The Failure Of Laker LeBron

Last night, the Denver Nuggets, the defending NBA Champions, beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 108-106 at the Ball Arena (formerly the Pepsi Center) in Denver. The Nuggets thus won the Playoff series, 4 games to 1, and ended the Lakers' season.

Nikola Jokić of the Nuggets has clearly been the best player in the NBA the last 2 years. Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors has been the best player over the last 10 years. And LeBron James, now with the Lakers, has been the best player over the last 20 years. 

LeBron might not have been the better all-around player than Steph. But there is no question that he "had a greater impact" than anyone. He has become the ultimate user of "player power." Some players became "coach killers." But LeBron did something even Michael Jordan didn't do: For the Lakers, he became, for all intents and purposes, all at the same time:

1. Star Player

2. Team Captain

3. Head Coach

4. General Manager

5. Public Relations Director

He has been those things, regardless of who the actual head coach and GM have been.

And yet, in 6 seasons with them, what has he led them to? One NBA Championship, and that in the COVID-interrupted season of 2019-20; one other trip to the Conference Finals, 2 1st Round exits including this one, and 2 flat-out Playoff misses. The Lakers' win, this season, in the NBA's 1st-ever in-season tournament was a big story, but, ultimately, didn't help them achieve real success. It's another notch on LeBron's record. It might be the NBA's "FA Cup," but, so far, it doesn't really mean anything.

A head coach with that record, with that franchise, would be fire. A GM? Certainly.

If Lakers owner Jeanie Buss had the power that an NFL team owner had, she wouldn't have given LeBron anything beyond the captaincy. If she had the mindset of an NFL team owner, then, after the 2022 Playoff miss, she would have told LeBron, "You wanna play on an NBA team with your son? Go ahead, try it, but try it somewhere else: You're gone. We have higher standards than any other NBA team, and you have failed them."

And she would have done what it took to sever ties with him. If that meant messing up salary cap space for the next three seasons, so what? They wouldn't have won anything over the next 3 seasons, anyway.

Next season, 2024-25, the Los Angeles Clippers will be moving into a new arena, where they won't have to look over their shoulders for the Lakers.

LeBron is 40. He is already looking over his shoulder at Father Time, who can be beaten many times, but only needs to win once.

One title in six years. By Laker standards, that's not good enough. He'll get his number retired. Heck, Kobe Bryant got two numbers retired, and LeBron could, too. He'll get a statue.

But that doesn't mean that he hasn't failed in Los Angeles. Will he come back next season? Almost certainly. With the Lakers? Probably, but it's not a given. Does he have to win one more title to make his Los Angeles tenure no longer a failure? In my opinion, yes.

Maybe he should stick to politics, and leave sports out of it. 

Yankees Inconsistent with Lumber & Bullpen, But Hanging On

Is it me? It is the fact that I'm not trying to do a writeup after every game, and sticking to once a week, the reason the Yankees haven't gotten off to the kind of slow start they got off to these last few years?

I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Uncle Mike, the world does not revolve around you. Didn't your parents ever teach you that?"

Yes, they did. But it's not true. As far as any of us knows, the world only exists through our own perceptions. Self-preservation, and thus selfishness, is a default position. Or else Donald Trump never would have become President.

Cliché Alert: But I digress.

*

So the Yankees played 4 games at home against the Oakland Athletics, then 3 on the road against the Milwaukee Brewers. Nothing wrong with that, to me. I can remember when that was no big deal. But, since 1994, the Brewers have no longer been in the same Division as the Yankees. Since 1998, they have not even been in the same League.

At least, next season, they'll still be in the same city. It looks like the A's won't.

The Monday game -- an afternoon game, being that it was Passover -- was a great pitcher's duel. Carlos Rodón went 7 innings, allowing just 1 hit and 2 walks. For the A's, former Yankees JP Sears -- like CC Sabathia, he doesn't use periods or a space -- went 6 innings, allowing 3 hits and 1 walk. After 8 innings, the game was scoreless.

But to start the top of the 9th, Victor González allowed a single and a home run. Mason Miller struck out the side in the bottom of the 9th: Anthony Volpe, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge. Those were the bats a Yankee Fan wants in the bottom of the 9th, but they all struck out. A's 2, Yankees 0.

And when Marcus Stroman allowed a run in the top of the 1st inning on Tuesday night, recent fears returned. But the Yankees gave him 4 runs in the bottom of the 1st, including a 2-run homer by Anthony Rizzo. Stroman gave up a pair of solo homers, but the bullpen tossed 3 2/3rds innings of hitless, 1-walk relief. Yankees 4, A's 3.

Judge gave Clarke Schmidt a 2-run homer in the 1st on Wednesday night. Rizzo and Soto added homers. Rizzo's was the 300th of his career. Schmidt wasn't great, but he was good enough. Yankees 7, A's 3.

Nestor Cortés fell victim to "onebadinningitis" on Thursday night. In his case, he allowed 3 runs in the top of the 4th. That was all the A's got, but that was all they needed: Aside from a solo homer by Jose Trevino, the Yankees wasted a bunch of opportunities, leaving 11 men on base. A's 3, Yankees 1.

*

On to Milwaukee. Luis Gil had 4 fine starts to begin the season. His 5th start, in the Friday night game, was a bad one, allowing 5 runs in 5 innings. But the Yankees hit well, too: Soto, Alex Verdugo, and Trent Grisham, who came over in the Soto trade and played center field that night, hit home runs.

The game went to extra innings, and each team scored a run in the 10th. Michael Tomkin, a newly-acquired former Met, allowed a run in the bottom of the 11th, and the Brewers won, 7-6.

The Yankees made the Brewers pay dearly for that. Twice. Rodón pitched well on Saturday, while the Yankees got homers from Judge, Rizzo, Verdugo and Giancarlo Stanton. Verdugo had 4 RBIs, and Stanton and Gleyber Torres each had 3. Yankees 15, Brewers 3.

The Yankees used 6 pitchers yesterday, starting with Stroman, who, again, did not pitch well. He was succeeded by Ron Marinaccio, making only his 6th appearance of the season. But, the way the Yankee runs came, he ended up as the winning pitcher.

The Yankees unloaded the lumber again, including 7 runs in the top of the 6th inning. Judge, Rizzo and Volpe homered. Judge's season-beginning slump seems to be over. Yankees 15, Brewers 5.

*

We are 18 percent of the way through the season -- a little over 1/6th. The Yankees are 19-10, one game ahead of the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Eastern Division, 3 ahead of the Boston Red Sox, 5 ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays, and 6 ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays. In the all-important loss column, they are tied with the O's, 3 ahead of the Sox, 5 ahead of the Jays, and 6 ahead of the Rays.

The only team in the AL with a better record is the Cleveland Guardians, 19-9. The only National League team with a better record is the Atlanta Braves, 19-7. In case anyone is interested, the Mets are 14-13, counting yesterday's extra-inning win over the St. Louis Cardinals.

When the Yankees score at least 3 runs, they are 19-3. When they don't, they are 0-7. However, that 19-3 includes a game where they scored 6 and another where they scored 7, and in each case lost in extra innings. In extra-inning games, they are 1-3. This suggests that they simply need to step up and score enough runs, but also that they still need to improve their bullpen. That kind of inconsistency, with both the lumber and the bullpen, may hurt them at some point.

This has still been accomplished without Gerrit Cole, DJ LeMahieu and Jonathan Loáisiga, all injured.

The roadtrip continues tonight, against the Baltimore Orioles. Clarke Schmidt starts against Grayson Rodriguez. Huh? Those two names don't go together!

Happy St. Totteringham's Day!

Inside the M25, the highway that serves as London's "capital beltway," there are 14 soccer teams in England's Football League.

Two of these are in North London, 4.7 miles apart: Arsenal Football Club, or Arsenal F.C., or sometimes simply "The Arsenal," Capital T, Capital A; and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, a.k.a. Tottenham, a.k.a. Spurs, or the Spuds, or the Totts, or the Tiny Totts. Fans of each call the other "The Scum," Capital T, Capital S. In the immortal words of that great broadcaster of American football, Keith Jackson, "These two teams just... don't... like each other!"

Tottenham will forever be in Arsenal's shadow. Arsenal have won the League 13 times, Tottenham only 2. Tottenham twice won the League title at their former home ground, White Hart Lane, in 1951 and 1961. Both times, they beat Sheffield Wednesday. Arsenal also twice won the League at White Hart Lane, in 1971 and 2004. Both times, against Tottenham.

No other team has ever won the title -- either the old Football League Division One, or, since 1992, the Premier League -- at the home of their arch-rivals. Liverpool has never done this to Everton, nor vice versa. Nor has either Manchester City or Manchester United done it to each other. Nor Aston Villa or Birmingham City to each other, nor Newcastle United or Sunderland to each other, nor Portsmouth or Southampton to each other.

Arsenal fans celebrate three "holidays":

* St. Michael's Day, May 26, the anniversary of the day Michael Thomas scored the League title-winning goal away to Liverpool, ending an 18-year drought in the last minute of the last game of the season.
* Invincibles Day, the day when the last unbeaten team in the Premier League loses its 1st League game of the season, thus insuring that Arsenal's feat of going through the League unbeaten in 2003-04 remains unique. And...
* St. Totteringham's Day, the day when it becomes mathematically certain that Arsenal will finish above Tottenham in the League.

Of course, Tottenham can prevent there being a "St. Tott's" (or "St. T's"), simply by finishing ahead of Arsenal in the League.

*

Julian Schuman was the Arsenal fan who first thought up the idea of St. Totteringham's Day. Since celebrating the occasion is a relatively recent phenomenon, Arsenal fans have looked back to see when it would have been celebrated.

Between 1893-94 (Arsenal's 1st season in the old Football League, having been founded in the 1886-87 season) and 1907-08 (Spurs' last season before joining the League), Spurs were not in the league, and Arsenal were. In 1908-09, Spurs were in Division 2, and Arsenal in the top flight. In 1909-10, Arsenal had a bad year, and finished below Spurs. So the 1st true St. T's was on April 22, 1911, when Arsenal beat Blackburn Rovers 5-1.

May 5, 1923 was the 1st St. Totteringham's Day in 11 years, due to Arsenal having been relegated in 1913 (the only time the club have ever gone down), followed by a stretch when Tottenham were in Division One and Arsenal in Division Two (including the stretch where football was called off due to World War I, from 1915 to 1919).

Tottenham have been relegated more frequently, so, technically, The Arsenal could celebrate two St. Totteringham's Days in one season: The day that season's finishing ahead of Spurs is assured; and the day Spurs are relegated, thus assuring that Arsenal will finish ahead of them in the next season. Example, from the last time Spurs were relegated, Arsenal clinched a better position on April 23, 1977 (St. T's '77), and Spurs were relegated on May 14, 1977 (St. T's '78).

On 10 occasions, it's come down to the last day of the season: April 27, 1912; May 5, 1923; May 7, 1927; May 12, 1984; May 5, 1996; May 7, 2006; May 9, 2010; May 13, 2012; May 19, 2013; and May 15, 2016.

March 22, 1935 would be the earliest St. T's Day for a long time to come, with the now-dormant website Arseweb calling it a "perfect season": Arsenal won the League, and Spurs were relegated. Between World War II (again, play suspended from 1939 to 1946), Spurs being in Division Two, Spurs winning the League in 1951 (1st time ever for them), and Arsenal blowing it on the final day in 1952, 1953 was the 1st St. T's Day since that 1935 title-winning season -- and 1953 was another title-winning season for Arsenal.

As the 1950s wore on, both teams went into decline. Tottenham snapped out of it much sooner, winning the League and the FA Cup in 1961 -- "doing The Double," the 1st time any team had won both since Aston Villa in 1897. From 1960 to 1968, there were no St. Totteringham's Days. In this period, Spurs won the FA Cup in 1961, '62 and '67; won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1963, and got to the Semifinals of the European Cup in 1962.

But in 1971, Arsenal won The Double, and clinched at White Hart Lane, not easy because Spurs finished a strong 3rd that season, behind only Arsenal and Leeds United, and won the League Cup. On April 26, 1975, for the 1st time ever, St. Totteringham's Day came in an actual Arsenal-Spurs match, with former Manchester United star Brian Kidd notching the only goal of a "One-nil to The Arsenal" win.

Both teams went into decline from their strong early 1970s showings, and in 1977 Spurs were relegated, though they jumped right back up the next season. Arsenal won the FA Cup in 1979, but the next few years were mostly Spurs: They won the FA Cup in 1981 and '82 and the UEFA Cup in 1984.

In 1987, Spurs threatened a historic Treble: League, FA Cup and League Cup. But they failed to win the League (Everton, the "blue club in Liverpool," won it), they choked in the FA Cup Final against Coventry City, and Arsenal stunned them with a late come-from-behind, 1-0 to 2-1, win at White Hart Lane in the League Cup Semifinal, before beating Liverpool in the Final. 

Spurs' only consolation is that they finished ahead of Arsenal in the League. Thus, there was no St. Totteringham's Day that season. The domestic Treble -- the League and both domestic cups, all in the same season -- would not be achieved until Manchester City won it with their oil billions in 2019. Arsenal won both domestic cups in 1993, Liverpool did it in 2001 and 2022, and West London's Chelsea did it in 2007, but none won the League in the same season.

Arsenal finished ahead of Tottenham in 1988, and from that point onward, there have been more seasons that Arsenal finished ahead of Tottenham than vice versa. In 1989 and 1991, Arsenal won the League, but finished behind Tottenham in 1990. In 1991, despite Arsenal winning the League, Tottenham beat them in the FA Cup Semifinal, before beating Nottingham Forest in the Final -- to date, the last time Spurs have even qualified for the Final, 23 years ago. They are 0-8 in Semifinals since, including 0-3 against Arsenal.

Arsenal finished ahead of Spurs in 1992, but a loss to them on the last day of the 1993 season meant that, in spite of winning the Cup Double, they finished behind Spurs. It would be the last time Spurs won away to Arsenal for 17 years, the last time at Arsenal's former home of the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury. Arsenal finished ahead in 1994, but collapsed in 1995, finishing 12th, behind Spurs.

That was it: Spurs did not finish ahead of Arsenal again for 22 years. Arsenal won The Double in 1998, and St. T's Day came on March 28, the earliest since 1959. In 2002, Arsenal won a 3rd Double, and St. T's Day came on March 18, a new record for earliest date.

In 2004, a new record was set: March 13. But that was not the most significant date in the Arsenal-Spurs rivalry for that season. That would be April 25, 2004 -- 20 years ago this week. On a Sunday afternoon, Chelsea's loss to Newcastle in the early game meant that Arsenal needed only a draw to clinch the Premier League title at White Hart Lane.

They jumped at the chance, with Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires each scoring a 1st-half beauty. But Jamie Redknapp -- whose father Harry would later cause Arsenal some trouble as a manager -- hit a screamer of his own. In stoppage time, there was a dive in the box, and referee Mark Halsey stupidly (or corruptly?) awarded a penalty. Robbie Keane took it, and it was 2-2.

Before the game, Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger had told his players that, if they got the point they needed, they should not celebrate on the pitch, but rather wait until they were in the dressing room.

But Keane celebrated his equalizer by doing a cartwheel, egging on a Spurs crowd that was already going bananas. As Henry later said, the Spurs fans "celebrated like they won the World Cup Final." (As a part of the France team that did just that in 1998, he would know.)

Play resumed, and when Halsey almost immediately blew his whistle, the Gunners basically said, "Fuck it, we're the Champions, we've earned this," and partied along with the 3,000 or so Arsenal fans who'd made the 4 1/2-mile trip up the Seven Sisters Road to celebrate. The song, dating back to 1971, went up, to the tune of "When the Saints Go Marching In" (a song Tottenham fans had previously appropriated as "When the Spurs Go Marching In"):

We won the League (We won the League!)
at White Hart Lane! (at White Hart Lane!)
We won the League at White Hart Lane!
We won the League at the Shithole!
We won the League at White Hart Lane!

Yes, White Hart Lane was a shithole. Opposing fans from Aston Villa (which is in Birmingham, often called "England's Detroit"), Stoke City (in bleak Staffordshire) and Sunderland (in the dreary North-East) have all sung, to the tune of "Sloop John B," without the slightest trace of irony:

Let me go home!
I wanna go home!
Tottenham's a shithole!
I wanna go home!

*

May 7, 2006. One does not simply discuss the history of the Arsenal-Tottenham rivalry without talking about this day. It is folly.

Arsenal had their best European Cup/Champions League campaign ever, reaching the Final. But the 2005-06 season was the last season for Highbury. The new Emirates Stadium -- some call it The Emirates, some by the area's former name Ashburton Grove, some cheekily call it New Highbury -- was going up, 500 yards away, and would open in the Summer. Arsenal wanted very badly to end the last game at Highbury with a win.

But it wasn't just sentiment: Arsenal went into the season's League finale in 5th place, with Tottenham in 4th. All Spurs had to do in their game, away to East London club West Ham United, was match Arsenal's performance at home to Manchester-area team Wigan Athletic, on that final day of the Premiership season, and not only would Spurs finish ahead of Arsenal (thus preventing St. Totteringham's Day for that season), it would be Spurs in the 2006-07 Champions League, with Arsenal "relegated" to the UEFA Cup -- unless, of course, Arsenal could win the CL Final. As the defending Champions automatically qualify, under that condition, both teams would have.

The night before, Tottenham manager Martin Jol had secluded his players at a hotel, the Marriott Canary Wharf, in London's financial district, a.k.a. The City. This is not unusual: Many managers do things like this, even before home games. American football head coaches, in both the professional and the collegiate ranks, also do this. The players would have a nice dinner together the night before the game, get a good night's sleep, and would have a nice short bus ride to the stadium, all away from the prying of fans and the media.

What did Scottish poet Robert Burns say? Translated into modern common English, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray." Somewhat appropriate, since, early in the film version of Fever Pitch, Colin Firth's character is shown teaching John Steinbeck's novel that takes its name from that quote, Of Mice and Men.

In the middle of the night, 10 Spurs players woke up, vomiting, and/or having diarrhea. Someone decided to blame the lasagne they'd eaten for dinner that night, and after the whole thing was over, some Spurs fans started a conspiracy theory that the Marriott chef was an Arsenal fan and had purposely poisoned the Spurs players! It became known as Lasagne-gate.

In the morning, several Spurs players were still, uh, indisposed. So club chairman Daniel Levy (who is still in that post today) called the League office, and asked League chairman Richard Scudamore to postpone the game. Nothing doing: With 1 League game to go, all teams were to play their games at the same time, 3:00 PM. This was a change from past policy, to avoid teams whose League place had already been decided from laying down on the job, thus giving gamblers some easy pickings, and giving paying customers a less than honest performance.

In the end, the game kicked off on time, at 3:00, and only one of the affected players, the backup goalkeeper, did not make it into the game, although 3 affected players had to be subbed off in the 2nd half.

That season was Wigan's 1st-ever season in the Premiership, and they had achieved midtable respectability, finishing 10th. An Arsenal win shouldn't have been assumed, but it was well possible. West Ham were about Wigan's equal, finishing 9th, and were hosting Spurs -- hence the Canary Wharf hotel, not far from the Hammers' Boleyn Ground, a.k.a. Upton Park. (In 2016, they moved into the London Stadium, the 2012 Olympic stadium.)

Pires scored the opener in the Highbury match, and, for the last time at that ground, the song "One-nil to The Arsenal" was sung -- by both Arsenal fans at Highbury and West Ham fans, learning by radio and text message, at Upton Park.

But Wigan struck back, and led 2-1. Spurs fans, getting calls and messages on their mobile phones, found out, and were ecstatic. And when Jermaine Defoe scored in the 35th to match Darren Fletcher's goal for the Hammers in the 10th, meaning Spurs were looking at a draw while Arsenal were losing, it looked like it would be Spurs' day.

It wasn't. Thierry Henry scored a hat trick, forging a 4-2 Arsenal win. And West Ham came from behind, and won 2-1 on a goal in the 80th minute by Yossi Benayoun. Arsenal finished 4th, 2 points ahead of Tottenham, and qualified for the Champions League; Tottenham, finishing 5th, went to the UEFA Cup.

The supposedly offending lasagne was sent to a laboratory, and tested. As it turned out, there was nothing wrong with it, at least not medically. The virus that spread among the Spurs players was real, but it had nothing to do with food. Still, Spurs fans blame that lasagne, and the chef that served it. Just like the Yankees-Red Sox "Curse of the Bambino," the lasagne contagion never really existed, but it has taken on a life of its own, because the afflicted team's fans believed it. And so, to spite them, ever since, Arsenal fans have sung, to "Volare":

Lasagne, whoa!
Lasagne, whoa!
We laughed ourselves to bits
when Tottenham got the shits!

Which matches another Arsenal chant. I don't know how far back it goes, but it was already in place in early 2007:

Q: What do you think of Tottenham?
A: Shit!
Q: What do you think of shit?
A: Tottenham!
Q: Thank you!
A: That's all right! We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham! We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham! We hate Tottenham and we hate Tottenham! We are the Tottenham haters! (Usually followed by a variation on the Y-word.)

*

Tottenham would beat Arsenal in the 2008 League Cup Semifinal, and go on to win that trophy. But since Spurs' last FA Cup win in 1991, all they've won is the 1999 and 2008 League Cups. Over that same stretch, Arsenal have won the League 3 times and the FA Cup 9 times. But in that 2008 season, although Arsenal didn't come close to winning the League, they set a new record for earliest St. Totteringham's Day: March 9.

Arsenal slumped in the 2009-10 season, after staying in the League race until April. And an inspired Tottenham team clinched 4th place and a CL berth, while Arsenal only clinched 3rd, and a finish ahead of Spurs, on the last day.

In August 2011, riots broke out all over England. The first of them, and, in terms of property damage, the worst of them, was in Tottenham. While White Hart Lane itself had been spared any damage, the surrounding area had not. As a result, when the League season began 2 weeks later, the Premier League suspended Spurs' season opener. This would have consequences later, as the fixture list piled up (partly due to a bad Winter postponing some games).

By February 26, 2012, about the 2/3rds point of that season, Tottenham were 10 points ahead of Arsenal in the League, and Spurs fans spent weeks reminding Gooners, in the words of message on the trains of the London Underground, to "Mind the gap." (In America, it's usually "Please watch the gap.") And it was Derby Day. Arsenal fell behind 2-0, but stormed their way to a 5-2 win.

On May 13, in a reverse of 2006, Arsenal needed to match Tottenham's performance on the final day of the League season to guarantee 4th place and a CL place for next season, but were away, while Tottenham are home. It would either be the latest-ever St. Totteringham's Day, or there would be none at all that season.

And, sure enough, Tottenham beat fellow London club Fulham, 1-0. But, thanks to a goal by 2006 Spurs tormentor Yossi Benayoun, and a great late clearance by left back Kieran Gibbs, Arsenal beat Wigan, 3-2, and clinched 4th.

Spurs fans, yet again, got their hearts broken. Of course, this latest Spurs disaster wouldn't have happened if their fixture list hadn't been so congested, wearing their players down over the late Winter and the Spring. And that might not have happened if their 1st League game hadn't had to be rescheduled. And that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't "burned their own town."

They screwed themselves, and they screwed their club. This was like the Chicago Cubs losing a Pennant because of Steve Bartman -- except Bartman was just one man doing something he was legally entitled to do. The rioters were hundreds of people committing actual crimes.

2012 was the year singer Adele, a Tottenham native, would break out as a major star. She is known for singing songs of heartbreak, and she is a Spurs fan. Gee, do you think there's a connection? Arsenal beat Spurs 5-2 at the Emirates again on November 17, 2012. But on March 3, 2013, Tottenham won the rematch at The Lane, 2-1. This put Spurs 7 points ahead of Arsenal. Their manager at the time, Andre Villas-Boas, said that Arsenal were in "a downward spiral."

But Arsenal didn't lose a match for the rest of the season. And, on May 19, yet another record for latest St. Totteringham's Day (if they could do it), in another "Groundhog Day," they simply had to match Tottenham's performance on the final day to ensure that they finish 4th and Tottenham 5th.

Arsenal were away to Newcastle United, while Spurs were home to, oddly enough, Newcastle's arch-rivals, Sunderland. Defender Laurent Koscielny scored in the 52nd minute, and it was One-nil to The Arsenal. Somehow, fans at The Lane got the message that Newcastle had equalized, and that all Tottenham had to do was get one goal, and they would finish 4th. And they got that goal, and beat Sunderland, 1-0.

But Newcastle had not equalized -- or "equalised," as it would be spelled (or "spelt") in Britain -- and Arsenal won, 1-0. "Have Newcastle equalised yet?" joined "Lasagne" and "Mind the Gap" as a Gooner catchphrase, much as "Power shift in North London" had become a Spurs catchphrase -- prematurely, as it turned out.

The 2013-14 season was a milestone: For the 1st time, Arsenal won 3 games against Tottenham without losing any: Both League matches, and in the 3rd Round of the FA Cup. (In 1987, Arsenal won 3 games against Tottenham, but also lost one and drew one, as a result of the FA Cup Semifinal going to a replay after the two-legged regulation semifinal.)

St. Totteringham's Day came on April 28 -- 10 years ago today. But Spurs fans were still taunting Arsenal about not having won a trophy in 9 years. But Arsenal won the FA Cup in 2014. And again in 2015. And again in 2017. And again in 2020.

The 2015-16 season was Spurs' best chance to win the League since 1987. They battled upstarts Leicester City for the title all season. But Arsenal, which could only manage draws in both Derbies, beat Leicester twice, and snuck back in. With 4 games left, Spurs still had a reasonable chance. But they could only draw their last 2, and lost their last 2. With a miserable 5-1 loss away to Newcastle on May 15, not only did Leicester complete their "fairytale," but Arsenal finished 2nd, a point ahead of Spurs. The English media, normally so supportive of Spurs, said they had "finished third in a two-team race." They had "bottled it." And Arsenal fans, in their season-ending 4-0 home win over Aston Villa, celebrated St. Totteringham's Day, and sang, to the tune of "Sloop John B":

It's happened again!
It's happened again!

Tottenham Hotspur:

It's happened again!

But the long-predicted "power shift" finally came. A small but loud minority of Arsenal fans, convinced that Wenger had stayed too long, demanded his firing, and demanded that certain players be signed over Wenger's veto. This was done, and those players did not work out. The shift didn't happen because Spurs got better: If they did, it wasn't by much. It happened because Arsenal fell apart.

In 2017, Spurs finished 2nd, their highest finish since 1963, though 7 points behind title winners Chelsea; and Arsenal finished 5th, a whopping 11 points behind them. For the 1st time since 1995, there was no St. Totteringham's Day.

Spurs finished ahead of Arsenal in 2018 and 2019, too. The 2018-19 season featured the opening of the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, after nearly 2 full seasons playing "home games" at the new Wembley Stadium, across town. Oddly, the new stadium has not yet gotten a corporate name. I guess nobody wants the naming rights to the place. Spurs went from a stadium that was called "the shithole" to one that actually does look like a toilet seat.

But 2019 was also the year that Arsenal fans faced the nightmare scenario: Spurs nearly won the Champions League, something their own team hadn't done. Spurs pulled off some stunning upsets and comebacks, getting all to the Final, where they were outclassed by Liverpool.

In 2020, '21 and '22, Spurs made it 6 straight finishes ahead of Arsenal, even though Arsenal won 2 trophies in that stretch, Spurs none. Then, in 2022-23, Arsenal beat them home and away, and finished 2nd in the League, 5 points behind Man City. Spurs crashed to 8th, 24 points behind the Gunners. St. Totteringham's Day not only came for the 1st time in 6 years, it came relatively early, on April 21.

This season, 2023-24, Arsenal are in a 3-way fight for the title with Man City and Liverpool, the teams entering this day within 2 points of each other; while Spurs are in 5th, and likely to stay there. On September 24, the teams played to a 2-2 draw at the Emirates.

Today, they played each other at Spurs. An Arsenal win, or even a draw, would mean that Spurs cannot finish ahead of Arsenal in the League, and it will be St. Totteringham's Day. They are already doomed to a 16th consecutive season without a trophy, a 33rd straight season without the FA Cup, and a 63rd straight season without winning the League. Arsenal's comparative droughts? Respectively: 4, 4, and 20 years.

Arsenal took a 3-0 lead by halftime. Tottenham clawed back, and were still fighting in the 97th minute, but Arsenal won, 3-2. Happy St. Totteringham's Day!

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.