March 4, 1925: The Inauguration of Calvin Coolidge

March 4, 1925, 100 years ago: Calvin Coolidge, who became the 30th President of the United States upon the death of Warren Harding in 1923, and won a full term of his own in 1924, is sworn in as President. Charles G. Dawes, a former U.S. Ambassador to Britain, is sworn in as Vice President.

A 52-year-old native of Plymouth Notch, Vermont, and Governor of Massachusetts when he was elected Vice President in 1920, he is sworn in on the West Front of the Capitol Building, by the Chief Justice, himself a former President, William Howard Taft.

This was the 1st time that a former President swore in an incoming President. In spite of this, Taft goofed on the Oath of Office: Instead of asking Coolidge to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," it came out, "protect, preserve and defend." Four years later, for Herbert Hoover, Taft goofed again, making it "preserve, and maintain, and defend…"

His reputation as "Silent Cal" led to a story that two women at a White House party made a bet, and one walked up to Coolidge and said, "I made a bet with my friend that I could get you to say at least three words to me," and Coolidge said, "You lose." Belying this reputation, this speech was, and remains, the 6th-longest Inaugural Address of any President. His Inaugural Address is the 1st to be broadcast on radio. Unfortunately, no sound recording of the Address survives.

The Address is not especially memorable. He closes by saying, "America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force. No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions. The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but with the cross. The higher state to which she seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God."

The theme of his 1924 election campaign was "Keep Cool with Coolidge"; alternately, "Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge." The scandals of the late President Harding were forgotten: Coolidge was a model of propriety. And the country enjoyed "Coolidge Prosperity," and enjoyed an isolationist foreign policy: There were no international entanglements during his time in office.

On vacation in the Summer of 1927, he told the press, "I do not choose to run for President in 1928." Maybe he saw the writing on the wall, that an economic crash was coming. Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce under Harding and Coolidge, was elected, and was left holding the bag for the Crash of 1929. Coolidge escaped blame for the Great Depression.

He died on January 5, 1933, 2 months before his 2nd full term, had he sought it and won it, would have ended. He remains the modern model for a boring President: When told he had died, theater critic Dorothy Parker said, "How can you tell?"

Top 10 Myths About the Roaring Twenties

August 2, 1923, 100 years ago: President Warren G. Harding dies. When the 1920s began, he was elected President as a good-looking, charismatic man who would lead the nation into a new era of "normalcy," while, at the same time, letting us have as much fun as he was having behind the scenes.

By the time the 1920s were over, he had been posthumously exposed as an idiot, a womanizer, and the head of a really corrupt Administration. His reputation crashed every bit as hard as the stock market did.

His image was well-crafted, especially since he was seen as nice and healthy, unlike the physically and politically paralyzed outgoing President, Woodrow Wilson. Little did anyone know that Harding was, like Wilson before his 1919 stroke, already a lot sicker than he let on by the time his candidacy began.

So let's look at some myths about the uproarious decade, and see how close they were to the truth:

Top 10 Myths About the Roaring Twenties

1. Babe Ruth saved baseball. That is, his home runs in 1920 and onward made the nation forget about the Black Sox Scandal, which would have destroyed baseball otherwise.

Warren Gamaliel Harding and George Herman Ruth Jr.

Baseball had survived scandals and down periods before. Certainly, Ruth helped. But the scandal didn't break until the end of the 1920 season, nearly a year after the fixed World Series, and Ruth was already destroying previous home run records. Without it, baseball might have taken longer to bounce back, but it would have happened.

And if you had asked the Babe himself, he would admit that he hadn't "saved baseball," that baseball didn't need "saving." It didn't after the Black Sox Scandal, it didn't after the Strike of '81, it didn't after the Strike of '94, and it doesn't now.

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2. Warren Harding was one of the worst Presidents. Did the 29th President of the United States get a bum rap? This website advertises "6 Major Accomplishments of Warren G. Harding." Let's check them out, and see if they hold water:

1. Before embarking on a political career as an ambitious Republican, he built a successful newspaper, The Marion Star. He did this, but that's hardly a major accomplishment, and it wasn't something he did as President. So we can't count it.

2. Warren Harding was the first sitting U.S. Senator to win the Presidency. This is true. Is it a major accomplishment? Certainly: Winning the Presidency is one, regardless of how you did it, unless you cheated -- and, as far as we can tell, he didn't. But it's not an accomplishment as President.

3. One of his earliest successes was the Washington Naval Conference in 1921–22. He managed to bring the major nations with significant naval might to agree on what was called the naval limitations program. The program was in place for a decade.

This could be considered a major accomplishment. Or, it could be attributable to his Secretary of State, Charles Evans Hughes, much as the Louisiana Purchase was less Thomas Jefferson than his negotiator, James Monroe; the Monroe Doctrine was less Monroe than Secretary of State (and successor as President) John Quincy Adams; and the Alaska Purchase was less Andrew Johnson than Secretary of State William Seward. But we can count it in Harding's favor.

4. Warren Harding passed the federal child welfare program, the first of its kind. He managed to lower taxes, increased the tax base, raised tariffs to create employment and he also managed to successfully negotiate with striking workers in mining and railroad companies, particularly the crisis in Blair Mountain and the Great Railroad Strike in 1922.

This is actually 4 separate actions. The child welfare program was, unquestionably, a good thing. But lowering taxes doesn't increase the tax base: By definition, it lowers it. Raising tariffs doesn't create employment, it reduces it. These things helped to set up the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And he had little to do with the Blair Mountain Crisis -- which wrecked the United Mine Workers for a decade. So that's 1 plus, 2 major minuses, and 1 flat-out lie that would have been a minus had it been true.

5. Warren Harding was vocal against lynching and the violence meted out to African Americans. He did bring in the anti-lynching bill only to see it fail at the hands of the Congress. Harding's Republican Party had control both houses of Congress, so, while his heart was in the right place, he failed as a leader on this issue.

6. President Harding signed a peace treaty with Austria and Germany post World War I. Big deal. Whoever was President was going to do that. It was a formality, since the war had ended 3 years earlier, and the Congress of Versailles had already happened. No one counts the proclamation officially ending World War II that he signed on December 31, 1946 -- 16 months after V-J Day -- as one of the accomplishments of Harry Truman. Ending the war in victory for the Allies, yes; the New Year's Eve '46 treaty, no.

So, to tally up: 9 actions, resulting in 2 major accomplishments, 1 piece of window dressing, 1 embarrassing failure, 2 harmful actions, and 3 actions that were not accomplishments of his Presidency at all.

And, yes, his economic policies, guided by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, helped to set up the Great Depression. And, yes, the Teapot Dome scandal was the biggest piece of executive branch malfeasance ever, and would remain so for another half a century.

In other words: In 2 1/2 years in office, 2 big pluses, 1 very little plus, 3 minor minuses, 1 big minus, and 1 humongous minus.

Was America better off on August 2, 1923, when Harding left the Presidency through death, than it was on March 4, 1921, when he entered the Presidency? Yes. How responsible was he for that? Not much. And, by March 4, 1931, the 10th Anniversary of his Inauguration, it was obvious that he was one of the worst Presidents the country had ever had. That we have since had Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, each of whom was even worse, by no means elevates Harding in history.

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Let's move on:

3. The Great Gatsby symbolizes the good times of "The Jazz Age." This one is pure baloney. Both the 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the films based on it, including the Robert Redford version in 1974 and the Leonardo DiCaprio one in 2013, show that all the parties and other good times were hollow -- or, to use the expression I used for Harding's treaty "ending the war," window dressing -- and did nothing but take people's minds off the difficulties of life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

A director with guts could easily do a version of Gatsby and set it over half a century later, in the Disco Period.

4. Charles Lindbergh was the 1st man to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. He was the 1st to do it solo, and the 1st to do it from the North American continent to the European continent. Certainly, that was worth celebrating. Perhaps not as much as it was celebrated in what a documentary about the 1920s called "The Age of Ballyhoo." But worth some celebration.

Lindbergh and his plane, Spirit of St. Louis

But Lindbergh wasn't the 1st to fly across the Atlantic, or even the 2nd. On June 15, 1919, British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the 1st air crossing of the Atlantic. To be fair to Lindbergh and his achievement, Alcock and Brown did not go full continent-to-continent. They chose the closest possible route: From St. John's, Newfoundland, the easternmost city in the Western Hemisphere, to the west coast of Ireland, the westernmost point in Europe.

Arthur Brown (left) and John Alcock

5. The Jazz Singer was the 1st "Talking Picture." It wasn't: Its star, Jolson, already a Broadway and recording legend, had sung in a much shorter film the year before. But it was the 1st feature-length motion picture with a synchronized recorded music score, and the 1st feature-length motion picture with lip-synchronous speech and singing.

6. "Coolidge Prosperity." Yes, there was an economic boom that began under Harding, ending the postwar drop under Wilson, which was definitely a recession and has been termed a "depression" by some. And it continued under Coolidge.

Calvin Coolidge

But looks can be deceiving. Using the Dow Jones Industrial Average as a guide: It was 64 on August 22, 1921. Not 6,400: Sixty-four. It reached 100 in October 1922, was at 87 when Harding died in August 1923, and was at 120 at the end of 1924, Coolidge's 1st full year in office. Proportionally speaking, that's significant improvement.

At the end of 1925, it was at 156. In September 1926, it reached 164, before dropping a little by the end of the year. It broke 200 at the end of 1927. The real surge began in July 1928, just as Hoover was running on "Republican prosperity." It hit 292 on November 26, 1928. After a drop in early December, it reached 300 on New Year's Eve. On June 10, 1929, it was 303. On September 3, it had surged to 381.17.

Then it started going down. The "Crash of '29" seems to have happened in a hurry, but, on October 23, the Dow was already down to 305.85. On the 24th, "Black Thursday," it fell to 299.47, and would have been worse if not for a late stock buy made by the famous "walk across the floor" of the New York Stock Exchange by J.P. Morgan banker Thomas W. Lamont. On Friday, the 25th, there was a slight rise, to 301.22.

But the weekend, as it frequently has in tough times since, bred worry. On Monday the 28th, the Dow fell to 260.64. The 29th was "Black Tuesday," and the Dow fell to 230.07. The chickens hatched by Harding, Coolidge and Mellon had come home to roost. As a poem of the time went:

Hoover blew the whistle

Mellon rang the bell

Wall Street gave the signal

and the country went to hell!

What about the other major gauge of how well the economy is doing, the unemployment rate? Here it is, at the end of each calendar year in the 1920s:

* 1920: 4.0 percent

* 1921: 11.9

* 1922: 7.6

* 1923: 3.2

Looks like the Harding-Mellon policy of cutting taxes is working. Let's see what the Coolidge of policy of "do nothing, because the business of America is business" does:

* 1924: 5.5

* 1925: 4.0

* 1926: 1.9

Is that for real? Or was somebody cooking the books? Let's continue:

* 1927: 4.1

* 1928: 4.4

* 1929: 3.2

In other words, while the Crash happened late in 1929, the Depression wasn't yet getting noticed around the country. But then:

* 1930: 8.9

That's bad, but not as bad as the hangover from the Wilson years. But it got much, much worse thanks to the Harding-Mellon-Coolidge-Hoover policies:

* 1931: 15.9

* 1932: 23.6

* 1933: 24.9

Yeah. America needed a new deal, capitalized or otherwise. Harding died, and Coolidge did "not choose to run for President in 1928." So they escaped the blame of "early drafts of history," and Hoover was "left holding the bag." It just seemed too convenient, just as it was to blame CBS for the collapse of the Yankees in 1965, without considering what harm selling owners Dan Topping and Del Webb had already done.

Calvin Coolidge was, at least domestically, the most conservative President America has ever had. Not a radical right-winger like Reagan, George W. Bush or Trump, but conservative in the old sense of the word. America paid the price for this, but he didn't.

7. Prohibition turned America into a giant gangland shooting gallery. The homicide rate did rise in the 1920s, but context is needed. A lot of potential murderers, and murder victims, were in the service in 1917 and 1918.

But there's no sign that Prohibition or organized crime accounted for most, or even much, of it. Hijackings of cars and trucks smuggling liquor was common, but the robbers usually didn't find it necessary to kill the drivers. Why cause more trouble than you need?

8. "Flappers" were women of loose morals. Smoking. Drinking. Showing skin, with the age of the corset being over.

There was no study done at the time to prove that flappers had more sex than their predecessors. They did have more opportunity for pre-marital sex, as well as an increasing knowledge of contraceptive practices. The easier access to cars carried young adults away from parental eyes to socials, parties, sporting events, and theaters, while Hollywood productions portrayed, and simultaneously manufactured, this modern courting culture.

But there seems to have been no major rise in pregnancies, births, abortions, or sexually-transmitted diseases. If there was, it's been kept quiet. And if you wonder how something can be kept quiet for 100 years, let the record show that I didn't find out about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 until around 2000 or so, and didn't find out about the Ocoee Massacre in Florida in 1920 until its 100th Anniversary. And we still don't know what caused Babe Ruth's "Bellyache Heard 'Round the World" in 1925.

9. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 led to mass suicides. Since then, whenever there's a dip in the stock market, demonstrators go to the New York Stock Exchange at Broad and Wall Streets, and yell, "Jump! Jump! Jump!" Because they think that's what happened during and after the Crash of '29.

There is no record of a single stockbroker suicide, let alone one via jumping out of a window, in the wake of the Crash. In what remains the definitive book about the Crash, The Great Crash 1929, Pulitzer Prize-winning economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, "In the United States the suicide wave that followed the stock market is also part of the legend of 1929. In fact, there was none."

One of the more famous photos connected with the Crash is this one, showing Walter Thornton. He was one of the most successful male models of the early 20th Century. Today, though, he is best known for this photo, trying to sell his very nice car, a 1929 Chrysler Imperial 75 Roadster, for $100 -- about $1,784 in today's money.

Did Thornton get $100 for his car? I can find no reference to an answer. But he did return to his previous career, modeling, and soon started a modeling agency, and gained a new fortune from that. He lived until 1990.

10. The Crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression. That was part of it, but by no means all of it. The end of World War I meant that farmers, having lost a big chunk of their market, had already been in a depression since the Armistice, 11 years earlier.

The famous headline in

the film industry's "trade paper"

In his nationally-syndicated newspaper column, Will Rogers spent much of the "Roaring Twenties" saying how, for farmers, the decade didn't roar so much as mumble. He pointed out that the economic boom wasn't universal for the cities, either: In 1928, about a year before the Crash, he wrote, "Wall Street has never been better off, but Eighth Avenue has never been worse off."

When he was President, John F. Kennedy quoted an old saying: "A rising tide lifts all boats." Not a boat with a hole in it. And, of course, in the 1920s as now, some people didn't have boats, and some people couldn't even swim.

Even with the Crash, the Depression might have been sharp, but relatively short, if not for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which President Herbert Hoover signed into law on June 17, 1930. Named for its sponsors, Senator Reed Smoot of Utah and Representative Willis Hawley of Oregon, both Republicans, the law raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.

Willis Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot

This prompted retaliatory tariffs by other countries against America. As a result, between 1929 and 1933, American exports dropped 61 percent, and American imports dropped by 66 percent. Between 1929 and 1932, real Gross Domestic Product fell 17 percent worldwide, and 26 percent in the United States.

Unemployment was 8 percent when the Act was passed. It doubled to 16 percent in 1931 -- already higher than any of the "recessions" since the Depression -- and 25 percent in 1932. It is suspected that, when FDR took office on March 4, 1933, it may have been as high as 31 percent. If the Crash was the biggest cause, Smoot-Hawley was a strong second.

The Roaring Twenties did roar. But not quite the way history tends to remember it.

August 2 & 3, 1923: The Death of Warren Harding -- and the Struggle to Inaugurate Calvin Coolidge

August 2, 1923, 100 years ago: Warren Gamaliel Harding, the 29th President of the United States, dies in office, halfway through the 3rd year of his term. He was 57 years old.

The former newspaper editor was a U.S. Senator from Ohio when he was elected President in a landslide in 1920. He was handsome, charming, and promised "a return to normalcy" after the turbulent Progressive Era, World War I, and its difficult aftermath. Actually, he never used the words "return to normalcy" in any speech. What he said was:

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.

Things had considerably calmed down in America during his time in office, and he was still popular in the Summer of 1923. He even posed for a photo with the biggest star in baseball, the Yankees' Babe Ruth.

Legend has it that Ruth, whose many alliterative nicknames could have included the Imperator of Informality, once asked the President of the United States, "Hot as hell, ain't it, Prez?" It's not clear whether the President in question was Harding, who might have appreciated it, or his successor, Calvin Coolidge, who certainly would not have.

So he was still popular in the Summer of 1923, when the Teapot Dome scandal broke out. Unlike such later scandals as Richard Nixon's Watergate, Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra, Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and the many scandals of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, this one was, and remains, a bit complicated.

Teapot Dome was an oil reserve in Wyoming, one of three set aside for the use of the U.S. Navy in the event of a national emergency. In May 1921, Harding signed an executive order transferring control of the reserves from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior. Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby agreed to this, and Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall now had control.

In July 1921, California-based oilman Edward Doheny offered Fall a bribe of $100,000 -- about $1.7 million in today's money -- for permission to drill at Teapot Dome. The weird part is, after Harding was gone, Fall was convicted of accepting this bribe in 1929 -- the 1st Cabinet member ever to go to prison for actions in office -- but Doheny was acquitted of offering it in 1930.

Teapot Rock, above Teapot Dome

The scandal had begun to break, and Harding's bid for re-election was less than a year and a half away. He called his Secretary of Commerce into his office. He asked the Secretary, if he were President, and knew of a scandal in his Administration, what would he do? The Secretary said he would come completely clean. The Secretary's name was Herbert Hoover, and he would eventually become President. He didn't have a scandal like Teapot Dome in his Administration. He should have been no more unlucky than that.

Harding did not come clean. Instead, he ran away. No, he didn't resign. He went on what he called a "Voyage of Understanding," a train trip all over the continent. He became the 1st sitting President to visit Canada, and then the 1st to visit Alaska, which would still be a Territory until gaining Statehood in 1959.

On his way back south, he visited Seattle, and gave a speech at the University of Washington on July 27. That night, he called his doctor, Charles E. Sawyer, complaining of abdominal pain. Sawyer diagnosed an "acute gastrointestinal attack," and that's what the press was told. Somehow, it got out that Harding had eaten some tainted crabmeat in Alaska.

On July 29, Harding arrived in San Francisco, and checked into the Palace Hotel, and had a relapse. It wouldn't be publicly revealed until after his death, but, like his immediate predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, Harding was already a sick man when he became President, with a few years of heart problems, which were flaring up again. His wife, Florence, known as "The Duchess," was with him, and she wasn't very healthy, either, with a chronic kidney condition.

At 7:30 PM Pacific Time, in their room at the Palace, Florence was reading a flattering article about him, published by The Saturday Evening Post: "A Calm Review of a Calm Man." She paused, and he said, "That's good. Go on, read some more." She did, for a few seconds, until she noticed him twisting and gasping for air. She called the doctors, but it was too late: He was dead. 

Mrs. Harding did not permit an autopsy for her husband. A rumor got around that she had poisoned him -- possibly to protect him from the rising scandal; or possibly out of revenge for something the public didn't know at the time, his voracious womanizing, including an affair that resulted in the only child he would ever have.

That wouldn't be known for a few years. At first, the country was deeply saddened by the death of a popular President. But before the Harding Tomb could be completed in 1929, it had all come out, and he became regarded as one of the worst Presidents the country had ever had: As scandalous as Richard Nixon, as dumb as George W. Bush, and as horny as Bill Clinton.

Whatever Mrs. Harding knew, she took to the grave, on November 21, 1924, less than a year and a half after her husband, and just after he would have had to face the voters again.

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Harding died at 10:30 PM Eastern Time. Now, a new President of the United States must be sworn in. It becomes the most difficult Inauguration in the office's history. Not because of any external threat, real or imagined. And not because of any resistance to the peaceful transfer of power. But because of simple logistics, and the technology of the time.

The Secret Service had to find the Vice President, Calvin Coolidge, former Governor of Massachusetts. Like Harding, he was escaping the Summer heat of Washington, D.C., staying at his family's homestead in Plymouth, Vermont, where he had been born on July 4, 1872. (This makes him, to this day, the only person born on the nation's birthday to become President.)

This was 1923, and less than half of all American homes had telephones. And the Coolidge Homestead did not have a telephone. But it shouldn't have been that hard to send a telegram. Well, they couldn't reach the Coolidge Homestead by telegram, either.

So, Secret Service Agents had to drive up from Boston, and knock on the front door of the Coolidge Homestead in the middle of the night. The unwitting new President's father, John Coolidge, a former Vermont State Senator, a notary public, and a justice of the peace, answered the door. The Agents discovered that this rural home -- 150 miles northwest of Boston, 100 miles northeast of Albany, and 100 miles southeast of Vermont's largest city, Burlington -- didn't even have electricity. The ceremony had to be conducted by candlelight.

At 2:47 AM Eastern Time -- meaning that, less than 100 years ago, there was a time when the nation didn't have a working President for over 4 hours -- Calvin Coolidge was administered the Oath of Office by his father, becoming the 30th President of the United States. 

Artist's depiction of the Inauguration. There was no photographer present.

When John was asked by a reporter a few days later how he knew he could swear his son in, he said, "I didn't know that I couldn't." The legal basis for him being the person to swear the President in is a bit vague: He wasn't actually a judge, and every other person who has ever sworn a President in has been, at the very least, a judge.

Most have been the Chief Justice of the United States. This includes Salmon Chase, swearing in Andrew Johnson after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865; Harlan Stone, swearing in Harry Truman after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945; and Warren Burger, swearing in Gerald Ford after the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. The others:

* April 30, 1789, George Washington, Federal Hall, New York: Robert Livingston, Chancellor of New York. In other words, the State's Chief Justice. There wasn't yet a Chief Justice of the country, because there wasn't yet a Supreme Court, because the Justices of that Court hadn't yet been appointed by the President, because there wasn't yet a President.

* April 6, 1841, John Tyler, Indian Queen Hotel, Washington: William Cranch, Chief Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.

* July 10, 1850, Millard Fillmore, House of Representatives Chamber, U.S. Capitol, Washington: Cranch again.

* September 20, 1881, Chester Arthur, his apartment, New York: John R. Brady, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

* September 14, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, Ansley Wilcox House, Buffalo, New York: John R. Hazel, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

* November 22, 1963, Lyndon Johnson, aboard Air Force One, Love Field, Dallas: Sarah T. Hughes, Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. She remains the only woman to administer the Oath of Office to an incoming President.

Thus sworn in by his father, President Calvin Coolidge went back to bed, helping to feed the legend that he slept too much while he was President. The next morning, Coolidge was driven to Rutland, Vermont, where he took a train to Boston, and then another to Washington, where, just to be on the safe side, he was sworn in again, by a federal Judge, Adolph A. Hoehling Jr.

Calvin Coolidge ran for a term of his own in 1924, and, untainted by the Teapot Dome scandal that had engulfed Harding, won easily. On March 4, 1925, at the Capitol, he got a proper Inauguration, sworn in by the Chief Justice, himself a former President, William Howard Taft.

Would Harding have been re-elected, given the booming economy, even with Teapot Dome and the subsequent scandal in the U.S. Department of Justice, which sent his Attorney General and former campaign manager, Harry Daugherty, to prison? Maybe, because the Democrats were badly divided.

But since Coolidge wasn't involved in the scandals at all, he cruised to an easy victory, as the nation decided to follow the Republican slogan, "Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge."

John Coolidge died in 1926. Calvin Coolidge did not run for a 2nd full term in 1928, and left office on March 4, 1929, with the Inauguration of Herbert Hoover. He died on January 5, 1933. His Presidency had so little drama, and Coolidge himself had so little personality, that, when the writer Dorothy Parker was informed that he had died, she said, "How can you tell?"

March 3, 1923: Time Magazine Debuts

March 3, 1923, 100 years ago: Time magazine debuts, with a cover featuring Joseph G. Cannon, a Republican from Illinois, who had been Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1903 to 1911.

Founded by a pair of Yale University classmates, Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden, it quickly became America's leading news magazine.

Hadden fell victim to a strep infection, and, with antibiotics not yet possible, died on February 27, 1929, a few days after his 31st birthday. Before he died, he signed a will, which left all of his stock in Time Inc. to his mother, and forbade his family from selling those shares for 49 years.

That didn't stop Luce: Within a year, he had formed a syndicate that gained hold of Hadden's stock. He took Hadden's name off the magazine's masthead. He took control of Hadden's personal papers, and claimed credit for Hadden's ideas, including the introduction of Time's annual Man of the Year, first awarded in 1927, to pilot Charles Lindbergh.

In 1936, Luce founded Life magazine, which became a picture magazine, to appeal to people who weren't interested in the in-depth articles that Time was publishing. He built Time-Life, Inc. into a publishing empire that would eventually include, among other magazines, Fortune and Sports Illustrated.

And he used this empire to push conservative Republican causes, including opposing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's liberal "New Deal," and also Nationalist China, as Luce had been born in China to Christian missionaries, and was deeply anti-Communist. Fortunately, he hated the Nazis in equal measure.

Luce died in 1967. Afterward, the company restored Hadden's name to the masthead, and restored his historical reputation as well. 

August 22, 1922: The Assassination of Michael Collins

August 22, 1922, 100 years: Michael Collins is assassinated in Béal na Bláth, County Cork, Ireland. He was only 31 years old.

"The Big Fellow" was born 19 miles away, also in County Cork, in Woodfield. Here, sports led to larger history. At the time, the entirety of Ireland was still part of the British Empire. Collins' father, and most of the male role models he sought out after he was 6, when his father died, had been involved in Ireland's occasional rebellions.

Nevertheless, at age 15, he took a civil service exam, passed it, and was rewarded with a job in London, the Empire's capital. While living there, he was a member of the London County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the governing body for traditional Irish sports such as "Gaelic football" and hurling. So sports had an effect on history in this case: This association brought him into contact with rebels trying to establish Irish independence. In 1915, he moved to New York to work in a bank, a job that lasted one year.

Thus, the executions of the Easter Rising of 1916 did not include him. Indeed, the removal of several of the cause's leaders meant that others had to step in, and this aided his rise through the ranks. His background, working in banks in the Irish communities of London and New York, led to his appointment as the Minister for Finance in the early Republic of Ireland. He became Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and became renowned for his guerrilla warfare strategy.

Sent to London to negotiate peace terms, he was offered a treaty that would establish the Irish Free State -- with an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown. The British Crown, held by King George V. Collins accepted this compromise, calling it "the freedom to achieve freedom." Some in the Provisional Government did not, and the end of the Irish War of Independence led to the beginning of the Irish Civil War.

Collins was named Chairman of the Provisional Government and commander-in-chief of the National Army. On August 22, 1922, returning from a visit to Cork City, a rebel stronghold, his convoy stopped at around 7:15 PM, at a bar called Long's Pub. It is now named the Diamond Bar. They were ambushed.

Collins' aide, Emmet Dalton, ordered the driver of Collins' armored car to "Drive like hell!" But Collins said, "No, stop, and we'll fight 'em!" A great example of "famous last words." Collins jumped out of the vehicle with his Lee Enfield rifle. He and his men fired from behind the car, which had a Vickers machine gun. But the Vickers jammed, and was of no use.

Collins moved back, his men presuming that it was to get a better view. He got off a couple of shots, and was reloading when he was hit in the head from a shot by former British Army sniper Denis "Sonny" O'Neill, a native of West Cork who had met Collins on a few occasions, before the split in the Irish nationalist ranks. Collins was the only man to die in the firefight.

O'Neill was granted a pension by the post-civil war government, and worked for a board of elections before dying peacefully in 1950.

Collins was played by Brendan Gleeson in the 1991 made-for-TV film The Treaty, by Liam Neeson in the 1996 film Michael Collins, and by Gavin Drea in the 2019 film Resistance.

October 29, 1921: The Impossible Formula

October 29, 1921, 100 years ago: The Harvard University football team loses to Centre College of Danville, Kentucky, 6-0 at Harvard Stadium in Boston, ending a 25-game winning streak. This is considered one of the biggest upsets in college football, as the "Praying Colonels" (no, I'm not making that mascot name up), from a school of just 300 students at the time, were the 1st team from outside the old Northeast (Jim Thorpe's Pennsylvania-based Carlisle counts) to beat one of the old "Big Three" of Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

All over Danville, graffiti appeared with the score: "C6H0." This could be read as a scientific formula: Six parts carbon, zero parts hydrogen. Since that can't be done, it become known as "The Impossible Formula."

Today, Harvard, like all the Ivy League teams, is in the FCS, the Football Championship Subdivision, what used to be known as Division I-AA. Since the official founding of the Ivy League as a sports conference in 1955, Harvard has won its football championship 15 times, most recently in 2015.

Centre would prove that their 1921 win over Harvard was no fluke. They finished their regular season undefeated, 10-0, having also beaten Clemson, Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Auburn, Tulane and Arizona. They were invited to play Texas A&M in the Dixie Classic, a precursor game to the Cotton Bowl. A&M won, 22-14, in a game that became known for the origin story of their "12th Man" tradition. Their biggest star of 1921, Bo McMillin, was a rough Texan who was one of the 1st good NFL quarterbacks, and would coach Indiana to its 1st football title in the Big Ten in 1945.

They had also beaten Kentucky and Virginia Tech the year before. In 1922, they beat Clemson away, Mississippi, Virginia Tech away, Louisville, Kentucky away and South Carolina. However, they lost a rematch away to Harvard on October 21, 24-10. They also lost to Auburn at Rickwood Field, the Birmingham ballpark.

In 1923, they went 7-1-1, their conquests including Clemson, Kentucky, and Auburn at Rickwood again. They tied Georgia, and their only loss was the Penn at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia. On 4 consecutive Saturdays in 1924, the Colonels defeated Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. 

Today, however, Centre are in Division III, but have won their league 15 times, including 6 times from 1980 to 1990. Their last title was in 2014. Their current enrollment: 1,430, to Harvard's 27,000.

Nor would Harvard's loss be a fluke: A week later, they went down to Princeton, and lost again.

In 1950, the Associated Press named C6H0 the greatest upset of the 1st half of the 20th Century, in any sport. In 2005, The New York Times called it "arguably the upset of the century in college football." (They did not use capital letters.) In 2006, ESPN named it the 3rd-biggest upset in college football history.

In anticipation of the game's 75th Anniversary, in 1996, Centre challenged Harvard to a rematch. Harvard declined. Harvard went 4-6 that season. I can't find a record of how Centre did that year, but they won their league the year before. Who knows, maybe history could have repeated itself.

This year? Harvard won its 1st 5 games before losing to Princeton last week. They host Dartmouth tomorrow. Centre take a 5-2 record into tomorrow's game, home to Rhodes College of Memphis.

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October 29, 1859: Charles Hercules Ebbets is born in Manhattan. In 1883, he got a job with a new baseball team, then known as the Brooklyn Grays. By 1890, he had become the majority owner. In 1912, knowing that Washington Park was insufficient for a major league team in the wake of new stadiums like Shibe Park and Forbes Field, he began building a new ballpark for his team, by then known as the Dodgers. He was told that since it was his idea, it should be called Ebbets Field. And so the Dodgers played at Ebbets Field from 1913 until 1957.

Under his guidance, the team, under various names, won Pennants in 1889 (in the American Association, thereafter in the National League), 1890, 1899, 1900, 1916 and 1920. He invented Ladies Day, with women admitted at half-price, in 1899. His experience as a bookkeeper led him to the concept that the best schedule for baseball was for the 8 NL teams to play each other 22 times a season: 22 times 7 = 154, so he created the 154-game schedule that was in place from 1904 to 1960 (and until 1961 in the NL).

In 1906, he installed a visiting team clubhouse, complete with showers, at Washington Park, eliminating the need for teams to change at their hotels and arrive in open vehicles (horse-drawn carriages, and by this point early taxis) in their uniforms, where home fans could throw things at them. He invented the rain check in 1911. As early as 1922, he suggested that players wear uniform numbers -- although his suggestion was on the cap or the sleeve, not on the back as would happen starting in 1929. He also served in the New York State Assembly and on the New York City Council, as a Democrat.

Unfortunately, his messy personal life would have consequences for baseball, and, indirectly, the entire world. He had lived with his eventual 2nd wife for 12 years before his divorce from his 1st wife became final. And, unlike later team owners Branch Rickey and Walter O'Malley, he was not a lawyer who would have known a way around this: To guarantee his alimony payments, he deposited his shares of the Dodgers with the Mechanics Bank, which was later bought by the Brooklyn Trust Company.

He died in 1925, with the team in dire financial straits. To make matters worse, it rained at his funeral, and one of his co-owners, Ed McKeever, caught a cold, which developed into the flu, and, in those pre-antibotic days, he outlived Ebbets by only 11 days.

That left Ebbets' widow Grace, his son-in-law Joseph Gilleaudeau, and Brooklyn Trust as half-owners of the Dodgers, and Ed's brother Steve McKeever as owner of the other half. When Steve died in 1938, his half-share passed to his daughter Elizabeth "Dearie" Mulvey and her husband James. But the team was still, financially, in bad shape.

So Brooklyn Trust appointed Cincinnati Reds general manager Larry MacPhail as team president. He straightened things out, until leaving to re-enter the U.S. Army in World War II. He was replaced by Rickey. In 1944, Rickey and John L. Smith bought out Mrs. Ebbets and Gilleaudeau. Rickey and Smith were now each 1/4 owners.

O'Malley was the lawyer who handled the Dodgers for Brooklyn Trust, and eventually bought the bank's shares. In 1950, he bought Rickey and Smith out, and the Mulveys pretty much did what he wanted, including approving the move of the team to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, before O'Malley bought them out in 1975.

The move not only betrayed Ebbets' vision and the Dodger fans in the New York Tri-State Area, but made Los Angeles a "major league city" in a way that even the NFL's Rams hadn't, elevating it to the status of the loftiest city in the American West.

O'Malley died in 1979. His son Peter owned the team until selling to Rupert Murdoch in 1998. Frank McCourt bought them in 2004, but, learning nothing from the example of Charlie Ebbets, had to sell them in 2012 to pay off his divorce settlement. For $2 billion, basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson became their owner, and remains so today.

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October 29, 1881, 140 years ago: John Riegel DeWitt is born in Phillipsburg, Warren County, New Jersey, and grows up nearby in Riegelsville, Pennsylvania, which an ancestor of his had founded. A guard and kicker at Princeton University at the dawn of the 20th Century, he is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.

In 1920 Walter Camp named "The Princeton Strong Boy" to his all-time All-America team. A 1919 article for a Princeton magazine called him the school's best player ever. A 2009 article by Football Foundation, choosing retroactive Heisman Trophies for 1935 and earlier, chose him for 1903.

John DeWitt was also a track & field star, specializing in throwing events, and won the Silver Medal in the hammer throw at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis. He became a prominent businessman in New York, commuted into The City from a home in Connecticut, and died unexpectedly of a heart attack on his commute in 1930, only 48 years old.

October 29, 1889: The National League Champion New York Giants win their 2nd consecutive World Championship by taking this year's best-of-11 matchup in 9 games.

After spotting the American Association Champion Brooklyn Bridegrooms (the once-and-future Dodgers were so named because 3 of their players had gotten married in the 1887-88 off-season) 2 runs in the 1st‚ the Giants rally to win 3-2 behind Hank O'Day's pitching -- the same Hank O'Day who would be the umpire who ruled against them in the Fred Merkle Game 19 years later. Slattery scores the winning run in the 7th inning‚ coming in from second as catcher Doc Bushing misses a two-out 3rd strike.

The next season, the 'Grooms would join the NL, and win the Pennant. They would win 2 more Pennants before the Giants won another, in 1899 and 1900. But over the next 40 years, the Superbas/Robins/Dodgers would win just 2 Pennants, while the Giants would win 13. And the Yankees, not even formed yet, would win 11. Ah, but over the last 17 years of New York's 3-team availability, it would be a different story: The Yankees would win 12 Pennants, the Dodgers 7, the Giants only 2.

The last survivor of the 1889 Giants was 3rd baseman Art Whitney, who lived on until 1943.

October 29, 1891, 130 years ago: Fania Borach is born in Manhattan. Like her fellow Lower East Siders the Marx Brothers, she was a child of a Jewish immigrant from Alsace, France. By 1910, under the name Fanny Brice, she was starring on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1912, she created the character of Baby Snooks, a mischievous little girl. 

In 1944, she began the CBS radio program The Baby Snooks Show, even though she was already 52 years old. The show helped give comedy legend Danny Thomas his start. In 1949, she was filmed in character, clowning with the Chicago White Sox at their Spring Training complex. She died on May 29, 1951, of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 59, and the show was canceled.

In 1921, she had a hit song, "Second Hand Rose." In 1964, Barbra Streisand began appearing on Broadway as Brice in the musical Funny Girl, and the song became more identified with Streisand than it ever was with Brice. The musical was filmed in 1968, and a sequel, Funny Lady, was filmed in 1975. Today, if anybody knows Fanny, they know her through Barbra Joan.

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October 29, 1901, 120 years ago: Leon Czolgosz is executed in the electric chair at Auburn Prison (now Auburn Correctional Facility) in Auburn, in the Finger Lakes Region of Central New York. The assassin of President William McKinley was 28, and had outlived his victim by 45 days.

His last words were, "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people, the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime. I am sorry I could not see my father."

October 29, 1911, 110 years ago: Bernard Joy (no middle name) is born in Fulham, West London. On May 9, 1936, the centreback played for England in a 3-2 loss to Belgium. To this day, he is the last amateur to play for the England senior team. Later that year, he was the Captain of the Great Britain soccer team at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. They did not win a medal.

He was soon signed by Arsenal, and helped them win the League in 1938. But World War II came right in the middle of his prime: He served in the Royal Air Force, and he never won another trophy. He retired in 1947, just before Arsenal began another title-winning season.

He became a sportswriter, writing for The Star, The Evening Standard and the Sunday Express, covering soccer and tennis. In 1952, he wrote Forward, Arsenal! It was the 1st comprehensive history of the team, but it contained many inaccuracies (presumably unintentional), including some which wouldn't be cleared up until the gentlemen at Untold Arsenal did some legwork over half a century later. Joy wrote several more soccer books, and lived until 1984.

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October 29, 1920: The Yankees sign Red Sox manager Ed Barrow as business manager – the job that will, in a few years, begin to be called "general manager" – completing the front office team that will build the game's most successful record. Hugh Duffy, the Boston Braves star who batted a record .438 in 1894, replaces Barrow at Fenway Park.

Barrow had managed the Red Sox to the 1918 World Series, and, regarding the hitting and pitching talents of Babe Ruth, said, "I'd be a fool to turn the best lefthanded pitcher in the game into an outfielder."

The choice had already been made for him, but he would help the Yankees win 14 Pennants and 10 World Series in his 26 seasons as Yankee GM. Shortly before his death in 1953, he was elected to the Hall of Fame. At the Yankees' next home opener, a plaque was dedicated in his memory and hung on the outfield wall near the Monuments, and would later be moved to Monument Park.

He is buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York, along with several other baseball-connected personalities: The Yankee owner who hired him, Jacob Ruppert; a Yankee slugger he signed, Lou Gehrig; the Boston owner and Broadway promoter who previously hired him, Harry Frazee; the Governor of New York who sometimes threw out the first ball at big Yankee games, Herbert Lehman; the opera singer who often sang the National Anthem at Yankee games, Robert Merrill; and the Brooklyn-born comedian who remained a Dodger fan after they moved West to his own new home of Hollywood, and was a member of the first ownership group of the Seattle Mariners, Danny Kaye.

Also on this day, William Juzda (no middle name) is born in Winnipeg. A defenseman, Bill Juzda briefly played for the New York Rangers before going into World War II, and later made 2 NHL All-Star Games and helped the Toronto Maple Leafs win the 1949 and 1951 Stanley Cups. He was named to the Manitoba Sports and Manitoba Hockey Halls of Fame, and played in old-timers' games into his 70s. He lived until 2008.

October 29, 1929: Black Tuesday. The stock market completes the crash that began the preceding Thursday. The Roaring Twenties are over. The Dirty Thirties, and the Great Depression, have begun.

The incumbent Republican President, Herbert Hoover, gets blamed for it, when it was his Republican predecessors, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, who set the table for it. Hoover shouldn't be blamed for the Depression. And he shouldn't be blamed for doing nothing: He tried a few things.

What he should be blamed for is giving up. Some of the things he tried worked a little, but not enough, and he abandoned his efforts. And in 1932, he lost in a landslide, to the Democratic Governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

At the height of the stock boom in early September 1929, America's unemployment rate was 3.2 percent. By the end of 1930, it was 8.7. 1931, 15.9. At the 1932 election, 23.6. At the depth, on March 4, 1933, when FDR was inaugurated and the banking crisis was critical, the rate was 24.9 percent. Fully 1 out of 4 Americans who wanted to work couldn't get work. Some people have suggested the rate was considerably higher than that, as much as 31 percent, or nearly 1 in 3.

The Great Depression left scars on people that never went away. My grandmother grew up in Queens in that era, and knew how important it was to save money. She grew up in the Depression, so, due to her pinching pennies as an adult, my mother also "grew up in the Depression." And because of that, I "grew up in the Depression." Am I saying that I'm cheap? Yes, I am cheap, but not by choice.

The people who grew up in the Depression are now dead or very old. We cannot allow their memories to fade. Remember our forgotten men and women.

I was going to do a "Scores On This Historic Day" for the date, but it was after the MLB season ended, before the NHL season started, before the NBA was founded, and in the middle of the week of the NFL season. So there's no games to report.

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October 29, 1931, 90 years ago: For the 1st time under the current format, as voted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, the Most Valuable Player awards are given. In the American League, the choice is an easy one, and is unanimous: Robert "Lefty" Grove of the Philadelphia Athletics, who had, statistically speaking, maybe the best season any pitcher has ever had, going 31-4 with a 2.08 ERA, and helping the A's win their 3rd straight Pennant. They did lose the World Series, so I can't call it "the best season any pitcher has ever had."

The 1st official NL MVP is Frankie Frisch, 2nd baseman for the Pennant-winning Cardinals. The Fordham Flash batted .311 and led the NL in stolen bases, before leading them to victory over the A's in the World Series, avenging the previous season's defeat. He will become player-manager in 1934, and lead "the Gashouse Gang" to another World Championship, his 4th as a player, also including 1921 and 1922 with the Giants. He and Grove, who'd won the Series with the A's in 1929 and 1930, will both become easy choices for the Hall of Fame.

October 29, 1939: The Babe Siebert Memorial Game is played at the Montreal Forum. It raised $15,000 for his family -- about $281,000 in today's money.

Charles Albert Siebert was a left wing who won Stanley Cups with the 1926 Montreal Maroons and the 1933 New York Rangers. With Nels Stewart and Hooley Smith, he formed one of the first named forward lines in hockey, the S-Line. In 1934, playing for the Boston Bruins, he played in the 1st All-Star benefit game for an NHL player, Ace Bailey of the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose career was ended by a vicious check by Bruin defenseman Eddie Shore.

But Siebert and Shore couldn't get along, and, in 1936, the Bruins traded him to the Montreal Canadiens. He was immediately named Captain, and won the 1937 Hart Trophy as NHL MVP. The following fall, he played in another All-Star benefit game, this time for Canadiens superstar Howie Morenz, who had died in March from complications from leg surgery.

In 1939, 35 years old and plagued with injuries, he retired.  He was immediately offered the Canadiens' head coaching position, and accepted. But he never got the chance to coach a game. On August 25, 1939, while vacationing with his family and swimming with his daughters Judy and Joan, then just 11 and 10 years old, at a family cottage on the shore of Lake Huron, he drowned attempting to retrieve an inflatable tire they were playing with.

The league organized an all-star benefit game to aid Siebert's widow (who was paralyzed and had mounting medical bills) and daughters. The Canadiens faced an all-star team composed of the best players from the remaining teams. The All-Stars won, 5-2. Though only about 6,000 fans showed up, the organizers met their target of $15,000.

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October 29, 1941, 80 years ago: Harvey Hendrick shoots and kills himself at his farm in Covington, Tennessee. He was only 43. A star football player at Vanderbilt University, he was a rookie 1st baseman and outfielder on the Yankees' 1st World Championship team in 1923, and, after Lou Gehrig, was the 2nd man to have played on that team to die. His baseball career ended in 1934, with a .308 lifetime batting average (though as mainly a reserve player), and I guess his farm wasn't working out well.

Judging by the reaction when active Yankee Cory Lidle was killed in a plane crash just after the 2006 regular season, I can imagine that, today, if a former Yankee player committed suicide, the story would soak the news (in blood) for days.

But Hendrick has been just about forgotten. The Yankees did not wear black armbands or any kind of memorial patch during the 1942 season -- just the red, white & blue "HEALTH" shield that all teams wore in that 1st full year of World War II for the U.S. And there is no mention of him in Monument Park, or anywhere else in Yankee Stadium.

Also on this day, Charles Andrew Russell is born in Detroit, and grows up in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, Missouri. A star linebacker at the University of Missouri, Andy Russell was a rookie with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1963, then missed 2 years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

He was with the Steelers when they bottomed out in the late 1960s, but was still there when they rose to the top. A 7-time Pro Bowler, he and center Ray Mansfield were the senior Steelers when they finally won Super Bowl IX on January 12, 1975. Each was still with them for Super Bowl X, and each lasted 1 more year before retiring. Russell is still alive, and a member of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and the Pittsburgh Steelers All-Time Team and Hall of Honor.

Also on this day, Ernest William Accorsi Jr. is born in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The man from the Chocolate City (sorry, George Clinton) has had a long and sweet career. After reporting on sports for The Charlotte News, The Baltimore Sun and The Philadelphia Inquirer, he served in the athletic departments at Philadelphia's St. Joseph's University (when Dr. Jack Ramsay was the head basketball coach) and Pennsylvania State University (in the early tenure of head football coach Joe Paterno).

In 1970, he was named public relations director of the Baltimore Colts. In his 1st season there, they won Super Bowl V. He later served as their last general manager, resigning rather than make the move to Indianapolis in 1984. He was named GM of the Cleveland Browns, building a team that made 3 AFC Championship Games, but lost all 3.

In 1994, he was named assistant GM of the New York Giants. In 1998, he became full general manager, staying until 2006, building the teams that lost Super Bowl XXXV and won Super Bowl XLII (with many of his players still being there to win Super Bowl XLVI). He has since served as a consultant in the front offices of the Carolina Panthers, the Chicago Bears, the Giants again, the Arizona Cardinals, and, currently, the Detroit Lions.

Also on this day, the Kaunas Massacre takes place in Lithuania. The Nazis' SS shot and killed 9,200 Jews. It was the largest single-day execution in Nazi history.

October 29, 1942: Robert Norman Ross is born in Daytona Beach, Florida. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 18, serving among the mountains in Alaska, which would later inspire his painting. He also decided that, having had to be mean as a First Sergeant, once he was discharged, he would never scream again. The persona of Bob Ross was born.

From 1983 to 1994, his program The Joy of Painting appeared on PBS. Like Julia Child, Fred (Mr.) Rogers, Bob Vila and Carl Sagan, he used his appearances on that network to show himself as a kindly person who not only knew his stuff, but wanted you to know it, too, and explained it in ways that would be understood, but never insulting your intelligence.

His show stopped only because he developed lymphoma, and died in 1995. His legacy goes on, with his portrayal by "Nice Peter" Shukoff against "Epic Lloyd" Ahlquist as Pablo Picasso on a 2013 episode Epic Rap Battles of History, and Target Stores having released the board game "Bob Ross: The Art of Chill." It should sell well: After all, as the man himself said, "I don't believe in mistakes."

October 29, 1946, 75 years ago: Frank Watts Baker is born in Meridian, Mississippi. A shortstop, he played 146 games for the Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles from 1970 to 1974, batting .191. He is still alive.

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October 29, 1951, 70 years ago: New York City gives a ticker-tape parade to servicemen from all United Nations wounded in the Korean War.

October 29, 1953: Denis Charles Potvin is born in Hull, Quebec, across the Ottawa river from the Canadian capital of Ottawa, Ontario. One of the greatest defensemen in hockey history, he was the Captain of the New York Islanders' 4 straight Stanley Cups of 1980 to 1983.

Arguably the team's greatest player ever, and certainly its most important, his Number 5 has been retired, and he was the first Isles player elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. His brother Jean Potvin also played for the Isles for a time, and his cousin Marc Potvin also played in the NHL.

However, his name is best remembered for an incident in the Ranger-Islander rivalry. On February 25, 1979, the teams played at Madison Square Garden, and Potvin checked Ranger All-Star Ulf Nilsson into the boards, breaking Nilsson's ankle.

In spite of the fact that no penalty was called, and the fact that Nilsson himself has always maintained that it was a clean hit, and that fact that then-Ranger coach Fred Shero also said it was a clean hit, the moron Ranger fans have spent almost 40 years chanting, "Potvin sucks!" – against all opponents, not just the Islanders. This led to some confusion, years later, when Felix Potvin (no relation) would tend goal for various teams, including the Islanders for a time.

In retaliation, Islander fans have done a "Rangers suck!" chant for every home game, regardless of opponent, and New Jersey Devils fans do the same. Ranger fans also had a chant of "Beat your wife, Potvin, beat your wife!" Denis Potvin, who has never been charged with beating his wife, usually beat the Rangers instead.

Part of Ranger mythology is that Potvin's hit knocked Nilsson out for the season, and that's why they lost the Stanley Cup Finals to the Montreal Canadiens. In fact, Nilsson returned in time for those Finals, in which the Rangers won Game 1 at the Montreal Forum, but then dropped the next 4, including all 3 at the Garden.

October 29, 1959: The Greensboro Coliseum opens in Greensboro, North Carolina, as a memorial to the city's fallen from World Wars I and II and the Korean War. The opening event is Holiday On Ice.

The complex includes an arena, an amphitheater, an aquatic center, a banquet hall, a convention center, a museum, a theater, and an indoor pavilion. The arena, which is what people usually mean when they say "the Greensboro Coliseum," opened with 7,100 seats, was expanded to 15,000 in 1972, and had a 3rd tier added in 1993 to push capacity to 23,000.

It has hosted 27 of the last 54 Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball tournaments, and 21 of the last 22 ACC women's tournaments. In 1974, it hosted the NCAA Final Four, featuring David Thompson and North Carolina State ending UCLA's dynasty in the Semifinal before beating Marquette in the Final. On March 23, 1976, Rutgers University had the greatest moment in its sports history at the Coliseum, defeating Virginia Military Institute (VMI) 91-75, to advance to the NCAA Final Four with an undefeated record. (Indiana beat them in the Semifinal.)

Since 2009, it has been home court for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. From 1959 to 1989, it hosted some home games for Wake Forest University for which the Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum would have been too small, prior to the building of the on-campus Joel Coliseum. The Carolina Cougars of the American Basketball Association played there from 1969 to 1974. In minor-league basketball, it has hosted the Greensboro City Gators (1991-92) and the Greensboro Swarm (since 2016).

When the Hartford Whalers moved to become the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997, they played 2 seasons at the Greensboro Coliseum, until their new arena is Raleigh was ready. Since the locals knew this was a temporary setup, the 'Canes' attendance was even worse in Greensboro. In minor-league hockey, the Coliseum hosted the Greensboro Generals (1959-77, and again 1999-2004), and the Greensboro Monarchs (1989-97). In arena football, it hosted the Greensboro Prowlers (2000-03), the Greensboro Revolution (2006-07) and the Carolina Cobras (debuting this year).

Elvis Presley sang at the Greensboro Coliseum on April 14, 1972, and again on April 21, 1977, on what turned out to be his final tour.

Also on this day, Jesse Lee Barfield is born in Joliet, Illinois, outside Chicago. Possessor of one of the best right field arms ever, he also hit 241 home runs in the major leagues. He was an All-Star in 1986, leading the American League in home runs, and a Gold Glove winner in 1986 and 1987.

But his luck was bad in terms of postseason play. He was a member of the Toronto Blue Jays' 1st AL Eastern Division Champions in 1985, but was traded to the Yankees for Al Leiter in 1989, missing the Jays' 1989 and '91 Division titles and their 1992 and '93 World Championships.

And his arrival with the Yankees coincided with their collapse from a near-miss run from 1985 to 1988, when they really could have used someone like him -- especially in the 2nd half of 1987, when Dave Winfield, also with one of the great outfield arms of the era, got hurt. Had Barfield played on the Yankees when he was with the Jays, and vice versa, he could have gone from All-Star to true baseball legend.

Injuries led him to retire at age 34, with 241 home runs. He is now a Blue Jays broadcaster. His sons Josh and Jeremy also played pro baseball, with Josh playing a season for the Baltimore Orioles and 3 for the Cleveland Indians.

Also on this day, Michael Alfred Gartner is born in Ottawa. Mike Gartner was a right wing who starred for several hockey teams, including the Washington Capitals, who retired his Number 11. But he never appeared in the Stanley Cup Finals, being traded by the Rangers at the trading deadline in 1994, in a trade that helped them win the Cup, to the Toronto Maple Leafs, who made it to the Western Conference Finals before losing.

Among players who have never won a Cup, he is 2nd to Phil Housley in games played, and 2nd to Marcel Dionne in goals, with 708. He is a member of the Hockey and Ontario Sports Halls of Fame. In 2017, he was named to the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players. He and former Caps teammate Wes Jarvis run a string of ice rinks in the Toronto area.

Also on this day, Finola Hughes (no middle name) is born in London. She started out as a dancer, then became a soap opera legend by playing Anna Devane on General Hospital. She's been a character in productions of  both Marvel Comics (as Emma Frost of the X-Men in Generation X) and DC Comics (the voices of Superman's mother Lara Lor-Van in Superman: The Animated Series, and supervillain Lady Shiva in Beware the Batman).

Not being a soap opera fan, I first saw her on Jack's Place, a 1992-93 ABC drama starring Hal Linden, which was essentially The Love Boat in a restaurant that also served as a ja club, where she played the head waitress. She became part of the long line of British brunettes to capture my fancy.

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October 29, 1961, 60 years ago: Joel Stuart Otto is born in Elk River, Minnesota. The center won a Stanley Cup with the Calgary Flames in 1989. He scored 195 goals in a career that lasted from 1985 to 1998. He has returned to Calgary, as an assistant coach for the minor-league Calgary Hitmen.

October 29, 1964: Ground is broken for the current Madison Square Garden, on top of Penn Station at 32nd Street & 7th Avenue.

October 29, 1966: Detective Comics #359 is published, with a date of January 1967. The title of the story is "The Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl!" Batgirl is Barbara Gordon, a librarian, and the daughter of Jim Gordon, the Police Commissioner of Gotham City. In the following TV season, she is written into the Batman TV series on ABC, played by Yvonne Craig. In comics, October 29 is retconned in as her birthday.

On TV, Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, discovers her dual identity, but keeps it a secret even from Batman and Robin -- and he keeps theirs, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, respectively, from her. In the comics, though, Bruce and Dick find out, and eventually her father does as well. (Whether the Commissioner knows the identities of Batman and the various Robins has been debated, but not established in canon.)

In the 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, an uncostumed Barbara was shot and paralyzed by the Joker. Though confined to a wheelchair, she adopted a new nom de guerre, Oracle, and became a computer hacker and information broker for crimefighters. In the 2011 "New 52" reboot, the paralysis was retconned as not having happened, and she was once again Batgirl.

In the 1997 film Batman and Robin, Batgirl was rewritten as Barbara Wilson, Alfred's niece, played by Alicia Silverstone. In the 2002 Fox TV series Birds of Prey, Dina Meyer played Barbara Gordon, as Oracle, with flashbacks showing her in the Batgirl costume. In 2019, a young Barbara was played by Jeté Laurence on the Fox TV series Gotham. This year, Hispanic actress Leslie Grace was cast in a DC Extended Universe Batgirl film.

While she has been apparently referenced on The CW's Arrow, and is played by Savannah Welch on the DC Universe network's Titans (having been paralyzed, yet been awarded her late father's job as Police Commissioner), she has not yet been shown  in "The Arrowverse." Instead, since 2019, they have focused on the separate character of Batwoman, Bruce Wayne's gay Jewish cousin Kate Kane, played by Ruby Rose on the show's 1st season. After Rose was fired, she was replaced by a new character created for the show, Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie), who is gay and black, but grew up poor and with no connection to the Wayne or Kane families.

October 29, 1969: The 1st-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, thus making this a possible birthdate for the Internet.

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October 29, 1971, 50 years ago: Winona Laura Horowitz is born in Winona, Minnesota. Her hippie parents named her for her birthplace. Sometimes, that works, as with Italian-born Florence Nightingale. Sometimes it doesn't, as with David and Victoria Beckham's son Brooklyn.

She renamed herself Winona Ryder, after 1960s rocker Mitch Ryder. She is best known for playing Veronica Sawyer in Heathers. You don't like that? "Lick it up, baby, lick it up!" She recently played Evelyn Finkel, eventually Evelyn Bengelsdorf, in the HBO miniseries based on Philip Roth's alternate-history story The Plot Against America.

What does she have to do with sports? As far as I know, nothing, although the climactic bomb in Heathers was in the high school gym.

Also on this day, Matthew Lawrence Hayden is born in Kingaroy, Queensland, Australia. A longtime star for the Queensland state cricket team, he was a member of the Australia teams that won the 2003 and 2007 Cricket World Cups. He was named in a poll as the best opener in the national team's history. He now works for the Queensland state tourist board.

Also on this day, Duane Allman is killed in a motorcycle accident in his native Georgia. He was only 24 years old, and, in spite of his hard-living image, was not under the influence of alcohol or any other drug. A truck had to make a sudden stop, and he couldn't avoid it.

He had already made himself a legend, recording "Whipping Post" (with his brother Gregg singing lead and playing keyboards) for The Allman Brothers Band, and doing a dueling guitar solo with Eric Clapton on "Layla" by Derek & the Dominoes. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named him 2nd on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, behind Jimi Hendrix.

A little more than a year after Duane's crash, just 3 blocks away from the site, Allman Brothers bass guitarist Berry Oakley was killed in a motorcycle crash, slamming into a stopped bus. They are buried next to each other in Macon.

October 29, 1973: Robert Emmanuel Pirès is born in Reims, France, the son of a Portuguese father and a Spanish mother. A midfielder, "Super Rob" was a member of France's World Cup winners in 1998, and the Arsenal champions of 1998 (League and FA Cup "Double"), 2002 (another Double) and 2004 (undefeated League season). He is now on the Arsenal coaching staff.

Also on this day, Vonetta Jeffery (no middle name) is born in Birmingham, Alabama. Under her married name of Vonetta Flowers, she and Jill Bakken won Gold Medals in the two-woman bobsled at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Bakken was the driver, Flowers the brakewoman. This made the former University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) sprinter the 1st black person, of any country, of either gender, to win a Gold Medal in the Winter Olympics.

Also on this day, and this has nothing to do with sports, Match Game 73 aired this exchange on CBS:

Gene Rayburn, host, reading a card with a clue: "Bertha was so fat!"

Bert Convy, host of other game shows, and one of the panelists, interrupts: "How fat was she, Gene?"

Gene: "I'll tell you how fat Bertha was: They had to use (blank) to get her through the revolving door. That's how fat Bertha was."

Richard Voelsing, contestant: "Grease."

Bert: "I'm in the family. I said, 'Lard.'" Ironically, given how fat she apparently was. The show's judges counted it as a match.

Brett Somers, actress and Match Game regular: "I didn't say, 'Lard," I didn't say, 'Grease,' I said, 'Pushers!'"

Jack Carter, comedian: "You should see what pushers are selling nowadays! Well, I know Bertha's sister. She's so fat, she needs a bookmark to find her chins! She used, 'Suction!'"

Fannie Flagg, actress and writer, previously known for her work on Candid Camera, making her 1st appearance on the show before becoming a regular panelist: "This man and I are thinking alike: I said, 'Axle grease.'" It was counted as a match. Only, due to her dyslexia, she unleashed the 1st of her many Match Game misspellings: "Axil grease." Spelling didn't count on that show, much to the relief of Fannie and, later on, Hungarian-born actress Eva Gabor, who said on a 1977 installment, "Darling, I speak 4 languages, but I can't spell in any of them!"

Richard Dawson, actor, and later host of the game show Family Feud: "'Grease!'"

Ann Elder, comedy-show writer, who had been on Laugh-In with Dawson a couple of years earlier: "Well, I wrote a word that was near and dear to my heart as I tried to think of an answer. I wrote, 'Pressure.'" So, 3 matches.

A little later, Gene read, rolling his eyes, "The Vanderwinkles' guest bathtub is soooo huge... " And Convy took the hint and went along with it, asking, "How huge is it, Gene?" And Gene said, "They put up a sign saying, 'No (blank)ing!'" The answer was, "No swimming."

Johnny Carson released a record album, Here's Johnny.... Magic Moments From The Tonight Show, in 1974, and there's a "How hot was it?" line on it. I can find no reference to when that show was broadcast. It could have been before October 29, 1973, but I can't prove it. So this Match Game
episode is the earliest example I have yet found of the old "How (adjective) is/was (pronoun)?" bit on TV.

But on a 1975 Match Game episode, somebody yelled out a response from the audience, and Brett asked, "What is he, Ed McMahon?" This suggests that McMahon, Carson's announcer and sidekick, was the 1st to do the routine -- or, at least, that Brett thought he was.

In October 1974, DC Comics released Action Comics #442, a story titled "The Midnight Murder Show!" Their analogue to Johnny Carson was Johnny Nevada, since the capital of Nevada is Carson City. Like Carson, Nevada had a habit of going on vacation and needing a guest host. This time, it was Steve Lombard, quarterback-turned-sportscaster, who said, "It was so hot in Metropolis today!" The audience yelled, "How hot was it?" Steve said, "It was so hot, I saw the Flash chasing the Mirror Master, and they were both walking!" So, at least by then, the routine was familiar enough with the general public that even kids who bought comic books, who might be in school when Match Game aired and in bed when The Tonight Show did, would know it.

I have no way of knowing about the contestants on that Match Game installment, but Convy died in 1991, Rayburn in 1999, Somers in 2007 (shortly before fellow regular panelist Charles Nelson Reilly did), Dawson in 2012, Carter in 2015, and Flagg and Elder are still alive.

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October 29, 1981, 40 years ago: Bill Giles‚ the Philadelphia Phillies' vice president for the past 11 years‚ heads a group of investors which purchases the club for just over $30 million‚ the highest price paid to date for an MLB club.

Giles is the son of longtime National League President Warren Giles. He turned over day-to-day operation of the club to David Montgomery in 1997, and since 2000 has been NL President himself, although this is a powerless, purely ceremonial role, pretty much limited to awarding the trophy named for his father to the NL's Pennant winner.

Also on this day, Amanda Ray Beard is born in Newport Beach, California. The swimmer won Gold Medals at the 1996 and 2004 Olympics.

Also on this day, Jonathan Brown (no middle name) is born in Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia. Now retired from Australian Rules Football, he was the Captain of the Brisbane Lions. He was a 3-time league player of the year, and won 3 league titles with the Lions.

October 29, 1994: Had the 1994 baseball season been allowed to reach a conclusion, this would have been the day Game 6 of the World Series was played, at the National League Champions' home park.

But there was a baseball championship on this day, and it was in a Game 6, of the Japan Series. The Tokyo-based Yomiuri Giants beat the Tokorozawa-based Seibu Lions, 3-1 at Seibu Lions Stadium, now the MetLife Dome. Henry Cotto, an outfielder who had reached the Playoffs with the 1984 Chicago Cubs, played for the Yankees from 1985 to 1987, and was an original 1993 Florida Marlin, hits a home run in what turns out to be his last professional game.

Despite being named for the old New York Giants, and having their colors of black and orange, Yomiuri are the Yankees of Japan: This was their 18th win in the Japan Series, and they now have 22, most recently in 2012. They have won 37 Central League Pennants, most recently in 2019.

But this is the only season in which they could legitimately have claimed to be "the World Champions of Baseball." They do not claim this, but they could. It's not like the Pacific Coast League Champion Albuquerque Dukes, or the Governor's Cup-winning Richmond Braves could.

October 29, 1996, 25 years ago: The NBA announces its 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players:

* 18 Guards, in alphabetical order: Nate "Tiny" Archibald, Dave Bing, Bob Cousy, Clyde "the Glide" Drexler, Walt "Clyde" Frazier, George "Iceman" Gervin, Hal Greer, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Sam Jones, Michael "Air" Jordan, "Pistol" Pete Maravich, Earl "the Pearl" Monroe, Oscar "the Big O" Robertson, Bill Sharman, John Stockton, Isiah Thomas, Jerry "Mr. Clutch" West and Lenny Wilkens.

* 16 Forwards: "Pitchin'" Paul Arizin, "Sir" Charles Barkley, Rick Barry, Elgin Baylor, Larry Bird, Billy Cunningham, Dave DeBusschere, Julius "Dr. J" Erving, John "Hondo" Havlicek, Elvin "Big E" Hayes, Jerry Lucas, Karl "the Mailman" Malone, Kevin McHale, Bob Pettit, Scottie Pippen, Dolph Schayes, and "Big Game" James Worthy.

* 15 Centers: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain, Dave Cowens, Patrick Ewing, George Mikan, Moses Malone, Hakeem "the Dream" Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Robert Parish, Willis Reed, David "the Admiral" Robinson, Bill Russell, Nate Thurmond, Wes Unseld and "the Roaring Redhead" Bill Walton.

Only Maravich was already dead, in 1988. He has been followed into the Great Gym In the Sky by Chamberlain in 1999, DeBusschere in 2003, Mikan in 2005, Arizin in 2006, Sharman in 2013, Moses Malone and Schayes in 2015, Thurmond in 2016, Greer in 2018, Havlicek in 2019 and Wes Unseld in 2020. So, 38 of the 50 are still alive. Shaq, in 2011, was the last one still active.

In 2021, the NBA named a 75th Anniversary 75 Greatest Players. All of the 50 Greatest were included, plus 2 who were eligible then but denied: Bob McAdoo and Dominique Wilkins. 

*

October 29, 2003: LeBron James, the most-hyped high school basketball player ever, makes his professional debut, 2 months before his 19th birthday. At the ARCO (now Sleep Train) Arena in Sacramento, he plays 42 minutes, scores 25 points, and doesn't make a difference, as his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers lose to the Sacramento Kings, 106-92.

October 29, 2008: After a 2-day delay for rain, Game 5 of the World Series is resumed at Citizens Bank Park. It begins in the bottom of the 6th, with the game tied 2-2. Geoff Jenkins doubles, is bunted to 3rd by Jimmy Rollins, and is driven in by a Jayson Werth single. Rocco Baldelli ties the game with a home run in the 7th. Later in the inning, Utley takes a grounder, fakes a throw to 1st, then throws Jason Bartlett out at home for the 3rd out in a play later described as having saved the Series for the Phillies.

In the bottom of the 7th, Pat Burrell leads off with a double. Eric Bruntlett, pinch-running for Burrell, scores on a single by Pedro Feliz to put the Phillies up by a run again, 4–3.

In the top of the 9th, Brad Lidge gives up a single and a stolen base, but faces Eric Hinske with the chance to give the city its 1st World Series win since 1980, and its 1st World Championship in any sport since the 1983 76ers. Harry Kalas, the Hall of Fame voice of the Phils, had the call:

One strike away, nothing-and-two to Hinske. Fans on their feet. Brad Lidge stretches. The 0–2 pitch! Swing and a miss! Struck him out! The Philadelphia Phillies are 2008 World Champions of baseball!

Brad Lidge does it again, and stays perfect for the 2008 season, 48-for-48 in save opportunities! And let the city celebrate! Don't let the 48-hour wait diminish the euphoria of this moment and celebration! Twenty-five years in this city that a team has enjoyed a World Championship, and the fans are ready to celebrate. What a night! Phils winning, 4–3, Brad Lidge gets the job done once again!

Harry would die early the next season. He deserved that title.

Also on this day, the Oklahoma City Thunder, who for the previous 41 years had been the Seattle SuperSonics, make their debut. Kevin Durant is not yet the superstar he would become, and scores only 12 points. Richard Jefferson, Charlie Villanueva and Michael Redd each score 20 points, and the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Thunder, 98-87 at the Ford Center (now the Chesapeake Energy Arena).

Also on this day, a North London Derby is played at the Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal. Their arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, take an early 1-0 lead. David Bentley, a member of Arsenal's 2003-04 "Invincibles" who never quite panned out, scores against them for Tottenham. But Arsenal come back, and, on goals by Mikael Silvestre, William Gallas, Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie (the first 2 considerably more surprising as scorers than the second 2), lead 4-2 in the 88th minute. Darren Bent, always a problem for Arsenal, scored the other goal for "Spurs," but Arsenal are in command.

And they blow it. Jermaine Jenas scores in the 89th, and, with more stoppage time given than necessary, Aaron Lennon scores in the 94th. It's a 4-4 draw.

Within 12 hours, before the last chorus of "Four-two, and you fucked it up!" can stop ringing around North London, Tottenham release a DVD of this match. That's right, they released a video of a draw. True, Arsenal celebrated a draw at White Hart Lane in 2004, but that draw gave them the 1 point they needed to clinch the League title away to their arch-rivals. What did "Spurs" get out of this draw? Not bragging rights: They still hadn't won a League game against Arsenal in 9 years. (That streak would end in 2010.)

Because they're both young black Englishmen who play on the right wing, Lennon (from Leeds in West Yorkshire) and Arsenal's Theo Walcott (from the Stanmore section of Northwest London) often got compared to each other. Tottenham fans call Walcott "a shit Aaron Lennon." No, Aaron Lennon is a shit Aaron Lennon. (That refers only to his performance. He is regarded by all as a man of fine character.)

October 29, 2009: Game 2 of the World Series. The Yankees' finest season in 6 years is in trouble after losing Game 1, the 1st Series game played at the new Yankee Stadium. While the Phillies -- wearing "HK" memorial patches for Kalas -- are the defending champs, that shouldn't matter: The Yankees have to step it up. Especially considering that the starting pitcher for the Phillies is, perhaps, the most despised pitcher in the history of Yankee opponents, Pedro Martinez.

With a pregame ceremony that includes native New Yorkers Jay-Z and Alicia Keys singing their current duet hit "Empire State of Mind," the Yankees do, indeed, step it up. Mark Teixeira takes Pedro over the wall in the 4th inning, and Hideki Matsui does the same in the 6th, reminding him that the Yankees are his "daddy." A.J. Burnett allowed a run in the 2nd inning, but cruises after that. With tomorrow being a travel day, using Mariano Rivera for 2 innings is no problem, and he shuts the Phils down. Yankees 3, Phils 1. The Series goes to Philadelphia tied.

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October 29, 2011, 10 years ago: A rare October snowstorm hits the New York Tri-State Area. Eric LeGrand, paralyzed from the neck down during a Rutgers football game the year before, returns to High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey, and, in his wheelchair, leads the Rutgers team onto the field. The photo of him doing so while large snowflakes fell around him was voted "Sports Moment of the Year" by Sports Illustrated readers on the magazine's website.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case for Rutgers when something nice happens, they actually had to play a game. The opponent was West Virginia, then ranked Number 24 in the country. Rutgers lost, 41-31.

Also on this day, Arsenal cross London to play away to Chelsea, whose Stamford Bridge has been a difficult place to play for nearly 2 decades. But 3 goals from van Persie, and goals from Walcott and the much-maligned left back Andre Santos, give Arsenal a stunning 5-3 win. It was the 3rd straight win for the Gunners in a streak that would eventually reach 8.

October 29, 2012: Hurricane Sandy hits the New York Tri-State Area, causing devastation all over the Jersey Shore, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, and causing flooding in Lower Manhattan. In some places, power was out for a week. It was a Monday, and power wasn't restored to my residence until the following Monday.

In terms of damage, it was the 2nd-worst hurricane in American history, behind Katrina, which nearly destroyed New Orleans in 2005. In terms of lives lost, there are 286 that were blamed either directly or indirectly on the "superstorm."

In sports terms, the main effect around here was that the Nets' 1st game as a Brooklyn team, scheduled for November 1 against the Knicks at the Barclays Center, was postponed, and was instead played on November 3, the regularly-scheduled 2nd game against the Toronto Raptors. The Nets won, 107-100. The New York City Marathon was also canceled, for what remains the only time in its history.

Today, some parts of the Shore, Queens and Long Island have still not recovered, due to Republican members of Congress not authorizing funds for States that vote Democratic, as New York and New Jersey tend to do.

Even Republican officials like Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York (until he left office at the end of 2013) and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey (until he left office near early in 2018) were unable to sway those lawmakers, some of whom come from Republican-voting States since devastated by hurricanes: North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

Late in 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, and Texas lawmakers demanded relief from the federal government. But when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico -- which, though not a State, is part of the United States of America, and its people citizens thereof -- they did nothing.

Donald Trump ignored his duty as President, and refused to help. The death toll? It depends on who you ask. The federal government said it was 66. Funeral directors on the island have gotten together, and said that they have processed the remains of over 3,000 people -- about as many as were killed on September 11, 2001.

Donald Trump loves Russian dictators so much, he even covers up the effects of disasters like one. Look up how casualties were reported in World War II, the 1982 Luzhniki Stadium disaster, and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown.

Previous Presidents have handled hurricanes fairly well: Franklin Roosevelt got aid to the Northeast after the Hurricane of 1938 (they began to be named for women in 1955, and for men in 1975), Richard Nixon to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Camille in 1969 and the Northeast after Hurricane Agnes in 1972, Jimmy Carter to Florida and the Northeast after Hurricane David in 1979, George H.W. Bush to the Carolinas after Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Florida after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and, of course, President Barack Obama after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

In contrast, George W. Bush screwed up after Hurricane Katrina wrecked New Orleans in 2005, and Trump, rather than screwing up (making mistakes), willfully ignored the suffering after Hurricane Maria. What does he care? The people of Puerto Rico legally could not vote for him even if they liked him. They sure don't now.

*

October 29, 2014: For only the 2nd time since Bud Selig -- now, thankfully, overseeing his final game as Commissioner -- declared in 2003 that the League that wins the All-Star Game would have home-field advantage for the World Series, a Series goes to a Game 7. That means that the Kansas City Royals will host it at Kauffman Stadium.

And the 1st time was in 2011, and the St. Louis Cardinals won Games 6 and 7 to beat the Texas Rangers. And the last time the road team has won a Game 7 in the World Series was the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates, 35 years earlier. And that means that, despite most of the San Francisco Giants having at least 1 ring (2012) and many of them 2 rings (2010 and 2012), and the Royals are in their 1st World Series in 29 years, the Giants have no chance, right?

Wrong. The teams trade blocks of 2 runs in the 2nd inning, and in the top of the 4th, Pablo Sandoval reaches on an infield single, and advances to 3rd on a single by Hunter Pence. Michael Morse singles him home to give the Giants the lead.

Giants manager Bruce Bochy gambles, sending Madison Bumgarner out to pitch the 5th on 2 days' rest. "MadBum" gave up a hit, but, in a display that wouldn't have seemed so courageous as recently as the 1970s, didn't allow another baserunner until the 9th, retiring 14 batters in a row.

With 1 out to go, Alex Gordon hits a liner that rolls to the wall, and he gets to 3rd. Salvador Perez had already gotten the game-winning hit in the AL Wild Card game. But Bumgarner induces a foul popup that is caught by Sandoval, completing the longest save in World Series history: 5 full innings.

The Giants win, 3-2, and take their 3rd World Championship in the last 5 years -- their 8th World Series win, counting their New York period. The Royals would have to wait at least 1 more year. Gordon would have to wait 1 more World Series game to become a baseball legend.

Also on this day, the Charlotte Hornets name is officially revived. The original Hornets, who played from 1988 to 2002, moved to New Orleans, but were enticed to give the name up in 2013, and take the name of a former minor-league baseball team, the New Orleans Pelicans. The Charlotte Bobcats, created as an expansion team in 2004, are officially allowed to take the Charlotte Hornets name.

Like the Oklahoma City Thunder, the new Hornets play their 1st game at home against the Milwaukee Bucks. Unlike the Thunder, the Hornets win, 108-106 at Time Warner Cable Arena (now the Spectrum Center). Kemba Walker leads all scorers with 26 points.

And Arsenal lost to Huddersfield Town, 3-1 at Highbury in North London.