June 3, 1925: The 1st Goodyear Blimp

June 3, 1925, 100 years ago: The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company launches the Pilgrim, its 1st advertising airship, from Akron, Ohio, near the company's headquarters. It is the 1st "Goodyear Blimp."

Starting in the 1930s, airships began to be flown over sports stadiums, to provide overhead views for film cameras. In the 1960s, this grew to television cameras. In the 1970s, they began to be equipped with lighted message boards, for use in night games.

In 1975, Thomas Harris, later to write the Hannibal Lecter novels, published his 1st novel, Black Sunday. Although he used a fictional company's name for the blimp, he used a sporting event, the Super Bowl, as the plot point: He was going to have a terrorist use the blimp to explode over Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, as the Miami Dolphins played the Washington Redskins below. (That matchup had happened in 1973, at the Los Angeles Coliseum. It would happen again in 1983, also in the L.A. area, at the Rose Bowl.)

In 1977, Black Sunday was filmed, with cooperation from both Goodyear, which allowed one of its blimps to be used; and the NFL, which permitted film of Super Bowl X to be used. That game saw the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys, 21-17, at the Orange Bowl, so the story was rewritten to take place in Miami.

In 1985, with New York Mets legend Tom Seaver, then pitching for the Chicago White Sox, going for his 300th career win against the New York Yankees, Goodyear sent a blimp to cover the event at Yankee Stadium. I was at this game, and I saw the blimp begin drifting to its left, and looked like it might crash into the left-field stands. The pilot got it going forward again, and there was no Black Sunday situation, intentional or otherwise.

Eventually, other companies began to use blimps in advertising. Over the course of 2014 to 2017, Goodyear began retiring its older non-rigid airships, and replacing them with semi-rigid airships.

Also on June 3, 1925, Bernard Schwartz was born in The Bronx. We knew him as actor Tony Curtis, ex-husband of actress Janet Leigh, and father of actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Yanks-Dodgers Series Raises Questions

Going into last night's game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, the 3 worst games the Yankees had played in this decade are the last 2 games they've played against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Game 5 of last year's World Series, and the Friday and Saturday games of this series.

Friday night's game, and Saturday night's game, were each one of those games that makes a 16-4 run, like the one that preceded it, look meaningless.

As with that Game 5, the Yankees had an early lead, 5-2 after 3 innings. Aaron Judge, Austin Wells, Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt all hit home runs. Max Fried was on the mound, so it looked safe. But in the 5th, Fried had his 1st Yankee meltdown, including the 1st of 2 home runs by Shohei Ohtani, and the Dodgers ended up winning, 8-5.

The Saturday game was over early. Will Warren had a horrible first inning, allowing 4 runs and leaving the bases loaded, and Aaron Boone just sat there like a bump on a log, leaving him out there to squirm.

Will Warren allowed 4 runs in the 1st inning. Manager Aaron Boone left him in. He let Warren pitch to 4 batters in the 2nd inning: Walk, walk, groundout, 3-run homer. Finally, he took Warren out, having left him in for 1 & 1/3rd, 7 runs on 6 hits and 4 walks. That might be the worst start for a Yankee pitcher I've ever watched. It didn't have to be that way.

The 1st reliver, Brent Headrick, was no better. End of 2: Los Angeles 10, Yankees 0. And that was with both innings ending on an Ohtani K.

I know the Yankees' failures are more general manager Brian Cashman's fault than anyone else's, but I can't defend Boone for much longer.

Ten-nothing after two innings. Pardon my French, but... Oy gevalt.

My grandfather was a Jewish Yankee Fan from The Bronx. He told me that using the word "gevalt" twice in one day was bad luck. Well, that ship had sailed -- and it was the Lusitania.

The Dodgers scored 4 runs in the 1st, 6 in the 2nd, 9 in the 3rd, 0 in the 4th, and 4 in the 5th. 46004. That's a ZIP Code in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

When the carnage was over, the Dodgers had won, 18-2. Judge had hit 2 home runs, but so had Max Muncy. To put this in perspective: Counting his home runs, Judge reached base 3 times; the rest of the Yankees combined, hits and walks combined, 8.

The Friday night game was on Amazon Prime, which I don't have on my cable system. So I couldn't watch it. I was still better off than on Saturday, when I watched on Fox.

This made last night's game, the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game, a must-win. This time, the Yankees took the initiative, scoring 1 run in the 1st inning, 3 in the 3rd, and 2 in the 5th. That's a linescore of 10302. That's a ZIP Code in Staten Island. Ben Rice hit a home run.

Ryan Yarbrough gave the Yanks a strong start: 6 innings, 1 run, 4 hits, no walks, 5 strikeouts. Ryan's hope led to a bullpen that hung on, and the Yankees salvaged the finale, 7-3. They went 6-3 on the combined Los Angeles roadtrip, Angels and Dodgers.

*

We are now in June, 36 percent of the way through the regular season. The Yankees are 36-22, for a .620 winning percentage, a 100-62 pace. They lead the American League East by 5 1/2 games over the Toronto Blue Jays, 6 1/2 over the Tampa Bay Rays, 8 1/2 over the Boston Red Sox, and 14 over the Baltimore Orioles. Cliché Alert: In the all-important loss column, they lead the Jays by 6, the Rays by 7, the BoSox by 10 and the O's by 14.

They have done this with no Gerrit Cole, with no Luis Gil, with Clarke Schmidt out for the 1st month, with DJ LeMahieu and Jonathan Loáisiga out for the 1st month and a half, and with Jazz Chisholm out for the last 2 weeks. Except for Cole, no key player is, as yet, out for the season. The defending AL Champions are, with little doubt, still the best team in the AL.

And yet, the Dodgers managed to make them look very ordinary. Baseball doesn't work this way, but the Dodgers took the series 29-14 on aggregate. While these games officially meant no more than any other regular-season games, they had the atmosphere of postseason games, and they showed that maybe, just maybe, the Yankees are no better mentally prepared for the postseason than they were last season.

Sure, they won the Pennant, beating the Kansas City Royals 3 games to 1 and then the Cleveland Guardians 4 games to 1, but neither of those teams was much of a challenge: The Royals won 86 games; the Guardians, 92 -- to the Yankees' 94, and the Dodgers' 98. It's entirely possible that, had the Dodgers lost the National League Championship Series to the Mets, the Mets might have give the Yankees a lot of trouble, and possibly even reversed the result of the 2000 World Series. We have never let their fans live that down, and they would give us the same treatment.

So, clearly, something must be done, because we can't presume that the AL Playoffs will be as easy this time. And, since the Dodgers are likely to make the Playoffs again, we have to be prepared for them.

How do we do that? That is the question, possibly encompassing several sub-questions, that Boone and Cashman must answer between the start of June and the start of October.

June 1, 1925: Lou Gehrig's Streak Begins

June 1, 1925, 100 years ago: The New York Yankees lose to the Washington Senators, 5-3 at Yankee Stadium. Walter Johnson outpitched Sad Sam Jones. Sam Rice, the Senators' center fielder and leadoff hitter, headed for the Hall of Fame, went 5-for-5.

Despite their frequent billing as "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League," there was no shame, at that time, in losing to the Senators. They had won the World Series the year before, and would fall just 1 game short of doing it again. But after staying in the Pennant race late in 1919 and 1920, winning the American League Pennant in 1921 and 1922, winning the World Series in 1923, and finished only 2 games behind the Senators in 1924, the Yankees were a mess.

Babe Ruth had only recently made his season debut, after an illness that still baffles baseball historians to this day. And a bunch of the players who had helped them win those 3 straight Pennants simply weren't hitting: 1st baseman Wally Pipp was batting .244, 2nd baseman Aaron Ward was at .255, shortstop Everett Scott was at .224, center fielder Whitey Witt was at .194, and catcher Wally Schang was at .247.

Scott didn't play in this game. Paul "Pee Wee" Wanninger did. He was the 1st New York-based shortstop nicknamed Pee Wee, but he was no Harold "Pee Wee" Reese.

Pipp. Ward. Scott. Witt. Schang. All 5 of these players would be replaced as starters by the time the 1926 season began. And the players they got would help them win another 3 straight Pennants, losing the World Series in 1926, but sweeping it in 1927 and 1928.

Schang wasn't exactly replaced. The Yankees tried Benny Bengough, Mike Gazella and Pat Collins, but it would take until Bill Dickey became the starter in 1929 for them to again have an elite catcher. It is an oddity that the 1927 Yankees, known as "Murderers' Row," have often been considered the greatest team in baseball history without having a great catcher.

But Witt had already been replaced in center field by Earle Combs, who would go on to became a Hall-of-Famer. Ward was replaced at 2nd base by Tony Lazzeri, who also went to the Hall of Fame. Scott was replaced at shortstop by Mark Koenig, a decent player.

As for Pipp... He was batting .244 after going 1-for-4 in this game. That's why he was replaced. Yes, later in the year, he was hit in the head by a batting-practice pitch, as the myth says. But he had already been replaced as the starting 1st baseman by that point. It's also not true that Pipp never played again. He did play, and well -- but for teams other than the Yankees.

His replacement, who had previously made only 34 major league appearances, pinch-hit for Wanninger with 1 out in the bottom of the 8th inning. He flew out to left fielder Goose Goslin, and replaced Pipp at 1st base in the 9th inning.

The next day, he started at 1st base, going 3-for-5. Bob Meusel hit 2 home runs, and the Yankees beat the Senators, 8-5. It was the 2nd of what would turn out to be 2,130 consecutive games. His name was Lou Gehrig. He became the greatest first baseman in the history of baseball.