September 8, 1974: Evel Knievel at the Snake River Canyon

September 8, 1974, 50 years ago: Evel Knievel tries to jump over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho, on a "sky-cycle."

For people too young to remember Knievel (pronounced Keh-NEE-vil), he was the kind of figure who defies description. He was a 1970s phenomenon, a proper coming together of man and moment, hero and hype level. He was the King of the Daredevils, wearing star-spangled jumpsuits, big collars, big belts with big buckles, and making a fool of himself in Las Vegas. Which makes him sound like the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, except Elvis also had some great shows in Vegas.

Robert Craig Knievel was born on October 17, 1938 in Butte, Montana. He claimed he'd adopted the stage name "Evel Knievel" after being arrested for, no joke, reckless driving, and sharing a cell with a man known as William "Awful" Knofel. He made it "Evel" instead of "Evil," and wore white instead of black, because he didn't want anyone to think he was associated with motorcycle gangs like the Hell's Angels.

He participated in rodeos, ski jumping events, and served in the U.S. Army before marrying Linda Joan Bork and starting a semi-pro hockey team. To support his family, Knievel started the Sur-Kill Guide Service, and later worked as an insurance salesman.

Eventually, he opened a Honda motorcycle dealership in Washington, D.C., but faced difficulties promoting Japanese imports. After the dealership closed, Knievel worked at a motorcycle shop where he learned motocross stunts that would later contribute to his daredevil career.

He put together a show featuring other bikers, and called it Evel Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils. He gradually increased the number of cars he could jump over, until June 19, 1966, in Missoula, in his home State of Montana: He tried to jump 12 cars and a cargo van, but his back wheel hit the top of the van, he fell, and he ended up with a broken arm and several broke ribs. But he survived, and that began his legend.

On March 25, 1967, he cleared 15 cars at Ascot Park in Gardena, California. He tried that again on July 28, 1967, in Graham, Washington. He landed his cycle on the last vehicle, a panel truck, was thrown from his bike, and suffered a serious concussion. He went back there on August 18, and his injuries were more serious.

He recovered and, on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1967, the same day that CBS broadcast the NFL Championship Game -- the Ice Bowl in Green Bay -- Knievel tried to jump 140 feet, over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. He wanted it broadcast live on ABC Wide World of Sports. ABC said no: They told him to film it, and, if they thought it worthwhile, they would buy it, would broadcast it later. So Knievel got two friends to film it: Actor-director John Derek, and Derek's then-wife Linda Evans.

He did the jump, but he couldn't stick the landing, and was thrown over the handlebars. This was his worst set of injuries yet. But he didn't die. He lived to jump again, and was doing so by March 25, 1968. ABC refused to buy the Caesars film. As his legend grew, his production company rented the film to ABC, which would, eventually broadcast it -- many times.

On January 7 and 8, 1971, he sold out the Astrodome in Houston on back-to-back days. On the following February 28, he jumped 19 cars at the Ontario Motor Speedway in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, California. Doug Senecal was then 10 years old and living in Massachusetts, and was fascinated. In 2015, using the name Doug Danger, he wore the same costume and drove the same cycle that Knievel used in the Ontario jump, and set a new record, jumping 22 cars in Sturgis, South Dakota.

On March 3, 1972, at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco, Knievel made a successful jump, but, because of a short landing area, tried to stop short, and got hurt. He didn't get back to jumping until November 10, 1973. It was on this occasion that ABC finally agreed to put him on Wide World live, for what would be the 1st of 6 such appearances. There were 50 cars stacked at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and he got over them successfully, and landed successfully.

As far back as 1968, Knievel told the media that his dream was to jump from one side of the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the other. But the Canyon is included in the National Park system, controlled by the U.S. Department of the Interior, which denied him every time he asked, no matter what safety precautions he suggested. In 1971, while flying from one stunt to another, he was over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho, and he was struck by its natural beauty. Since the federal government had no control over that, that's what he set his mind on.

ABC refused to broadcast this one, fearing that he was finally going to be killed. Of course, they were already set to broadcast the Heavyweight Championship fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, which had people thinking that Foreman might actually kill Ali in the ring. (Instead, Ali knocked Foreman out.) And Wide World of Sports broadcast all kinds of dangerous events, from cliff diving in Mexico to all kinds of auto races: The Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Formula 1 and Grand Prix in Europe and South America. So who was kidding who?

So Knievel hired boxing promoter Bob Arum's company, Top Rank Productions, to put the event on closed-circuit television, and broadcast it to movie theaters, as if it were a major prizefight.

By this point, Knievel had learned that you couldn't just guess, or do it "by feel." He had accepted that he had to embrace the science of it -- which meant hiring people smarter than himself to figure it out. An ordinary motorcycle wasn't going to be able to do it. He hired aeronautical engineers Doug Malewicki and Robert Truax to build him a rocket-powered vehicle to jump across the Snake River.

On September 8, 1974, at 3:36 PM Mountain Time -- 5:36 Eastern -- the Skycycle was launched at the south rim of the Snake River Canyon, west of Shoshone Falls, Idaho. But the launch caused the drogue parachute to prematurely deploy, resulting in too much drag. The vehicle did reach a point over the north rim, but the wind caught the parachute, and blew it back to the south side of the canyon. The Skycycle crashed into the rock wall, and viewers were sure that Knievel had been killed.

Instead, at that point, crashing into the rock wall was the better option. He survived with only minor injuries. But he couldn't get out of the vehicle himself: His harness had malfunctioned. Had he landed in the water, he would have drowned before the rescue crew could get to him.

He had failed. But he had lived. The spectacle mattered more than the result. And, with Watergate reaching a climax that day with President Ford pardoning former President Nixon, America needed this kind of distraction. Evel Knievel had become the biggest thing in America.

On May 26, 1975, Wide World of Sports broadcast his attempt to jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London. These were not the "double-decker buses" that London is known for, but they were certainly taller than the kind of cars he was used to jumping. Frank Gifford, who was part of CBS' broadcast crew for the Ice Bowl, and wasn't there at Caesars, had since come to ABC, and had become friends with Knievel, and was the lead broadcaster for this event.

Over 90,000 people saw Knievel take off with not enough speed, and he hit the landing ramp with his front wheel, causing the bike to "trampoline" up, throwing him. His landing would have been bad enough, but the bike, with its wheels still spinning, kept going, and landed on top of him. The spinning of the wheel burned through his jumpsuit, extending his injuries.

He never lost consciousness. Gifford was among those who rushed to help him. They got him to a standing position, and he took a microphone, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen of this wonderful country, I've got to tell you that you are the last people in the world who will ever see me jump. Because I will never, ever, ever jump again. I'm through."

Gifford begged him to get on a stretcher for his ride to the hospital. Despite knowing his injuries included a broken pelvis -- because he'd done that before -- he said, "I came in walking, I went out walking!"

Like a great boxer, of course he couldn't stay retired. Just 5 months later, on October 25, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at the Kings Island amusement part outside Cincinnati. At 133 feet, it was his longest successful jump. And it was Wide World of Sports' highest-rated broadcast ever. Again, he retired. Again, he lied, and came back, with a successful jump at Seattle's new Kingdome.

Inspired by the film Jaws, he wanted to jump a tank full of live sharks. On January 31, 1977, he rehearsed the jump at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. He lost control of the motorcycle, and hit a cameraman, Thomas Geren, and a wall. He broke both of his arms, but heard that Geren had sustained a permanent eye injury. That was it: He was willing to risk his own life and limb, but not someone else's. He never jumped again. As it turned out, though, Geren regained his full vision. Though relieved, this time, Knievel kept his word, and never jumped again.

The Guinness Book of World Records listed him as having suffered 433 separate breakings of bones. He said he had broken 35 different bones over his career. It all left him in terrible pain, especially in his back.

He turned to painting, a much calmer pastime -- and one he shared with another famous Wide World of Sports crasher, Slovenian ski jumper Vinko Bogataj, victim of the 1970 "agony of defeat" fall. He supported his son Robbie Knievel's daredevil career, addressing the crowds at Robbie's events. He did safety-themed commercials, telling kids to wear helmets while riding their bicycles, to stay away from drugs, and one on radio for the New York City Transit Authority, telling people not to try "stunts" on Subway trains or buses: "Take it from a daredevil, me, Evel Knievel: Some stunts are just plain stupid."

But his health declined. His many surgeries required blood transfusions that led to Hepatitis C, and needed a liver transplant. It looked like he wouldn't get one, and, in 1999, he was told that he only had a few days to live. He decided to leave the hospital, and die at his home. On the car ride home, he got a call that a liver was available. Take a wild guess as to how the donor died: In a motorcycle accident. (On the NBC hospital drama ER, the characters called motorcycles "donorcycles.")

In 2005, to raise relief funds for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, he worked with Harley-Davidson, makers of all his motorcycles, to lead a group of cyclists on a fundraising ride around Harley's hometown of Milwaukee. But he suffered a stroke shortly before the event, and had to limit his effort to an autograph-signing session.

Evel Knievel may have been on ABC Wide World of Sports 6 times, but what he did was not a sport. He died on November 30, 2007, outside Tampa in Clearwater, Florida -- not due to the effects of any or all of his crashes, but due to lung disease and diabetes.

Maxim, a magazine geared toward men, always with a scantily clad woman on the cover, printed his last interview. He said, "You can't ask a guy like me why I performed. I really wanted to fly through the air. I was a daredevil, a performer. I loved the thrill, the money, the whole macho thing. All those things made me Evel Knievel. Sure, I was scared. You gotta be an ass not to be scared. But I beat the hell out of death."

In 1999, Robbie Knievel jumped a portion of the Grand Canyon owned by the Hualapai Indian Reservation, out of the federal government's jurisdiction. In 2016, stuntman Eddie Braun, working with Evel's son Kelly and Ronald Truax's son Scott, successfully piloted a replica of the 1974 Skycycle over the Snake River Canyon. Braun idolized Evel, and had insisted that the jump would have worked if the parachute hadn't deployed too soon. He proved himself right.

It took me until 2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were Schrödinger's Decade. There were too many ridiculous distractions from the rotten things going on in the world; and, at the same time, not enough of them.

September 24, 1921: Jim McKay Is Born

September 24, 1921, 100 years ago: James Kenneth McManus is born in Philadelphia, and spent his teenage years in Baltimore. We knew him as Jim McKay. He was the voice of the Olympics on ABC, the Triple Crown horse races, the U.S. and British Open golf tournaments, and the host of ABC Wide World of Sports for its entire run, from 1961 to 1998.

He spoke WWOS' opening narration, written by ABC staff writer Stanley Ralph Ross, who would later write for the Batman series and co-create The New Adventures of Wonder Woman: "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport. The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat. The human drama of athletic competition. This is ABC Wide World of Sports."

He was the anchor for the 1st nationally-televised Olympic Games coverage, by CBS of the 1960 Olympics in Rome. ABC hired him in time for Tokyo in 1964, then both the Winter and the Summer Games: Grenoble and Mexico City in 1968, Sapporo and Munich in 1972, Innsbruck and Montreal in 1976, Lake Placid in 1980 (but not Moscow, as the U.S. boycotted), and Sarajevo and Los Angeles in 1984.

He got to cover such great moments as the Gold Medals won by Peggy Fleming in '68, Dorothy Hamill in '76, the U.S. hockey team in '80, and just about every American athlete, or so it seemed, in '84 as the Soviet Union and East Germany avenged the '80 boycott by boycotting. But he also had to cover the controversy of the Tommie Smith and John Carlos gesture in '68, and the Munich Massacre in '72, with his unforgettable words on the fate of the Israeli hostages taken by the Palestinian thugs: "They're all gone."

In 1988, ABC assigned him to cover the Winter Games in Calgary, but they haven't done the Olympics since: NBC got the Summer Games in Seoul, and have broadcast the Summer Games ever since. CBS got the Winter Games in Albertville in 1992, and NBC got them for Nagano in 1998, and have broadcast the Winter Games ever since.

In his memoir, The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports, published in 1998, he said that the two best sports were golf and horse racing, because they are the sports with the best stories. His choices were wrong -- as we have established, golf is not a sport -- but his reason was wonderful.

He also said in that memoir, "I have tried to make my job not just the description of what was happening at the moment but a search for excellence and an exploration of the human character in action." He succeeded.

Whenever I see NBC cover the Olympics, or the Triple Crown horse races, I miss Jim McKay. He died on June 7, 2008, at his farm in Monkton, Baltimore County, Maryland. He was 86 years old, and survived by his wife, the former Margaret Dempsey, and their children, Sean and Mary McManus. Sean McManus was a longtime executive at CBS, serving from 2005 to 2011 as President of both CBS News and CBS Sports.

March 7, 1970: The Agony of Defeat for Vinko Bogataj

March 7, 1970, 50 years ago: Vinko Bogataj achieves an unusual kind of fame, and he doesn't even know it. And it wasn't by winning. It was by losing, disastrously.

The 22-year-old native of Brezovica, in what is now the independent nation of Slovenia, was competing for Yugoslavia in the World Ski Flying Championships in Oberstdorf, in the Bavarian Alps of what was then West Germany, on the border of Austria. (Such was the nature of the multiethnic, multireligious Yugoslavia that Bogataj's hometown was closer to Oberstdorf than it was to the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, now in Serbia.)

The event was covered by American network ABC, for its program Wide World of Sports, even though there were no American competitors. The show's introduction was narrated by the show's host, Jim McKay, and written by Stanley Ralph Ross, who later wrote for the TV shows Batman and The Monkees, and co-created the 1975-79 Wonder Woman TV show:

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport: The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition! This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!

Going into the March 21, 1970 broadcast, the scene used to symbolize "the agony of defeat" in their opening montage was of a downhill skier falling. Perhaps this was foreshadowing. That day, they broadcast the World Ski Flying Championships, contested 2 weeks earlier. 

A light snow had begun falling at the start of the competition, and by the time Bogataj was ready for his third jump on the Heini Klopfer Hill, the snow had become quite heavy. Midway down the inrun for his jump, Bogataj realized that the conditions had made the ramp too fast. He attempted to lower his center of gravity and slow his jump. Instead, he lost his balance completely, and hurtled out of control off the end of the inrun, tumbling and flipping wildly, and crashing through a light retaining fence near a crowd of spectators before coming to a halt.

ABC's announcer was Bud Palmer, a Princeton graduate who played for the early New York Knicks before moving into broadcasting. He said, "Lot of speed on that track now. Look out! Look at him go! Oh! Oh, baby! What a terrible fall!"

Bogataj suffered a mild concussion and a broken ankle, and was competing again 6 weeks later. By that point, WWOS had begun using Bogataj's fall to represent "the agony of defeat" in the opening montage, a decision made by coordinating producer Dennis Lewin. The show kept that sequence as such until the end of its run in 1998.

When the show was preparing to celebrate its 20th Anniversary in 1981, they found him in Lesce, Slovenia, and invited him to come to America -- not an easy thing to do, since Yugoslavia was a Communist country. He was long retired from competition, a ski instructor, a forklift operator, and a painter, and had no idea that he was famous in America. When he was introduced at the anniversary dinner, he got a longer standing ovation than anyone -- even Muhammad Ali, who asked him for his autograph.

In 1991, for the show's 30th Anniversary, while on his way to an interview with Wide World of Sports about the incident, he got into a small automobile collision. His first line to the reporter was, "Every time I'm on ABC, I crash."

Vinko with one of his paintings

In his own country, he became known for his painting. He married and had 2 daughters. He is still alive.

Keith Jackson, 1928-2018

Whoa, Nellie, we lost an all-time great.

Keith Max Jackson was born on October 18, 1928, in Roopville, Georgia, about 57 miles southwest of downtown Atlanta, and grew up on a farm in nearby Carrollton. He grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and was the only one of his siblings who survived childhood. He was an athlete at Roopville High School -- but it was basketball that he played.

He was too young to serve in World War II, but too poor to go to college on his own. So he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps upon turning 18, and was discharged just in time to avoid combat in the Korean War.

On the G.I. Bill, he enrolled at... Washington State University. Wazzu? "Up on the Palouse"? Over 2,400 miles from home? They had the coursework he wanted, at a time when not many colleges did. He graduated in 1954, with a degree in speech communications. The fact that he did not go to a Southern school allowed him to broadcast Southern college football games with complete objectivity.

From 1954 to 1964, he broadcast on KOMO-Channel 4 in Seattle, covering, among other things, baseball games of the Seattle Rainiers of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, and football at the University of Washington -- Wazzu's arch-rival. U-Dub fans did not complain.

In 1958, he became the 1st American sports announcer to broadcast an event taking place in the Soviet Union, as the UW crew team raced a Soviet team. It turned out to be the 1st American sports victory on Russian or Soviet soil. That got the attention of the national networks, and when ABC bought KOMO from NBC in 1959, they hired Keith as a radio news correspondent for their radio network. By 1964, he was sports director of ABC Radio West.

*

He also did American Football League games on ABC, from the AFL's founding in 1960 until 1964, after which the network signed a contract with NBC, leading to the Peacock Network becoming the AFC's main broadcaster until 1993.

Keith's pro football experience was mixed. When Monday Night Football began, Keith was named the anchor, with Howard Cosell and Don Meredith. The 1st game was on September 21, 1970, and the Cleveland Browns beat the New York Jets 31-20. After 1 season, Keith was replaced by Frank Gifford. ABC gave him the lead on United States Football League broadcasts in the 1983, '84 and '85 seasons, including broadcasting all 3 Championship Games.

He did other sports, too. He broadcast NBA games alongside Bill Russell. From 1987 to 1992, he did college basketball alongside Dick Vitale, before Dickie V became an ESPN mainstay. (ABC and ESPN were both bought by the Walt Disney Company around that time.) But, clearly, basketball was not his sport.

He was regularly featured on Wide World of Sports, including doing auto races alongside the retired Scottish racing champion Jackie Stewart, providing a rich contrast of accents. For ABC's Olympic Games broadcasts, he had to switch to his news background for the Black September terrorist attack at Munich in 1972.

He covered Mark Spitz's swimming Gold Medals in 1972, Bruce Jenner's decathlon win at Montreal in 1976, Eric Heiden's speed skating Gold Medals at Lake Placid in 1980, and the basketball Gold Medal won by Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing at Los Angeles in 1984. He had been offered hockey for Lake Placid 1980, but turned it down, allowing Al Michaels to become a legend.

He was part of ABC's Monday Night Baseball and postseason baseball teams, doing the World Series in odd-numbered years and the League Championship Series in even-numbered years. This allowed him to cover some big moments, including Chris Chambliss' Pennant-winning home run for the Yankees in 1976, Bucky Dent's home run in 1978, the Thurman Munson Memorial Game in 1979, and the 1986 NLCS between the Mets and the Houston Astros, including the 16-inning Game 6 that won the Pennant for the Mets.

On October 18, 1977, his 49th birthday, he broadcast Game 6 of the World Series, saying there was no place he'd rather be. And (the obviously unrelated) Reggie Jackson hit 3 home runs to clinch the World Championship for the Yankees over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

On October 7, 1978, he broadcast the annual Red River Rivalry showdown at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, watching Number 1-ranked Oklahoma beat Number 6 Texas, then flew to New York, and arrived at Yankee Stadium just in time to call Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, as the Yankees won another Pennant over the Kansas City Royals. On October 11, 1980, he did it again, calling Oklahoma vs. Texas at the Cotton Bowl (Texas won, 20-13), then flying to Houston to cover Game 4 of the epic 1980 National League Championship Series between the Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies, at the Astrodome. At least, that time, he didn't have as far to fly.

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But it is college football for which he is best known. ABC paired him up with several legends of the sport: Jackie Jensen (1966-67, the only man to win both a Rose Bowl and a World Series and the 1958 AL Most Valuable Player), Bud Wilkinson (1969-75, the legendary Oklahoma coach), Ara Parseghian (1975-80, the great Notre Dame coach), Frank Broyles (1978-85, the iconic Arkansas coach), Lynn Swann (1984-85, the star USC and Pittsburgh Steelers receiver), Bob Griese (1987-99, the only quarterback to lead Purdue to a Rose Bowl win and the only one to lead the Miami Dolphins to a Super Bowl win), and Dan Fouts (2002-05, the Oregon quarterback who became a Hall-of-Famer with the San Diego Chargers).

Like his fellow Southerner Walter "Red" Barber, perhaps the greatest baseball announcer of them all, Keith peppered his commentary with down-home-isms:

* Much as an exciting play made Phil Rizzuto and Harry Caray say, "Holy cow!", Richie Ashburn "Oh brother!", Dick Enberg "Oh my!", Dave Niehaus "Holy Toledo!", Dick Vitale, "It's awesome, baby!" and English soccer announcer John Motson "Goodness me!", Keith would let out a hearty, "Whoa, Nellie!" or, occasionally, "My goodness!"

Some people thought he picked up "Whoa, Nellie!" from Los Angeles broadcaster Dick Lane. (Not to be confused with the legendary football player of the same name, nicknamed "Night Train," who terrorized receivers in the 1950s.) But that wasn't it: "'Whoa, Nellie' came from my great-grandpa. He was a farmer... And then he would do something, drop something or whatever, and, often times, you'd hear him say, 'Whoa, Nellie!' That kind of stuff, and it kind of stuck to the little scruffy kid following him around."

* A dropped ball was a "Fum-blllllllle!"

* A penalty flag made him say, "Hold the phone!" If the foul was egregious enough for all the officials to throw their flags, he might say, "A ton of laundry on the field."

* Linemen, on either side of the ball, were "the big uglies in the trenches." A particularly big guy was a "hoss."

* At the other end of the spectrum: "He's a little-bitty thing, a bantam rooster. But he's young. If he keeps eatin' his cornbread, he'll be man-sized someday."

* I once heard him decry a runner's poor attempt at trying to get around tacklers, saying, "You can't be pussyfootin' around out there like a ballerina. You've got to run it north and south."

* Occasionally, he would be assigned to the Alabama-Tennessee game, always played on the 3rd Saturday in October, the time of the Harvest Moon -- and he would call it "a Possum-Huntin' Moon."

* One year, as the usual early-season inter-conference games were concluded, and it would be regular conference games the rest of the way, Keith said, "The social portion of the Big Ten schedule is over. From here on out, it's strictly meat and potatoes."

Yes, he was a Southerner, and he particularly liked to stretch out the name of Paul "Bear" Bryant's Crimson Tide: "Touchdown, Allllllabama!" But he liked going to the Midwest to call Big Ten games, and liked to stretch out the opening consonant in "Mmmmichigan!" And the Iowa Hawkeyes became "the Iowa Huckeyes."

He gave the stadiums in the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry their nicknames: Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor was "the Big House," and Ohio Stadium in Columbus was "the Big Horseshoe on the Olentangy." And the winner would usually win the Big Ten title, and go to Pasadena, outside Los Angeles, to play the Pacific-Ten (now Pacific-Twelve) Champion in the Rose Bowl, the oldest bowl game, which he thus called "the Granddaddy of Them All."

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And what games he called. He called the 1974 Notre Dame-USC game. Just before halftime, Notre Dame led 24-0. USC scored 55 unanswered points to win, hastening Parseghian's retirement from sideline to broadcast booth.

He called the 1978 Gator Bowl, in which Clemson beat Ohio State. This was the game in which Ohio State coach Woody Hayes punched Clemson player Charlie Bauman on the sideline after an interception, and the broadcast shows that neither Keith nor Ara saw the punch, not even on the instant replay. There were no sideline reporters at the time, to let them know what happened. Hayes was soon fired, and Keith was accused of trying to protect Woody. He wasn't, because he simply didn't know.

He explained: "If people go back and listen, I said, 'Let's look at the tape and see what happened." But we didn't see the tape, because the network was nickel-and-diming the operation at that time, with a bunch of green kids, and the tape was in New York, which did not feed to us in the booth. I saw it for the first time at noon the next day, on NBC."

He called 10 Number 1 vs. Number 2 games. The 1st was the 1st college football game I can remember watching, the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day, January 1, 1979. Penn State, coached by Joe Paterno, was Number 1. Alabama was Number 2. Thanks to a goal-line stand, 'Bama beat Penn State 14-7, and took the National Championship.

Oddly, this was the 1st game the Bear coached without his famous houndstooth hat. Why? Because it was the 1st time Alabama had gotten to the Sugar Bowl since it was moved into the Superdome, and the Bear said his mama told him never to wear a hat indoors.

Keith called the 1981 Sugar Bowl, when Georgia, his home-State school, won the National Championship. Led by sensational freshman running back Herschel Walker, they beat Notre Dame. He called the 1983 Sugar Bowl, when Walker and Georgia were beaten by Penn State, winning Paterno's 1st National Championship after a few (allegedly unfair) near-misses.

He called the 1991 Florida State-Miami game, in which Number 2 Miami won because of a last-play field goal miss by Number 1 Florida State, the game known as Wide Right I. He called the Michigan-Ohio State game nearly every year, including in 1991, and when Desmond Howard broke off a long touchdown, it became clear that he would win a certain Trophy. When Howard reached the end zone, Keith said, "Hello, Heisman!" As if anticipating Keith's call, Howard struck the Heisman Trophy pose -- except he goofed: The figure in the Trophy tucks the ball under his left arm and holds out his right, as if to hold off defenders; Howard held out his left arm.

Keith called the 1992 "Iron Bowl" between Alabama and Auburn, Pat Dye's last game as Auburn coach, due to infractions, a game Alabama won. He called the 1993 Sugar Bowl, in which Alabama ended Miami's long winning streak to take their 1st post-Bear National Championship.

On Thanksgiving Day 1993, he went home to Atlanta, and called the Georgia-Georgia Tech game, a rivalry known as "Clean Old-Fashioned Hate." In his opening, he said, "This is the day when the waistline takes a whuppin', and ancient rivalries are replayed." Georgia led only 16-10 at the start of the 4th quarter, but ran up the score, and by the time it was 43-10, a fight broke out on the field. This was one of many times, in many rivalries, that Keith said, "These two teams just... don't... like each other!"

He called the 1994 Colorado-Michigan game, where Kordell Stewart's last-second bomb won the game for Colorado, a game known as "The Miracle at Michigan." He called the 1997 Sugar Bowl, where Florida got revenge for their regular-season loss to Florida State and won the National Championship.

When the Bowl Championship Series took over the deciding of the National Championship for the 1998 season, Keith announced his retirement. He was turning 70, and had intended to make the National Championship Game, the Fiesta Bowl on January 4, 1999, his last game. Tennessee was Number 1, and Florida State was Number 2. Tennessee won, 23-16. At one point, the Moon was shown overhead, and Griese said, "I'm surprised you didn't say that was a 'Possum Huntin' Moon.'" And Keith said, "Well, it's not possum-huntin' time!"

He thought he was done. He had maintained his off-season home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, which offered a view of the San Fernando Valley, and of the Rose Bowl stadium itself. He lived in that house with his wife, Turi Ann Johnsen. They had 3 children, Melanie Ann, Lindsey and Christopher. They, and multiple grandchildren, survive him.

People began to ask him if he would write a book. He said he would only sit down and work on one if he were to ever lose his golf swing. The book has never come. Hopefully, now that he's gone, someone will go through his stuff, and find it complete, ready to go to a publisher.

He thought he was done. But he couldn't stay away. He cut a deal with ABC to do only West Coast games, to cut down on his travel. He made 2 exceptions: The 100th games in the rivalries between Michigan and Ohio State, in 2003; and  between Oklahoma and Texas, in 2005. He did the National Championship game for the seasons of 2001 (Rose Bowl, therefore nearby, Miami beating Nebraska) and 2002 (Fiesta Bowl, therefore not especially long travel, Ohio State stunning Miami).

His status as an icon grew. In 1992, to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of their football program, Alabama asked him to record a voiceover for a special video. In 2006, Nebraska did the same. In 2010, the Big Ten Network asked him to host a series titled Big 10 Icons. He did a series of commercials titled The Legend of Gatorade.

In 1995, he recorded a commercial for Miller Lite beer, in which he played the minister officiating at a wedding between "that groom from Texas, Billy Clyde Humphrey, and his bride, a five-six debutante from Allllabama! Nell Peterson!" Of course, when it was time for them to kiss, he looked at Billy Clyde and Nell, and said, "Whoa, Nellie!"

In 2005, at age 78, he realized he was making more mistakes. He said he didn't want to die in a stadium parking lot. (This would become more poignant in 2009, when Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas died in the press box at Nationals Park in Washington.) He decided that his 53rd season of college football would be his last.

His timing was excellent: While it's hard to name any game as the definitive "greatest game ever played," his last game is usually considered the best college football game of the 21st Century thus far. On January 4, 2006, at the Rose Bowl, Number 2 Texas, led by quarterback Vince Young, ended the bid by Number 1 USC, with Heisman winners Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush, for a 3rd straight National Championship, 41-38.

*

Keith was elected to the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame. The committee that runs the Rose Bowl game and stadium named its press box the Keith Jackson Broadcast Center.

Keith Jackson died on Friday, January 12, 2018, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89 years old.

People didn't wait to salute him after his death: He got plenty of plaudits while he still walked the Earth. In 1998, during the Michigan-Ohio State game, thinking that his retirement would stick, the Michigan band spelled out "THANKS KEITH" during its halftime show. Lloyd Carr, then, the Michigan coach, called him "a symbol of all the good things in college football."

Hayden Fry, the former coach at the University of Iowa, backed that up: "He's my hero. He stands for all the good things associated with college football."

Joe Paterno of Penn State, who saw even more college football than Keith did, said, "I don't think you could say that there is any one person who is not a coach, athletic director or administrator who has done more for college football than Keith Jackson." On another occasion, he said, "Keith Jackson and college football. You can't say one without the other."

In the last couple of days, the tributes have come fast, hard, and true:

* Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, and thus the big boss of ABC and ESPN: "When you heard his voice, you knew it was a big game. Keith was a true gentleman and a memorable presence."

* Darryl Dunn, general manager of the Rose Bowl stadium: "He was a John Wayne type. He told his old war stories, and it was priceless, because it was Keith Jackson. We were very blessed that we got to know Keith personally, and what people saw on air and on TV was exactly who he was. He talked to you like he was in your living room with you. That's who he was, a really nice person from Georgia who had a passion for college football and telling stories."

* Mike Greenberg of ESPN: "If you ask: 'What does college football sound like?' My answer is: 'Keith Jackson's voice.'"

* Bomani Jones of ESPN: "Think about how much of the overall aesthetic of college football is tied to Keith Jackson's voice. He was that important."

* Paul Finebaum, Southern radio icon: "Simply, the most iconic and memorable soundtrack ever to the game. And an incredible gentleman."

* Steve Kelley of The Seattle Times: "A voice that was to college football what Edward R. Murrow's was to war. It was the voice of ultimate authority in his profession."

* Bob Griese: "He never intruded on the game. It was always about the kids on the field. Never, never shining the light on himself. And that was one of the things that I most admired about him."

* Lynn Swann: "Not just the voice, but the spirit of college football."

* Desmond Howard: "Having a hard time finding the right words to express what the icon Keith Jackson meant to me personally, Michigan football and college football, in general."

* Marcus Allen, 1981 Heisman winner at USC: "Keith Jackson was the voice of college football."

* Tim Brown, 1987 Heisman winner at Notre Dame: "Keith Jackson was the fabric of College Football."

* Aaron Rodgers, University of California and Green Bay Packers quarterback: "Keith was the voice of my childhood Saturday football afternoons."

* J.J. Watt, University of Wisconsin and Houston Texans defensive end: "THE voice of college football and one of the most iconic voices of all time, RIP Keith Jackson. Thank you for all of the incredible Saturday's."

"If I've helped people enjoy the telecast, that's fine," he said. "That's my purpose."

Purpose fulfilled, Keith. Good night.

UPDATE: His final resting place is not publicly known.

October 17, 1989, 25 years ago: Earthquake at the World Series

October 17, 1989, 25 years ago: Game 3 of the World Series, the 1st ever between the 2 teams of the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The A's have a 2 games to none lead.

At 5:04 PM Pacific Time -- 8:04 Eastern Time -- ABC is showing highlights of Game 2 when the screen flickers. The ground starts shaking. In ABC's broadcast booth at Candlestick Park are Al Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver. Michaels, who had lived in California, figured out what was happening, and said, "I'll tell you what, we're having an earth-- "

And the screen goes black. ABC puts a "Please Stand By" card up. A few minutes later, audio is restored, although video takes a little longer, and Michaels explains that there was, indeed, an earthquake.

The official World Series highlight film shows fans at Candlestick reacting with a sense of fun, since nobody inside the ballpark got hurt. One fan, who’d brought white cardboard panels and magic markers to make up signs on the spot, had on one side, “That was nothing, wait till the Giants bat,” and on the other, a jagged line, supposed to be a quake-caused crack, and, “Welcome to Candlestick.”

Back in the Giants clubhouse, Giant legend Willie Mays, who had been introduced as part of the pregame ceremony, said, "That's the first time I've ever been scared in Candlestick. I've been knocked down a lot, but that's the first time I was scared." Asked why, he said, "The ground was shaking, man!"

But, on the highlight film, the camera then shifts to a man in a Giants cap with headphones on, and he develops a look that shows he’s just found out how serious the situation really is. There are fires all over the city. Many houses in the Marina District are burning. A section of the upper level of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has collapsed onto the lower level, killing 3 people. Worst of all, a section of the double-decked Nimitz Freeway, Interstate 880, has collapsed in Oakland, killing several.

The quake registers a magnitude of 7.1 on the Richter scale. At first‚ it's believed that over 200 people were killed. When everyone is accounted for, it is determined that the quake killed 67 people, and did $7 billion in damage -- about $13.4 billion in today's money.

Commissioner Fay Vincent has Candlestick evacuated, and the remainder of the Series postponed. Everyone was lucky: The stadium then had a baseball seating capacity of 62,000, and if it had collapsed, or even if a part of the stadium had collapsed, the death toll almost certainly would have exceeded the nearly 3,000 in the World Trade Center attacks of 12 years later. But Candlestick Park, the most maligned venue in the history of North American sports, held firm, with only a few small concrete chunks dislodged. In the San Francisco Bay Area's darkest hour since the 1906 earthquake and fire, The 'Stick did its duty, and saved lives.

Just how bad it could have been is illustrated by a sporting event 6 months earlier. On April 15, 1989, in English soccer, an FA Cup Semifinal was held at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, chosen as a neutral site, between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Several thousand fans who didn’t have tickets tried to get in, and a horrible mistake was made when a gate was opened when it shouldn’t have been, and people were crushed against walls and wire fencing. About 700 people were injured, and 96 died.

At the time, I heard about this on the evening news, but since it didn’t involve Americans, we all quickly forgot about it. Had but 1 American been among the dead, no doubt the U.S. media would have featured the story day after day after day, practically flogging it, as they did with the World Series Earthquake.

It would be 10 days before the Series was resumed, and 12 rescue workers -- 6 from San Francisco, 6 from Oakland -- were chosen to throw out ceremonial first pitches.

*

October 17, 1814, 200 years ago: The London Beer Flood occurs. No, I’m not making that up. If Boston could have a molasses flood in 1918, why couldn’t London have a beer flood?

It happened in the London parish of St. Giles. At the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road, a huge vat containing over 135,000 "imperial gallons" of beer ruptured, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons of beer burst out and gushed into the streets.

The wave of beer destroyed 2 homes and crumbled the wall of the Tavistock Arms Pub, trapping the Eleanor Cooper, a barmaid whose age has been variously given as 14, 15 and 16 years old, under the rubble. The brewery was located among the poor houses and tenements of the St Giles Rookery, where whole families lived in basement rooms that quickly filled with beer. The wave left 9 people dead: 8 due to drowning (including the barmaid) and 1 from alcohol poisoning.

October 17, 1860: For the first time, The Open Championship (referred to in North America as the British Open) is held, at Prestwick Golf Club, in Ayrshire, Scotland. The winner is Scotsman Willie Park.

Wait, why am I mentioning this? Golf is not a sport!

October 17, 1906: Samuel Paul Derringer is born in Springfield, Kentucky. Paul Derringer was a rookie pitcher with the 1931 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, and won the 1939 National League Pennant and the 1940 World Series with the Cincinnati Reds. He started the 1st major league night game, at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field in 1935, and won 223 games in his career. Of those, 161 came in a Reds uniform, 2nd in club history only to Eppa Rixey's 179.

October 17, 1908: Robert Abial Rolfe is born in Penacook, New Hampshire. The starting 3rd baseman in 4 All-Star Games, Red Rolfe helped the Yankees win the 1932, ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39 and ’41 World Series. He is the greatest player ever born in New Hampshire, although Bellows Falls, Vermont-born Carlton Fisk grew up in Charlestown.

Retiring as a player at only 34, he was immediately hired, due to the wartime manpower shortage, as both baseball and basketball coach at Yale University. He later served as athletic director at his alma mater, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Until Graig Nettles, and later Alex Rodriguez, he was probably the best all-around player ever to play 3rd base for the Yankees. Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen selected him as the 3rd baseman on his all-time team, although Mel did also see plenty of Eddie Mathews and Brooks Robinson, and wasn't that far past the era of Pie Traynor.

*

October 17, 1911: After criticizing his teammate Rube Marquard's pitching to Philadelphia Athletics 3rd baseman Frank Baker in his newspaper column‚ Christy Mathewson takes the mound for the New York Giants in Game 3 against 29-game winner Jack Coombs. Matty takes a 1-0 lead into the 9th. With 1 out‚ Baker lines another drive over the right field fence to tie it.

With that blow‚ he receives the nickname "Home Run" Baker. Based on 2 home runs? Well, it was 1911, the Dead Ball Era: He only hit 96 home runs in his entire 13-season career, although he did have a .307 lifetime batting average and a very strong 135 OPS+, is regarded as one of the best 3rd basemen of the 1st half of the 20th Century, and is in the Hall of Fame.

However, Baker’s homer only ties the game, and it goes to extra innings. Errors by Giant 3rd baseman Buck Herzog and shortstop Art Fletcher give the A's 2 unearned runs in the top of the 11th. New York scores once‚ but the A's win 3-2 behind Jack Coombs's 3-hitter.

October 17, 1912: Albino Luciani is born in Canale d'Agordo, Veneto, Italy. He was Patriarch of Venice when, on August 26, 1978, he was named Pope, to succeed the late Paul VI. When Paul VI died, it was mentioned on a Yankee broadcast, and the very Italian, very Catholic Phil Rizzuto said, "Well, that puts a damper on even a Yankee win."

Cardinal Luciani took the name John Paul I. But just 33 days later, on September 28, 1978, he also died, apparently of a heart attack. The shortest-reigning Pope of the modern era, he was only 65. With a Yanks-Sox Pennant race coming down to the wire, Charles Laquidara of Boston radio station WBCN began his broadcast, "Pope dies, Sox still alive.”

The late Pope's successor, Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow in Poland, took the name John Paul II, and said of his predecessor, "What warmth of charity, nay, what an abundant outpouring of love, which came forth from him in the few days of his ministry."

October 17, 1915: Arthur Asher Miller is born in Harlem -- at the time, becoming the nation's foremost black neighborhood, but still retaining much of its former German and Jewish character. (Lou Gehrig was born there, the son of Protestant German immigrants.)

In Miller's play Death of a Salesman, he quoted his lead character, Willy Loman, as exulting in the fact that, “We’re playing football at Ebbets Field!” Football? At Ebbets Field? Yes, it happened in real life, as the NFL had a Brooklyn Dodgers from 1930 to 1944, although the play refers to high school football.

October 17, 1918: Margarita Carmen Cansino is born in Brooklyn. Better known as Rita Hayworth. Although she was a huge star, for a lot more than 2 reasons, her personal life was a mess, including stormy marriages to Orson Welles and the manipulative, skirt-chasing Muslim prince Aly Khan. She said, "Basically, I am a good, gentle person, but I am attracted to mean personalities." She also said, citing her best-known film role, “Men fall in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me.”

What does she have to do with sports? Nothing, as far as I know, although Aly Khan was a noted breeder of racehorses. She’s just one of the most magnificent women who ever lived. After so many years of martial abuse, alcoholism and Alzheimer’s disease, she finally found peace in 1987. Her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, is a major fundraiser for Alzheimer’s research.

Also on this day, Ralph Cookerly Wilson Jr. is born in Columbus, Ohio. Growing up in Detroit, he ran an industrial firm, and was a minority owner of the NFL’s Detroit Lions during their glory years in the 1950s, when he had the chance buy a franchise in the fledgling American Football League. His first choice for a city in which to play was Miami, but he was turned down. He got his 2nd choice, and the Buffalo Bills were born. (Clearly, he didn't make Buffalo his 2nd choice after Miami due to the weather!)

Of the original 8 AFL owners, a.k.a. “The Foolish Club,” he was the last survivor, dying this past March 25. At 54 years, he was the 2nd-longest-lasting owner in NFL history, trailing only league and Chicago Bears founder George Halas at 63 years. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009.

When the naming rights to the Bills’ Rich Stadium ran out, the board of directors renamed it Ralph Wilson Stadium. Under him, the Bills won 2 AFL Championships, 1964 and ’65, and 4 AFC Championships, 1990, ’91, ’92 and ’93. But not, as yet, a Super Bowl.

But there have been whispers that, due to the decline of the Western New York market, the team might have to be moved to Toronto, where they're already, since 2008, playing 1 regular-season home game every season. Ralph Wilson Stadium, in the suburb of Orchard Park, is 11 miles southeast of downtown Buffalo's Niagara Square, and you don't need a passport to get there; the Rogers Centre, in downtown Toronto, is 98 miles away. However, it looks like the Bills' ownership situation will soon be settled, keeping them in Buffalo for some time to come.

October 17 and 18, 1925: Believe it or not, the expansion New York Giants football team plays on back-to-back days. A lot of teams did that in the 1920s, and it will end up becoming an issue that clouds the awarding of this season’s title. Neither the Giants nor the Frankford Yellow Jackets have to worry about that, as neither is a contender.

On Saturday the 17th, since Pennsylvania law then prohibited playing sporting events on Sundays, they played at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philadelphia, and the Jackets won 5-3. (There must have been a safety.) On Sunday the 18th, since New York State law did allow Sunday sports, they played at the Polo Grounds, officially the 1st home game in franchise history, despite their first actual game having been played in Newark. But the home field advantage didn’t help the Giants, as Frankford completed the sweep, 14-0.

The Jackets would win the NFL Championship in 1926, but go out of business in 1931, due to the Great Depression. The NFL sold the rights to the Philadelphia territory to Bert Bell and Lud Wray, who founded the Philadelphia Eagles in 1933, but the Eagles signed no Yellow Jackets players, and do not count the Yellow Jackets’ records, including their 1926 title, as their own.

Nevertheless, the weekend of October 17-18, 1925, is the beginning of the pro football rivalry between New York and Philadelphia, which remains tense and strange to this day, with all kinds of weird things having happened.

October 17, 1927: Ban Johnson‚ in failing health‚ retires as President of the American League, after heading the League he started for its 1st 28 years. His endless battles with Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and the team owners had eroded his power. Detroit Tigers president Frank Navin, is named acting AL President, until Ernest Barnard, longtime general manager of the Cleveland Indians, is named President.

October 17, 1929: In the wake of the death of manager Miller Huggins, and interim manager Art Fletcher’s desire to remain as 3rd base coach (a post he held from Huggins’ arrival in 1918 until Joe McCarthy’s resignation in 1946), Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert hires former pitcher Bob Shawkey as manager.

In 1917, Ruppert had made Shawkey his first big acquisition. This would be paralleled 67 years later as George Steinbrenner made another A’s pitcher, Catfish Hunter, his first big free-agent signing. But Shawkey will only manage the 1930 season, and with the Cubs having fired McCarthy, Ruppert snaps him up, and the Yanks get back on track.

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October 17, 1930: James Earl Breslin is born in Jamaica, Queens. As much as anyone – not a word, fans of the late Ed Koch; shut up, Rudy Giuliani; put a sock in it, Donald Trump; sorry, Regis Philbin – Jimmy Breslin has been the voice of New York City.

He wrote for the New York Journal-American in the Fifties, and moved on to the New York Herald-Tribune in 1962, writing a book about the horrendous first year of the Mets, borrowing for his title a line from manager Casey Stengel: Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

When the Trib folded in 1966, he became one of the cornerstones of “New York’s Hometown Paper,” the Daily News. He remains best known for receiving letters from David Berkowitz, the serial killer known as the Son of Sam, after the 6th of the 8 shootings in 1977, publishing them, and writing an editorial whose title was blasted on the front page: “Breslin to .44-Caliber Killer: GIVE UP! IT’S THE ONLY WAY OUT.” After Berkowitz was caught, Breslin and his former Trib teammate Dick Schaap collaborated on a novel based on the case, titled .44.

Unfortunately, like his Daily News stablemate Dick Young, and his Chicago counterpart Mike Royko, he got crochety and conservative in his later years, taking his image as the voice of his city’s common man too seriously. He moved on to the Long Island paper Newsday, and received a Polk Award and the last of his four Pulitzer Prizes. He has since returned to the Daily News, and his recent columns suggest that he has remembered that it's liberals, not conservatives, that are for the little guy.

Through all the drinking, smoking, inhalation of New York smog, rides in cabs with crazy drivers, health problems, and a particularly nasty beating from the Mob in 1970, he still lives.  In addition to the preceding, his books include the Mob novel The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, the Watergate-themed book How the Good Guys Finally Won, an expose of the priestly-abuse scandal titled The Church That Forgot Christ, and biographies of racehorse trainer Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, sportswriter Damon Runyon, and, most recently, baseball executive Branch Rickey.

He introduced and closed Spike Lee’s film Summer of Sam. In another film based on life in New York in 1977, The Bronx Is Burning, he was very convincingly played by Michael Rispoli.

Also on this day, Robert Coleman Atkins is born -- like Ralph Wilson, in Columbus, Ohio. The nutritionist was the creator of the Atkins Diet, which emphasized lowering your carbohydrates and eating more protein, especially in vegetables.

Contrary to urban legend, he did not die an ironic (or hypocritical) death, from a heart attack from being too fat. On April 8, 2003, following a rare April snowstorm in New York, he slipped on some ice, fell, and hit his head. He was on his way to work, at age 72, so that’s to be admired. But I like my carbs. Pasta! Mangia!

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October 17, 1938: Robert Craig Knievel is born in Butte, Montana. Like Elvis Presley, Evel Knievel was a Seventies spectacle who wore white jumpsuits, big collars, big belts with big buckles, and made a fool of himself in Las Vegas. Unlike Evel, however, Elvis also had some great shows in Vegas.

Evel Knievel may have been on ABC Wide World of Sports many times, but what he did was not a sport. He died in 2007 -- not due to the effects of any or all of his crashes, but due to lung disease.

October 17, 1946: Bob Seagren is born in Pomona, California, outside Los Angeles. He won the pole vault at the 1968 Olympics, and the first Superstars competition in 1973.

October 17, 1948: Margaret Ruth Kidder is born in Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories. Better known as Margot Kidder, she is almost certainly the most famous person ever to come from the NWT -- though huge in area, it has just 41,000 people.

She played Lois Lane in Christopher Reeve’s Superman movies. “Don’t worry, Miss,” Superman says when meeting Lois in-costume for the first time. “I’ve got you.” Her classic response: “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” A street in Yellowknife has been named Lois Lane in her honor.

Also on this day, George Robert Wendt III is born in Chicago. Who? “Good afternoon, everybody.” NORM! What’s goin’ on, Norm? “My birthday, Sammy. Gimme a beer, put a candle in it, and I’ll blow out my liver.” Actual exchange from a 1991 episode of Cheers, in which Wendt played beerhound and occasionally-employed accountant and Norm Peterson.

“Bars can be sad places,” he once said. “Some people spend their whole lives in a bar. Yesterday, some guy came in, and sat down next to me for 11 hours.”

Wendt got his big break on M*A*S*H, playing a Marine (a guy that out of shape, playing an active-duty Marine? No way) who tried to stick an entire pool ball in his mouth, and, unfortunately for him, he succeeded. Having to treat him, Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, played by David Ogden Stiers, got to do something he rarely did: Have some fun.

That episode was written by Ken Levine and David Isaacs, who would go on to co-create and write for Cheers, and remembered Wendt. They also remembered Shelley Long from a M*A*S*H episode they’d written. Come to think of it, there are some similarities between Winchester and Dr. Frasier Crane, although we later found out that, unlike Charles, Frasier was not actually from Boston.

Norm is a Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins fan. In real life, though, Wendt is Chicago through and through, and roots for the Cubs, the Blackhawks, and, as reflected in his character Bob Swerski on the Saturday Night Live sketch “The Super Fans,” he also loves “a certain team which is known as... Da Bears!” And another “certain team which is known as... Da Bulls!”

*

October 17, 1957: Stephen Douglas McMichael is born in Houston. Speaking of Da Bears, Steve McMichael was a defensive tackle on their 1985-86 Super Bowl Shuffle team, and made 2 Pro Bowls.

Nicknamed “Mongo” after the Blazing Saddles character played by another legendary DT, Alex Karras, he later became a pro wrestler, and has twice been married to WWE “Divas.” He hosts a talk show on Chicago radio station ESPN 1000 (the former WLUP and WMVP), and coaches an indoor football team, the Chicago Slaughter.

October 17, 1960: The National League grants franchises to the New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45's -- the team now known as the Houston Astros.

October 17, 1966: Bob Swift, manager of the Detroit Tigers, dies in office of lung cancer. He was 51. He had replaced Charlie Dressen earlier the year, after Dressen had died in office. As far as I know, no other MLB team has ever had 2 managers die on them in a single year.

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October 17, 1970: John Steven Mabry is born in Wilmington, Delaware. He played 1st base, 3rd base, left field and right field, and even pitched twice in the major leagues. His 96 home runs ties him with Randy Bush and Dave May as the all-time leader... for players born in the State of Delaware, although he grew up 25 miles away in Chesapeake City, Maryland. (Bush was born in Dover but grew up in New Orleans. May was born and raised in New Castle.)

Mabry reached the postseason with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998, the Oakland Athletics in 2002, and the Cardinals again in 2004, this time reaching the World Series. He last played with the Colorado Rockies in 2007, although he was released before they won the Pennant that year.

October 17, 1971: Steve Blass hurls a 4-hitter and Roberto Clemente homers, as the Pittsburgh Pirates win Game 7 of the World Series, 2-1 over the Baltimore Orioles at Memorial Stadium‚ becoming World Champions for the 4th time, the 1st time since 1960.

Clemente played in all 7 games in '60 and in all 7 games in '71, and got hits in all 14 World Series games in which he played. In fact, all 5 of the Pirates' World Series wins -- 1909, '25, '60, '71 and '79 -- have been in 7 games.

Clemente and Bill Mazeroski are the only men to have played for the Pirates in both the 1960 and the 1971 World Series, although Danny Murtaugh managed them in both, and 1960 player Bill Virdon was one of Murtaugh’s 1971 coaches.

After the game‚ 40‚000 people riot in downtown Pittsburgh. At least 100 are injured‚ some seriously, although no deaths are reported.

Earlier in the season, the Pirates had become the first team ever to field an all-black-and/or-Hispanic starting lineup, leading author Bruce Markusen to title his book about the '71 Bucs The Team That Changed Baseball. He's also written biographies of Clemente, Ted Williams, Orlando Cepeda, and a book about the 1970s Oakland A's team, published in 1998, just before the Yankees began a streak of 3 straight World Series, thus making a retroactive error of the title of Markusen's book: Baseball's Last Dynasty: Charlie Finley's Oakland A's.

October 17, 1972: Quite a day to be born. Marshall Bruce Mathers III is born in St. Joseph, Missouri, although the man better known as Eminem and Slim Shady has spent most of his life in the Detroit area.

As far as I know, he has nothing to do with sports, but he does often wear a cap of his hometown Detroit Tigers. Say what you want about Em, and I don’t like him much, but at least he’s funny every once in a while, and he’s still got more class than those other white Detroiters who want us to think they've got street cred, Rob “Kid Rock” Ritchie and Ted "Motor City Madman" Nugent.

Wyclef Jean, lead singer of the Fugees, is born in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti. I don’t think he has anything to do with sports, either, but he was in Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” video, which certainly required some athleticism.

Sharon Ann Leal is born in Tucson, Arizona, best known as a teacher on on the Fox TV drama Boston Public. She's also been in the film version of Dreamgirls and 2 Tyler Perry films. I don’t think she’s involved with sports either, but she’s so beautiful that I don’t care.

And Joseph Earl McEwing is born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, about halfway between Philadelphia and Trenton. He played for the Mets, so he doesn’t have anything to do with sports, either. (Ba-DUMP-bump-TSHHHH!) He did help the Mets win the 2000 National League Pennant, though, and is now the 3rd base coach for the Chicago White Sox.

 *

October 17, 1973: On the day the Arab oil embargo is announced, driving up gas prices, and Motorola engineer Marty Cooper is granted the patent for the handheld mobile telephone, the Mets even the World Series at 2 games apiece with a 6-1 win over the Oakland A’s at Shea Stadium.

Rusty Staub goes 4-for-4 with a homer and 5 RBI. The New Orleans chef was really cooking that night.

October 17, 1974, 40 years ago: At the Oakland Coliseum, Oakland’s Vida Blue and Los Angeles' Don Sutton are tied 2-2 going into the bottom of the 6th, when Mike Marshall relieves Sutton and retires the side. In the 7th‚ a shower of debris from the fans halts the game for 15 minutes. When play is resumed‚ Joe Rudi hits Marshall's first pitch for a homer to give the A's a 3rd 3-2 win‚ clinching a 3rd straight World Championship for the team.

The A’s thus become only the 2nd major league franchise to win 3 straight World Series, and remain the only one other than the Yankees to have done it. This was also the 1st all-California World Series, or even the 1st with both teams playing more than a few blocks west of the Mississippi River (take note, fans of St. Louis and Minnesota).

Also on this day, John Loy Rocker is hatched from his pod in Macon, Georgia. He rose quickly to become a power pitcher, then fell apart, both competitively and physically. At first, we thought it was because, following all his insulting, ignorant, bigoted comments about the Mets and Met fans, that the furious reaction from the Flushing Faithful had gotten into his head. Certainly, there was room in there. (Not entirely a joke: The dope’s head is huge.) But, eventually, it was revealed that he was a steroid user. Which explains a lot of things.

He did pitch for the Atlanta Braves in the 1999 World Series, after pitching against the Mets in the NLCS. But here’s the difference: The Mets and their fans talked about how they wanted to beat him (justifiably so), while the Yankees actually did it.

He last pitched in the majors for the 2003 Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and recently published -- I won't say "wrote" -- a memoir, Scars and Strikes.  He also produces (again, I won't say "writes") a column for WorldNetDaily, the right-wing loon website also known as World Nut Daily.

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October 17, 1978: The Yankees complete their last of many comebacks in this amazing season, taking Game 6, 7-2 at Dodger Stadium, and winning their 22nd World Championship, their 2nd in a row, having taken the last 4 games after dropping the first 2.

Reggie Jackson has his chance for revenge over Dodger rookie Bob Welch for striking him out with the bases loaded to end Game 2, and his revenge goes to right field, halfway to the San Gabriel Mountains.

Both halves of the Yankee double-play combination, Bucky Dent and Brian Doyle (subbing for the injured Willie Randolph) collect 3 hits. Dent batted .417 for the Series and is named MVP, capping a month that began with his Playoff homer over Boston. Doyle bats .438, and, along with third base wizard Graig Nettles and reliever Goose Gossage, also makes a pretty good case for Series MVP.

The final out is Gossage popping up Ron Cey behind home plate, where Thurman Munson catches it. The Goose thus becomes the 1st pitcher to nail down the final out of a Division clincher, a Pennant clincher, and a World Series clincher in the same season.

This remains my favorite single-season sports team of all time, as it was the first baseball season I was really old enough to "get" what was happening. I was aware of the 1977 title, but I didn't really comprehend what the Yankees had to overcome to win it.

Unfortunately, as with the year before, my parents waited until the Yankees were winning, and then sent me to bed, so I didn’t see it. Despite being a fan of the greatest franchise in the history of sports, I was almost 27 years old before I saw my favorite team win a World Series while it was actually happening. And I don’t think it was until that 1996 Series that I got over that fact.

October 17, 1979: As in 1971, the Pittsburgh Pirates win the World Series by beating the Baltimore Orioles in Game 7 at Memorial Stadium, winning 4-1 to complete a comeback from 3 games to 1 down.

Willie Stargell, the 1st baseman known as “Pops” not just for his age (39) but because of his playing of Sister Sledge’s hit disco song “We Are Family,” hits his 3rd homer of the Series, and is named Series MVP, after having also been named MVP of the NLCS. After the season, it will be announced that there is a tie vote for the regular-season MVP, between Stargell and the NL’s batting champion, St. Louis Cardinal first baseman Keith Hernandez. Stargell becomes the first man, and remains the only one, ever to sweep the regular season, LCS and World Series MVPs in a single season.

Stargell, pitcher Bruce Kison and catcher Manny Sanguillen are the only players to have played for the Pirates in both the ’71 and the ’79 Series, although Sanguillen had left and since returned.

But in the 35 years since -- nearly 2 full generations -- the Pirates have never won another Pennant, though they reached Game 7 of the NLCS in 1991 and ’92, losing to the Atlanta Braves both times. The Steelers have since won 3 Super Bowls and appeared in 2 others; the Penguins have reached the Stanley Cup Finals 4 times, winning 3; and the University of Pittsburgh football team has won some bowl games and has usually a contender for their conference title (formerly the Big East, now the Atlantic Coast Conference).

The Pirates? After 21 years out of the postseason, they've made it in back-to-back seasons, but, so far, they can't win the NLDS. So they're still waiting for the next generation of the Family to make good.

*

October 17, 1982: Robin Yount records his 2nd 4-hit game of the World Series to lead the Brewers to a 6-4 win in Game 5 at County Stadium, and give Milwaukee a 3-2 lead overall. Yount is the first player ever to have two 4-hit games in one World Series.

This night is the high-water mark of the Brewers franchise: Not only is this the closest they have ever gotten to winning a World Series, but they have never won a World Series game since.

October 17, 1987: In the 1st indoor World Series game ever, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis‚ Dan Gladden's grand slam caps a 7-run 4th inning and leads the Twins to a 10-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1. It is the 1st World Series grand slam since 1970.

October 17, 1991: The Braves advance to the World Series for the 1st time since their move to Atlanta – for the 1st time since they were in Milwaukee in 1958 – with John Smoltz leading the way with a 6-hit‚ 4-0 shutout.

The Pirates fail to score in the last 22 innings of the series. Steve Avery is named the MVP of the NLCS. Worst of all, for this Pennant-deciding game, only 46,932 fans come out to the 58,729-seat Three Rivers Stadium. That’s a disgrace for such a good sports city as Pittsburgh.

October 17, 1992: In the 1st-ever World Series game involving a team from outside the U.S., the Atlanta Braves defeat the Toronto Blue Jays, 3-1. Catcher Damon Berryhill hits a 3-run homer in the 6th inning.

The pitching matchup of Tom Glavine and Jack Morris is the 1st time that a pair of 20-game winners starts the opening game of a World Series since 1969. Glavine goes all the way for the win‚ while Joe Carter homers for the only Toronto run.

October 17, 1995: The Cleveland Indians shut out the Seattle Mariners‚ 4-0‚ behind the pitching of Dennis Martinez‚ Julian Tavarez‚ and Jose Mesa‚ to clinch their 1st Pennant in 41 years.

To give you an idea of how long it was: This game was played at the Kingdome in Seattle, and the Indians were moving on to play the Atlanta Braves; in 1954, the last time the Indians won a Pennant, the Braves had just moved from Boston to Milwaukee, Seattle was home to a minor-league team (which had, not that much earlier, been one of Cleveland's farm teams and named the Seattle Indians), and the only person thinking much about a fully-roofed stadium for traditionally outdoor sports was Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who had just proposed a new home for Dem Bums, what he called the Brooklyn Sports Center and others mocked, not as an engineering or architectural impossibility, but as a monument to O’Malley’s greed and self-promotion, as “O’Malley’s Pleasure Dome.” (Which, of course, ended up never being built; when O'Malley finally got his stadium, it was across the country, and looked like a baseball stadium.)

October 17, 1996: The Yankees finally find out who they’ll be playing in their 1st World Series in 15 years. The Braves complete their comeback from being 3 games to 1 down in the NLCS‚ winning their 3rd in a row‚ 15-0‚ to defeat the Cardinals and win the NL Pennant. Homers by Fred McGriff‚ Javy Lopez‚ and Andruw Jones support the shutout pitching of Tom Glavine.

October 17, 1998: Game 1 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, the way God intended it. Down 5-2 in the bottom of the 7th, the Yankees explode for 7 runs to blow away the Padres‚ 9-6.

Chuck Knoblauch completes his redemption from his ALCS Game 2 “brainlauch” with a 3-run homer in the inning to tie it‚ off Padre starter Kevin Brown, who had a reputation as a “Yankee Killer” while pitching for the Texas Rangers. (Yankee Killer? We hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.)

Then, after reliever Mark Langston (himself rather successful against the Yankees while pitching for the Mariners and Angels) loads the bases, Tino Martinez, who’s also been struggling lately, comes up. With a 2-2 count, Langston throws a pitch that’s juuuust low. To this day, Padre fans will say that it was strike 3, and Tino should have been called out, and that this “fixed” the Series for the Yankees.

Now, we Yankee Fans don’t have much reason to get upset with Padres fans, but if you blow a 3-run lead in the 7th inning of a World Series game, you don’t deserve to win the Series. Tino takes the full-count pitch, and cranks it into the upper deck in right field for a grand slam. San Diego native David Wells notches the win against his hometown team.

October 17, 1999: The Mets edge the Braves in a 15-inning thriller at Shea‚ 4-3‚ to move within 1 game of Atlanta in their NLCS. Robin Ventura's grand slam in the bottom half of the 15th wins it‚ but his Met teammates mob him before he can reach 2nd base. He never completes his round of the bases, and so he gets credit for a single instead of a home run.

The Braves leave a postseason-record 19 players on base in the contest. The Mets use 9 pitchers in the game‚ with rookie Octavio Dotel getting the win. No “Heartbreak Dotel” in this game.

No, if it’s heartbreak you’re looking for, head up to Fenway Park. The Yankees defeat the Red Sox‚ 9-2‚ to take a 3-games-to-1 lead in the ALCS. Andy Pettitte gets the victory for New York‚ with home run support from Darryl Strawberry and Ricky Ledee.

It was only 3-2 Yankees going into the top of the 8th, but the Boston bullpen (Ledee hits a grand slam off Rod Beck) and defense collapse – some would say aided by some poor umpiring. The Sox fans, angry about the calls, throw garbage onto the field in the 9th, for about five minutes until the umpires get the public-address announcer to ask the fans to stop or else the game will be forfeited.

But with all the errors the Sox have been making, and with all the bullpen failure, Sox fans have no one to blame but their own players. For years, I’d heard Boston described as “the Athens of America,” and Red Sox fans described as the most knowledgable in baseball. This proved both a lie. Even Tony Massarotti, then writing for the Boston Herald, ripped the Fenway faithful, saying that this was not the Curse of the Bambino, but “the Torment of the Drunks.”

October 17, 2000: The Yankees defeat the Mariners‚ 9-7 at Yankee Stadium‚ to win the ALCS and their 37th AL Pennant. David Justice's 3-run homer in the 7th inning gives New York a lead it never relinquishes. Justice wins the ALCS MVP award. Seattle catcher Dan Wilson's single breaks his 0-for-42 hitless streak‚ the longest ever in postseason history.

Since the Mets have already wrapped up the NL Pennant, New York will have its first Subway Series in 44 years.

October 17, 2003: It was 12:16 AM when Aaron Boone became the newest in a long, long of unlikely postseason heroes for the Yankees. But aside from another homer that turned out to be meaningless, he barely hit in the World Series against the Florida Marlins, and in the offseason he injured his knee so badly he'd be out for the 2004 season. So the Yankees got Alex Rodriguez. How did that turn out? Uh, well, 1 title so far.

Early editions of the October 17 New York Post include an editorial claiming the Yankees lost to Boston and couldn't get the job done in Game 7 of the ALCS. Way to go, Murdoch Post, showing your usual quality control and/or honesty.

October 17, 2004, 10 years ago: The Red Sox stay alive in the ALCS with a 6-4‚ 12-inning win over the Yankees. David Ortiz's 2-run walkoff homer wins it in the 12th after the Sox tied the score off Mariano Rivera in the 9th, with a walk by Kevin Millar, pinch-runner Dave Roberts’ steal of 2nd, and Bill Mueller singling him home with the tying run. Ortiz drives home 4 runs for Boston‚ while Alex Rodriguez homers for New York – his last positive contribution to a Yankee postseason effort for 5 years. (Millahhhh? Mueller? Ortiz? Cough-steroids-cough.)

The Sox jumped on Ortiz as if they'd just won not just 1 ALCS game, but the World Series. They had good reason to call themselves "Idiots." Aw, what the heck, it's only 1 game, right? The Yankees will wrap up the Pennant tomorrow, right?

It took the Yankees 5 more years to wrap up their next Pennant.

October 17, 2005: Albert Pujols' 3-run homer off Brad Lidge, practically smashing through the outer wall beyond left field at Minute Maid Park, with 2 outs in the 9th inning gives the Cardinals a 5-4 comeback win over the Astros and keeps their Pennant hopes alive. Lance Berkman's 3-run homer in the 7th had given Houston a 4-2 lead. The Astros still lead the Series‚ 3-games-to-2. Jason Isringhausen gets the win in relief for St. Louis.

Legend has it that Lidge was never the same after giving up this mammoth home run, but his performance for the Phillies since 2008 proved that not to be true.

October 17, 2008: Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Four Tops and the voice of Audrey II in the film version of Little Shop of Horrors dies of cancer.  He was 72.

As far as I know, he had nothing to do with sports. I’m just mentioning him to set up this question: Why do I watch sports, when it costs me so much time, money and energy? ‘Cause, sugar pie, honey bunch, I’m weaker than a man should be. I can’t help myself.