high school athletic trainer in Michigan. He was sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison, and was paroled this past September 22.
Luis Sojo, playing 2nd base because Knoblauch's fielding difficulties limited him to DH status, is coming up to bat. Leiter had thrown 141 pitches. A number that would not have caused Catfish Hunter and Tom Seaver to flinch, but, by the standards of the 1990s and 2000s, a lot.
Yaz popped up to end that game in victory for the Yankees; 22 years later, Piazza got considerably better wood on his pitch, and hit one deep to straightaway center field. For a moment, many of us, myself included, thought, "Uh-oh, no!" Translation: "Tie game, Mets will go on to win it, and take the next 2 in The Bronx, and the Yanks will have choked it away."
Because we had grown up with the Mets as the team that won and the Yanks as the team that fell short. We had the arrogance of Yankee Fans of old, but deep down, in places we don't like to talk about at parties, we had the fears that came so easily to fans of the Indians, the pre-2004 Red Sox, the pre-2007 Phillies, the pre-2016 Cubs -- and the post-2006 Mets.
Jeter becomes the 1st player ever to be named Most Valuable Player of the All-Star Game and the World Series in the same season. Still, he would never be named MVP of a regular season.
For the 1st time, the Mets had the chance -- their first, their best, maybe their last -- to beat the Yankees in a Subway Series, and to irrevocably "take over New York." And while they had their chances and fought hard, in the end, the better team won.
The Yankees have beaten the Mets in a World Series. The other way around has never happened. And it never will. Never, never, never. Or, in the words of Flushing’s own Fran Drescher, "It begins with an N and ends with an A: Nev-a." As a Yankee Fan said then, "The Yankees have scoreboard over the Mets for all time."
This was the 26th World Championship. And for those of us who grew up as Yankee Fans during the Mets' "glory" years of 1984 to 1990, the Dynasty That Never Was, and had to deal with the unearned arrogance of the Flushing Heathen, the filthy bastards, delusional that their 2 titles outweighed our 22 (until 1996; now 27), damn fools to believe that the 1986 Mets could have beaten the Yankees of 1927, 1938, 1941, 1953, 1961 and 1978, and eventually even the 1998 juggernaut... for us, this was the greatest, sweetest moment of them all.
We beat the Mets. And it wasn't close. All 5 games were close, but winning in 5 games is domination. And we clinched at their place, on their field, at the William A. Shea International Airport, at the Flushing Toilet.
This was the 13th World Series game played at Shea. An unlucky 13th. It was also the last, which no one (not even a wiseass Yankee Fan like me) could have predicted at the time.
There were 25,000 people at Shea chanting "Let's Go Yankees!" and "We're Number 1!" Eventually, the owner came out to talk to the press, and he and the announcers couldn't talk, because the Yankee Fans were so loud, chanting "Thank you, George!" Imagine that, thousands of people saluting George Steinbrenner at Shea Stadium.
I loved it. October 26, 2000 – actually, the final out came just before midnight, so it was really October 27 that we celebrated – remains my favorite moment as a sports fan.
To the Flushing Heathen: I'd tell you to go to Hell, but you're already Met fans. So, instead, you and your 2 long-ago rings can kiss my Pinstriped ass. Or you can kiss my 27 rings, 7 of which came since your '69 title and 5 of which came after you got lucky in '86. Yes, you got lucky that the Red Sox had their choke of chokes against you in Game 6.
Sure, the Yankees have had luck. But they have earned all their victories. That's why every Yankee Fan can, on occasion, say the words of Yankee legend Lou Gehrig: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
After all, we could have had worse luck, and it would have been all our own fault.
We could have chosen to be Met fans. We chose Yankees. We chose greatness.
*
October 26, 2002: Game 6 of the World Series, at what was then known as Edison International Field of Anaheim – the former "Big A" briefly nicknamed "the Big Ed." The San Francisco Giants lead the Series 3 games to 2, and lead 5-0 after 6½ innings, thanks to home runs by Shawon Dunston and Barry Bonds.
The Anaheim Angels score 3 runs in the 7th to make it 5-3, but the Giants are still just 9 outs away from their 1st World Championship since moving to San Francisco 45 years earlier, their 1st in any city since they were in New York 48 years earlier.
But they choke. The Angels, having already scored the 3 runs in the 7th, score 3 more in the 8th on a home run by Scott Spiezio, and win, 6-5. The Series will go to a Game 7 in Anaheim tomorrow night.
October 26, 2004: The Red Sox win Game 3 of the World Series with a 4-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium. Finally making his 1st World Series start, Pedro Martinez hurls 7 shutout innings to put the Sox up 3-games-to-0. Manny Ramirez homers and drives in a pair of runs for the Sox‚ while Larry Walker hits one out for the Cards. The Sox can achieve their 86-year-old dream tomorrow night.
Also on this day, Bobby Ávila dies at age 79. A three-time All-Star, the 2nd baseman was not the 1st major league player born in Mexico – that was Red Sox outfielder Mel Almada in 1933, an outfielder who batted .284 over 7 seasons in the bigs – but he may have been the best, at least until Fernando Valenzuela came along, and the best hitter until Vinny Castilla arrived.
In 1954, despite a broken thumb, he won the AL batting title with a .341 average, and helped the Indians win the Pennant. But it was the NL's batting champion, Willie Mays, who was the star of the World Series as the Giants swept the heavily-favored Tribe.
October 26, 2005: The Chicago White Sox shut out the Astros‚ 1-0 at Minute Maid Park in Houston‚ to sweep the World Series and win their 1st World Championship since 1917, the 1st for either Chicago team in that time. Freddy Garcia gets credit for the win‚ as Jermaine Dye drives home the game's only run. Dye is named the Series MVP.
Ozzie Guillen, a native of Venezuela, becomes the 1st foreign-born manager to win a World Series. The Astros, in the Series for the 1st time in their 44-season history, are still, through 2016, winless in World Series games. Their all-time record in postseason games is 24-38.
Also on this day, George Swindin dies in Kettering, Northamptonshire, England, from the effects of Alzheimer's disease. He was 90. A PT boat instructor for the British Army during World War II, he resumed his soccer career thereafter.
He was the starting goaltender for North London club Arsenal, winning the League title in 1948 and 1953 and the FA Cup in 1950. He later managed the club from 1958 to 1962, but not well. He also managed Peterborough United, Norwich City, Kettering Town, Cardiff City and Corby Town.
October 26, 2006: Game 4 of the World Series, postponed a day by rain. Sean Casey hits a home run for the Detroit Tigers, but in the bottom of the 8th inning, David Eckstein, one of the Angels' Series heroes of 2002, doubles off Craig Monroe's glove, driving in Aaron Miles with the winning run. The St. Louis Cardinals win, 5-4, and can wrap up the Series tomorrow night.
October 26, 2009: Castle airs the Halloween-themed episode "Vampire Weekend." When 2 college kids -- one an artist who dressed as a vampire, the other a writer who dressed as a werewolf -- who were writing a graphic novel about a present-day vampire in New York are killed, mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and the detectives at the NYPD's 12th Precinct connect the murders to one committed 18 years earlier.
*
October 26, 2010, 10 years ago: Paul the Octopus dies, just 3 months after his predictions -- based on national flags dropped into his tank -- for the World Cup in South Africa made him the most famous cephalopod who ever lived.
Living at the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Ruhr, Germany (but hatched in Weymouth, Dorset, England), he correctly chose the winning team in several matches in Euro 2008, and in all 7 of Germany's matches in the 2010 World Cup. He also correctly predicted Spain's win over the Netherlands in the Final. Overall, his record was 12-2.
He was 2 1/2 years old, which is actually a rather normal lifespan for an octopus. Nevertheless, he was observed the day before, and appeared to be in good health.
Also on this day, Jack Butterfield dies in Springfield, Massachusetts at the age of 91. A nephew of hockey legend Eddie Shore, his service as President of the American Hockey League from 1966 to 1994 allowed him to join his uncle in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
October 26, 2013: Game 3 of the World Series is played at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and it has the weirdest ending of any Series game ever. (Even weirder than Game 4 of 2020.)
In the bottom of the 9th inning, with the score tied 4-4, Red Sox pitcher Brandon Workman gives up a 1-out single to Yadier Molina. Boston closer Koji Uehara is brought in to face pinch-hitter Allen Craig, who doubles on the 1st pitch. Jon Jay hits a grounder to 2nd baseman Dustin Pedroia, who makes a sensational diving stab, and throws home to catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who tags out the sliding Molina for the 2nd out.
But then Saltalamacchia throws to 3rd, trying to get Craig, who was running on the play, and decided to slide towards Will Middlebrooks, knocking him down. However, the ball glanced off Middlebrooks' glove and Craig's body, caroming into foul territory down the left field line. When Craig starts toward home, he runs over Middlebrooks, who winds up slowing Craig down as he tries to take off for home.
The 3rd base umpire, Jim Joyce, calls obstruction on the play. Home plate umpire Dana DeMuth
October 26, 2016: Game 2 of the World Series. Behind the pitching of Jake Arrieta, The Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 5-1 at Progressive Field, and even the Series.
After winning all 8 games he managed with the Boston Red Sox, and winning game one with the Indians, this was the 1st time Terry Francona lost a World Series game as a manager. He was 9-0. It was the 1st World Series game the Cubs had won since Game 6 in 1945.
October 26, 2018: Game 3 turns out to be the longest game in World Series history. Joc Pederson gives the Dodgers the lead with a home run in the 3rd inning, and Jackie Bradley Jr. ties it for the Red Sox with a home run in the 8th, to make it 2-2.
The Red Sox scored in the top of the 13th on a walk, a wild pitch and a single-and-error. But the Dodgers tied it on a walk, a fly out, and a single-and-error of their own. As the game went on and on, Twitter users began making jokes about its length: This game had started at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and was moved to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Sandy Koufax had started the game for the Dodgers, Cy Young for the Red Sox; Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson had traded home runs in the 14th, and so on.
Max Muncy nearly hit a walkoff home run in the bottom of the 15th, but his drive hooked just foul. He finally hit one in the bottom of the 18th, giving the Dodgers a 3-2 win. Nathan Eovaldi, normally a starting pitcher, had thrown 7 innings in relief before taking the loss. His effort helped save the Boston bullpen, keeping their relievers fresh. This would be the only game the Dodgers would win in the Series.
The 18 innings broke the Series record of 14, set by the same teams in 1916, and tied by the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros in Game 3 in 2005. The first pitch was at 5:10 PM Pacific Time (8:10 Eastern), and it ended at 12:30 AM (3:30 Eastern). At 7 hours and 20 minutes, it broke the record of that 2005 Game 3, 5 hours and 41 minutes, and tied the record for longest postseason game ever, set in Game 4 of the 2005 National League Division Series, won by the Astros on Chris Burke's home run against the Cardinals. This game was longer than the entire 1939 World Series, a 4-game sweep by the Yankees over the Reds, which took a combined 7 hours and 5 minutes to play.
October 26, 2375: If we presume that, in the far future of Star Trek, a game meant to take the place of Game 1 of the World Series is scheduled for the last Saturday in October, then this is the date that the game in the Deep Space Nine episode "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" takes place.
Okay, Worf (Michael Dorn) exaggerated: The pitch wasn't half a meter outside; but Odo (René
October 26, 1908: Canada holds a federal election. It is the 1st in which Alberta and Saskatchewan, which gained the status of Province in 1905, can vote. The Liberal Party loses 4 seats in the House of Commons, but still holds a majority, so their Leader, Wilfrid Laurier, remains Prime Minister. It will take 3 more years before the Conservative Party can win a majority and make their leader, Robert Borden, the Prime Minister.
The Bank of Canada has included a portrait of Laurier, the 1st French-Canadian PM, on the $5 bill since 1972; and one of Borden, PM during World War I, on the $100 bill since 1975.
*
October 26, 1910, 110 years ago: The Washington Post headlines a rumored trade that, had it gone through, would have been the biggest in baseball history in terms of the one-for-one names involved, with Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators going to the Detroit Tigers for Ty Cobb.
Tigers president Frank Navin scoffs at the story‚ saying he would never trade Cobb‚ but praising Johnson "as the best pitcher in the country." Cobb was about to turn 24 and had just finished his 5th full season of baseball; Johnson was 23 and had just finished his 4th season. This would have been like trading Mike Trout for Clayton Kershaw in 2013.
Also on this day, John Joseph Krol is born in Cleveland. Cardinal Krol was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, a period that included the construction of Veterans Stadium and The Spectrum, the 76ers' NBA Championships of 1967 and 1983, the Flyers' Stanley Cups of 1974 and 1975, the Phillies' World Series win in 1980, and Villanova's 1985 National Championship. He died in 1996.
October 26, 1911: The Philadelphia Athletics win their 2nd straight World Series. Chippewa pitcher Albert "Chief" Bender cruises to his second victory‚ a 4-hit 13-2 breeze. The A's cap the win with a 7-run 7th‚ battering three tired Giant hurlers‚ Red Ames‚ Hooks Wiltse‚ and Rube Marquard.
Overall‚ the Giants manage just 13 runs and a .175 batting average off Bender‚ Jack Coombs and Eddie Plank, gaining revenge for the Christy Mathewson-dominated Series of 1905 when the Giants embarrassed the A's.
Because of the NL's extended playing season‚ and a record 6-day rain delay, this is the latest ending ever for a World Series‚ and would remain so until the strike-delayed 1981 Series.
The last survivor of the 1911 A's was center fielder Amos Strunk, who lived until 1979.
Also on this day, Sidney Gillman (no middle name) is born in Minneapolis. With the Los Angeles Rams, Sid Gillman used the passing game of Norm Van Brocklin to Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch and Tom Fears to win an NFL Championship as an assistant coach in 1951 and a Western Division title as head coach in 1955.
He became the 1st head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1960 (they played their 1st season in Los Angeles before moving down the Coast), coaching quarterbacks like Jack Kemp, Tobin Rote and John Hadl, and receiver Lance Alworth, and reached 5 of the 1st 6 AFL Championship Games, in 1960, '61, '63, '64 and '65, winning in 1963 – still the only time in major league sports that a San Diego team has gone as far as their league allowed them to go. (They did not play the NFL Champion Chicago Bears, and if they had, it might have been the AFL's best chance to make a statement until Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Colts 5 years later.)
It was Gillman's wide-open passing game that helped to give the AFL its first positive reviews and its reputation as a League where anything could happen at any time, contrasting with the NFL, then comparatively very conservative despite having such quarterbacks as Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen and Bart Starr.
Gillman later served as an assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles, helping head coach Dick Vermeil develop Ron Jaworski, and with the Los Angeles Express of the USFL, where he helped to develop Steve Young.
NFL coaches who played or coached under him include Vermeil, George Allen, Al Davis, Chuck Noll and Chuck Knox. Coaches who played or coached under those men include: With Davis' Oakland Raiders, John Madden, Tom Flores, Art Shell, Bill Walsh and Jon Gruden; with Allen’s Redskins, Jack Pardee, Richie Petitbon and Joe Bugel; with Noll's Steelers, Bud Carson and Tony Dungy; with Vermeil's Eagles, Herman Edwards. Walsh's "coaching children," and thus Gillman's "grandchildren," include Mike Holmgren, Jim Fassel, Sam Wyche, George Seifert and Dennis Green; through them, Gillman's "great-grandchildren" include Andy Reid, John Fox, Mike Shanahan, Jeff Fisher, Brian Billick, Lovie Smith and Mike Tomlin.
Gillman was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983, one of the 1st primarily-AFL figures to be so honored. He is also a member of the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame and the San Diego Hall of Champions.
Also on this day, Mahalia Jackson (no middle name) is born in New Orleans. She is often regarded as the greatest singer of gospel music ever, of any race, of any gender, of any era. As far as I know, she had nothing to do with sports, but I want to mention her anyway.
She sang at the March On Washington in 1963, and, supposedly, saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was wrapping up his speech, and she remembered a previous speech of his, and said to him, "Martin, tell them about the dream." He did so, and a strong call for social justice became something larger than even all the people on that stage, which also included A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis, Daisy Bates, Rosa Parks, Walter Reuther, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee, Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, Mary Travers, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
If that story is true, then Mahalia performed a greater service to the human race than most people ever do to the God who created it, and to whom she sang so superbly.
October 26, 1916: Francois Mitterand is born. He was President of France from 1981 to 1995, and died in 1996.
October 26, 1917: Miller Huggins‚ a former "good-field, no-hit" 2nd baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, who managed the St. Louis Cardinals to a 3rd-place finish this season‚ is signed to manage the Yankees by owner Jacob Ruppert.
Co-owner Til Huston‚ who favored Brooklyn Dodger boss Wilbert Robinson for the job‚ has a falling out with partner Ruppert, and will sell his half interest to Ruppert in 1923. Huston had tried throughout the 3 men's common tenure to get rid of Huggins, to the point that, when Ruppert finally bought Huston out and announced it to the press, the next words out of his mouth were "Miller Huggins is my manager." And Huggins remained Yankee manager until his death in 1929, along the way leading the club to its 1st 6 Pennants and its 1st 3 World Championships.
October 26, 1918: George Henry Stirnweiss is born in Manhattan, and grows up in The Bronx. He is the closest thing to a Yankee Legend who grew up in the Bronx Bombers' home Borough. Lou Gehrig grew up in Manhattan; Willie Keeler, Waite Hoyt and Willie Randolph in Brooklyn; and Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford in Queens.
He became a football start at the University of North Carolina, and was drafted by the Chicago Cardinals in 1940. But his best sport was baseball, and he signed with the Yankees. It's not clear when, or why, George Stirnweiss first got the nickname "Snuffy." Maybe, playing in the South, either at UNC or for the Norfolk Tars, a Yankee farm team, he picked up the habit of chewing tobacco or using its nasal cousin, snuff. He certainly didn't resemble the rural comic strip character Snuffy Smith.
In 1943, defending American League Most Valuable Player Joe Gordon was called up into World War II. Snuffy was not. That led the Yankees to bring him to the major league roster as the starting 2nd baseman, giving him uniform Number 1. The Yankees won the World Series, although Snuffy was not a major contributor that season. But in 1944, he batted .319 and fielded brilliantly, finishing 4th in the MVP voting. In 1945, he batted .309, and that was enough to win the batting title and finish 3rd in the MVP voting.
With The War ending, there was a question of whether Snuffy had bulked up his stats on weakened pitching. Gordon returned as the starting 2nd baseman in 1946, and it looked like Snuffy's day in the Sun was over. But after that season, the Yankees traded Gordon to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Allie Reynolds. This was a brilliant trade for both teams: Gordon helped the Indians win the World Series in 1948, while the Yankees essentially got 2 players: Reynolds, their pitching ace through 1954, and the "return" of Stirnweiss.
He helped the Yankees win the World Series again in 1947, getting 7 hits and drawing 8 walks in the 7 games. But by the time of their 1949 title, he had been replaced as starting 2nd baseman by Jerry Coleman. He was traded to the St. Louis Browns in 1950 and the Indians in 1951, and retired after the 1952 season.
Snuffy managed in the minor leagues, with the Philadelphia Phillies' Class AA team, the Schenectady Blue Jays; then for the Yankees' team in the same league, the Binghamton Triplets. But he didn't like managing, and it didn't pay well, and he had a wife and 6 children to support. He worked for a bank and then, in 1957, he went to work for Caldwell & Company, a manufacturer of light fixtures, in Manhattan.
Every day, he got on the Central Railroad of New Jersey train in his adopted hometown of Red Bank, Monmouth County, New Jersey, and rode it up to the Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City, and then took a ferry across the Hudson River into The City.
On September 15, 1958, he never made it to Communipaw. The Newark Bay lift bridge was left open, and the train went straight through signals, and 2 of the cars fell into the Bay. He was 1 of 48 people killed. He was just short of turning 40. The bridge was abandoned, and demolished in 1980.
October 26, 1919: Edward William Brooke III is born in Washington, D.C. After earning a Bronze Star in World War II, he went to Boston for law school, and never left. Starting in 1950, running as a Republican -- black Americans still thought of it as the Party of Lincoln, and the Democrats as the party of segregation -- he ran for several offices in Massachusetts, but lost every time, until 1962, when he was elected his State's Attorney General, the 1st black person elected to that office in any State. (Most States elect theirs; my home of New Jersey does not, and the office is appointed by the Governor.)
In 1966, Ed Brooke was elected to the U.S. Senate, the 1st black person so honored since Reconstruction. He was among the authors of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, better known as the Fair Housing Act. He was re-elected in 1972, and a year later, became the 1st Republican in either house of Congress to publicly suggest that President Richard Nixon resign.
He lost his bid for a 3rd term in 1978, because he angered the State's Catholic majority due to his divorce and his pro-choice stance. He returned to the practice of law, and died in 2015.
Also on this day, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is born in Tehran, Persia. (The name of the country was changed to Iran in 1935.) He became Shah of Iran (linguistically "King," but officially "Emperor") in 1941, was marginalized by Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951, and was restored (for reasons of both anti-Communism and oil) by a coup backed by the CIA and Britain's MI6 in 1953.
On the plus side, he seriously modernized his country. No one said Iran was "backward" under his rule. On the minus side, his political repression was brutal, assisted by his secret police, SAVAK. In 1979, he was overthrown by an Islamic revolution, and fled to Egypt, where President Anwar Sadat kept him and his family safe.
But Sadat couldn't protect him from cancer. Sadat, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Chase Manhattan Bank president David Rockefeller asked President Jimmy Carter to let the Shah come to America for treatment. Carter, usually a great exponent of human rights, and aware of the situation in Iran, could have been expected to refuse, and keep this great opponent of human rights out. Instead, he buckled, and let the Shah in on October 22. Just 13 days later, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was raided, and hostages taken. Carter's Presidency never recovered.
Mohammad Reza Shah died in Cairo on July 27, 1980, and Sadat gave him a state funeral and burial there. That hurt Sadat with Islamic militants as much as his Camp David Accords with Israel did, and he was assassinated on October 6, 1981.
The Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, about to turn 59, is recognized as Crown Prince by Iranian exiles. He was training as a pilot with the U.S. Air Force at the time of the 1979 revolution, and lives with his family in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. As he has 3 daughters, but no sons, his 1st cousin, Prince Patrick Ali, 72, is next in line for the abolished Peacock Throne and the head of the House of Pahlavi.
*
October 26, 1920, 100 years ago: Eldred William Byerly is born outside St. Louis in Webster Groves, Missouri. A pitcher, Bud Byerly was promoted to his hometown St. Louis Cardinals during World War II, and was a member of their 1943 National League Champions and their 1944 World Champions.
He became a football start at the University of North Carolina, and was drafted by the Chicago Cardinals in 1940. But his best sport was baseball, and he signed with the Yankees. It's not clear when, or why, George Stirnweiss first got the nickname "Snuffy." Maybe, playing in the South, either at UNC or for the Norfolk Tars, a Yankee farm team, he picked up the habit of chewing tobacco or using its nasal cousin, snuff. He certainly didn't resemble the rural comic strip character Snuffy Smith.
In 1943, defending American League Most Valuable Player Joe Gordon was called up into World War II. Snuffy was not. That led the Yankees to bring him to the major league roster as the starting 2nd baseman, giving him uniform Number 1. The Yankees won the World Series, although Snuffy was not a major contributor that season. But in 1944, he batted .319 and fielded brilliantly, finishing 4th in the MVP voting. In 1945, he batted .309, and that was enough to win the batting title and finish 3rd in the MVP voting.
With The War ending, there was a question of whether Snuffy had bulked up his stats on weakened pitching. Gordon returned as the starting 2nd baseman in 1946, and it looked like Snuffy's day in the Sun was over. But after that season, the Yankees traded Gordon to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Allie Reynolds. This was a brilliant trade for both teams: Gordon helped the Indians win the World Series in 1948, while the Yankees essentially got 2 players: Reynolds, their pitching ace through 1954, and the "return" of Stirnweiss.
He helped the Yankees win the World Series again in 1947, getting 7 hits and drawing 8 walks in the 7 games. But by the time of their 1949 title, he had been replaced as starting 2nd baseman by Jerry Coleman. He was traded to the St. Louis Browns in 1950 and the Indians in 1951, and retired after the 1952 season.
Snuffy managed in the minor leagues, with the Philadelphia Phillies' Class AA team, the Schenectady Blue Jays; then for the Yankees' team in the same league, the Binghamton Triplets. But he didn't like managing, and it didn't pay well, and he had a wife and 6 children to support. He worked for a bank and then, in 1957, he went to work for Caldwell & Company, a manufacturer of light fixtures, in Manhattan.
Every day, he got on the Central Railroad of New Jersey train in his adopted hometown of Red Bank, Monmouth County, New Jersey, and rode it up to the Communipaw Terminal in Jersey City, and then took a ferry across the Hudson River into The City.
On September 15, 1958, he never made it to Communipaw. The Newark Bay lift bridge was left open, and the train went straight through signals, and 2 of the cars fell into the Bay. He was 1 of 48 people killed. He was just short of turning 40. The bridge was abandoned, and demolished in 1980.
October 26, 1919: Edward William Brooke III is born in Washington, D.C. After earning a Bronze Star in World War II, he went to Boston for law school, and never left. Starting in 1950, running as a Republican -- black Americans still thought of it as the Party of Lincoln, and the Democrats as the party of segregation -- he ran for several offices in Massachusetts, but lost every time, until 1962, when he was elected his State's Attorney General, the 1st black person elected to that office in any State. (Most States elect theirs; my home of New Jersey does not, and the office is appointed by the Governor.)
In 1966, Ed Brooke was elected to the U.S. Senate, the 1st black person so honored since Reconstruction. He was among the authors of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, better known as the Fair Housing Act. He was re-elected in 1972, and a year later, became the 1st Republican in either house of Congress to publicly suggest that President Richard Nixon resign.
He lost his bid for a 3rd term in 1978, because he angered the State's Catholic majority due to his divorce and his pro-choice stance. He returned to the practice of law, and died in 2015.
Also on this day, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is born in Tehran, Persia. (The name of the country was changed to Iran in 1935.) He became Shah of Iran (linguistically "King," but officially "Emperor") in 1941, was marginalized by Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951, and was restored (for reasons of both anti-Communism and oil) by a coup backed by the CIA and Britain's MI6 in 1953.
On the plus side, he seriously modernized his country. No one said Iran was "backward" under his rule. On the minus side, his political repression was brutal, assisted by his secret police, SAVAK. In 1979, he was overthrown by an Islamic revolution, and fled to Egypt, where President Anwar Sadat kept him and his family safe.
But Sadat couldn't protect him from cancer. Sadat, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Chase Manhattan Bank president David Rockefeller asked President Jimmy Carter to let the Shah come to America for treatment. Carter, usually a great exponent of human rights, and aware of the situation in Iran, could have been expected to refuse, and keep this great opponent of human rights out. Instead, he buckled, and let the Shah in on October 22. Just 13 days later, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was raided, and hostages taken. Carter's Presidency never recovered.
Mohammad Reza Shah died in Cairo on July 27, 1980, and Sadat gave him a state funeral and burial there. That hurt Sadat with Islamic militants as much as his Camp David Accords with Israel did, and he was assassinated on October 6, 1981.
The Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, about to turn 59, is recognized as Crown Prince by Iranian exiles. He was training as a pilot with the U.S. Air Force at the time of the 1979 revolution, and lives with his family in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. As he has 3 daughters, but no sons, his 1st cousin, Prince Patrick Ali, 72, is next in line for the abolished Peacock Throne and the head of the House of Pahlavi.
*
October 26, 1920, 100 years ago: Eldred William Byerly is born outside St. Louis in Webster Groves, Missouri. A pitcher, Bud Byerly was promoted to his hometown St. Louis Cardinals during World War II, and was a member of their 1943 National League Champions and their 1944 World Champions.
But after the war, he was sent back down to the minor leagues, and didn't re-emerge in the majors until 1950, with the Cincinnati Reds. He went up and down between the majors and the minors until 1960, when he made his last appearance, with the San Francisco Giants. He finished at 22-22, with a 3.70 ERA. He died in 2012.
October 26, 1921: Joseph Franklin Fulks is born in Birmingham, Kentucky. Jumpin' Joe starred at Murray State University in his home State, and they retired his Number 26. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II.
When the NBA was founded as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, he played for the Philadelphia Warriors, and averaged 23.2 points per game to become the league's 1st scoring champion. He led the Warriors to the 1st Championship of the league, beating the Chicago Stags 4 games to 2 in the Finals, clinching on April 22, 1947, at home at the Philadelphia Arena.
From the dawn of the league until Elgin Baylor's 64 points in a 1959 game, Fulks held the NBA single-game point-scoring record, topping out at 63 on February 10, 1949, against the Indianapolis Jets. He played in the 1st 2 NBA All-Star Games, in 1951 and 1952, and retired after the 1954 season.
He worked as the recreation director of the Kentucky State Penitentiary until March 21, 1976. Ironically, it was a crime outside the prison walls that killed him: His girlfriend, Roberta Bannister, had a son named Gregg, and they argued over a gun, and Gregg shot Joe with it. Joe was only 54 years old.
On a 1996 ESPN Classic broadcast, sports columnist and basketball historian Bob Ryan tried to put the pre-24-second-shot-clock era (1946-54) into perspective, and said, "I'm not gonna kid you: I don't think Jumpin' Joe Fulks makes it in today's NBA, except maybe as a 12th man."
Nevertheless, Fulks was named to the NBA's 25th Anniversary Team in 1971, and was posthumously elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978. He is also a member of the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. But the Warriors have not retired the Number 10 he wore for them. (They moved to the Bay Area in 1962, and the Syracuse Nationals became the Philadelphia 76ers the next season. The Sixers have retired 10, but for Maurice Cheeks, and they don't acknowledge the Dubs' achievements in their city.)
Also on this day, Roland Joseph McLenahan is born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. A defenseman, he was one of the players more or less frozen out by the NHL's 1942-67 6-team structure. He played 8 games for the Detroit Red Wings in 1946, but that was it. On the other hand, he played for minor-league teams in Washington, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo and Cincinnati from 1935 to 1957, and was a 4-time All-Star at that level.
In 1957-58, his 1st season after retiring as a player, he coached the Rochester Americans to the Calder Cup, the championship of the American Hockey League. He served as a scout with the Montreal Canadiens, and served his country and his Province in youth sports until his death in 1984. He was elected to the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, and that Hall gives out an annual Roly McLenahan Award to an outstanding amateur athlete from the Province.
Also on this day, Frances Scott Fitzgerald is born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She would be the only child born to either F. Scott Fitzgerald or his wife Zelda Sayre. "Scottie" became a journalist, writing for The Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine. She married twice, and had 4 children, all with her 1st husband, and died of cancer in 1986.
Also on this day, the Chicago Theatre opens, inside the Loop at 175 North State Street. The 3,880-seat theater was a big movie palace, straddling the silent and talking eras, and also featured live jazz, making it not at all a surprise when its famed marquee became the logo for the 2003 film version of the musical Chicago, which was set in 1927. Since 2007, it has been owned by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.
October 26, 1923: Thomas Giatano Glaviano is born in Sacramento. A 3rd baseman, he played for the St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies from 1949 to 1953, batting .257. He died in 2004.
October 26, 1926: Richard Werner Bokelmann is born outside Chicago in Arlington Heights, Illinois. A pitcher, he had cups of coffee with the Cardinals in 1951, '52 and '53, finishing 3-4 with a 4.90 ERA. He died in 2019.)
October 26, 1928: Charles Edward Brown is born in San Luis Obispo, California. Ed Brown was one of the earliest in a long line of men who tried to follow Sid Luckman as the starting quarterback of the Chicago Bears, but didn't live up to the standard.
But he did make 2 Pro Bowls, and lead the Bears into the 1956 NFL Championship Game, where they, and especially he, got clobbered by the New York Giants. In 1963, he was named NFL Comeback Player of the Year for nearly getting the Pittsburgh Steelers into the Playoffs. He died in 2007, and the Bears just named him one of their 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players.
October 26, 1929: The Taming of the Shrew premieres, the 1st sound film of a play by William Shakespeare. It stars the movies' 1st great husband-and-wife team: Douglas Fairbanks Sr. plays Petruchio, and Mary Pickford plays Katherina.
The play has since been adapted in 1962, for Australian TV; in 1967, by Franco Zeffirelli, starring perhaps the most famous Hollywood marriage of all, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor; in 1980, for British TV, starring John Cleese of Monty Python and Sarah Badel; and, of course, by Cole Porter as Kiss Me, Kate, on Broadway in 1948 with Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison, and in film in 1953 with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson.
Also on this day, Roland Hemond (no middle name) is born in Central Falls, Rhode Island. he got his 1st job in Major league Baseball as the scouting director of the Boston Braves in 1952. He was with them when they moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and helped build their 1957 World Series winners.
In 1961, he left the Braves to become the 1st scouting director of the team now known as the Los Angeles Angels. In just 2 years, he helped them reach 3rd place. In 1970, he was named general manager of the Chicago White Sox, nearly getting them to American League Western Division titles in 1972 and 1977, and getting them to one in 1983.
In 1988, with the Baltimore Orioles in turmoil, he was named their general manager. He almost got them to the AL East title in 1989, and helped build their Playoff teams of 1996 and '97. In 1992, he founded the Arizona Fall League, an off-season instructional league.
He joined the original front office of the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1996, helping them get off the ground in 1998, win the National League Western Division in 1999, and win the World Series in 2001. By that point, he had already returned as an executive advisor to the White Sox, helping them win the 2005 World Series. In 2007, he went back to the Diamondbacks, and remained with them until retiring in 2017. He is still alive, and was named Sporting News Executive of the Year in 1972, 1983 and 1989. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
*
October 26, 1930, 90 years ago: Fair Park Stadium opens in Fair Park on the east side of Dallas. In 1937, with the establishment of the city's New Year's Day "bowl game," it was renamed the Cotton Bowl.
Also on this day, Roland Hemond (no middle name) is born in Central Falls, Rhode Island. he got his 1st job in Major league Baseball as the scouting director of the Boston Braves in 1952. He was with them when they moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and helped build their 1957 World Series winners.
In 1961, he left the Braves to become the 1st scouting director of the team now known as the Los Angeles Angels. In just 2 years, he helped them reach 3rd place. In 1970, he was named general manager of the Chicago White Sox, nearly getting them to American League Western Division titles in 1972 and 1977, and getting them to one in 1983.
In 1988, with the Baltimore Orioles in turmoil, he was named their general manager. He almost got them to the AL East title in 1989, and helped build their Playoff teams of 1996 and '97. In 1992, he founded the Arizona Fall League, an off-season instructional league.
He joined the original front office of the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1996, helping them get off the ground in 1998, win the National League Western Division in 1999, and win the World Series in 2001. By that point, he had already returned as an executive advisor to the White Sox, helping them win the 2005 World Series. In 2007, he went back to the Diamondbacks, and remained with them until retiring in 2017. He is still alive, and was named Sporting News Executive of the Year in 1972, 1983 and 1989. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
*
October 26, 1930, 90 years ago: Fair Park Stadium opens in Fair Park on the east side of Dallas. In 1937, with the establishment of the city's New Year's Day "bowl game," it was renamed the Cotton Bowl.
Seating 92,000, it hosted the Cotton Bowl Classic from 1937 to 2009. It was home to Southern Methodist University football from 1932 to 1978, and SMU used it for home games again from 1995 to 1999. Two short-lived teams called the Dallas Texans used it, the NFL team of 1952 that became the Baltimore Colts the next year, and the AFL team of 1960 to 1962 that became the Kansas City Chiefs. Those Texans won the 1962 AFL Championship there.
It was the 1st home of the Dallas Cowboys, from 1960 to 1971, when Texas Stadium opened. The North American Soccer League's Dallas Tornado used it in 1967 and 1968, and the Major League Soccer team formerly known as the Dallas Burn, now just "FC Dallas," used it from 1996 to 2005.
Today, with both the Cowboys and the Cotton Bowl Classic playing at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the Cotton Bowl is mainly the host of 2 games: The annual Red River Rivalry between the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma every 2nd Saturday in October, during the Texas State Fair; and the Heart of Dallas Bowl.
Also on this day, Harry Payne Whitney dies at age 58. His fortune is estimated at $62.8 million -- about $979 million in today's money. He was a member of one of America's richest families, and had married into another, the Vanderbilts. He was a champion polo player and yacht racer, but his biggest contribution to sports was in horse racing.
His stable bred 12 winners of Triple Crown races, including 2 Horse of the Year honorees: Burgomaster in 1906, and Regret, the 1st filly to win the Kentucky Derby, in 1915. He was also the great uncle of the Mets' 1st owner, Joan Whitney Payson, who also bred champion horses.
Also on this day, Leslie Alan Richter is born in Fresno, California. A linebacker, he made 8 Pro Bowls, and helped the Los Angeles Rams reach the 1955 NFL Championship Game. He later ran Riverside International Raceway in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and served as a NASCAR executive. He died in 2010, reminding people of how great a football player he was, and was then posthumously elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was also elected to the College Football and Motorsports Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1931: Charles Comiskey dies of heart disease at age 72. One of the great players of the 1880s with the St. Louis Browns (forerunners of the Cardinals), he practically invented the way 1st base was played, and he was a major figure in the Players' League revolt of 1890.
But when offered the chance to start, own and run a team in the new American League in 1901, which became the Chicago White Sox, he betrayed the players who followed him by pinching pennies, much as later hockey greats Art Ross, Conn Smythe, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux would do.
Known as "the Old Roman" despite being of Irish descent, he built the ballpark that would bear his name, Comiskey Park, and built a franchise that would win 4 Pennants and 2 World Series in his lifetime. But he also indirectly caused, and made much worse, the greatest scandal in sports history, the Black Sox Scandal of 1919-21. His reputation as a great player and a smart, canny executive has been wiped out, replaced by one as a cheap, nasty old bastard.
On this same day, the Frankford Yellow Jackets defeat the Chicago Bears, 13–12 at Wrigley Field. Due to the Great Depression, this turned out to be the last game the Jackets ever played. The next day, the team's owner, the Frankford Athletic Association of Northeast Philadelphia, returned the franchise to the NFL, and the Frankford Yellow Jackets were out of business.
On July 9, 1933, former University of Pennsylvania football teammates Bert Bell and James Ludlow "Lud" Wray bought the territorial rights to a Philadelphia team from the NFL. And their new team, named the Eagles after the Blue Eagle symbol of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, at first wore the Jackets' colors, powder blue and gold, switching to green and white in 1954.
But they did not purchase the Yellow Jackets team itself, only the local rights to a team. As a result, the NFL does not consider the Eagles to be a continuation of the Jackets, and the Eagles do not claim the Jackets' 1926 NFL Championship as one of their titles, along with those they won in 1948, 1949, 1960 and 2017.
This 1931 game also marked the last time a Philadelphia-based NFL team would win an away game over the Bears until October 17, 1999, when the Eagles defeated the Bears 20–16 at Soldier Field.
Also on this day, Marshal Philippe Pétain, "The Lion of Verdun," perhaps the greatest French military hero of World War I, is given a ticker-tape parade in New York, 4 days after his Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, got one. Both of these parades would become an embarrassment in 1940, as both men collaborated with the Nazi conquest of France.
The Nazis named Pétain Chief of the French State, and he held that post until the liberation in 1944. Like Laval, he was tried for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. Unlike Laval, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, due to his age. He died in 1951, at 95.
October 26, 1933: Joseph Childress (no middle name) is born in Robertsdale, Alabama. A running back, Joe Childress played 10 seasons in the NFL, all with the same franchise. He was with the Chicago Cardinals when they played the 1st-ever game between NFL and CFL teams, a 55-26 win over the Toronto Argonauts at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto on August 5, 1959.
He was still with the Cardinals in 1960, when they moved to St. Louis, and when they played in the "Playoff Bowl" in 1964. A versatile player by the standards of his time, he finished his career with 2,210 yards rushing and 1,700 yards receiving. He later coached with the Houston Oilers, but developed cancer, and died in 1986, only 52. He was posthumously elected to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
October 26, 1934: Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith sells his shortstop and manager, Joe Cronin, to the Boston Red Sox for shortstop Lyn Lary and $225‚000 (about $4.4 million in today's money). Recently married to Mildred Robertson‚ Griffith's niece and adopted daughter‚ Cronin is signed to a 5-year contract, a real rarity in those days.
This trade not only helps return the Red Sox to contention for the first time since Harry Frazee sold off several stars to the Yankees from 1919 to 1923, but it also helps wreck the Senators franchise, which had won the Pennant just 1 year earlier: For 77 years, from 1934 to 2011, only once, in 1945, had a Washington baseball team been in a major league Pennant race; only twice had they finished as high as 2nd, only 3 times as high as 3rd, and only 5 times had they had winning seasons.
This includes the "old Senators" from 1935 to 1960 (when they moved to become the Minnesota Twins), the "new Senators" from 1961 to 1971 (when they moved to become the Texas Rangers), the Washington Nationals who had been terrible with flashes of fun since arriving in 2005, and the 1972-2004 interregnum when D.C.-area fans either had to go up to Baltimore, go to only the occasional exhibition game at RFK Stadium, check out minor-league teams (the Maryland cities of Salisbury, Frederick and Hagerstown, or Virginia teams like nearby Prince William), or stick to TV and go without live major league ball. It took the Nats until last year to finally bring D.C. its 1st Pennant since 1933 -- 86 years.
Also on this day, Rodney Clark Hundley is born in Charleston, West Virginia. "Hot Rod" was a star guard at West Virginia University, preceding his future pro teammate Jerry West there. The Cincinnati Royals made him the 1st pick in the 1957 NBA Draft, but immediately traded his rights to the Minneapolis Lakers.
He moved with them to Los Angeles in 1960, made the NBA All-Star Game in 1960 and 1961, and retired in 1963, having reached the NBA Finals with them in 1959, 1962 and 1963 -- but not winning a title. He wore Number 33 on the Lakers long before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did.
On November 15, 1960, his Laker teammate Elgin Baylor scored 71 points, a league record, albeit one that didn't stand for long, as Wilt Chamberlain raised it to 100 in 1962. Rod was fond of saying, "The highlight of my career was when Elgin Baylor and I combined for 73 points."
He went into broadcasting, and was the 1st voice of the expansion New Orleans Jazz in 1974. He moved with them to Utah in 1979, and until retiring in 2009, he became as identified with the Jazz as Frank Layden, Karl Malone or John Stockton. He died in 2015, in Phoenix, from the effects of Alzheimer's disease. He was 80, and a member of the West Virginia and Utah Sports Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1936: The Ohio State University Marching Band first performs their Script Ohio
formation. It is based on the sign at the Loew's Ohio Theatre in downtown Columbus, although the capital O now resembles the block O in Ohio State's logos.
At the conclusion of the formation, the drum major leads a sousaphone player to the top of the lower case i in "Ohio," and he "dots the i." This is considered the highest honor at Ohio State. Honorary i-dotters have included former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes, and such prominent Ohio natives as Bob Hope, golfer Jack Nicklaus, Heavyweight Champion James "Buster" Douglas, and astronaut and Senator John Glenn.
Also on this day, Elio Chacón Rodríguez is born in Caracas, Venezuela. A backup 2nd baseman on the 1961 National League Champion Cincinnati Reds, Elio Chacón scored the winning run against the Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series -- the only Red to score a winning run in a Series game between 1940 and 1970.
But they left him unprotected in the 1962 expansion draft, and he was chosen by the Mets. Platooning at shortstop with Félix Mantilla, he kept crashing into veteran center fielder Richie Ashburn on bloops to short center field. It was explained to Ashburn that Chacón didn't understand English, thus didn't understand when Ashburn yelled the classic fielder's line, "I got it!" Ashburn was told that the Spanish equivalent was, "¡Yo la tengo!"
The next game, there was a popup to short center. Ashburn moved up. Chacón moved back. Ashburn yelled, "¡Yo la tengo!" Chacón backed off. But left fielder Frank Thomas, who didn't understand Spanish, came over, and crashed into Ashburn. After they got up, Thomas yelled at Ashburn, "What the hell is a yellow tango?" Years later, a rock band made up of Met fans named themselves Yo La Tengo for this incident.
Chacón led the Mets in stolen bases that season, but he never appeared in the major leagues again, finishing with a .232 batting average. He went back to Venezuela, and died in 1992, at the age of 55.
October 26, 1937: David Roy Gavitt is born in Westerly, Rhode Island. Having served Dartmouth College in New Hampshire as both player and coach, he coached the basketball team at Providence College in his home State from 1969 to 1979, taking them to the 1973 Final Four with star guard Ernie DiGregorio.
In 1979, the Big East Conference was formed, and Dave Gavitt was named its 1st Commissioner, serving until 1990. He made the league one of the best in college basketball history, taking 3 of the Final Four slots in 1985: St. John's, Georgetown, and National Champions Villanova. He later served on the U.S. Olympic Committee, and built the 1992 "Dream Team," and then served as CEO of the Boston Celtics.
He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, the 1st Rhode Island native so honored. He was also elected to the Rhode Island Sports Hall of Fame. The court at Providence's arena, the Dunkin Donuts Center, is named for him. He lived to see each of these honors, dying in 2011.
Also on this day, Hugh Nelson Durham is born in Louisville. A guard, he starred in high school basketball in Kentucky, but, like Dave Cowens later would, turned down all colleges in the Bluegrass State and instead played at Florida State University.
He was not selected in the 1959 NBA Draft, so his FSU coach, Bud Kennedy, named him an assistant coach, since he still knew the players. Kennedy died of cancer in 1966, and Durham was named head coach. Among the players he recruited to FSU was Cowens.
He got the Seminoles to the 1972 National Championship Game, losing to UCLA. Florida State is in Tallahassee, in the Florida Panhandle, so he took a cultural risk with his roster: 12 black men, and 1 white man, John Amick, who put his long hair in a ponytail. They were good enough to get to the last game, but not good enough to beat a Bruins team coached by John Wooden and starring a sophomore named Bill Walton, whose struggles with Wooden over his hair, regular and facial, might have made him momentarily jealous of Amick.
In 1978, while FSU was still an independent in football, he won the Metro Conference title in basketball. He was then hired by the University of Georgia, and coached them for 17 years. In 1983, he led them to their 1st Southeastern Conference Tournament win, their 1st NCAA Tournament berth, and their 1st trip to the Final Four. He also led them to their 1st SEC regular-season title in 1990, and was named SEC Coach of the Year 4 times.
He retired in 1995, but returned 2 years later to rebuild the program at Jacksonville University, restoring them to respectability. He retired in 2005, with an overall coaching record of 634-430. He remains the only man to coach the Florida State Seminoles to the NCAA Final Four, and the only man to coach the Georgia Bulldogs that far. He is still alive, and a member of the Kentucky, Florida and Georgia Sports Halls of Fame.
October 26, 1938: The Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury after its North London neighborhood, hosts a match between the England national team and a team representing "The Rest of Europe." The game commemorates, on the actual anniversary day, the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the Football Association. A crowd of 40,185, including King George VI, sees England win 3-0. It was the 2nd full England match to be shown live on British television.
The England team consisted of Arsenal's left back Eddie Hapgood (Captain) and left half Wilf Copping, Chelsea's goalkeeper Vic Woodley, Tottenham's right back Bert Sproston and inside right Willie Hall, Huddersfield's right half Ken Willingham, Wolverhampton Wanderers' centre half (and future title-winning manager) Stan Cullis, Stoke City's outside right Stanley Matthews, Everton's centre forward Tommy Lawton and outside left Walter Boyes, and West Ham United's inside left Len Goulden. Hall, Lawton and Goulden scored.
The Rest of Europe team included 5 players from recent World Cup winners Italy, 2 Germans, a Frenchman, a Belgian, a Hungarian, and a Norwegian. Only 1 of the 5 Italians was on the forward line, so even then, Italy was a defense-first footballing nation. It was Silvio Piola, considered too young for their 1934 World Cup winners, but starred on the 1938 version while playing his club soccer for Lazio in Rome. The Belgian, Ray Braine, was his country's 1st professional footballer, when he signed for Sparta Prague in 1930.
The last survivor of each team was Cullis, who lived until 2001; and Pietro Rava of Italy and Juventus, who lived until 2006.
Also on this day, for the 1st time, an ice hockey match is televised. Oddly, this does not occur in Canada, or in America, or in any of the European nations that we now associate with the game, such as Russia or Sweden. It is in England, on the BBC, between Harringay Racers of North London and Streatham Redskins of South London. The broadcaster, at least, was a Canadian: Winnipeg-born Stuart MacPherson.
I don't have a record of the result, although Harringay finished ahead of Streatham in the English National League in the 1938-39 season. Harringay won it the preceding season, 1937-38, and Streatham had won it in 1934-35. Harringay folded in 1957, and have since been replaced by a new team using the name. Streatham are still in business.
In 1940, New York station W2XBS (forerunner of WNBC-Channel 4) would become the 1st TV station to broadcast an NHL game, a 6-2 New York Rangers win over the Montreal Canadiens at the old Madison Square Garden. Just 3 days after that, they would broadcast the 1st televised basketball game, also at the old Garden. That station had already done, all in New York City in 1939, the 1st TV broadcasts of baseball, at Ebbets Field; college football, at Columbia University's Baker Field; and the NFL, at the Polo Grounds.
In 1952, CBC would bring Hockey Night In Canada from radio to TV, and it quickly became, and remains, Canada's favourite (that's how it's "spelt" up there) TV show. But the U.S. -- ABC/ESPN, NBC and Fox have all tried -- has never really gotten hockey broadcasts right. "Glow puck," anyone?
Also on this day, Timoslav Nikolayevich Meshcheryakov is born in Harbin, Manchukuo, controlled by the Japanese Empire from 1932 to 1945, but part of China. The Meshcheryakovs had fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but going to Manchukuo didn't help much, as they were taken to a Japanese interment camp near Tokyo during World War II.
After The War, the family moved to San Francisco. During the Red Scare of the early 1950s, the family name was changed, and Timoslav's name was changed to Thomas Nicholas Meschery. Tom became a basketball star at Lowell High School, and helped St. Mary's University, in the East Bay town of Moraga, reach what we would now call the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament as a sophomore in 1959. In 1961, he was named West Coast Conference Player of the Year. St. Mary's retired his Number 31.
A power forward, he was drafted by the Philadelphia Warriors. Convenient for him, if for few others, they moved to San Francisco in 1962. In 1963, he was named an All-Star. He helped them win the Western Conference title in 1964 and 1967, but lost the NBA Finals both times. In 1967, he was lost in the expansion draft, and was an original Seattle SuperSonic until 1971.
He briefly coached the ABA's Carolina Cougars, and became a published poet and a high school English teacher. The team now known as the Golden State Warriors retired his Number 14. He is still alive.
Also on this day, Ross William Fichtner is born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. A cornerback, he is a surviving member of the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns. His son Randy Fichtner is a longtime assistant coach with the Browns' arch-rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and also has a championship ring, from Super Bowl XLIII. He is now their offensive coordinator.
October 26, 1939: William Stevenson (no middle name) is born in Leith, Scotland. A left back, Willie Stevenson was part of Liverpool FC's Scottish connection in the 1960s, which also included manager Bill Shankly. With him, they won the League in 1964 and 1966 and the FA Cup in 1965.
In 1974, he played for the original Vancouver Whitecaps of the old North American Soccer League. He closed his career with Macclesfield Town, and still lives in Macclesfield, retired from running a contract cleaning company.
*
October 26, 1940, 80 years ago: Detroit Tigers outfielder Hank Greenberg is named the Most Valuable Player of the American League. Greenberg won the MVP honors in 1935 as a 1st baseman, but had played mostly left field this season, as another big slugger, Rudy York, was being tried at 1st, and there was then no designated hitter at which to put either one.
Greenberg will soon become the 1st big-name player to enlist in the U.S. armed forces in anticipation of World War II, and when he returns in 1945, York has gone to Boston, and Greenberg plays the rest of his career at his former position of 1st base. Nevertheless, he is the 1st player to win MVP awards while playing at 2 different positions. He has since been joined only by Robin Yount (shortstop and center field) and Alex Rodriguez (shortstop and 3rd base). No National League player has yet accomplished the feat.
Also on this day, James Darel Carrier is born in Bowling Green, Kentucky. A guard, Darel Carrier dropped his first name, and starred for the basketball team at Western Kentucky University, which is in Bowling Green. They retired his Number 35.
He never played in the NBA, but he was a 3-time All-Star in the ABA, for his home-State Kentucky Colonels and the Memphis Tams. He was named to the ABA All-Time Team, and was the league's all-time leader in 3-point field goal percentage. He is still alive.
October 26, 1941: The 1st Superman movie premieres -- sort of. For Paramount Pictures, Max Fleischer produces, and his brother Dave Fleischer directs, Superman, a.k.a. The Mad Scientist. It runs 10 minutes, and is the 1st of 17 cartoon serials produced by Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios. They are still known as "the Fleischer Superman Cartoons."
This 1st one begins by detailing Superman's origin: Born on Krypton, sent to Earth by his scientist father to escape the planet's explosion, he is found and adopted by the Kents, discovers his powers growing up as Clark Kent, gets a job as a reporter for the Daily Planet newspaper in Metropolis, and fights crime and stops disasters as Superman.
This intro borrows a few Superman clichés that had debuted on radio the year before: "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!" "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" And Clark's role as a "mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper." And "a never-ending battle for truth and justice!" The 1952-58 TV series The Adventures of Superman would use all of these, expanding the last to "...for truth, justice and the American Way!" This serial also debuts the nickname "the Man of Steel," and the idea of Clark changing clothes in a Planet storeroom. (The phone booth idea would come later.)
The voice of Superman is Bud Collyer, who had already played him on radio, and would later host the TV game show To Tell the Truth. Lois Lane is voiced by Joan Alexander, and Perry White by Julian Noa, also reprising their radio roles, but the character of Jimmy Olsen does not appear.
Another fictional strongman whose cartoons were produced by Fleischer, Popeye, was voiced by Jack Mercer, who plays the mad scientist here -- but he is not named, and it is never suggested that he is the man who is already Superman's nemesis, Lex Luthor. The narrator is Jackson Beck, who voiced Popeye's nemesis, Bluto (listed as "Brutus" on occasion).
October 26, 1944: John Elliott (no middle name) is born in Beaumont, Texas. A defensive tackle, he was a rookie on the Jets team that won Super Bowl III in 1969. He continued with them through 1973, and played for the New York Stars in the World Football League in 1974. He died in 2010.
He was not related to the Pro Bowl offensive lineman John Elliott who won a Super Bowl with the Giants, and later played for the Jets. The later one was nicknamed Jumbo, after the legendary Villanova University track & field coach; the earlier one was not.
October 26, 1945, 75 years ago: Jacquelyn Ellen Smith is born in Houston. From 1976 to 1981, Jaclyn Smith played Kelly Garrett on Charlie's Angels. She's also played Sally Fairfax, Florence Nightingale and Jacqueline Kennedy. Last year, after just 1 role in 7 years, she appeared in the TV-movie Random Acts of Christmas.
October 26, 1946: Columnist Westbrook Pegler, writing for the Hearst Corporation's papers, including the New York Journal American, writes a critical piece about the off-field relationship between Brooklyn Dodger manager Leo Durocher‚ actor George Raft and well-known gamblers. This is the first of a few articles that will lead up to the suspension of Durocher for the entire 1947 season.
Pegler was an alcoholic and a lunatic, who had already called for the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which nearly happened in 1933. In the 1950s, due to her civil rights activism, he would call for the assassination of FDR's widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. And one of his last public acts would be to do the same in 1968, for Robert Kennedy, which did happen. After that, he couldn't be hired by anyone except the John Birch Society -- the Tea Party/MAGAts of their day -- and, finally, even they fired him for being too extreme. But, in the case of Durocher, and in a few others, Pegler turned out to be right.
The recent movie 42, about Jackie Robinson and his introduction to the white major leagues, suggested that Durocher was actually suspended by Commissioner A.B. "Happy" Chandler because the local Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) was threatening to boycott the Dodgers due to Durocher's affair with actress Laraine Day (whom he married as soon as his divorce from his current wife became final).
Another factor is that, while Durocher was associating with known gamblers (big mistake), and didn't think it should be considered a big deal (bigger mistake, at least as far as his baseball career was concerned), he suggested that Yankee co-owner Larry MacPhail was doing the same, and accused Chandler of a double standard: Durocher was being targeted for it, while MacPhail was getting away with it. The fact that MacPhail had previously been the Dodgers' president, and thus Durocher's boss, and that their relationship was always stormy, didn't help.
Another of the Yankee ownership triumverate, Del Webb, definitely had Mob ties, through his construction empire. The 3rd member, Dan Topping, was no angel, but he was almost certainly not mobbed up. With MacPhail, it was possible, but less likely than with Webb. Yet Durocher accused MacPhail, not Webb. Whatever the truth may have been, Durocher was suspended for what Chandler called "conduct detrimental to the game."
He would return for the 1948 season, then, when Mel Ott was fired as manager of the Dodgers' arch-rivals, the New York Giants, the Giants called Dodger president Branch Rickey, and asked him if they could offer Durocher the job. Rickey, one of the great moralizers of the era, who had kept Durocher as long as he could stand him, was happy to offer permission, and Leo took the job.
Durocher was fully authorized, and completely within his rights, to jump ship. But Dodger fans didn't understand this, which made him the most-hated figure in the history of Dodger fandom, a traitor, a turncoat. Sort of like Sol Campbell going from Tottenham captain to Arsenal star -- if, that is, the Dodgers had been actively pushing Durocher out, which they hadn't. So it's more like Roger Clemens going from the Red Sox to the Yankees -- if Clemens hadn't spent 2 years in Toronto in between.
Also on this day, Gran Estadio de La Habana opens in the Cuban capital of Havana. A full house of 31,000 sees a game between Havana teams Almendares (named for a Havana neighborhood and popularly known as the Scorpions) and Cienfuegos (named for a team from that city, but playing home games in Havana and known as the Oilers). Almendares win, 9-1.
The aforementioned Branch Rickey used it as the Dodgers' Spring Training headquarters in 1947, to ease the pressure on Jackie Robinson. He would use it again in Spring Training 1953, when he was president of the Pittsburgh Pirates. From 1954 to 1960, it was the home of the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class AAA International League. But in 1961, Fidel Castro banned professional sports in Cuba. There are those who believe that, if Cuba had never gone Communist, eventually, Major League Baseball would have expanded to Havana.
Later known as Estadio Cerro, and now as Estadio Latinoamericano, the ballpark, with its short fences (poles 325 feet away, power alleys just 345) is home to the Cuban national team, and to one of the state-sponsored (and thus not really "amateur") teams, Industriales, which has won so much and has gained so many fans all over the country, they are considered "the Yankees of Cuba."
Estadio Latinoamericano and the national team also hosted exhibition games against the Baltimore Orioles in 1999 (preceded by a visit of the Cuba team to Baltimore's Camden Yards) and the Tampa Bay Rays in 2016, the latter attended by the respective Presidents, Barack Obama and Fidel's brother Raul Castro.
Also on this day, Patrick Leonard Sadjak is born in Chicago. We know him as Pat Sajak, a simplification of the pronunciation of his birth name. Since 1981, he has been the host of the syndicated TV game show Wheel of Fortune. If he continues to host through 2026, he will surpass Bob Barker, formerly of The Price Is Right, as the longest-running host of any singe game show.
I used to say that he bore a resemblance to Vice President Dan Quayle, who was born a few months later. As it turns out, they share crazy right-wing politics, too.
October 26, 1947 Hillary Diane Rodham is born in Chicago, and grows up in the nearby suburb of Park Ridge. And, yes, growing up, she was a Cub fan. In 1994, then First Lady, Hillary Clinton was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Day at Wrigley Field.
Donald Trump claims to be a Yankee Fan. Can't we trade him? To a team on Mars, or further away?
Also on this day, James Thomas Clack is born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. He was the center on the Pittsburgh Steelers who was replaced by Mike Webster, but still earned 2 Super Bowl rings.
He was traded to the New York Giants, and in 1978, he was the center who snapped the ball to Joe Pisarcik, beginning the play that became known as "The Miracle of the Meadowlands" to Philadelphia Eagles fans. An All-American at Wake Forest, he was elected to their sports Hall of Fame and the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. He died in 2006.
October 26, 1948: Colbert Dale Harrah is born in Sissonville, West Virginia. An All-Star 3rd baseman for the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians, Toby Harrah was the last active player who had been a member of the Washington Senators, the team that moved to become the Rangers in 1972.
Next-to-last was his former Ranger teammate Jeff Burroughs, and together, with players like Mike Hargrove and Ferguson Jenkins, managed by Billy Martin, they finished 2nd in 1974, the best finish the Senators/Rangers franchise had yet had in 14 years of existence. They wouldn't win the AL West until 1994 – ironically, after Harrah's brief tenure as Rangers manager had ended.
In 1976, despite playing both games at shortstop, he went through an entire doubleheader without a single fielding chance. Despite this, he was generally regarded as a good defensive player, who also managed to hit 195 home runs despite being a middle infielder and playing his entire career in pitchers' parks: Arlington Stadium, Cleveland Municipal Stadium (the Rangers had traded him to the Indians for 3rd baseman Buddy Bell, a trade which worked out well for both teams, though neither is known for making good trades) and, for 1 season, in the old Yankee Stadium with its "Death Valley" in left and center making it hard on a righthanded hitter
Harrah later served as the Rangers' manager in 1992, and they elected him to their team Hall of Fame. His most recent job in baseball was as hitting instructor for the Detroit Tigers in 2013. He is a member of the West Virginia Sports Hall of Fame.
October 26, 1949: Dudley Michael Hargrove is born in Perryton, Texas, at the top of the Panhandle, close to the Oklahoma line. I can see why he prefers to be known as Mike Hargrove, although his 1st nickname was Grover, a variation of Hargrove. A teammate of Harrah on the 1970s Texas Rangers, the 1st baseman was American League Rookie of the Year in 1974, and an All-Star in 1975. He finished his career with the Cleveland Indians in 1985, batting .290 for his career.
October 26, 1949: Dudley Michael Hargrove is born in Perryton, Texas, at the top of the Panhandle, close to the Oklahoma line. I can see why he prefers to be known as Mike Hargrove, although his 1st nickname was Grover, a variation of Hargrove. A teammate of Harrah on the 1970s Texas Rangers, the 1st baseman was American League Rookie of the Year in 1974, and an All-Star in 1975. He finished his career with the Cleveland Indians in 1985, batting .290 for his career.
He became known as The Human Rain Delay for his antics at the plate. After every single pitch, he would step out of the batter's box, adjust his batting helmet, adjust his batting glove with careful attention to the thumb, pulling his uniform sleeves up, and wiping each hand on his pants. To make matters worse, he was one of these guys, like Hall-of-Famers Luke Appling and Richie Ashburn, and recent Yankee Legend Paul O'Neill, who was capable of fouling off multiple pitches in a row.
In 1991, he was named the Indians' manager, and he led them to AL Central Division titles in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999, including the Pennant in 1995 and 1997. The Indians have elected him to their team Hall of Fame. He also managed in Baltimore and Seattle, and now works in the Indians' front office.
Also on this day, Stephen Douglas Rogers is born in Jefferson City, Missouri. No, not Captain America. This Steve Rogers plied his trade in Canada, as an All-Star pitcher for the Montreal Expos, and remains the all-time leader in several pitching categories for the franchise now known as the Washington Nationals.
Unfortunately, the furthest that franchise had ever gotten until this month was a tie game in the 9th inning of the 5th and deciding Game of the 1981 NLCS, when Rogers, who had won Game 3 but was now pitching in relief on just 2 days rest, gave up a Pennant-winning home run to the Dodgers’ Rick Monday. In Game 5 of the Strike-forced NLDS, he drove in the winning run.
He deserves to be remembered for more than his fateful pitch on "Blue Monday," as he, not Randy Johnson or Pedro Martinez (neither of whom stayed in Montreal for very long) was the greatest pitcher in that franchise's history, and even if Stephen Strasburg or Max Scherzer does more for them than Rogers did in an Expo uniform, Rogers will still be the greatest pitcher the city of Montreal has ever had. (Former Dodgers manager and Montreal Royals lefty Tommy Lasorda may dispute that, but the Royals were the minors, the Expos – no matter how inept they sometimes were on the field and in the front office – were the majors.)
He was a 5-time All-Star, won 158 games in the major leagues, had a 3.17 ERA, and now lives not far from me, in West Windsor, New Jersey, employed by the players' union, the Major League Baseball Players Association.
Also on this day, James Thomas Kelley Jr. is born in Buffalo. Before Jim Kelly began quarterbacking the Buffalo Bills, Jim Kelley was writing a sports column for The Buffalo News. He hosted a TV show titled Hockey Night In Buffalo, and was honored by the Hockey Hall of Fame with its equivalent to election for media figures, the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award. He was also elected to the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. He died in 2010.
Also on this day, Emil Liston dies of a heart attack in Baldwin, Kansas at age 59. The longtime basketball and football coach at Baker University, a Christian school in Baldwin, he was posthumously elected to the Basketball Hall Fame but being the 1st executive director of the NAIA, which handles collegiate sports for those schools big enough to have athletic departments, but too small to be members of the NCAA.
*
October 26, 1950, 70 years ago: Branch Rickey resigns as president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Walter O'Malley succeeds him. Rickey sells his 25 percent interest in the club for a reported $1.05 million. O'Malley had tried to push Rickey out, and got his chance when another partner died and his heirs wanted to sell his shares. O'Malley, in this as in everything else a money-grubbing bastard who didn't care who he hurt in the process, tried to lowball Rickey, offering him only his original investment in the club, the $350,000 he had paid in 1942.
But Rickey and O'Malley, despite some stark differences, were more alike than either cared to admit. One way in which they were alike that both, as was once said of Rickey, "had money and players, and didn't like to see them mix." Another is that both were lawyers who knew all the tricks.
But Rickey knew a trick that O'Malley didn't know. He knew that an agreement in the Dodger partnership said that if any of the partners got an offer for their shares, and another partner wanted to buy, that other partner had to match the offer. Rickey found someone willing to pony up a million bucks, and so O'Malley had to pay through the nose: The $350,000 of '42 was worth $515,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars, while, in reverse, the $350,000 of '50 was worth just $237,000, so O'Malley was really offering Rickey a 54 percent loss. Instead, O'Malley had to pay Rickey a 104 percent profit.
Today, Rickey's original '42 investment is worth $5.6 million, O’Malley's '50 offer $3.8 million, and Rickey's $1.05 million becomes $11.3 million. In 1969, O'Malley admitted his holdings in the Dodgers were worth $24 million, which is $170 million in 2020 dollars.
At his death in 1979, at which point his son Peter became owner, they were said to be worth $50 million, or today's $179 million. When Peter sold the Dodgers in 1998, it was for $311 million, or today's $497 million. When Magic Johnson bought the Dodger franchise, including Dodger Stadium, in 2012, the price was rumored to be about $2 billion.
Also on this day, Marcus Wayne Garland is born in Nashville. Dropping his first name, and not entering his hometown's leading industry -- although Mark Garland would have been a good name for a country singer -- Wayne Garland went 20-7 for the Baltimore Orioles in 1976, and looked like he would be one of the top pitchers in baseball over the next few years.
That Autumn, in the 1st free agent market, the Cleveland Indians offered him a 10-year contract for $230,000 a year -- a big one for the time, but worth just over $1 million today. In Spring Training the next year, he tore his rotator cuff, and, wanting to live up to the contract, he tried to pitch through it. He was released after just 5 years, having gone 28-48 for the Indians, for a career record of 55-66. He later served as a minor-league manager, but remains, at age 70, the patron saint of big-contract pitchers who, for whatever reason (their own fault or, in his case, otherwise), don't pan out.
Also on this day, Walter Eugene Foreman is born in Frederick, Maryland. I can't find a reference as to why he calls himself Chuck Foreman. In high school, he saw Baltimore Bullets star Earl "the Pearl" Monroe do spin moves on the basketball court, so Chuck incorporated it into his football running. He and future Philadelphia Eagle Tom Sullivan helped to revive the program at the Univeristy of Miami, becoming one of several pairs of athletes to become known as the Gold Dust Twins.
With the Minnesota Vikings, he made 5 straight Pro Bowls, and helped them win the 1973, 1974 and 1976 NFC Chamionships, although they lost all 3 Super Bowls. He was NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year in 1973, and, despite being a running back, led the NFL in receptions in 1975.
Injuries cut his career short, limiting him to less than 6,000 career rushing yards, and probably denying him election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Vikings have named him to their Ring of Honor, although they have not retired his Number 44. He became a high school teacher and hosts a radio talk show. His son Jay Foreman played 8 seasons as an NFL linebacker, and now runs a fitness company.
October 26, 1951: Desperate for money to pay a mounting tax bill, Joe Louis, who stood as Heavyweight Champion of the World longer than anyone (12 years, 1937-49) and defended the title more than anyone (25 times), climbs into the ring at the old Madison Square Garden for a purse of $300,000 – a little over $3 million in today's money. He fights Rocky Marciano, then a rising contender who idolized Louis. Rocky had told the press, "This is the last guy I want to fight." It had nothing to do with his own ability, or whatever Louis had left.
It is a mismatch: Marciano is 28, is in superb shape, and has a sledgehammer for a right hand; Louis is 37, struggles with his weight, and his arms and legs, once the fastest in the fight game despite his being a heavyweight, have terribly slowed. Marciano actually knocks Louis out of the ring in the 8th round.
Marciano goes back to his dressing room and cries over what he has done to his greatest hero, and even goes over to see him and says, "I'm sorry, Joe." Sugar Ray Robinson, then Middleweight Champion, was in Louis' dressing room to console him, and was also crying.
Eleven months later, Marciano knocked Jersey Joe Walcott out to become the Heavyweight Champion. Louis, still needing money, humiliated himself as a professional wrestler, and not a very good one. Both men's lives ended badly: Marciano's in a plane crash in 1969, just before his 46th birthday; Louis' in a wheelchair, unable to pay his medical bills, with Frank Sinatra hosting a benefit concert for him in Las Vegas in 1978, which kept Louis afloat until he finally passed away in 1981, at 67.
As a Sergeant in the U.S. Army in World War II, he was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, on the order of President Ronald Reagan, and with Sinatra delivering the eulogy.
October 26, 1952: The Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants 14-10, thanks in part to the efforts of Norm Willey, a 24-year-old defensive end from West Virginia. There appears to be no surviving film of this game, but Hugh Brown of the Philadelphia newspaper The Evening Bulletin
wrote, "Willey awed inhabitants of the Polo Grounds by dumping New York Giants quarterback Charlie Conerly 17 times as he attempted to pass."
The term "sack" hadn't yet been used to describe such a play. It would be years before Los Angeles Rams defensive end Deacon Jones came up with the term. Since passing ahead of the line of scrimmage is illegal, those 17 attempts could only have happened behind it -- therefore, they were sacks. So unless Brown got it really wrong, "Wild Man" Willey sacked Conerly 17 times. In one game. To paraphrase a later Philly sports legend, "Not a season, not a season, not a season: We talkin' 'bout a game."
Willey wasn't huge, not even by the standards of his time: He was 6-foot-2 and 224 pounds. He must have been fast, though. At a time when seasons were 12 games long, he appears to have gotten 20 to 30 sacks a season.
Officially, the single-game record is 7, by Derrick Thomas of the Kansas City Chiefs in 1990; the single-season record is 22 1/2, by Michael Strahan of the Giants in 2001; and the career record is 200 by Bruce Smith, from 1985 to 2003. If Brown was even half-off with his account, Thomas' record goes by the wayside, and Strahan's record may be wrong as well.
Willey played for the Eagles from 1950 to 1957. He remained in the Philadelphia area, coaching at Pennsville Memorial High School in Salem County, on the New Jersey end of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. He died in 2011, outliving Thomas, a victim of a car crash.
Also on this day, Jim Cole is born. (I don't have a record of his full name or his birthplace.) From 1991 to 2011, he was the head coach at Alma College, a Division III school in Alma, Michigan. He won 113 games and 3 Conference Championships. He is still alive, and a member of the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.
Also on this day, Victory at Sea premieres on NBC, running 26 episodes that detail America's victory in the naval phase of World War II. It ay have been television's 1st great documentary, and paved the way for The History Channel (which became so known for its World War II pieces that it was mocked as "The Hitler Channel") and similar cable networks.
October 26, 1953: Terry W. Ryan (I can find no reference as to what the W stands for) is born in Janesville, Wisconsin. A pitcher, he was doing well in the Minnesota Twins' organization in the 1970s, before injuries doomed his playing career. He went back to the University of Wisconsin, got his degree, and was hired by the Mets as a scout in 1980. He was part of the scouting department that built the 1986 World Champions.
He was brought back to the Twins after the '86 Series, working under general manager Andy MacPhail. and helped them win the 1987 and 1991 World Series. Succeeding MacPhail in 1994, he had some rough years, but then built their Playoff teams of the 2000s. He has since been reunited with MacPhail, in the front office of the Philadelphia Phillies.
He was brought back to the Twins after the '86 Series, working under general manager Andy MacPhail. and helped them win the 1987 and 1991 World Series. Succeeding MacPhail in 1994, he had some rough years, but then built their Playoff teams of the 2000s. He has since been reunited with MacPhail, in the front office of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Also on this day, William C. Smith is born in Las Vegas. (I can find no reference as to what the C stands for). An All-American guard at the University of Missouri, Willie Smith played in the NBA from 1976 to 1980, and then in the minors until 1984. He returned to Columbia, the seat of UM, and became a successful businessman. He is still alive, and a member of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.
Also on this day, Roger William Allam is born in East London. He is at his best playing villains. He played Inspector Javert in the original 1985 London production of Les Misérables; and the title role(s) in a 1991 London production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (not to be confused with the Jekyll & Hyde musical then running on Broadway); the title role in a 1996 version of Macbeth; Walt Disney in the 1999 film RKO 281; Adolf Hitler in the 2000 play Albert Speer; and concentration camp commander turned "Voice of London" propagandist Lewis Prothero in the 2005 film V for Vendetta.
Also on this day, Major General William F. Dean, U.S. Army, is given a ticker-tape parade in New York. He had received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Taejon on July 21, 1950. But he was captured by the North Koreans at the end of that battle, making him the highest-ranking American officer captured during the Korean War. He was held as a prisoner of war until the Truce of Panmunjom ended the war on July 27, 1953. He then retired, and lived until 1981.
October 26, 1955: The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio -- Olympic Ice Stadium -- opens in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Veneto, in the Italian Alps, near the border with Austria. It was the main stadium for the 1956 Winter Olympics, then seating 65,000.
With just 5,842 people according to Italy's most recent census, Cortina is one of the smallest municipalities ever to host an Olympic Games. Nevertheless, it has been selected again, as the site of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio still stands, and will host the curling events at the '26 Games. But, having been converted to an all-seater facility, its capacity is down to 27,958, and so a larger stadium will be built for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
October 26, 1956: Margarita Ibrahimoff (with a name like that, she hardly needs a middle name) is born in Hollywood. Her mother was Greek, and her father was a Bulgarian Muslim, who converted to Greek Orthodox Catholicism upon marrying. He changed the family name after seeing a local street, and thus Margarita has since been known as Rita Wilson.
She appeared as Nurse Lacey in 2 episodes of the last season (1982-83) of M*A*S*H, and also guested on Bosom Buddies, where she met Tom Hanks. They've been married since 1988, and Tom based his character Viktor Navorski in The Terminal on her father. She produced the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, seeing much of her mother's family in that of the story's writer and star, Nia Vardalos. Although she and Tom have worked together on several movies, they haven't both appeared in any of them.
Fans of the Cheers franchise know her as Dr. Hester Crane, mother of Frasier and Niles, in flashback sequences, and as Mia Preston, a girlfriend who looks just like Hester, but Frasier is the only one who doesn't see it, until it's nearly too late.
October 26, 1957: The Cincinnati Royals play their 1st regular-season game after moving from Rochester. They beat the Syracuse Nationals 110-100 at the Cincinnati Gardens.
Despite having future Hall-of-Famers in Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and Jack Twyman, they never won a title, only getting as far as the 1963 and 1964 NBA Eastern Conference Finals.
In 1972, they moved again, to Kansas City. Since that city already had a baseball team named the Royals, they didn't want to make the same mistake that the NFL's Chicago Cardinals made when they moved to St. Louis, so they changed the name but kept the royalty theme, and became the Kansas City Kings. In 1985, they moved again, and became the Sacramento Kings.
Being small markets, neither Rochester, nor Cincinnati, nor Kansas City has ever regained an NBA team.
Also on this day, Robert Perry Golic is born in Cleveland. An Ohio State Champion wrestler at Cleveland's St. Joseph’s High School, Bob Golic played defensive tackle for his hometown Browns, and was a member of the team that lost back-to-back AFC Championship Games to the Denver Broncos in the 1986 and '87 seasons.
He and his brother Mike Golic, also a former NFL player, are both hosts of sports-talk shows on radio (although not together), and while Mike does NutriSystem commercials that show him losing 50 pounds, Bob, using a different diet, lost 140, and is back to his high-school weight of 245 pounds.
October 26, 1958: The Boeing 707 makes its 1st commercial flight, from Idlewild Airport in New York to Le Bourget Airport in Paris. It makes a fuel stop in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada.
Idlewild was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1963. Le Bourget, where Charles Lindbergh landed in 1927, and Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West in 1961, was rendered Paris' secondary airport in 1974, upon the opening of Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Boeing stopped building 707s in 1979, and U.S. airlines stopped using them for passenger flights in 1983. Today, only a few of them are left, mostly in military usage.
*
October 26, 1960, 60 years ago: There are 13 days left before the Presidential election. Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested for protesting at a whites-only snack bar in his hometown of Atlanta.
Terrified that he might be beaten or even killed in jail, his wife, Coretta Scott King, calls the campaign of the Republican nominee for President, Vice President Richard Nixon, for help. She gets none.
So she calls the campaign of the Democratic nominee for President, Senator John F. Kennedy. Whoever she reached got word to JFK. He calls his brother and campaign manager, Robert F. Kennedy, and asks him to see what he can do. RFK calls Governor Ernest Vandiver of Georgia. Together, they work on Oscar Mitchell, the judge who had ordered MLK’s arrest. He is released.
Afterward, MLK’s father, Dr. Martin Luther King Sr., tells people, "If I had a million votes, I would give them to Jack Kennedy." For all we know, the Kennedy brothers' action to free MLK may just have swayed 1 million black votes to JFK, who had not previously been seen as noticeably friendly to civil rights. JFK won New Jersey by 22,000 votes, Missouri by 10,000, and Illinois by 9,000. Had Nixon won those States, Nixon would have won the Electoral Vote, even if he had still lost the popular vote, and would have won the election.
October 26, 1961: Keith B. Griffin is born in Columbus, Ohio. (I can find no record of what the B stands for.) Despite being born in the hometown of Ohio State University, and being the younger brother of O-State's Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin, the running back instead attended the University of Miami. He was the player shown on the cover of Sports Illustrated after Miami's shocking win over Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl gave them the National Championship.
He wasn't done winning. He played 5 seasons for the Washington Redskins, and was a member of their Super Bowl XXII winners. Archie's pro career was an injury-induced bust. He did reach Super Bowl XVI with his home-State Cincinnati Bengals, but they lost. He lost a fumble during the game, but that ended up not mattering.
Also on this day, Mark Anthony McDermott is born in the New York suburb of Waterbury, Connecticut. We know him as Dylan McDermott. He played Bobby Donnell on The Practice. He also starred in each of the 1st 2 seasons of American Horror Story, although as different characters, as each season of that show tells a different story.
Also on this day, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is born in Nairobi, Kenya. The son of Jomo Kenyatta, the country's founding father and 1st President, he was elected its 4th President in in 2013, and re-elected in 2017.
The Swahili word "uhuru" means "freedom." It is for this reason that the black African character on the original Star Trek series was named Uhura. There was also a Jamaican reggae band named Black Uhuru.
October 26, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis has everyone on edge. Someone forgot to tell the staff at Vandenberg Air Force Base outside Lompoc, California to cancel a regularly-scheduled test of a Titan II missile. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but, under the circumstances, it was still a stupid thing to let it go forward.
It could have been worse. Another missile test, later that day, went forward at Cape Canaveral, outside Cocoa Beach, Florida, not especially far from Cuba itself. This time, even other U.S. bases didn't know about it, so both governments -- all 3, if you count Cuba -- had to wonder if this was it. It wasn't. How the hell did the world make it to November 1962, with such stupidity?
Also on this day, Joe Dial (the only name I have for him) is born in Marlow, Oklahoma. A pole vaulter, Track and Field News named him High School Athlete of the Year in 1981. Hoever, he never competed in the Olympics.
He turned to coaching, and has coached 50 track All-Americans at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. He is a member of the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.
October 26, 1963: In just its 3rd season of varsity football, my eventual alma mater, East Brunswick High School, travels to Millville Senior High School in Cumberland County, South Jersey, and loses 24-20. At 102 miles, it remains the longest roadtrip in EBHS football history.
Millville is noted for its team name, the Thunderbolts, and for having the oldest Thanksgiving Day football rivalry in New Jersey, with neighboring Vineland. In the old days, they would meet twice a year. Vineland has won the last 5 games, 67 overall, to Millville's 62, with 15 ties.
Notable Millville graduates include current Princeton University football coach Bob Surace and baseball star Mike Trout, a.k.a. the Millville Meteor.
Also on this day, Tony Steven Casillas is born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A defensive tackle, he helped the University of Oklahoma win the 1985 National Championship, and the Dallas Cowboys win Super Bowls XXVII and XXVIII. He later played for the Jets, and hosted a radio sports-talk show. He has been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
Also on this day, Bob Wilson makes his 1st team debut in goal for North London soccer team Arsenal. They beat East Midlands team Nottingham Forest, 4-2 at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury. It takes until 1968 for Bob to become the regular starter, but he was in goal for their 1971 Football League title and FA Cup win, "the Double." After retiring in 1974, he became a coach with the team, serving until 2003. He is still alive.
Also on this day, Craig Robert Shakespeare is born in Birmingham, West Midlands, England. A midfielder, he played in England from 1981 to 2000, mostly for West Midlands clubs Walsall and West Bromwich Albion, and Yorkshire club Sheffield Wednesday, but never won a trophy.
He went into coaching, and served as West Brom's caretaker manager in 2006, and began serving on Leicester City's staff in 2008, serving as manager for most of calendar year 2017 after the firing of Claudio Ranieri, less than a year after Ranieri had led Leicester to the Premier League title. His namesake William Shakespeare might have said that Leicester management, with Ranieri and Craig, was demonstrating a comedy of errors. Craig Shakespeare is now a coach at Liverpool-based Everton.
Also on this day, Natalie Anne Merchant is born in Jamestown, New York. She was the lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs -- not to be confused with a capoultra, who leads "Ultra" groups in European soccer.
October 26, 1964: Steven Thomas Adkins is born in Chicago. A lefthanded pitcher, and a rare Ivy Leaguer to make it to Major League Baseball (the University of Pennsylvania), Steve Adkins made 5 appearances as a September callup for the Yankees in 1990. He went 1-2 with a 6.38 ERA, and never appeared in the majors again.
October 26, 1965: Gerald Wayne Martin is born in Forrest City, Arkansas. A defensive end who dropped his first name, Wayne Martin played 12 seasons for the New Orleans Saints, making the 1994 Pro Bowl. He was elected to their team Hall of Fame.
Also on this day, Mark McLoughlin (no middle name) is born in Liverpool, England, and grows up in Saskatchewan. The placekicker helped the Calgary Stampeders win the Grey Cup in 1992, 1998 and 2001. He is 2nd behind Lui Passaglia in points scored in CFL play. He now serves in the Saskatchewan provincial government.
October 26, 1966: Jeanne Zelasko is born in Cincinnati. She was the host of Fox's baseball pregame shows from 2001 until its cancellation in 2008, twice taking time off to have children. She now hosts a radio show on KFWB, formerly one of Los Angeles' great Top 40 stations. She is also a survivor of thyroid cancer.
A lot of baseball fans don't like her, but I do. She knows the game and is a very good interviewer. But at the 2005 All-Star Game in Detroit, she wore an orange dress, to match the host Tigers' colors. She was pregnant at the time, and orange is not a good color for a maternity dress. But she still did her job well that night, and it certainly wasn't as poor a choice as the night Hannah Storm, working the 1997 NBA Finals for NBC, did an interview with Dennis Rodman, exposing her unborn child to his weirdness. (As far as I know, both of the children in question are okay.)
Also on this day, the 1st half of the most-watched episode in the history of the Batman TV show airs on ABC, "The Devil's Fingers." The next night, the 2nd half airs, "The Dead Ringers." (On that show, episode halves usually rhymed.) Why was this the most-watched show? Because the "Special Guest Villain" was played by Liberace.
Or, rather, Villains. Władziu Valentino Liberace (1919-1987) -- half-Italian and half-Polish, and known as Walter to his family and Lee to his friends -- plays identical twin brothers: Chandell, a concert pianist obviously based on his real personality -- but apparently straight -- who had been forced by an injury to cheat his way through a career-making White House performance years earlier; and Harry, a small-time crook who threatened to reveal Chandell's cheating unless Chandell committed crimes for him.
During his concerts, Chandell would rig his piano to send signals to female accomplices with musical stage names: Doe (a redhead played by former Playboy Playmate Marilyn Hanold), Rae (a brunette, Edy Williams, also a Playmate and ex-wife of director Russ Meyer) and Mimi (a blonde, Swedish actress Sivi Aberg), and they would perform the actual robberies.
Knowing that it would take $5 million -- over $40 million in 2020 money -- to get Harry to call off his blackmail, Chandell decided to romance Harriet Cooper, Dick Grayson's aunt, and then have Dick and his guardian, Bruce Wayne, killed, so that he could marry Harriet and gain control of the Wayne family fortune.
The brothers tried to double-cross each other, and in attempting to carry out his double-cross, Harry inadvertently revealed to Aunt Harriet that he wasn't Chandell. So she helped Batman and Robin foil the plan. Bruce and Batman were played by Adam West, Dick and Robin by Burt Ward, Harriet by Madge Blake.
Ironically, in real life, Liberace's manager was his brother, George (1911-1983). Although not an identical twin, George was also a musician, a violinist, and often worked as Lee's musical arranger.
October 26, 1967: Keith Lionel Urban is born in Whangerei, New Zealand. At age 6, he moved with his family to Australia, and is an Australian citizen. Eventually, he moved to America and became a country singer. He is married to fellow Australian-American Nicole Kidman, which makes him not just a member but an officer of the Lucky Bastards Club.
A lot of people were very upset at country singer Garth Brooks for his "side project," The Legend of Chris Gaines, in which Brooks "played" Gaines, including doing concerts and TV appearances in character. I liked the idea -- but then, I wasn't fond of Brooks' regular persona. I am now convinced that the Gaines character is based on Urban: Gaines, too, was born in 1967 (making him 5 years younger than his portrayer), was born in Australia but grew up in Los Angeles, and dealt with substance abuse at the height of his fame.
Also on this day, Lieutenant John McCain, U.S. Navy, is shot down over North Vietnam. He remains a prisoner of war for 5 1/2 years.
October 26, 1968: At Highbury, host Arsenal and visiting East London club West Ham United play to a 0-0 tie. Despite the presence of such great players as Arsenal's Bob Wilson, Frank McLintock, George Armstrong, George Graham and John Radford; and West Ham's Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, there isn't much action on the field.
There is, however, action in the stands. West Ham hooligans enter the North Bank, home of Arsenal's most vociferous fans, and "take" it, fighting hard enough that they had to be allowed to stay. Despite the claims of other "firms" -- North London arch-rivals Tottenham Hotspur and their unforgivably-named Yid Army, West London's Chelsea and their Headhunters, Manchester United and their London-based Cockney Reds -- it is the only time any opposing firm has been confirmed to have taken the North Bank.
Also on this day, of the 11 boxing finals at the Olympics in Mexico City, 3 Americans are entered. At 125 pounds, Al Robinson loses to Antonio Roldán of host Mexico. At 132 pounds, Ronnie Harris beats
Ironically, in real life, Liberace's manager was his brother, George (1911-1983). Although not an identical twin, George was also a musician, a violinist, and often worked as Lee's musical arranger.
October 26, 1967: Keith Lionel Urban is born in Whangerei, New Zealand. At age 6, he moved with his family to Australia, and is an Australian citizen. Eventually, he moved to America and became a country singer. He is married to fellow Australian-American Nicole Kidman, which makes him not just a member but an officer of the Lucky Bastards Club.
A lot of people were very upset at country singer Garth Brooks for his "side project," The Legend of Chris Gaines, in which Brooks "played" Gaines, including doing concerts and TV appearances in character. I liked the idea -- but then, I wasn't fond of Brooks' regular persona. I am now convinced that the Gaines character is based on Urban: Gaines, too, was born in 1967 (making him 5 years younger than his portrayer), was born in Australia but grew up in Los Angeles, and dealt with substance abuse at the height of his fame.
Also on this day, Lieutenant John McCain, U.S. Navy, is shot down over North Vietnam. He remains a prisoner of war for 5 1/2 years.
October 26, 1968: At Highbury, host Arsenal and visiting East London club West Ham United play to a 0-0 tie. Despite the presence of such great players as Arsenal's Bob Wilson, Frank McLintock, George Armstrong, George Graham and John Radford; and West Ham's Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, there isn't much action on the field.
There is, however, action in the stands. West Ham hooligans enter the North Bank, home of Arsenal's most vociferous fans, and "take" it, fighting hard enough that they had to be allowed to stay. Despite the claims of other "firms" -- North London arch-rivals Tottenham Hotspur and their unforgivably-named Yid Army, West London's Chelsea and their Headhunters, Manchester United and their London-based Cockney Reds -- it is the only time any opposing firm has been confirmed to have taken the North Bank.
Also on this day, of the 11 boxing finals at the Olympics in Mexico City, 3 Americans are entered. At 125 pounds, Al Robinson loses to Antonio Roldán of host Mexico. At 132 pounds, Ronnie Harris beats
Józef Grudzień of Poland. And at Heavyweight, 178 pounds and up, George Foreman of Houston, having previously defeated boxers from Poland, Romania and Italy, defeats Jonas Čepulis of Lithuania and the Soviet Union by technical knockout, as the referee stops the fight in the 2nd of the maximum 3 rounds.
After his fight, with Čepulis' blood on his singlet and shoulder, Foreman walks around the ring holding a small American flag, and bows to the crowd. He says it was just an expression of pride, and many athletes, particularly in track & field, have had their shoulders draped by their national flag after winning Olympic Gold Medals. People probably wouldn't have thought much of it had it not been for the Tommie Smith and John Carlos protest of 11 days earlier.
*
October 26, 1970, 50 years ago: Muhammad Ali returns to the ring, 3 1/2 years after his boxing license was suspended and his Heavyweight Championship of the World stripped, upon his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army.
Ironically, the 1st State willing to license Ali was the State that, historically, has been the de facto
capital of the South: Georgia. Ali extended challenges to all of the top 10 contenders for the title, including the man who now held the belt, Joe Frazier. The only one who said yes was Jerry Quarry, an Irish Southern Californian who had beaten former Champion Floyd Patterson, but lost to Frazier.
The fight was held at the City Auditorium in Atlanta, and Ali was definitely rusty. Quarry fought well in the 1st 2 rounds, but in the 3rd, Ali cut him over his eye. The referee was too concerned to let the fight continue, and Ali was ruled the winner.
Two years later, they fought again in Las Vegas. This time, Light Heavyweight Champion Bob Foster knocked Quarry's brother Mike out on the undercard. Then, again, Quarry fought hard before getting cut over the eye, this time in the 6th round, and the referee stopped the fight and awarded Ali a TKO.
Both times, Quarry told the media that he could have gone on. Ali would later say, "Ugly Jerry Quarry. He's so ugly, he got cut at the weigh-in!"
Quarry was one of many athletes who had more courage than sense, and one of many boxers who lost their money, and as a result kept fighting far too long. He suffered from dementia pugilistica, and died in 1999, only 53 years old.
After his fight, with Čepulis' blood on his singlet and shoulder, Foreman walks around the ring holding a small American flag, and bows to the crowd. He says it was just an expression of pride, and many athletes, particularly in track & field, have had their shoulders draped by their national flag after winning Olympic Gold Medals. People probably wouldn't have thought much of it had it not been for the Tommie Smith and John Carlos protest of 11 days earlier.
*
October 26, 1970, 50 years ago: Muhammad Ali returns to the ring, 3 1/2 years after his boxing license was suspended and his Heavyweight Championship of the World stripped, upon his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army.
Ironically, the 1st State willing to license Ali was the State that, historically, has been the de facto
capital of the South: Georgia. Ali extended challenges to all of the top 10 contenders for the title, including the man who now held the belt, Joe Frazier. The only one who said yes was Jerry Quarry, an Irish Southern Californian who had beaten former Champion Floyd Patterson, but lost to Frazier.
The fight was held at the City Auditorium in Atlanta, and Ali was definitely rusty. Quarry fought well in the 1st 2 rounds, but in the 3rd, Ali cut him over his eye. The referee was too concerned to let the fight continue, and Ali was ruled the winner.
Two years later, they fought again in Las Vegas. This time, Light Heavyweight Champion Bob Foster knocked Quarry's brother Mike out on the undercard. Then, again, Quarry fought hard before getting cut over the eye, this time in the 6th round, and the referee stopped the fight and awarded Ali a TKO.
Both times, Quarry told the media that he could have gone on. Ali would later say, "Ugly Jerry Quarry. He's so ugly, he got cut at the weigh-in!"
Quarry was one of many athletes who had more courage than sense, and one of many boxers who lost their money, and as a result kept fighting far too long. He suffered from dementia pugilistica, and died in 1999, only 53 years old.
Also on this day, the comic strip Doonesbury premieres in national syndication. Garry Trudeau based it on Bull Tales, which he had drawn at Yale University. Among its regular characters is B.D. a professional football quarterback, and later policeman and soldier, based on late 1960s Yale quarterback Brain Dowling. Trudeau still draws the strip, and is still married to journalist Jane Pauley.
Trudeau drew President Richard Nixon literally building a stone wall around the White House. Timing is everything, though: The strip was scheduled to run on August 12, 1974. Three days earlier, Nixon resigned. A few days later, Trudeau drew the wall coming down, and the Sun shining on the White House, now that Nixon was gone and Gerald Ford was in.
Also on this day, Jessie Willard Armstead is born in Dallas. A linebacker, he won the National Championship with the University of Miami in 1989 and 1991. He made 5 Pro Bowls with the New York Giants, and helped them win the 2000 NFC Championship, although they lost Super Bowl XXXV.
Since 2008, he has been a "Special Assistant" for the Giants, including working with the defense and recruiting. For this role, he received a ring when they won Super Bowl XLVI. The Giants have named him to their Ring of Honor. He is eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but is not yet in.
October 26, 1971: Anthony Deane Rapp is born in Chicago. He played Mark Cohen in the original 1996 Broadway production of the musical Rent, and again in the 2005 film version. He now plays Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets, Chief Engineer aboard the eponymous starship, on the TV series Star Trek: Discovery. This is the 1st openly gay character in a Star Trek series.
October 26, 1973: The Boston Red Sox trade pitcher Ken Tatum and outfielder Reggie Smith to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitcher Rick Wise and outfielder Bernie Carbo.
This could have been one of those rare trades that worked out for both teams: Wise was the leading winner on the Sox rotation that won the 1975 AL Pennant, and Carbo hit a key home run in that year's World Series; while Smith had a .287 lifetime batting average and hit 314 career home runs – 2nd all-time among switch-hitters behind Mickey Mantle at the time of his retirement – and helped his team win 3 Pennants and a World Series.
The problem was that, just as the Cards gave up on Steve Carlton too soon, trading him to the Phillies for Wise, and gave up on Jerry Reuss too soon, sending him to the Dodgers, and now give up on Wise too soon, they will later give up on Smith too soon, trading him to the Dodgers, where he and Reuss will team up on the team that dominates the NL West from 1977 to 1988. These trades were a big reason why the Cards never won the NL East from 1969 to 1981.
Also on this day, Austin Sean Healey is born in Wallasey, Cheshire, England. He has no connection to the British car brand Austin-Healey. The rugby player starred for the Leicester Tigers, and played for England in the 1999 Rugby World Cup. He was an outspoken player, known as the Leicester Lip, and has been a commentator on the sport for the BBC since before his retirement.
Also on this day, Seth Woodbury MacFarlane is born in Kent, Litchfield County, Connecticut. Despite being the descendant of a Mayflower passenger, he created the gross-out TV cartoons Family Guy, its spinoff The Cleveland Show, and American Dad! He also created the gross-out Ted film franchise.
He redeemed himself by creating the science fiction series The Orville, on which he stars as the commanding officer of the starship of that name, Captain Ed Mercer. His sister, actress Rachael MacFarlane, after doing several voices on his cartoons, is the voice of the ship's computer.
Their parents are both from Boston, and, despite growing up on the New York side of Connecticut, Seth is a Red Sox fan. This may (we don't yet know, as baseball has not been mentioned on the show) be reflected in Ed Mercer's background, as the character says he is from Boxford, which is a real town, north of Boston in Essex County, Massachusetts.
October 26, 1974: The Richfield Coliseum opens in Richfield, Ohio. The location was chosen because it was about halfway between the downtowns of Cleveland and Akron. This was a very stupid thing to do.
It was home to the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers from 1974 to 1994, the World Hockey Association's Cleveland Crusaders from 1974 to 1976, the NHL's Cleveland Barons from 1976 to 1978, the Major Indoor Soccer League's Cleveland Force from 1978 to 1988, their successors the Cleveland Crunch from 1989 to 1992, and the International Hockey League's Cleveland Lumberjacks from 1992 to 1994.
In 1975, Muhammad Ali had his 1st defense of his regained Heavyweight Championship of the World there, surprisingly getting knocked down by Chuck Wepner before flooring the otherwise overmatched "Bayonne Bleeder" in the 15th and final round. This fight inspired Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky.
The location was terrible, and the Cavs could never fill its 20,000 seats, so the Gateway Arena (now the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse) Arena was built downtown. The Coliseum was demolished in 1999, and the site is now part of a National Forest.
October 26, 1975: Baltimore's last (to date) major league (or so-to-speak) basketball team folds, before it can ever play a regular-season game.
ABA Commissioner Dave DeBusschere, just a year removed from a Hall of Fame playing career, got word that one of the Baltimore Claws' banks had yanked its line of credit. Double D responded with an ultimatum: Deposit $500,000 with the league as a "performance bond" within 4 days to cover expenses, or the league will shut your team down. The Claws got together half of the money, but could not raise the rest. Reportedly, the remaining money, plus an additional $70,000, was being held in escrow by the city, to be released only if team president David Cohan resigned.
One of the toughest players of his generation, and equally tough as an executive, DeBusschere was not bluffing: The ABA disbanded the Claws less than a week before the regular season began. It issued a statement noting that it had been prepared to enter the 1975-76 season with 9 solid teams, and had given the Baltimore group extra time to get its affairs in order, but that the Claws had failed to do so. The Claws' office at the Baltimore Civic Center was locked up by arena management due to unpaid bills.
The Claws threatened to seek an injunction delaying the start of the season until they were reinstated, citing a provision in the rules requiring 10 days notice before any team could be shuttered. However, after the league and the city threatened to file their own legal actions, the Claws gave up the ghost and folded.
Built in 1962, the Civic Center still stands, as the Royal Farms Arena. Baltimore would like to try to get back into the NBA, but that won't happen unless they can get a new arena, and condemn the downtown auditorium that hosted the NBA's Bullets, several minor-league hockey teams, Elvis and the Beatles to oblivion.
October 26, 1976: Miikka Sakari Kiprusoff is born in Turku, Finland. He was the goaltender for the Calgary Flames, nearly helping them win the 2004 Stanley Cup with some amazing saves in the Playoffs. He is now a spokesman for the Rainbow Society, a Canadian version of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. His brother Marko also played in the NHL.
Also on this day, R. Steve Kelly is born in Vancouver. I can't find a record of what the R. stands for, but it's a good thing he goes by "Steve Kelly," not "R. Kelly." He played 10 seasons as a centre in the NHL from 1997 to 2008, including in 2000 with the Devils, where he played just 1 game in the regular season, but 10 in the Playoffs, and got his name on the Stanley Cup. He is now a police officer in Calgary.
October 26, 1978: Antonio Durran Pierce is born. A linebacker, he played 4 seasons each with the Washington Redskins and the Giants. With the Giants, he made the Pro Bowl in 2006, and was a member of their Super Bowl XLII winners. In 2018, he returned to his alma mater, Arizona State, and is now their defensive coordinator.
October 26, 1973: The Boston Red Sox trade pitcher Ken Tatum and outfielder Reggie Smith to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitcher Rick Wise and outfielder Bernie Carbo.
This could have been one of those rare trades that worked out for both teams: Wise was the leading winner on the Sox rotation that won the 1975 AL Pennant, and Carbo hit a key home run in that year's World Series; while Smith had a .287 lifetime batting average and hit 314 career home runs – 2nd all-time among switch-hitters behind Mickey Mantle at the time of his retirement – and helped his team win 3 Pennants and a World Series.
The problem was that, just as the Cards gave up on Steve Carlton too soon, trading him to the Phillies for Wise, and gave up on Jerry Reuss too soon, sending him to the Dodgers, and now give up on Wise too soon, they will later give up on Smith too soon, trading him to the Dodgers, where he and Reuss will team up on the team that dominates the NL West from 1977 to 1988. These trades were a big reason why the Cards never won the NL East from 1969 to 1981.
Also on this day, Austin Sean Healey is born in Wallasey, Cheshire, England. He has no connection to the British car brand Austin-Healey. The rugby player starred for the Leicester Tigers, and played for England in the 1999 Rugby World Cup. He was an outspoken player, known as the Leicester Lip, and has been a commentator on the sport for the BBC since before his retirement.
Also on this day, Seth Woodbury MacFarlane is born in Kent, Litchfield County, Connecticut. Despite being the descendant of a Mayflower passenger, he created the gross-out TV cartoons Family Guy, its spinoff The Cleveland Show, and American Dad! He also created the gross-out Ted film franchise.
He redeemed himself by creating the science fiction series The Orville, on which he stars as the commanding officer of the starship of that name, Captain Ed Mercer. His sister, actress Rachael MacFarlane, after doing several voices on his cartoons, is the voice of the ship's computer.
Their parents are both from Boston, and, despite growing up on the New York side of Connecticut, Seth is a Red Sox fan. This may (we don't yet know, as baseball has not been mentioned on the show) be reflected in Ed Mercer's background, as the character says he is from Boxford, which is a real town, north of Boston in Essex County, Massachusetts.
October 26, 1974: The Richfield Coliseum opens in Richfield, Ohio. The location was chosen because it was about halfway between the downtowns of Cleveland and Akron. This was a very stupid thing to do.
It was home to the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers from 1974 to 1994, the World Hockey Association's Cleveland Crusaders from 1974 to 1976, the NHL's Cleveland Barons from 1976 to 1978, the Major Indoor Soccer League's Cleveland Force from 1978 to 1988, their successors the Cleveland Crunch from 1989 to 1992, and the International Hockey League's Cleveland Lumberjacks from 1992 to 1994.
In 1975, Muhammad Ali had his 1st defense of his regained Heavyweight Championship of the World there, surprisingly getting knocked down by Chuck Wepner before flooring the otherwise overmatched "Bayonne Bleeder" in the 15th and final round. This fight inspired Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky.
The location was terrible, and the Cavs could never fill its 20,000 seats, so the Gateway Arena (now the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse) Arena was built downtown. The Coliseum was demolished in 1999, and the site is now part of a National Forest.
October 26, 1975: Baltimore's last (to date) major league (or so-to-speak) basketball team folds, before it can ever play a regular-season game.
ABA Commissioner Dave DeBusschere, just a year removed from a Hall of Fame playing career, got word that one of the Baltimore Claws' banks had yanked its line of credit. Double D responded with an ultimatum: Deposit $500,000 with the league as a "performance bond" within 4 days to cover expenses, or the league will shut your team down. The Claws got together half of the money, but could not raise the rest. Reportedly, the remaining money, plus an additional $70,000, was being held in escrow by the city, to be released only if team president David Cohan resigned.
One of the toughest players of his generation, and equally tough as an executive, DeBusschere was not bluffing: The ABA disbanded the Claws less than a week before the regular season began. It issued a statement noting that it had been prepared to enter the 1975-76 season with 9 solid teams, and had given the Baltimore group extra time to get its affairs in order, but that the Claws had failed to do so. The Claws' office at the Baltimore Civic Center was locked up by arena management due to unpaid bills.
The Claws threatened to seek an injunction delaying the start of the season until they were reinstated, citing a provision in the rules requiring 10 days notice before any team could be shuttered. However, after the league and the city threatened to file their own legal actions, the Claws gave up the ghost and folded.
Built in 1962, the Civic Center still stands, as the Royal Farms Arena. Baltimore would like to try to get back into the NBA, but that won't happen unless they can get a new arena, and condemn the downtown auditorium that hosted the NBA's Bullets, several minor-league hockey teams, Elvis and the Beatles to oblivion.
October 26, 1976: Miikka Sakari Kiprusoff is born in Turku, Finland. He was the goaltender for the Calgary Flames, nearly helping them win the 2004 Stanley Cup with some amazing saves in the Playoffs. He is now a spokesman for the Rainbow Society, a Canadian version of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. His brother Marko also played in the NHL.
Also on this day, R. Steve Kelly is born in Vancouver. I can't find a record of what the R. stands for, but it's a good thing he goes by "Steve Kelly," not "R. Kelly." He played 10 seasons as a centre in the NHL from 1997 to 2008, including in 2000 with the Devils, where he played just 1 game in the regular season, but 10 in the Playoffs, and got his name on the Stanley Cup. He is now a police officer in Calgary.
October 26, 1978: Antonio Durran Pierce is born. A linebacker, he played 4 seasons each with the Washington Redskins and the Giants. With the Giants, he made the Pro Bowl in 2006, and was a member of their Super Bowl XLII winners. In 2018, he returned to his alma mater, Arizona State, and is now their defensive coordinator.
October 26, 1979: President Park Chung-hee of the Republic of Korea (a.k.a. "South Korea") is assassinated, shot by Kim Jae-gyu, director of the KCIA, the country's intelligence service, after a banquet at an alleged safehouse in the capital of Seoul.
Kim claimed that Park was an obstacle to democracy, and that his act was one of patriotism. He had a point: Park had been President since 1962, and since the nation was established in 1948 under Syngman Rhee, it had, essentially, been a dictatorship. Nevertheless, for his crie, Kim was hanged 7 months later.
Within a few years, South Korea would be a thriving democracy. In 2013, Park's daughter, Park Geun-hye, was elected President, the 1st popularly elected head of state in East Asia. But she was impeached for corruption, and was removed from office on March 10, 2017.
*
October 26, 1980, 40 years ago: The Cleveland Browns come from behind to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-26 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. By beating their arch-rivals, who are also the 2-time defending (and 4 times in the last 6 years) NFL Champions, the Browns knock them off their perch, and go on to become AFC Central Division Champions. By doing it the way they did, on top of other come-from-behind wins, this game gives them the nickname "The Kardiac Kids." But they will lose to the Oakland Raiders in the Divisional Playoffs.
Kim claimed that Park was an obstacle to democracy, and that his act was one of patriotism. He had a point: Park had been President since 1962, and since the nation was established in 1948 under Syngman Rhee, it had, essentially, been a dictatorship. Nevertheless, for his crie, Kim was hanged 7 months later.
Within a few years, South Korea would be a thriving democracy. In 2013, Park's daughter, Park Geun-hye, was elected President, the 1st popularly elected head of state in East Asia. But she was impeached for corruption, and was removed from office on March 10, 2017.
*
October 26, 1980, 40 years ago: The Cleveland Browns come from behind to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-26 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. By beating their arch-rivals, who are also the 2-time defending (and 4 times in the last 6 years) NFL Champions, the Browns knock them off their perch, and go on to become AFC Central Division Champions. By doing it the way they did, on top of other come-from-behind wins, this game gives them the nickname "The Kardiac Kids." But they will lose to the Oakland Raiders in the Divisional Playoffs.
Also on this day, Nicholas John Collison is born in Orange City, Iowa, and grows up in nearby Iowa Falls. A forward, he became the leading scorer in the history of Big 12 Conference basketball, and with Kirk Heinrichs helped the University of Kansas reach the Final Four in 2002 and 2003. He is a member of the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame.
He was drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics, and moved with them the become the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008, but has kept his residence in the Seattle area. He helped them reach the 2012 NBA Finals. Both Kansas and the Thunder have retired his Number 4, making him the Thunder's 1st retired number.
(The Thunder have kept the numbers retired by the Sonics out of circulation, but do not hang banners for them. If the Sonics are restored, through an expansion or a move, their history will also be restored, and the Thunder can then give those numbers out.)
Also on this day, Christian Eugen Chivu is born in Reșița, Romania. A left back, he won league titles with Ajax Amsterdam in 2002, and with Internazionale Milano in 2008, 2009 and 2010; national cups with Ajax in 2002 (a Double), AS Roma in 2007, and Inter in 2010 (a Double) and 2011; and the UEFA Champions League in 2010 (Italy's only "European Treble" to date -- for all their achievements, neither AC Milan nor Juventus have done it).
He played for Romania in Euro 2000 and Euro 2008, but never in the World Cup. He retired after the 2014 season. He has gone into coaching.
October 26, 1983: Mike Michalske dies in Green Bay, Wisconsin at age 80. A guard and a defensive tackle, he starred for Penn State long before Joe Paterno came along, and was a 7-time All-Pro for the Green Bay Packers, helping them win the NFL Championship in 1929, 1930 and 1931. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NFL's 1920s All-Decade Team. He later went into coaching, assisting on the staffs of the Packers, Chicago Cardinals and Baltimore Colts, and was head coach at Iowa State from 1942 to 1946.
Also on this day, Francisco Liriano is born in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. The Minnesota Twins' lefthander reached the All-Star team in 2006 aged just 22, but an elbow injury has hampered his career ever since. He pitched a no-hitter in 2011.
His career record is 112-114, and he has reached the Playoffs with the Twins in 2009 and '10; the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2013, '14 and '15; the Toronto Blue Jays in '16, and won the World Series with the Houston Astros in '17. That's 5 straight seasons, and in 7 of 9. Resistance is futile!
He did not pitch in the 2020 season, opting out due to the COVID-19 epidemic. However, he has not officially retired.
Also on this day, Katharine Bear Tur is born in Los Angeles. In 2017, for her reporting on MSNBC, Katy Tur received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.
October 26, 1984: Michael Jordan makes his NBA debut. He scores 16 points and has 11 assists, and is outscored by 3 Chicago Bulls teammates: Orlando Woolridge with 28, Quintin Dailey with 25 and Steve Johnson with 18. The Bulls beat the Washington Bullets, 109-93 at Chicago Stadium.
Also on this day, Alexandra Pauline Cohen is born in Los Angeles. Of Russian-Jewish descent, "Sasha" Cohen won a Silver Medal in figure skating at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and has since become an actress.
She is definitely not to be confused with the also-Jewish British actor Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Ali G, Borat, Bruno, and Admiral General Hafez Aladeen. Unlike Sacha Baron Cohen, Sasha Cohen has class.
Also on this day, Adriano Correia Claro is born in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. Known simply as Adriano, the midfielder led hometown club Coritiba to the Paraná state championship in 2003 and 2004. He went to Spain, and won the Copa del Rey (King's Cup) with Sevilla in 2007 and '10, and with Barcelona in 2012, '15 and '16. He won the UEFA Cup with Sevilla in 2006 and '07. With Barcelona, he won La Liga in 2011, '13, '15 and '16, and the UEFA Champions League in 2011 and '15.
Despite helping Brazil win the 2004 Copa América, he has never represented his country in the World Cup. With Istanbul team Beşiktaş, he won the Turkish Süper Lig in 2017. He now lays for Belgian top-flight team K.A.S. Eupen.
Also on this day, Katharine Bear Tur is born in Los Angeles. In 2017, for her reporting on MSNBC, Katy Tur received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.
October 26, 1984: Michael Jordan makes his NBA debut. He scores 16 points and has 11 assists, and is outscored by 3 Chicago Bulls teammates: Orlando Woolridge with 28, Quintin Dailey with 25 and Steve Johnson with 18. The Bulls beat the Washington Bullets, 109-93 at Chicago Stadium.
Also on this day, Alexandra Pauline Cohen is born in Los Angeles. Of Russian-Jewish descent, "Sasha" Cohen won a Silver Medal in figure skating at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and has since become an actress.
She is definitely not to be confused with the also-Jewish British actor Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Ali G, Borat, Bruno, and Admiral General Hafez Aladeen. Unlike Sacha Baron Cohen, Sasha Cohen has class.
Also on this day, Adriano Correia Claro is born in Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. Known simply as Adriano, the midfielder led hometown club Coritiba to the Paraná state championship in 2003 and 2004. He went to Spain, and won the Copa del Rey (King's Cup) with Sevilla in 2007 and '10, and with Barcelona in 2012, '15 and '16. He won the UEFA Cup with Sevilla in 2006 and '07. With Barcelona, he won La Liga in 2011, '13, '15 and '16, and the UEFA Champions League in 2011 and '15.
Despite helping Brazil win the 2004 Copa América, he has never represented his country in the World Cup. With Istanbul team Beşiktaş, he won the Turkish Süper Lig in 2017. He now lays for Belgian top-flight team K.A.S. Eupen.
Also on this day, Jefferson Agustín Farfán Guadalupe is born in Lima, Peru. Known professionally as Jefferson Farfán, the forward led hometown club Alianza Lima to the Peruvian League title in 2001 and '03; PSV Eindhoven to the Dutch league (Eredivisie) title in 2005, '07, '07 and '08; PSV to the Dutch Cup (KNVB Beker) in 2005; and Schalke to the German Cup (DFB-Pokal) in 2011.
He now plays for Lokomotiv Moscow, and helped them win the Russian Premier League in 2018, and the Russian Cup in 2017 and 2019. The same year, he finally appeared in his 1st World Cup for Peru.
Also on this day, Gus Mancuso dies in Houston of emphysema. He was 78. A catcher, he was a 2-time All-Star who won National League Pennants with the 1930 and 1931 St. Louis Cardinals, and with the 1933, 1936 and 1937 New York Giants, winning the World Series in 1931 and 1933. He is a member of the Texas and National Italian American Sports Halls of Fame.
*
October 26, 1985: Time travel is first demonstrated at the Twin Pines Mall (or is that the Lone Pine Mall?) in Hill Valley, California -- or, rather, is dramatized in the film Back to the Future.
He now plays for Lokomotiv Moscow, and helped them win the Russian Premier League in 2018, and the Russian Cup in 2017 and 2019. The same year, he finally appeared in his 1st World Cup for Peru.
Also on this day, Gus Mancuso dies in Houston of emphysema. He was 78. A catcher, he was a 2-time All-Star who won National League Pennants with the 1930 and 1931 St. Louis Cardinals, and with the 1933, 1936 and 1937 New York Giants, winning the World Series in 1931 and 1933. He is a member of the Texas and National Italian American Sports Halls of Fame.
*
October 26, 1985: Time travel is first demonstrated at the Twin Pines Mall (or is that the Lone Pine Mall?) in Hill Valley, California -- or, rather, is dramatized in the film Back to the Future.
The demonstration by Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) was actually filmed at the Puente Hills Mall in City of Industry, California, about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Most of the trilogy's scenes were filmed in Los Angeles County, although the Courthouse Square area was a movie set that, for whatever reason, has frequently been struck, not by lightning, but by fire.
Before the incident that sent Marty back to 1955, Doc told him that he was going 25 years into the future, to see what technological developments were going to happen. "I'll also get to see who wins the net 25 World Series!" he says. "Wouldn't that be a nice gift to have for my old age?"
Before the incident that sent Marty back to 1955, Doc told him that he was going 25 years into the future, to see what technological developments were going to happen. "I'll also get to see who wins the net 25 World Series!" he says. "Wouldn't that be a nice gift to have for my old age?"
For the record, due to the Strike of '94, he would have gotten to see only 24, won by the following teams: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Mets, the Minnesota Twins, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Oakland Athletics, the Cincinnati Reds, the Twins again, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Jays again, the Atlanta Braves, the New York Yankees, the Florida Marlins, the Yankees again, the Yankees again, the Yankees again, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Anaheim Angels, the Marlins again, the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago White Sox, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Red Sox again, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Yankees again.
But in the 2nd film, partially set 30 years in the future -- on October 21, 2015, now 5 years in our past -- Marty sees that the Chicago Cubs have won the World Series, beating a Miami-based team whose logo is an alligator. This turned out to be impossible, not just because the Cubs didn't show up against the Mets in the 2015 National League Championship Series, but because MLB put the Cubs and the Miami team, which was instead named the Marlins, in the same League.
This inspires him to buy a sports almanac that he can take back to 1985, so he can know the results beforehand and bet on them: "I can't lose!" Doc warns Marty about how dangerous that can be, and convinces Marty to throw the almanac out.
But the film's antagonist, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), sees and overhears all this, picks up the thrown-out almanac, takes it with him, steals the DeLorean, and demonstrates that the Doc was right: Placing bets using the almanac, Young Biff, with Old Biff's assistance, unwittingly creates an alternate reality where Hill Valley is a mini-Las Vegas, and Middle-Aged Biff is a cross between Fat Elvis and Tony Soprano, with a hairstyle that brings to mind Donald Trump -- except, unlike Trump, Biff actually makes money running a casino.
And, apparently having gotten connections to Richard Nixon, Biff has even gotten the 22nd Amendment repealed, so that Nixon is running for a 5th term as President. Might this be a tip of the hat to Watchmen? No: In that story, whose "present" is September 1985, Nixon used Dr. Manhattan to win the Vietnam War in 1970; in this one, a newspaper headline reads "Vows to end Vietnam War by 1985." This situation is remedied at the end of the 2nd film: The newspaper changes to read, "Reagan to seek 2nd term, Vows to balance budget by 1985." (That didn't happen in real life.)
But in the 2nd film, partially set 30 years in the future -- on October 21, 2015, now 5 years in our past -- Marty sees that the Chicago Cubs have won the World Series, beating a Miami-based team whose logo is an alligator. This turned out to be impossible, not just because the Cubs didn't show up against the Mets in the 2015 National League Championship Series, but because MLB put the Cubs and the Miami team, which was instead named the Marlins, in the same League.
This inspires him to buy a sports almanac that he can take back to 1985, so he can know the results beforehand and bet on them: "I can't lose!" Doc warns Marty about how dangerous that can be, and convinces Marty to throw the almanac out.
And, apparently having gotten connections to Richard Nixon, Biff has even gotten the 22nd Amendment repealed, so that Nixon is running for a 5th term as President. Might this be a tip of the hat to Watchmen? No: In that story, whose "present" is September 1985, Nixon used Dr. Manhattan to win the Vietnam War in 1970; in this one, a newspaper headline reads "Vows to end Vietnam War by 1985." This situation is remedied at the end of the 2nd film: The newspaper changes to read, "Reagan to seek 2nd term, Vows to balance budget by 1985." (That didn't happen in real life.)
And yet, in one respect, the movie was only off by a year: The Cubs reached the NLCS in 2015, and reached the World Series in 2016!
Perhaps Marty should have warned the Cardinals about what was going to happen in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, starting at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, about 19 hours after his trip back into time.
The Cards lead the cross-State Royals 1-0, and need just 3 more outs to win the World Series. Jorge Orta hits a ground ball to 1st baseman Jack Clark. Clark flips to reliever Todd Worrell, who is covering the base. Orta is unquestionably out. The instant replay cameras and the photograph above confirm this. Except 1st base umpire Don Denkinger blows the call, and calls Orta safe.
The next batter, Steve Balboni, pops up, and Clark can’t handle it, and Balboni singles on his next swing. A passed ball by Darrell Porter, a Royal postseason hero from 1980 but now the Cardinal catcher (having been their postseason hero in 1982), makes it men on 2nd and 3rd, and Hal McRae is intentionally walked. Dane Iorg steps up, and singles home Orta and Balboni, and the Royals have a 2-1 walkoff win to force a Game 7 at home.
The Cardinals are furious. So are their fans. Understandably so. They all think Denkinger stole the World Series from them. They still think so, 35 years later.
There's just one problem with this theory: There was still 1 game to go. If the Cardinals had won Game 7, Denkinger's blown call would have been just a footnote.
So Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog should have taken his team into the clubhouse and said, "Men, we got screwed tonight, but there's nothing we can do about it now. So let's win this thing tomorrow, and what happened tonight won't matter." Instead, the White Rat whined about the call to the media, and let it get into his head, and into his team's heads.
The shock isn't that the Cards lost Game 7 by a whopping 11-0. The shock is that the Royals won it by only 11 runs. It is the biggest blowout in Game 7 history, previously reached only by, oddly enough, the Cardinals, when they beat the Detroit Tigers in 1934 (the Joe Medwick Game).
In 2015, someone did a "Win Expectation" study of that game. Before the swing, the Cardinals had an 81 percent chance of winning the game -- meaning a 1 in 5 chance of losing. That's hardly ridiculous. If the right call had been made, giving the Cardinals an out, they would have had an 89 percent chance -- a 1 in 11 chance of losing, unlikely but still not outrageous for the Royals to have come from behind to win. Even with the call blown, the Cards had a 67 percent chance -- a 2/3rds chance. They still should have won it.
Don Denkinger was still respected enough by the baseball establishment to be put behind the plate for the 1987 All-Star Game, and named crew chief for the 1988 American League Championship Series, the 1991 World Series, and the 1992 ALCS, before retiring in 1998 after 30 season in the majors, 22 as a crew chief. He is now 84 years old, and still lives in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa.
The Cardinals have since won 3 World Series. For those among their fans who have not yet done so, it's time to move on.
On the same day of the real-life World Series umpiring miscue and the fictional time-travel experiment, the Montreal Canadiens pay tribute to one of their 1950s heroes, retiring the Number 2 of Hall of Fame defenseman Doug Harvey. They beat the Hartford Whalers, 5-3 at the Montreal Forum.
Also on this day, Bob Scheffing dies in Phoenix at age 72. He was a major league catcher, mostly for the Chicago Cubs, from 1941 to 1951, although he missed the Cubs' 1945 Pennant due to serving in World War II. He managed the Cubs from 1957 to 1959, and the Detroit Tigers from 1961 to 1963.
He then served the Tigers as a scout and a radio broadcaster, before being hired to succeed the late Johnny Murphy as Mets general manager in 1970. He traded Nolan Ryan to the California Angels for Jim Fregosi after the 1971 season, one of the all-time bonehead trades. But he did help the Mets build a Pennant winner in 1973. He was fired in 1975, but remained in the Met organization as a scout for the last 10 years of his life.
Also on this day, Clarence B. Vaughn (I don't have any reference to what the B stands for) is born in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and grows up in Colorado Springs. A safety, "Chip" Vaughn was with the New Orleans Saints when they won Super Bowl XLIV. He won the Grey Cup in 2013, with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He has gone into coaching.
Also on this day, Monta Ellis (no middle name, and that's pronounced Mon-TAY) is born in Jackson, Mississippi. A guard for the Golden State Warriors, "the Mississippi Missile" was named the NBA’s Most Improved Player in 2007. He last played in 2017, for the Indiana Pacers.
Also on this day, Andrea Bargnani is born in Rome. A center, he starred in his native Italy before coming to America and playing for the Toronto Raptors, the Knicks and the Nets.
Also on this day, Kieran Read is born in Papakura, New Zealand. He was the Captain of his country's legendary national rugby team, the world-famous All Blacks. He was part of their 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cup winners, and plays his club rugby for Toyota Verblitz, in the city of Toyota, Japan.
Also on this day, Andrea Bargnani is born in Rome. A center, he starred in his native Italy before coming to America and playing for the Toronto Raptors, the Knicks and the Nets.
Also on this day, Kieran Read is born in Papakura, New Zealand. He was the Captain of his country's legendary national rugby team, the world-famous All Blacks. He was part of their 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cup winners, and plays his club rugby for Toyota Verblitz, in the city of Toyota, Japan.
October 26, 1986: Jackson Scholz dies in Delray Beach, Florida at age 89. In 1920, he was part of an American relay team that won a Gold Medal at the Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. In 1924, he won another Gold Medal in Paris, in the 200 meters.
But he's best remembered for a race he lost, the 100 meters in 1924, defeated by British runner Harold Abrahams. This was depicted in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Scholz was played by Brad Davis, Abrahams by Ben Cross. As part of American Express' promotions for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Scholz and Cross did one of AmEx's "Do you know me?" commercials.
Also on this day, Jakub Rzeźniczak is born in Łódź (pronounced "wootz"), Poland. A centreback, he was the Captain of Poland's leading sports team, Legia Warsaw, the former Polish Army soccer club. He won the Polish League, the Ekstraklasa, with "The Legion" in 2006, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017; and the Polish Cup (Puchar Polski w piłce nożnej) in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013 (a Double), 2015 and 2016 (another Double).
He has since left Legia, and now plays for Wisła Płock. Oddly, he has only played 9 games for the Polish national team, and never represented Poland in a major tournament, not even in 2012 when it shared hosting duties for Euro 2012 with Ukraine.
But he's best remembered for a race he lost, the 100 meters in 1924, defeated by British runner Harold Abrahams. This was depicted in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Scholz was played by Brad Davis, Abrahams by Ben Cross. As part of American Express' promotions for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Scholz and Cross did one of AmEx's "Do you know me?" commercials.
Also on this day, Jakub Rzeźniczak is born in Łódź (pronounced "wootz"), Poland. A centreback, he was the Captain of Poland's leading sports team, Legia Warsaw, the former Polish Army soccer club. He won the Polish League, the Ekstraklasa, with "The Legion" in 2006, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017; and the Polish Cup (Puchar Polski w piłce nożnej) in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013 (a Double), 2015 and 2016 (another Double).
He has since left Legia, and now plays for Wisła Płock. Oddly, he has only played 9 games for the Polish national team, and never represented Poland in a major tournament, not even in 2012 when it shared hosting duties for Euro 2012 with Ukraine.
October 26, 1987: Adam Wolanin dies in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge -- 40 years to the day after Hillary Clinton was born in the same town. The native of Lwow, Poland -- now Lviv, Ukraine -- played soccer as a forward in Poland, but fled to England when the Nazis invaded in 1939. He signed with Lancashire club Blackpool, but never played in a first team game.
So he went to Chicago, home to a large Polish community, and starred for local clubs, winning the National Challenge Cup -- America's version of England's FA Cup, now known as the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup -- in 1953 with the Chicago Falcons. He was also a member of the U.S. World Cup team in 1950 (eligible because he had not previously played for Poland's team), although he only played in the opening match against Spain, not in the subsequent upset of England. He is a member of the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame.
*
October 26, 1990, 30 years ago: Forum di Assago opens in Milan, Italy. Now named the Mediolanum Forum, it is home to Italy's most successful professional basketball team, Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano. They've won the Italian League a record 28 times, including 4 times since the arena opened. They've won the EuroLeague, basketball's version of soccer's UEFA Champions League, 3 times, in 1966, 1987 and 1988, but those were before the arena opened.
Former Knicks head coach Mike D'Antoni played for them from 1977 to 1990, when the arena opened, and then served as their head coach until 1994.
October 26, 1991: Game 6 of the World Series. The Minnesota Twins are hosting the Atlanta Braves at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, broadcast live on CBS. While the game is still going on, NBC airs Saturday Night Live.
This episode would be the debut of Ellen Cleghorne's character Queen Shenequa, but it opens with their version of NBC's political talk show The McLaughlin Group, with Dana Carvey playing host John McLaughlin. He and all the panelists are wearing Halloween costumes. Then, Carvey keels over with a knife in his back, and the real McLaughlin takes over -- but stays in character, exaggerating his tagline, "Wrong!" the way Carvey does.
So he went to Chicago, home to a large Polish community, and starred for local clubs, winning the National Challenge Cup -- America's version of England's FA Cup, now known as the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup -- in 1953 with the Chicago Falcons. He was also a member of the U.S. World Cup team in 1950 (eligible because he had not previously played for Poland's team), although he only played in the opening match against Spain, not in the subsequent upset of England. He is a member of the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame.
*
October 26, 1990, 30 years ago: Forum di Assago opens in Milan, Italy. Now named the Mediolanum Forum, it is home to Italy's most successful professional basketball team, Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano. They've won the Italian League a record 28 times, including 4 times since the arena opened. They've won the EuroLeague, basketball's version of soccer's UEFA Champions League, 3 times, in 1966, 1987 and 1988, but those were before the arena opened.
Former Knicks head coach Mike D'Antoni played for them from 1977 to 1990, when the arena opened, and then served as their head coach until 1994.
October 26, 1991: Game 6 of the World Series. The Minnesota Twins are hosting the Atlanta Braves at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, broadcast live on CBS. While the game is still going on, NBC airs Saturday Night Live.
This episode would be the debut of Ellen Cleghorne's character Queen Shenequa, but it opens with their version of NBC's political talk show The McLaughlin Group, with Dana Carvey playing host John McLaughlin. He and all the panelists are wearing Halloween costumes. Then, Carvey keels over with a knife in his back, and the real McLaughlin takes over -- but stays in character, exaggerating his tagline, "Wrong!" the way Carvey does.
When host Christian Slater comes out, he sees the entire audience doing the Braves' Tomahawk Chop and War Chant. He turns and sees McLaughlin and executive producer Lorne Michaels watching the game, rather than watching hthe show they're actually working on, doing the Chop with the big red foam Tomahawks, and wearing Indian headdresses. With the game in extra innings, Michaels says, "Braves in 6." McLaughlin says, "Wrong! Braves in 7!"
They're both wrong: Kirby Puckett makes a great catch and hits a dramatic home run in the bottom half of the 11th inning, to give the Twins a 4-3 win, and tie the Series. What has been shaping up as one of the best World Series ever will go to a Game 7 that will be worthy of it.
October 26, 1992: John Dwight Smith Jr. is born outside in Peachtree City, Georgia. His father, who goes by Dwight Smith, was then with for the Chicago Cubs. Also an outfielder, Dwight Smith Jr. debuted with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2017, and has been with the Baltimore Orioles in since 2019.
October 26, 1993: Shaquille O'Neal releases his 1st recording, the rap album Shaq Diesel. The album sells over a million copies, and the single "(I Know I Got) Skillz" reaches Number 35 on the Billboard
October 26, 1993: Shaquille O'Neal releases his 1st recording, the rap album Shaq Diesel. The album sells over a million copies, and the single "(I Know I Got) Skillz" reaches Number 35 on the Billboard
magazine Hot 100.
Shaq later went into acting, including playing the DC Comics superhero Steel in the 1997 film of that title. However, he was wise to not quit his "day job." The Los Angeles Rams and Tony Conigliaro in the 1960s, and Terry Bradshaw in the 1970s, proved that athletes shouldn't sing. In the 1980s, Liverpool Football Club proved that athletes shouldn't rap, either. Apparently, Shaquille O'Neal didn't listen.
Shaq later went into acting, including playing the DC Comics superhero Steel in the 1997 film of that title. However, he was wise to not quit his "day job." The Los Angeles Rams and Tony Conigliaro in the 1960s, and Terry Bradshaw in the 1970s, proved that athletes shouldn't sing. In the 1980s, Liverpool Football Club proved that athletes shouldn't rap, either. Apparently, Shaquille O'Neal didn't listen.
Also on this day, the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars are founded, as the NFL votes to admit them through the expansion process.
Also on this day, Everett Dean dies at age 95. An All-American basketball player at Indiana University in 1921, he coached their team from 1924 to 1938, winning the title of the league now known as the Big Ten in 1926, 1928 and 1938, and coaching their baseball team at the same time.
He then moved on to Stanford, and coached them to the 1942 National Championship, remaining in charge until 1951, and coaching their baseball team from 1950 to 1955.
October 26, 1994: Had the baseball season been permitted to reach a conclusion, Game 4 of the World Series would have been played on this day, at the home park of the American League Champions.
Also on this day, Everett Dean dies at age 95. An All-American basketball player at Indiana University in 1921, he coached their team from 1924 to 1938, winning the title of the league now known as the Big Ten in 1926, 1928 and 1938, and coaching their baseball team at the same time.
He then moved on to Stanford, and coached them to the 1942 National Championship, remaining in charge until 1951, and coaching their baseball team from 1950 to 1955.
October 26, 1994: Had the baseball season been permitted to reach a conclusion, Game 4 of the World Series would have been played on this day, at the home park of the American League Champions.
Also on this day, Jordan Morris (no middle name) is born in Seattle. A forward, he helped his hometown Seattle Sounders win the 2016 and 2019 MLS Cups, and the U.S. national team win the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup - but did not qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
He plays despite having diabetes. His father, Michael Morris, is the Sounders' team doctor.
October 26, 1995, 25 years ago: Game 5 of the World Series at Jacobs (Progressive) Field in Chicago. What shapes up as a pitcher's duel between Greg Maddux of the Atlanta Braves and Orel Hershiser, a Los Angeles Dodger hero of the 1988 World Series, now pitching for the Cleveland Indians, turns into a home run battle.
Luis Polonia and Ryan Klesko hit round-trippers for the Braves, but Albert Belle and Jim Thome hit them for the Tribe. A Braves comeback in the 9th falls short, and the Indians win, 5-4 to send the Series back to Atlanta for a Game 6.
This turns out to be the last Major League Baseball game televised by ABC until the 2020 Playoffs.
Also on this day, the KeyArena opens at the Seattle Center complex, taking the place of the Seattle Center Coliseum. The Seattle SuperSonics make the NBA Finals in their 1st season there, but are moved to Oklahoma City in 2008.
It was also home to the WNBA's Seattle Storm and the basketball teams of Seattle University. But it is about to be replaced with the 3rd arena on the site, for the Seattle Kraken, an expansion team debuting in the NHL for the 2021-22 season. Seattle also hopes it will become the home of a moved or expansion NBA team that will become the new Sonics. Until it reopens, the Storm are playing at Hec Edmondson Pavilion on the campus of the University of Washington.
Also on this day, Mario Lemieux scores his 500th career goal, at the Nassau Coliseum. It helps the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the New York Islanders, in their awful new "Gorton's Fisherman" logo jerseys, 7-5. These awful uniforms will last just 2 seasons.
*
October 26, 1996: Has it really been 24 years? Yes. Yankees 3, Braves 2, clinching the Yankees' 23rd World Championship, their 1st in 18 years, at the original Yankee Stadium. The Yanks scored all 3 runs in the bottom of the 3rd, including a triple off Greg Maddux by catcher Joe Girardi.
After seeing Girardi as the Yankee manager from 2008 to 2017, it's easy to forget what kind of a player he was. He was a good defensive catcher, but hitting a triple off Maddux in a World Series game was really unexpected. It wasn't quite the U.S. college kids beating the "amateur" hockey players in their 30s put up by the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics, nor was it quite Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson in 1990. But it was a shock. A beautiful shock.
October 26, 1996: Has it really been 24 years? Yes. Yankees 3, Braves 2, clinching the Yankees' 23rd World Championship, their 1st in 18 years, at the original Yankee Stadium. The Yanks scored all 3 runs in the bottom of the 3rd, including a triple off Greg Maddux by catcher Joe Girardi.
After seeing Girardi as the Yankee manager from 2008 to 2017, it's easy to forget what kind of a player he was. He was a good defensive catcher, but hitting a triple off Maddux in a World Series game was really unexpected. It wasn't quite the U.S. college kids beating the "amateur" hockey players in their 30s put up by the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics, nor was it quite Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson in 1990. But it was a shock. A beautiful shock.
Less shocking is that Braves manager Bobby Cox, himself a former Yankee 3rd baseman and coach, is thrown out of the game for arguing with a call. While not as abusive as such umpire-baiters as John McGraw, Billy Martin and Earl Weaver, Cox holds the major league records for regular-season ejections with 158, and in the postseason with 3. Not until Dave Martinez in 2019 will another manager be thrown out of a World Series game.
When Mariano Rivera, then the "bridge" reliever, was on the mound in the 8th, Fox announcer Tim McCarver said, "There's not a lot of secret as to what you're gonna get from Mariano Rivera: A lot of high gas." It would be the next year, when Mo succeeded John Wetteland as the closer, that he developed the cut fastball that made him the greatest relief pitcher of all time.
When Mo got a strikeout to end the 8th, McCarver and Joe Buck wisely didn't say a word, and let the roar of the crowd be what took them to commercial. Those cheers seemed to contain not a word, but they spoke volumes. Some who were there said that the old Yankee Stadium actually shook at that moment.
An inning later, Wetteland, who became the 1st reliever ever to save all 4 of his team's wins in a World Series (and remains the only one) and was named MVP, got Mark Lemke to pop up to 3rd base, and Charlie Hayes caught it. As John Sterling said on WABC (the Yankees' radio station at the time), "Hayes... makes the catch! Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!" He didn't start adding "Ballgame over!" until the next year, and didn't start adding "(name of series) over!" until the next.
Since my parents made me go to bed early in 1977 and '78, this was the first time I had ever seen the Yankees win a World Series as it happened. And when you live in a town full of Met fans, and see Met fans every day on the local news, and hear all the time about 1969 and 1986, then 18 years really does feel as long as 86 years ended up feeling to Red Sox fans.
Add the fact that a lot of Met fans switched sides, either temporarily (like Joan Hodges, Gil's wife, and son Gil Jr.) or permanently (like Spike Lee), and the fact that the Yankees' ticker-tape parade attracted 4 million people, more than attended either of the Mets' parades, and more than attended the Rangers’ parade in 1994 (have I ever mentioned that the Rangers suck?), and this was the most satisfying sports championship I had ever experienced.
Even more than the Devils' 1st Stanley Cup the year before. More than the various sports titles won by East Brunswick High. Even the football State Championship won, at long last, by E.B. in 2004 cannot top this. The '98 and '99 Yanks? Great victories, but '96 would always be the sweetest sports win of my life.
Or so I thought. More on that later.
Sterling was interviewed on Eyewitness News the next day. He was not yet known as the hyper-partisan, victory-yammering "Pa Pinstripe" that he later became. We did not yet think of him as "the Voice of the Yankees" like we did Phil Rizzuto, and generations before thought of Mel Allen.
And he knew that this team had won just 92 games in the regular season, faced a tough challenge from the Orioles to win the AL East, lost Game 1 of the ALDS to the Texas Rangers and were losing in Game 2 before they came back to win that, Game 3 and Game 4; and then had the Jeffrey Maier incident in Game 1 of the ALCS and lost Game 2 before sweeping 3 in Baltimore, and finally coming back from 2 games to 0 to take the next 4 of the World Series against the Braves.
This Yankee team's greatness was not in their numbers or in their star power – remember, Derek Jeter was a rookie, so was Jorge Posada (and he wasn't even the starting catcher yet), and Rivera and Andy Pettitte were both in Year 2 – but in their performance, their courage and their resilience. As George Steinbrenner said afterwards, "They're battlers, and New York is a city of battlers. You battle for everything in this town: For cabs, for a seat in a restaurant, everything."
And Sterling summed the '96 Yankees up: "They're not a great team, but they're a team that plays great together."
Beautiful. Then in 1998, the Yankees became the greatest single-season team of all time.
When Mariano Rivera, then the "bridge" reliever, was on the mound in the 8th, Fox announcer Tim McCarver said, "There's not a lot of secret as to what you're gonna get from Mariano Rivera: A lot of high gas." It would be the next year, when Mo succeeded John Wetteland as the closer, that he developed the cut fastball that made him the greatest relief pitcher of all time.
When Mo got a strikeout to end the 8th, McCarver and Joe Buck wisely didn't say a word, and let the roar of the crowd be what took them to commercial. Those cheers seemed to contain not a word, but they spoke volumes. Some who were there said that the old Yankee Stadium actually shook at that moment.
An inning later, Wetteland, who became the 1st reliever ever to save all 4 of his team's wins in a World Series (and remains the only one) and was named MVP, got Mark Lemke to pop up to 3rd base, and Charlie Hayes caught it. As John Sterling said on WABC (the Yankees' radio station at the time), "Hayes... makes the catch! Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!" He didn't start adding "Ballgame over!" until the next year, and didn't start adding "(name of series) over!" until the next.
Since my parents made me go to bed early in 1977 and '78, this was the first time I had ever seen the Yankees win a World Series as it happened. And when you live in a town full of Met fans, and see Met fans every day on the local news, and hear all the time about 1969 and 1986, then 18 years really does feel as long as 86 years ended up feeling to Red Sox fans.
Add the fact that a lot of Met fans switched sides, either temporarily (like Joan Hodges, Gil's wife, and son Gil Jr.) or permanently (like Spike Lee), and the fact that the Yankees' ticker-tape parade attracted 4 million people, more than attended either of the Mets' parades, and more than attended the Rangers’ parade in 1994 (have I ever mentioned that the Rangers suck?), and this was the most satisfying sports championship I had ever experienced.
Even more than the Devils' 1st Stanley Cup the year before. More than the various sports titles won by East Brunswick High. Even the football State Championship won, at long last, by E.B. in 2004 cannot top this. The '98 and '99 Yanks? Great victories, but '96 would always be the sweetest sports win of my life.
Or so I thought. More on that later.
Sterling was interviewed on Eyewitness News the next day. He was not yet known as the hyper-partisan, victory-yammering "Pa Pinstripe" that he later became. We did not yet think of him as "the Voice of the Yankees" like we did Phil Rizzuto, and generations before thought of Mel Allen.
And he knew that this team had won just 92 games in the regular season, faced a tough challenge from the Orioles to win the AL East, lost Game 1 of the ALDS to the Texas Rangers and were losing in Game 2 before they came back to win that, Game 3 and Game 4; and then had the Jeffrey Maier incident in Game 1 of the ALCS and lost Game 2 before sweeping 3 in Baltimore, and finally coming back from 2 games to 0 to take the next 4 of the World Series against the Braves.
This Yankee team's greatness was not in their numbers or in their star power – remember, Derek Jeter was a rookie, so was Jorge Posada (and he wasn't even the starting catcher yet), and Rivera and Andy Pettitte were both in Year 2 – but in their performance, their courage and their resilience. As George Steinbrenner said afterwards, "They're battlers, and New York is a city of battlers. You battle for everything in this town: For cabs, for a seat in a restaurant, everything."
And Sterling summed the '96 Yankees up: "They're not a great team, but they're a team that plays great together."
Beautiful. Then in 1998, the Yankees became the greatest single-season team of all time.
*
October 26, 1997: Game 7 of the World Series at whatever the combined Marlins-Dolphins stadium in the Miami suburbs was called at the time. The Cleveland Indians jump out to a 2-0 lead over Florida‚ and are just 2 outs away from winning their 1st World Series in 49 years.
But Jose Mesa, not for the first time nor for the last, blows the save, and the Marlins claw their way back and tie the score in the bottom of the 9th on a sacrifice fly by Craig Counsell. In the last half of the 11th‚ Edgar Renteria gets his 3rd hit of the game‚ driving home Counsell with the winning run‚ as Florida wins Game 7 by a score of 3-2.
This was, after 1962, only the 2nd World Series where neither team won back-to-back games: The Marlins won Games 1, 3, 5 and 7; the Indians won Games 2, 4 and 6. This was also the Series with the greatest extremes of weather: The 4 games in South Florida were the 4 warmest on record for Series games, while the 3 in Cleveland were 3 of the 4 coldest (the previous coldest, in New York in 1976, remains 3rd), and Game 4 is the only Series game to be played in a snowfall except for one in Chicago in 1906.
The Marlins, in just their 4th season of existence (as opposed to the Indians, in their 97th), thus become the fastest team in baseball history to win a World Series title‚ 3 years quicker than the 1969 Mets. Livan Hernandez, the pitcher who fled Cuba (and would soon be followed by his brother Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez) is named Most Valuable Player of the Series.
This Series is sweet vindication for manager Jim Leyland, who lost 3 straight NLCS while managing the Pittsburgh Pirates; for Bobby Bonilla, who played for Leyland on those Pirates, bad-attituded his way out of his native New York with the Mets, and flopped the year before with the Baltimore Orioles; for Alex Fernandez, who pitched for the talented Chicago White Sox team that fell just short in 1990, lost the ALCS in ’93 and was screwed over by the strike in ’94, and was injured and unable to pitch in the postseason, so his teammates put his Number 32 on their caps; and for Gary Sheffield, who was already gaining a reputation as a bad apple that nobody wanted to keep around for very long, despite his obvious talent for power hitting, and this remained his only World Series win.
For the Indians, who hadn't won a Series since 1948, went from 1954 to 1995 without winning a Pennant, went from 1959 to 1994 without even being in a Pennant race, stood to be the AL's Wild Card if the standings at the time of the Strike of '94 had held to the end of the season, lost the '95 Series despite winning 100 of 144 games in the regular season, lost the '96 ALDS to an inferior Oriole team, and won just 86 games in this regular season but had defeated the favored Yankees and the Seattle Mariners before this crushing defeat, it is not just a crushing defeat, where they came closer to winning the World Series without doing so than any team ever had except the '86 Red Sox (and now the 2011 Texas Rangers).
No, this loss meant that, like the Red Sox, the Indians now have a reputation of being a choking team. They have never shaken it, despite return trips to the postseason in 1998, '99, 2001 and '07 – blowing a 2-1 lead in the '98 ALCS, 3-1 leads in the '07 ALCS and the '16 World Series, and a 2-0 lead in the '17 ALDS.
Also on this day, D.C. United wins its 2nd MLS Cup, in the league's 2nd season, beating the Denver-based Colorado Rapids, 2-1 on home soil at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Jaime Moreno and Tony Sanneh score the goals.
October 26, 1999: Game 3 of the World Series. Andy Pettitte did not have his good stuff, but Tino Martinez, Chad Curtis and Chuck Knoblauch helped the Yankees come from 5-1 down to send the game to extra innings. Curtis led off the bottom of the 10th, and knocked one out for a 6-5 win.
The following night, the Yanks wrapped up the sweep, the 25th World Championship, the title of Team of the Decade (it ain't about Division Titles, Braves fans), and the title, as NBC's Bob Costas said that next night, of "Most Successful Franchise of the Century."
Like fellow late 1990s Yankee Dynasty players Roger Clemens and John Wetteland, Curtis was among the most faith-vocal players of his era. Also like Clemens and Wetteland, he would later be accused of what would once have been quaintly called "morals charges," relating to his time as a high school athletic trainer in Michigan. He was sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison, and was paroled this past September 22.
*
October 26, 2000, 20 years ago: Game 5 of the World Series is played at Shea Stadium. Jeter and Bernie Williams homer off Al Leiter. Pettitte and Leiter give it their all. The game is tied 2-2 in the top of the 9th. Two outs. Posada on 2nd, Scott Brosius on 1st. Not great speed on the basepaths.
October 26, 2000, 20 years ago: Game 5 of the World Series is played at Shea Stadium. Jeter and Bernie Williams homer off Al Leiter. Pettitte and Leiter give it their all. The game is tied 2-2 in the top of the 9th. Two outs. Posada on 2nd, Scott Brosius on 1st. Not great speed on the basepaths.
Luis Sojo, playing 2nd base because Knoblauch's fielding difficulties limited him to DH status, is coming up to bat. Leiter had thrown 141 pitches. A number that would not have caused Catfish Hunter and Tom Seaver to flinch, but, by the standards of the 1990s and 2000s, a lot.
Met Manager Bobby Valentine's choices are not good: A, stick with an exhausted Leiter, who would be pitching on brains, courage and fumes, and pray that he gets the out that sends it to the bottom of the 9th still tied; B, put in Armando Benitez, who led the National League in saves that year and saved Game 3, but also blew Game 1 for Leiter and also blew a Division Series game against the Giants (which the Mets ended up winning anyway), and had previously messed up 2 ALCS games against the Yankees for the Orioles (including the Jeffrey Maier Game); or C, put in John Franco, who was the winning pitcher in Game 3 and also pitched well in Game 4, but would be pitching for the 3rd day in a row, and was 39, and there was a reason Valentine had taken the closer's job from Franco and given it to Benitez.
Valentine decided a tired Leiter was better than an aging, potentially tired Franco and an inconsistent, unreliable Benitez. Although I frequently accused Valentine of overmanaging, and sometimes outright stupidity, I can't fault him for this choice. If he had put in the very popular New York native Franco and lost anyway, he might have gotten away with it; but if he had put in the already suspicious Benitez and he blew yet another, Valentine would have been run out of Flushing on the Long Island Railroad.
Leiter threw his 142nd pitch to Sojo. He knocks it up the middle. A Met fan once told me that Rey Ordonez would have stopped this grounder. This Met fan was a fool: Ordonez would not have gotten it. Mike Bordick was the shortstop that night, and he couldn't quite get it.
Base hit for Sojo. Posada comes around 3rd. Center fielder Jay Payton's throw... never makes it to Mike Piazza at the plate, instead hitting Posada in the back and getting away, toward the backstop. This enables not only Posada to score the tiebreaking run, but also Brosius to score an insurance run as well. It was Yankees 4, Mets 2.
Bottom of the 9th. Two out. The Mets get a man on. Piazza comes up to the plate. If you're a Met fan, this is the man you want up: The best offensive player the Mets have ever had (cough-steroids-cough), one of the best fastball hitters of his time, power hitter against power pitcher, Mariano Rivera.
Valentine decided a tired Leiter was better than an aging, potentially tired Franco and an inconsistent, unreliable Benitez. Although I frequently accused Valentine of overmanaging, and sometimes outright stupidity, I can't fault him for this choice. If he had put in the very popular New York native Franco and lost anyway, he might have gotten away with it; but if he had put in the already suspicious Benitez and he blew yet another, Valentine would have been run out of Flushing on the Long Island Railroad.
Leiter threw his 142nd pitch to Sojo. He knocks it up the middle. A Met fan once told me that Rey Ordonez would have stopped this grounder. This Met fan was a fool: Ordonez would not have gotten it. Mike Bordick was the shortstop that night, and he couldn't quite get it.
Base hit for Sojo. Posada comes around 3rd. Center fielder Jay Payton's throw... never makes it to Mike Piazza at the plate, instead hitting Posada in the back and getting away, toward the backstop. This enables not only Posada to score the tiebreaking run, but also Brosius to score an insurance run as well. It was Yankees 4, Mets 2.
Bottom of the 9th. Two out. The Mets get a man on. Piazza comes up to the plate. If you're a Met fan, this is the man you want up: The best offensive player the Mets have ever had (cough-steroids-cough), one of the best fastball hitters of his time, power hitter against power pitcher, Mariano Rivera.
But if you're a Yankee Fan, there’s no one you'd rather have on the mound, and there's no one you’d rather get as the final out. It was similar to the final matchup of the 1978 Boston Tie Party, with Carl Yastrzemski, one of the greatest fastball hitters ever, and the most beloved player in his franchise's history (remember, Sox fans didn't always love Ted Williams), coming up to try to save his club against one of the fastest and most fearsome pitchers ever, Rich "Goose" Gossage.
Yaz popped up to end that game in victory for the Yankees; 22 years later, Piazza got considerably better wood on his pitch, and hit one deep to straightaway center field. For a moment, many of us, myself included, thought, "Uh-oh, no!" Translation: "Tie game, Mets will go on to win it, and take the next 2 in The Bronx, and the Yanks will have choked it away."
Because we had grown up with the Mets as the team that won and the Yanks as the team that fell short. We had the arrogance of Yankee Fans of old, but deep down, in places we don't like to talk about at parties, we had the fears that came so easily to fans of the Indians, the pre-2004 Red Sox, the pre-2007 Phillies, the pre-2016 Cubs -- and the post-2006 Mets.
But Piazza had juuuust gotten under it. The ball has too much height and not enough distance. Bernie stands on the warning track, it's an easy catch, and it's over.
Jeter becomes the 1st player ever to be named Most Valuable Player of the All-Star Game and the World Series in the same season. Still, he would never be named MVP of a regular season.
For the 1st time, the Mets had the chance -- their first, their best, maybe their last -- to beat the Yankees in a Subway Series, and to irrevocably "take over New York." And while they had their chances and fought hard, in the end, the better team won.
The Yankees have beaten the Mets in a World Series. The other way around has never happened. And it never will. Never, never, never. Or, in the words of Flushing’s own Fran Drescher, "It begins with an N and ends with an A: Nev-a." As a Yankee Fan said then, "The Yankees have scoreboard over the Mets for all time."
This was the 26th World Championship. And for those of us who grew up as Yankee Fans during the Mets' "glory" years of 1984 to 1990, the Dynasty That Never Was, and had to deal with the unearned arrogance of the Flushing Heathen, the filthy bastards, delusional that their 2 titles outweighed our 22 (until 1996; now 27), damn fools to believe that the 1986 Mets could have beaten the Yankees of 1927, 1938, 1941, 1953, 1961 and 1978, and eventually even the 1998 juggernaut... for us, this was the greatest, sweetest moment of them all.
We beat the Mets. And it wasn't close. All 5 games were close, but winning in 5 games is domination. And we clinched at their place, on their field, at the William A. Shea International Airport, at the Flushing Toilet.
This was the 13th World Series game played at Shea. An unlucky 13th. It was also the last, which no one (not even a wiseass Yankee Fan like me) could have predicted at the time.
There were 25,000 people at Shea chanting "Let's Go Yankees!" and "We're Number 1!" Eventually, the owner came out to talk to the press, and he and the announcers couldn't talk, because the Yankee Fans were so loud, chanting "Thank you, George!" Imagine that, thousands of people saluting George Steinbrenner at Shea Stadium.
I loved it. October 26, 2000 – actually, the final out came just before midnight, so it was really October 27 that we celebrated – remains my favorite moment as a sports fan.
To the Flushing Heathen: I'd tell you to go to Hell, but you're already Met fans. So, instead, you and your 2 long-ago rings can kiss my Pinstriped ass. Or you can kiss my 27 rings, 7 of which came since your '69 title and 5 of which came after you got lucky in '86. Yes, you got lucky that the Red Sox had their choke of chokes against you in Game 6.
Sure, the Yankees have had luck. But they have earned all their victories. That's why every Yankee Fan can, on occasion, say the words of Yankee legend Lou Gehrig: "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
After all, we could have had worse luck, and it would have been all our own fault.
We could have chosen to be Met fans. We chose Yankees. We chose greatness.
Also on this day, it is revealed to the public that George W. Bush, currently Governor of Texas and the Republican nominee for President, was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol near his family’s Summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine on September 4, 1976.
Given that the main theme of his campaign was, “I will restore honor and integrity to the White House” in the wake of a dozen made-up scandals about President Bill Clinton, this should have destroyed Bush’s campaign.
Instead, he basically brushed it off and said it didn’t matter – and the American media bought it, and went back to talking about the already-proven lies told about the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore.
Also on this day, The Euro, the currency of the European Union, which had started on January 1, 1999 at $1.10 in comparison to the American dollar, drops to 83 cents. This remains its all-time low. Its all-time high is $1.60, achieved on July 15, 2008.
October 26, 2002: Game 6 of the World Series, at what was then known as Edison International Field of Anaheim – the former "Big A" briefly nicknamed "the Big Ed." The San Francisco Giants lead the Series 3 games to 2, and lead 5-0 after 6½ innings, thanks to home runs by Shawon Dunston and Barry Bonds.
The Anaheim Angels score 3 runs in the 7th to make it 5-3, but the Giants are still just 9 outs away from their 1st World Championship since moving to San Francisco 45 years earlier, their 1st in any city since they were in New York 48 years earlier.
But they choke. The Angels, having already scored the 3 runs in the 7th, score 3 more in the 8th on a home run by Scott Spiezio, and win, 6-5. The Series will go to a Game 7 in Anaheim tomorrow night.
October 26, 2004: The Red Sox win Game 3 of the World Series with a 4-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium. Finally making his 1st World Series start, Pedro Martinez hurls 7 shutout innings to put the Sox up 3-games-to-0. Manny Ramirez homers and drives in a pair of runs for the Sox‚ while Larry Walker hits one out for the Cards. The Sox can achieve their 86-year-old dream tomorrow night.
Also on this day, Bobby Ávila dies at age 79. A three-time All-Star, the 2nd baseman was not the 1st major league player born in Mexico – that was Red Sox outfielder Mel Almada in 1933, an outfielder who batted .284 over 7 seasons in the bigs – but he may have been the best, at least until Fernando Valenzuela came along, and the best hitter until Vinny Castilla arrived.
In 1954, despite a broken thumb, he won the AL batting title with a .341 average, and helped the Indians win the Pennant. But it was the NL's batting champion, Willie Mays, who was the star of the World Series as the Giants swept the heavily-favored Tribe.
October 26, 2005: The Chicago White Sox shut out the Astros‚ 1-0 at Minute Maid Park in Houston‚ to sweep the World Series and win their 1st World Championship since 1917, the 1st for either Chicago team in that time. Freddy Garcia gets credit for the win‚ as Jermaine Dye drives home the game's only run. Dye is named the Series MVP.
Ozzie Guillen, a native of Venezuela, becomes the 1st foreign-born manager to win a World Series. The Astros, in the Series for the 1st time in their 44-season history, are still, through 2016, winless in World Series games. Their all-time record in postseason games is 24-38.
Also on this day, George Swindin dies in Kettering, Northamptonshire, England, from the effects of Alzheimer's disease. He was 90. A PT boat instructor for the British Army during World War II, he resumed his soccer career thereafter.
He was the starting goaltender for North London club Arsenal, winning the League title in 1948 and 1953 and the FA Cup in 1950. He later managed the club from 1958 to 1962, but not well. He also managed Peterborough United, Norwich City, Kettering Town, Cardiff City and Corby Town.
October 26, 2006: Game 4 of the World Series, postponed a day by rain. Sean Casey hits a home run for the Detroit Tigers, but in the bottom of the 8th inning, David Eckstein, one of the Angels' Series heroes of 2002, doubles off Craig Monroe's glove, driving in Aaron Miles with the winning run. The St. Louis Cardinals win, 5-4, and can wrap up the Series tomorrow night.
October 26, 2008: In a 10-2 rout of the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 4 of the World Series at Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Joe Blanton hits a home run, the 1st pitcher to do so in a Series game in 34 years. Ken Holtzman of the A's was the last hurler to accomplish the feat when he went deep off Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers in 1974 -- also in Game 4.
October 26, 2009: Castle airs the Halloween-themed episode "Vampire Weekend." When 2 college kids -- one an artist who dressed as a vampire, the other a writer who dressed as a werewolf -- who were writing a graphic novel about a present-day vampire in New York are killed, mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and the detectives at the NYPD's 12th Precinct connect the murders to one committed 18 years earlier.
*
October 26, 2010, 10 years ago: Paul the Octopus dies, just 3 months after his predictions -- based on national flags dropped into his tank -- for the World Cup in South Africa made him the most famous cephalopod who ever lived.
Living at the Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Ruhr, Germany (but hatched in Weymouth, Dorset, England), he correctly chose the winning team in several matches in Euro 2008, and in all 7 of Germany's matches in the 2010 World Cup. He also correctly predicted Spain's win over the Netherlands in the Final. Overall, his record was 12-2.
He was 2 1/2 years old, which is actually a rather normal lifespan for an octopus. Nevertheless, he was observed the day before, and appeared to be in good health.
Also on this day, Jack Butterfield dies in Springfield, Massachusetts at the age of 91. A nephew of hockey legend Eddie Shore, his service as President of the American Hockey League from 1966 to 1994 allowed him to join his uncle in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
October 26, 2013: Game 3 of the World Series is played at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and it has the weirdest ending of any Series game ever. (Even weirder than Game 4 of 2020.)
In the bottom of the 9th inning, with the score tied 4-4, Red Sox pitcher Brandon Workman gives up a 1-out single to Yadier Molina. Boston closer Koji Uehara is brought in to face pinch-hitter Allen Craig, who doubles on the 1st pitch. Jon Jay hits a grounder to 2nd baseman Dustin Pedroia, who makes a sensational diving stab, and throws home to catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who tags out the sliding Molina for the 2nd out.
But then Saltalamacchia throws to 3rd, trying to get Craig, who was running on the play, and decided to slide towards Will Middlebrooks, knocking him down. However, the ball glanced off Middlebrooks' glove and Craig's body, caroming into foul territory down the left field line. When Craig starts toward home, he runs over Middlebrooks, who winds up slowing Craig down as he tries to take off for home.
The 3rd base umpire, Jim Joyce, calls obstruction on the play. Home plate umpire Dana DeMuth
determines that Craig would have scored without the obstruction, and awards the Cardinals the run, giving them a 5-4 win, and a 2–1 lead in the World Series. As far as I know, this is the only game in baseball history where a game-winning run was awarded without the runner having touched the plate.
This was 28 years to the day after an umpire's incorrect call set in motion a series of events that cost the Cardinals a World Championship. Had the Cardinals gone on to win the Series, it would have become an epic moment, and Red Sox fans would fume about getting screwed for the rest of their lives -- even though, unlike the Denkinger call in 1985, this call was correct. We know they would have forever fumed, because Sox fans old enough to remember the 1975 World Series are still fuming about the alleged "interference" of Ed Armbrister of Cincinnati in the 10th inning of another Game 3.
But, of course, the Sox won the Series (by cheating), so this play is a footnote. A bizarre footnote, but a footnote nonetheless.
October 26, 2014: The San Francisco Giants win Game 5 of the World Series, 5-0 over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium, 29 years to the day after the Royals' most stunning victory, in the same stadium, although not on the same field: Their old artificial turf has been replaced with real grass.
Madison Bumgarner becomes the 1st pitcher to throw a complete game shutout in Series play in 11 years. The Giants now lead 3 games to 2, and need to win just 1 of the possible 2 games in Kansas City to take the title.
Also on this day, Oscar Taveras is killed in a car crash in his native Puerto Plata, Domincan Republic. He was 22, and had been drinking. His girlfriend, Edilia Arvelo, was a passenger, and was also killed.
A right fielder, he had made his major league debut, for the Cardinals, only 5 months earlier, and had hit a home run against the San Francisco Giants in Game 2 of the NLCS. The Cardinals wore black patches with a white "OT" on them during the 2015 season.
Also on this day, Gordy Soltau dies in the San Francisco suburb of Santa Clara, California. He was 89, and was a 3-time Pro Bowl receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. He later broadcast for them.
Also on this day, Senzo Meyiwa is shot and killed in a robbery in the Vosloorus, South Africa home of his girlfriend and the mother of his child, Kelly Khumalo, one of South Africa's leading singers. He was believed to be 27, but a check of official records after his death revealed he was actually 30.
He was the goalkeeper and Captain of one of the country's greatest soccer clubs, Orlando Pirates, winning the League with them in 2011 and '12. Their next game was the country's greatest rivalry, the Soweto Derby, against Kaizer Chiefs. It was postponed in his memory. The killers remain at large.
This was 28 years to the day after an umpire's incorrect call set in motion a series of events that cost the Cardinals a World Championship. Had the Cardinals gone on to win the Series, it would have become an epic moment, and Red Sox fans would fume about getting screwed for the rest of their lives -- even though, unlike the Denkinger call in 1985, this call was correct. We know they would have forever fumed, because Sox fans old enough to remember the 1975 World Series are still fuming about the alleged "interference" of Ed Armbrister of Cincinnati in the 10th inning of another Game 3.
But, of course, the Sox won the Series (by cheating), so this play is a footnote. A bizarre footnote, but a footnote nonetheless.
October 26, 2014: The San Francisco Giants win Game 5 of the World Series, 5-0 over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium, 29 years to the day after the Royals' most stunning victory, in the same stadium, although not on the same field: Their old artificial turf has been replaced with real grass.
Madison Bumgarner becomes the 1st pitcher to throw a complete game shutout in Series play in 11 years. The Giants now lead 3 games to 2, and need to win just 1 of the possible 2 games in Kansas City to take the title.
Also on this day, Oscar Taveras is killed in a car crash in his native Puerto Plata, Domincan Republic. He was 22, and had been drinking. His girlfriend, Edilia Arvelo, was a passenger, and was also killed.
A right fielder, he had made his major league debut, for the Cardinals, only 5 months earlier, and had hit a home run against the San Francisco Giants in Game 2 of the NLCS. The Cardinals wore black patches with a white "OT" on them during the 2015 season.
Also on this day, Gordy Soltau dies in the San Francisco suburb of Santa Clara, California. He was 89, and was a 3-time Pro Bowl receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. He later broadcast for them.
Also on this day, Senzo Meyiwa is shot and killed in a robbery in the Vosloorus, South Africa home of his girlfriend and the mother of his child, Kelly Khumalo, one of South Africa's leading singers. He was believed to be 27, but a check of official records after his death revealed he was actually 30.
He was the goalkeeper and Captain of one of the country's greatest soccer clubs, Orlando Pirates, winning the League with them in 2011 and '12. Their next game was the country's greatest rivalry, the Soweto Derby, against Kaizer Chiefs. It was postponed in his memory. The killers remain at large.
October 26, 2015: Supergirl premieres on CBS. After its 1st season, it moves to The CW, becoming part of its "Arrowverse" franchise of superhero dramas. Melissa Benoist plays Kara Zor-El, a native of Krypton who, in a manner of speaking, has 2 secret identities: Kara Danvers, a media figure; and the titular superheroine.
The original version of the character debuted in May 1959, in Action Comics #252, as a cousin to Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Kal-El. Superan's father, Jor-El, and Supergirl's father, Zor-El, were brothers and scientists. The character had previously been show in the 1984 film Supergirl, starring Helen Slater, as part of the franchise started by the Christopher Reeve Superman films.
Nods were given to previous superhero franchises, including Dean Cain, Superman in the 1990s series Lois & Clark, as Jeremiah Danvers, Kara's adoptive father; and Lynda Carter, the title character on the 1970s Wonder Woman series, as Olivia Marsden, President of the United States, who has to resign when it is revealed that she is, herself, an alien.
October 26, 2016: Game 2 of the World Series. Behind the pitching of Jake Arrieta, The Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 5-1 at Progressive Field, and even the Series.
After winning all 8 games he managed with the Boston Red Sox, and winning game one with the Indians, this was the 1st time Terry Francona lost a World Series game as a manager. He was 9-0. It was the 1st World Series game the Cubs had won since Game 6 in 1945.
October 26, 2018: Game 3 turns out to be the longest game in World Series history. Joc Pederson gives the Dodgers the lead with a home run in the 3rd inning, and Jackie Bradley Jr. ties it for the Red Sox with a home run in the 8th, to make it 2-2.
The Red Sox scored in the top of the 13th on a walk, a wild pitch and a single-and-error. But the Dodgers tied it on a walk, a fly out, and a single-and-error of their own. As the game went on and on, Twitter users began making jokes about its length: This game had started at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and was moved to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Sandy Koufax had started the game for the Dodgers, Cy Young for the Red Sox; Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson had traded home runs in the 14th, and so on.
Max Muncy nearly hit a walkoff home run in the bottom of the 15th, but his drive hooked just foul. He finally hit one in the bottom of the 18th, giving the Dodgers a 3-2 win. Nathan Eovaldi, normally a starting pitcher, had thrown 7 innings in relief before taking the loss. His effort helped save the Boston bullpen, keeping their relievers fresh. This would be the only game the Dodgers would win in the Series.
The 18 innings broke the Series record of 14, set by the same teams in 1916, and tied by the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros in Game 3 in 2005. The first pitch was at 5:10 PM Pacific Time (8:10 Eastern), and it ended at 12:30 AM (3:30 Eastern). At 7 hours and 20 minutes, it broke the record of that 2005 Game 3, 5 hours and 41 minutes, and tied the record for longest postseason game ever, set in Game 4 of the 2005 National League Division Series, won by the Astros on Chris Burke's home run against the Cardinals. This game was longer than the entire 1939 World Series, a 4-game sweep by the Yankees over the Reds, which took a combined 7 hours and 5 minutes to play.
October 26, 2019: Game 4 of the World Series, at Nationals Park. The Houston Astros score 2 runs in the 1st inning and 2 more in the 4th, with home runs by Robinson Chirinos and Alex Bregman, and never look back, recording an 8-1 win over the Washington Nationals, and tying the Series.
October 26, 2269: If we go by the apparent custom of a Star Trek stardate's last 3 digits and its decimal point representing a percentage of the year to date, then this is the date of Stardate 5818.4, and the Original Series episode "The Cloud Minders." A sci-fi take on the old question of "Nature vs. Nurture."
October 26, 2375: If we presume that, in the far future of Star Trek, a game meant to take the place of Game 1 of the World Series is scheduled for the last Saturday in October, then this is the date that the game in the Deep Space Nine episode "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" takes place.
Okay, Worf (Michael Dorn) exaggerated: The pitch wasn't half a meter outside; but Odo (René
Auberjonois) was wrong: It did not catch the outside corner.
So let's raise our glasses of Saurian brandy to manufactured triumph!
So let's raise our glasses of Saurian brandy to manufactured triumph!
No comments:
Post a Comment