Every so often, I point out that the Yankees haven't won a World Series under a Republican President since 1958, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in office. "The Ike Age."
Then again, having Joe Biden in office will matter for many things, but perhaps not this one: It's not who's running the country that matters to the Yankees' success, but who's running the team. As long as Brian Cashman is the Yankees' chief executive, they're not going to win another Pennant.
Major League Sports Teams that won their last World Championship when Joe Biden was President: The Atlanta Braves, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Donald Trump: The Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Washington Nationals, the Toronto Raptors, the St. Louis Blues, the New England Patriots, the Boston Red Sox, the Golden State Warriors, the Washington Capitals, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Houston Astros, the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Barack Obama: The Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Denver Broncos, the Kansas City Royals, the Chicago Blackhawks, the San Francisco Giants, the San Antonio Spurs, the Los Angeles Kings, the Seattle Seahawks, the Miami Heat, the Baltimore Ravens, the New York Giants, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Dallas Mavericks, the Boston Bruins, the Green Bay Packers, the New Orleans Saints, the New York Yankees, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
George W. Bush: The Philadelphia Phillies, the Boston Celtics, the Detroit Red Wings, the Anaheim Ducks, the Indianapolis Colts, the Carolina Hurricanes, the Chicago White Sox, the Detroit Pistons, the Miami Marlins, the New Jersey Devils, the Los Angeles Angels, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Colorado Avalanche.
Bill Clinton: The St. Louis (now Los Angeles) Rams, the Dallas Stars, the Chicago Bulls, the Dallas Cowboys, the Houston Rockets, the San Francisco 49ers, the New York Rangers, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Montreal Canadiens.
George H.W. Bush: The Washington Redskins (now the Washington Football Team), the Minnesota Twins, the Cincinnati Reds, the Edmonton Oilers, the Oakland Athletics, the Calgary Flames.
Ronald Reagan: The New York Mets, the Chicago Bears, the Detroit Tigers, the Los Angeles (now Las Vegas) Raiders), the Baltimore Orioles, the Philadelphia 76ers, the New York Islanders.
Jimmy Carter: The Pittsburgh Pirates, the Seattle SuperSonics, the Washington Bullets, the Portland Trail Blazers.
Gerald Ford: The Philadelphia Flyers.
Richard Nixon: The Miami Dolphins, the New York Knicks.
Lyndon Johnson: The New York Jets, the Cleveland Browns.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The St. Louis (now Atlanta) Hawks, the Detroit Lions.
Harry Truman: The Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings), the Cleveland Indians (now the Cleveland Guardians), the Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals.
If you don't see your favorite team in a particular sport here, it's because they've never won a World Championship. I didn't include MLS, its predecessor the NASL, or the WNBA.
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November 6, 1816: James Monroe is elected President. Secretary of State to outgoing President James Madison, also formerly Secretary of War, Governor of Virginia, U.S. Ambassador to Britain and France, and Colonel in the Continental Army -- he's the young man seen holding the flag in the famous, if erroneous, painting Washington Crossing the Delaware -- the nominee of the Democratic-Republican Party wins 68 percent of the popular vote, and 183 Electoral Votes.
The Federalist Party disintegrated during the War of 1812, due to its having agitated the country into the war, and its feckless peace offerings during it. They had nominated Senator Rufus King of New York, who won just 31 percent of the vote, and 34 Electoral Votes. He turned out to be the last Federalist nominee for President. Soon, the Democratic-Republicans would split into the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party, later to become the Whig Party.
November 6, 1854: John Philip Sousa is born in Washington, D.C. Perhaps the most famous American of Portuguese descent, he conducted the U.S. Marine Band, playing for Presidents, then formed his own band. The Sousa Band toured from 1892 until 1931, and he died the next year.
"The March King" composed and conducted songs that are still remembered today, most notably "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (1897). In 1923, his band played "The Star-Spangled Banner" before the 1st game at Yankee Stadium.
November 6, 1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th President of the United States. He is the 1st nominee of the Republican Party to win the Presidency, making the Republicans the 1st, and to this day the only, "third party" to elect a President.
Thanks to a split in the Democratic Party, and the Whig Party (to which Lincoln once belonged) totally dissolving, he wins with 39 percent of the vote, the lowest percentage of any winner in the election's history.
But the former Congressman from Illinois did win a majority of the Electoral Votes: 180. Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky won 72, Senator John Bell of Tennessee won 39, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois -- who had beaten Lincoln for that office just 2 years earlier -- won 12. Douglas finished 2nd in the popular vote, with 29 percent. Breckinridge had 18, and Bell 12.
In spite of the fact that Lincoln said, at the time, that he didn't want to abolish slavery entirely, only stop it from spreading to new States and Territories, the Southern States began to secede the next month. Outgoing President James Buchanan, a moral coward who thought the Constitution didn't allow him to do anything to stop it, did nothing to stop it. The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861. It would take Lincoln 4 years to win it.
You've heard the saying, "Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came?" Well, in February 1861,
Douglas held a peace conference at Willard's Hotel in Washington, and nobody came. Despite their disagreements on several issues, including slavery, once the war began, Douglas took a train tour of the Midwest, rallying support for the Union cause. But he was stricken with typhoid fever, and died on June 3. He was only 48 years old, 4 years younger than Lincoln was.
Breckinridge was appointed to the U.S. Senate, but enlisted in the Confederate Army, and was expelled from the Senate. He was a terrible General, but President Jefferson Davis appointed him Secretary of War in February 1865. He urged Davis to surrender, but was refused. He escaped after the fall of Richmond, and lived abroad for 3 years, until Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson extended amnesty to all former Confederates. Breckinridge died in 1875, at 54: He was 12 years younger than Lincoln, but died 2 years younger.
Bell was the only one who outlived Lincoln both in calendar years and in actual years. He supported the Union until the war began, then switched sides. He lived until 1869, age 73.
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November 6, 1861, 160 years ago: James Naismith (no middle name) is born in Almonte (now part of Mississippi Mills), Ontario, outside the Canadian capital of Ottawa. He graduated from Montreal's McGill University, where he lettered in lacrosse, gymnastics, soccer, rugby, and the Canadian version of gridiron football. He was hired as McGill's athletic director in 1890, but just a year later, he was hired by the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, what is now Springfield, College.
He was asked to invent a game that could be played indoors in the Winter, when baseball and football couldn't be played. He knew he should start with a ball, but a large, soft one, like a soccer ball, not a small, hard one like a baseball, which would be dangerous in the confined space of a gymnasium. He noted that most of the rough action took place around the goal: The goal in soccer, hockey or lacrosse, the end zone in football or rugby, or home plate in baseball. So he thought he could reduce the danger by raising the goal.
He asked the custodian to get him a box, because he had invented boxball. The custodian could only find a peach basket. So Dr. Naismith had invented basketball instead. The date was December 21, 1891.
Through the influence of the YMCA's worldwide organization, the word was spread. Naismith became the head coach at the University of Kansas, which became one of the great college basketball programs. He died in 1939, at the age of 78, at their Lawrence campus. Within the last 4 years of his life, he had seen the debut of sold-out doubleheaders involving national powers at Madison Square Garden, the debut of basketball as an official medal sport at the Olympic Games, and the foundation of the NIT and NCAA Tournament.
November 6, 1865: The last "grand match" of the baseball season takes place at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn, before 15‚000. The Atlantics lead all the way to defeat fellow Brooklynites the Eckfords, 27-24‚ and claim the 1865 championship with a record of 17-0.
Henry Chadwick, America's 1st real sportswriter: "Is there another sport attractive enough to draw such attendance under such circumstances? In the summer it is not surprising as the weather is pleasant... but on a cold November day‚ in the busiest time of the year‚ it must be indeed an attractive sport to collect such an assemblage that is present on this occasion."
Named for a famed hill in Rome, the Capitoline Grounds, a 5,000-seat wooden stadium opened in 1864, was meant to rival and surpass the Union Grounds. The Atlantics made it their home, and, like the Union Grounds, it became a skating rink in the winter.
But it was demolished in 1880. It was on a plot of land bounded by what's now Halsey Street, Marcy Street, Putnam Avenue and Nostrand Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant. To visit, take the A or C train to Nostrand Avenue. While this neighborhood, notorious for crime not that long ago, should be safe during the day, definitely do not visit at night.
November 6, 1869: What is generally recognized as the 1st college football game is played. Rutgers College plays the College of New Jersey, on Rutgers' campus in New Brunswick.
The game is essentially a very large soccer game, with a round leather ball, and 25 men on a side. The Rutgers men, finding the color inexpensive to obtain, wrap scarlet red cloth around their heads like turbans, so that they can tell each other apart on the field. Thus did they invent school colors and, in a way, the football helmet.
The men of Old Queens must have had less trouble telling team from team than did the men of Old Nassau, as Rutgers won, 6-4 -- that's 6 goals to 4, or 42-28 under today's scoring system.
The next week, the CNJ men returned the favor in Princeton, and won, 8-0. There was supposed to be a 3rd game, but the college presidents got together and decided that too much emphasis was being placed on athletics, and forbade it.
The field where "the first football game" was played is now the parking lot for Rutgers' College Avenue Gym. Rutgers played at College Field until 1891, then opened Neilson Field across the street, playing there until 1938, when Rutgers Stadium opened across the River in Piscataway. The Alexander Library, the school's main library, was built on the site of Neilson Field in 1953. Rutgers Stadium was replaced on the same site by what's now named SHI Stadium in 1994, while they played their 1993 home games, and many others from 1976 to 2009, at Giants Stadium.
George Large of Rutgers was the last surviving player from this game, living until August 15, 1939, age 88. The native of Readington, Hunterdon County played on the Rutgers side, and in 1888 served as President of the State Senate, making him the Acting Governor on a few occasions.
In 1874, Harvard University would accept a challenge from McGill University in Montreal, and discover on their arrival that by "football," McGill meant "rugby," not "soccer." Adjustments were made, Harvard liked the results, and convinced the other "football"-playing schools to join them in this adaptation of "football." In 1906, the forward pass was legalized and hashmarks prevented dangerous scrimmages close to the sideline. "Football" as America knows it now was on its way.
In 1896, the College of New Jersey changed its name to Princeton University, while a nearby school would later be founded as Trenton State College, and change its name to The College of New Jersey. Rutgers College would become, and remains, the centerpiece of the larger system of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
Princeton's nickname, the Tigers, would inspire 2 professional team names: Baseball's Detroit Tigers and the Canadian Rugby Union's Hamilton Tigers, now the Canadian Football League's Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Rutgers was known as "The Queensmen" until 1925, when they became the Chanticleers, after a fighting rooster. The school's literary magazine was already called The Chanticleer. But this carried the connotation of "chicken" -- and, as the University of South Carolina has found out with their similarly-named Gamecocks, they can be called "Cocks." In 1955, head coach Harvey Harman recommended the change to the Scarlet Knights, and such they have been ever since.
Rutgers and Princeton did not always play once a year, sometimes missing years, sometimes playing twice a year. But Rutgers did not beat Princeton again until 1938, the dedication game for the original Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway. breaking a 33-game losing streak over 69 years. Princeton still dominated until Rutgers won 4 straight from 1958 to 1961, the latter an undefeated season. Then, Princeton won another 6 straight.
Then Rutgers began to make what it called a commitment to big-time football. From 1968 onward, they went 9-3-1 against Princeton, which included winning the last 5 games by scores of 17-0, 10-6, 24-0, 38-14 and 44-13. This further included the 1st appearance by either school on national television, the 100th Anniversary Game at Rutgers Stadium on September 27, 1969, a 29-0 Rutgers win; and Rutgers' 1976 undefeated season.
Princeton decided that they couldn't remain in the Ivy League and also compete on the same level as Rutgers and the other schools that had formed the Big East Conference for all sports but football, and eventually would for football as well. (Most of those are now in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but Rutgers is in the Big Ten, and West Virginia is in the Big 12.) So Princeton called off the series, still holding an enormous 53-17-1 edge. The rivalry does continue in other sports.
Rutgers continues to bill itself as "The Birthplace of College Football," or simply "The Birthplace." You know the joke: Rutgers invented football in 1869, and they haven't done a damn thing since. It's not quite true, but it's bad enough. For example: On November 6, 2021, at home, Rutgers lost to Wisconsin 52-3.
November 6, 1888: Benjamin Harrison is elected the 23rd President of the United States. The former U.S. Senator from Indiana, and grandson of 9th President William Henry Harrison, wins 233 Electoral Votes, defeating incumbent President Grover Cleveland, who had 168.
But Cleveland won the popular vote, 48.6 percent to 47.8. Matthew Quay, Republican boss of Pennsylvania, practically came out and admitted that he had the State's 30 Electoral Votes stolen for Harrison. If true (and it probably is), then the vote should have been 203-198 in Harrison's favor. Meaning that, if 1 more State was "stolen," then Cleveland should have been re-elected.
Indeed, 4 years later, after a hard Presidency with recession and labor strife, Harrison lost his bid for re-election, and Cleveland became the only former President ever to regain the office.*
November 6, 1900: President William McKinley is re-elected. As in 1896, he defeats Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan, 51.6 percent of the popular vote to 45.5, and 292 Electoral votes to 156.
Garret Hobart, McKinley's 1st Vice President, had died in office in 1899, so he needed a new one. He chose Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York, because his svengali, Ohio Republican boss Mark Hanna, though TR was making too much noise as Governor, thinking he'd be silenced as Vice President. He told McKinley he had to live, to keep "that damned cowboy" out of the White House.
On September 6, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition, a World's Fair in Buffalo, McKinley was shot. He died 8 days later, and TR was President of the United States. In 1904, Hanna died, and TR won a term of his own.
November 6, 1927: Martin Nicholas Pavelich is born in Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. A left wing, he played for the Detroit Red Wings, and was assigned as a "shadow," to shut down opposing teams' best attackers, particularly Maurice "The Rocket" Richard of the Montreal Canadiens.
He won 4 Stanley Cups with the Wings, and is the last surviving player from the 1950 Cup team, 1 of 4 surviving players from 1952, 1 of 4 from 1954, and 1 of 5 from 1955.
He appears not to be related to Mark Pavelich, a native of Eveleth, Minnesota who won the Olympic Gold Medal with the 1980 U.S. hockey team, and later played for the Rangers and Minnesota North Stars, and was an original 1991-92 San Jose Shark.
November 6, 1928: Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover is elected President, with a whopping 58 percent of the vote, and 444 Electoral Votes. The Democrats had nominated Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, the 1st Catholic ever nominated by a major party. He won just 40.8 percent, a figure exceeded by all but 2 Democratic nominees since (George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984), and took just 8 States, worth 87 Electoral Votes.
In his nationally-syndicated newspaper column, humorist Will Rogers wrote that Smith's supporters "are going to be shocked at how much of the country lives west of the Hudson River." He was right, as Smith was too New Yorky for the rest of the country, including most of New York State.
Indeed, New York was not 1 of the 8 States he won. He won the 2 most Catholic States in the nation, Massachusetts and Rhode Island; and 6 "Solid South" States that, at the time, would never go for a Republican, still thought of as "the Party of Lincoln": South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. Smith didn't even get the entire South: Hoover won Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Texas.
Had Smith been a Protestant, from a small town rather than the biggest city, with a pleasant voice instead of a N'Yawk accent, in favor of keeping Prohibition rather than repealing it, and not connected to the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine that dominated New York State and especially New York City, he still would have lost, as Hoover rode the Republican prosperity of the Roaring Twenties.
Despite the Hoover landslide, Franklin D. Roosevelt, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1920 Democratic nominee for Vice President, and cousin of the late former President Theodore Roosevelt, is narrowly elected to succeed Smith as Governor. Someone asked Smith if FDR, one of his biggest backers, was going to be a rival that would prevent him from getting the Democratic nomination again in 1932. Smith, noting that Roosevelt had been dealing with the effects of polio since 1921, said, "No, he will be dead within a year."
Within a year of the 1928 election, the stock market had crashed, and, barring a major scandal, the Democratic nominee was going to win in 1932. Smith tried for that nomination. He lost it. To FDR. FDR became President. Smith became one of his fiercest critics. And, in the end, in spite of FDR's health difficulties, Smith died 6 months before he did.
Also on this day, William Donald Wilson is born in Central City, Nebraska. A center fielder, Bill Wilson started with the Chicago White Sox, and was with the Philadelphia Athletics when they moved, hitting the 1st home run in Kansas City Athletics history on April 12, 1955. But that was to be his last season in the major leagues. He, Bobby Shantz and Bill Harrington are the last 3 living former Philadelphia Athletics.
November 6, 1929: With the field at the Cycledrome -- a 10,000-seat bicycle racing track with a football field almost fully squeezed into it -- so waterlogged that the referees will not permit play, the Providence Steam Roller, defending NFL Champions, move their scheduled game with the Chicago Cardinals to their former home, Kinsley Park. This 6,000-seat stadium has floodlights, and so, this becomes the 1st night game in NFL history.
The Cardinals win, 16-0, but the gate receipts from the sellout crowd count the same. And, with the stock market having crashed a few days ago, the Steam Roller need all the help they can get. As it turns out, it's not enough: The team gets through the 1930 and '31 NFL seasons, drops out, holds on in another league through 1933, and folds, a victim of the Great Depression. Kinsley Park was torn down in 1933, and no trace of it remains.
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November 6, 1946, 75 years ago: Edward John DeBartolo Jr. is born in Youngstown, Ohio. He and his father Edward Sr. developed the Edward J. DeBartolo Group, which, under Eddie's leadership, became the Simon Property Group. It built in 1972, and still maintains, the Brunswick Square Mall in my native East Brunswick, New Jersey.
Also in New Jersey, it runs the Menlo Park Mall in Edison, Newport Centre in Jersey City, The Mills at Jersey Gardens in Elizabeth, the Ocean County Mall in Toms River, the Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrence, Jersey Shore Premium Outlets in Tinton Falls, and Jackson Premium Outlets near Great Adventure. On Long Island, it runs Roosevelt Field in Garden City, and the Walt Whitman Mall in Huntington. In the Hudson Valley, it runs The Westchester in White Plains, The Shops at Nanuet, and Woodbury Common Premium Outlets.
But the DeBartolos are better known for their sports teams. Edward Sr. owned the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins, and let his daughter Denise DeBartolo York run them, winning their 1st 2 Stanley Cups. Eddie owned the San Francisco 49ers, seeing them win 5 Super Bowls. A 1998 controversy led him to sell the team to his sister, her husband John York, and their son Jed York. (NFL rules prevent a majority owner of a team in another sport from being majority owner of an NFL team, so she had to sell the Penguins to become the 49ers' operational owner.)
Despite the troubles he got into, "Mr. D" is still one of the few NFL owners who was truly beloved by his players, and was recently elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is the only living current or former NFL team owner in the Hall. He is also a member of the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame.
Also on this day, Sally Margaret Field is born in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California. We like her. We really, really like her.
November 6, 1947: Meet the Press debuts on NBC. It is still on the air after 74 years, making it the longest-running program in television history, anywhere in the world.
Oddly for its era, the 1st moderator was a woman, Martha Rountree. She was succeeded in 1953 by Ned Brooks, who held the post until 1965, Lawrence Spivak until 1975, Bill Monroe (not the country singer) until 1984, Marvin Kalb until 1987, Chris Wallace until 1989, Garrick Utley until 1991, and then its longest-running host, Tim Russert, until his death in 2008. He was succeeded by David Gregory, and then Chuck Todd was named host in 2014.
Herbert Hoover appeared on the show as an old man in 1955. Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower never did. But every President since John F. Kennedy has, although as the incumbent President, only Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have. So far, Donald Trump has not, and I suspect it will stay that way, although he made 5 appearances before taking office, including in 1999, before he began to worm his way into politics.
Athletes do not usually appear on the show, often mocked as Meet the Depressed and Press the Meat.
But Russert, a Buffalo native, loved to interview them. During Autumn, he would conclude the show's usual tagline with a reference to his hometown team: "If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press. Go Bills."
Russert liked to challenge Democrats and Republicans alike, and, with a graphic or a clip ready to go, made, "Senator, let me show you... " the 5 scariest words in Washington. Today, Todd shows an obvious favoritism toward conservatives, which has earned him the nickname "Chuck Toad."
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November 6, 1951, 70 years ago: Louise Williams (no middle name) is born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The actress, known professionally as Liberty Williams, got her start as Debbie Morgenstern, Rhoda's sister, on a 1973 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She was a regular on the short-lived series Bustin' Loose, 13 Queens Boulevard and Baby Makes Five. She appeared in 2 different episodes of Three's Company, in 2 different roles, 3 years apart.
She is best known as the voice of Jayna, the Wonder Twin who could take the form of any animal, on the Super Friends cartoons. Although she has had no acting credits since 1990, she is still alive.
November 6, 1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower is re-elected. Despite concerns over his health (he'd had a heart attack in September 1955, and had been hospitalized again in June, possibly for another heart attack that the White House didn't want to talk about), the fitness for office of Vice President Richard Nixon, and how "Ike" had handled the recent crises in Hungary and Egypt, he wins 57 percent of the popular vote, and 457 Electoral Votes.
Former Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois fares no better in the rematch than he did in 1952, winning just 42 percent, and 73 Electoral Votes. Stevenson won only 7 States: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri. In the other 41 States, he comes close only in Tennessee.
November 6, 1981, 40 years ago: Larry Holmes defends the Heavyweight Championship of the World at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, against Renaldo Snipes. Snipes knocks Holmes down in the 7th round, but Holmes gets up at the count of 4, and knocks Snipes out in the 11th.
Snipes was 22-0 going into the fight, with his last 2 fights being wins over former WBA Light Heavyweight Champion Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and eventual WBA Heavyweight Champion Gerrie Coetzee.
But from here on out, he went just 17-8-1, fighting 3 future partial Heavyweight Champions, beating Trevor Berbick (WBC), but losing to Tim Witherspoon (WBC and WBA, though not at the same time, and who would, in 1983, come closer to beating Holmes) and Greg Page (WBA). He was supposed to fight Mike Tyson in 1990, but broke his hand, and it never happened. He was replaced as Tyson's opponent by James "Buster" Douglas, and the rest is history.
Snipes is now 65, and a charity fundraiser. He says, "I had a good career. I made good friends. I keep in contact with my friends, and I'm healthy." That's more than a lot of ex-boxers can say.
November 6, 1983: This is the date on which the sci-fi/fantasy series Stranger Things begins, with an attack from the dimension known as "The Upside Down" on the lab in Hawkins, Indiana that opened a portal to it.
November 6, 1991, 30 years ago: Arsenal host Benfica at Highbury in North London, in the 2nd leg of the 2nd round of what turns out to be the last European Cup tournament under that name. The following season, 1992-93, it was rebranded as the UEFA Champions League. Since the Heysel Ban kept defending Football League Champions Arsenal from playing in the 1989-90 edition, this was only their 2nd time in it, following a run to the Quarterfinal in 1971-72.
Two weeks earlier, Arsenal had gone to Lisbon, Portugal, and held Benfica, that country's most storied sports team, to a 1-1 draw (with Kevin Campbell scoring) in front of 120,000 people in their Estádio da Luz. In order to have a playing facility that met modern safety standards (no standing terraces, with dangerous overcrowding), that stadium was demolished and rebuilt on the same site in 2003, and its current capacity is 64,642. The English translation of the name, "Stadium of Light," was applied to North-East club Sunderland's new stadium built in 1997. The new Benfica stadium's design would eventually inspire the design of Arsenal's new Emirates Stadium, which opened in 2006.
With the tie level, and with an away goal, and this being a Benfica squad far beneath their European Cup winners of 1961 and 1962, Arsenal fans were confident of victory and advancement. But after a 1-1 halftime score (2-2 on aggregate, 1-1 on away goals), Arsenal's defense leaked twice, and Benfica won 3-1, to advance 4-2.
This was one of the most humiliating defeats in Arsenal's history, in literally the biggest game that George Graham ever managed. (Any European Cup/Champions League match is bigger than a European Cup Winners' Cup Final.) Ironically, the only Arsenal goal on this night was scored by Colin Pates, taking the Number 4 place in midfield vacated by Graham's foolish sale of Michael Thomas (to Liverpool, of all teams to send the 1989 title-clinching goalscorer to) the preceding off-season.
Fans who came of age in the Graham years (1986-95) loved to compare his record in European play with that of Arsène Wenger (1996-2018), who consistently kept the team in the Champions League, reaching the Final in 2006 and the Semifinal in 2009, but never won a European trophy, while Graham won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1994 -- a tournament so insignificant that UEFA folded it into the UEFA Cup (now the Europa League) in 1999.
But this game had everything they loved to hate about Wenger: An Arsenal side weakened due to selling off one of the team's best players, a poor defense, "shit tactics," and a spectacular failure in European competition, which could be called a loss to "farmers."
Just 9 weeks later came the 3rd Round of the FA Cup, a trip to North Wales that became known as "The Wrexham Disaster." That game, a loss to a team then in Division Four, has often been cited as Graham's most disgraceful defeat. Yes, it was bad. But it wasn't as bad as blowing a 2nd-leg home tie in a European Cup knockout round.
Graham was lucky that this happened before the Internet Age, before the dawn of social media, and before the starting of Arsenal Fan TV.
November 6, 1999: Conseco Fieldhouse opens in Indianapolis, replacing the Market Square Arena. The Indiana Pacers beat the Boston Celtics, 115-108, and go on to win the NBA Eastern Conference title for the 1st time. But they will lose the NBA Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers.
The building was renamed Bankers Life Fieldhouse in 2011, and Gainbridge Fieldhouse this year.
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November 6, 2001, 20 years ago: Major League Baseball votes to contract its number of teams, something that hasn't happened in 102 years. The vote to contract from 30 teams to 28 is 28-2. It is not revealed who the 2 teams to vote against it were, but the rumor is that it's the 2 teams most often mentioned as the ones to be dropped: The Minnesota Twins and the Montreal Expos.
The 30-team setup remains in place, pending a new collective bargaining agreement, as the old one runs out in the 2002 season. But the CBA that is approved keeps all 30 teams. MLB ends up getting rid of the Expos anyway: After the 2004 season, they are moved, to become the Washington Nationals.
But the Twins make the most of their reprieve: They win the American League Central Division the next 3 seasons, and in 6 of the next 9, concluding in 2010, their 1st season in Target Field, after moving out of the oft-mocked Metrodome.
Today, both franchises are as strong as ever, at least business-wise, and MLB has again begun to consider expansion, from 30 teams to 32.
November 6, 2002: The West Wing airs the episode "Election Night." President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is re-elected, but shows signs that his multiple sclerosis will be an issue in his 2nd term. Also, Deputy White House Communications Director Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) discovers that he will have to keep a promise he made to the widow of the Democrat running for Congress in his home district in Southern California.
This episode debuts Joshua Malina as Will Bailey, and Danica McKellar as his half-sister and campaign assistant Elsie Snuffin.
This episode should not be confused with the episode "Election Day," which resolves the storyline from this next entry:
November 6, 2005: The West Wing airs the episode "The Debate." It is a live episode, and the only episode of the show that is broadcast on videotape instead of film. Running to replace Bartlet are Republican Senator Arnold Vinick of California (M*A*S*H's Alan Alda) and Democratic Congressman Matthew Santos of Texas (L.A. Law's Jimmy Smits).
This occurs only 3 years after the episode showing Bartlet's re-election, because in the 2003-04 TV season, the show jumped from the middle of Year 5 of his Administration to the middle of Year 6, due to the fact that the actors' contracts all ran out after the show's 7th season.
