April 17, 1963: The Suspensions of Paul Hornung & Alex Karras

April 17, 1963, 60 years ago: NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle has discovered that 2 of the League's biggest stars, Green Bay Packers running back Paul Hornung and Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras, had been betting on NFL games, and, as was said at the time, "associating with undesirable persons." Both men confessed, and accepted their punishment: Suspension for the entire upcoming season.

Hornung's coach, Vince Lombardi, put his foot down, and told Hornung that he couldn't gamble anymore, not even on his hometown's signature sporting event: He could not go back to Louisville and so much as attend the Kentucky Derby. Lombardi also told him to stay away from Las Vegas. Hornung agreed.

"Rozelle should have suspended me," he said many years later. "He could have suspended a lot of others, too. A lot of guys bet like I did. I'd bet $100, and never more than $500. The Commissioner was making a point, and the older I got, the more I understood."

At the end of the calendar year, given the way he handled the gambling situation, the ongoing conflict with the American Football League, and the decision over whether to play the regularly-scheduled games on the weekend after President John F. Kennedy assassination, Sports Illustrated named Rozelle its Sportsman of the Year. He remains the only Commissioner, of any league, so honored. (Unlike the Time magazine Person of the Year, which is for the person who most affects the news, for good or ill, SI, owned by Time, does consider its distinction, now named the Sportsperson of the Year, to be an award.)

Given each man's cooperation, Rozelle reinstated both Hornung and Karras for the 1964 season. Lombardi defied the rumor that he would trade Hornung, and welcomed him back, asking only that he report to Packer camp 2 months early to get back into shape.

He told the media, "You have to know what Hornung means to this team. I have heard and read that he is not a great runner or a great passer or a great field-goal kicker, but he led the league in scoring for three seasons. In the middle of the field he may be only slightly better than an average ballplayer, but inside the twenty-yard line he is one of the greatest I have ever seen. He smells that goal line."

Hornung also did things off the field that Lombardi valued, such as reaching out to newly-acquired players. He would take them along to his speaking engagements, and split his fee with them.

During his suspension, Karras turned to professional wrestling. Upon returning, he served as captain for a pregame coin toss, and the referee told him to call it. Karras told him, "I'm sorry, sir: I'm not permitted to gamble."

But the suspensions did have a long-term effect on each player's reputation. Hornung was not elected to the College Football Hall of Fame until 1985, his 20th year of eligibility; and not to the Pro Football Hall of Fame until 1986, his 15th year. Karras wasn't elected to the College Football Hall until 1991, his 25th year; and to the Pro Football Hall until 2020, his 45th, and more than 7 years after his death. At least Hornung lived to receive both of the honors in question.

Of course, neither man bet on his own sport. Pete Rose did. And both Hornung and Karras confessed immediately, and cooperated. Rose didn't. Which is why he is not in his sport's Hall of Fame.

Neither Hornung nor Karras had any hard feelings toward Rozelle. When the Commissioner retired in 1989, after 29 seasons in charge, Hornung wrote him a letter calling him "the best commissioner of any sports league."

Cole Shutout Bails Out Yankee Bats

Okay, whoever had April 15 in the "Giancarlo Stanton Injury Pool," you win. He pulled a hamstring legging out a double on Friday, and had to leave the game. He was put on the 10-Day Injured List. Knowing it's a hamstring injury, he might be tempted to reaggravate it soon, like too many other players (including some Yankees) have done, and knock himself out again, for who-knows-how-long.

With a starting lineup that did not include Stanton, but did include Aaron Hicks, on-base percentage .174; Willie Calhoun, .176; Jose Trevino, .235; Oswaldo Cabrera, .255; and Anthony Volpe, .309 but his batting average just .191, a fan could be excused for thinking the Yankees wouldn't score many runs against the Minnesota Twins at Yankee Stadium yesterday afternoon.

And they didn't. In the 3rd inning, Aaron Judge drew a walk, Anthony Rizzo was hit by a pitch -- and Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, whiny little sucka that he is, challenged it, unsuccessfully -- and, after a Gleyber Torres, strikeout, DJ LeMahieu singled Judge home. And LeMahieu led off the 6th with a home run. That's 2 runs, and that's all the Yankees would score, and DJLM was responsible for both of them.

But the story of the game was Gerrit Cole. Defying all Brian Cashman logic, Aaron Boone left him in to pitch a complete game. He allowed a walk in the 2nd inning, a single in the 5th, a single in the 6th, and that was it. He threw 109 pitches, 73 of them strikes, and struck out 10. In this case, the quantity was as important as the quality: He (and Boone) gave the bullpen a precious day off.

Yankees 2, Twins 0. WP: Cole (4-0). No relievers, so no save. LP: Pablo Jose López (1-1).

The Yankees are 10-6, as are the Toronto Blue Jays. They trail the Tampa Bay Rays, who were 14-2, by 4 games. The Baltimore Orioles are 9-7, 5 back. And the Boston Red Sox are 8-8, 6 back. So the entire American League Eastern Division is .500 or better.

The Yankees have today off, so that's more rest for the bullpen. Tomorrow night, the Los Angeles Angels come in, with Mike Trout, who is not as good as Mickey Mantle; and Shohei Ohtani, who is not doing the same things as Babe Ruth.

April 17, 1953: Mickey Mantle's "565-Foot" Home Run

April 17, 1953, 70 years ago: The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 7-3 at Griffith Stadium. It was 2 days after Opening Day, when the new President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, threw out the ceremonial first ball. So instead of a sellout of around 30,000 people, only 4,206 fans attended.

Eddie Lopat went 8 innings to get the win for the Yankees. Billy Martin and Gene Woodling each had 2 hits. So did Mickey Mantle, the Yankees' 21-year-old center field phenom. One of Martin's hit's was a home run. So was one of Mantle's.

It was 2 years to the day after Mantle's major league debut, and he found a way to celebrate the anniversary. In the top of the 5th, with 2 out and Yogi Berra on 1st base, the switch-hitting Mantle batted righthanded against Chuck Stobbs, a lefthander.

Mantle admitted that he was a better hitter for average from the left side, but he clearly had more power from the right side. Stobbs threw him a fastball, and he hit one of the most powerful drives anyone had ever seen. It glanced off a scoreboard at the back of the bleachers, a 460-foot drive. The ball caromed off the board, and kept going.

Arthur "Red" Patterson, then the Yankees' public-relations director, noted that nobody had ever hit a ball out of the left side of Griffith Stadium. This probably was not true: Josh Gibson, whose Homestead Grays divided their Negro League home games between Washington and Pittsburgh, probably did it a few times.

Patterson left the ballpark, and looked for the ball. He finally found a 10-year-old boy, in the backyard of a house at 434 Oakdale Place NW, across 5th Street from the left-field bleachers. Patterson asked for the ball. The boy wanted 75 cents -- about the standard price at the time for a fresh baseball from a store. Patterson gave him a dollar and got the ball.

Then he paced off the distance to the wall of the bleachers. Then he got the width of the bleachers. Then he saw the 391-foot marker on the wall where the ball had crossed the fence. He put it all together, and decided that Mantle had hit the ball 565 feet.

He did not use a tape measure. But, later in the season, Mantle would also hit long home runs over the left field pavilion at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis and the double-decked left field bleachers at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Patterson did use a tape measure for those, and so, whenever Mantle hit a particularly long home run, it became known as a "tape measure home run."

The ball Mantle hit in Washington on this date went into The Guinness Book of World Records for the longest home run ever hit in a Major League Baseball game. In fact, he did not hit the ball 565 feet. A batted ball is supposed to be measured from home plate to where it first hit something. The ball made contact with the scoreboard, 460 feet away. Still, that is a very long drive, and it would remain the longest home run in that ballpark's history.

Did Mantle hit a baseball 565 feet, ever? Possibly: In addition to the preceding, he hit 2 drives over the left-field roof at Comiskey Park in Chicago, which probably exceeded 550 feet. He hit one over the right field roof at Tiger Stadium in Detroit that may have gone that far, although the 643-foot distance suggested by Mark Gallagher in Explosion!, a book about Mantle's home runs, is almost certainly a gross miscalculation. (Gallagher admitted he'd used trigonometry to determine the distance.)

And there were at least 3 occasions when Mantle hit the facade atop the right field roof at the old Yankee Stadium, which came close to clearing the roof. It's been suggested that, had those balls been just a little higher, they would have gone over 600 feet.

Did Mantle hit the longest home run in baseball history? The evidence is flimsy. Home runs were not measured in the 1920s and 1930s, when Babe Ruth was hitting them lefthanded, and Jimmie Foxx was hitting them righthanded -- in each case, further than anybody had that way until Mantle. Ruth has been suggested as having hit them further than 565, sometimes even 600.

One thing is for sure: At a time when pitching was paramount, but a few sluggers hit the ball over 500 feet -- including Luke Easter, Frank Howard, Frank Robinson, Harmon Killebrew, Dick Allen, and the player most often compared to Mantle, Willie Mays -- Mickey Mantle hit the ball further than anybody. Despite a seemingly unending run of injuries, he played 18 seasons, and finished his career with 536 home runs. At the time, he was 3rd on the all-time list, behind Ruth and Mays.

Griffith Stadium was replaced by District of Columbia Stadium in 1961, and torn down in 1965. The Howard University Hospital was built on the site. D.C. Stadium became Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in 1969. 

Yankees Beat Twins & Their Lying Whiny Manager

After back-to-back home losses to the Minnesota Twins, one a 1st-inning blowout and the other an 8th-inning choke, the Yankees really needed to win yesterday afternoon. 

In particular, Domingo Germán, who struggled badly in his 1st 2 starts of the season, needed a good game. He got it, pitching what may have been the best game of his career. He got through the 1st 2 innings without allowing a baserunner, and was looking very sharp. 

But before the 3rd inning began, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli alleged that, as Germán has been caught using once before, he was using "sticky stuff." The umpires looked at his hands, and told him to wash them. He did, and went back out there, and was just as effective as he was before.

At his post-game press conference, Baldelli whined that Germán hadn't washed his hands at all, and was still cheating. He is such a liar. Germán did get rid of whatever was on his hands, if anything. He did do what the umpires demanded. Newsflash, Rocco: Your team wasn't good enough today. Maybe you should put some sticky stuff on your lips, and close them.

Baldelli spent his playing career with the Tampa Bay Rays organization, except for w season with the Boston Red Sox. That explains why he has no class at all.

Germán didn't allow a baserunner until the 6th inning, and, for a moment, we allowed ourselves to wonder if this game might be historic. He was left in until allowing a run in the 7th, with a career-high 11 strikeouts, and Michael King pitched the rest of the way without allowing him for the runs.

That kind of pitching deserves support. Germán got it. Kyle Higashioka hit a home run in the 2nd, and Anthony Rizzo hit one in the 3rd. They got further runs on a DJ LeMahieu single on the 5th, and a Giancarlo Stanton double in the 7th.

Yankees 6, Twins 1. WP: Germán (1-1). No save. LP: Tyler Mahle (1-2).

The series concludes this afternoon. Gerrit Cole starts against Pablo López.

Holmes' Feat of Clay Wipes Out Volpe, Cortés Heroics

After the Yankees' 11-2 loss to the Minnesota Twins on Thursday night, I wrote, "With a loss like that, nothing you can do except treat it like a 3-2 loss, put it in the past, and move on to the next game."

It sure looks like they were about to do it. The 1st batter of the game was rookie sensation Anthony Volpe and he hit his 1st major league home run. Before I could even finish writing about it on Facebook, Aaron Judge hit the next pitch to make it back-to-back home runs. So it was 2-0.

And Nestor Cortés was being especially nasty on the mound. Through the 1st 5 innings, he allowed just 2 hits, and no walks, although he did hit 2 batters. In the top of the 6th, he gave up a home run to former Houston Astros cheater Carlos Correa, but Giancarlo Stanton took that run right back in the bottom of the 6th, with a home run of his own. Cortés gave up another homer in the 7th, but left with the score 3-2 Yankees.

In this 1st season of the post-Aroldis Chapman era, manager Aaron Boone is counting on Clay Holmes to be the new closer. Well, he brought Holmes in to pitch the 8th, and it was a mistake: before he could get a single out, he allowed single, walk, double, and just like that, the Yankees were losing. And they couldn't get anything going in the last 2 innings.

Twins 4, Yankees 3. WP: Emilio Pagan (1-0). SV: Jhoan Duran (that's how he spells it, and the save was his 4th). LP: Holmes (0-1).

This loss was worse than the one the night before. The night before, they were down 9-0 after 1 inning, and we knew we weren't getting back into the game. This time, we were leading in the 8th inning. You don't want to lose like that. I mean, you never want to lose, at all, but you certainly don't want to lose like that.

The series continues this afternoon. Domingo Germán starts against Tyler Mahle. Since this is April 15, the anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut, all players, in all games, will wear Number 42.

April 15, 2013: The Boston Marathon Bombing

April 15, 2013, 10 years ago: Two explosions go off near the Back Bay finish line of the Boston Marathon, held annually on Patriot's Day, the 3rd Monday in April, in commemoration of the Battle of Lexington & Concord that began the War of the American Revolution, on April 19, 1775.

The time was 2:49 PM. The race, the 114th edition of it, was won by Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia, in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 22 seconds; and, on the women's side, Rita Jeptoo of Kenya in 2:26:25. Jeptoo had previously won in 2006, and would again in 2014, but was stripped of the 2014 title for doping. Desisa would win again in 2015.

The winners crossed the finish line about 3 hours before the bombing. Desisa donated his winner's medal to the City of Boston, as a tribute to the victims.

The final count was 3 dead, 264 others injured. The perpetrators were a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers who had fled Russia, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Muslims angry at the continued U.S. military action in Afghanistan.

Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from nearby Medford, Massachusetts, was killed by the 1st bomb. The 2nd bomb killed Lü Lingzi, 23, a Chinese citizen and a graduate student at Boston University; and Martin Richard, 8, from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston.

The brothers then claimed a 4th victim, killing Sean Collier, 27, a campus policeman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) across the Charles River in Cambridge, and stole a car. They got as far as Watertown, about 6 miles west of the bomb site, but the police caught up with them, and shot them both. Tamerlan, 26 years old, died at the scene. Dzhokhar, 19, was wounded, but got away, made it to a boat on a trailer, and was found by the police, barely alive.

He was tried and convicted, and sent to, and remains in, ADX Florence, the "supermax" federal prison in Colorado. Also there: "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski, 1993 World Trade Center bombing "mastermind" Ramzi Yousef, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols, Olympic Park and abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph, "20th 9/11 hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, and FBI/GRU double agent Robert Hanssen. No one has ever escaped from this prison.

*

Every year, on the 3rd Monday in April, New England, and in particular the State -- excuse me, the Commonwealth -- of Massachusetts, celebrates Patriot's Day. They commemorate the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the start of the War of the American Revolution. (Lexington Green is 14 miles northwest of Boston's Downtown Crossing.)

On this day, the nation's oldest long-distance race is conducted, the Boston Marathon. So as to avoid the combination of traffic that would be generated by a Red Sox home game and street closures for the Marathon, on Patriot's Day, the Red Sox play the Major League Baseball season's only morning game, at Fenway Park, an 11:05 AM start.

The Sox had completed their game before the bombing, and beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 3-2. Jarrod Saltalamacchia had hit a home run, but the Sox blew a 2-1 lead in the top of the 9th inning. In the bottom of the 9th, with 1 out, Dustin Pedroia drew a walk, and Mike Napoli doubled him home with the winning run.

The Red Sox would ride the slogan "Boston Strong" -- and the steroids of David Ortiz -- to win the World Series in 2013. This was 4 years after Ortiz had been exposed as a cheat, yet was continued to be allowed to play, and was even awarded the Series' Most Valuable Player award, as the Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals in 6 games.

That night, I wrote this on Facebook:

Days like today, like 9/11, Newtown, Oklahoma City '95, the shuttle explosions, Jonestown... Days I'm not old enough to remember, Kent State, the assassinations of the 1960s, Pearl Harbor, the first time we saw pictures of the Nazi camps... Days like that far outnumber the civil rights gains, the Moon landings, the announcements of the great scientific discoveries.

And then you hear about the other side of those days. The people who ran into the fire. The ones who shielded the already shot, knowing they could be next. Today, it was people who had already run 26 miles, whose legs were exhausted, running to help people who lost legs.

Some people will ask, "Why did God let this happen?" The only answer I have is so that, once again, we could see that the worst in humanity has brought out the best in humanity.

Sometimes, You're the Windshield...

There's an old saying: "Sometimes, you're the windshield. Sometimes, you're the bug." Of course, that saying doesn't work out too well for the windshield, either.

The Yankees opened a long homestand tonight, with the Minnesota Twins supplying the opposition. Filling one of the holes in the Yankee rotation, Jhony Brito was fantastic in his 1st 2 outings. Not this time: In the very 1st inning, he allowed single, single, walk, sacrifice fly, double, double, groundout, double, home run. Minnesota 7, New York not yet up to bat.

Aaron Boone mercifully took him out. Maybe mercy was the wrong move: Colten Brewer allowed home runs to the 1st 2 batters he faced. 9-0.

Brewer managed to pitch through the 4th, including 2 more runs in the 3rd. But Joe Ryan was brilliant for the Twins, going 7 innings and allowing only 3 baserunners. All night long, the only Yankee runs came in the 4th and 9th innings, in each case through a solo home run by Anthony Rizzo.

Ian Hamilton pitched the 5th, the 6th and the 7th, and Jimmy Cordero pitched the 8th. All of which were scoreless. In wipeout games like this, there's a tendency to let a position player pitch. Major League Baseball (or, at least, Commissioner Rob Manfred) doesn't like that, and so, there's a new rule about that: Leading teams have to be up by 10 or more runs in the 9th inning in order to let a position player pitch, while trailing teams can use a position player anytime it's down by 8 or more runs. Position players are also allowed to pitch anytime in extra innings.

Boone sent Isiah Kiner-Falefa in to pitch. He has now played 311 MLB games at shortstop, 126 at 3rd base, 73 catcher, 20 at 2nd base, 5 in center field, 4 as a designated hitter, and 1 as a pitcher. He has yet to play 1st base, left field or right field.

First batter, 1 pitch, 1 out. A lineout to center field by Trevor Lamach, a single to left by José Miranda, a flyout to left by Donovan Solano, and a lineout to right by Nick Gordon. He threw 12 pitches, 8 of them strikes. So Rizzo and IKF had good games, the rest didn't. Maybe IKF should have started the game.

But he didn't. And so, Twins 11, Yankees 2. WP: Ryan (3-0). No save. LP: Brito (2-1).

With a loss like that, nothing you can do except treat it like a 3-2 loss, put it in the past, and move on to the next game. The series continues tomorrow night. Nestor Cortés starts, against Louie Varland (if you believe the YES Network, or Tyler Mahle if you believe ESPN).