April 27, 1994: South Africa's 1st All-Races Election

April 27, 1994, 30 years ago: The Republic of South Africa ends apartheid by holding its 1st all-races general election. Lines of people miles, and hours, long developed, stunning the world with footage. It shook many people up, including Americans, who had taken the right to vote for granted.

The African National Congress won 62 percent of the vote, resulting in 252 seats in the national legislature, the National Assembly. As a result, its Leader, Nelson Mandela, was sworn in as President on May 10.

The National Party, which went into the election as the party holding the government, got just 20 percent, winning 82 seats. Its leader, Frederik W. de Klerk, who had set the end of apartheid in motion by releasing Mandela from his 27-year imprisonment 3 years earlier, lost the post of President, but remained Deputy President under an agreement reached to set the election up.

Coming in 3rd, with 10 percent of the vote and 43 seats, was the Inkatha Freedom Party, led by Zulu tribal Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Mandela appointed him Minister of Home Affairs.

Since then, April 27 has been a national holiday in the country: Freedom Day.

On June 21, 1990, 4 months after his release, Mandela had addressed a civil rights rally at the original Yankee Stadium. A former professional boxer, he, like many national leaders -- some more ethical than others -- understood how sports can shape public opinion. He helped inspire South Africa to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup on home soil, which he hoped -- correctly, as it turned out -- would help in bringing his country together. 

April 26, 1974: The Yankees' Friday Night Massacre

Chris Chambliss

April 26, 1974, 50 years ago: The New York Yankees trade 4 pitchers away: Fritz Peterson, Steve Kline, Fred Beene and Tom Buskey. They are sent to the Cleveland Indians. Just 6 months after President Richard Nixon initiated what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre, the New York media calls this the Friday Night Massacre.

The Yankees traded 1/3rd of their pitching staff for 1st baseman Chris Chambliss, the 1971 American League Rookie of the Year, and 2 pitchers that nobody in New York had ever heard of. This trade was very unpopular at the time, both in the clubhouse and in the stands.

The night before, 3 of the pitchers had played in the Yankees' 6-1 loss to the Kansas City Royals at Shea Stadium, where the Yankees were groundsharing with the Mets while Yankee Stadium was being renovated, that season and the next. Kline started, and didn't get out of the 6th inning, which Beene finished. Peterson pitched the last 3 innings, allowing the last run.

In a little over 8 seasons with the Yankees, Peterson had gone 109-106 with a 3.10 ERA, including a 20-win season in 1970. Kline had gone 40-37 and 3.26 in a shade over 4 seasons. Beene was 7-3 with 5 saves and a 1.99 ERA in a little over 2 seasons. Buskey had appeared in only 12 games, all in relief, going 0-2 with 2 saves and a 5.64 ERA. Mainly, it was the trade of Peterson that upset Yankee fans, with whom he was still popular, in spite of his "wife swap" the season before with fellow pitcher Mike Kekich, who was traded soon thereafter.

But it was a great trade for the Yankees. As one observer wrote, it "broke up the country club." Upshaw never did much for them, but Tidrow became a key pitcher, both starting and relieving, on the team that would win 3 straight Pennants from 1976 to 1978. And Chambliss had both a Gold Glove and a power bat, hitting the home run that clinched the 1976 Pennant. Once the fans poured onto the field at the renovated Yankee Stadium following Chambliss' homer, Peterson had become "Fritz Who?"

Peterson went 14-8 for the Indians in 1975, but pitched only 1 more season and change in the majors, due to a shoulder injury. He would finish his career at 133-131. The other pitchers were not missed.

In 2018, Peterson publicly revealed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and stepped away from public life. He died on October 19, 2023, although it wasn't publicly announced for another 6 months, until April 12, 2024.

Heart attacks took the lives of Cecil Upshaw when he was only 52 in 1995, and Tom Buskey when he was only 51 in 1998. Steve Kline died in 2018, Dick Tidrow in 2021. As of April 26, 2024, Chris Chambliss and Fred Beene are still alive.

Happy 100th Birthday, Art Schallock!

April 25, 1924, 100 years ago: Arthur Lawrence Schallock is born outside San Francisco in Mill Valley, California. In other words, if the M*A*S*H character B.J. Hunnicutt, said to be from Mill Valley, were a real person, they could have been in the same class at school.

Art graduated from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, which has a rather distinguished alumni corps, even with B.J. being fictional: Baseball figures Tony Freitas, Sam Chapman, Joe DeMaestri and Nyjer Morgan; football star Matt Hazeltine; sportscaster Pete Gross; actors Eve Arden, Pat Paulsen, Kathleen Quinlan, Cassandra Webb, Merritt Butrick, Courtney Thorne-Smith and Beth Behrs; and music figures John and Mario Cipollina, Chris Chaney and Tupac Shakur. Unfortunately, it's also the Alma Mater of Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan.

During World War II, he served as a radio operator on the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea. He was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. He never got to Ebbets Field, because, on July 12, 1951, the Dodgers traded him to the New York Yankees for Eddie Malone, a catcher who, as it turned out, had already played his last major league game; and Bob Landeck, a pitcher who, as it turned out, would never play a first, although he did play for eventual major league cities Kansas City and Toronto.

Four days later, on July 16, 1951, Art made his major league debut. Wearing Number 26, he was the Yankees' starting pitcher against the Detroit Tigers, at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. He did not get out of the 3rd inning, but the Yankees won anyway, 8-6, thanks to home runs by Yogi Berra and Joe Collins. Neither Joe DiMaggio nor Mickey Mantle played in the game: DiMaggio got a day off, and Mantle had been sent down to the minors, before being brought back up.

Art appeared in 11 games that season, starting 6, and had a 3-1 record with a 3.88 ERA. He was placed on the World Series roster, but did not appear in any of the games. He was in the minor leagues for most of the next 3 seasons, making 2 major league appearances in 1952 and 7 in 1953. He was not on the Yankees' World Series roster in 1952, but he was in 1953. Now wearing Number 38, he pitched the last 2 innings of Game 4, and was not responsible for the Yankees losing the game. The Yankees won the Series, so he received a World Series ring.

He spent most of the 1954 season on loan to the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, so he was back in his home region, going 12-4. He made 6 appears in the majors that season. The Yankees waived him on May 11, 1955, and the Baltimore Orioles picked him up. They put him in their bullpen, and he had a record of 3-5. He spent the 1956 season with the Seattle Rainiers of the PCL, and then hung 'em up. His major league record was 6-7, with 1 save, a 4.02 ERA, and a 1.703 ERA.

He and his wife, Dona Bernard, were married for 76 years until her death in 2023. They had 2 children and 5 grandchildren. He still lives north of San Francisco, in Sonoma, in what's known as "California Wine Country."

Art Schallock had a very ordinary career, stat-wise. But he is still alive at age 100, is the oldest living former major league baseball player, and is the last surviving former teammate of Joe DiMaggio. He wasn't on the World Series roster in 1952, but he was in 1951 and 1953, making him the last survivor of those Yankee World Championship teams.

April 25, 1974: Portugal's Carnation Revolution

April 25, 1974, 50 years ago: A military coup overthrows the Fascist government of Portugal, ending it after 41 years. Because of the flowers that the soldiers wore in their lapels, it became known as the Carnation Revolution.

Portugal's First Republic was overthrown in a coup on May 28, 1926, leading to the Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship). It was replaced on April 11, 1933 by the Estado Novo (New State). Historians would falsely label this combined era as the Second Portuguese Republic.

From its founding in 1933 until 1968, the Estado Novo was run by António de Oliveira Salazar. It was Fascist: Corporatist, nationalist, and bigoted, heavily oppressing Portugal's overseas colonies, especially in Africa: Mozambique, Angola, and Cape Verde. Like most Fascist regimes, including the one that began in Italy in 1922 and the one that would begin in neighboring Spain in 1939, it was tied in with the Catholic Church, itself conservative and autocratic.

António Salazar

Like Spain, Portugal remained neutral during World War II, and postwar American Administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, looked the other way at their abuses, domestic and foreign, since they were part of the worldwide bulwark against Communism. Portugal was a founding member of NATO in 1949, although Spain was kept out until 1982, due to not wanting to antagonize the Soviets, with their memories of the Spanish Civil War that was lost in 1939. Both Portugal and Spain joined the United Nations in 1955.

From 1950 until 1970, Portugal saw its Gross Domestic Product per capita increase at an annual average rate of 5.7 percent. Despite this remarkable economic growth, by the fall of the Estado Novo in 1974, Portugal still had the lowest per capita income and the lowest literacy rate in Western Europe. They were in so deep of a hole that this remained true following the fall, and continues to the present day.

After the Second Vatican Council (1962-66), a large number of Catholics became active in the democratic opposition. The outbreak of the colonial wars in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique – in March 1961, January 1963 and September 1964 respectively – exacerbated the divisions within the Catholic sector along progressive and traditionalist lines.

On August 3, 1968, Salazar fell in his bath and hit his head. At first, he seemed fine. But on August 19, he felt sick, and was admitted to a hospital. On September 16, he went into a coma. Américo Tomás, who, as the President of Portugal, had ceremonial duties but otherwise had little power, presumed that Salazar would never recover, and dismissed him on September 25, replacing him with Marcelo Caetano.

But Salazar did emerge from his coma, and was even lucid. He was not told that he had been removed from power. He was allowed to continue to believe that he ruled the nation, until he died on July 27, 1970, at the age of 81.

Caetano continued to pave the way towards economic integration with Europe and a higher level of economic liberalization in the country, achieving the signing of an important free-trade agreement with the European Economic Community (a.k.a. the EEC or the "Common Market") in 1972.

In February 1974, Caetano decided to remove General António de Spínola from the command of Portuguese forces in Guinea, in the face of Spínola's increasing disagreement with the promotion of military officers and the direction of Portuguese colonial policy. This occurred shortly after the publication of Spínola's book, Portugal and the Future, which expressed his political and military views of the Portuguese Colonial War.

Several military officers who opposed the war formed the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA, or Armed Forces Movement) to overthrow the government in a military coup. The movement was aided by other Portuguese army officers who supported Spínola and democratic civil and military reform.

Thousands of Portuguese took to the streets, mingling with, and supporting, the military insurgents. A central gathering point was the Lisbon flower market, then richly stocked with carnations (which were in season). Some of the insurgents put carnations in their gun barrels, an image broadcast on television worldwide, which gave the revolution its name. Caetano was permitted to flee to Portuguese-speaking Brazil.

Portugal's 1st free election, ever, was held on the 1st anniversary of the Revolution, April 25, 1975 to write a new constitution replacing the Constitution of 1933, which prevailed during the Estado Novo era. Another election was held in 1976 and the first constitutional government, led by centre-left socialist Mário Soares, took office. He served as Prime Minister until 1978, and again from 1983 to 1985, and later as the President of Portugal from 1986 to 1996.

Mário Soares

Portugal became free, and remains free to this day. But freedom from Fascism for them meant independence for its colonies. And that proved to be troublesome, even disastrous:

* Guinea-Bisseau: Portugal recognized its independence on September 10, 1974. At first, things went well. But in 1980, as in many other countries, the economy went sour, and there was a coup. Multi-party elections were not held again until 1994. A civil war was fought in 1998-99, and there were coups again in 2003 and 2004, a Presidential assassination in 2009, another coup in 2012. Things stabilized after that, although there was a failed attempt at another coup in 2022.

* Mozambique: Portugal recognized its independence on June 25, 1975. After just 2 years of independence, a civil war broke out, and lasted until 1992. Finally, in 1994, they had their 1st multi-party elections, and the country became free, and remains so.

* Cape Verde: Portugal recognized the independence of this archipelago off the West Coast of Africa on July 5, 1975. This is easily the most successful of the ex-colonies, having remained democratic since independence. In 2013, they officially changed their name to the Portuguese-language Cabo Verde. In 2020, they were voted Africa's most democratic nation by the V-Dem Institute, which tracks emerging democracies.

* São Tomé and Príncipe: Portugal recognized its independence on July 12, 1975. Like Cabo Verde, it has been comparatively stable and free.

* Angola: Portugal recognized its independence on November 11, 1975. But it went Communist, and descended into a civil war that lasted until 2002, well after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the point where the only outside aid it was getting was from Cuba. The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, or MPLA) has ruled the country from the beginning, and José Eduardo dos Santos ruled as President from 1979 to 2017. He retired for health reasons, and was succeeded by João Lourenço, who has reformed things somewhat. Nevertheless, Angola remains a one-party dictatorship.

Marcelo Caetano lived until 1980, António de Spínola until 1996, and Mário Soares until 2017. 

Reason for Cautious Optimism

Another week, another reason for cautious optimism for the 2024 Yankees.

They continued a roadtrip with a 12-4 record, and took on the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre. Luis Gil allowed 3 runs in 5 innings. He struck out 6, but walked 7. The Yankees only got 4 hits, and lost, 3-1.

The next night, Carlos Rodón only got through 4 innings, and reliever Luke Weaver put the Yankees further behind. Alex Verdugo got 2 hits, but the rest of the team, combined, only got 4. They stranded a runner on 3rd in the top of the 9th, and lost, 5-4.

The Yankees now had a 3-game losing streak. It was time to step up, show some character, and let the fans know that this was a different team from the one of the last few years.

At first, it didn't look like it would happen. Marcus Stroman allowed 2 runs in the 2nd inning. They were down 4-1 after 7 innings, and it was the kind of moment when a fan wondered if the season was now going down the drain.

But in the 8th, Juan Soto hit a home run. Giancarlo Stanton led off the 9th with a tremendous home run, to make it 4-3. Gleyber Torres singled, and Verdugo doubled.

Oswaldo Cabrera grounded out, and the runners couldn't advance. But Jose Trevino singled Torres home, and the game was tied. Anthony Volpe popped up, but Soto drew a walk, and Aaron Judge singled Verdugo and Trevino home. 

Clay Holmes pitched a scoreless bottom of the 9th, and the Yankees salvaged the last game of the series, 6-4. Victor González, who got the last out in the 8th, was the winning pitcher.

*

They came home to face the Tampa Bay Rays. Clarke Schmidt allowed just 1 run over 5 1/3rd innings, but the Yankees were still down 1-0 going to the bottom of the 7th. It was another moment to find your inner Yankee.

They found it -- with help. Two errors, a single by Volpe, and a home run by Soto meant 5 runs. Ian Hamilton allowed 2 runs in the 8th, but Holmes got out of a jam in the 9th, and the Yankees won, 5-3.

The Saturday game followed an on-field ceremony honoring broadcaster John Sterling, retiring after 36 years with the team.

It was a pitchers' duel. Nestor Cortés pitched 7 innings of shutout ball, but the Yankees only got 4 hits all game. It went to extra innings scoreless, and a combination of the ghost runner and Caleb Ferguson's shakiness gave the Rays a 2-0 win in 10 innings. 

Yesterday, Gil pitched into the 6th inning, allowing 1 run, unearned, on 2 hits, although he walked 3. He struck out 9.

The Yankees got an RBI single from Anthony Rizzo in the 1st inning, followed in the 5th by 3 straight walks by Stanton, Rizzo and Torres -- and think of the lack of control it takes to walk all of those in a row -- and 3 straight RBI singles by Verdugo, Trevino and Cabrera.

Weaver was fine in relief of Gil, but Dennis Santana allowed 3 runs in the 8th. In the 9th, González got the 1st 2 outs, but walked Randy Arozarena, putting the tying run on base.

Harold Ramirez was sent up to pinch-hit. He's a right-handed hitter with a good record against lefthanded pitchers, like González. It was beginning to look like one of those games, especially after he hit a line drive up the middle that González couldn't field.

But González, showing excellent awareness, got to the ball, and wisely tossed it underhanded to 1st base. Although Ramirez slid, the ball got into Rizzo's glove first. Ballgame over. Yankees 5, Rays 4.

Someone online said that last year's Yankees would have lost that game. I'll take it further than that: Last year's Yankees would have e lost all 6 of these games.

*

Nevertheless, the Yankees finished the week at 15-7, in 1st place in the American League Eastern Division, half a game ahead of the Baltimore Orioles.

This has been done without Gerrit Cole, DJ LeMahieu or Jonathan Loáisiga. It's been done with Aaron Judge batting .183, Torres batting .200, Stanton batting .227, Rizzo batting .235, and catchers Trevino and Austin Wells batting a combined .171.

And it's been done with a few good relievers, but, as yet, no single closer.

Today, the Yankees start a 4-game series against the Oakland Athletics. Rodón starts against former Yankee JP Sears. It's an afternoon game, because tonight is the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

In all likelihood, it will be the last visit of the A's to Yankee Stadium as an Oakland team. Their current plan is to leave the Oakland Coliseum after this season, play 3 seasons in Sacramento, and then move to a retractable-roof stadium in Las Vegas for 2028.

April 20, 1999: The Columbine Massacre

April 20, 1999, 25 years ago: A mass shooting kills 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School, in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting at an American school. Another 21 were wounded, but survived.

What made it more chilling is that it was done by 2 of the school's own students, both seniors within weeks of graduation: Eric Harris, who had just turned 18 and had recently moved there after many places as the child of a U.S. Air Force officer; and Dylan Klebold, still 17 and a lifelong resident of the community.

Both worked at a nearby pizza parlor. According to Harris' journal, he had planned to exceed the death toll of the Oklahoma City bombing, 4 years plus 1 day earlier: 168.

President Bill Clinton, being a Democrat, had managed, through legislation while Congress was controlled by Democrats, to greatly reduce gun crime in America. Now, he wanted to do more. The Congress of that time, being controlled by Republicans, did nothing. No new legislation regarding gun control was put on the Presidential desk.

The school, and the unincorporated community in which it stands, were named for the State Flower of Colorado. The school opened in 1973, and, with retroactive irony, its mascot is the Rebels, with a logo reminiscent of the Continental Army in the War of the American Revolution. If Harris and Klebold only had the kind of weapons available then, the death toll would have been much lower.

Among Columbine's graduates is Darrel Akerfelds, who pitched for 4 different major league teams from 1986 to 1991. He also died too soon, at 50, in 2012, from cancer.

A memorial to the victims opened at the school near the start of the 2007-08 schoolyear. Today, the school has an enrollment of about 1,700.

Only 1 game was canceled in any sport: The Colorado Rockies, the team closest to the crime, canceled their games that night and the next one, at Coors Field against the Montreal Expos.

*

On a separate note, although this is about a game that I do not consider a sport: On this day, for his comic strip B.C., Johnny Hart drew this strip, showing that he loves golf, but is frustrated by it:

In case you're having trouble reading it:

Panel 1: Woman asks male golfer, "Let me get this straight, the less I hit the ball, the better I am doing." Golfer says, "That's right."

Panel 2: Woman asks golfer, "Then why do it at all?"

Panel 3, at night, so, clearly, golfer has been thinking about it the whole time: "Why... do it... at all?"

April 20, 1944: Elmer Gedeon Is Killed In Action

April 20, 1944, 80 years ago: Elmer Gedeon dies in action in World War II. He was 1 of 2 Major League Baseball players lost in "The Big One."

Elmer John Gedeon was born on April 15, 1917 in Cleveland. At that city's West High School, he starred in baseball, football and track. His uncle, Joe Gedeon, was a major league 2nd baseman from 1913 to 1920, before he was banned from baseball for "having guilty knowledge" of the Black Sox Scandal.

Elmer would not be banned. He went to the University of Michigan, and kept going in all 3 sports, tying a world record in the high hurdles. Graduating in 1939, he was signed by the Washington Senators, and played 67 games as an outfielder for their farm team, the Orlando Senators of the Florida State League.

The Senators called him up in September, and he played 5 games, on September 18, 19, 20, 21 and 23: The 1st in right field, the rest in center field. He got 3 hits in 15 at-bats, none of them for extra bases.

He spent the 1940 season with the Charlotte Hornets -- which was the name of a minor-league baseball team before it was that of a World Football League team in the 1970s and an NBA team starting in 1988 -- batting .271 with 11 home runs. But that was his last professional season, as he was drafted by the U.S. Army, before the 1941 season started, let alone before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

On August 9, 1942, he was the navigator on a B-25 bomber which crashed into a swamp adjacent to an airport at Raleigh, North Carolina. He managed to get out of the burning plane, and, despite his own injuries, dragged another crewmate out, saving his life, although 2 others died. Gedeon was decorated for this, and was convinced he had used up his bad luck, and would return to baseball after the war.

But it was not to be. On April 20, 1944, Captain Elmer J. Gedeon took off flying a B-26 bomber from RAF Boreham, north of London, to attack a German position in Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise in northern France. His plane was hit, and he was 1 of 6 crew members killed as it crashed. He was 27 years old, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Gedeon is the subject of 2 weird coincidences. Both MLB players who were killed in World War II, Gedeon and Harry O'Neill, and the one who was killed in the Korean War, Bob Neighbors, played in the majors only briefly, during the 1939 season. And Gedeon's uniform number with the Washington Senators was 34, which would be worn after the war by Bert Shepard, the only major league player to play with a prosthetic leg. 

April 19, 1954: "Seduction of the Innocent" Is Published

April 19, 1954, 70 years ago: Dr. Fredric Wertham publishes his book Seduction of the Innocent. It turns the world of comic books on its head.

Born on March 20, 1895, in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, as Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer, he anglicized his name to Fredric Wertham in 1927, after moving to America and becoming an American citizen. Subsequently, he married an American sculptor, Florence Hesketh. He had studied at the University of Munich and King's College, London.

He joined the senior staff at New York's Bellevue Hospital, famous (or infamous) for having America's best-known psychiatric ward. In 1946, he opened a low-cost psychiatric clinic in the basement of a church in Harlem, specializing in improving the mental health of black teenagers, and was successful at gaining charitable contributions for it. To this point, he seemed like a good man doing good work.

But that work led him to look into the causes of juvenile delinquency. And in 1954, he published his book, saying he'd found a source. Not rock and roll music, which was then in its infancy. Not movies about young criminals, like the ones starring Marlon Brando and James Dean. Comic books.

He specifically cited "crime comics," which he used to describe not only the popular gangster/murder-oriented titles of the time, but also superhero and horror comics as well. He asserted, based largely on undocumented anecdotes, that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children. He said that 95 percent of children in reform schools read comics, so that must be what caused it. The logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc: "After it, therefore, because of it." A was followed by B, so A must have caused B. Not necessarily.

He went after superheroes. Since the creation of Batman's teenaged crimefighting partner Robin in 1940, people had joked that the Dynamic Duo were what would now be called a gay couple. But Wertham wrote it, making the suspicion, which he believed, part of the public record.

It was no secret that William Marston, creator of Wonder Woman, had given her a bondage subtext. What was a secret was that Marston -- who had died in 1947, and was therefore unable to publicly defend himself or his character -- had lived in a ménage à trois with his wife Elizabeth and their research assistant Olive Byrne.

But Wertham suggested that being a woman but also being so strong -- physically and emotionally -- and independent meant that she was a lesbian. Such was the thinking about gay people in the 1950s, and a psychiatrist should have known better.

Stan Lee, already writing for the company that would become Marvel Comics, recalled that Wertham "said things that impressed the public, and it was like shouting 'Fire!' in a theater. But there was little scientific validity to it. And yet, because he had the name 'Doctor,' people took what he said seriously, and it started a whole crusade against comics."

(Lee didn't exactly have credibility on the subject: Although he respected science enough to make many of his best characters scientists -- Mr. Fantastic, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the human form of the Hulk -- the actual science in his stories made little sense. He was a storyteller, not a scientist.)

The advertisements in comic books didn't help. They sold knives. They even sold air rifles, like the one Ralphie wanted in the 1940-set 1983 film A Christmas Story. You know the tagline: "You'll shoot your eye out!" Wertham claimed that this made kids want these instruments of violence. Had I been around at the time, I would have been with him on this claim, at the least.

(Then again, people said the same thing about video games in the 1980s. I was a video game addict as a teenager at that time. And I haven't gone on to fight invading aliens.)

Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, an anti-crime crusader, called Wertham before his Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. In his testimony, Wertham repeated a call he had made in his book, for "national legislation based on the public health ideal that would prohibit the circulation and display of comic books to children under the age of 15."

The Committee did not blame comic books for teenage crime in its report, and did not draft legislation addressing the situation. Instead, it suggested that the comics regulate themselves "voluntarily." (Quotation marks mine.) This was an implied threat, much like President Theodore Roosevelt, nearly half a century earlier, telling the colleges to regulate their football, or he would act.

And so, just as TR's threat led to the creation of the NCAA and the streamlining of football rules, the publishers of comic books responded to the Kefauver Subcommittee's suggestion by creating the Comics Code Authority, to censor their own content. Much like Hollywood's Hays Code, it dictated that criminals must always be punished.

This was pretty much the end of murder comics and horror comics. Detective comics -- not to be confused with DC, which originally stood for "Detective Comics" and still published (and still does today) a magazine with that very title -- adventure comics (which was also the title of a DC series) and superhero comics became sanitized, their rough edges gone.

This effect was seen on television as well. In its 1st couple of seasons, The Adventures of Superman had some hard-hitting stories about Superman (played by George Reeves) taking on gangsters. They didn't have much of a choice in terms of opponents: The limited TV budgets of the time precluded the appearances of comics supervillains like Lex Luthor and Mr. Mxyzptlk. After Seduction of the Innocent, the show's episodes became sillier in tone. By 1966, the Batman series that developed, while occasionally going "dark," was known, even at the time, as "campy."

After Crisis On Infinite Earths in 1985, DC retconned much of its history. Putting the 1940s superheroes on "the same Earth" as their current heroes, they said that most of the earlier heroes went into a reluctant retirement in the early 1950s, due to Congressional hearings demanding that they reveal their secret identities to the public in order to continue their costumed crimefighting, and most refused. This was Werthamism, disguised as McCarthyism.

In 1971, Marvel published a story about drug abuse in a Spider-Man issue, doing so without the seal of the Comics Code Authority on its cover. This was considered a huge risk. It worked. The Authority wasn't dead, but it was now as defanged as it had once rendered the comics. Two years later, a Spider-Man story showed Spidey's arch-enemy, the Green Goblin, killing Spidey's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. He didn't get away with it, but it did end Part 1 of a two-part story. If Wertham knew about it, he was probably infuriated by it.

After 1954, Wertham continued to look for sources of juvenile delinquency. He decided that television was a bad influence, and in 1959, he wrote The War On Children. Just 5 years after he shook up America, no publishing house would touch his work.

Nevertheless, the comics' killjoy continued to advocate for civil rights, and his writings about segregation were used as evidence in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. He became a senior psychiatrist at the New York City Department of Hospitals, and the director of the Mental Hygiene Clinic at Bellevue.

In his 1599 play Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare put these words in the mouth of Marc Antony at Caesar's funeral: "The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones." Dr. Fredric Wertham died on November 18, 1981, at age 86. His work for civil rights, which made him a hero, were forgotten. His work to subdue comics, which made him a villain -- or, at least momentarily, a fool -- live on.

Carl Erskine, 1926-2024

I see the boys of summer in their ruin

Lay the gold tithings barren,

Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils.

Dylan Thomas wrote that. The great Welsh poet died on November 9, 1953, in New York, from the effects of raging alcoholism. Roger Kahn had just completed 2 seasons as the beat reporter for the Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune. He would later write a book about the Dodger players that he covered in the 1952 and '53 seasons.

The last survivor of the players he looked up while they were in middle age, and profiled in the book The Boys of Summer, was Carl Erskine.

In 1985, with a few of the others still alive, rock and roll legend Don Henley wrote this:

I can tell you

my love for you will still be strong

after the boys of summer have gone.

Henley was from Texas, not a Dodger fan, and wasn't talking about baseball. Nevertheless, the "boys" of whom Kahn wrote -- as is Kahn himself -- are now all gone.

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Carl Daniel Erskine was born on December 13, 1926 in Anderson, Indiana. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he signed as a pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He made his major league debut on July 26, 1948, pitching the 7th inning for the Dodgers, against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field. He ended up as the winning pitcher in a 7-6 Dodger win.

The Brooks were in a transition: The men who'd led them to the National League Pennant in 1941 and 1947, and nearly did so in 1942 and 1946, were, or had been, traded away, due to either advancing age or their unwillingness to play with the 1st black player in modern baseball, Jackie Robinson. The men who would help the Dodgers win 5, and nearly 7, out of 8 Pennants were on their way up, and Erskine was one of them.

He was not one of the Dodger players who had a problem with playing with a black man. He recalled a moment from early in his career, meeting Jackie, his wife Rachel, and their son, Jackie Jr.:

In Brooklyn, I came out of the clubhouse one day, and there was an area where wives and family members could wait. When I came out of the clubhouse, Rachel and little Jackie were there. I just walked over, the natural thing to do, and talked with them for a few minutes.

The next day, Jackie said he wanted to thank me for what I did. I said, "I didn't pitch yesterday." He said, "No, you walked over to talk, out in front of the crowd, to talk with Jackie and Rachel." I was almost embarrassed. I said, "Jackie, don't thank me for that. Shake my hand for a well-pitched game." That was a natural thing for me to do. But he was impressed by that.

Soon, Dodger fans would be impressed with the man who, in their Brooklyn accent, called "Oisk." He was used mainly as a reliever in the Pennant season of 1949, and the near-miss seasons of 1950 and '51. In 1951, he went 16-12 with 4 saves. He was in the bullpen, along with Ralph Branca, in the bottom of the 9th inning of the Playoff game between the Dodgers and their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, when manager Charlie Dressen needed a relief pitcher.

Erskine had one of the best curveballs in the game at the time, but, at just the right moment, he threw a bad one. Bullpen coach Clyde Sukeforth saw this, and told Dressen over the phone that Branca looked better. Branca gave up a Pennant-winning home run to Bobby Thomas. Erskine would later call the curveball he bounced in the bullpen dirt the best pitch he ever threw.

Dressen moved Erskine into the starting rotation in 1952. It worked: Erskine went 14-6 with a 2.70 ERA, including a no-hitter against the Chicago Cubs on June 19. He went 20-6 in 1953, leading the NL with a .769 winning percentage. In Game 4 of the World Series, against the New York Yankees, he struck out 14 batters, a World Series record that stood for 10 years, and a record for righthanders that stood for 15 years. Still, the Dodgers lost both Series.

Those seasons, 1952 and '53, were Roger Kahn's years covering the Dodgers for the Herald Tribune. He got to know the players very well. Kahn's father was a Dodger fan, but was also was a book editor, and his mother was a schoolteacher, so he had a healthy respect for good writing. Kahn wrote of how Erskine sat next to him on a team flight, and they recited poetry to each other.

Don Newcombe, the Dodgers' best pitcher in that era, missed the entire '52 and '53 seasons, serving in the Korean War. For that reason, he was not one of the Dodger players that Kahn profiled in The Boys of Summer, as he looked up his former heroes, to see what they were doing in middle age: 2nd baseman Jackie Robinson, catcher Roy Campanella, 1st baseman Gil Hodges, shortstop Harold "Pee Wee" Reese, center fielder Edwin "Duke" Snider (all eventually Hall-of-Famers), 3rd baseman Billy Cox, left fielders George "Shotgun" Shuba and Andy Pafko, right fielder Carl "the Reading Rifle" Furillo; and pitchers Erskine, Elwin "Preacher" Roe, Clem Labine and Joe Black.

In 1954, Erskine went 18-15, and made his only All-Star Game. In 1955, he went 11-8, and the Dodgers finally won the World Series, beating the Yankees, after losing to them in the Series of 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. (They also lost to the Boston Red Sox in 1916, and the Cleveland Indians in 1920.)

In 1956, he seemed to slow down, only going 13-11. He did, however, pitch a 2nd no-hitter, against the hated Giants, on May 12, 1956. It was the 1st no-hitter broadcast on national television, on the NBC Game of the Week. Given that the Dodgers were still the defending World Champions, and that Robinson was still with the team, this may have been the all-time high-water mark for Brooklyn baseball.

The Dodgers lost the World Series to the Yankees that year. Robinson retired after it. In 1957, the Dodgers were moved to Los Angeles. Erskine lasted until 1959, but was not on the Dodgers' roster when they made that year's World Series. He finished his career with a record of 122-78, an ERA of 4.00, and a WHIP of 1.328.

He went back to Indiana, and coached the baseball team at Anderson College, an NAIA school, winning 4 league titles. He became president of the Star Bank of Anderson. In 1960, already with 3 children, Danny, Gary and Susan, Carl and Betty Erskine became the parents of James. He was born with Down syndrome.

It was a time when many doctors told parents that babies with Down syndrome should be sent to an institution, that they would be a societal hindrance, that they would disrupt family life. Carl and Betty wouldn't do that. Instead, they raised Jimmy just as they did their other three children.

Ted Green, a documentary filmmaker, said in his film The Best We've Got: The Carl Erskine Story, "They let him fly. They took Jimmy out with them wherever they went, to church, to restaurants. It was always Jimmy was there and if he acted up, he acted up." Just like every other kid acts up. The Erskines blazed a trail for other families with children who had special needs. They showed quietly though their actions how to raise a child with intellectual disabilities.

As an adult, Jimmy lived at home, and held a job nearby, at the Hopewell center, for people with developmental difficulties, assisting those who didn't have parents as strong as his own. Together, the Erskines, parents and children, raised money for the Special Olympics.

Anderson named an elementary school and a hospital after him. Brooklyn named a street after him. In 2010, Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana gave him the State's highest honor, the Sachem Award. In 2023, the Baseball Hall of Fame gave him the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to charity.

That year, Jimmy's health difficulties caught up with him, and he died at the age of 63, which is longer than most Down's patients live. It's not much of a surprise that Carl Erskine died yesterday, April 16, 2024, at the age of 97, less than a year after his son.

Hodges was the 1st of "the Boys of Summer" to die, in 1972. Robinson, due to his health difficulties, told a reporter at Hodges' funeral that he believed he would be the 1st to go. He wasn't off by much, dying later in the year. Cox died in 1978, Furillo in 1989, Campanella in 1993, Reese in 1999, Black in 2002, Labine in 2007, Roe in 2008, Snider in 2011, Pafko in 2013, Shuba in 2014, and Newcombe in 2019. Now, with Erskine, they're all gone.

With his death, that leaves 5 living former Brooklyn Dodgers: Tommy Brown, Jim Gentile, Fred Kipp, Bob Aspromonte and Sandy Koufax. It leaves Koufax as the last surviving member of the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers, although Erskine was the last one who played in that World Series. And it leaves 3 surviving players who played in the 1940s: Ed Mickelson, Frank Saucier and Bobby Shantz.

Whitey Herzog, 1931-2024

Prior to World War II, a major league sports team's field boss, its manager, and it's business boss, its general manager, were often the same person. As time went on, this became less common. We still see it every once in a while in the NBA and the NHL.

In the NFL, it usually happens when a Super Bowl-winning coach falls out with his team's owner, and another team's owner wants to hired him, and the coach says not unless I get full control over player decisions, and that usually doesn't work out well.

In Major League Baseball, since World War II, only one man has been a team's manager and its general manager, and still won a Pennant, much less a World Series. That one man was Whitey Herzog.

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Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog was born on November 9, 1931 in New Athens, Illinois, outside St. Louis. Like Edward Charles Ford, Don Richard Ashburn, and a previous St. Louis Cardinals legend, George John Kurowski, his light blond hair led to the nickname "Whitey." He could have gone by one of his middle names, and the English translation of his German surname: "Norman Duke." In 1953, he married Mary Lou Sinn, and they had 3 children.

"Baseball has been good to me since I quit trying to play it." A lefthanded hitter and a righthanded outfielder, he played for the Washington Senators from 1956 to 1958, making him a teammate of Harmon Killebrew; the Kansas City Athletics from 1958 to 1960, making him a teammate of Roger Maris; the Baltimore Orioles in 1961 and 1962, making him a teammate of Brooks Robinson; and the Detroit Tigers in 1963, making him a teammate of Al Kaline.

Not much rubbed off on him: In 634 major league games, he batted .257 with 25 home runs and 172 RBIs, and never got close to a Pennant. In 1964, the Kansas City Athletics hired him as a scout, and promoted him to a major league coach in 1965.

In 1966, he was hired as the 3rd base coach for the New York Mets. In 1967, the Mets made him director of player development. So he had a role in building the team that won the 1969 World Series and the 1973 National League Pennant.

Just before the start of the 1972 season, Met manager Gil Hodges died. Herzog thought he should be the next manager. Team chairman M. Donald Grant ordered Herzog not to attend Hodges' funeral, to avoid speculation. Grant hired Yogi Berra instead.

Herzog knew Grant was a rotten guy, and decided to get out of the Met organization and take the 1st managing job he was offered. After the 1972 season, Joe Burke, the general manager of the Texas Rangers, hired him. But he didn't get through the 1973 season, as the team's owner, Bob Short, fired him on September 7. In 1974, he became the California Angels' 3rd base coach, and served as interim manager for 4 games after Bobby Winkles was fired and Dick Williams was hired.

That year, Burke became the GM of the Kansas City Royals, and on July 24, 1975, he fired Jack McKeon as manager and hired Herzog. Between Burke's player moves and Herzog's managing, the Royals won the American League Western Division title in 1976, 1977 and 1978.

They were a team that used its ballpark to its advantage: Royals Stadium, now named Kauffman Stadium, had deep power alleys, so it was hard to hit home runs in, but it encouraged doubles and triples. The field was artificial turf. So Burke and Herzog built a team of line-drive hitters and speedsters who were good on defense, and pitchers who were good at inducing ground balls rather than fly balls.

Case in point was George Brett, to this day the greatest player the Royals franchise has ever had: His lifetime batting average was .305, and he collected 3,154 hits, 665 of them doubles and 137 of them triples -- but despite his obvious power, he hit "only" 317 home runs in 20 full seasons.

But, all 3 times, the Royals lost the AL Championship Series to the New York Yankees, despite Brett's tendency to use the "short porch" in right field at Yankee Stadium for home runs. Clearly, something had to change. After falling well short of the Division title in 1979, the Royals fired Herzog, and hired Jim Frey. This, and some other changes, including boosting the bullpen, gave the Royals what they needed to finally beat the Yankees in the ALCS, in 1980.

"The White Rat" was hired by the St. Louis Cardinals, as both manager and GM. It was already a rare thing to be both in MLB. But he knew that Busch Memorial Stadium was also a pitcher's park with artificial turf, and built a new "Whiteyball" team of pitching, contact hitting, speed and defense.

This time, the signature player was shortstop Ozzie Smith. But he also had good hitters and fielders, like 1st baseman Keith Hernandez, 2nd baseman Tommie Herr, right fielder George Hendrick, center fielder Willie McGee (who became that season's National League Rookie of the Year), and his former catcher in Kansas City, Darrell Porter.

With a pitching staff topped by Bruce Sutter, the best reliever in the NL, the Cardinals won the World Series in 1982, beating the Milwaukee Brewers. This made Herzog the 1st manager/GM to win a World Series since Connie Mack of the 1930 Philadelphia Athletics -- and he was also a part-owner.

Herzog found out that Hernandez was using cocaine, so he traded him in 1983, to the Mets, for pitchers Neil Allen and Rick Ownby. This trade helped rebuild the Mets, and it worked out badly for the Cards. Prior to the 1985 season, Herzog traded for San Francisco Giants' 1st baseman Jack Clark, one of the top sluggers of the time. In the 1985 NL Championship Series, Herzog outmanaged Tommy Lasorda of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Clark's home run in the top of the 9th inning of Game 6 won the Pennant.

It would be the Royals that the Cards would face, in the 1st (and still only) All-Missouri World Series. The Cardinals led the Royals 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 6, and needed just 3 more outs to win the Series. Jorge Orta hit a ground ball to Clark. Clark flipped to reliever Todd Worrell, who was covering 1st base. Orta was unquestionably out. The instant replay cameras and a now-familiar photograph confirmed this. Except 1st base umpire Don Denkinger blew the call, and called Orta safe.

The next batter, Steve Balboni, popped up, and Clark couldn't handle it, and Balboni singled on his next swing. A passed ball by Porter made it men on 2nd and 3rd, and Hal McRae was intentionally walked. Dane Iorg, another former Cardinal, stepped up, and singled home Orta and Balboni, and the Royals had a 2-1 walkoff win to force a Game 7 at home.

The Cardinals were furious. So were their fans. Understandably so. They all thought Denkinger stole the World Series from them. They still think so, 39 years later. There's just one problem with this theory: There was still 1 game to go. If the Cardinals had won Game 7, Denkinger's blown call would have been just a footnote.

So Herzog should have taken his team into the clubhouse and said, "Men, we got screwed tonight, but there's nothing we can do about it now. So let's win this thing tomorrow, and what happened tonight won't matter." Instead, the White Rat whined about the call to the media, and let it get into his head, and into his team's heads. The shock isn't that the Cards lost Game 7 by a whopping 11-0. The shock is that the Royals won it by only 11 runs.

The Cardinals won another Pennant in 1987, making it 3 in 6 seasons, but lost the World Series to the Minnesota Twins. Herzog remained the Cardinal manager and GM until July 6, 1990, resigning of his own accord, saying, "I came here in last place, and I leave here in last place. I left them right where I started." He never managed again, although he did serve as GM of the California Angels in 1993 and 1994. His career record as a manager was 1,281-1,185, for a .532 winning percentage. He reached 6 postseasons, winning 3 Pennants and 1 World Series.

Whitey Herzog was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans' Committee in 2009. The Cardinals subsequently retired his Number 24. Both the Royals and the Cardinals elected him to their team Halls of Fame, and he was elected to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. He died this past Monday, April 15, 2024, at the age of 92.

April 17, 1999: The Strangest NFL Draft

April 17, 1999, 25 years ago: The NFL Draft is held in New York, at The Theater at Madison Square Garden -- formerly known as the Felt Forum, and now as the Hulu Theater.

The Draft has had some sour moments. New York Jets fans, especially when the Draft is held in New York, tend to go, and their reactions to their team's 1st round pick is usually vociferous. Like the nursery rhyme about the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead, when it's good, it's very, very good; but when it's bad, it's horrid.

But Jet fans have nothing on fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. As NFL Films co-founder, producer and writer Steve Sabol (a Philadelphia area native) put it, to be read by John Facenda, the local news anchor who was the voice of NFL Films from 1967 until his death in 1984, put it, "In Philadelphia, a fan learns to boo before he can walk."

In 1998, the Heisman Trophy was won by Ricky Williams of the University of Texas, who had broken the NCAA's career record for rushing yardage. That record lasted for just 1 year, broken by Ron Dayne of Wisconsin, who would play for the New York Giants.

Williams seemed to push all the right buttons. He was big. He was strong. He was very fast. He was from one of college football's marquee schools. He had excelled in one of college football's toughest leagues, the Big 12 Conference. He had come through in high-profile games. He seemed nice. He seemed smart. He was respectful of the game's history: When Doak Walker, often regarded as the greatest Texas-born player, was dying, Ricky visited him in the hospital, and, for one game, switched from his usual Number 34 to Walker's legendary 37. And, at the time, there were no red flags.

He should have been the top pick in the NFL Draft. Except that 1999 was the year the restored Cleveland Browns were beginning play, and they had the top pick. They made it known that they would be picking a quarterback. That turned out to be Tim Couch of the University of Kentucky. He turned out to be a bust, partly because he wasn't that good, partly because the Browns handled him badly. But that's a story for another time.

The 2nd pick belonged to the Eagles, 3-13 the season before. Their quarterbacks were Rodney Peete (decent but injury-prone), Bobby Hoying (a reasonable backup, but shouldn't have been a starter) and Koy Detmer (not even the best quarterback in his own family, and his brother Ty wasn't so hot as a pro, either).

Drafting a seemingly good quarterback is not a cure-all, especially for his rookie year. In the previous year's Draft, the Indianapolis Colts had the 1st pick, the San Diego Chargers the 2nd. The top 2 picks were going to be Peyton Manning of Tennessee and Ryan Leaf of Washington State, and pretty much everybody was thinking that you couldn't go wrong with either one. The Colts picked Manning, and he had a rough rookie year, but became a Hall-of-Famer. The Chargers picked Leaf, and it was a disaster even beyond his rookie year.

But the Eagles also needed to boost their running game. Their 2 best running backs were Duce Staley (good, but not great) and Charlie Garner (occasionally good, at best). Furthermore, given that they were 3-13, the Eagles could have gone with the cliché of drafting "the best available athlete." At the time, it wasn't hard to believe that this was Ricky Williams.

Angelo Cataldi, then as now the morning show host for all-sports radio station WIP (then 610 AM, now 94.1 FM), knowing that the Browns were likely drafting Couch, promoted the idea of the Eagles drafting Williams. He arranged for a group of Eagles fans to attend the Draft at The Garden. Some of them even wore Eagle jerseys with Williams' name and Number 34 on them, presumably paid for out of their own pockets, not out of WIP's bank account. (UPDATE: Cataldi retired in 2023.)

At the Draft, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced, "With the 2nd pick, the Philadelphia Eagles select... Donovan McNabb... " The rest of his words could not be heard, as the Eagle fans in attendance overwhelmed it with boos.

They had been betrayed by team management, and not for the 1st time. Or so they believed. And they booed their lungs out. Why?

Well, from previous bad drafts and bad free agent signings, to the financial difficulties of former owner Leonard Tose and the cheapness of former owner Norman Braman, Eagle fans were used to the organization not doing right by them. New owner Jeffrey Lurie had promised better. So far, he hadn't delivered. Drafting McNabb instead of Williams seemed like another crack in the promise.

The team that can run the ball the best controls the clock. The team that controls the clock usually wins the game. And, as former Eagle cornerback Herman Edwards, then an assistant coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, would later say as head coach of the New York Jets, "You play to win the game!"

And, as I said, the Eagles needed to boost their running game, possibly more than they needed a good quarterback. This was largely due to the fact that, from 1995 to 1997, they had put their faith in a different Ricky W: Ricky Watters had helped the San Francisco 49ers win a Super Bowl, and the Eagles signed him as a free agent, but he didn't work out for them, appearing to take a nonchalant attitude, which is anathema to Philadelphia fans. And, as I also said, Williams seemed like "the best available athlete."

McNabb came out of Syracuse University. In 1997, he got them to 9-4. Their wins included these over opponents that were then nationally ranked in the Top 25: The Kickoff Classic at the Meadowlands against Number 24 Wisconsin, and home to Number 17 West Virginia. But he also lost at home to North Carolina State, and away to Oklahoma and Number 22 Virginia Tech.

In 1998, he got them to 8-4. They won away to Number 13 Michigan, and home to Number 16 Virginia Tech (with Michael Vick as a senior). However, they again lost to North Carolina State and West Virginia, this time away in both cases; and lost at home to Number 10 Tennessee.

In both seasons, he led the Orangemen to the Championship of the Big East Conference. But the Big East was never seen as an elite football league. In basketball, yes; in football, no. In both seasons, he got them to a major bowl game: The 1997 Fiesta Bowl against Number 10 Kansas State (actually played on New Year's Eve that season) and the 1999 Orange Bowl against Number 7 Florida (played on New Year's Day). However, they lost both games. In both seasons, he got them to a Top 25 ranking: 20th in 1997 and 24th in 1998.

In other words, he looked like a good college quarterback. And there were other choices, aside from the already-drafted Couch. With the 3rd pick, the Cincinnati Bengals drafted Akili Smith, who had led Oregon to an 8-4 season. With the 11th pick, the Minnesota Vikings drafted Dante Culpeper, who had led Central Florida to 9-2. With the 12th pick, the Chicago Bears drafted Cade McNown, who had led UCLA to 10-2, the Pac-10 title, and victory in the Rose Bowl. In the 2nd round, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers drafted Shaun King, who had led Tulane to an undefeated 12-0 season and the Number 7 ranking in the country (albeit against, at best, what college basketball fans would call a mid-major schedule).

In other words, McNabb had a good college football career, but was he clearly the best quarterback in that Draft? The best, maybe. Clearly the best, no.

And, as I said, Williams seemed to have all the prerequisites: Good guy, great player, filled a need for the Eagles. And he was available. But they didn't take him. And their fans booed.

They shouldn't have. The Eagles needed a quarterback. When the Detroit Lions chose Rodney Peete in the 6th round out of USC in 1989, there was nothing wrong with wanting a healthy eete on your team. But he got hurt in his 1st preseason, and this began a string of injuries. By the time the Eagles got him in 1995, having a healthy Peete was pretty much a lost cause. And, as I said, neither Bobby Hoying nor Koy Detmer was going to be the answer.

The best college running backs often turn out to be pro busts -- figuratively or, through injury, literally. Eagles fans found that out when they won 2 games late in the 1968 season, costing them the chance to draft the eventually felonious O.J. Simpson, and instead got Leroy Keyes, who fell well short of expectations.

The Eagles had won their last NFL Championship in 1960. Just between then and 1998, and just among Heisman Trophy winners: Ernie Davis never played a pro down due to a fatal illness, Steve Owens lasted just 5 seasons and rushed for less than 2,500 yards, John Cappelletti lasted 10 years and rushed for less than 3,000, Archie Griffin lasted 7 years and rushed for less than 3,000, Charles White lasted 9 years and rushed for just over 3,000, and Rashaan Salaam lasted 4 years and rushed for less than 1,800. Since then, the aforementioned Ron Dayne lasted for 8 years and rushed for less than 4,000.

In addition to those, Billy Sims and Bo Jackson, both Heisman winners, looked like they were headed for the Hall of Fame. But Sims wrecked his knee in his 5th season, and Jackson hurt his hip in his 4th, and neither ever played again. Ki-Jana Carter was the 1st pick in the 1995 NFL Draft, but wrecked his knee in a preseason game in his rookie year. played in just 59 games over a span of 10 seasons, and rushed for just 1,144 yards.

So drafting a running back in the 1st round, even a great college running back like Ricky Williams, wasn't necessarily a great idea.

And what about other teams? They made this Draft even stranger. The Browns didn't draft Williams, either. Once they drafted Couch, and the Eagles drafted McNabb, the Bengals could have drafted Williams. Here's where it gets really strange: The New Orleans Saints offered the Bengals 9 draft picks for their pick, so they could draft Williams. Nine of them. The Bengals turned them down, and drafted Akili Smith.

The 4th pick belonged to the Indianapolis Colts. The Saints tried to make a deal with them, too, but they wouldn't budge. But they also didn't pick Williams. They drafted a different running back, Edgerrin James of the University of Miami. And while Couch and Smith were both busts, James was not: He went to the Hall of Fame.

Finally, the Saints got the Washington Redskins to agree to a deal: The 5th pick in that Draft, in exchange for the Saints' entire 1999 Draft except for the 2nd round, and their 1st and 3rd round picks for 2000. The Saints drafted Williams. The Redskins did some more maneuvering, and packaged 3 of the picks they got from the Saints to send to the Bears for a pick they ended up using on University of Georgia cornerback Champ Bailey, who made the Hall of Fame.

Incidentally, the Saints' general manager at the time was Bill Kuharich, son of Joe Kuharich, who, as Eagles head coach and general manager in 1964, made what is generally regarded as the worst trade in Eagles history: Sending Sonny Jurgensen to the Washington Redskins for Norm Snead.

Jurgensen was a carouser, and the moralistic Joe Kuharich hated that. Snead was a straight arrow. With the Redskins, Jurgensen continued his Hall of Fame career, throwing the most touchdown passes of any quarterback in the 1960s. The quarterback with the most interceptions in that decade? You may have guessed: Snead.

Anyway, what all this means is that 5 teams passed on drafting Ricky Williams: First the Browns, then the Eagles, then the Bengals, then the Colts, and lastly the Redskins. As we will soon see, the Browns and Bengals might have been better off if they'd taken him. Between what we will soon see, and what we have already seen, the Eagles and Colts might not have been.

Bears legend Mike Ditka was the Saints' head coach at the time, and they went just 3-13 in 1999. Williams rushed for 884 yards. Ditka was fired, and replaced with Jim Haslett. It was a huge improvement, as they went 10-6, and, each for the 1st time in franchise history, won their Division (the NFC West) and won a Playoff game. Williams rushed for 1,000 yards even, despite missing half the season due to injury. And then they slid back down to 7-9 in 2001, despite Williams rushing for 1,245 yards. He was getting personal success, but not much team success.

He didn't fit in. His Saints teammate Joe Horn said, "Ricky's just a different guy. People he wanted to deal with, he did. And people he wanted to have nothing to do with, he didn't. No one could understand that. I don't think guys in the locker room could grasp that he wanted to be himself. You know, quiet."

He was traded to the Miami Dolphins for 4 draft picks, and 2002 turned out to be his best NFL season. He rushed for a League-leading 1,853 yards. He rushed for another 1,372 yards in 2003. In those seasons, they went 9-7 and 10-6, but didn't make the Playoffs either time. Still, it looked like the Saints had blown it, both in getting him and in getting rid of him.

And then, in the run-up to the 2004 season, he was suspended for testing positive for marijuana. On August 2, he announced his retirement.

It's become a meme in the years since: ESPN's Stephen A. Smith telling NFL players to "Stay off the weed!" Or, as he pronounces it, "the weeeeeeee-duh!" Physically speaking, Ricky Williams was as gifted as any running back in NFL history. Emotionally speaking, he was at the other extreme, eventually being diagnosed with clinical depression and social anxiety disorder. He chose smoking pot over playing football.

The Dolphins seemed to prove his point, that they needed him more than he needed them, going 4-12 in 2004. Williams patched things up with them, served his mandatory 4-game drug-test suspension, and rushed for 743 yards in 12 games. The Dolphins went 9-7 in 2005, and just missed the Playoffs again. And then, in early 2006, Williams was suspended for the entire upcoming season, for violating the NFL's drug policy for a 2nd time.

The Canadian Football League had a less stringent drug policy, and Williams signed with the Toronto Argonauts. But his season with the Argos was stricken with injuries: A broken bone in his arm and a damaged Achilles tendon limited him to 11 games and 526 yards. The CFL instituted what's become known as "The Ricky Williams Rule": No longer would a player under suspension by the NFL be eligible to be signed by a CFL team, although a "grandfather clause" meant that Williams himself could stay.

He didn't: After claiming that yoga had helped him to stop using marijuana, he entered into negotiations with Commissioner Tagliabue, and was granted reinstatement. He returned on November 26, 2007, playing for the Dolphins against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football. But it would be the only game he played that season, as he suffered a shoulder injury.

He played all 16 games of the 2008 season, rushing for 659 yards, and helping the Dolphins win the AFC East. He played all 16 games of the 2009 season, rushing for 1,121 yards, making him only the 7th player in NFL history to rush for at least 1,000 at age 32 or later, but the Dolphins only went 7-9. In 2010, he rushed for 673 yards, and the Dolphins went 10-6, but missed the Playoffs.

His contract with the Dolphins had run out, and he signed with the Baltimore Ravens for 2011. He played in every game, rushed for 444 yards, and on January 1, 2012, he joined the 10,000 Yards Club. The Ravens went 12-4, won the AFC North, and advanced to the AFC Championship Game.

But, a month later, Williams announced his retirement, for good this time. He was not quite 35, with 10,009 rushing yards, 342 receptions for 2,606 yards, and 74 touchdowns.

He has since become a certified yoga instructor, and an advocate for medical marijuana. Apparently, the former hasn't actually turned him off from the latter; but, together, they have helped him deal with his mental health difficulties.

He is in the College Football Hall of Fame, but not the Pro Football Hall of Fame, for which he has been eligible since 2017. There are 31 players with at least 10,000 rushing yards. The only ones eligible but not yet in are Fred Taylor, Steven Jackson, Corey Dillon, Warrick Dunn, Ricky Watters, Jamal Lewis, Thomas Jones, Tiki Barber, Eddie George, Ottis Anderson... and Ricky Williams.

Two of those players, Williams and Lewis, have had drug issues. The rest haven't. Based on statistics, it appears that 12,000 yards -- or, more precisely, 12,074 -- is the actual threshold: Every player with at least that many is in, except for the not-yet-eligible Gore and Peterson. So maybe it's not the drug issue that's holding Williams back, since there are never-suspended players with more rushing yards who aren't in Canton.

Nevertheless, Williams was a headache for 2 different NFL franchises, New Orleans and Miami. Neither team has elected him to their team hall of fame. If you ask the average Dolphin fan to name his all-time team, his running backs are going to be those on the 1972-73 Super Bowl teams, Larry Csonka and either Jim Kiick or Mercury Morris. (A little ironic, since Morris had to overcome a more severe drug problem than Williams, and did.)

Even in the 22 years since Williams arrived in the NFL, or in the 17 years since he was first suspended, America's understanding of mental health issues has improved. It is entirely possible that the same issues would have reared their heads had he been drafted by the Eagles instead of the Saints.

And that would have been very bad for his mental health. Can you imagine Eagle fans reacting to Ricky Williams' drug and psych issues? They would have tried to destroy him. And, away from the more laid-back atmospheres in Louisiana and South Florida, it would have been much worse for him. Instead of accepting him, Eagle fans would have compounded the problem.

Now, imagine that the Eagles drafted the top quarterback available the next year. Because they still would have needed one. Who would that have been? There were 12 quarterbacks drafted. The 1st was Chad Pennington, who had a decent career with Miami and the Jets. Of the 11 after him, the best was... Tom Brady, taken in the 6th round by the New England Patriots. And we'll never know for sure if he would have won even one single solitary NFL game without being the perpetrator, or at least the beneficiary, of cheating.

And, given how close the Eagles were to winning the Super Bowl with McNabb but without Williams, would they have been any better the other way around? With Pennington as quarterback and Williams in the backfield? It's unlikely.

Because the quarterback they did draft turned out to be pretty good. Suppose you rooted for a struggling NFL team. And suppose I told you that they were going to draft a quarterback who gave his college back-to-back seasons of a Conference Championship and a bid to a New Year's Day bowl game. And that he would lead your team to the Playoffs in only his 2nd season, and that this would be the 1st of 8 trips to the Playoffs -- without any guarantee as to how any of those berths would turn out. Would you like your chances? Would you take this? I think most fans would.

Certainly, McNabb's pro career could have been better. He was 10-8 in Playoff games, 1-4 in NFC Championship Games including 2 losses at home, and 0-1 in Super Bowls. And, so far, voters for the Pro Football Hall of Fame have not seen fit to elect him.

But Donovan McNabb turned out to be, if not the greatest, then the most statistically successful quarterback in Eagles history. He joined Fran Tarkenton, John Elway and Steve Young as only the 4th quarterback in NFL history to have 30,000 passing yards, 200 touchdown passes, 3,000 rushing yards and 20 touchdown runs. He made 6 Pro Bowls. He won 5 NFC East titles.

In 2004, he set a record (since broken) with 24 consecutive pass attempts completed. That same year, he became the 1st quarterback ever to finish a season with at least 30 touchdown passes and fewer than 10 interceptions.

As I said, he went 10-8 in Playoff games with the Eagles. But look at it another way: In 11 seasons with Donovan McNabb as their starting quarterback, the Eagles won 10 postseason games; in 78 seasons with all other starting quarterbacks (1933 to 1998, and 2010 to 2021), they have won just 13. In fact, until Nick Foles came along, it was 9 postseason wins in 73 years without McNabb.

The Eagles reached 5 NFC Championship Games with him. They only reached 1 Super Bowl, and lost it -- but that was to the Patriots, so how do we know it was on the up-and-up? We don't. With the Pats, we presume they're guilty until they're proven innocent.

You can say that other Eagles quarterbacks -- Norm Van Brocklin, Sonny Jurgensen, Ron Jaworski, Randall Cunningham, Nick Foles and Carson Wentz -- were better than Donovan McNabb. Certainly, some of those were more talented. But results matter. Van Brocklin was only in Philadelphia for 3 seasons; Foles, 2. Long-term, McNabb is the Eagles' best quarterback ever.

So the people booing his selection at the 1999 NFL Draft owe him an apology. Yes, Ricky Williams looked like the better pick at the time. But he wasn't. McNabb was.