The Very Unpleasant Scenario

The 2020 posteason has been a very unpleasant scenario for New York baseball fans.

For Met fans:

* Their team is not in it.

* The team that broke their parents' or grandparents' hearts, the formerly Brooklyn, now Los Angeles, Dodgers have been, from the beginning of the season, the favorites to win the World Series, and have now taken the National League Championship Series to a deciding Game 7.

* The other team in it is the Atlanta Braves, who infuriated them so much at the turn of the 21st Century.

For Yankee Fans:

* Their team came up small again, losing in the American League Division Series.

* They did so against the Tampa Bay Rays, a contemptible organization.

* The other team in the ALCS was the Houston Astros, who not only were not sufficiently punished for their 2015-19 cheating, but rode the 8th and last seed in these unusual-circumstance expanded Playoffs to get there. (Not that Yankee Fans should mention that: The Yanks only got the 5th seed. In their respective Leagues, the Rays and Dodgers were 1st seeds, the Braves 2nd.)

* The Rays led the Astros 3 games to none, but the Astros came back to force a Game 7. Had the Astros won it, the Yankees would no longer be the only team ever to "blow" a 3-0 lead. Of course, The Boston Red Sox cheated to win that 2004 ALCS. Astro fans were all, "See? We're not cheating now!" But, given their record, they have to be presumed guilty until proven innocent.

But if they really weren't cheating, then the Rays losing 4 straight would have gotten the Yankees off the particular hook of "worst postseason choke ever," because the Rays would own the tiebreaker, since their opponents didn't cheat. But the Rays won anyway, so the Yankees are still, unfairly, stuck with that label.

* Yankee Fans whose game-watching experience began in the Don Mattingly era of 1982 to 1995, or in the Derek Jeter era of 1996 to 2014, couldn't even live vicariously through Mattingly and/or Jeter: Mattingly managed the Miami Marlins, with Jeter as controlling owner, into the NL Division Series, but the Braves swept them 3 straight. The Curse of Donnie Baseball lives: No team with Mattingly in uniform, in any capacity, has ever won a Pennant.

And the last 4 teams standing? Given that New York is a liberal city, and even Met fans tend to vote Democratic, 3 of the last 4 teams were in Georgia, Florida and Texas. The alternative was New York rooting for Los Angeles. That's fine, politically, but not in baseball terms.

Met fans have reason to hope, since it looks like the sale of the team from Fred Wilpon to Steve Cohen will go through. But we've seen the Mets spend big before, and not have it work. So there's not as much reason to hope as they believe.

Yankee Fans? We still have Brian Cashman, effectively, as both general manager and field manager, with Aaron Boone carrying out his stupid orders, and taking the hard questions that Cashman is too much of a coward to take.

It's been 11 years without a Pennant. The Mets have won a Pennant more recently. The Red Sox have won 2 World Series since our last. We keep losing to Boston, Houston and Tampa Bay.

I know that all this is unacceptable. You know it, too. When will Hal Steinbrenner figure out that it is unacceptable, and do something about it?

Firing Boone is not the answer: We have no idea of how good a manager he is, because he's not operating on his own. Cashman is the problem. You don't fire the doll, when it's the ventriloquist that is the real dummy.

Oh well, it's October 18. Happy Reggie Jackson Day.

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October 18, 1753: Joseph Bloomfield is born in Woodbridge, Middlesex County, New Jersey. He became a lawyer in Bridgeton, Cumberland County, and then commanded the 3rd New Jersey Regiment in the War of the American Revolution. He was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, but survived.

He was elected Clerk of the New Jersey General Assembly, then the State's Attorney General, and led New Jersey troops as part of the force that put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. He was elected Governor twice, serving 1801-02 and 1803-12. He resigned as Governor to resume his service as a General in the War of 1812. He was elected to Congress in 1816 and 1818, and died in Burlington, Burlington County, on October 3, 1823, just short of turning 70.

In 1796, the Old First Church in Newark was named the Presbyterian Society of Bloomfield in his honor. In 1812, that part of Newark was separated from the City, and was named the Township of Bloomfield for him, although there is no evidence that he ever set foot within the Township's borders.

From March 1, 1969 until November 22, 1972, my parents lived in Bloomfield, at 183-B Davey Street in the Forest Hill garden apartments, which thus became my 1st home. We then moved to East Brunswick, where we have remained for 48 years.

For the 1st 18 years of my life, I figured the town was named for a field in which flowers bloomed. But upon visiting in 1988, I found a monument to the Township's founding, including General Bloomfield's name.

October 18, 1775: During the 1st year of the War of the American Revolution, Britain's Royal Navy attacks the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, in retaliation for Patriot activities. The attack backfires, and helps raise support for independence from Britain.

The town in question became the City of Portland, Maine, which was separated from Massachusetts in 1820. The other Massachusetts town named Falmouth, on Cape Cod, has kept the name. There is also a separate town of Falmouth, Maine.

October 18, 1776: The Battle of Pell's Point is fought, on what's now the Pelham's Bay and Split Rock Golf Courses, in Pelham Bay Park in The Bronx. The British landed at Pelham Bay and attacked. Troops commanded by Colonel John Glover held them off long enough to get word to General George Washington that it was time for his Continental Army to retreat, yet again, and to get it done.

The battle was a British victory, but since they were trying to entrap the Continentals, and failed, it was a failure.

The Battle is depicted in 1 of 4 murals mounted in the Veterans Memorial Hall on the ground floor of the Bronx County Courthouse, the white marble building familiar to baseball fans due to its proximity to Yankee Stadium. The others show the arrival of Jonas Brock, considered the Borough's founding father, at Mott Haven in 1639; the 1st meeting of the Westchester County Court, at Westchester Square in 1764; and the departure of the ultimately successful Washington from the Van Cortlandt House, in Van Cortlandt Park in 1783.

October 18, 1779: The Siege of Savannah fails, as the Continental Army has to back off from attacking the British-held city on the Georgia coast. Among the 244 men killed on the American side was Casimir Pulaski, the Polish Count hailed as "the Father of the American Cavalry."

October 18, 1818: Edward Otho Cresap Ord is born in Cumberland, Maryland. The Union General was instrumental in the Battle of Vicksburg, and later helped bring about the surrender of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee by his troops assisting General Ulysses S. Grant's at Petersburg and Appomattox.

He was then assigned to investigate whether the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln included the Confederate government. He concluded that it did not, which was almost certainly correct. He later built the 1st railroad line from Texas to Mexico City, and died in 1883. Due to his long Army service in California, Fort Ord, outside Monterey, is named for him.

October 18, 1831: Friedrich Wilhelm Nikolaus Karl von Hohenzollern is born at the New Palace in Potsdam, outside Berlin. In Germany, 1888 became known as "The Year of the Three Emperors," as Kaiser Wilhelm I died on March 9, but his son already had cancer, and only reigned as Kaiser Friedrich III until June 15. Upon his death, his son became Kaiser Wilhelm II, and abandoned the liberal course his father had set, making World War I not only possible, but inevitable.

October 18, 1848: William Arthur Cummings is born in Ware, Massachusetts. "Candy" Cummings claimed to have invented the curveball by throwing clamshells in Ware, even though Ware is in Central Massachusetts, far from the Atlantic Ocean. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, on the basis of his invention. The truth is a bit murkier: It might have been invented by Fred Goldsmith, who made the 1st public demonstration of a curveball in Brooklyn in 1870.

This much is undisputed: Cummings joined the Excelsior Base Ball Club of Brooklyn in 1866, at age 17. He would play for that legendary amateur team, and the Stars of Brooklyn, the New York Mutuals, the Baltimore Canaries, the Philadelphia White Stockings, the Hartford Dark Blues and the Cincinnati Reds in a career that lasted until 1877. Although stats for before 1871 are woefully incomplete, his combined record in the National Association (1871-75) and the National League (1876-77) is 145-94, which certainly suggests that he was a good pitcher -- if not quite Hall of Fame level.

He later became a minor-league executive, and made a lot of money on inventing a railway coupling device. He died in 1924, at age 75.

October 18, 1854: William Lloyd Murdoch is born in Sandhurst, in the colony of Victoria -- now Bendigo, in the State of Victoria, Australia. I don't know what makes a cricket player great, but Billy Murdoch captained the Australian national team from 1880 to 1890, including the 1882 Test match against England that began the "Ashes" rivalry between the countries. He died in 1911, at the age of 56.
As far as I know, in spite of his name and his Australian origin, he is, thankfully, not an ancestor of Rupert Murdoch.

October 18, 1859: Abolitionist John Brown leads a raid by 22 escaped slaves on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), about 65 miles northwest of Washington. He had asked Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to join him. Both declined: Tubman was ill, and Douglass was sure that it would fail.

Douglass was right: U.S. Marines led by Lieutenant Israel Greene put the revolt down. Among their superiors were U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant James E.B. "Jeb" Stuart.

Brown was hanged for treason in Charles Town, (West) Virginia on December 2. He was 59 years old. In attendance were Lieutenant Thomas J. Jackson, a military instructor at Virginia Military Institute, not yet nicknamed "Stonewall"; and a 21-year-old actor who had volunteered with a militia known as the Richmond Grays, John Wilkes Booth.

Abraham Lincoln, then out of office, said, "He agreed with us thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason." Writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, though a Northerner, wrote, "Nobody was ever more justly hanged." Lee, who took the raid more as an insult to Virginia than to slavery, said, "The result proves that the plan was the attempt of a fanatic or madman." But another Northern writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, called him "an idealist."

If the American Civil War wasn't inevitable before, it was now, and Lee, Stuart and Jackson would all become Confederate Generals. Still another Northern writer, Herman Melville, called Brown "the meteor of the war."

Also on this day, Samuel Clifford Carroll is born in Clay Grove, in the southeastern corner of Iowa. An outfielder, Cliff Carroll won the National League Pennant with the Providence Grays in 1884. In 1890, refusing to go the the rebel Players' League and sticking with Al Spalding, Cap Anson and their Chicago Colts (later to be renamed the Cubs), he led the NL in at-bats with 582. He closed his career with another Pennant, with the 1893 Boston Beaneaters (later to be renamed the Braves). He lived until 1923.

October 18, 1867: With a treaty having been made, the transfer of Alaska from Russian to American control is made at Sitka. Since then, Alaska has, sports-wise, become known for college hockey, collegiate-age Summer "Midnight Sun" baseball, and for the Iditarod sled dog race.

October 18, 1868: William Jones Clarke is born in Manhattan, and grows up in New Mexico. A catcher and a 1st baseman, he said he was nicknamed Boileryard because, "I had a terrible voice, which you could hear all over the diamond."

He won National League Pennants with the Baltimore Orioles in 1894, 1895 and 1896, and won the World Series with the New York Giants (managed by his former Baltimore teammate John McGraw) in 1905.

He later coached at Princeton University and the U.S. Naval Academy. He died in 1959, the last survivor of those "Old Orioles," and Princeton's baseball complex is named Clarke Field in his memory.

October 18, 1871: Charles Babbage dies of kidney failure in London, at age 79. In 1822, he came up with an idea for what he called a "difference engine." The British government gave him money to develop it. He produced a working model in 1832 -- but "working" turned out to be a bit of a stretch. By 1842, the government had given up on him. Still, he is remembered as "the father of the computer."

October 18, 1873: The Toronto Argonauts play their 1st game. Under the scoring rules of the time, they defeat the Hamilton Tigers 1-0 in Toronto.

As the Tigers are the forerunners of today's Hamilton Tiger-Cats, this is not only the beginning of the longest continuously-used team name in North American professional sports (the Argonauts, or the Argos for short), but the longest-running rivalry in North American professional sports (147 years).

October 18, 1875: Leonard Charles Braund is born in Clewer, Berkshire, England. Like I said, I don't know what makes a cricketer great, but Len Braund apparently was England's top batsman of the 1900s (the 1900-09 decade). He died in 1955, at age 80.

October 18, 1876: Charles Francis Adams is born in Newport, Vermont. Despite the name Charles Francis being common to the family that had produced Presidents John and John Quincy Adams, he was not related to them. As a teenager, he worked in his uncle's grocery store, and built it up to the point where he became the head of the leading grocery chain in New England, First National Stores. This became Finast, which by 1999 became part of the company that runs Stop & Shop.

On November 1, 1924, he paid the National Hockey League $15,000 -- about $228,000 in today's money -- and received the right to be the owner of the 1st NHL team in America, which he named the Boston Bruins, and outfitted in the colors then used for his stores, black and gold. They won the Stanley Cup in 1929, and in 1936, he sold his stock to his son Weston Adams and the team's general manager, Art Ross.

He was also a minority owner of baseball's Boston Braves from 1927 to 1935, and Suffolk Downs racetrack from 1927 to 1945. He died in 1947, just short of his 71st birthday, and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in one of its earliest classes, in 1960. The NHL's Adams Division was named for him, existed from 1974 to 1993, and the Bruins were members throughout.

He was not related to Jack Adams, a great player in the 1910s and the longtime head coach and general manager of the Detroit Red Wings, for whom the NHL's coach of the year trophy was named.

October 18, 1881: John Bernard Lobert is born in Wilmington, Delaware. Like so many men named John of German descent, people called him by the German variant, "Hans." Or, in the case of John Peter Wagner, "Honus."

A 3rd baseman, Hans Lobert was a rookie and a teammate of Honus Wagner on the 1903 Pittsburgh Pirates, winning the National League Pennant, but losing the 1st World Series. His last season was with the 1917 New York Giants, again winning the Pennant but losing the World Series. In between, he batted .274 and stole 316 bases.

He later coached for the Philadelphia Phillies, and managed them in 1938, and again in 1942, with no success. Lawrence Ritter interviewed him for his book The Glory of Their Times. He died in 1968.

October 18, 1882: Lucien Georges Mazan is born in Plessé, Pais de la Loire, France. He wanted to be a cyclist, a racer of bicycles. His father wanted him to get a real job. Since Pais de la Loire was then part of Brittany, and there was already a famous cyclist named Lucien Breton, he renamed himself Lucien Petit-Breton -- "Little Breton."

He was a star in his sport, through the 1900s and 1910s, until World War I intervened. He was killed on December 20, 1917 in Troyes -- not in combat, but from crashing into an oncoming car near the front. He was only 35.

October 18, 1884: Burton Edwin Shotton is born outside Cleveland in Brownhelm, Ohio. An outfielder, he played in the major leagues from 1909 to 1923, including for both St. Louis teams, first the American League's Browns, then the National League's Cardinals, showing great speed but little distinction.

From 1923 to 1925, he was the "Sunday manager" for the St. Louis Cardinals: Branch Rickey, then both the field manager and the general manager, was a devout Methodist, and wouldn't go to work on Sunday. Well, not that devout: He was still willing to accept the gate receipts from Sunday games.

Burt Shotton managed the Philadelphia Phillies from 1928 to 1933, and the Cincinnati Reds in 1934. He then went back to work for Rickey, managing in the Cardinal farm system until 1941. From 1942 to 1945, he coached with the Cleveland Indians. After that, his wife made him promise to never wear another baseball uniform.

At the dawn of the 1947 season, when Rickey, now president and part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was making Jackie Robinson the 1st black player in modern baseball, he needed a fast replacement for his suspended manager Leo Durocher. Burt reminded Rickey of the promise he'd made to his wife. Remembering that Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics was still managing, and had always done so wearing a suit instead of a uniform, he told Burt he could do the same, thus keeping the letter of his promise, if not the spirit of it.

Shotton managed the Dodgers to the Pennant. In 1948, when Durocher left for the New York Giants, Rickey brought Shotton back. He won the Pennant again in 1949, and nearly did it again in 1950. He then retired for good, as did Mack. Every manager since has worn a uniform in the dugout.

Shotton died in 1962. In 42, the 2013 film about Robinson, he was played by Barney Miller veteran Max Gail.

October 18, 1888: Gaston Vidal is born in Saint-Étienne, France. He was a hero in the French Army in World War I, and went into politics, serving 2 Prime Ministers in the Cabinet. He chaired the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (USFSA), then the French sports governing body, and organized the 1924 Olympics in Paris. It was his idea to found the separate Winter Olympics, which were first held in Chamonix, in the French Alps, from January 25 to February 5, 1924. Vidal died in 1949, at age 60. 

October 18, 1889: For the 1st time, a postseason series is played between 2 champions of baseball leagues that are both from New York.

The best-6-of-11 series between the Brooklyn Bridegrooms of the American Association (3 players on the team previously known as the Grays, and later as the Dodgers, had gotten married during the previous offseason) and the New York Giants of the National League (formerly the Gothams, manager Jim Mutrie had described them as "my big boys, my giants") opens at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan.
The Bridegrooms win, 12-10 in 8 innings. Oyster Burns is 4-for-5 with 3 RBIs‚ including the game-winning double in the bottom of the last inning.

October 18, 1892: The Edgerton Park Arena opens in Rochester, New York. It seated 4,200 people. It was home to the Rochester Royals from 1923 to 1955, winning the title in the National Basketball League in 1945 and the National Basketball Association in 1951. Shortly after the the Community War Memorial Arena opened in 1955, the old Arena was demolished. More on that later.

October 18, 1895, 125 years ago: Rinaldo Angelo Paolinelli is born in San Francisco. He would later semi-anglicize his name to Ralph Arthur Pinelli, Eventually, he would become Babe Pinelli. He played in the major leagues, mostly as a 3rd baseman, from 1918 to 1927. In 1922, with the Cincinnati Reds, he led the National League in games played, with 156 -- keeping in mind that the schedule was then 154 games, but there were 2 games called due to darkness.

In 1935, he was named a National League umpire. That would be Babe Ruth's last year in the majors, with the Boston Braves. He was told by the other umpires that he should never call a strike on Ruth. But he got behind home plate, and called a strike on Ruth. The Bambino turned around and yelled at the rookie umpire -- some rookie, they were born the same year -- "There's 40,000 people in this park that know that was a ball, tomato-head!" Pinelli said, "Perhaps, but mine is the only opinion that counts." For maintaining his composure in the face of a tongue-lashing from Ruth, he was known as Babe Pinelli from then on.

He umpired in 6 World Series: 1939, 1941, 1947, 1948, 1952 and 1956. After the last of these, he retired. His last game behind the plate was Game 5 of that Series, Don Larsen's perfect game. Pinelli died in 1984, and was posthumously elected to the National Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame.

October 18, 1898: As per the Treaty of Paris of 1898, America officially takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain. This is why Puerto Rico -- and Cuba, too, and even the Dominican Republic, even though it is currently independent -- love baseball, when most of the former Spanish colonies in the New World prefer soccer, and the former British colonies in the New World prefer cricket.

Also on this day, Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer is born in Vienna, Austria. The world knew her as Lotte Lenya. Married to German songwriter Kurt Weill, in 1928 she starred in The Threepenny Opera, the show that gave the world the song "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" -- known in English as "The Ballad of Mack the Knife."

She and Weill fled Germany when it was taken over by the Nazis in 1933, going first to Paris and then, in 1935, New York. In 1956, Louis Armstrong recorded "Mack the Knife," but got the words wrong, and inserted her name into it. In 1959, Bobby Darin recorded it the same way, and it not only hit Number 1, it remains the biggest-selling single in New York City history.

In 1963, despite her age, she appeared as the villainous SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film From Russia with Love. German actress Ilse Steppart's performance as Irma Bunt in the 1969 Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service was almost certainly based on Rosa, and Mindy Sterling's performances as Frau Farbissina in the Austin Powers films is a combination of them.

Lotte Lenya died in 1981, and, today, most Americans only know her from the Bond film and being mentioned in "Mack the Knife."

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October 18, 1903: Blake Watson (no middle name) is born in Winnipeg. A left wing, he never played in the NHL, but he won the Memorial Cup, the championship of Canadian junior hockey, with the University of Manitoba in 1923; and the IIHF World Championship with the Manitoba Grads in 1931. He was elected to the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame, and died in 1998.

Also on this day, Clem F. Crowe (I can find no reference as to what the F stood for) is born in Lafayette, Indiana. Although born and raised near Purdue University, he played end in football and forward in basketball at Notre Dame. He was an All-American in football, and played on Notre Dame's 1924 National Champions, the team with the "Four Horsemen" backfield -- making him one of the linemen known as the "Seven Mules."

He went into coaching, and served as the head coach at Saint Vincent College in Pennsylvania, Xavier University in Cincinnati, and the University of Iowa. He also served as head coach for the basketball teams at St. Vincent, Xavier and Notre Dame. He also coached in pro football, with the Buffalo Bills of the All-America Football Conference, the Baltimore Colts, and, in the CFL, the Ottawa Rough Riders and the BC Lions. He led the Riders to the 1951 Grey Cup. He died in 1983.

October 18, 1904: Abbott Joseph Liebling is born in Manhattan. Working for The New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963, he wrote superbly on many subjects, particularly boxing and horse racing. In 1995, the Boxing Writers Association of America created the A.J. Liebling Award for writing about the sport.

October 18, 1908: Harold Marsh (no middle name) is born in Silton, Saskatchewan. A right wing, "Mush" March played 17 seasons for the Chicago Blackhawks, helping them reach the Stanley Cup Finals in 1931, 1934, 1938 and 1945. The Hawks won in 1934, with his goal in double overtime of Game 4 giving them a 3-games-to-1 win, and making himself the 1st player to clinch the Cup with an overtime goal; and again in 1938.

On November 12, 1931, he scored the 1st goal at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The puck was preserved. On February 13, 1999, he dropped that very same puck for a ceremonial faceoff at the last game at the Gardens, also between the Hawks and the Toronto Maple Leafs. He died in 2002, the last survivor of the '34 Cup winners. He is not in the Hockey Hall of Fame, but he should be. He is in the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame.

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October 18, 1910, 110 years ago: Game 2 of the World Series is played at Shibe Park. Jack Coombs does not have his best stuff for the Philadelphia Athletics. But he strands 14 baserunners, a Series record at that point. Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown pitches worse, as the A's tag him for 6 runs in the 7th inning. The A's beat the Cubs, 9-3.

Also on this day, Lamar Ashby Newsome is born in Phenix City, Alabama. A shortstop, "Skeeter" Newsome played for both Philadelphia teams, the AL's Athletics from 1935 to 1939, and the NL's Phillies in 1946 and 1947. In between, he played with the Boston Red Sox. He was named to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and died in 1989.

Also on this day, John Feggo Jr. is born in Oxford, Warren County, New Jersey. We knew him as Kirk Alyn. In the 1948 serial Superman, he became the 1st live-action Man of Steel. He played the Man of Tomorrow again in the 1950 serial Atom Man vs. Superman. He was already 37 years old when he was first cast. In 1951, he was replaced by another man who started as a song-and-dance man, George Reeves -- who was less than 4 years younger.

Alyn played another comic book hero, Blackhawk, in 1952, but he was hopelessly typecast, the 1st example of "The Curse of Superman." As a tribute, he was cast as Sam Lane, Lois' father, in the 1978 version of Superman. He died in 1999.

October 18, 1913: In Cincinnati, the Giants and White Sox begin a 5-month worldwide barnstorming trip that will include stops in Australia, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The teams recruit top players from both leagues, including the Giants' Christy Mathewson, the White Sox' Buck Weaver, Tris Speaker of the Boston Red Sox and Sam Crawford of the Detroit Tigers. But Jim Thorpe, then playing for the Giants, is the main attraction during the global tour, due to his fame from the 1912 Olympics.

October 18, 1915: For the 1st time, Southern Methodist University of Dallas and Texas Christian University of Fort Worth play each other in football, at Clark Field on the TCU campus. TCU wins, 43-0.

TCU went 14-2-1 in "The Battle for the Iron Skillet" from 1949 to 1965, then SMU went 19-2 from 1966 to 1986, when the SMU programs was suspended due to the NCAA "death penalty." Since the rivalry resumed in 1989, TCU has gone 23-7. This year's game was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns. TCU leads overall, 51-41-7.

Also on this day, Sen Yew Cheung is born in San Francisco. We knew him as Victor Sen Yung. He played Jimmy Chan, the "number two son," in the Charlie Chan movies of the 1930s and '40s. If there was a movie from 1937 (The Good Earth) or a TV show from 1953 (an episode of The Adventures of Superman) until his death in 1980 that required Chinese (or Asian, or even Hawaiian) characters, he was in it.

But he's best known for playing Hop Sing, the cook at the Ponderosa Ranch on Bonanza throughout the show's run, from 1959 to 1973. He appeared in 107 episodes of the show, more than any other actor outside of Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright, or the actors playing Ben's sons: Pernell Roberts as Adam, Dan Blocker as Hoss, and Michael Landon as Little Joe.

But he was cast as a stereotype, a submissive, broken-English-speaking Asian who only stood up to people when it was necessary to keep the huge, ever-hungry Hoss out of his kitchen -- and one time when he used kung fu, which didn't help the stereotype. The 2001-02 prequel series Ponderosa tried to correct this, casting Matthew Yuan as a younger, more substantive Hop Sing, but the show premiered 2 days before the 9/11 attacks, and never caught on.

October 18, 1918: The Provisional Government of the Czechoslovak Nation, meeting in Washington, D.C., issues a Declaration of Independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It cannot take true effect until the war ends.

Czechoslovakia would be under Nazi control from 1939 to 1945, and Communist control from 1948 to 1989 and its "Velvet Revolution." In 1993, thanks to Slovakians wanting a "Velvet Divorce," the nation split in 2: The Czech Republic, or Czechia, and Slovakia.

October 18, 1919: Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau is born in Montreal. He was Prime Minister of Canada for all but 9 months between April 1968 and February 1984. He was smart. He was suave. He was cool. His rise, "Trudeaumania," made it look like John F. Kennedy was singing lead for the Beatles in French.

The man usually listed as "Pierre Elliott Trudeau" threw out the ceremonial first balls before the 1st Montreal Expos home game at Jarry Park in 1969, the 1st Toronto Blue Jays game at Exhibition Stadium in 1977, and the 1st game the Expos played at their new home, the Olympic Stadium, also in 1977.

As a sports participant, he was a brown belt in judo, and loved to ski in Quebec's Laurentian Mountains. He died in 2000, and his son Justin Trudeau is now the Prime Minister, making the Trudeaus the 1st father & son pair to both serve in the post.

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October 18, 1921: Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. is born outside Charlotte in Monroe, North Carolina. He was a reporter for The Raleigh Times, then became an executive for its television station, WRAL-Channel 5, delivering conservative editorials denouncing, as he put it, "the civil rights movement, the liberal news media, and anti-war churches."

In 1972, he switched to the Republican Party and ran for the U.S. Senate, winning 5 terms, all the while denouncing civil rights, atheists, labor unions, feminists, abortion activists and gay people. Ironically, while working at the newspaper, he had hired Armistead Maupin, who went on to become one of America's best-known gay-themed writers.

Helms became one of the most loved, and one of the most hated, politicians in America. When he ran for his 4th term in 1990, his Democratic opponent was Harvey Gantt, the black Mayor of Charlotte. Helms ran a campaign ad that showed a pair of white hands opening an envelope, then crumpling it up, as a rejection letter was read. The voice-over said that the job the man had applied to had been given to a less qualified black person, because of federal regulations.

Michael Jordan, who grew up in North Carolina and was the other most famous living citizen of the State, was asked to campaign for Gantt. He refused, saying, "Republicans buy sneakers, too." Helms won, with 52 percent of the vote. Jordan could have made a difference. Instead, he showed more loyalty to Nike than to North Carolina, or to America. In contrast, LeBron James has opposed Donald Trump.

Helms would have loved Trump's Presidency. Alas, he died in 2008, on July 4 (he might have liked that), exactly 4 months before Barack Obama was elected the nation's 1st black President -- including having won the State of North Carolina.

October 18, 1922: The British Broadcasting Corporation begins radio broadcasting. It begins television service in 1936. It becomes renowned for sports programming, including, from 1964 onward, its soccer program Match of the Day.

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October 18, 1924: At the Polo Grounds in New York, the South Bend, Indiana-based University of Notre Dame beats Army -- the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York -- 13-7, led by their 4-man backfield: Quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, left halfback Jim Crowley, right halfback Don Miller and fullback Elmer Layden. Layden scored a touchdown in the 2nd quarter, Crowley in the 3rd.

The great syndicated sports columnist Grantland Rice, based out of the New York Herald Tribune, heard Notre Dame's publicity director, George Strickler, cite the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and wrote this opening paragraph, the most famous piece of sportswriting ever:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore their names are Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and Famine. But those are aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

They don't write 'em like that anymore: Not only was the 1920s, as Rice himself later billed it, the Golden Age of Sports, it was the golden age of sportswriting, with Rice joined by such men as Ring Lardner, Paul Gallico, Jimmy Cannon and Damon Runyon.

Over the Horsemen's 3 seasons -- freshmen were not eligible to play varsity football at the time -- Notre Dame won 27 games and lost only 2, both away to Nebraska, plus a tie in an earlier game with Army. They won the 1924 National Championship, defeating Ernie Nevers' Stanford squad in the 1925 Rose Bowl, with Layden returning 2 interceptions for touchdowns. (Notre Dame would then refuse all bowl invitations until 1970 -- having been shamed into it because they refused to take on Texas for the National Championship in the previous year's Cotton Bowl.)

None of them was over 6 feet tall, and none weighed more than 162 pounds. But this was typical of football players of the Roaring Twenties. And no one today can question their toughness: In their 30 games together, they played in primitive protective equipment, played offense and defense, excelling on both sides, and played all 60 minutes with no substitutions. The line that protected them was nicknamed the "Seven Mules," to emphasize their crucial but less glamorous function.

Football players wore uniform numbers before the other sports made them universal. Layden wore 5, Miller 16, Crowley 18 and Stuhldreher 32.

They didn't do much in the pros. Stuhldreher, from Massillon, Ohio, served as head coach at Villanova and Wisconsin, worked for U.S. Steel, and wrote a couple of books about football. He died in 1965, only 63 years old.

Layden, from Davenport, Iowa, went on to be the head coach at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and later Notre Dame, and was Commissioner of the NFL during the difficulties of the World War II era. He then went into business in Chicago, and died in 1973, age 70.

Miller, from Cleveland, coached at Georgia Tech, and then practiced law. He was appointed a U.S. Attorney for the Cleveland area by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and died in 1979, age 77.

Crowley, from Chicago, had Notre Dame graduate and later Green Bay Packers founder Curly Lambeau as his high school coach. He became head coach at Michigan State and Fordham, where he coached a team that challenged for the National Championship in 1937 and '38, with a line known as the Seven Blocks of Granite, including 2 future Pro Football Hall-of-Famers. Alex Wojciechowicz starred for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Detroit Lions. The other never played a down of pro ball, and is in the Hall as a coach: Vince Lombardi. (Longtime Giants owner Wellington Mara didn't play, but was also a student at Fordham at this time.)

Crowley later became chairman of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission, and was the last survivor of the Four Horsemen, living until 1986, at the age of 83.

The center for the Seven Mules was Adam Walsh. He grew up in Los Angeles, then became the head coach at Santa Clara University in the San Francisco Bay Area, was an assistant coach at both Yale and Harvard, and, in 1945, coached the Cleveland Rams to the NFL Championship. He moved with them to Los Angeles in 1946, but that was his last year in the pros. From 1935 to 1942, and again from 1947 to 1958, he was the head coach at Bowdoin College in Maine. He served in the Maine legislature, was appointed a U.S. Marshal by President John F. Kennedy, and died in 1985, at 83.

The other Mules were: Guard John Weibel, who became a doctor and, ironically, died before any of the others, from appendicitis in 1931, well before antibiotics could have saved him; guard Noble Kizer, who coached Purdue to the 1931 and '32 Big Ten titles, but died of a kidney ailment in 1940; end Ed Hungsinger, who played with Brooklyn in 1926 and later coached at Fordham under Crowley, became head coach at Niagara University in Buffalo, and lived until 1960; tackle Joe Bach, head coach at Duquesne, Niagara, St. Bonaventure University in Western New York, and in 1952 and '53 with the Pittsburgh Steelers, living until 1966; end Chuck Collins, later head coach at North Carolina, living until 1977; and tackle Edgar Miller, no relation to Don, later the head coach and then a longtime athletic department official at the Naval Academy, the last survivor, living until 1991.

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On the same day that Rice wrote his famous prose, Harold "Red" Grange led the defending National Champions, the University of Illinois, onto the field at brand-new Memorial Stadium in Champaign for its dedication game against the University of Michigan.

Grange returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. He ran 67 yards for a touchdown. He ran 56 yards for a touchdown. He ran 44 yards for a touchdown. All this was accomplished in the 1st 12 minutes of the ballgame. He later passed for another touchdown, and returned a kick for another. He handled the ball on all 6 touchdowns in Illinois' 39-14 victory.

Having made legends out of the Four Horsemen, Grantland Rice took pen in hand (or, more likely, tapped out on his typewriter), and wrote this about Grange:

A streak of fire, a breath of flame
Eluding all who reach and clutch;
A gray ghost thrown into the game
That rival hands may never touch;
A rubber bounding, blasting soul
Whose destination is the goal
Red Grange of Illinois!

Although Rice had called Grange "a gray ghost" (and he certainly appears as such in the few surviving film clips of him playing, all black and white, of course), Warren Brown, writing for the Chicago American, gave him the nickname "the Galloping Ghost."

Grange's 77 became the 1st celebrated uniform number in American sports -- especially since Major League Baseball wouldn't have uniform numbers until 1929, and the National Hockey League until 1926. When asked how he got the famous double-digit, he said, "The guy in front of me got 76, and the guy behind me got 78." It wasn't a choice, and it's not like Wheaton had uniform numbers at the time.

Late in the 1925 season, Illinois went to Philadelphia, and stunned the University of Pennsylvania 24-2 at Franklin Field. Grange ran for 237 yards and 2 touchdowns on a mud-soaked field. In his last collegiate game, the next week, Illinois beat Ohio State 14-9.

Grange would then leave college immediately and star for the Chicago Bears -- this was before the NFL Draft made that impossible -- and his 1925 game against the Giants drew 75,000 people to the Polo Grounds, the gate receipts saving the franchise. He played until 1934, became a broadcaster, was honored in the 1st class of inductees to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, and lived until 1991, at age 87.

In 1999, he was ranked number 80 on The Sporting News' end-of-century list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. In 2008, Grange was also ranked #1 on ESPN's Top 25 Players In College Football History list. In 2011, the Big Ten Network named Grange the league's greatest icon -- 86 years after he played his last game for Illinois.

Today, 96 years after his greatest game, and 86 years after he played his last game of any kind, he remains a legend, a touchstone, one of the founding fathers of professional football.

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October 18, 1925: Tony Lazzeri, 2nd baseman for the Salt Lake Bees of the Pacific Coast League, hits his 60th home run of the season, in a 12-10 victory over the Sacramento Solons in the final regular-season game of the year. It is an inside-the-park drive in the 7th off Frank Shellenback. The 21-year-old Lazzeri also had 222 RBIs, which may still be a North American professional record.

However, given that the weather in California allowed for a longer season – though as a mountain city, Salt Lake probably had some problems with snow at both ends – the PCL season was 200 games long. Lazzeri's record was accomplished in 197 appearances. He would soon be signed by the Yankees and go on to a Hall of Fame career.

On this same day, Cincinnati Reds pitcher Marv Goodwin is injured in a plane crash in Houston. He dies from his injuries 3 days later. The 34-year-old righthander from outside Charlottesville, Virginia appeared in 4 games for Cincinnati, 3 as a starter, 2 of them complete games, and posted an 0-2 record. He appears to have been the 1st big-league athlete to die in a plane crash.

On the same day, as I alluded to in the October 17 entry, the expansion New York Giants football team plays its 1st official home game, losing 14-0 to the Philadelphia-based Frankford Yellow Jackets at the Polo Grounds. Attendance: About 27,000, or half-full.

October 18, 1926: Charles Edward Anderson Berry is born in St. Louis. He died in 2017. He was hardly a role model, but, as John Lennon said, "If you want to give rock and roll another name, you could call it 'Chuck Berry.'"

"Maybellene." "Roll Over Beethoven." "School Day." "Reelin' & Rockin'." "Rock and Roll Music." "Sweet Little Sixteen." "Johnny B. Goode." (Those songs are listed in chronological order.) Any one of those songs would have made a man an all-time legend. He recorded them all -- between May 21, 1955 and January 6, 1958. That's 7 classics in a span of 961 days, or an average of 1 every 4 months.

In those 2 1/2 years -- about as long as it takes singers or bands to make 1 album today -- he made music without which there would have been no Beatles (they did "Roll Over Beethoven"), no Beach Boys ("Surfin' U.S.A." is the melody and place-naming of "Sweet Little Sixteen" taken to the beach, and "Fun, Fun, Fun" uses the guitar intro to "Johnny B. Goode"), and no anybody inspired by the greatest hitmaking bands that Britain and America, respectively, have ever produced.

October 18, 1927: Marvin Rotblatt (no middle name) is born in Chicago. At a time when there were few Jewish baseball players, and almost none where as short as 5-foot-6, Marv Rotblatt was both, as a pitcher for his hometown White Sox from 1948 to 1951, going 4-3. He had previously led the University of Illinois to the Big Ten baseball title in 1948, and had pitched a no-hitter in the Southern Association. He died in 2013.

October 18, 1928: Keith Max Jackson is born in Roopville, Georgia -- right around the time of, as he would later put it, "the possum-huntin' moon." Whoa, Nelly, he was the greatest college football broadcaster of all time. My goodness. His homespun Southern sayings endeared him to 2 generations of fans. "You can't be pussyfootin' around like a ballerina out there, you've got to run it north-and-south." (Translation: Don't give us any fancy offensive tricks, just run the ball up the middle.)

Oddly, he went to a Northern college, Washington State University -- on the G.I. Bill after serving in the Marines in the Korean War. But this enabled him to be objective when calling so many Southeastern Conference football games. He also nicknamed the oldest bowl game, the Rose Bowl, "the Granddaddy of Them All," and Michigan Stadium, which has had a crowd of over 115,000 for a football game, "The Big House."

He also tended drag out the M in "Mmmmichigan," and the L and the last A in "Allllabamaaaaaaaa," and refer to the University of Iowa's teams, the Hawkeyes, as the "Huckeyes." When a big play got canceled by a penalty, he would say, "Hold the phone!" When there were flags from every official on a play, he'd say, "There's a ton o' laundry on the field." The line of his that every impressionist copies, aside from "Whoa, Nelly," is "Fumblllllllle!"

On Thanksgiving Day 1993, he announced Georgia vs. Georgia Tech with former Miami Dolphin quarterback Bob Griese, saying, "This is the day when the waistline takes a whoopin', and ancient rivalries are replayed." The game was 16-10 in Georgia's favor going into the 4th quarter, but then things got out of control, as Georgia ran up the score, and Tech didn't like that, and a big fight broke out, before it was a 43-10 final. Not for the 1st time, and not for the last, Keith said of a rivalry, "These two teams just... don't... like each other."

He just wasn't as good with pro football. He did Monday Night Football in its 1st season, 1970, including the 1st game, a Jets loss away to the Cleveland Browns, then went back to the college game. He was ABC's lead broadcaster for the USFL, 1983 to 1985, but, again, it just wasn't the same. He also did ABC baseball broadcasts for a few years, including Chris Chambliss' home run that won the 1976 Pennant for the Yankees, the 1978 Playoff with the Red Sox (the Bucky Dent Game), and -- on his own 49th birthday -- Reggie's 3 homers.

His last game was the 2006 Rose Bowl thriller between Southern California and Texas. He died in 2018, at age 89. He said he wouldn't write a book about his experiences until he loses his golf swing. I hope he did it anyway, and left the manuscript somewhere: I want to read that book.

Also on this day, John McCurry is born in Anderson, South Carolina. He played Walter Murchman, a Negro League slugger, in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings. He was a "character actor," one of those people you always see on TV and in movies, but can never remember his name, the kind that makes you say, "Oh yeah... him! I like him!" He was also in Atlantic City and Trading Places, and died in 1989.

Also on this day, Bill Austin is born in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro, California, and grows up in the Portland suburb of Woodburn, Oregon. An offensive lineman, he made the 1954 Pro Bowl and played on the 1956 NFL Champion New York Giants.

He became one of the NFL's top assistant coaches, helping Vince Lombardi build NFL Championship squads with the Green Bay Packers in 1961 and 1962. George Allen lured him away for the Los Angeles Rams in 1965, before he got his own head coaching debut. As a head coach, he wasn't very successful, coaching the Pittsburgh Steelers before Chuck Noll, and serving as Washington Redskins interim coach between Lombardi's death and the hiring of Allen.

He then coached for Allen on the Redskins again, and then on the staffs of 3 different New York/New Jersey pro teams: The Giants, then the New Jersey Generals of the USFL, and finally the Jets in 1985. He was elected to the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, and died in 2013.

October 18, 1929: Violeta Barrios Torres is born in Rivas, Nicaragua. Known by her married name of Violeta Chamorro, her husband, Pedro, published a newspaper, La Prensa. He was assassinated by the right-wing government of Anastasio Somoza. She took over the paper.

When the left-wing Sandinistas overthrew and assassinated Somoza, she supported them. But when, under new President Daniel Ortega, they moved closer to the Soviet Union, she used the paper to oppose them. In 1990, Ortega agreed to hold elections, and she was elected to defeat him. She was the nation's 1st female President, and remains its only one, serving until 1997.

Her time in office was fraught with economic difficulty, and she did not run for re-election. Ortega has since been elected President again, and she has retired from public life due to ill health.

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October 18, 1931: Andrew Arthur Carey is born in Oakland, and grew up in adjoining Alameda, California. A 3rd baseman, he was a Yankee from 1952 to 1960. In 1955, he led the American League with 11 triples. He made 2 key fielding plays that helped save Don Larsen's perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. He won World Series rings with the Yankees in 1956 and 1958, and lived until 2011.

Also on this day, Thomas Edison dies of complications of diabetes at his home/laboratory in West Orange, Essex County, New Jersey. He was 84. A 1992 New York museum exhibit hailed him as "The Man Who Invented the 20th Century." Of course, he had help, some of which was helping himself to other people's inventions and taking credit for them. He was a genius inventor and a bastard businessman.

October 18, 1933: As it turns out, October 18 is a good birthday for a future football coach. It's also a good birthday for a future Green Bay Packer.

Alvis Forrest Gregg (he dropped the first name) is born in Birthright, Texas -- no, I'm not making that town name up. Green Bay Packer coach Vince Lombardi, himself a former offensive lineman and perhaps partial to them, but a man who knew talent and dedication, called this Hall-of-Famer "the finest player I ever coached."

An offensive tackle, Forrest Gregg and 2 of his teammates, guard Fred "Fuzzy" Thurston and cornerback Herb Adderley are the only men ever to play on 6 NFL Championship teams. All 3 won in 1961, '62, '65, '66 and '67 with the Packers. Thurston also won with the 1958 Baltimore Colts, Gregg and Adderley both did so with the 1971 Dallas Cowboys. This includes Super Bowls I, II and VI. (Don't tell me Tom Brady has won 6 Super Bowls. He cheated.)

Gregg went on to coach for Tom Landry in Dallas, took the head job with the Cleveland Browns, and got the Cincinnati Bengals into Super Bowl XVI, their first trip to the season finale. After his alma mater, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, got "the death penalty" from the NCAA, having their program suspended for a year due to recruiting violations while already on probation, he was named head coach, held the program back another year so it could rebuild, and got them back onto a footing where they'’ve been able to consistently compete as what college basketball would call a "mid-major." Lombardi and Landry would be proud. He died in 2019, at age 85.

October 18 is not, however, a good day for the Philadelphia Eagles, who, on that date in 1933, played their 1st home game, losing 25-0 at Baker Bowl, home of the Phillies, to the Portsmouth Spartans of southern Ohio, the team that will become the Detroit Lions the next season. Only 5,000 people come to the ramshackle 18,800-seat relic at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue, across from the North Philadelphia stations of both the Pennsylvania and Reading Railroads.

October 18, 1935: Howard Ralph Nunn is born in Westfield, North Carolina. A pitcher, Howie Nunn played for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1959, and with the Pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds in 1961. In both cases, he was a teammate of pitcher Jim Brosnan, and ended up being mentioned in the books that Brosnan wrote about those seasons, The Long Season and Pennant Race, respectively. Nunn's career record was 4-3. He died in 2012.

October 18, 1937: Boyd Hamilton Dowler is born in in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Another of Lombardi's 1960s Packers, he was a wide receiver and a punter, a member of all 5 title teams and an All-Pro in 1965 and 1967. But he's probably best remembered for getting hurt early in Super Bowl I, enabling Max McGee to step in, and catch the 1st pass and score the 1st touchdown in Super Bowl history.

Dowler would, however, be key in winning the next season's NFL Championship Game, the Ice Bowl, scoring 2 1st half touchdowns against the Cowboys. In 11 seasons, he caught 474 passes for 7,270 yards, and those were very good totals for the era. He is now a scout for the Atlanta Falcons.

Dowler is among the 10 surviving players from the Packers' 1961 NFL Champions, the 12 from their 1962 title, the 14 from their 1965 title, the 18 from their 1966 NFL Champions/Super Bowl I winners, and the 20 from their 1967 NFL Champions/Super Bowl II winners.

October 18, 1938: Robert Frank Knoop is born in Sioux City, Iowa. Bobby Knoop -- and that Dutch name is pronounced "Kuh-NOPP," not "NOOP" -- was a 2nd baseman for the Los Angeles/California Angels from 1964 to 1969, and then played for the Chicago White Sox and the Kansas City Royals. He won 3 straight Gold Gloves, and was an All-Star in 1966.

He later coached, mostly for the Angels, and was on their staff for their 1st 4 postseason appearances: The 1979, '82 and '86 American League Championship Series, and the 1995 AL Western Division Playoff defeat to the Seattle Mariners. In 1994, he was interim manager, splitting 2 games. He is still listed as an Angels coach, in much the way that Jimmie Reese once was, the way Johnny Pesky was for the Boston Red Sox, and Red Schoendienst was for the St. Louis Cardinals. He is a member of the Angels' team Hall of Fame.

Also on this day, Dawn Elberta Wells is born on Reno, Nevada. She played Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan's Island. She and Tina Louise (Ginger Grant) are the last survivors among the show's main cast. (UPDATE: Dawn Wells died on December 30, 2020, leaving Tina as the last survivor.)

October 18, 1939: Michael Keller Dyczko Jr. is born in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. His father sort-of anglicized the family name to Ditka. A star at the University of Pittsburgh, Mike Ditka practically invented the position of tight end with the Chicago Bears, helping them win the 1963 NFL Championship. He is 1 of 10 surviving players from that team.

He went on to the Dallas Cowboys and helped them win Super Bowl VI. He then served as an assistant to Landry, alongside Gregg, and another eventual Super Bowl-reaching head coach, former Cowboys running back Dan Reeves. Together, they won Super Bowl XII.

"Iron Mike" was the last head coach hired for the Chicago Bears by team founder-owner George Halas. He got them into the Playoffs 7 times, including winning Super Bowl XX. In other words, the Bears haven't won a World Championship without Ditka having some part in it in 74 years. He was the 1st tight end elected to the Hall of Fame. 

After a long estrangement, the Bears finally retired his Number 89 in 2014. He has spent most of his time since losing the Bears job as a studio analyst for NBC Sports.

When the Bears won the Super Bowl in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger blew up 2 days later, and their White House reception with President Ronald Reagan was canceled. In 2011, 25 years later, President and Chicago resident Barack Obama invited the team to the White House to make it up to them.

Despite Ditka and several of the players being very conservative -- Ditka has openly supported Donald Trump, and was even approached to run against Obama for the U.S. Senate in 2004, but thought a loss would hurt the restaurant chain he owned, and chose not to -- he gave Obama the traditional gift, a team jersey with the President's name on the back. Sometimes, the number on the jersey is 1, sometimes it's the President's sequential number (in Obama's case, 44); this time, it was the year of the title, 85.

Unfortunately for Ditka, and anyone else born the same day, this was also the day that Lee Harvey Oswald was born, in New Orleans. Another guy with a connection to Dallas – in fact, he was living in Irving in 1963, 8 years before Texas Stadium opened and the Cowboys moved there.

Some people will never be convinced that he is the one and only person behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy – and I'm one of them. But there is no doubt that, later that day, he killed a Dallas police officer, Patrolman J.D. Tippit. And there were other reasons to conclude that Oswald was scum. When Jack Ruby killed him 2 days later, it meant that the chances of us ever hearing the full story were probably gone forever; but other than that, it was no great loss.

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October 10, 1940, 80 years ago: Cynthia Weil (no middle name) is born in Manhattan. With husband Barry Mann, married since 1961, she wrote some of the great 1960s rock and roll classics: "Uptown" by The Crystals, "On Broadway" by the The Drifters, "Only In America" by Jay & the Americans, "I'm Gonna Be Strong" by Gene Pitney, "Walking In the Rain" by the Ronettes (and Jay & the Americans), and "Kicks" by Paul Revere & the Raiders.

Most notably, they wrote both of The Righteous Brothers' Number 1 hits: "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" and "You're My Soul and Inspiration." They also wrote "We Gotta Get Out of This Place," which the Righteous Brothers turned down, and it became a hit for The Animals.

In the 1970s, they wrote one of Dolly Parton's early hits, "Here You Come Again." They had a brief comeback in the mid-1980s, with a pair of Linda Ronstadt duets, "Somewhere Out There" with James Ingram, and "Don't Know Much" with Aaron Neville.

October 18, 1941: The Maltese Falcon premieres. It is the 3rd, and by far the most successful, version of Dashiell Hammett's novel about San Francisco private detective Sam Spade, helping Humphrey Bogart make the transition from playing nasty gangsters to playing guys you could actually root for, even if they were not always heroic. He was the Paul Newman and the Denzel Washington of his day.
Mary Astor plays the femme fatale. This was also the 1st time Bogie worked with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. It would not be the last.

Also on this day, Ezell Alexander Blair Jr. is born in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was one of "The Greensboro Four," students at the city's all-black North Carolina A&T University who began a "sit-in" at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's store downtown, to protest racial segregation in public accommodations. This would eventually lead to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1965, Blair moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and worked with developmentally disabled people. In 1968, he converted to Islam, and changed his name to Jibreel Khazan. He is still alive, at age 79.

Joseph McNeil, who sat in with him, and rose to the rank of Major General (2 stars) in the U.S. Air Force, is 78. David Richmond was the only one of the Four to stay in Greensboro, working as a porter until he developed cancer, and died in 1990, only 49. Franklin McCain worked for a chemical company in Charlotte, and lived until 2014, age 73. In 2002, NCA&T dedicated a statue of the Four.

October 18, 1942: Lavern George Holtgrave is born outside St. Louis in Aviston, Illinois. A pitcher, Vern Holtgrave made just 1 appearance in the major leagues, on September 26, 1965. He pitched the 4th, 5th and 6th innings for the Detroit Tigers, allowing 2 runs but not figuring in the decision, in a 7-1 loss to the Cleveland Indians. He pitched 1 more season in the minor leagues, and that was it. He is still alive.

October 18, 1945, 75 years ago: Donald Wayne Young is born in Houston. The outfielder made his major league debut for the Chicago Cubs against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on September 9, 1965 -- Sandy Koufax' perfect game.

His 2 errors against the Mets on July 8, 1969 were unfairly blamed for starting the Cubs' collapse. He would never play in the majors again after that season, and played his last professional baseball game at age 26. He went from job to job, mostly blue-collar work in the West, but always managed to find work until his retirement. He is still alive.

October 18, 1946: Yet another football coach with an October 18 birthday: Frank Mitchell Beamer is born in Mount Airy, North Carolina. He turned the football program at his alma mater, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, a.k.a. Virginia Tech, from a laughingstock into training stock for the NFL.

He retired after the 2015 season, having won 238 games, including 11 bowls and 12 1st-place finishes in either his league (first the Big East, now the Atlantic Coast Conference) or his division (since the ACC split). Counting his time as the head man at Murray State, he has 280 wins, and is the winningest and longest-tenured active coach in Division I-A -- excuse me, in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). He has been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

His son Shane, a member (along with the now-infamous Michael Vick) of his 1999 team that reached the BCS National Championship Game, became one of his assistants, and is now assistant head coach to Lincoln Riley at the University of Oklahoma.

October 18, 1947: John Howard Getty Johnson is born in Carthage, Mississippi, and grows up in Milwaukee. A forward, "J.J." starred for the University of Iowa, was an original Cleveland Cavalier in 1970, was their 1st All-Star in 1971 and '72, and helped the Seattle SuperSonics win the 1979 NBA Championship.

He died in 2016. The Cavaliers made him a charter inductee into their Wall of Honor in 2019.

Also on this day, Joseph Thomas Morton Jr. is born in Harlem, Manhattan, and grows up in Bayside, Queens. In 1984, he starred in The Brother from Another Planet. As far as I know, this made him the 1st black person to play an alien in a movie.

He has since played Dr. Henry Deacon on Eureka, Eli Pope on Scandal, Dr. Silas Stone in the DC Extended Universe, and Rev. Arthur Finer on God Friended Me.

October 18, 1948: Bryan Andrew Lefley is born in Grosse Isle, Manitoba, Canada. A defenseman, he was an original member of the New York Islanders in 1972, and a Kansas City Scout in 1974, making him an original player for the franchise that went on to become the New Jersey Devils.

He was named the head coach of the Italian national hockey team, and still held that job on October 28, 1997, when he was killed in a car crash in Bolzano, Italy. He had just turned 49. He was elected to the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame. His brother Chuck Lefley was a center for the Montreal Canadiens, including their 1973 Stanley Cup winners, and the St. Louis Blues.

October 18, 1949: George Andrew Hendrick Jr. is born in Los Angeles. The 4-time All-Star hit 267 home runs, and was a member of 2 World Championship teams, the 1972 Oakland Athletics and the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals. Now working in the front office for the Tampa Bay Rays, he says he will only autograph Cardinals memorabilia.

Also on this day, Edward Joseph Farmer is born outside Chicago in Evergreen, Illinois. A relief pitcher, he was an All-Star with the Chicago White Sox in 1980. He finished his career with a record of 30-43 and 75 saves.

He had bad luck: He was with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1974, 2 years before they started making the Playoffs again; the Baltimore Orioles in 1977, just missing a Playoff berth and 2 years before their next Pennant; the Milwaukee Brewers in 1978, just as they were first getting good, but before they made the Playoffs; the White Sox in 1981, 2 years before they made the Playoffs; and the Phillies again in 1982, just missing a Playoff berth, and 1983, traded right before they won a Pennant.

He later worked as an Orioles scout and in the White Sox' front office. He was a White Sox broadcaster from 1991 until his death on April 1, 2020.

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October 18, 1950, 70 years ago: Connie Mack's sons, Connie Jr., Earle and Roy, take legal action that removes their father from the operating ownership and manager's job with the Philadelphia Athletics after 50 years. Counting his time running the Pittsburgh Pirates before that, he managed a big-league record 54 years.

But he is about to turn 88 years old, and is clearly senile (having spent the last few years calling out the names of players he had long since traded away), and had managed just 1 winning season in the last 17. It was long since time for him to step aside, but, as owner, he never would, until his sons forced his hand.

To do so, they had to swallow their differences: Earle and Roy were the products of the old man's 1st marriage, Connie Jr. from his 2nd. His 2nd wife was still alive, and she basically controlled Connie Jr., and hated Earle and Roy. Earle and Roy didn't much like each other, but sided with each other against their half-brother and stepmother. Until now: They felt they didn't dare ruin their father's 50th Anniversary season, but, now, they had to admit the obvious: He had to be removed from full control of the ballclub.

"The Grand Old Man of Baseball" retains his title as president of the club, but it is purely ceremonial now. Before his death, Shibe Park will be renamed Connie Mack Stadium; but the A's will also be sold by "the House of Mack" in 1954, and moved to Kansas City.

Connie died in 1956, aged 93. Longtime A's player and coach Jimmy Dykes succeeded him as manager, and the results wee little better, which was one of the reasons for the move.

None of the Mack sons was ever involved with sports again. Connie Jr.'s son Connie III served Florida in both houses of Congress, and his son Connie IV tried to do the same, serving in the House but losing for the Senate in 2012.

Also on this day, a soccer game between all-stars of England's Football League and the Irish League of Northern Ireland is played at Bloomfield Road in Blackpool, Lancashire. Kevin McGarry of Cliftonville in Belfast scores 2 goals for the Irish team, but Albert Stubbins of Liverpool scores 5 for the English one, and the English team wins 6-3. The English team also includes Tom Finney of Preston North End.

Also on this day, Wendy Wasserstein (as far as I know, her full birth name) is born in Brooklyn. In 1989, she won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play The Heidi Chronicles. No, it is not about the "Heidi Bowl" game between the Jets and the Oakland Raiders in 1968. She died in 2006.

October 18, 1951: Michael John Antonovich is born in Calumet, Minnesota. A star hockey player at the University of Minnesota, Mike was a member of the original 1982-83 New Jersey Devils, but his best years were in the 1970s in the WHA, with the Minnesota Fighting Saints (no, I’m not making that name up, they played in St. Paul and they did do a lot of fighting) and the New England Whalers. He is now a scout with the Columbus Blue Jackets

Also on this day, Pamela Dawber (no middle name) is born in Detroit, and grows up in the suburb of North Farmington, Michigan. Pam started out with Wilhelmina Models, and tried out for the role of the grown-up Tabitha Stephens in Tabitha, a spinoff of Bewitched. She didn't get it (Lisa Hartman did), but it got ABC's attention, and she was cast opposite Robin Williams in the sitcom Mork & Mindy.

The show, set in Boulder, Colorado, didn't have much to do with sports, but the last scene of the opening montage showed Mork and Mindy on the goalposts at Folsom Field, home of the University of Colorado football team. Pam later played the title role in the CBS sitcom My Sister Sam.

In 1987, she married former UCLA quarterback Mark Harmon, then wrapping up his stint on St. Elsewhere. Since My Sister Sam's cancellation in 1989 (right before her co-star, Rebecca Schaeffer, was murdered at age 19), has cut back on acting to raise her family. When Garry Marshall, the ABC producer behind her big break, died in 2016, she joined several other actors from Marshall shows in a guest appearance on the new version of The Odd Couple with Thomas Lennon and Matthew Perry.

Also on this day, Terry McMillan (no middle name) is also born in Michigan, in Port Huron. The status of her groove, and whether she needs to get it back, are uncertain.

Also on this day, Andrew Earl Hassler is born in the Houston suburb of Texas City, Texas. The lefthander, converted to a reliever halfway through his career, reached the postseason with the Kansas City Royals in 1976 and '77, the California Angels in 1982, and the St. Louis Cardinals in 1985. He pitched for the Boston Red Sox in 1978, including in the Bucky Dent Game; and for the Mets in 1979. His career record was 44-71, with 29 saves. He died on Christmas Day, December 25, 2019.

October 18, 1952: Jeron Kennis Royster is born in Sacramento. A speedy infielder, Jerry played in the 1974 World Series for the Dodgers, and spent 1987 with the Yankees, but played the majority of his career on some mediocre Atlanta Braves teams in between.

He managed the Milwaukee Brewers briefly in 2002, and recently managed the Lotte Giants of Busan, Korea, making him the 1st non-Korean manager in Korea's top baseball league.

Also on this day, Allen Stevens Ripley is born in the Boston suburb of Norwood, Massachusetts. The 

son of major league pitcher Walt Ripley, he was a rookie pitcher with the ill-fated 1978 Red Sox, and was done in the major leagues by 1982, with a record of 23-27. While pitching for the San Francisco Giants in 1980, his catcher, Bob Brenly, nicknamed him Speed Limit, because his fastball seemed to top out at 55 miles per hour. Ripley died in 2014.

Also on this day, Anderson Sidney Johnson is born in Athens, Georgia. He was a quarterback at the University of Georgia, but the New England Patriots moved him to running back. He played 9 seasons for them, and was named to their 1970s All-Decade Team. He was elected to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, and died in 2018.

October 18, 1953: The San Francisco 49ers beat the Chicago Bears 35-28 at Wrigley Field. Bears coach George Halas is unhappy with the play of quarterback George Blanda, and so the aptly-named Willie Thrower is sent in as his replacement, thus becoming the 1st black quarterback in the NFL. He throws 8 passes, completing 3, for 27 yards, and an interception. He played only 1 more game, was released, and never played pro football again. He died in 2002.

October 18, 1954: Texas Instruments announces it has begun production of the 1st transistor radio. Baseball fans everywhere rejoice, for now they can listen to ballgames almost anywhere, from the office to the beach.

Well, they'll have to wait until April 1955 to listen to them, and until Summer 1955 to listen to them on the beach. Maybe April 1955, if they live in California and can get Pacific Coast League broadcasts.

Also on this day, Mort Walker and Dik Browne debut the comic strip Hi & Lois. Separately, Walker created Beetle Bailey (Lois Flagston was Beetle's sister), and Browne created Hagar the Horrible.

October 18, 1955: Ralph Kiner, formerly a great slugger for the Pittsburgh Pirates, calls it quits due to a back injury. He is about to turn 33 years old. He hit just 18 home runs for the Cleveland Indians this past season.

Years later, as a broadcaster for the Mets, a player (whose name I've long since forgotten, even though I was watching this game on WOR-Channel 9) hit his 1st major league home run, and Kiner said, "You always remember your first." Kiner's 1st was on April 18, 1946, at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, off Howie Pollet of the Cardinals, who beat the Pirates that day anyway, and went on to win the World Series that season.

His broadcast partner Tim McCarver, who won 2 Series as a catcher for the Cardinals (1964 and '67) and one more with the Phillies (1980, his last season), said he didn't remember his 1st major league home run, saying, "You'd think I would, because I didn't hit very many." It came on July 13, 1961, also at Sportsman's Park (by then, the 1st ballpark to get the name of Busch Stadium), off Tony Cloninger of the Milwaukee Braves, who beat the Cardinals that day anyway.

Kiner: "I don’t remember my last home run, because, at the time, I didn't think it would be my last! It was on September 10, 1955, at Fenway Park in Boston, off Ellis Kinder, and the Indians beat the Red Sox.

That last home run was Number 369 – and he did that in only 10 seasons, a career shortened at the beginning by service in World War II and at the end by his injury. If he'd been able to play 20, you can double that 369, and you've got 718. I know it doesn't work that way, but, theoretically, he could have surpassed Babe Ruth before Hank Aaron did.

Ralph died in 2014. He was 91, and it was a remarkable baseball life.

Also on this day, the Community War Memorial Arena opens in Rochester, New York, 63 years to the day after the opening of the Edgerton Park Arena, which it replaces. The NBA's Rochester Royals only play 2 seasons there before moving to become the Cincinnati Royals in 1957, the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985.

But the 10,664-seat building still stands, under the name of the Blue Cross Arena at the War Memorial. Since 1956, it has been the home of one of the great institutions of minor-league hockey, the American Hockey League's Rochester Americans. The Amerks have shared it with the hockey team at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and, for games too big for their on-campus arena in Olean, the basketball team at St. Bonaventure University.

Also on this day, the Winnipeg Arena opens. It was home to the Winnipeg Jets from 1972 to 1996, including their 1976, 1978 and 1979 World Hockey Association titles. It was also home to a series of minor-league teams, including the Winnipeg Warriors, the original Winnipeg Jets, and, from the NHL Jets' move to Arizona in 1996 until 2004, the Manitoba Moose.

The Moose moved into the arena now known as Bell MTS Place in 2004, a building necessary if Winnipeg was ever to return to the NHL, which it did when the Atlanta Thrashers became the new Jets in 2011. The old arena was torn down in 2006.

October 18, 1956: Martina Šubertová (no middle name) is born in Prague, in the nation then known as Czechoslovakia. Her stepfather, Miroslav Navrátil, became her 1st tennis coach, and her name was changed to Martina Navrátilová. 

Sorry, Roger Federer and Serena Williams, but Martina remains the greatest tennis player who ever lived, of any gender, of any era, of any nationality. From 1978 to 1990, she won 9 Wimbledons, 4 U.S. Opens, 3 Australian Opens and 2 French Opens. She just missed the Grand Slam in 1983, winning all but the French. That's 18 majors.

Also on this day, Johnny Hatten Buss is born in Los Angeles. Along with each of his 5 siblings, he inherited an 11 percent ownership of the Los Angeles Lakers from their father, Dr. Jerry Buss. His sister Jeanie is the controlling owner, though.

Also on this day, Alan Willey (no middle name) is born in Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, in the North-East of England. The striker didn't do much with "hometown" club Middlesbrough, but he starred in the North American Soccer League and the Major Indoor Soccer League, playing for the Minnesota Kicks, the Montreal Manic, the Minnesota Strikers and the San Diego Sockers.

In a 1978 Playoff game for the Kicks against the New York Cosmos, "The Artful Dodger" scored 5 goals, but it wasn't enough to win. He is still alive.

October 18, 1958: Thomas Hearns (no middle name) is born in Memphis, although, like Alabama-born Joe Louis, he grew up and trained as a boxer in Detroit. Known as "The Hit Man" and "The Motor City Cobra," he was one of the most devastating punchers the ring has ever known, holding various titles ranging from welterweight to light heavyweight from 1980 to 1992.

Also on this day, Kjell Samuelsson (no middle name) is born in Tingsryd, Sweden -- and that's pronounced like "shell." A defenseman, he played for the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers and didn't gain a reputation as a thug – an amazing achievement. More importantly, he was a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins when they won the 1992 Stanley Cup.

Also on this day, Julio Jorge Olarticoechea is born in Saladillo, Argentina. A left back, he played for both of the big clubs in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, River Plate (winning a league title in 1981) and Boca Juniors. He was played as a left wingback in the 1986 World Cup Final, won by Argentina. He also played in the 1982 and 1990 World Cups, and managed the Argentina team at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Also on this day, Letitia Ann James is born in Brooklyn. In 2003, she was elected to the New York City Council from a District in Brooklyn. In 2013, she was elected the City's Public Advocate, which made her the de facto vice Mayor, under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

In 2018, "Tish" James was elected the Attorney General of the State of New York. In her 1st 2 years in that position, she has challenged Donald Trump on multiple fronts, and would have the authority to prosecute him for any crimes he may have committed in the State, once he leaves office, even if his successor pardons him for any federal crimes. (A President can only pardon a person for federal crimes, not State crimes.) This black woman with legal power may yet turn out to be Trump's worst nightmare.

October 18, 1959: Christopher Michael Russo is born in Syosset, Long Island, New York. No word on whether the future sports-talk host known as "Mad Dog" said to the people in the delivery room, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand goodaftanoon evwybody! Howayoutoday?"

*

October 18, 1960, 60 years ago: Yankee co-owners Dan Topping and Del Webb officially relieve Casey Stengel as manager, after 12 seasons, a record 10 American League Pennants, and a record-tying 7 World Series wins.

He gives the press a prepared statement where he announces his resignation. Then he says, "I guess this means they fired me." And "I'll never make the mistake of being 70 again." But Casey, and Mets fans, would have the last laugh.

Also on this day, Erin Marie Moran is born in Burbank, California. Not an athlete, but as Joanie Cunningham on Happy Days, she played a cheerleader at Milwaukee's Jefferson High School. There are about 40 Jefferson High Schools in the U.S., but Milwaukee doesn't have one in real life: The school used for exterior shots was the city's Washington High School.

She'd had money troubles and substance abuse issues, and died of cancer in Indiana in 2017. She was only 57 years old. To put that in perspective: If Joanie were a real person, and she were the same age Erin was when the show began (nearly 14), she'd now be 78, and could well still be alive.

October 18, 1961: The film version of the 1957 musical West Side Story premieres. It goes on to be nominated for 11 Academy Awards (Oscars), winning 10 of them, including Best Picture.

In this corner, of various white extractions including Irish, Italian and Polish -- and one kid known by a name that would never fly today, "A-rab" -- in a gang named the Jets: Richard Beymer as Tony (replacing Larry Kert from the original Broadway production, Jimmy Bryant did his singing), Russ Tamblyn as Riff (Michael Callan), and several other guys and girls, including a young Elaine Joyce, well before she became a regular on Match Game.

And in this corner, the Puerto Ricans, calling their gang the Sharks: Natalie Wood as Maria (with her songs sung by Marni Nixon, replacing Carol Lawrence from Broadway), George Chakiris as Bernardo (replacing Ken LeRoy -- ironically, Chakiris played Riff when the musical first took the British stage in 1958), Jose DeVega as Chino, and, in an Oscar-winning performance, Rita Moreno (Chita Rivera).

And, in the only thing they seem to agree on (besides all of them being Catholic and that you gotta be tough to survive in Hell's Kitchen), hating the police, William Bramley plays Sergeant Krupke, a.k.a. Officer Krupke.

In 1969, after winning the Super Bowl with a different group of Jets, Joe Namath got his own TV talk show. The moderator was author Dick Schaap. Schaap was an Ivy Leaguer, having gone to Cornell University in New York State's Finger Lakes region. Namath barely got through the University of Alabama. At one point during the run of The Joe Namath Show, Schaap mentioned that he was going to see Romeo & Juliet as part of the Shakespeare in the Park series, and invited Namath. Namath said, "What's it about?" Schaap was shocked that Namath had never heard of it. So he said, "Did you ever see West Side Story?"

In 1972, the World Hockey Association was founded. Two of its teams were the Winnipeg Jets and the Los Angeles Sharks. And the "Jets vs. Sharks" jokes were easy. In 1979, with the Sharks long since disbanded, the Jets were among the WHA teams invited to join the NHL. In 1991, the San Jose Sharks were founded, and the jokes resumed. In 1996, the Jets moved to become the team now known as the Arizona Coyotes. In 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers moved, became the new Winnipeg Jets, and the Jets vs. Sharks jokes started all over again.

In the Spring of 2017, I was babysitting my niece Mackenzie, not yet a full year old. And West Side Story came on TV, with its creditless opening montage showing New York from above, including the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium in living color. When the camera finally panned down to the finger-snapping Jets, and they started dancing to Jerome Robbins' choreography and Leonard Bernstein's score, Mackenzie was transfixed. This baby could not take her eyes off a movie that premiered nearly 55 years before she was born.

October 18, 1962: Cecil Lee Rouson is born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and grows up across the State in Greensboro. Dropping his first name, Lee Rouson was a running back who won Super Bowls XXI and XXV with the Giants. He is now a minister in Mount Olive, Morris County, New Jersey.

October 18, 1966: The expansion Chicago Bulls play their 1st home game. They overcome 32 points from Rick Barry with 26 by Jerry Sloan and 22 by Guy Rodgers, and beat the San Francisco Warriors 119-116 at the International Amphitheatre.

The Bulls will play only their 1st season in the stockyards arena, which became infamous 2 years later as the site of the 1968 Democratic Convention, and play at the Chicago Stadium on the West Side from 1967 until 1994, subsequently moving across the street to the United Center.

October 18, 1967: The Philadelphia Flyers play their 1st regular-season home game. They beat the St. Louis Blues 2-1 at The Spectrum.

Also on this day, the American League approves Charlie Finley's move of the Athletics to Oakland‚ California. Kansas City is promised an expansion team for 1969, as is Seattle.

When Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri and Mayor Ilus Davis of Kansas City threaten legal action against the move‚ possibly including the revocation of baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws, AL President Joe Cronin reopens talks‚ and the expansion deadline is moved to 1969.

Nevertheless, Symington is glad that his home State is rid of Finley, saying, "Oakland is the luckiest city since Hiroshima."

Also on this day, students at the main Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin protest over recruitment there by Dow Chemical, which has been producing the napalm used in U.S. bombings of Vietnam. The police strike back, and 76 people are injured.

Also on this day, according to the TV show Friends, Ross Eustace Geller is born, definitely in the State of New York, possibly on Long Island, which is definitely where he and his sister Monica grew up. Ross was played by David Schwimmer, himself born in Flushing, Queens, although he grows up in Beverly Hills.

An anthropologist, who enjoys offsetting his nerdy image and his frequent lack of self-confidence by flaunting his knowledge and his Ph.D., Dr. Geller was no athlete. He proved this onscreen. In one of the show's earliest episodes, oddly played during the real-life NHL lockout of 1994-95, he got hit in the nose with a puck during a Ranger game at Madison Square Garden.

In a 1996 episode, he and Monica, a chef played by Courteney Cox, reminisced about having been captains of opposing touch football teams on Thanksgiving Day, in what was known as the Geller Bowl, with the trophy, a two-by-four with a troll doll glued to the top, being named the Geller Cup. 

After a dispute over who won Geller Bowl VI, their parents discontinued the game, only to have it revived on the current Thanksgiving, with a guys-vs.-girls touch football game in a park near their Greenwich Village apartments. That game got rough, and weird, and also ended in dispute.

And in a 1998 episode, in order to impress his English girlfriend, Emily Wyatt (Helen Baxendale), Ross played rugby with her English friends. This turned out not to be a good idea.

October 18, 1968: The greatest performance in Olympic history, that of the U.S. track & field team continues. Bob Beamon sets a world record in the long jump at the Olympic Games at the Estadio Universitario in Mexico City.

It's so long, it's beyond the means of the available measuring equipment. As with Mickey Mantle's home runs, but with far more need, a tape measure is found, and an accurate measurement is taken: 8.90 meters.

The crowd is stunned. But, as an American, not familiar with the metric system, Beamon doesn't know what 8.90 meters means. The old world record was 27 feet, 7¼ inches. Beamon's jump is 29 feet, 2½ inches. He has broken both the 28-foot and 29-foot barriers.

In the Olympics, where races -- on foot, in pools, on bicycles, on skis, on boats, and in various Winter sports vehicles -- are determined by hundredths of seconds, and distances by fractions of an inch, he has not only surpassed the old record by a foot and a half, he's increased it by nearly 6 percent.

He collapses into the arms of his teammate, Ralph Boston, the 1960 Gold Medalist and the 1964 Silver Medalist in the event, who ends up taking the Bronze Medal this time. Lynn Davies, the Welshman who won the 1964 Gold Medal for Great Britain, tells him, "You have destroyed this event." He does not medal at all. Nor does Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, the half-Ukranian, half-Armenian competing for the Soviet Union: After Bronze Medals in 1960 and 1964, he finishes 4th this time. The Silver Medal goes to Klaus Beer of East Germany, who jumps 26 feet, 10½ inches -- 28 inches short of the Gold.

Beamon's jump becomes known as the Leap of the Century, and stands as a world record for 23 years, before Mike Powell extends it by 2 inches in 1991. It still stands as an Olympic record.

Beamon was a native of South Jamaica, Queens, New York, the same neighborhood that produced Governor Mario Cuomo, rapper 50 Cent, and my Grandma. After that Gold Medal, he was drafted by one of the NBA's brand-new expansion teams, the Phoenix Suns. He didn't sign, staying at Long Island's Adelphi University and getting his degree. He now operates a museum in Florida. There have now been 12 Olympiads since Beamon's jump, and, to this day, only 1 man has beaten it.

Also on this day, the Phoenix Suns play the 1st game ever played by a major league team calling Arizona home. They win it, too, getting 27 points from Gail Goodrich, and defeating last year's expansion team, the Seattle SuperSonics, 116-107 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Also on this day, Michael Detlief Stich is born in Pinneberg, Germany. He won Wimbledon in 1991.

Also on this day, Stuart Grant Law is born in the Brisbane suburb of Herston, Queensland, Australia. He is the all-time leading run-scorer for his home-State cricket team in first class cricket, and is the most successful captain in Australian domestic cricket. He later coached the national team of Bangladesh.

October 18, 1969: Having been college basketball's player of the year all 3 years he played for UCLA -- freshmen wouldn't be made eligible until 1972 -- Lew Alcindor plays his 1st professional basketball game. He scores 29 points to lead the Milwaukee Bucks to a 119-110 win over the Detroit Pistons at the Milwaukee Arena.

In 1970-71, just his 2nd season, their 3rd, Big Lew led the Bucks to the title, and got the great Oscar Robertson his one and only ring. After another season, he announced his conversion to Islam and his name change. He has been Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ever since.

Only 2 people were still allowed to call him Lew: His father, Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Sr.; and his college coach, John Wooden, who, until the day he died, called Kareem "Lewis."

Also on this day, Nelson David Vivas is born in Granadero Baigorra, Argentina. A right back, he began his career with Buenos Aires club Quilmes in 1991, and ended it with them in 2005. In between, he played for both of the Buenos Aires giants, Boca Juniors and River Plate. He played for Argentina in the 1998 World Cup.

From 1998 to 2001, he played for North London's Arsenal -- with no luck. They won the League and Cup "Double" the season before he got there and the season after he left. While he was there, they reached the 2000 UEFA Cup Final and the 2001 FA Cup Final, but lost both. He is now an assistant coach at Atletico Madrid.

Also on this day, The Jackson 5 make their national television debut, on The Hollywood Palace, ABC's Saturday night, taped, West Coast attempt to outdo CBS' Sunday night live, New York-based The Ed Sullivan Show. (It lasted from 1964 to 1970.) They are introduced by fellow Motown act Diana Ross, whose boss (and illicit boyfriend) Berry Gordy Jr. publicly credits with "discovering" them.

An appearance on Sullivan followed a few weeks later. From the perspective of the TV viewer, they always lined up, left to right, as follows: Tito, Marlon, Michael, Jackie and Jermaine.

*

October 18, 1970, 50 years ago: Sachio Kinugasa takes his place in the starting lineup of the Hiroshima Carp‚ playing 3rd base. Over the next 17 years he will play in 2‚215 consecutive games -- longer than Lou Gehrig, although Major League Baseball doesn't count it as a record. And, of course, Cal Ripken will surpass this total, too.

Also on this day, Douglas Anthony Mirabelli born in Kingman, Arizona. He is best known as Tim Wakefield’s personal catcher on the 2004 and 2007 World Champion * Boston Red Sox. He is now the assistant coach of the University of Florida softball team.

October 18, 1971: Aryamehr Stadium opens in Tehran, the capital of Iran. The name means "Light of the Aryans." The original meaning of "Aryan" had nothing to do with Nordic peoples, as the Nazis claimed. They were the native people of land stretching from present-day Iran to India.

The stadium was built to host the 1974 Asian Games, a continental mini-Olympics. It also became the home of Iran's national soccer team, and of the 2 biggest teams in the city, and in the country: Persepolis, a.k.a. the Red Army; and Taj, meaning "Crown," a.k.a. the Loving Blues and the Giants of Asia.

Among the other changes brought about by Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, the name of the stadium was changed to Azadi Stadium (ironically, "Azadi" means "Freedom"), and the name of Taj, to rid them of its connection to the deposed Shah and his royal/imperial family, was changed to Esteghlal (meaning "Independence").

From a record crowd of 128,000 for a 1998 World Cup qualifying match between Iran and Australia, the stadium's conversion to all-seater has dropped capacity to 78,116. Still, when split down the middle between 39,000 Red Army fans and 39,000 Loving Blues fans, it is as wild a sporting venue as any in the world.

October 18, 1973: The Mets win Game 5 of the World Series, 2-0 over the Oakland Athletics at Shea Stadium, behind the 3-hit pitching of Jerry Koosman and Tug McGraw. Cleon Jones doubles in a run in the 2nd, and Don Hahn's triple scores the other run.

The Series now moves out to Oakland, and the Mets need to win only 1 of the last 2 games to win their 2nd World Series. It would take them another 13 years to get that 4th World Series game won.

Also on this day, Michalis Kapsis is born in Piraeus, outside Athens. The son of star soccer player Anthimos Kapsis, the centreback helped AEK Athens with the Greek Cup in 2000 and 2002, and Athens-based Olympiacos win both that and the Superleague Greece for a "Double" in 2006. He then helped APOEL win Cyprus' league in 2007 and its Cup in 2008. More importantly, he helped Greece win its only major tournament, Euro 2004, shocking host Portugal in the Final.

Also on this day, Rachel Michele Alexander is born in Phoenix, and grows up in the Washington suburb of Potomac, Maryland. One of several ESPN personalities to have graduated from Northwestern University outside Chicago, she uses her married name, Rachel Nichols. Since 2016, she has hosted ESPN's NBA-themed show The Jump.

October 18, 1974: Robert William Savage is born in Wrexham, Wales. Appropriately enough, that city's name pronounced like "Wrecks 'em." "Savage," indeed: Robbie was one of the dirtiest soccer players of his time.

A midfielder, he played in England for 15 years, and he won just 1 trophy, the 2000 League Cup with Leicester City. In 2008, the Daily Mail named him the dirtiest player in Premier League history to that point (1992 to 2008), due to his diving and his rough play. He received more yellow cards than any player before him, although he has been surpassed. (It should surprise no one that his 1st pro club was the dirtiest club in Britain, Manchester United, although he never played in a League game for them.)

He has since become a pundit on BBC's Radio 5 Live, and he continues to be a polarizing figure: Those who like him defend him to the hilt, and those who don't like him absolutely despise him.

October 18, 1975: Having premiered the week before, Saturday Night Live features Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel reuniting in song, plus songs by Randy Newman and Phoebe Snow. And basketball star Connie Hawkins and sportscaster Marv Albert appear during "Weekend Update." No, Hawk doesn't call Marv "you ignorant slut" -- we didn't know about that part of Marv's life yet.

Also on this day, Jose Alexander Cora is born in Caguas, Puerto Rico. The starting shortstop of the 2007 World Champion * Boston Red Sox, Alex Cora also played for the Mets, and, after a few years as an analyst for ESPN, plus coaching for the Houston Astros team that won the 2017 World Series *,took over managing the Red Sox in 2018, taking them to 108 wins and another World Series win *. But he was suspended for the 2020 season, for his role in the Astros' cheating scandal. His brother Joey Cora is a former big-leaguer, and now an MLB Network analyst.

*

October 18, 1977: The man that Sports Illustrated called a "Superduperstar" in Oakland becomes a legend in New York. He becomes "Mister October." Reggie Jackson hits 3 home runs, the last a tremendous blast into the center field bleachers at the original Yankee Stadium, blacked out as a hitter's background, and Mike Torrez goes the distance. The Yankees beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 8-4 at the original Yankee Stadium, and win Game 6 to take their 21st World Series -- but their 1st in 15 years.

I only saw the 1st 2 of Reggie's home runs. I was about to turn 8, and my parents figured the game was in the bag, and that I didn't need to stay up past 11 to see the last out, especially on a school night. (It was a Tuesday -- don't bet me. And you know what? The game ended at 10:53, so I didn't have to stay up past 11!) So I missed Reggie's mammoth 3rd blast. I have seen the clip a few times since. (Ya think, DiNozzo?)

As he had jokingly predicted, a candy bar was named after him. I loved the Reggie Bar. Oddly enough, it was peanuts and caramel, surrounded by chocolate -- pretty much the same combination as the Baby Ruth bar, which, as we now know, was named after the Bambino, the 1st man to hit 3 homers in a World Series game. That feat has since been matched by Albert Pujols (not a big surprise) and Pablo Sandoval (a very big surprise).

Because of what he was able to do, and where, and when, Reginald Martinez Jackson remains my favorite athlete of all time. Yeah, he's flawed -- so are we all, and so what?

There are 20 members of the 1977 World Champion New York Yankees still alive, 42 years later: Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph, Roy White, Graig Nettles, Chris Chambliss, Lou Piniella, Mickey Rivers, Bucky Dent, Ed Figueroa, Sparky Lyle, Dick Tidrow, Cliff Johnson, Fred Stanley, Don Gullett, Mike Torrez, Fran Healy, Ken Clay, Dell Alston & George Zeber. Coaches Bobby Cox and Cloyd Boyer (older brother of Clete and Ken) are also still alive.

Thurman Munson, Catfish Hunter, Paul Blair, manager Billy Martin, and coaches Elston Howard, Dick Howser, Art Fowler and Yogi Berra have died.

Also on this night, the Nets play their 1st game as a New Jersey team. Well, not really: They started out as the New Jersey Americans in the ABA in 1967-68, before moving to Long Island and becoming the New York Nets. And this game is on the road, at Cobo Hall in Detroit. But, officially, they play their 1st game as the New Jersey Nets.

It doesn't go so well: The Detroit Pistons beat them, 110-93. As they did the season before, their 1st in the NBA, the Nets will struggle for the 4 seasons in which they call the Rutgers Athletic Center home. (Anybody would, playing their home games in that ridiculous gym.) Once they move into the Meadowlands Arena in 1981, things will improve a bit.

Also on this day, Robert Curran dies at age 56. A member of the Holy Cross basketball team that won the 1947 NCAA Championship, he also played baseball at the Worcester, Massachusetts school. He was later head coach at the University of Massachusetts, an assistant coach at Holy Cross, and Holy Cross' head baseball coach.

October 18, 1978: Michael James Tindall is born in Otley, West Yorkshire, England. Starring for the club teams of Bath and Gloucester, Mike Tindall played for the England team that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup.

The former England Rugby captain is now retired from the sport, and raises money for charity by participating in various sporting events. He is married to Zara Phillips, daughter of Princess Anne, granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II. They have a 5-year-old daughter, Mia Grace Tindall, and a 1-year-old daughter, Lena Elizabeth Tindall.

*

October 18, 1980, 40 years ago: Game 4 of the World Series is played at Royals (Kauffman) Stadium. Larry Christenson starts for the Philadelphia Phillies, and he has nothing. The Kansas City Royals tag him for 4 runs in the 1st inning, including a home run by Willie Aikens. The Phils pull a run back in the top of the 2nd, but Aikens homers again in the bottom of the inning. It's 5-1 Royals, and the game seems lost.

Phils manager Dallas Green brings Dickie Noles in to pitch the bottom of the 4th. He faces George Brett, the Royals' .390-hitting MVP. Aikens would later say he was expecting a brushback pitch, in retaliation for his 4 homers in the Series thus far. Instead, Noles, not yet much of a reason for the Phils' success this year, throws a brushback pitch, and Brett falls on his ass. (Which we soon learn is ridden with hemorrhoids.)

That pisses the Royals off, and their fans boo like hell, but it sends them a message: We don't care about your talent, we don't care about your home-field advantage, and we don't care about your momentum. Sure enough: While their comeback falls short, and the Royals win the game 5-3, tying up the Series, the complexion of the Series is changed. From the start of Game 3, the Royals had outscored the Phillies 9-4. The rest of the way, the Phillies would outscore the Royals 10-4.

October 18, 1981: Gregory Robert Warren is born in Mount Olive, North Carolina. A center and the long snapper for the Pittsburgh Steelers, he has appeared in 3 Super Bowls, winning 2 (XL and XLIII). He retired due to injury in 2007.

Also on this day, Nathan Michael Hauritz is born in Wondai, Queensland, Australia. One of the top cricketers of the 2000s, he played in 3 Cricket World Cups, helping Australia win in 2003.

October 18, 1982: The New Jersey Devils play the Philadelphia Flyers for the 1st time. The Devils win, 3-1 at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford.

Also on this day, Mark Sampson (no middle name) is born in Creigiau, Wales. A defender, he wasn't much of a soccer player. But in 2015, he guided the England team to the Semifinals of the Women's World Cup. But in 2017, he was fired due to racist behavior. He now manages Stevenage F.C. in Hertfordshire, in the suburbs of London.

Also on this day, Bess Truman dies of heart failure in her hometown of Independence, Missouri. The widow of President Harry S Truman (served 1945 to 1953) was 97. She remains the longest-lived First Lady.

October 18, 1983: Willie Edward Jones dies of cancer in Cincinnati at age 58. Nicknamed Puddin' Head, he was the 3rd baseman on the 1950 National League Champion Philadelphia Phillies, a.k.a. the Whiz Kids. He batted .258 for his career, and hit 190 home runs. He was a 2-time All-Star, and closed his career with another Pennant, with the 1961 Cincinnati Reds.

Also on this day, Dante Bonfim Costa Santos is born in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. A centreback, he helped Standard Liège win the Belgian League in 2008. With Bayern Munich, he won the Bundesliga in 2013, '14 and 15; the DFB-Pokal (German Cup) in 2013 and '14 (both for the Double); and the UEFA Champions League in 2013 (for a "European Treble").

Known as simply Dante, also helped Brazil with the 2013 Conferderations Cup, although the 2014 World Cup, on home soil, ended in competitive disaster to Germany in the Semifinals, some of his opponents including his Bayern teammates. He is now the Captain of French club OGC Nice.

October 18, 1984: Lindsey Caroline Kildow is born in St. Paul, Minnesota. We know her as Lindsey Vonn. She won the women's downhill at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

After divorcing a fellow Olympic skier, she said she would never get married again. She had a brief relationship with Tiger Woods -- after his divorce. But even if she had married him, she'd still have been, by far, the most successful athlete in the family. Even if you do consider golf a "sport," 1 Gold Medal tops 4 Green Jackets. However, she is now engaged to New Jersey Devils defenseman P.K. Subban.

October 18, 1985: Yoenis Céspedes Milanés is born in Campechuela, Cuba. The left fielder defected in 2011, appeared in the AL Division Series for the Oakland Athletics in 2012 and '13.

When the Mets picked him up at the 2015 trading deadline, they had a small chance at winning the National League Eastern Division, and a better shot at the NL Wild Card. With him, they won the Pennant last year and reached the Wild Card this year. Truly, by the strictest definition of the phrase, he was the most valuable player in the NL for 2015, even though he was only in it for the last 2 months of the regular season. He also helped them get into the 2016 NL Wild Card Game.

When I typed "cespedes" into Google in 2016, the 1st thing that came up, after just the name, was "cespedes contract." The Mets signed him to a new contract for the 2017 season, but injuries have limited him to just 127 games the last 4 seasons (including not playing at all in 2019), over which he's batted .274, with 28 homers and 77 RBIs. He hasn't had a full season since he was 31, and he's now 35. There's a reason he's called "CesPEDes."

Also on this day, Bryn Jones dies in London at age 73. A forward, he starred for West Midlands soccer team Wolverhampton Wanderers. At Wolves' home ground of Molineux, he led Wales to beat England.
That got the attention of George Allison, manager of North London club Arsenal, and he paid £14,000

for him, a British transfer record at the time.

World War II intervened, but after The War, he helped Arsenal win the League title in 1948. After retiring as a player, he ran a newsstand (or, as they say over there, a newsagent's shop) near the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury.

October 18, 1986: Maybe the Mets' World Series win this year isn't "inevitable" after all. The Boston Red Sox win Game 1, 1-0 at Shea, when Tim Teufel botches Rich Gedman's routine grounder in the 7th inning‚ allowing Jim Rice to score the game's only run. Bruce Hurst and Calvin Schiraldi combine on a 4-hitter for the Red Sox.

Also on this day, Saturday Night Live debuts the sketch "The Sweeney Sisters." Candy (Jan Hooks) and Liz (Nora Dunn) sing cover medleys of pop standards, usually including "The Trolley Song" from Meet Me In St. Louis. In their 10th and final appearance, on March 25, 1989, it  was revealed that there was a 3rd sister who split with them due to creative differences, Audrey, played by Mary Tyler Moore.

Also on this day, NFL playing and broadcasting legend Frank Gifford marries actress, singer and TV show host Kathie Lee Johnson. It's his 3rd marriage, her 2nd. They would have 2 children, and, despite an indiscretion on his part, they would remain together until death did they part, 28 years later.

October 18, 1987: Game 2 of the World Series. Gary Gaetti and Tim Laudner hit home runs to back the pitching of veteran Bert Blyleven, and the Minnesota Twins beat the St. Louis Cardinals 8-4. The Twins lead the series 2-0 as it heads to St. Louis.

October 18, 1988: Mark McGwire's home run off Jay Howell in the bottom of the 9th gives Oakland a 2-1 win in Game 3 of the World Series. This is the 1st time, and it remains the only time, that 2 games of a single World Series end with walkoff homers. However, this will be the only game in the Series that the A's will win.

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October 18, 1990: Brittney Yvette Griner is born in Houston. The only player in the history of women's college basketball to score 2,000 points and block 500 shots, the center helped Baylor University win the 2012 National Championship.

She led the Phoenix Mercury to the 2014 WNBA Championship. She led the league in blocked shots in her 1st 7 seasons in it, and in scoring in 2017 and 2019. She is a 6-time All-Star, all with the Mercury.

Also on this day, Derrick Lamont Coleman is born in Los Angeles. A running back, he was the 1st legally deaf offensive player in NFL history. He was with the Seattle Seahawks when they won Super Bowl XLVIII. After playing the 2018 season for the Atlanta Falcons, he is currently a free agent. As far as I can tell, he is not related to Derrick Coleman the basketball player.

October 18, 1992: The Toronto Blue Jays even the World Series with a 5-4 win over the Braves in Game 2 in Atlanta. Pinch-hitter Ed Sprague's 2-run home run in the top of the 9th proves to be the margin of victory‚ marking just the 2nd time in Series history that a 9th-inning homer turns a losing margin into a winning one. The other was Kirk Gibson's homer in Game 1 of the 1988 Series.

This is also the 1st time a non-U.S. team wins a World Series game. But, due to this international distinction, there is a mishap: The Canadian flag is inadvertently flown upside-down by a United States Marine Corps color guard during the pregame ceremonies.

Although the international incident annoys many Canadians, most Toronto fans resist the call to fly the American Stripes and Stars in a similar fashion during Game 3 at the Skydome, but opt instead to wave Canada's L'Unifolié with the message, "This end up", affixed to the top.

October 18, 1994: Darron Lee (no middle name) is born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A linebacker, he helped Ohio State win the 2013 National Championship. He played the 2016, '17 and '18 seasons with the Jets, and played for the Kansas City Chiefs. He won a ring for Super Bowl LIV, although he was officially inactive for the game. He is currently a free agent.

October 18, 1997: For the 1st time, a World Series game is played in the State of Florida. The Marlins take Game 1‚ 7-4 over the Cleveland Indians at Joe Robbie Stadium‚ behind rookie Cuban pitcher Livan Hernandez. Moises Alou's 3-run homer in the 4th inning is the big blow for the Marlins‚ who are outhit by the Indians‚ 11-7.

Also on this day, Saturday Night Live debuts Chris Kattan's character Mango, a male stripper who tends to turn straight men gay. Though it doesn't seem to work through the TV screen, because I thought both he and the sketch were terrible.

October 18, 1998: The Yankees strike early in Game 2 of the World Series‚ scoring 3 runs in each of the 1st 2 innings. They go on to cruise to a 9-3 win in Game 2 behind Orlando Hernandez, brother of Livan and nicknamed "El Duque" (the Duke). Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada connect for homers.

October 18, 1999: Yankees 6, Red Sox 1, in Game 5 of the ALCS. The Yankees clinch a Pennant at Fenway Park. El Duque wins the clincher and is named series MVP. Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada homer for the Yanks.

This was the 6th Pennant the Yankees clinched at Fenway. The 1st 5 happened when Pennants could still be clinched in the regular season: 1922, 1937, 1941, 1950 and 1955. They've also clinched Division titles at Fenway in 1978 (the Bucky Dent Game), 1998 and 2005; and, this year a Wild Card berth at Fenway, although that was by backing in: Losing on a night when the team they needed to lose also did so. 

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October 18, 2002: The SBC Center opens in San Antonio, with a San Antonio Spurs exhibition game. The Spurs won the NBA Championship in their 1st season there, in addition to the 1999 title won at their former home, the HemisFair Arena. They added titles in 2005, 2007 and 2014. The building's name was changed to the AT&T Center in 2006.

October 18, 2003: The 100th Anniversary World Series gets underway at Yankee Stadium. I had a feeling that, physically and emotionally drained after their intense ALCS against the Red Sox, there was no way the Yankees would win Game 1.

Sure enough: Bernie Williams hits a home run, but Brad Penny, Dontrelle Willis and Ugeth Urbina otherwise shut them down, and the Florida Marlins beat them, 3-2.

October 18, 2004: The Red Sox outlast the Yankees‚ 5-4‚ in 14 innings to force a Game 6 of their ALCS. David Ortiz again is the hero (cough-with a sidekick named "Steroids"-cough)‚ driving home the winning run with a bloop single. Ortiz also homers‚ as does Bernie Williams for the Yanks.

Also on this day, Jeff Kent hits a home run in the bottom of the 9th, breaking up a scoreless duel and giving the Houston Astros a 3-0 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. The Astros now lead the Cards 3 games to 2, and are 1 win away from their 1st Pennant in their 43-season history. They will have to wait 1 more season.

October 18, 2005: The Montreal Canadiens -- having to wait a year to do so, due to the NHL team owners' lockout -- pay tribute to the departed Expos by raising a commemorative banner to the rafters of Montreal's Bell Centre.

Displaced mascot Youppi, working in his 1st game for the NHL team, and former players Gary Carter and Andre Dawson are on hand to assist in the hoisting the of blue and orange banner that features their retired numbers, 8 and 10, respectively, as well as the numbers for Tim Raines (30) and Rusty Staub (10). In the game, the Canadiens beat the Bruins 4-3.

Also on this day, the Edmonton Oilers retire the Number 7 of Hall of Fame defenseman Paul Coffey. They beat the Phoenix Suns, 4-3 in overtime.

Also on this day, Arsenal travel to the Czech Republic for a UEFA Champions League match, and defeat Sparta Prague 2-0 at Stadion Letná. Both goals are scored by Thierry Henry, including his 186th for Arsenal, breaking the club record set by Ian Wright. He will finish his Arsenal career with 228 goals, and remains the team's all-time leader.

Also on this day, longtime Bay Area sportscaster Bill King dies. He was the voice of the A's, the Raiders and the Warriors. Like former A's reliever Rollie Fingers, he was noted for having a handlebar mustache. He was 78. He was posthumously awarded the Baseball hall of Fame's Ford Frick Award, tantamount to election for broadcasters.

Also on this day, Hal Lebovitz dies. The Cleveland native joined the Cleveland News in 1942, and covered both the Indians and the Browns in their greatest years, the 1940s and '50s. In 1960, he joined the News' rivals, The Plain Dealer, and served as their sports editor from 1964 to 1982. A recipient of the Baseball Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink Award, tantamount to election for sportswriters, he was 89.

October 18, 2006: The Mets edge the Cardinals, 4-2 at Shea, to even the NLCS at 3 games apiece. Jose Reyes gets 3 hits for the Mets, including a homer, and John Maine gets the win.

The Mets go into Game 7, 1 win away from the National League Pennant and a trip to their 5th World Series. It took them another 9 years to get that win.

October 18, 2007: On national TV on a Thursday night, Rutgers plays the University of South Florida, then ranked Number 2 in the country, 30-27 in front of a full house of 44,267 at Rutgers Stadium. USF -- misnamed, since their home region of Tampa Bay is in Central Florida -- becomes the highest-ranking opponent RU has ever beaten.

Also on this day, William J. Crowe dies at Bethesda Naval Medical Center in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, at age 82. The retired U.S. Navy Admiral was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1985 to 1989, and U.S. Ambassador to Britain from 1994 to 1997.

October 18, 2008: Scoring in each of the last 3 innings, the Red Sox erase a 7-run deficit in the 7th to beat the Rays, 8-7, in Game 5 of the ALCS.

The Philadelphia A's, who rallied after trailing 8-0 to beat the Cubs, 10-8, in Game 4 of the 1929 World Series, are the only team to have made a bigger comeback in the postseason.

Also on this day, Saturday Night Live has the real Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican nominee for Vice President, interrupt Tina Fey's impersonation of her in a fake press conference. Fey had returned to SNL and gotten laughs with lines like, "I can see Russia from my house!" (which the real Palin never said), and otherwise just repeating Palin's words verbatim.

October 18, 2009: Game 3 of the NLCS. Cliff Lee shuts the Dodgers out on 3 hits, while Jayson Werth and Shane Victorino hit home runs. The Phillies beat the Dodgers 11-0, and take a 2-1 lead in the series.

Also on this day, the New England Patriots demolish the Tennessee Titans 59-0, in a blizzard at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. No, I don't know if, or how, the Patriots cheated this time.

Each team was in its 50th season, having started in 1960, and both teams wore throwback uniforms: The Patriots to their red-shirted, white-helmets, "Pat Patriot" days of the 1960s and '70; the Titans to their original 1960 and '61 AFL Championships as the Houston Oilers, with powder blue helmets and the oil rig.

It was the biggest blowout in the NFL since a 59-0 Los Angeles Rams win over the Atlanta Falcons in 1976. The biggest in NFL history remains the Chicago Bears' 1940 NFL Championship Game win over the Washington Redskins: 73-0.

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October 18, 2010, 10 years ago: Game 3 of the ALCS. This wasn't the most damaging late-season or postseason bullpen screwup by Yankee manager Joe Girardi. But it was the ugliest.

Cliff Lee (there must be a reason why he kept changing teams, despite apparently being so good) shuts the Yankees out on 3 hits over the 1st 8 innings. But it's still only 2-0 in favor of the Texas Rangers, after Josh Hamilton hit a home run off Andy Pettitte back in the 1st. The Yankees could still win it.

Instead, Girardi takes Kerry Wood out after he'd pitched a scoreless 8th, and brings in Boone Logan, because he's a lefthanded pitcher, to pitch to Hamilton. What the Yankee skipper forgets is, A, Logan can't fucking pitch; and, B, Hamilton can hit the ball 400 feet without even thinking about it (possibly with pharmaceutical help).

Hamilton hits another homer, and before Logan, David Robertson and Sergio Mitre can finally stop the bleeding, the Rangers have taken an 8-0 lead. That's the final, and the Rangers lead the series 2-1.

October 18, 2012: The Tigers win their 2nd Pennant in 7 years when they beat the Yankees, 8-1, at Comerica Park to complete a 4-game sweep. Delmon Young is named series MVP.

The last time the Bronx Bombers had failed to win a game in a postseason series was in 1980, after the Royals beat them 3 straight in the best 3-of-5 ALCS.

Did I say "Bombers"?  Derek Jeter broke his ankle in Game 1, missed the rest of the series, and, really, was never the same again. Even so, in this series, as in the ALDS against the Baltimore Orioles, the Yankees just weren't hitting: Curtis Granderson went 0-for-11, Brett Gardner 0-for-8, Eric Chavez 0-for-8, Robinson Cano 1-for-18, Alex Rodriguez 1-for-9 (2009 was already beginning to look like a long time ago), Russell Martin 2-for-14, Mark Teixeira 3-for-15, Raul Ibanez 3-for-13, Nick Swisher 3-for-12.

The Yankees scored 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th to send Game 1 to extra innings. Other than that, in 38 innings in this series, they scored 2 runs, and had an on-base percentage of .224. Pathetic.

It took the Yankees 5 years to reach another Division Series, let alone another LCS. We're still looking for our 1st Pennant, never mind World Series win, in 11 years. Because of this, Joe Grardi no longer has his job. Why does Brian Cashman still have his?

Also on this day, Slater Martin dies in Houston at age 86. A point guard, "Dugie" Martin was a 7-time NBA All-Star, and won NBA Championships with the Minneapolis Lakers in 1950, '52, '53 and '54, and with the St. Louis Hawks in 1958. He also coached the Hawks and the ABA's Houston Mavericks. The University of Texas retired his Number 15, and he wore 22 with the Lakers, before it was worn by Elgin Baylor, for whom it would be retired. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

October 18, 2013: Game 6 of the NLCS. The Cardinals knock Clayton Kershaw around, and Michael Wacha pitches a 2-hit shutout. The Cardinals beat the Dodgers 9-0, and win their 19th National League Pennant -- their 23rd Pennant, counting their tenure in the American Association in the 1880s.

Also on this day, Oail Andrew "Bum" Phillips dies on his Texas ranch at age 90. He coached the Houston Oilers into the 1978 and '79 AFC Championship Games, bringing pro football to its most popular point in South Texas. (The Oilers had won the AFL title in 1960 and '61, but weren't as popular as they'd become in the late Seventies. The Texans haven't gotten that popular yet, either.) As Bum himself said, "The Dallas Cowboys may be America's team, but the Houston Oilers are Texas' team."

He also coached the New Orleans Saints. His son Wade Phillips has been head coach of the Denver Broncos, the Buffalo Bills and the Cowboys, and is now the defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams.

Also on this day, Allan Stanley dies in Bobcaygeon, Ontario at age 87. The defenseman played for the Rangers in the 1950s. Needless to say, he won the Stanley Cup after he left. Indeed, he won it 4 times with the Toronto Maple Leafs, in 1962, '63, '64 and '67, scoring the goal that wrapped up the '67 Cup. He was a 3-time All-Star, and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

October 18, 2015: Game 2 of the NLCS. Daniel Murphy hits a home run off Jake Arrieta in the bottom of the 1st, and, with Noah Syndergaard pitching, the Mets never look back at Citi Field. They beat the Cubs 4-1, and head out to Wrigley up 2 games to none.

October 18, 2016: The Chicago Blackhawks beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 7-4 at the United Center. For the Hawks, Marián Hossa scores his 500th NHL goal.

October 18, 2017: After 29 seasons at the Palace in suburban Auburn Hills, Michigan, and 10 years before that at the Silverdome in suburban Pontiac, the Detroit Pistons play their 1st game back in the City of Detroit since Cobo Hall in 1978, at the new Little Caesars Arena. They beat the Charlotte Hornets 102-90.

Also on this night, the Yankees win Game 5 of the ALCS, beating the Houston Astros 5-0, on a shutout by Masahiro Tanaka and a home run by Gary Sánchez. They need to win just 1 of the potential 2 in Houston to take the Pennant.

They don't.

October 18, 2018: Game 5 of the ALCS. The Boston Red Sox cling to a 1-0 lead going into the top of the 6th, which would be precarious at Fenway Park, but this is at Minute Maid Park, a bandbox formerly named Enron Field and nicknamed Ten-Run Field.

But it is the Sox who take advantage of this, with Rafael Devers hitting a 3-run home run in the inning. The Astros are unable to fully claw back, and the Sox win 4-1, taking their 4th Pennant in the last 15 years *.

October 18, 2019: Game 5 of the ALCS. The Yankees do not want to have the Astros clinch at Yankee Stadium. But when James Paxton allows a run in the top of the 1st, it doesn't look good.

But the Yankees score 4 times in the bottom of the 1st, thanks to home runs by DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Hicks. Paxton takes this cushion and settles down, and there is no further scoring -- the 1st time in MLB postseason history that both teams score in the 1st inning and neither does thereafter.

In regular-season play, for Detroit and Houston, Justin Verlander closed the 2020 season with a record of 226-129. In Division Series play, he's 8-1. In LCS play, this game dropped him to 6-4. But in World Series play, he is 0-6. (He was injured, and did not pitch for the Astros in the 2020 postseason.)