April 15, 1965: John Havlicek Steals the Ball

April 15, 1965, 60 years ago: Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, at the Boston Garden. The Boston Celtics led the Philadelphia 76ers 110-109, but a rare mistake by Russell gave the Sixers the ball with just a few seconds left on the clock.

If the Sixers could score, they would end (or, at least, interrupt) the Celtic dynasty, and head to the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, who had wrapped up the Western Conference Championship 2 days earlier.

Hal Greer was getting ready to inbound the ball, and if the Sixers could get it to Wilt Chamberlain, that would probably be it. First, Greer saw Chet Walker (Number 25 in the photo above), and tried to get the ball to him.

John Havlicek had other ideas. Johnny Most had the call, on WHDH, 850 on the AM dial (now WEEI):

Greer is putting the ball in play. He gets it out deep, and Havlicek steals it! Over to Sam Jones! Havlicek stole the ball! It's all over! It's all over! Johnny Havlicek is being mobbed by the fans! It's all over! Johnny Havlicek stole the ball! Oh my, what a play by Havlicek at the end of this ball game!

"I knew he had 5 seconds to inbound," Havlicek said at the time. "So I started counting to myself: '1,001, 1,002, 1,003.' Usually, something has happened by then. So, by 1,003 and a half, I started to peek a little more."

The film always confused me. The player dribbling the ball up the court is clearly a black man, who, as Most pointed out, was Sam Jones. Havlicek was still playing when I was a little kid, so I knew he was white. If Havlicek was the one who stole the ball, why was he not the man dribbling up the court? The film shows him jumping and just tipping the ball with his hand, and Jones retrieving it. It's a "Blink and you'll miss it" play.

But it's become the most famous single play in NBA history -- due to Most doing for it what Russ Hodges did for Bobby Thomson's home run to win the New York Giants the 1951 National League Pennant, and, in each case, the moment did the same for the man -- and 2nd only to Willie Mays' catch in the 1954 World Series as the most famous defensive play in the history of sports.

The Celtics went on to beat the Lakers in the Finals, having already done so in 1959 (while the Lakers were still in Minneapolis), 1962 and 1963; and did so again in 1966, 1968 and 1969, with Chamberlain and the 76ers finally breaking through in 1967, beating the San Francisco (now Golden State) Warriors.

Havlicek would be a member of 8 NBA Championship teams with the Celtics, the last in 1976. The current version of the NBA Championship Trophy, now named for former Commissioner Larry O'Brien, was introduced the following year, so "Hondo" never won the trophy he's holding in this photo. The predecessor Trophy, and this trophy until O'Brien's retirement as Commissioner in 1984, was named for the Celtics' founder and owner, Walter Brown.

Havlicek was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and named to the NBA's 50th and 75th Anniversary Teams. The Celtics retired his Number 17. He died in 2019. I don't know if he ever met Mays. 

April 22, 1947: The 1st NBA Champions

April 22, 1947, 75 years ago: The Basketball Association of America, the league that became the National Basketball Association 2 years later, crowns its first Champions.

The Philadelphia Warriors won the Eastern Division Playoffs, while the Chicago Stags won the Western Division Playoffs. The Finals got underway at the Philadelphia Arena, at 4530 Market Street in West Philadelphia, adjacent to the 46th Street station on the Market Street Elevated line, now known as SEPTA's Market-Frankford Line.

In those pre-24-second-shot-clock days, the Warriors won Game 1, 84-71. Joe Fulks, the league's 1st-ever scoring champion, scored 37 points.

(In a 1996 ESPN special about picking the greatest NBA team of all time, Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe, born 14 months before this 1st NBA Finals in nearby Trenton, New Jersey, suggested that the 1954 institution of the shot clock was a demarcation line, and, before that, no team, and no player, could be taken seriously among the all-time greats, because the game was just too different. He singled out Fulks: "I'm not going to kid you: I don't think Jumpin' Joe Fulks makes it in today's NBA, except maybe as a 12th man." In other words, the last man on the bench.)

The Warriors also won Game 2, 85-74, even though their leading scorer in this game scored only 18. This was Howie Dallmar, who had led Stanford University to the 1942 NCAA Tournament title.

The series moved out to the Chicago Stadium for Game 3. But only 2,209 fans came out, leaving about 20,000 empty seats. The days when a team going for a professional basketball league's championship meant everything to Chicago were far off into the future. The Warriors won this one, too, 75-72.

The Stags managed to avoid a sweep, by winning Game 4, 74-73, led by 20 points from Max Zaslofsky. But back in Philadelphia, on April 22, in front of a full house of 8,221, the Warriors finished the Stags off, 83-80. Fulks scored 34. Color footage survives, even though the accompanying music sounds more like the 1920s than the 1940s.

The team's head coach, general manager and owner was Eddie Gottlieb, born in 1898 in Kyiv, Ukraine, but grew up in South Philadelphia. He founded the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association team, or the Philadelphia SPHAs, the top pro basketball team in the Northeast in the 1930s and early 1940s. It's been suggested that the Warriors can be traced to this team, and some players did move from the SPHAs to the Warriors. However, the SPHAs continued in the minor American Basketball League for a few years. Gottlieb died in 1979.

Hail the Champions:

* 5, guard Angelo Musi, from West Philadelphia and the city's Temple University, born in 1918, died in 2009.

* 6, guard Jerry Fleishman, from Brooklyn and New York University (NYU), 1922-2007.

* 7, guard Jerry Rullo, from Southwest Philadelphia and Temple, 1922-2016, the last survivor of this team.

* 8, guard, George Senesky, from South Philadelphia and the city's St. Joseph's University, 1922-2001.

* 9, guard, Ralph Kaplowitz, from The Bronx and NYU, 1919-2009.

* 10, Joe Fulks, from Kuttawa, Kentucky and Murray State, 1921-1976.

* 12, forward Howie Dallmar, from San Francisco and Stanford, 1922-1991.

* 14, forward Matt Guokas, from West Philadelphia and St. Joseph's, 1915-1993. He later served as the public address announcer for the Philadelphia Eagles.

* 15, guard Pete Rosenberg, from South Philadelphia and, despite being Jewish, St. Joseph's, 1918-1997.

* 16, center Art Hillhouse, from Rutherford, New Jersey, and Long Island University in Brooklyn, 1916-1980.

The following season, the Warriors reached the Finals again, but lost to the original version of the Baltimore Bullets. They would win the NBA Championship again in 1956, coached by Senesky, and led by former Philadelphia collegiate stars Tom Gola of La Salle and Paul Arizin of Villanova.

Starting in 1952, the Warriors began playing more games at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center. The Philadelphia Arena burned down in 1983.

In 1962, the Warriors were bought and moved to San Francisco, taking the name Golden State Warriors in 1971. In 1963, the Syracuse Nationals were moved to become the Philadelphia 76ers. In 1967, led by Wilt Chamberlain, they won the NBA Championship. Also among their players was Matt Guokas Jr., making him and Matt Sr. the 1st father-son combination to both win NBA titles. Also among their players was Billy Cunningham, who coached the 76ers to the 1983 NBA Championship. They've been to just 1 NBA Finals since, in 2001.

The Stags weren't even that lucky. They made the Playoffs every year they were in the NBA, but they were only in it 4 years, folding in 1950. The Chicago Bulls arrived in 1966, but didn't win their 1st title until 1991, with Michael Jordan. 

March 2, 1962: Wilt Chamberlain Scores 100 Points

Note the time of this post: 1:00 AM, or "100 hours."

March 2, 1962, 60 years ago: The Philadelphia Warriors played the New York Knicks, in a "home game" for the Warriors at the Hershey Sports Arena.

It was not unusual for such games to be played by NBA teams in those days, in the hopes of building a regional fanbase. It might have worked better if the games had been on television. But there is no surviving TV broadcast of this game, and it might not have been on TV at all. There is no surviving film, either. Just a radio broadcast, with Bill Campbell on the microphone, and a few photographs.

Which is too bad, because this was the game in which the Warriors' Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points.

Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born on August 21, 1936 in Philadelphia. He was 6 feet even at age 10, and 6-foot-10 when he entered Overbrook High School in West Philadelphia. He eventually grew to 7-foot-1 and 1/16th inch. Or, as he later put it, "Kids, smoking is bad for you. I smoked a stogie when I was 14, and I haven't grown an inch since."

He also said that all the people who said, "My God, are you tall!" and "Lord, when are you going to stop growing?" and "Jesus, you are huge!" were balanced out by the people who said, "Holy shit!"

He wasn't the only pro basketball player produced by the Overbrook Rams (although they were the Panthers in his day): They also include Hal Lear, Wali Jones, Walt Hazzard, Wayne Hightower, 

Among their other celebrities: Baseball player Jeffrey Leonard, Super Bowl-winning New York Jets defensive back Johnny Sample, Philadelphia Eagles broadcaster Merrill Reese; doo-wop singers Rosetta Hightower (lead singer of The Orlons and Wayne's sister), Dee Dee Sharp and Len Barry; all the members of the soul group The Delfonics, Fresh Prince Will Smith, and Guion Bluford, the 1st black American astronaut.

Wilt excelled in track, in running, jumping and throwing events. But his combination of size, strength and speed had never been seen in basketball before. He broke Tom Gola's record to become Philadelphia's all-time high school basketball scoring leader, including 3 straight games in which he scored 74, 78 and 90 points. He led them to 3 straight Public League titles and 2 straight City Championships.

The University of Kansas, under head coach Forrest "Phog" Allen, had won the National Championship in 1952, lost the NCAA Final in 1953, and opened the Fieldhouse that would later bear Allen's name in 1955. Wilt went there, and led them to the NCAA Final in 1957, where they lost in triple overtime to North Carolina.

Until the 1970s, only Conference Champions and independents could enter the NCAA Tournament, and Kansas did not repeat as Big Eight Champions in 1958. After that junior year, Wilt left KU and signed with the Harlem Globetrotters. They paid him more than any NBA team would have, and he loved the traveling, going all over the world.

For the 1959-60 season, with his college class having graduated, he was eligible to play in the NBA, and the Philadelphia Warriors selected him with their territorial pick. He was now a teammate of Gola and Paul Arizin, both of whom went on to the Basketball Hall of Fame. And the Warriors' coach was the coach of the North Carolina team that had stopped him in the 1957 NCAA Final: Frank McGuire. McGuire knew Wilt was not a disciplinary problem, so he pretty much let Wilt play however he wanted.

As a result, Wilt practically re-wrote the NBA record book. In spite of this, the Warriors couldn't get past the Boston Celtics: Bill Russell wasn't quite as good a player as Wilt, but he was able to do something Wilt wasn't: He made his teammates better. The Warriors lost the Eastern Division Finals to the Celtics in 1960 and 1962, and lost the Division Semifinals to the Syracuse Nationals in 1961.

Wilt led the NBA in scoring in 1960 and 1961. Nobody could stop him. The league widened the lane, in the hopes that stopping him could be made easier. It didn't help. On November 24, 1960, at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center, perhaps the most Wiltian game of all was played. Wilt grabbed 55 rebounds. In one game. Against Russell. He also scored 34 points. But the Celtics won the game, anyway.

In the 1961-62 season, he was averaging about 50 points a game. He had games of 73 and 78 points, to set new NBA records. In the All-Star Game, he scored 42, setting a record that stood until 2017, broken by Anthony Davis. On March 2, having not gotten any sleep the night before, he went out to Hershey with his Warrior teammates to play the Knicks.

  

*

This is what the world was like at the time of the Wilt 100 Game:

The National Basketball Association had just 9 teams, meaning 8 made the Playoffs. At the time, the Knicks were so bad (How bad were they?), Marv Albert, then a student at Syracuse University, and not far from being named their main radio announcer, said he was convinced that the regular season served only to eliminate the Knicks.

The Knicks, the Warriors, the Boston Celtics and the Syracuse Nationals were in the Eastern Division. The Western Division consisted of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Detroit Pistons, the Cincinnati Royals, the St. Louis Hawks, and... the Chicago Packers.

Yes, you read that right: The Chicago Packers. It was their 1st season. But no Chicago Bears fan wanted to pay to see a team called the Packers. For the 1962-63 season, their name was changed to the Chicago Zephyrs. Still, nobody wanted to watch them. So they moved, taking the name of a team that had folded in 1954: The Baltimore Bullets. Today, they are the Washington Wizards.

Despite having Wilt, the Warriors moved to San Francisco after the season. A year later, the Nationals moved to replace them, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers. The Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968. The Royals became the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985.

Despite their move, the Nationals' arena, the Onondaga County War Memorial, still stands, now known as the Upstate Medical University Arena. So does Cobo Hall, the home of the Pistons, now named Huntington Place. The other 7 NBA arenas from 1962 are gone: The old Madison Square Garden was demolished in 1968, the Kiel Auditorium in 1992, the Boston Garden in 1998, the International Amphitheatre in Chicago in 1999, the Philadelphia Civic Center in 2005, the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in 2016, and the Cincinnati Gardens in 2018.

The Commissioner of the NBA, still the only one the league had had since it was founded in 1946, was Maurice Podoloff. He was older than the sport itself: He was born somewhere in the Ukraine (he said records weren't kept) on August 18, 1890, and Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts on December 21, 1891. (Podoloff, a lawyer who built and operated the New Haven Arena in Connecticut and also served as President of the American Hockey League, retired as NBA Commissioner in 1963, and lived until 1985.)

Wilt wasn't the only NBA star having a season for the ages: Oscar Robertson of the Royals averaged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 11.4 assists. That's right: He averaged a triple-double for the season. Nobody knew that, though, until the NBA made it an official statistic for the 1979-80 season. Oddly, it was Wilt's friend, Harvey Pollack, the statistician for Philadelphia basketball teams from the founding of the league and the Warriors in 1946 until his death in 2015, who coined the term, and led the NBA to adopt it.

"The Big O" would be the only NBA player to average a triple-double for an entire season until 2017, when Russell Westbrook did it for the 1st time. Through the 2020-21 season, he's now done it 4 times. However, in only 1 of those 4 seasons did he top Robertson in points, in only 1 (a different one) did he top him in assists, and in none of them did he top him in rebounds.

Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Jim Calhoun, Willis Reed, David Stern and Bill Bradley were still in college. Rick Barry, Pat Riley, Walt Frazier, Phil Jackson, Elvin Hayes, Mike Krzyzewski, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Pete Maravich were in high school.

Dave Cowens and Gregg Popovich were 13 years old; Julius Erving was 12; Roy Williams was 11; Pat Summitt and Bill Walton were 9; Geno Auriemma was 7, and Moses Malone was about to turn 7; Bernard King and Larry Bird were 5; Magic Johnson was 2, Isiah Thomas and Dennis Rodman were 9 months old; and John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Karl Malone weren’t born yet.

Mets manager Buck Showalter was 5 years old, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau was 4, Devils coach Lindy Ruff was 2; and the other current New York Tri-State Area head coaches and managers weren't born yet.

The Celtics were the defending NBA Champions, the Chicago Black Hawks held the Stanley Cup, the Yankees were baseball's World Champions, the Green Bay Packers had won the NFL Championship, and the Houston Oilers had won the AFL Championship. That franchise, now known as the Tennessee Titans, hasn't gone as far as the rules allowed them to go since then. The Heavyweight Champion of the World was Floyd Patterson.

The Olympic Games have since been held 4 times each in America and Japan; 3 times in Canada; twice each in Austria, France, Russia, Korea and China; and once each in Mexico, Germany, Bosnia, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, Italy, Britain and Brazil. The World Cup has since been held twice each in Mexico and Germany; and once each in America, England, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil and Russia.

Segregation was still in place in several States. There was no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Environmental Protection Agency, no OSHA, no Title IX. The ideas that a woman could legally obtain an abortion, or that people of the same gender could get married and be entitled to all the rights of a married couple, were ridiculous. But then, so was the idea that corporations were "people" and entitled to the rights thereof.

The President of the United States was John F. Kennedy. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry Truman, their wives, Herbert Hoover, and the widow of Franklin Delano Roosevelt were still alive.

Lyndon Johnson was Vice President. Richard Nixon was running for Governor of California. Gerald Ford was in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jimmy Carter was running for the State Senate in Georgia. Ronald Reagan was acting. George H.W. Bush was in the oil business in Texas, and his son George W. was in high school. So were Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham and Donald Trump. Joe Biden was in college. Jill Biden was 11 years old. Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Kamala Harris weren't born yet.

The Governor of the State of New York was Nelson Rockefeller, of the powerful oil and banking family. The Mayor of the City of New York was Robert F. Wagner Jr., son of one of the greatest U.S. Senators. The Governor of New Jersey was Richard J. Hughes. And, in the places in question, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was David L. Lawrence, and the Mayor of Philadelphia was James Tate.

The current holders of those offices? Kathy Hochul was 3 years old, Eric Adams was a year and a half, Phil Murphy was 4, Tom Wolf was 13, and Jim Kenney was 3.

There were still living veterans of America's Indian Wars and Canada's North-West Rebellion. There were still living players from that 1st basketball game in 1891.

The Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded, for the only time in its history, posthumously, to Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations, for his efforts to end civil wars in Africa. He had been killed in a plane crash the preceding September, and awarded the Prize in November.

The Prime Minister of Canada was Lester Pearson; and of Britain, Harold Macmillan. The monarch of both nations was Queen Elizabeth II -- that hasn't changed. The Pope was John XXIII. The current Pope, Francis, was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was 25, and had taken his Jesuit vows, although he had not yet been ordained as a priest. There have since been 12 Presidents of the United States, 12 Prime Ministers of Britain, and 6 Popes.

Major novels of 1962 included Another Country by James Baldwin, Lilies of the Field by William Barrett, Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie, King Rat by James Clavell, The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton, The Thin Red Line by James Jones, Big Sur by Jack Kerouac, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, the alternate-history story The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, and the last novel by William Faulkner, The Reivers.

For children, Madeleine L'Engle published A Wrinkle in Time, and Ezra Jack Keats published The Snowy Day. Definitely not for kids, Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl, Barbara Tuchman published The Guns of August, Milton Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom, and Edward Albee premiered his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? For everybody, John Steinbeck published Travels With Charley: In Search of America, and Rachel Carson launched the modern environmental movement with Silent Spring.

Notable films in the late Winter of 1962 included Light in the Piazza, Walk on the Wild Side, a remake of State Fair, and the last of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's "Road Pictures," The Road to Hong Kong. Ian Fleming had just published the James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me, and Sean Connery was filming the 1st Bond film, Dr. No. The late George Reeves was the last live-action Superman, Robert Lowery the last live-action Batman, and Doctor Who was still just a concept.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were still alive and writing. Gene Roddenberry was still writing for TV. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Stephen King were in high school. George R.R. Martin was in junior high. J.K. Rowling wasn't born yet.

The Number 1 song in America was "Duke of Earl" by Gene Chandler. Elvis Presley was about to premiere the film Follow That Dream, beginning his commercial downward spiral. The Beatles had begun to be managed by Brian Epstein. Bob Dylan was just getting started in the recording industry. Elton John was 15; Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen were 12; and Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince were all 3.

Inflation was such that what $1.00 bought then, $9.31 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 4 cents, and a New York Subway ride 15 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 31 cents, a cup of coffee 34 cents, a McDonald's meal (cheeseburger -- no Big Mac yet -- fries and shake) 49 cents, a movie ticket 81 cents, a new car $2,500, and a new house $19,508. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 711.00.

The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building. Telephone numbers were still based on "exchanges," based on the letters on a rotary dial. So a number that, today, would be (718) 293-6000 (this is the number for the Yankees' ticket office, so I’m not hurting anyone's privacy), would have been CYpress 3-6000. That would change: On May 11, 1962, all-number calling would begin.

There were no ZIP Codes, either. They ended up being based on the old system: The old New York Daily News Building, at 220 East 42nd Street, was "New York 17, NY"; it became "New York, NY 10017" starting on July 1, 1963.

Unless you were a teenager who needed to hear the day's biggest hits on "Top 40 Radio," television had completely replaced radio for entertainment. By this point, most American homes had at least 1 TV set. However, only about 1/3rd of those homes had a color set.

Photocopiers were still new. Credit cards were still a relatively new thing, and there were no automatic teller machines in America. There were artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts. Transplanting a kidney was possible, but not a heart, lung or liver. There were no video games. Computers could take up the entire wall of a city building. Steve Jobs had just turned 7, while Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee were 6. Men had been launched into Earth orbit, but not past it. President Kennedy had set the goal of putting a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth by the end of the decade.

In the late Winter of 1962, President Kennedy announced an embargo against Cuba. The London-based Sunday Times became the 1st newspaper to print a color supplement. France granted Algeria its independence, ending a 7-year war. A cola mine explosion in West Germany killed nearly 300 people. Another 300 Germans died in a flood of the North Sea. The U.S. and the Soviet Union exchanged captured spies, Francis Gary Powers of U-2 plane fame for Rudolf Abel. Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev danced together for the 1st time. A coup in Burma resulted in a military ditctatorship.

In America, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy led a nationally-televised tour of the White House. John Glenn became the 1st American to be launched into Earth orbit. Two of the Flying Wallendas were killed when their "seven-person pyramid" collapsed during a performance in Detroit. Comedian Danny Thomas founded the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. The 1st annual 24 Hours of Daytona race was run. The 1st Kmart store opened in Garden City, Michigan. And the 1st Taco Bell restaurant opened in Downey, California.

Conductor Bruno Walter, and baseball pitcher George Mogridge, and football legend Walt Kiesling died. Garth Brooks, and Chris Chelios, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee were born.

That's what the world was like on March 2, 1962, when the 46-29 Philadelphia Warriors took on the 27-45 New York Knickerbockers at the Hershey Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was the Warriors' 3rd "home game" there that season.

*

Only 4,124 people paid to see the game in the 7,286-seat arena, built in 1936. The game was not televised, in either New York or Philadelphia. No film footage is known to exist. In other words, only those 4,124 people, plus the teams, plus the people working with them, plus the people otherwise working in the arena, ever saw this performance. The only known recording is a off an audiotape, of the 4th quarter, of Bill Campbell (who also broadcast for the Philadelphia Phillies and Eagles) on WCAU, 1210 on the AM dial (now WPHT).

Before the game, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Baltimore Colts, football teams played a charity basketball game. (The arena is 14 miles east of the State Capitol in Harrisburg, 96 miles west of Center City Philadelphia, and 81 miles north of downtown Baltimore.) It is suspected that more of the 4,124 people paid to see that than to see the Warriors take on the woeful Knicks.

At the end of the 1st quarter, the Warriors led 42-26, and Chamberlain had 23 points. Darrall Imhoff had helped the University of California win the 1959 National Championship, but he was now tasked with guarding Wilt for the Knicks. He was soon benched for getting into foul trouble, and asked the ref, "Why don't you just give the guy a hundred now, and we'll all go home?" Fine question to ask: Referees rarely gave Wilt the benefit of the doubt.

At the half, it was Warriors 79, Knicks 68. Wilt had added another 18 points, for 41. Teammate Guy Rodgers, formerly a star at Temple University, cited a nickname Wilt liked, "the Big Dipper," because he had to dip his head under some doorways (he hated the nickname "Wilt the Stilt"), or "Dippy" or "Dip" for short, and said, "Let's get the ball to Dip. Let's see how many he can get." McGuire had no problem with this.

When Wilt got to 50, Dave Zinkoff -- the public-address announcer for Philadelphia's NBA teams from the league's founding in 1946 until his death in 1985 -- began to shout the number, to get the small crowd going. And it worked. By the time the 3rd quarter ended, with the Warriors leading 125-106, and Wilt added 28 to make 69, the fans were chanting, "Give it to Wilt! Give it to Wilt! Give it to Wilt!"

With 7:51 left, Wilt got to 79, breaking his own record. Al Attles, who would later coach the Warriors to the 1975 NBA Championship, passed up an easy layup and passed to Wilt, so he could score points 88 and 89, with 5 minutes to go. Attles later said, "We wanted that Wilt got the record, because we all liked him."

The Knicks changed strategy, fouling any player but Wilt, to try to stop him from getting 100. He got to 96 with a fadeaway with 2:12 to go. He didn't dunk often, but he slammed one home for 98 with 1:19 left.

With less than a minute to go, Joe Ruklick passed to Rogers, who saw Wilt close to the basket, and passed to him for the chance at 99 and 100. But he missed. Ted Luckenbill got the rebound, and passed to Wilt, who put up another shot, and missed again. Luckenbill got another rebound, and passed to Ruklick. He had an easy layup, but sacrificed it to lob it to Wilt. With 46 seconds left, Wilt jumped and laid the ball in. (Some accounts say it was a dunk, but most say it was a layup.)

Wilt had 100. About 200 fans stormed the court. Ruklick, wanting to be a part of history, got through them to the scorer's table. He wanted it recorded for all time that he had the assist for Wilt's 99th and 100th points of the night.

It is widely believed -- and Wilt himself claimed -- that the remainder of the game was never played. The surviving recording proves that this wasn't true: It took 9 minutes to clear the court, and the last 46 seconds were played. Wilt did play them, but did not score again. It's just as well: 101, 102, 103 or 104 wouldn't have had the same historical oomph as the nice, round, even number of 100.

Final score: Warriors 169, Knicks 147. This would remain the highest-scoring game in NBA history for 21 years. That final score was then the highest in NBA history, and the combined total of 316 points would remain an NBA record for 21 years.

Everybody else on the Warriors: Al Attles scored 17, Paul Arizin 16, Tom Meschery 16, Guy Rodgers 11, York Larese 9; and, playing but not scoring, Ed Conlin, Joe Ruklick and Ted Luckenbill.

For the Knicks: Richie Guerin 39, Cleveland Buckner 33, Willie Naulls 31, Dave Budd 13, Donnie Butcher 10, Al Butler 8, Darrall Imhoff 7 and Johnny Green 6.

After the game, Harvey Pollack, the Warriors' statistician and publicist since day one, who would hold that job for the 76ers until his death in 2015, found him in the locker room, and gave him a piece of paper with the number 100 on it, figuring a photograph of him holding it would make for good publicity. Pollack was right.

Wilt set these records: Most points in a game, 100; most points in a half, 59; most field goals in a game, 36; most field goals in a half, 22; and, belying his infamous problems with shooting them, most free throws in a game, 28, in 32 attempts.

Think about that: Wilt scored 100 despite being fouled 16 times, an average of once every 3 minutes. He also scored 100 without the 3-point field goal being available to him: The NBA would not adopt it until 1979, 6 years after his last game. With no video, we'll never know how many he would have scored if the 3-pointer had been available to him.

That season, Wilt scored more points than any player ever has, 4,029, over 1,000 more than the next-best total, by Michael Jordan, the only other guy ever to get 3,000 in a season.

Wilt averaged 50.36 points per game. Today, when a player has a single 50-point game, the way Ja Morant got 52 for the Memphis Grizzlies the other day, it's a big deal. Wilt averaged over 50 a game that season. Even if you take out that 1 game, he still averaged 49.73. As the man himself said, "So, it was like doubling my average."

Wilt had games of 78 and 73 points that season. Take out those 2 games, and the 100-pointer, and he still averaged 49.06 points per game. He also had 2 games with 67, 2 with 65, 3 with 62, 3 with 61, and 2 with 60.

The previous record was 71. The highest total since has been 81 by Kobe Bryant in 2006, and that included 7 treys. So, under the old rules, it would have been 74, still the 3rd-highest ever, behind Wilt and... Wilt.

Despite Wilt's achievements, at the end of the 1961-62 season, the Warriors were sold, and moved across the continent. They would play from 1962 to 1971 as the San Francisco Warriors, then move across the Bay to Oakland, using the name Golden State Warriors. They returned to San Francisco in 2019, but have kept the Golden State name.

After 1 season without an NBA team, 1962-63, Philadelphia got the Syracuse Nationals to move into the Warriors' former home, the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center. They were renamed the Philadelphia 76ers. They moved into The Spectrum in 1967, and the arena now named the Wells Fargo Center in 1996. Wilt died in 1999, and a statue of him now stands outside the Wells Fargo Center.

The arena in question, built in 1936, still stands, under the name of the Hersheypark Arena. It was long the home of the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League, until 2002, when a new arena was built adjacent, now named the Giant Center after a supermarket chain.

Wilt would lead the Warriors to the NBA Finals in 1964, where they lost to the Celtics. In 1965, he was traded back to his hometown, to the 76ers. In 1966, his 7th season in the NBA, he led the league in scoring for the 7th straight year.

Finally, in 1966-67, he did not league the NBA in scoring. But the Sixers were better off. They won 41 of their 1st 44 games, finished 68-13 to set a new league record for wins in a season, embarrassed the Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, and then beat, oddly enough, the Warriors in the Finals. Wilt finally had his title.

In 1968, he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, and he lived in L.A. for the rest of his life. The Lakers lost the Finals to the Celtics again in 1969, and to the Knicks in 1970. In 1971-72, they set a North American major league sports record that still stands with a 33-game winning streak. For the 2nd time, Wilt led a team that broke the NBA record for wins in a season, going 69-13. They beat the Knicks in the Finals. The next season, the Knicks beat the Lakers in the Finals, and Wilt retired.

Don't say Kobe. Don't say LeBron. Don't say Jordan. Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest basketball player of all time. He not only did to offensive stats in basketball what Babe Ruth did to them in baseball and Wayne Gretzky in hockey, he was the best defensive player, too. At the absolute least, 2nd in his time to Bill Russell.

Today, young fans like to say, "Wilt played against slow white guys." He also played against fast white guys. And fast black guys. In a league not watered down by expansion. Sure, the Knicks were bad, but there was no Donald Sterling-era Clippers, or pre-Jason Kidd Nets in the league.

Some young fans like to say, "Wilt played against plumbers." Guys who couldn't stay in shape all year long, because salaries were so low, they had to get off-season jobs. Well, if they were plumbers, then they brought their wrenches into the game, because Wilt got fouled like crazy, and it didn't stop him. Shaquille O'Neal whined about "Hack-a-Shaq." He didn't take half of what Wilt took, back when games weren't televised, and players knew they could get away with stuff that wouldn't get played on ESPN 5 times an hour. LeBron James? He would have faced the 1960s Celtics, with their thuggery, and run in stark terror.

At the 1997 All-Star Game, in Cleveland, the league's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players were introduced. In the locker room before the halftime introduction, Jordan was holding court, smoking a cigar, and bragging about how he was the greatest basketball player who ever lived.

Wilt had been hearing this for a few years, and he walked over to Jordan, and, very calmly, said, "Michael, my man, when you played, they changed the rules to make it easier for him. When I played, they changed the rules to make it harder for me. And it didn't work."

And he walked away. Dead silence in the room. Talk about "dropping the Mike."

Wilt died of heart trouble at his Los Angeles home on October 12, 1999. He was 63 years old.

UPDATE: On March 10, 2026, Bam Adebayo scored 83 for the Miami Heat in a win over the Washington Wizards. That is now the most since Wilt's 100. He had 7 3-pointers, so it would have been 76 under the rules Wilt played under; and he broke Wilt's record for most points on, and attempts on, free throws, raising it to 36 out of 43. After the game, he said, "Wilt, me, then Kobe. Sounds crazy."

Oh, Was That Today?

The New York City Marathon was held today, after being canceled last season due to COVID.

I hadn't noticed, and wouldn't have cared if I had.

At any rate, the winners were Albert Korir and, among the women, Peres Jepchirchi, both of Kenya.

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November 7, 1837: Elijah P. Lovejoy is assassinated. He was not a politician, but a newspaper publisher and a Presbyterian minister. He had founded a newspaper, the St. Louis Observer, that printed anti-slavery stories and editorials. This angered people in the city, and they destroyed his printing press. He got a new one, and they destroyed that one, too. He got another new one, and they destroyed that one, too.

He got the message: He wasn't welcome in St. Louis, and, in 1836, crossed the Mississippi River from the slave State of Missouri to the free State of Illinois, to nearby Alton, starting a new abolitionist newspaper, the Alton Observer.

Gun-wielding advocates of slavery caught up with him, and attacked the warehouse where he had his 4th printing press. He and his supporters thought they were ready, with their own guns, and a shootout commenced. Lovejoy was shot, and both he and his printing press were thrown into the river.

He was just short of his 35th birthday, and became the 1st white martyr in the cause against slavery. A 110-foot monument crowns his gravesite in Alton.

Hearing of his murder, John Brown dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery, but his cause would also end with gunfire. Not his life, though: That was by hanging, through due process -- if not justice.

November 7, 1848: Zachary Taylor is elected the 12th President of the United States. The leading General of the recently-concluded Mexican-American War, nicknamed Old Rough and Ready by the men who served under him and revered him, had never previously run for office, and later admitted that he'd never voted in his life, not even for himself.

However, as the nominee of the Whig Party, he beat the Democratic nominee, Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, and former President Martin Van Buren, who was running to regain the office as the nominee of the Free Soil Party, opposed to slavery.

Because of the 3-way race, Taylor was a plurality President, getting 47 percent of the popular vote, to Cass' 42 and Van Buren's 10. And Taylor and Cass split the States between them, 15 apiece. But Taylor got a majority of the Electoral Vote, 163 to 127, while Van Buren took no States and got no EVs.

Taylor was inaugurated on March 5, 1849 -- he refused to take office on the traditional day, March 4, because it was a Sunday, and so, in a way, for 24 hours, the nation was without a President -- and died on July 9, 1850, from food poisoning.

(It was accidental. In 1991, in response to historians' suggestions that he was poisoned on purpose, and thus assassinated, his body was exhumed from the veterans' cemetery that bears his name in Louisville, Kentucky, and tested. No traces of artificial poison were found.)

Vice President Millard Fillmore became the 13th President. No Whig was ever again elected, as the party was broken over the slavery issue. Therefore, the Whigs have the odd status as having as many Presidents rise to the office without election as with it: 2. (John Tyler had become President when William Henry Harrison died in 1841.) Here's the count:

Republican Party, 20: Abraham Lincoln (formerly a Whig), Andrew Johnson (formerly a Democrat), Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Democratic Party, 18: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Grover Cleveland (his nonconsecutive terms sometimes get him counted twice, which would make 18 "Democratic Presidents"), Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Whig Party, 4: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler (formerly a Democrat), Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.

Federalist Party, 1: John Adams.

National Republican Party, 1: John Quincy Adams (formerly a Federalist, later a Whig).

No party, 1: George Washington (sometimes incorrectly called a Federalist).

Total years in office: Democrats, 112; Republicans, 96; Whigs, 8; No party, 8; Federalists, 4; National Republicans, 4.

November 7, 1851, 170 years ago: Christian Friedrich Wilhelm von der Ahe is born in Hille, Prussia -- now in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He immigrated to St. Louis, then with a large German community, and bought a saloon near Sportsman's Park, the baseball park in town.

He bought the team that played there, the St. Louis Browns of the American Association, in 1882, proclaiming, in his accent, "I am der boss president of der Prowns!" There's some dispute as to whether his saloon, or Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevy's Third Base Saloon across from Boston's South End Grounds was the first "sports bar," but von der Ahe did something Nuf Ced didn't: Built a championship team, as the Browns won 4 straight AA Pennants from 1885 to 1888.

In 1892, the AA folded, and he was able to move the Browns into the National League. But a dispute with his 1st baseman and manager, Charlie Comiskey -- later the infamous owner of the Chicago White Sox -- led him to sell the star, and the Browns' glory days were over, as they wouldn't win an NL Pennant until 1926.

His glory days were over, too: By 1898, he was bankrupt, and had to sell the team. In 1908, the team, now called the Cardinals, and the new Browns, in the American League, played a benefit game for him. He died of cirrhosis in 1913.

Chris von der Ahe was baseball's 1st celebrity team owner. He was one of the most famous men in America in the 1880s and '90s. But he has been virtually forgotten, and has never been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

November 7, 1867: Maria Salomea Skłodowska is born in Warsaw, in what was then "Congress Poland," in the Russian Empire. In 1891, she and her sister, eventually known as Bronisława Dłuska, fled to Paris, and became renowned scientists.

Maria married French scientist Pierre Curie, and became known in France as Marie Curie or, more popularly, "Madame Curie." Together, the Curies conducted pioneering research into radioactivity. She was the 1st woman to win a Nobel Prize, the 1st person and the only woman to win 2 Nobels, and remains the only person to win in 2 different scientific fields: Chemistry and Physics.

She discovered the elements polonium (atomic number 84, named after her homeland) and radium (atomic number 86). Once synthesized, curium (atomic number 96) was named for her. She died in 1934, probably from the effects of long-term exposure to radioactivity.

Pierre had died in 1906. Their daughter Irène Joliot-Curie (1897-1956) and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900-1958) shared a Nobel Prize in 1935, but they also died young due to exposure to radioactivity. In contrast, their daughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot became a scientist and still teaches at the University of Paris at the age of 92, and their son Pierre Joliot is still working at 87. Between them, the Joliot-Curie grandchildren have 3 children of their own, all scientists.

Marie Curie has been played by Greer Garson in the 1943 film Madame Curie, Isabelle Huppert in the 1997 film The Palms of Madame Schutz, fellow Pole Karolina Gruszka in the 2016 film Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge, and Rosamund Pike in the 2019 film Radioactive.

November 7, 1876: Samuel Jones Tilden, former Governor of New York, wins the popular vote and the Electoral Vote in the Presidential election, defeating the Governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden got 51 percent of the popular vote, to Hayes' 48; and 204 Electoral Votes, to Hayes' 165.

What's that? You've never heard of Tilden? Unless you're a history buff, or are from Brooklyn where there's a high school named for him, that's not surprising. He didn't get to become President, because the Republicans stole the Electoral Votes of Louisiana (8), South Carolina (7) and Florida (4), plus 1 in Oregon.

So the final count, not made official until the Electoral Commission made its ruling on a pure party-line vote of 8-7 on March 2, 1877 -- 2 days before the Inauguration -- was Hayes 185, Tilden 184.

Hayes, nicknamed "His Fraudulency" and "Old 8 to 7," announced he would serve only 1 term, and kept his promise. Tilden was convinced he was robbed, but did not run again in 1880 or 1884, due to ill health, and died in 1886.

But was he robbed? The Democrats, then the nation's conservative party, may have engaged in serious intimidation of newly-enfranchised black voters in Southern States. It's possible they tried every bit as hard to steal those States on Election Day as the Republicans did afterward. We may never know who truly deserved to win. Regardless, there is absolutely no known evidence that either Hayes or Tilden participated in any election fraud on their own behalfs. (Behalves?)

November 7, 1896, 125 years ago: The St. Nicholas Rink opens at 69 West 66th Street, on the corner of Columbus Avenue (9th Avenue), on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In 1900, it was the site of the 1st hockey game between Harvard and Yale, and Yale won 5-4. In 1917, it hosted the 1st women's hockey game in America. It was New York vs. New England, and the hosts won: St. Nicholas 1, Boston 0.

In 1911, professional boxing was legalized in the State of New York, and a wooden floor was put over the ice so prizefights could be staged. By 1920, boxing was making the place so much money, the rink was eliminated, and it was known as the St. Nicholas Arena from then on. Jack Johnson, Jess Willard, Kid Chocolate, Rocky Graziano, Floyd Patterson (including his 1st professional fight) and Muhammad Ali (then still using his birth name of Cassius Clay) fought there.

The ABC Network used it as a production center, and early rock and roll concerts were held there. In 1983, ABC bought the building and its land, tore the Arena down, and built their headquarters, a.k.a. Lincoln Square, on the site, now carrying the address of 77 West 66th Street. WABC-Channel 7 Eyewitness News, ABC World News Tonight, Live! (formerly with Regis Philbin & Kathie Lee Gifford) and The Rachael Ray Show all tape and broadcast from there.

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November 7, 1904: Little Johnny Jones opens at the Liberty Theatre at 236 West 42nd Street in New York. It is the 1st play staged there. George M. Cohan is the writer, director and star, playing a jockey who goes to London to race in the Epsom Derby, loses, is accused of throwing the race, and must clear his name.

The show contains 2 of Cohan's legendary songs: "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Give My Regards to Broadway." The former not only becomes the title of the 1942 film biography of Cohan, starring James Cagney, but also helps to popularize "Yankees" as an alternative name for the New York Highlanders of baseball's American League.

Ironically, because New York Giants manager John McGraw cultivated Broadway performers as friends, Cohan became a Giants fan. Cagney, however, was a Yankee Fan, and even threw out the ceremonial first ball at a 1981 World Series game. It was one of his last public appearances.

The Liberty Theatre still stands, but has been converted into retail space, including a Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum and a Famous Dave's restaurant. With some appropriateness, a Yankees Clubhouse Store is almost right across the street, at 236 West 42nd.

November 7, 1908: Allegedly, this was the day that American outlaws Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh -- a.k.a. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, respectively -- were killed in a shootout with the Bolivian Army at San Vicente.

Attempts to determine whether this was true have thus far failed. It has been alleged, including by Cassidy's sister, that Butch left Bolivia and was still alive as late as 1937. (He would have been 72.) A suggestion that Sundance was still alive as late as 1936 has been proven by DNA testing to be false, but, so far, that's as close as DNA testing has come to proving anything. For all we know, the old Utah and Wyoming bank and train robbers of the 1890s may well have had a good laugh about it all for a long time thereafter.

November 7, 1916: America elects a President. The Democratic nominee is the incumbent, President Woodrow Wilson, campaigning against American entry into World War I. His slogan was, "He kept us out of war." The Republican nominee is Charles Evans Hughes, who had been Governor of New York and a Justice of the Supreme Court, who believes America should enter the war. It should be noted that each man's party is roughly evenly divided on the subject, for various reasons.

When the night is over, Hughes appears to be the winner. But, as with President Samuel J. Tilden, there's a reason most of you have never heard of President Charles E. Hughes: He, too, went to bed as the President-elect, and woke up as not that.

The problem turns out to be the communication systems of the time, with the results in rural areas not getting to the State capitals quickly, and thus not being sent on to the national capital quickly. For example, New Hampshire: Wilson ended up winning it by 56 votes. Not 56,000, not 5,600, but fifty-six. That's the smallest margin ever recorded in a State in a Presidential vote.

The key State is California, then having 13 Electoral Votes (about 1/4 of what it has now). At first, Hughes is winning it, and he goes to bed believing he has won it. Wilson, too, had gone to bed, thinking he had lost the State, and thus the country.

The story, perhaps apocryphal, tells of a reporter learning early the next morning that Wilson has taken the lead in California, and thus won the election, and calling Hughes' home. Hughes' son, or his butler, or someone else (depending on who's telling the story), tells the reporter, "The President-elect is asleep." The reporter says, "When he wakes up, tell him he's not the President-elect anymore."

With 266 Electoral Votes then needed for victory, Wilson wins 277-254. If Hughes had won California, he would have won 267-264. Wilson won 49.2 percent of the popular vote, Hughes 46.1 percent. For both of his terms, Wilson would be a plurality President -- which had already happened to Grover Cleveland, and would later happen to Bill Clinton.

By the time he is Inaugurated again on March 5, 1917 (the usual date until 1933, March 4, was a Sunday that year), it is clear that Wilson will have to take America into the war. The war will make him beloved around the world. The peace process will make him despised at home.

A stroke in October 1919 paralyzed him, and when he left office in March 1921, he was, physically and emotionally, a broken man. He died in 1924. Hughes was appointed Secretary of State by Wilson's successor, Warren Harding, in 1921, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover in 1930. He served until retiring in 1941, and lived until 1948.

In the same election, Jeannette Rankin becomes the 1st woman elected to Congress. At the time, her home State of Montana was 1 of 10 States which then had full voting rights for women – all of them West of the Missouri River.

November 7, 1917: The Winter Palace in Petrograd is stormed by Bolshevik troops, and the Bolshevik Revolution is complete. It is also known as the October Revolution, since Russia was still using the Julian Calendar, and they thought it was October 25. The new national leader, Vladimir Lenin, switches the vast country to the Gregorian Calendar.

Lenin also moved the capital to Moscow, and after his death in 1924, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. After the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, that city's name was restored to what it was before the failed Russian Revolution of 1905: St. Petersburg. As was said at the time, "Better to name it for a saint than for a monster."

We may never know how sports in Russia would have developed had either the Czars, or the provisional government under Alexander Kerensky that replaced them in the February Revolution earlier in 1917, lasted. Some dictators understand how sports can be used to spread propaganda for their government at home and for their country abroad. The fascist dictators of the 1930s did: Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and Francisco Franco of Spain.

Soviet dictators Lenin and Josef Stalin did not. Lenin was too busy trying to keep his country from flying apart to care. Stalin is only known to have attended 1 sporting event in his life, a soccer demonstration on Moscow's Red Square itself.

But Nikita Khrushchev certainly used the Olympics to spread Red propaganda, and Leonid Brezhnev used the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to do so. Vladimir Putin is a former judo champion, although he's not nearly as good at hockey as he's been allowed to think he is -- much like Fidel Castro and his pitching. Putin used the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi to spread the Russian image, and did so again with the 2018 World Cup.

One thing is for sure: If the Bolsheviks had failed, the 1972 Summer Olympic basketball tournament, the 1972 "Summit Series" between Canada and the Soviets, and the 1980 Winter Olympic hockey tournament, while still exciting, would have had far less controversy. Also, movies such as WarGames, Red Dawn and Rocky IV might still have been made, but would have had very different enemies -- possibly more than one.

Also on this day, the Tulsa Outrage occurs. Judge T.D. Evans convicts 12 members of the Industrial Workers of the World of the crime of not owning a war bond. This was during World War I. The IWW were opposed to WWI, and not because of the reverse of their initials. Evans also convicts 5 men who were witnesses for the defense, even though they were not IWW members.

These men are delivered into the custody of not the police, or the Oklahoma penal system, but a group calling itself the Knights of Liberty. They are driven to the outskirts of town, bound to a tree, whipped, and tarred and feathered.

This was done under the leadership of W. Tate Brady, one of the city's founders, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Four years later, he became one of the men responsible for the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Four years after that, Brady shot and killed himself. It wasn't due to a guilty conscience: Rather, he was despondent over the recent death of his son John in a car crash.

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November 7, 1938: Jerry Dean Gibbs is born in Grenada, Mississippi. Jake Gibbs was the 1st great quarterback at the University of Mississippi, before either Archie Manning or his son Eli. He led them to a 10-0-1 record in 1960, with only a tie against Louisiana State spoiling their record. They won the 1961 Sugar Bowl. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.

But he never played a down in the NFL, probably because he thought he could make more money playing baseball. He was a Yankee from 1962 to 1971, a backup catcher to Yogi Berra and Elston Howard on the 1962 World Champions, of which he is 1 of 9 surviving players. He was the starter in the 1967, '68 and '69 seasons, but lost his job to Thurman Munson.

He returned to Ole Miss, coached their baseball team to the 1972 Southeastern Conference Championship and into the College World Series, and was named Coach of the Year, winning that award again in 1977. He later coached in the Yankees' system.

Also on this day, James Lee Kaat is born in Zeeland, Michigan. Jim Kaat debuted for the Washington Senators in 1959, and was the last active player who had played for the original version of that franchise. The lefthanded pitcher moved with them, and as the Minnesota Twins he helped them win the 1965 American League Pennant and the 1969 and '70 AL Western Division titles. He won 25 games in 1966, and probably would have been named the AL's Cy Young Award winner, except that this was the last season in which it was given only to the most valuable pitcher in both Leagues.

He won National League Eastern Division titles with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1976, '77 and '78, and the AL East with the Yankees in 1980. Finally, in 1982, his 24th season in the majors, a record wait, he won the World Series, with the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals.

He closed his career with the Cards in 1983, making him the last player who had played in the 1950s. He retired with a record of 283-237, 3 All-Star berths, and 16 Gold Gloves. (Admittedly, the Gold Glove is not a big deal for a pitcher, but 16!) And yet, he is not in the Hall of Fame. The only eligible-but-not-in pitcher in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era with more wins is his 1979-80 Yankee teammate, Tommy John.

Like TJ, "Kitty" became a broadcaster, for the Yankees, the Twins and CBS, and was one of the most astute in the business, winning 7 Emmy Awards. Maybe he can get into the Hall of Fame that way.

*

November 7, 1942: Tony B. Jackson -- he was born "Tony," not "Anthony," and I can find no record of what the B stood for -- is born in Brooklyn. A forward, he played at Thomas Jefferson High School Brooklyn and St. John's University in Queens, and was drafted by the Knicks, but never played in the NBA.

It wasn't that he wasn't good enough: St. John's retired his Number 24. But he and fellow Brooklyn natives Connie Hawkins, Roger Brown and Doug Moe were all indicted in a point-shaving scandal in 1962. Although none was ever convicted of any crime, all were banned for life by Commissioner Walter Kennedy.

All would make their mark in the ABA, though. Jackson played for the New Jersey Americans in that league's 1st season, 1967-68, making him an original member of the team now known as the Brooklyn Nets. That season, he set the ABA record for free throws in a game with 24, and made the All-Star Game.

He only played 1 more season of pro ball, so it wouldn't have mattered if he had been reinstated. He lived until 2005. Brown helped the Indiana Pacers win 3 ABA titles, but also retired before the leagues merged in 1976. Hawkins was reinstated in 1969, and made 4 NBA All-Star Games. He and Brown went on to be elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Moe also retired before the leagues merged, went into coaching, and was reinstated as part of the merger agreement, eventually winning 628 games as a head coach over both leagues.

Also on this day, Norman James Johnson is born in Winnipeg. A center, Jim Johnson played 8 games for the New York Rangers, before being lost in the 1967 expansion draft and becoming an original Philadelphia Flyer. He also played for the Los Angeles Kings, and the World Hockey Association's Minnesota Fighting Saints and Indianapolis Racers. He is still alive, and a member of the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame.

November 7, 1943: Roberta Joan Anderson is born in Fort MacLeod, Alberta. At age 9, in 1952, she survived North America's last big polio outbreak, and, missing a lot of school, she focused on music and art. She settled on music, hit it big in Toronto's folk music scene, got married, and started using a variation on her married name: Joni Mitchell.

They moved to Detroit, and while the city was bubbling with Motown and proto-punk, she kept playing folk-rock. By 1967, she had recorded her 1st album, but her 1st hit as a writer was not a hit record for herself: It was Judy Collins who had the hit version of "Both Sides Now."

And not only did she not have the hit version of the song "Woodstock," she wasn't even there. Crosby, Stills & Nash, who were, had the hit version, whose citation of the phrase, "We were half a million strong," embedded the number 500,000 as the attendance figure in American minds, although it may not have quite been that many. (Rolling Stone magazine, right after the festival, said 450,000.)

By the early 1970s, she was having hits under her own name. She kept writing and performing until a brain aneurysm in 2015. She has recovered enough to appear in public, but hasn't played any concerts since.

November 7, 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented 4th term, defeating Thomas E. Dewey, who held FDR's former post of Governor of New York. FDR won 432 Electoral Votes to Dewey's 99, and 53 percent of the popular vote to Dewey's 46.

FDR was not well, struggling with heart disease and high blood pressure, brought on by the pressure of fighting, essentially, 2 major wars at once, against the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese Empire in the Pacific. His smoking and drinking didn't help. He was 62 years old, and looked at least 72. The Republicans began a "whispering campaign," saying that the Democratic titan was too old and tired to handle the Presidency, and possibly dying.

To counter this, FDR held a parade down Broadway in Lower Manhattan. In the rain. Not good for his health. The parade went over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn, and he held a rally at Ebbets Field. "I've got a confession to make," he said. "I come from the State of New York, and I've practiced law in New York City. But I have never been in Ebbets Field before." He was not booed.

He did say, "I've rooted for the Dodgers" -- even though he had, on numerous occasions, been to Yankee Stadium to cheer on the Yankees and the Polo Grounds to cheer on the Giants, and saw them both at the Polo Grounds in Game 2 of the 1936 World Series. "And I hope to come back someday and watch 'em play." That got a huge roar.

FDR would be unable to go back. He had not been to a major league game since before Pearl Harbor, thinking it inappropriate for the President to do so. (There was Presidential precedent: Woodrow Wilson loved baseball, and threw out the first ball at every Opening Day of his first term, but not in 1917 and '18 due to World War I, not in '19 due to his trip to the postwar peace conference, and not in '20 due to his health.) FDR died at the dawn of the next season, of a stroke brought on by working himself to death to save civilization from fascism.

In 2016, there was no "whispering campaign": The Republicans came right out and said that the year's Democratic nominee, also (officially) from the State of New York, Hillary Clinton, was "dying" and "doesn't have the stamina to be President." She did 3 90-minute debates and kicked Donald Trump's ass in each of them. In 2020, when it became clear that Trump was becoming more and more unhealthy and unhinged, they said it was Joe Biden who had "dementia." Biden did 2 debates that, because of Trump's constant and insane interruptions, lasted more than 90 minutes, and mopped the floor with him both times. And, in 2021, Hillary is still alive and well. So, you tell me.

Also on this day, Joseph Franklin Niekro is born in Martins Ferry, Ohio. He pitched in the major leagues from 1967 to 1988, and won 221 games. He combined with his brother Phil (who was only his teammate on the 1973 and '74 Atlanta Braves and the 1985 Yankees) for 539 wins, a record for a pair of brothers. Both had the knuckleball as their main pitch. In 1976, he hit his only major league home run, off Phil.

Joe led the National League in wins in 1979, and reached the postseason with the 1972 Detroit Tigers, the 1980 and '81 Houston Astros, and the 1987 Minnesota Twins, finally winning a World Series in his 21st season, just before turning 42. He died of a brain aneurysm in 2006. His son Lance Niekro also played in the major leagues.

Also on this day, Luigi Riva is born in Leggiuno, in Lombardy in the Italian Alps. "Gigi" Riva was a forward for his hometown soccer team Legnano when, in 1963, he was sold to Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia. Based on what he had heard of this island backwater, he thought he was going to Africa. (Sicily is closer to the African continent.)

He became the greatest player Cagliari have ever had, nicknamed Rombo di Tuono (Roar of Thunder). Three times, he was the leading scorer in Serie A (Italy's national league). In 1969, he was voted 2nd in the Ballon d'Or (Golden Ball) for World Player of the Year, behind fellow Italian Gianni Rivera of AC Milan.

In 1970, he led Cagliari to their one and only Serie A title, bringing them enough revenue that they could build a new stadium, and finishing 3rd in the Ballon d'Or voting behind Gerd Muller of Germany and Bobby Moore of England. He also helped Italy win Euro 1968 and reach the Final of the 1970 World Cup.

He later became an executive with Cagliari, which has retired his Number 11, and is now a consultant to the Italian national team.

Also on this day, Tommy Lee Hart is born in Macon, Georgia. A defensive end, he made the 1976 Pro Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers. He later joined their coaching staff, helping them win 3 Super Bowls (XIX, XXIII and XXIV). As a scout, he helped build another Super Bowl winner (XXIX). He is still alive, and a member of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

November 7, 1946, 75 years ago: The Philadelphia Warriors, descended from the legendary South Philadelphia Hebrew Association basketball team (a.k.a. the Philadelphia Sphas), play their 1st game, at the Philadelphia Arena at 46th and Market Streets. They beat the Pittsburgh Ironmen, 81-75. Led by Jumpin' Joe Fulks, the NBA's 1st scoring champion, they went on to win the NBA's 1st title, beating the Chicago Stags.

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November 7, 1951, 70 years ago: John Felix Tamargo is born in Tampa. The Yankees drafted him in 1969, but he chose to go to college instead. He played in the major leagues as a backup catcher from 1976 to 1980, mostly with the St. Louis Cardinals. He is now the Latin American coordinator for the Seattle Mariners' organization.

Also on this day, Chris Mortensen (I don't have a full name for him) is born in the Los Angles suburb of Torrance, California. He covered the NFL for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and has been at ESPN in 1991.

Also on this day, James M. O'Brien (I can find no reference as to what the M stands for) is born outside Washington, D.C. in Falls Church, Virginia. At this point, unless your college basketball team was an independent, only Conference Champions qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Jim O'Brien and Len Elmore led the University of Maryland to the Final of the 1973 Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, but lost a triple-overtime thriller to North Carolina State.

A forward, Jim never played in the NBA, but was a member of the 1974 ABA Champion New York Nets. He is still alive.

Also on this day, Lawrence Francis O'Donnell Jr. is born in Boston. He was the Captain of the baseball team, and a receiver on the undefeated football team, at St. Sebastian's School in nearby Needham, Massachusetts. But it would not be through sports that the nation at large would come to know him.

He graduated from Harvard with an economics degree, and wrote for their humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon. He wrote A Case of Deadly Force, a book about his father serving as the lawyer for the plaintiff in a wrongful death and police brutality case.

It became a movie in 1986, with Richard Crenna playing Lawrence Sr. and Tate Donovan as Lawrence Jr., who also served as an associate producer on the project. He then worked as an aide to one of his former Harvard professors, Senator Pat Moynihan of New York.

These last 2 jobs got him hired as part of the writing and production staff for the NBC drama The West Wing. He co-wrote 16 episodes, including "Five Votes Down," "Lord John Marbury," "Take This Sabbath Day" and "Celestial Navigation" in Season 1; "18th and Potomac" in Season 2; "In the Room" in Season 6; and "The Debate" in Season 7. In the unforgettable Season 2 finale, "Two Cathedrals," he played John Bartlet, the President's father, in a flashback set in 1960.

Since 2009, he has been a regular contributor to MSNBC. Since September 27, 2010, he has hosted The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on the network.

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November 7, 1961, 60 years ago: Orlando Mercado Rodríguez is born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. A weak-hitting catcher for several teams, Orlando Mercado was Terry Steinbach's backup on the 1988 Pennant-winning Oakland Athletics. He is now a catching instructor in the Los Angeles Angels' organization.

November 7, 1963: John Charles Bryan Barnes is born in Kingston, Jamaica. His father was an officer in the newly-formed Jamaican Army (independence had been gained the year before John was born), and in 1976, the British Commonwealth called Colonel Ken Barnes to London, where John finished his education and turned professional in soccer, which his father had played at the semi-pro level.

The midfielder helped Hertfordshire club Watford rise to 2nd place in the Football League in 1983, and to the FA Cup Final in 1984, where they lost to Merseyside club Everton. He was soon snatched up by the bigger Merseyside club, Liverpool F.C. He helped them win the League in 1988 and 1990, the FA Cup in 1989 and 1992, and the League Cup in 1995. He also played for England in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, and later managed the Jamaica national team to the 2008 Caribbean Cup.

He is famous for 2 things. At a point when Liverpool were embracing the rise of black players in the British Isles, Everton were not, and their fans were proud of the club's all-white status. That is no longer the case: Everton would have been relegated long ago if not for many fine black players, including New Jersey native goalkeeper Tim Howard.

On February 21, 1988, in an FA Cup 5th Round match that was also a Merseyside Derby, at Everton's Goodison Park, an Everton fan threw a banana onto the field, an overt suggestion that black people are apes. Noble in the face of darkness, Barnes backheeled it off the pitch, and a picture of it became one of the iconic photos of English football. (Liverpool won the game, 1-0, and advanced to the Final, losing to Wimbledon in one of the all-time FA Cup shocks.)

That's the sublime. The ridiculous is his music career, including the songs that Liverpool recorded as the FA Cup Final songs for 1988, "Anfield Rap (Red Machine In Full Effect)"; and 1996, "Pass & Move (It's the Liverpool Groove)." To be fair, he was hardly the only offender, and the other players in the videos, all white, looked even more ridiculous.

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November 7, 1975: The New Original Wonder Woman premieres on ABC, an hour-and-a-half "backdoor pilot" for a series that began a year later. After a failed pilot the year before, starring Cathy Lee Crosby as a blonde version of the "secret agent" Wonder Woman seen in DC Comics from 1968 to 1973, Lynda Carter, winner of the Miss World America pageant in 1972, is cast in the traditional star-spangled outfit.

In the show's 1st season, 1976-77, the setting was World War II, which was fitting, as the character debuted in 1941 and fought Nazis on behalf of the Allies. But ABC canceled the show after the 1st season, due to the cost of the period costumes and cars. CBS picked it up for the 1977-78 TV season, and, to save money, moved it up to the present day, putting her to work as a secret agent alongside Steve Trevor Jr., like his father played by Lyle Waggoner. The show ran until 1979.

November 7, 1996, 25 years ago: Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor is born in Auckland, New Zealand. Known professionally as Lorde (the E is silent), her 2013 debut hit "Royals" is about a life of luxury, but the title came from seeing a picture of Kansas City Royals star George Brett. Baseball is not especially popular in New Zealand, although it has become so in neighboring Australia. As far as I know, she is not related to Milwaukee Brewers star Christian Yelich.

November 7, 2011, 10 years ago: Joe Frazier dies of liver cancer in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia. The 1964 Olympic Gold Medalist boxer, Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1968 to 1973, was 67. It appears that he and his arch-rival, Muhammad Ali, had patched things up by the time he died.

Also on this day, Castle airs the episode "Heartbreak Hotel." A murder in New York leads to a casino in Atlantic City, leading to Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Detectives Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever) and Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas) disguising themselves as Elvis impersonators.

October 26, 1921: The 1st NBA Star Is Born

October 26, 1921, 100 years ago: Joseph Franklin Fulks is born in Birmingham, Kentucky. Jumpin' Joe starred at Murray State University in his home State, and they retired his Number 26. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II.

When the NBA was founded as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, he played for the Philadelphia Warriors, and averaged 23.2 points per game to become the league's 1st scoring champion. He led the Warriors to the 1st Championship of the league, beating the Chicago Stags 4 games to 2 in the Finals, clinching on April 22, 1947, at home at the Philadelphia Arena.

From the dawn of the league until Elgin Baylor's 64 points in a 1959 game, Fulks held the NBA single-game point-scoring record, topping out at 63 on February 10, 1949, against the Indianapolis Jets. He played in the 1st 2 NBA All-Star Games, in 1951 and 1952, and retired after the 1954 season.

He worked as the recreation director of the Kentucky State Penitentiary until March 21, 1976. Ironically, it was a crime outside the prison walls that killed him: His girlfriend, Roberta Bannister, had a son named Gregg, and they argued over a gun, and Gregg shot Joe with it. Joe was only 54 years old.

On a 1996 ESPN Classic broadcast, sports columnist and basketball historian Bob Ryan tried to put the pre-24-second-shot-clock era (1946-54) into perspective, and said, "I'm not gonna kid you: I don't think Jumpin' Joe Fulks makes it in today's NBA, except maybe as a 12th man."

Nevertheless, Fulks was named to the NBA's 25th Anniversary Team in 1971, and was posthumously elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978. He is also a member of the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. But the Warriors have not retired the Number 10 he wore for them.

They moved to the Bay Area in 1962, and the Syracuse Nationals became the Philadelphia 76ers the next season. The Sixers have retired 10, but for Maurice Cheeks, and they don't acknowledge the Dubs' achievements in their city.

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October 26, 1863: The Football Association is formed at the Freemasons Tavern in Holborn, Central London. Although there were football clubs (soccer teams) in England already (and a few of these are still in operation, though most on an amateur level), the rules of the game across the country were not uniform. So the founding of the FA is considered the "birthday" of English football.

The meeting was held after Ebenezer Cobb Morley, chairman of Barnes Football Club in South London, and possessor of a name the still-living Charles Dickens could have thought up had Morley not been born in 1831, before Dickens was ever published, wrote a letter to Bell's Life, a London newspaper, suggesting that football should have a unified set of rules.

Morley drafted the first "Laws of the Game," was hired as the FA's 1st secretary, and its 2nd president, serving from 1867 to 1874. And he was still a player, though 35 years old: He played for Barnes against Richmond in the 1st game played under his rules. (As opposed to Alexander Cartwright, who, in 1846, was the umpire in the 1st non-intrasquad baseball game played under the rules he has been widely credited with writing.)

Morley was a lawyer, was also active in rowing, and later served as a member of the Surrey County council and a Justice of the Peace. He died in 1924.

October 26, 1868: A crowd of 10‚000 is at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn to see the Mutual Club of New York capture the national amateur baseball championship of the year by defeating the Atlantics of Brooklyn for the 2nd time‚ 28-17.

This is the 1st time that a New York City club has won a postseason series designed to crown the national champions of baseball – or, if you prefer, the “World Champions.” However, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings declare themselves openly professional next year, it makes this the last "world championship" won by an amateur baseball team.

October 26, 1870: In a rematch of the game that finally ended their unbeaten streak at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn the previous June, the Cincinnati Red Stockings take on the Atlantics of Brooklyn‚ on neutral ground in Philadelphia. Led by 1st baseman Joe Start, the Atlantics score 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th to beat the mighty Reds‚ 11-7.

This was, effectively, the end of the 1st era of organized baseball, the all-amateur era. The next season, the National Association, the 1st professional league, began play. The Boston Red Stockings were formed, taking about half of the Cincinnati players, and they continued to dominate baseball in the 1870s. The National League came along in 1876. The Boston club won NA Pennants in 1872, '73, '74 and '75, and NL Pennants in 1877 and '78, before poachings from other teams finally forced them off their perch. They won just 1 Pennant between 1878 and 1891, before starting a new dynasty.

The Atlantics weren't so lucky, as they refused to join the NA, and lost most of their good players to that league. They continued to play an independent schedule until folding in 1882, baseball's first great team (founded in 1855) going out not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It would be the late 1880s before Brooklyn had another championship-quality team, the one that would eventually become the Dodgers. While Brooklyn outpaced Manhattan in the 1860s and the early 1870s, it would be the other way around until the late 1890s. The Dodgers (then the Superbas) won Pennants in 1899 and 1900.

But in 1902, John McGraw became Giants manager, and Manhattan ruled the City (with the brief exception of the 1916 and 1920 Brooklyn Pennants) until the original Yankee Stadium opened in The Bronx in 1923, and the northernmost Borough ruled until the 1969 Met Miracle. So Queens ruled NYC baseball in the first half of the 1970s and the latter half of the 1980s. Other than that, it's been all Bronx since the end of the Harding Administration. The Mets' 2015 Pennant and 2016 Wild Card berth hasn't changed that.

October 26, 1877: What we would later call "Major League Baseball" suffers its 1st scandal. Charles Chase, vice president of the club known as the Louisville Eclipse, confronts George Hall‚ the National League home run leader in 1876 with 5‚ and pitcher Jim Devlin with charges that they threw road games in August and September of this past season.

Both admit to throwing non-league games -- an exhibition game in Lowell‚ Massachusetts on August 30, and another in Pittsburgh on September 3 -- and implicate teammates Al Nichols and Bill Craver. Hall implicates Devlin, saying that the 2 helped in losses to the NL's Cincinnati Reds (no connection to the current team of that name) on September 6, and to the minor league Indianapolis Blues on September 24‚ but he argues, that since the Reds were about to be suspended and the games nullified‚ it amounted to an exhibition game. The accused players will end up being permanently banned from baseball.

Also on this day, Eustace James Newton is born in Indianapolis. A pitcher, "Doc" Newton pitched in the major leagues from 1900 to 1909, including 1905 to 1990 with the New York Highlanders, the team that became the Yankees in 1913. His career record was 54-72, and he died in 1931.

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October 26, 1881, 140 years ago: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the initials stood for "Old Kindersley") is fought in Tombstone, Arizona Territory -- actually on Fremont Street, a couple of blocks from where the Corral was.

While the Earp brothers and Dr. John Holliday were no angels -- by the standards of the time, the Earps were a lot like a Mob family (just as Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, killed in the New Mexico Territory earlier that year, was essentially a hitman) -- the Clanton Gang, a.k.a. "The Cowboys," was worse. So if there were any "good guys" in this fight, it was the Earps, and they won.

For the record: Wyatt Earp was not hit, Morgan Earp was hit in the shoulder but recovered quickly, Virgil Earp was shot through the calf and also recovered quickly, and Doc Holliday (a dentist, so it wasn't just a nickname) was saved when a bullet hit his holster, allowing him to escape with only a bruise; Cowboys leader Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne were both unarmed, and ran away from the scene without being hit, while the other 3 -- Tom's brother Billy Clanton and the brothers Frank and Tom McLaury -- were killed. (Frank was 33, Tom was 28, Billy Clanton just 19.)

As was the case in the major cities of the East in those days, there was a partisan divide reflected in competing newspapers. The Tombstone Nugget took the Cowboys' side, saying, "Blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttle cock." The Tombstone Epitaph (one of the best newspaper names ever) took the Earps' side, saying, "The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the Marshal was entirely justified in his efforts to disarm these men, and that being fired upon they had to defend themselves which they did most bravely."

Since the Epitaph had gotten the sanction of the Associated Press, that's the version that the public outside Arizona would come to accept as the truth. The coroner's report backed it up, essentially proving that Billy Clanton did not have his hands raised, thus making Ike Clanton a liar when he said Billy was trying to surrender, thus vindicating the Earps from the charge that it was murder instead of self-defense.

It didn't help the Cowboys' case that none of them lived past 1887 (Ike was shot while resisting arrest for stealing a horse, age 40; Billy Claiborne was killed by Frank Leslie a year after the Corral shootout, just 22), while both Wyatt and Virgil Earp lived into the 20th Century, with Wyatt spreading tall tales about his deeds all the way up to his death in 1929, 48 years after the shootout. (He was 80. Virgil died in 1905, age 62.)

And while there would be setbacks -- in the next year, Morgan would be killed (30) and Virgil badly wounded -- today, the Clantons would be forgotten if things had been settled peacefully. Then again, so might the Earps and Doc Holliday. (The Doc was already suffering from tuberculosis, and died in 1887, age 36. His last words were a comment on the fact that he was dying in bed, with bare feet, rather than in a gunfight with his boots on: "This is funny.")

The incident inspired the films My Darling Clementine in 1946, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, and both Wyatt Earp and Tombstone in 1994. It also inspired, ironically, TV science fiction, first with an episode of Doctor Who in 1966; and, more recently, with Wynonna Earp, with a supernaturally-immortal Holliday helping Wyatt's great-great-granddaughters fight monsters (and having a baby with the titular Wynonna, a choice forced on the scriptwriters by star Melanie Scrofano's real-life pregnancy).

In the 1983-84 TV season, NBC aired a series titled The Rousters, starring Chad Everett as Wyatt Earp III, who ran both a carnival and a bounty-hunting business. In spite of that show and the later Wynonna Earp, in real life, Wyatt is not known to have had any children.

DeForest Kelley played Ike Clanton in a TV version of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on a 1955 episode of You Are There, played Morgan Earp in the 1957 film adaptation, and in the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun," his Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy was forced by an alien to stand in for Tom McLaury.

That episode nearly aired on the anniversary: October 25, 1968. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) was forced to stand in for Ike Clanton, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) as the considerably younger Billy Clanton, Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as Frank McLaury, and Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) as Billy Claiborne.

Tombstone, founded in 1879, was a frontier boomtown of 5,300 people, due to nearby silver mines, with a population of about 14,000 by the time of the gunfight -- a huge amount for a town in the West in that era. An 1886 fire ended the boomtown status, but its status as a County Seat saved it from being completely abandoned by the time Arizona gained Statehood in 1912.

In 1964, Detroit-based investors bought the Corral and several other historic buildings, and turned Tombstone into a "living history museum," a Wild West counterpart to Colonial Williamsburg. They also bought The Tombstone Epitaph. In 1975, the daily paper was converted into a weekly. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona.

Today, the population of "The Town Too Tough to Die" is listed as 1,380 -- and they may get that population doubled in tourists. It is 184 miles southeast of Phoenix, 70 miles southeast of Tucson, and 35 miles north of the Mexican border.

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October 26, 1910: The Washington Post headlines a rumored trade that, had it gone through, would have been the biggest in baseball history in terms of the one-for-one names involved, with Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators going to the Detroit Tigers for Ty Cobb.

Tigers president Frank Navin scoffs at the story‚ saying he would never trade Cobb‚ but praising Johnson "as the best pitcher in the country." Cobb was about to turn 24 and had just finished his 5th full season of baseball; Johnson was 23 and had just finished his 4th season. This would have been like trading Juan Soto for Julio Urías now.

Also on this day, John Joseph Krol is born in Cleveland. Cardinal Krol was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, a period that included the construction of Veterans Stadium and The Spectrum, the 76ers' NBA Championships of 1967 and 1983, the Flyers' Stanley Cups of 1974 and 1975, the Phillies' World Series win in 1980, and Villanova's 1985 National Championship. He died in 1996.

October 26, 1911, 110 years ago: The Philadelphia Athletics win their 2nd straight World Series. Chippewa pitcher Albert "Chief" Bender cruises to his second victory‚ a 4-hit 13-2 breeze. The A's cap the win with a 7-run 7th‚ battering three tired Giant hurlers‚ Red Ames‚ Hooks Wiltse‚ and Rube Marquard.

Overall‚ the Giants manage just 13 runs and a .175 batting average off Bender‚ Jack Coombs and Eddie Plank, gaining revenge for the Christy Mathewson-dominated Series of 1905 when the Giants embarrassed the A's.

Because of the NL's extended playing season‚ and a record 6-day rain delay, this is the latest ending ever for a World Series‚ and would remain so until the strike-delayed 1981 Series.

The last survivor of the 1911 A's was center fielder Amos Strunk, who lived until 1979.

Also on this day, Sidney Gillman (no middle name) is born in Minneapolis. With the Los Angeles Rams, Sid Gillman used the passing game of Norm Van Brocklin to Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch and Tom Fears to win an NFL Championship as an assistant coach in 1951 and a Western Division title as head coach in 1955.

He became the 1st head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1960 (they played their 1st season in Los Angeles before moving down the Coast), coaching quarterbacks like Jack Kemp, Tobin Rote and John Hadl, and receiver Lance Alworth, and reached 5 of the 1st 6 AFL Championship Games, in 1960, '61, '63, '64 and '65, winning in 1963 – still the only time in major league sports that a San Diego team has gone as far as their league allowed them to go. (They did not play the NFL Champion Chicago Bears, and if they had, it might have been the AFL's best chance to make a statement until Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Colts 5 years later.)

It was Gillman's wide-open passing game that helped to give the AFL its first positive reviews and its reputation as a League where anything could happen at any time, contrasting with the NFL, then comparatively very conservative despite having such quarterbacks as Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen and Bart Starr.  

Gillman later served as an assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles, helping head coach Dick Vermeil develop Ron Jaworski, and with the Los Angeles Express of the USFL, where he helped to develop Steve Young.

NFL coaches who played or coached under him include Vermeil, George Allen, Al Davis, Chuck Noll and Chuck Knox. Coaches who played or coached under those men include: With Davis' Oakland Raiders, John Madden, Tom Flores, Art Shell, Bill Walsh and Jon Gruden; with Allen’s Redskins, Jack Pardee, Richie Petitbon and Joe Bugel; with Noll's Steelers, Bud Carson and Tony Dungy; with Vermeil's Eagles, Herman Edwards. Walsh's "coaching children," and thus Gillman's "grandchildren," include Mike Holmgren, Jim Fassel, Sam Wyche, George Seifert and Dennis Green; through them, Gillman's "great-grandchildren" include Andy Reid, John Fox, Mike Shanahan, Jeff Fisher, Brian Billick, Lovie Smith and Mike Tomlin.

Gillman was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983, one of the 1st primarily-AFL figures to be so honored. He is also a member of the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame and the San Diego Hall of Champions.

Also on this day, Mahalia Jackson (no middle name) is born in New Orleans. She is often regarded as the greatest singer of gospel music ever, of any race, of any gender, of any era. As far as I know, she had nothing to do with sports, but I want to mention her anyway.

She sang at the March On Washington in 1963, and, supposedly, saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was wrapping up his speech, and she remembered a previous speech of his, and said to him, "Martin, tell them about the dream." He did so, and a strong call for social justice became something larger than even all the people on that stage, which also included A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis, Daisy Bates, Rosa Parks, Walter Reuther, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee, Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, Mary Travers, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

If that story is true, then Mahalia performed a greater service to the human race than most people ever do to the God who created it, and to whom she sang so superbly.

October 26, 1921, 100 years ago: Roland Joseph McLenahan is born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. A defenseman, he was one of the players more or less frozen out by the NHL's 1942-67 6-team structure. He played 8 games for the Detroit Red Wings in 1946, but that was it. On the other hand, he played for minor-league teams in Washington, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo and Cincinnati from 1935 to 1957, and was a 4-time All-Star at that level.

In 1957-58, his 1st season after retiring as a player, he coached the Rochester Americans to the Calder Cup, the championship of the American Hockey League. He served as a scout with the Montreal Canadiens, and served his country and his Province in youth sports until his death in 1984. He was elected to the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, and that Hall gives out an annual Roly McLenahan Award to an outstanding amateur athlete from the Province.

Also on this day, Frances Scott Fitzgerald is born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She would be the only child born to either F. Scott Fitzgerald or his wife Zelda Sayre. "Scottie" became a journalist, writing for The Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine. She married twice, and had 4 children, all with her 1st husband, and died of cancer in 1986.

Also on this day, the Chicago Theatre opens, inside the Loop at 175 North State Street. The 3,880-seat theater was a big movie palace, straddling the silent and talking eras, and also featured live jazz, making it not at all a surprise when its famed marquee became the logo for the 2003 film version of the musical Chicago, which was set in 1927. Since 2007, it has been owned by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.

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October 26, 1930: Fair Park Stadium opens in Fair Park on the east side of Dallas. In 1937, with the establishment of the city's New Year's Day "bowl game," it was renamed the Cotton Bowl.

Seating 92,000, it hosted the Cotton Bowl Classic from 1937 to 2009. It was home to Southern Methodist University football from 1932 to 1978, and SMU used it for home games again from 1995 to 1999. Two short-lived teams called the Dallas Texans used it, the NFL team of 1952 that became the Baltimore Colts the next year, and the AFL team of 1960 to 1962 that became the Kansas City Chiefs. Those Texans won the 1962 AFL Championship there.

It was the 1st home of the Dallas Cowboys, from 1960 to 1971, when Texas Stadium opened. The North American Soccer League's Dallas Tornado used it in 1967 and 1968, and the Major League Soccer team formerly known as the Dallas Burn, now just "FC Dallas," used it from 1996 to 2005.

Today, with both the Cowboys and the Cotton Bowl Classic playing at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the Cotton Bowl is mainly the host of 2 games: The annual Red River Rivalry between the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma every 2nd Saturday in October, during the Texas State Fair; and the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

October 26, 1931, 90 years ago: Charles Comiskey dies of heart disease at age 72. One of the great players of the 1880s with the St. Louis Browns (forerunners of the Cardinals), he practically invented the way 1st base was played, and he was a major figure in the Players' League revolt of 1890.

But when offered the chance to start, own and run a team in the new American League in 1901, which became the Chicago White Sox, he betrayed the players who followed him by pinching pennies, much as later hockey greats Art Ross, Conn Smythe, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux would do.

Known as "the Old Roman" despite being of Irish descent, he built the ballpark that would bear his name, Comiskey Park, and built a franchise that would win 4 Pennants and 2 World Series in his lifetime. But he also indirectly caused, and made much worse, the greatest scandal in sports history, the Black Sox Scandal of 1919-21. His reputation as a great player and a smart, canny executive has been wiped out, replaced by one as a cheap, nasty old bastard.

On this same day, the Frankford Yellow Jackets defeat the Chicago Bears, 13–12 at Wrigley Field. Due to the Great Depression, this turned out to be the last game the Jackets ever played. The next day, the team's owner, the Frankford Athletic Association of Northeast Philadelphia, returned the franchise to the NFL, and the Frankford Yellow Jackets were out of business.

On July 9, 1933, former University of Pennsylvania football teammates Bert Bell and James Ludlow "Lud" Wray bought the territorial rights to a Philadelphia team from the NFL. And their new team, named the Eagles after the Blue Eagle symbol of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, at first wore the Jackets' colors, powder blue and gold, switching to green and white in 1954.

But they did not purchase the Yellow Jackets team itself, only the local rights to a team. As a result, the NFL does not consider the Eagles to be a continuation of the Jackets, and the Eagles do not claim the Jackets' 1926 NFL Championship as one of their titles, along with those they won in 1948, 1949, 1960 and 2017.

This 1931 game also marked the last time a Philadelphia-based NFL team would win an away game over the Bears until October 17, 1999, when the Eagles defeated the Bears 20–16 at Soldier Field.

October 26, 1938: The Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury after its North London neighborhood, hosts a match between the England national team and a team representing "The Rest of Europe." The game commemorates, on the actual anniversary day, the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the Football Association. A crowd of 40,185, including King George VI, sees England win 3-0. It was the 2nd full England match to be shown live on British television.

The England team consisted of Arsenal's left back Eddie Hapgood (Captain) and left half Wilf Copping, Chelsea's goalkeeper Vic Woodley, Tottenham's right back Bert Sproston and inside right Willie Hall, Huddersfield's right half Ken Willingham, Wolverhampton Wanderers' centre half (and future title-winning manager) Stan Cullis, Stoke City's outside right Stanley Matthews, Everton's centre forward Tommy Lawton and outside left Walter Boyes, and West Ham United's inside left Len Goulden. Hall, Lawton and Goulden scored.

The Rest of Europe team included 5 players from recent World Cup winners Italy, 2 Germans, a Frenchman, a Belgian, a Hungarian, and a Norwegian. Only 1 of the 5 Italians was on the forward line, so even then, Italy was a defense-first footballing nation. It was Silvio Piola, considered too young for their 1934 World Cup winners, but starred on the 1938 version while playing his club soccer for Lazio in Rome. The Belgian, Ray Braine, was his country's 1st professional footballer, when he signed for Sparta Prague in 1930.

The last survivor of each team was Cullis, who lived until 2001; and Pietro Rava of Italy and Juventus, who lived until 2006.

Also on this day, for the 1st time, an ice hockey match is televised. Oddly, this does not occur in Canada, or in America, or in any of the European nations that we now associate with the game, such as Russia or Sweden. It is in England, on the BBC, between Harringay Racers of North London and Streatham Redskins of South London. The broadcaster, at least, was a Canadian: Winnipeg-born Stuart MacPherson.

I don't have a record of the result, although Harringay finished ahead of Streatham in the English National League in the 1938-39 season. Harringay won it the preceding season, 1937-38, and Streatham had won it in 1934-35. Harringay folded in 1957, and have since been replaced by a new team using the name. Streatham are still in business.

In 1940, New York station W2XBS (forerunner of WNBC-Channel 4) would become the 1st TV station to broadcast an NHL game, a 6-2 New York Rangers win over the Montreal Canadiens at the old Madison Square Garden. Just 3 days after that, they would broadcast the 1st televised basketball game, also at the old Garden. That station had already done, all in New York City in 1939, the 1st TV broadcasts of baseball, at Ebbets Field; college football, at Columbia University's Baker Field; and the NFL, at the Polo Grounds.

In 1952, CBC would bring Hockey Night In Canada from radio to TV, and it quickly became, and remains, Canada's favourite (that's how it's "spelt" up there) TV show. But the U.S. -- ABC/ESPN, NBC and Fox have all tried -- has never really gotten hockey broadcasts right. "Glow puck," anyone?

*

October 26, 1941, 80 years ago: The 1st Superman movie premieres -- sort of. For Paramount Pictures, Max Fleischer produces, and his brother Dave Fleischer directs, Superman, a.k.a. The Mad Scientist. It runs 10 minutes, and is the 1st of 17 cartoon serials produced by Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios. They are still known as "the Fleischer Superman Cartoons."

This 1st one begins by detailing Superman's origin: Born on Krypton, sent to Earth by his scientist father to escape the planet's explosion, he is found and adopted by the Kents, discovers his powers growing up as Clark Kent, gets a job as a reporter for the Daily Planet newspaper in Metropolis, and fights crime and stops disasters as Superman.

This intro borrows a few Superman clichés that had debuted on radio the year before: "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!" "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" And Clark's role as a "mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper." And "a never-ending battle for truth and justice!" The 1952-58 TV series The Adventures of Superman would use all of these, expanding the last to "...for truth, justice and the American Way!" This serial also debuts the nickname "the Man of Steel," and the idea of Clark changing clothes in a Planet storeroom. (The phone booth idea would come later.)

The voice of Superman is Bud Collyer, who had already played him on radio, and would later host the TV game show To Tell the Truth. Lois Lane is voiced by Joan Alexander, and Perry White by Julian Noa, also reprising their radio roles, but the character of Jimmy Olsen does not appear.

Another fictional strongman whose cartoons were produced by Fleischer, Popeye, was voiced by Jack Mercer, who plays the mad scientist here -- but he is not named, and it is never suggested that he is the man who is already Superman's nemesis, Lex Luthor. The narrator is Jackson Beck, who voiced Popeye's nemesis, Bluto (listed as "Brutus" on occasion).

October 26, 1946, 75 years ago: Columnist Westbrook Pegler, writing for the Hearst Corporation's papers, including the New York Journal American, writes a critical piece about the off-field relationship between Brooklyn Dodger manager Leo Durocher‚ actor George Raft and well-known gamblers. This is the first of a few articles that will lead up to the suspension of Durocher for the entire 1947 season.

Pegler was an alcoholic and a lunatic, who had already called for the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which nearly happened in 1933. In the 1950s, due to her civil rights activism, he would call for the assassination of FDR's widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. And one of his last public acts would be to do the same in 1968, for Robert Kennedy, which did happen. After that, he couldn't be hired by anyone except the John Birch Society -- the Tea Party/MAGAts of their day -- and, finally, even they fired him for being too extreme. But, in the case of Durocher, and in a few others, Pegler turned out to be right.

The recent movie 42, about Jackie Robinson and his introduction to the white major leagues, suggested that Durocher was actually suspended by Commissioner A.B. "Happy" Chandler because the local Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) was threatening to boycott the Dodgers due to Durocher's affair with actress Laraine Day (whom he married as soon as his divorce from his current wife became final).

Another factor is that, while Durocher was associating with known gamblers (big mistake), and didn't think it should be considered a big deal (bigger mistake, at least as far as his baseball career was concerned), he suggested that Yankee co-owner Larry MacPhail was doing the same, and accused Chandler of a double standard: Durocher was being targeted for it, while MacPhail was getting away with it. The fact that MacPhail had previously been the Dodgers' president, and thus Durocher's boss, and that their relationship was always stormy, didn't help.

Another of the Yankee ownership triumverate, Del Webb, definitely had Mob ties, through his construction empire. The 3rd member, Dan Topping, was no angel, but he was almost certainly not mobbed up. With MacPhail, it was possible, but less likely than with Webb. Yet Durocher accused MacPhail, not Webb. Whatever the truth may have been, Durocher was suspended for what Chandler called "conduct detrimental to the game." 

He would return for the 1948 season, then, when Mel Ott was fired as manager of the Dodgers' arch-rivals, the New York Giants, the Giants called Dodger president Branch Rickey, and asked him if they could offer Durocher the job. Rickey, one of the great moralizers of the era, who had kept Durocher as long as he could stand him, was happy to offer permission, and Leo took the job.

Durocher was fully authorized, and completely within his rights, to jump ship. But Dodger fans didn't understand this, which made him the most-hated figure in the history of Dodger fandom, a traitor, a turncoat. Sort of like Sol Campbell going from Tottenham captain to Arsenal star -- if, that is, the Dodgers had been actively pushing Durocher out, which they hadn't. So it's more like Roger Clemens going from the Red Sox to the Yankees -- if Clemens hadn't spent 2 years in Toronto in between.

Also on this day, Gran Estadio de La Habana opens in the Cuban capital of Havana. A full house of 31,000 sees a game between Havana teams Almendares (named for a Havana neighborhood and popularly known as the Scorpions) and Cienfuegos (named for a team from that city, but playing home games in Havana and known as the Oilers). Almendares win, 9-1.

The aforementioned Branch Rickey used it as the Dodgers' Spring Training headquarters in 1947, to ease the pressure on Jackie Robinson. He would use it again in Spring Training 1953, when he was president of the Pittsburgh Pirates. From 1954 to 1960, it was the home of the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class AAA International League. But in 1961, Fidel Castro banned professional sports in Cuba. There are those who believe that, if Cuba had never gone Communist, eventually, Major League Baseball would have expanded to Havana.

Later known as Estadio Cerro, and now as Estadio Latinoamericano, the ballpark, with its short fences (poles 325 feet away, power alleys just 345) is home to the Cuban national team, and to one of the state-sponsored (and thus not really "amateur") teams, Industriales, which has won so much and has gained so many fans all over the country, they are considered "the Yankees of Cuba."

Estadio Latinoamericano and the national team also hosted exhibition games against the Baltimore Orioles in 1999 (preceded by a visit of the Cuba team to Baltimore's Camden Yards) and the Tampa Bay Rays in 2016, the latter attended by the respective Presidents, Barack Obama and Fidel's brother Raul Castro.

Also on this day, Patrick Leonard Sadjak is born in Chicago. We know him as Pat Sajak, a simplification of the pronunciation of his birth name. Since 1981, he has been the host of the syndicated TV game show Wheel of Fortune. If he continues to host through 2026, he will surpass Bob Barker, formerly of The Price Is Right, as the longest-running host of any single game show.

I used to say that he bore a resemblance to Vice President Dan Quayle, who was born a few months later. As it turns out, they share crazy right-wing politics, too.

October 26, 1947 Hillary Diane Rodham is born in Chicago, and grows up in the nearby suburb of Park Ridge. And, yes, growing up, she was a Cub fan. In 1994, then First Lady, Hillary Clinton was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Day at Wrigley Field.

I knew she was never really a Yankee Fan. But then, Michael Bloomberg was honest about having been a Red Sox fan, and I'd sooner trust Hillary to be Mayor of New York, let alone President.

Donald Trump claims to be a Yankee Fan. Can't we trade him? To a team on Mars, or further away?

*

October 26, 1951, 70 years ago: Desperate for money to pay a mounting tax bill, Joe Louis, who stood as Heavyweight Champion of the World longer than anyone (12 years, 1937-49) and defended the title more than anyone (25 times), climbs into the ring at the old Madison Square Garden for a purse of $300,000 – about $3.16 million in today's money. He fights Rocky Marciano, then a rising contender who idolized Louis. Rocky had told the press, "This is the last guy I want to fight." It had nothing to do with his own ability, or whatever Louis had left.

It is a mismatch: Marciano is 28, is in superb shape, and has a sledgehammer for a right hand; Louis is 37, struggles with his weight, and his arms and legs, once the fastest in the fight game despite his being a heavyweight, have terribly slowed. Marciano actually knocks Louis out of the ring in the 8th round.

Marciano goes back to his dressing room and cries over what he has done to his greatest hero, and even goes over to see him and says, "I'm sorry, Joe." Sugar Ray Robinson, then Middleweight Champion, was in Louis' dressing room to console him, and was also crying.

Eleven months later, Marciano knocked Jersey Joe Walcott out to become the Heavyweight Champion. Louis, still needing money, humiliated himself as a professional wrestler, and not a very good one. Both men's lives ended badly: Marciano's in a plane crash in 1969, just before his 46th birthday; Louis' in a wheelchair, unable to pay his medical bills, with Frank Sinatra hosting a benefit concert for him in Las Vegas in 1978, which kept Louis afloat until he finally passed away in 1981, at 67.

As a Sergeant in the U.S. Army in World War II, he was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, on the order of President Ronald Reagan, and with Sinatra delivering the eulogy.

October 26, 1955: The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio -- Olympic Ice Stadium -- opens in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Veneto, in the Italian Alps, near the border with Austria. It was the main stadium for the 1956 Winter Olympics, then seating 65,000.

With just 5,842 people according to Italy's most recent census, Cortina is one of the smallest municipalities ever to host an Olympic Games. Nevertheless, it has been selected again, as the site of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio still stands, and will host the curling events at the '26 Games. But, having been converted to an all-seater facility, its capacity is down to 27,958, and so a larger stadium will be built for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.

October 26, 1957: The Cincinnati Royals play their 1st regular-season game after moving from Rochester. They beat the Syracuse Nationals 110-100 at the Cincinnati Gardens.

Despite having future Hall-of-Famers in Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and Jack Twyman, they never won a title, only getting as far as the 1963 and 1964 NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

In 1972, they moved again, to Kansas City. Since that city already had a baseball team named the Royals, they didn't want to make the same mistake that the NFL's Chicago Cardinals made when they moved to St. Louis, so they changed the name but kept the royalty theme, and became the Kansas City Kings. In 1985, they moved again, and became the Sacramento Kings.

Being small markets, neither Rochester, nor Cincinnati, nor Kansas City has ever regained an NBA team.

Speaking of small: Also on this day, Harry Perry Chappas is born in the Washington suburb of Mount Rainier, Maryland, and, well, grows up in the Miami suburb of Davie, Florida. In 1978, 27 years after sending the 3-foot-7 inch Eddie Gaedel to bat for the St. Louis Browns, Bill Veeck, now the owner of the Chicago White Sox, signed the shortest "real player" in MLB history, measured at 5-foot-3. Chappas insisted that he was really 5-foot-5, and that Veeck exaggerated so as to make him seem shorter than the shortest player in the majors then, Kansas City Royals shortstop Freddie Patek, 5-foot-4.

Also a shortstop, Chappas hit .267 in 20 games as a September callup. In 1979, Veeck named former Chicago Cubs shortstop Don Kessinger his manager, making Kessinger, to this day, the last player-manager in the American League. Kessinger respected Chappas' effort enough to name him, rather than himself, as the Opening Day starter. But just 2 weeks into the season, Chappas missed a sign, and Kessinger could not forgive that, sending him down to the minors.

Kessinger didn't last much longer himself, as the team was losing, and he resigned on August 2, 1979, and also retired as a player. That game was a White Sox win over the Yankees, and Kessinger's last game was also Thurman Munson's last game. From 1991 to 1996, he was a successful head coach at his alma mater, the University of Mississippi. He is still alive, but has never been involved in professional baseball again.

Chappas was called back up, but only played 26 games in 1979 and 26 more in 1980. He continued to play in the minor leagues until 1983. He is still alive.

*

October 26, 1961, 60 years ago: Keith B. Griffin is born in Columbus, Ohio. (I can find no record of what the B stands for.) Despite being born in the hometown of Ohio State University, and being the younger brother of O-State's Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin, the running back instead attended the University of Miami. He was the player shown on the cover of Sports Illustrated after Miami's shocking win over Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl gave them the National Championship.

He wasn't done winning. He played 5 seasons for the Washington Redskins, and was a member of their Super Bowl XXII winners. Archie's pro career was an injury-induced bust. He did reach Super Bowl XVI with his home-State Cincinnati Bengals, but they lost. He lost a fumble during the game, but that ended up not mattering.

Also on this day, Mark Anthony McDermott is born in the New York suburb of Waterbury, Connecticut. We know him as Dylan McDermott. He played Bobby Donnell on The Practice. He also starred in each of the 1st 2 seasons of American Horror Story, although as different characters, as each season of that show tells a different story.

Also on this day, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is born in Nairobi, Kenya. The son of Jomo Kenyatta, the country's founding father and 1st President, he was elected its 4th President in in 2013, and re-elected in 2017.

The Swahili word "uhuru" means "freedom." It is for this reason that the black African character on the original Star Trek series was named Uhura. There was also a Jamaican reggae band named Black Uhuru.

*

October 26, 1971, 50 years ago: Anthony Deane Rapp is born in Chicago. He played Mark Cohen in the original 1996 Broadway production of the musical Rent, and again in the 2005 film version. He now plays Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets, Chief Engineer aboard the eponymous starship, on the TV series Star Trek: Discovery. This is the 1st openly gay character in a Star Trek series.

October 26, 1974: The Richfield Coliseum opens in Richfield, Ohio. The location was chosen because it was about halfway between the downtowns of Cleveland and Akron. This was a very stupid thing to do.

It was home to the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers from 1974 to 1994, the World Hockey Association's Cleveland Crusaders from 1974 to 1976, the NHL's Cleveland Barons from 1976 to 1978, the Major Indoor Soccer League's Cleveland Force from 1978 to 1988, their successors the Cleveland Crunch from 1989 to 1992, and the International Hockey League's Cleveland Lumberjacks from 1992 to 1994.

In 1975, Muhammad Ali had his 1st defense of his regained Heavyweight Championship of the World there, surprisingly getting knocked down by Chuck Wepner before flooring the otherwise overmatched "Bayonne Bleeder" in the 15th and final round. This fight inspired Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky.

The location was terrible, and the Cavs could never fill its 20,000 seats, so the Gateway Arena (now the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse) Arena was built downtown. The Coliseum was demolished in 1999, and the site is now part of a National Forest.

October 26, 1984: Michael Jordan makes his NBA debut. He scores 16 points and has 11 assists, and is outscored by 3 Chicago Bulls teammates: Orlando Woolridge with 28, Quintin Dailey with 25 and Steve Johnson with 18. The Bulls beat the Washington Bullets, 109-93 at Chicago Stadium.

*

October 26, 1985: Time travel is first demonstrated at the Twin Pines Mall (or is that the Lone Pine Mall?) in Hill Valley, California -- or, rather, is dramatized in the film Back to the Future. But even more dramatic events are unfolding at Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, starting at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, about 19 hours after Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) made his trip back into time.

The St. Louis Cardinals lead the cross-State Kansas City Royals 1-0, and need just 3 more outs to win the World Series. Jorge Orta hits a ground ball to 1st baseman Jack Clark. Clark flips to reliever Todd Worrell, who is covering the base. Orta is unquestionably out. The instant replay cameras and the photograph above confirm this. Except 1st base umpire Don Denkinger blows the call, and calls Orta safe.

The next batter, Steve Balboni, pops up, and Clark can’t handle it, and Balboni singles on his next swing. A passed ball by Darrell Porter, a Royal postseason hero from 1980 but now the Cardinal catcher (having been their postseason hero in 1982), makes it men on 2nd and 3rd, and Hal McRae is intentionally walked. Dane Iorg steps up, and singles home Orta and Balboni, and the Royals have a 2-1 walkoff win to force a Game 7 at home.

The Cardinals are furious. So are their fans. Understandably so. They all think Denkinger stole the World Series from them. They still think so, 36 years later.

There's just one problem with this theory: There was still 1 game to go. If the Cardinals had won Game 7, Denkinger's blown call would have been just a footnote.

So Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog should have taken his team into the clubhouse and said, "Men, we got screwed tonight, but there's nothing we can do about it now. So let's win this thing tomorrow, and what happened tonight won't matter." Instead, the White Rat whined about the call to the media, and let it get into his head, and into his team's heads.

The shock isn't that the Cards lost Game 7 by a whopping 11-0. The shock is that the Royals won it by only 11 runs. It is the biggest blowout in Game 7 history, previously reached only by, oddly enough, the Cardinals, when they beat the Detroit Tigers in 1934 (the Joe Medwick Game).

In 2015, someone did a "Win Expectation" study of that game. Before the swing, the Cardinals had an 81 percent chance of winning the game -- meaning a 1 in 5 chance of losing. That's hardly ridiculous. If the right call had been made, giving the Cardinals an out, they would have had an 89 percent chance -- a 1 in 11 chance of losing, unlikely but still not outrageous for the Royals to have come from behind to win. Even with the call blown, the Cards had a 67 percent chance -- a 2/3rds chance. They still should have won it.

Don Denkinger was still respected enough by the baseball establishment to be put behind the plate for the 1987 All-Star Game, and named crew chief for the 1988 American League Championship Series, the 1991 World Series, and the 1992 ALCS, before retiring in 1998 after 30 season in the majors, 22 as a crew chief. He is now 85 years old, and still lives in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa.

The Cardinals have since won 3 World Series. For those among their fans who have not yet done so, it's time to move on.

*

October 26, 1991, 30 years ago: Game 6 of the World Series. The Minnesota Twins are hosting the Atlanta Braves at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, broadcast live on CBS. While the game is still going on, NBC airs Saturday Night Live.

This episode would be the debut of Ellen Cleghorne's character Queen Shenequa, but it opens with their version of NBC's political talk show The McLaughlin Group, with Dana Carvey playing host John McLaughlin. He and all the panelists are wearing Halloween costumes. Then, Carvey keels over with a knife in his back, and the real McLaughlin takes over -- but stays in character, exaggerating his tagline, "Wrong!" the way Carvey does.

When host Christian Slater comes out, he sees the entire audience doing the Braves' Tomahawk Chop and War Chant. He turns and sees McLaughlin and executive producer Lorne Michaels watching the game, rather than watching hthe show they're actually working on, doing the Chop with the big red foam Tomahawks, and wearing Indian headdresses. With the game in extra innings, Michaels says, "Braves in 6." McLaughlin says, "Wrong! Braves in 7!" 

They're both wrong: Kirby Puckett makes a great catch and hits a dramatic home run in the bottom half of the 11th inning, to give the Twins a 4-3 win, and tie the Series. What has been shaping up as one of the best World Series ever will go to a Game 7 that will be worthy of it.

October 26, 1994: Had the baseball season been permitted to reach a conclusion, Game 4 of the World Series would have been played on this day, at the home park of the American League Champions.

October 26, 1995: The KeyArena opens at the Seattle Center complex, taking the place of the Seattle Center Coliseum. The Seattle SuperSonics make the NBA Finals in their 1st season there, but are moved to Oklahoma City in 2008. 

It was also home to the WNBA's Seattle Storm and the basketball teams of Seattle University. It has now been replaced by the 3rd arena on the site, the Climate Pledge Arena, for the Seattle Kraken, an expansion team that just debuted in the NHL. Seattle also hopes it will become the home of a moved or expansion NBA team that will become the new Sonics. In the interim, the Storm played at Hec Edmondson Pavilion on the campus of the University of Washington.

*

October 26, 1997: Game 7 of the World Series at whatever the combined Marlins-Dolphins stadium in the Miami suburbs was called at the time. The Cleveland Indians jump out to a 2-0 lead over Florida‚ and are just 2 outs away from winning their 1st World Series in 49 years.

But Jose Mesa, not for the first time nor for the last, blows the save, and the Marlins claw their way back and tie the score in the bottom of the 9th on a sacrifice fly by Craig Counsell. In the last half of the 11th‚ Edgar Renteria gets his 3rd hit of the game‚ driving home Counsell with the winning run‚ as Florida wins Game 7 by a score of 3-2.

This was, after 1962, only the 2nd World Series where neither team won back-to-back games: The Marlins won Games 1, 3, 5 and 7; the Indians won Games 2, 4 and 6. This was also the Series with the greatest extremes of weather: The 4 games in South Florida were the 4 warmest on record for Series games, while the 3 in Cleveland were 3 of the 4 coldest (the previous coldest, in New York in 1976, remains 3rd), and Game 4 is the only Series game to be played in a snowfall except for one in Chicago in 1906.

The Marlins, in just their 4th season of existence (as opposed to the Indians, in their 97th), thus become the fastest team in baseball history to win a World Series title‚ 3 years quicker than the 1969 Mets. Livan Hernandez, the pitcher who fled Cuba (and would soon be followed by his brother Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez) is named Most Valuable Player of the Series.

This Series is sweet vindication for manager Jim Leyland, who lost 3 straight NLCS while managing the Pittsburgh Pirates; for Bobby Bonilla, who played for Leyland on those Pirates, bad-attituded his way out of his native New York with the Mets, and flopped the year before with the Baltimore Orioles; for Alex Fernandez, who pitched for the talented Chicago White Sox team that fell just short in 1990, lost the ALCS in ’93 and was screwed over by the strike in ’94, and was injured and unable to pitch in the postseason, so his teammates put his Number 32 on their caps; and for Gary Sheffield, who was already gaining a reputation as a bad apple that nobody wanted to keep around for very long, despite his obvious talent for power hitting, and this remained his only World Series win.

For the Indians, who hadn't won a Series since 1948, went from 1954 to 1995 without winning a Pennant, went from 1959 to 1994 without even being in a Pennant race, stood to be the AL's Wild Card if the standings at the time of the Strike of '94 had held to the end of the season, lost the '95 Series despite winning 100 of 144 games in the regular season, lost the '96 ALDS to an inferior Oriole team, and won just 86 games in this regular season but had defeated the favored Yankees and the Seattle Mariners before this crushing defeat, it is not just a crushing defeat, where they came closer to winning the World Series without doing so than any team ever had except the '86 Red Sox (and now the 2011 Texas Rangers).

No, this loss meant that, like the Red Sox, the Indians now have a reputation of being a choking team. They have never shaken it, despite return trips to the postseason in 1998, '99, 2001 and '07 – blowing a 2-1 lead in the '98 ALCS, 3-1 leads in the '07 ALCS and the '16 World Series, and a 2-0 lead in the '17 ALDS.

Also on this day, D.C. United wins its 2nd MLS Cup, in the league's 2nd season, beating the Denver-based Colorado Rapids, 2-1 on home soil at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Jaime Moreno and Tony Sanneh score the goals.

October 26, 1999: Game 3 of the World Series. Andy Pettitte did not have his good stuff, but Tino Martinez, Chad Curtis and Chuck Knoblauch helped the Yankees come from 5-1 down to send the game to extra innings. Curtis led off the bottom of the 10th, and knocked one out for a 6-5 win.

The following night, the Yanks wrapped up the sweep, the 25th World Championship, the title of Team of the Decade (it ain't about Division Titles, Braves fans), and the title, as NBC's Bob Costas said that next night, of "Most Successful Franchise of the Century."

Like fellow late 1990s Yankee Dynasty players Roger Clemens and John Wetteland, Curtis was among the most faith-vocal players of his era. Also like Clemens and Wetteland, he would later be accused of what would once have been quaintly called "morals charges," relating to his time as a high school athletic trainer in Michigan. He was sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison, and served 7.

*

October 26, 2000: The Euro, the currency of the European Union, which had started, on January 1, 1999, at $1.10 in comparison to the American dollar, drops to 83 cents. This remains its all-time low. Its all-time high is $1.60, achieved on July 15, 2008.

More importantly for me, on this day, Game 5 of the World Series is played at Shea Stadium. Jeter and Bernie Williams homer off Al Leiter. Pettitte and Leiter give it their all. The game is tied 2-2 in the top of the 9th. Two outs. Posada on 2nd, Scott Brosius on 1st. Not great speed on the basepaths. 

Luis Sojo, playing 2nd base because Knoblauch's fielding difficulties limited him to DH status, is coming up to bat. Leiter had thrown 141 pitches. A number that would not have caused Catfish Hunter and Tom Seaver to flinch, but by the standards of the 1990s and 2000s, a lot.

Met Manager Bobby Valentine's choices are not good:

* A: Stick with an exhausted Leiter. He would be pitching on brains, courage and fumes, and pray that he gets the out that sends it to the bottom of the 9th still tied.

* B: Put in Armando Benítez. He led the National League in saves that year and saved Game 3, but also blew Game 1 for Leiter, and also blew a Division Series game against the Giants (which the Mets ended up winning anyway), and had previously messed up 2 ALCS games against the Yankees for the Orioles (including the Jeffrey Maier Game). Or...

* C: Put in John Franco. He was the winning pitcher in Game 3, and also pitched well in Game 4, but would be pitching for the 3rd day in a row. And he was 39: There was a reason Valentine had taken the closer's job from Franco and given it to Benítez.

Valentine decided a tired Leiter was better than an aging, potentially tired Franco and an inconsistent, unreliable Benítez. Although I frequently accused Valentine of overmanaging, and sometimes outright stupidity, I can't fault him for this choice. If he had put in the very popular New York native Franco and lost anyway, he might have gotten away with it. But if he had put in the already suspicious Benítez and he blew yet another, Valentine would have been run out of Flushing on the Long Island Railroad.

Leiter throws his 142nd pitch to Sojo. He knocks it up the middle. A Met fan once told me that Rey

Ordóñez would have stopped this grounder. This Met fan was a fool: Ordóñez would not have gotten it. Mike Bordick was the shortstop that night, and he was a good shortstop, and he couldn't quite get it.

Base hit for Sojo. Posada comes around 3rd. Center fielder Jay Payton's throw... never makes it to Mike Piazza at the plate, instead hitting Posada in the back and getting away, toward the backstop. This enables not only Posada to score the tiebreaking run, but also Brosius to score an insurance run as well. Yankees 4, Mets 2.

Bottom of the 9th. Two out. The Mets get a man on. Piazza comes up to the plate. If you're a Met fan, this is the man you want up: The best offensive player the Mets have ever had (cough-steroids-cough), one of the best fastball hitters of his time, power hitter against power pitcher, Mariano Rivera.

But if you're a Yankee Fan, there’s no one you'd rather have on the mound, and there's no one you’d rather get as the final out. It was similar to the final matchup of the 1978 Boston Tie Party, with Carl Yastrzemski, one of the greatest fastball hitters ever, and the most beloved player in his franchise's history (remember, Sox fans didn't always love Ted Williams), coming up to try to save his club against one of the fastest and most fearsome pitchers ever, Rich "Goose" Gossage.

Yaz popped up to end that game in victory for the Yankees; 22 years later, Piazza gets considerably better wood on his pitch, and hits one deep to straightaway center field.

For a moment, many of us, myself included, think, "Uh-oh, no!" Translation: "Tie game, Mets will go on to win it, and take the next 2 in The Bronx, and the Yanks will have choked it away."

Because we had grown up with the Mets as the team that won and the Yanks as the team that fell short. We had the arrogance of Yankee Fans of old, but deep down, in places we don't like to talk about at parties, we had the fears that came so easily to fans of the Indians, the pre-2004 Red Sox, the pre-2007 Phillies, the pre-2016 Cubs -- and the post-2006 Mets.

But Piazza had juuuust gotten under it. The ball has too much height and not enough distance. As the clock strikes 12:00 midnight, Bernie stands on the warning track, it's an easy catch, and it's over.

Jeter becomes the 1st player ever to be named Most Valuable Player of the All-Star Game and the World Series in the same season. Still, he would never be named MVP of a regular season. At the site of his 1st game as a manager, 23 years earlier, Torre is picked up by his grateful players, and carried off the field.

There were 25,000 people at Shea chanting "Let's Go Yankees!" and "We're Number 1!" Eventually, the owner came out to talk to the press, and he and the announcers couldn't talk, because the Yankee Fans were so loud, chanting "Thank you, George!" Imagine that, thousands of people saluting George Steinbrenner at Shea Stadium.

I loved it. October 26, 2000 – actually, the final out came just before midnight, so it was really October 27 that we celebrated – remains my favorite moment as a sports fan.

For the 1st time, the Mets had the chance -- their first, their best, maybe their last -- to beat the Yankees in a Subway Series, and to irrevocably "take over New York." And while they had their chances and fought hard, in the end, the better team won.

The Yankees have beaten the Mets in a World Series. The other way around has never happened. And it never will. Never, never, never. Or, in the words of Flushing's own Fran Drescher, "It begins with an N and ends with an A: Nev-a." As a Yankee Fan said then, "The Yankees have scoreboard over the Mets for all time."

This was the 26th World Championship. And for those of us who grew up as Yankee Fans during the Mets' "glory" years of 1984 to 1990, the Dynasty That Never Was, and had to deal with the unearned arrogance of the Flushing Heathen, the filthy bastards, delusional that their 2 titles outweighed our 22 (until 1996; now 27), damn fools to believe that the 1986 Mets could have beaten the Yankees of 1927, 1938, 1941, 1953, 1961 and 1978, and eventually even the 1998 juggernaut... for us, this was the greatest, sweetest moment of them all.

We beat the Mets. And it wasn't close. All 5 games were close, but winning in 5 games is domination. And we clinched at their place, on their field, at the William A. Shea International Airport, at the Flushing Toilet.

This was the 13th World Series game played at Shea. An unlucky 13th. It was also the last, which no one (not even a wiseass Yankee Fan like me) could have predicted at the time.

No matter how bad the 2004 ALCS was, losing the 2000 World Series to the Mets would have been 10 times worse. As we saw in 2015, we don't have to live around very many Red Sox fans with their cheated-for arrogance, but we do have to live around Met fans with their unearned arrogance.

How arrogant are Met fans? Some insist that 2000 and the other World Series the Yankees have won since 1978 don't count, because they used steroids; therefore, the count since 1986 is 1 to 0, and the count since 1962 is 2-2. These fans are idiots: We have more evidence against the 2000 Mets (Piazza) than we do against the 1996-2009 Yankees. So if 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009 don't count for the Yankees, then 2000 doesn't count for the Mets, either.

For the moment, the count remains 27 to 2, and 5 to 0 since 1986.

I once saw a Met fan with a cap that had the 2000 World Series logo on the side, but razored off, with some of the stitching still visible. That's how much it bothers them. It should bother them: It basically erased their team's reason to exist.

As we've seen, the Yankees are (depending on your point of view: again, or still) the better team now. And let us not pretend that any Met World Series win -- be it 1969, 1986, or any future win -- is better than all of the Yankees' World Series wins.

Most of all, winning the 2000 World Series means that, as Paul Louis, an online friend who was the same age I am, put it, "The Yankees have scoreboard over the Mets for all time."

Sadly, early in 2021, Paul died from COVID. He was born right after his beloved New York Jets won the Super Bowl, and never lived to see them win another.

Also on this day, The Euro, the currency of the European Union, which had started on January 1, 1999 at $1.10 in comparison to the American dollar, drops to 83 cents. This remains its all-time low. Its all-time high is $1.60, achieved on July 15, 2008.

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October 26, 2002: Game 6 of the World Series, at what was then known as Edison International Field of Anaheim – the former "Big A" briefly nicknamed "the Big Ed." The San Francisco Giants lead the Series 3 games to 2, and lead 5-0 after 6½ innings, thanks to home runs by Shawon Dunston and Barry Bonds.

The Anaheim Angels score 3 runs in the 7th to make it 5-3, but the Giants are still just 9 outs away from their 1st World Championship since moving to San Francisco 45 years earlier, their 1st in any city since they were in New York 48 years earlier.

But they choke. The Angels, having already scored the 3 runs in the 7th, score 3 more in the 8th on a home run by Scott Spiezio, and win, 6-5. The Series will go to a Game 7 in Anaheim tomorrow night.

October 26, 2004: The Red Sox win Game 3 of the World Series with a 4-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium. Finally making his 1st World Series start, Pedro Martinez hurls 7 shutout innings to put the Sox up 3-games-to-0. Manny Ramirez homers and drives in a pair of runs for the Sox‚ while Larry Walker hits one out for the Cards. The Sox can achieve their 86-year-old dream tomorrow night.

October 26, 2005: The Chicago White Sox shut out the Astros‚ 1-0 at Minute Maid Park in Houston‚ to sweep the World Series and win their 1st World Championship since 1917, the 1st for either Chicago team in that time. Freddy Garcia gets credit for the win‚ as Jermaine Dye drives home the game's only run. Dye is named the Series MVP.

Ozzie Guillen, a native of Venezuela, becomes the 1st foreign-born manager to win a World Series. The Astros, in the Series for the 1st time in their 44-season history, are still, through 2016, winless in World Series games. Their all-time record in postseason games is 24-38.

He was the starting goaltender for North London club Arsenal, winning the League title in 1948 and 1953 and the FA Cup in 1950. He later managed the club from 1958 to 1962, but not well. He also managed Peterborough United, Norwich City, Kettering Town, Cardiff City and Corby Town.

October 26, 2008: In a 10-2 rout of the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 4 of the World Series at Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Joe Blanton hits a home run, the 1st pitcher to do so in a Series game in 34 years. Ken Holtzman of the A's was the last hurler to accomplish the feat when he went deep off Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers in 1974 -- also in Game 4.

October 26, 2009: Castle airs the Halloween-themed episode "Vampire Weekend." When 2 college kids -- one an artist who dressed as a vampire, the other a writer who dressed as a werewolf -- who were writing a graphic novel about a present-day vampire in New York are killed, mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and the detectives at the NYPD's 12th Precinct connect the murders to one committed 18 years earlier.

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October 26, 2013: Game 3 of the World Series is played at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and it has the weirdest ending of any Series game ever. (Even weirder than Game 4 of 2020.)

In the bottom of the 9th inning, with the score tied 4-4, Red Sox pitcher Brandon Workman gives up a 1-out single to Yadier Molina. Boston closer Koji Uehara is brought in to face pinch-hitter Allen Craig, who doubles on the 1st pitch. Jon Jay hits a grounder to 2nd baseman Dustin Pedroia, who makes a sensational diving stab, and throws home to catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who tags out the sliding Molina for the 2nd out.

But then Saltalamacchia throws to 3rd, trying to get Craig, who was running on the play, and decided to slide towards Will Middlebrooks, knocking him down. However, the ball glanced off Middlebrooks' glove and Craig's body, caroming into foul territory down the left field line. When Craig starts toward home, he runs over Middlebrooks, who winds up slowing Craig down as he tries to take off for home.

The 3rd base umpire, Jim Joyce, calls obstruction on the play. Home plate umpire Dana DeMuth

determines that Craig would have scored without the obstruction, and awards the Cardinals the run, giving them a 5-4 win, and a 2–1 lead in the World Series. As far as I know, this is the only game in baseball history where a game-winning run was awarded without the runner having touched the plate.

This was 28 years to the day after an umpire's incorrect call set in motion a series of events that cost the Cardinals a World Championship. Had the Cardinals gone on to win the Series, it would have become an epic moment, and Red Sox fans would fume about getting screwed for the rest of their lives -- even though, unlike the Denkinger call in 1985, this call was correct. We know they would have forever fumed, because Sox fans old enough to remember the 1975 World Series are still fuming about the alleged "interference" of Ed Armbrister of Cincinnati in the 10th inning of another Game 3.

But, of course, the Sox won the Series (by cheating), so this play is a footnote. A bizarre footnote, but a footnote nonetheless.

October 26, 2015: Supergirl premieres on CBS. After its 1st season, it moves to The CW, becoming part of its "Arrowverse" franchise of superhero dramas. Melissa Benoist plays Kara Zor-El, a native of Krypton who, in a manner of speaking, has 2 secret identities: Kara Danvers, a media figure; and the titular superheroine.

The original version of the character debuted in May 1959, in Action Comics #252, as a cousin to Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Kal-El. Superan's father, Jor-El, and Supergirl's father, Zor-El, were brothers and scientists. The character had previously been show in the 1984 film Supergirl, starring Helen Slater, as part of the franchise started by the Christopher Reeve Superman films.

Nods were given to previous superhero franchises, including Dean Cain, Superman in the 1990s series Lois & Clark, as Jeremiah Danvers, Kara's adoptive father; and Lynda Carter, the title character on the 1970s Wonder Woman series, as Olivia Marsden, President of the United States, who has to resign when it is revealed that she is, herself, an alien. The show will conclude in a few weeks after 6 seasons.

October 26, 2016: Game 2 of the World Series. Behind the pitching of Jake Arrieta, The Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 5-1 at Progressive Field, and even the Series. 

After winning all 8 games he managed with the Boston Red Sox, and winning game one with the Indians, this was the 1st time Terry Francona lost a World Series game as a manager. He was 9-0. It was the 1st World Series game the Cubs had won since Game 6 in 1945.

October 26, 2018: Game 3 turns out to be the longest game in World Series history. Joc Pederson gives the Dodgers the lead with a home run in the 3rd inning, and Jackie Bradley Jr. ties it for the Red Sox with a home run in the 8th, to make it 2-2.

The Red Sox scored in the top of the 13th on a walk, a wild pitch and a single-and-error. But the Dodgers tied it on a walk, a fly out, and a single-and-error of their own. As the game went on and on, Twitter users began making jokes about its length: This game had started at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and was moved to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Sandy Koufax had started the game for the Dodgers, Cy Young for the Red Sox; Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson had traded home runs in the 14th, and so on.

Max Muncy nearly hit a walkoff home run in the bottom of the 15th, but his drive hooked just foul. He finally hit one in the bottom of the 18th, giving the Dodgers a 3-2 win. Nathan Eovaldi, normally a starting pitcher, had thrown 7 innings in relief before taking the loss. His effort helped save the Boston bullpen, keeping their relievers fresh. This would be the only game the Dodgers would win in the Series.

The 18 innings broke the Series record of 14, set by the same teams in 1916, and tied by the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros in Game 3 in 2005. The first pitch was at 5:10 PM Pacific Time (8:10 Eastern), and it ended at 12:30 AM (3:30 Eastern). At 7 hours and 20 minutes, it broke the record of that 2005 Game 3, 5 hours and 41 minutes, and tied the record for longest postseason game ever, set in Game 4 of the 2005 National League Division Series, won by the Astros on Chris Burke's home run against the Cardinals. This game was longer than the entire 1939 World Series, a 4-game sweep by the Yankees over the Reds, which took a combined 7 hours and 5 minutes to play.