October 12, 1948: Who Is This Clown?

October 12, 1948, 70 years ago: The Yankees hire Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel as their manager. Stengel had just managed the Oakland Oaks -- including former star big-league catcher Ernie Lombardi and a 20-year-old sparkplug local boy from West Berkeley named Billy Martin -- to the Pacific Coast League Pennant, so chances were that some big-league team would have snapped him up in the next year or two if the Yankees didn't.

But his 2 previous big-league managing jobs, with the Dodgers (managing them in between Uncle Robbie and Leo the Lip) and the Boston Braves, were terrible. In Brooklyn in 1935, it was quipped that overconfidence might cost the Dodgers 6th place. In Boston in 1943, Casey was slightly injured when hit by a cab, and a sportswriter called the driver the man who had done the most for Boston baseball that season.

He was 58 years old in 1948, and, like Connie Mack, he always looked even older than he was. And he had a reputation as a "clown," for such antics as tipping his cap and letting a bird fly out from under it, and protesting the weather to an umpire by walking out of the dugout with an umbrella. This was not a man who would manage "the Yankee way," sportswriters said.

Then again, Casey really didn't have the players in Flatbush or in Allston. Once he proved everyone wrong by winning the 1949 Pennant, he said, with a mixture of pride and humility, "I couldn't have done it without my players." Finally having the horses, Casey went on to manage the Yankees for 12 years, winning 10 Pennants and 7 World Series.

He then managed the Mets in their first 4 years, 1962-65, prompting Warren Spahn, running out the string with the Mets after 22 years with the Braves, to say, "I'm the only man who played for Casey both before and after he was a genius." (Yogi Berra, by then one of Casey's coaches, came out of retirement and played a few games, including behind the plate. Someone asked him if he and Spahn were the oldest "battery" -- pitcher-catcher combination -- in baseball history. Yogi told him, "I don't know if we're the oldest, but we're certainly the ugliest.")

Casey is still the most successful manager in baseball history. He was fast-tracked to election to the Hall of Fame after his retirement, the Yankees dedicated a Plaque in Monument Park to his memory, and he lived to see both the Yankees and the Mets retire his Number 37. The parking lot at Shea, and now at Citi Field, is named Casey Stengel Plaza, and the Long Island Rail Road yard across Roosevelt Avenue is named the Casey Stengel Depot.
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October 12, 1492: Christoffa Corombo – as he was known in his native Genoa, or Christophorus Columbus as he was known in Latin, or Cristobal Colon as his patron, Queen Isabella I of Spain, calls him -- finally gets his ships to land. He believes he has reached South Asia. He names the island on which he lands San Salvador, after Jesus. Eventually, the island will be taken over by the English, and renamed Watling Island. Today, it is a part of the Bahamas.

Eventually, the man the English-speaking world knows as Christopher Columbus will make 4 voyages west, never fully realizing he was in what became known as "the New World," always thinking he was in Asia. But he does start the wave of European exploration that will make the Americas -- eventually named for rival Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci – possible.

Yet, considering previous voyages of the Vikings (and, some believe, the Chinese), it is disingenuous to say, "Columbus discovered America." In fact, he never set foot on the soil of the continental U.S., coming the closest when he reached Puerto Rico.

As far as I can tell, it was Juan Ponce de Leon, who came with Columbus on his second voyage in 1493, who was the first European to set foot on present-day U.S. soil, reaching Florida in 1513. (Vespucci did reach land in what’s now called South America, but not North America. The Vikings reached present-day Canada, and possibly present-day Maine.)

It's also not true that Columbus "proved the world is round." By 1492, most people already believed that. Even so, it would be 1522, and the conclusion of the Ferdinand Magellan expedition, before anyone sailed all the way around the world and back to his starting point, and proved through firsthand experience that the world was round.

What does this have to do with baseball? Today, there is a Triple-A minor league baseball team in Columbus, Ohio, and a Double-A team in Columbus, Georgia. And a major league team in Washington, District of Columbia. And, of course, there is a tremendous amount of talent in lands that Columbus revealed to the Old World, including the places now known as Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

October 12, 1537: Edward Tudor is born at Hampton Court Palace in Richmond-upon-Thames, in what is now Southwest London, the son of King Henry VIII of England and Queen Jane Seymour. Jane, Henry's 3rd wife, dies shortly after his birth, but Henry finally gets the son he wants.

Henry dies in 1547, and, at age 9, Edward becomes King Edward VI. But in 1553, only 15, he died of tuberculosis, setting off a succession crisis that was hardly abated when it was won by the Protestant Edward's Catholic half-sister Mary, and only settled when she died 5 years later, and was succeeded by their Protestant half-sister Elizabeth.

October 12, 1565: Jean Ribault, leader of France's early expeditions to the New World, is executed by the Spanish at their settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously-occupied (by people of European descent, anyway) place in America. He was believed to be 45 years old.

October 12, 1692: Sir William Phips, colonial Governor of Massachusetts, orders that the witch trials in Salem be stopped. There had been 20 executions, although none were, as the legend says, burned at the stake.

In other words, the Boston Red Sox aren't the cause of New Englanders being messed-up. They, their failures, the angst those failures have caused, and their turning to cheating, are by-products of New England already being messed-up.

October 12, 1773: Eastern State Hospital opens in Williamsburg, Virginia. It is America's 1st psychiatric hospital. It predates Fenway Park by 139 years.

October 12, 1798: Pedro de Alcântara Francisco António João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim is born in Queluz Palace, the royal residence in Lisbon, Portugal. When Napoleon Bonaparte's troops invaded Portugal in 1807, the entire House of Braganza, including Dom Pedro, his father the heir to the throne and the Prince Regent, and his insane grandmother Queen Maria I, fled to Portugal's colony in South America, Brazil. Although Portugal was liberated after the Napoleonic Wars, the Queen never returned, and died in Brazil in 1816.

King João VI returned to Portugal in 1821, but Dom Pedro, now heir to the throne, remained behind in Brazil, whose independence he had declared in 1822. He built the colonial backwater into what would then have been considered a modern country. Upon his father's death in 1826, he became King Pedro IV of Portugal, but he soon abdicated in favor of his daughter, who became Queen Maria II. (Ironically, she married a grandson of Josephine de Beauharnais, who was thus a step-grandson of Napoleon.)

Pedro's brother Miguel deposed Maria, and Pedro returned to Portugal to lead her forces in the civil war. He won, and became known as "The Liberator," but it wrecked his health, and he died of tuberculosis in 1834, not quite 36. His son became Emperor Pedro II, the last Emperor of Brazil before the abolition of the monarch in 1889.

Because of Dom Pedro's development, Brazil became the first truly modern country in South America, one to which Europeans -- not just Portuguese -- flocked. This allowed them, later in the 19th Century, under Pedro II, to bring with them their culture, including their sports, allowing it to develop into the continent's, and eventually the world's, greatest soccer nation. Without Dom Pedro I, no Garrincha, no Pelé, no Sócrates, no Romário, no Ronaldo, no Ronaldinho, no Neymar.

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October 12, 1853: Edward Fitzsimmons Dunne is born in Watertown, Connecticut, and grows up in Peoria, Illinois. He was elected Mayor of Chicago in 1905, and his tenure included the all-Chicago World Series of 1906, when the White Sox beat the Cubs. He was elected Governor of Illinois in 1912.

In both offices, he was aligned with Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive wing of the Republican Party. He fought for women's suffrage and public works, and against the Ku Klux Klan. He lived until 1937.

October 12, 1858, 160 years ago: John Lawrence Sullivan is born in the Roxbury section of Boston. John L. Sullivan (always listed with the middle initial) is considered the 1st "true" heavyweight champion of the world, reigning from 1882 to 1892, and was a great hero for America’s Irish Catholic immigrants and their children.

His personal life, however, was greatly criticized, mostly by the English Protestant establishment of the time, but who remembers them more than they remember "the Great John L.?"

October 12, 1859: The visiting Atlantics whip the Eckford Club‚ 22-12 to win the baseball championship of the year. Both clubs are based in Brooklyn. The Atlantics score 7 in the 1st inning and lead 16-4 at the end of 3. They finish the year at 11-1.

October 12, 1864: Roger Taney dies in Washington, D.C., after years of failing health. He was 87. After serving in both houses of Maryland's legislature and as its Attorney General, he became Andrew Jackson's staunches supporter in that State. Jackson rewarded him by appointing him Secretary of War, Attorney General, Secretary of the Treasury, and in 1836, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the 1st Roman Catholic to serve either in the Cabinet or on the Court.

It was Jackson's biggest mistake -- more so the Indian Removal Act, because it affected more people. Taney was still Chief Justice in 1857, when he made the worst ruling in the Court's history, in Dred Scott v. Sanford, that not only did the U.S. Congress constitutionally not have the right to restrict the spread of slavery into any State or Territory, but that black people -- including those born free -- were not citizens of the United States. If the Civil War was still a question of "if," this was when it became a question of "when."

Taney administered the Oath of Office to a record 7 Presidents. The 1st 6 were Martin Van Buren (March 4, 1837), William Henry Harrison (March 4, 1841), James Polk (March 4, 1845), Zachary Taylor (March 5, 1849 -- the 4th was a Sunday that year), Franklin Pierce (March 4, 1853) and James Buchanan (March 4, 1857). As Harrison and Taylor died in office, and their successors had to be sworn in quickly, he was not available to administer the Oath to John Tyler (April 6, 1841) or Millard Fillmore (July 10, 1850).

On March 4, 1861, Taney had to swear his harshest critic, Abraham Lincoln, in as President. As the Civil War began, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and Taney ruled that Lincoln couldn't do that. Lincoln ignored the ruling, and got away with it. The day Taney died, his home State of Maryland, which remained in the Union despite not having abolished slavery, officially abolished it, not yet knowing of his death. Lincoln appointed Salmon Chase, who had also served as Secretary of the Treasury, as Taney's successor.

On August 16, 2017, as part of the controversy concerning Confederate and other white-supremacist statues, a statue of Taney was removed from Mount Vernon Place in downtown Baltimore, following a vote of the City Council. Two days later, upon the recommendation of Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland -- a Republican -- an identical statue was removed from the grounds of the State House in Annapolis.

Now, we have a Supreme Court with a 5-4 archconservative majority: Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. They could end up doing as much damage as Taney did as Chief Justice.

October 12, 1866: James Ramsay MacDonald is born in Lossiemouth, Morayshire, Scotland. A Member of Britain's Parliament on and off from 1906 until his death in 1937, he was the Leader of the Labour Party from 1922 to 1935, and served as Prime Minister for 9 months in 1924, and again from 1929 to 1935.

October 12, 1870: Robert E. Lee dies in Lexington, Virginia, from the effects of a stroke suffered 14 days earlier. The commander of the Confederate armies was 63.

Lee was a noble officer in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, and up until the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861. And he worked to reconcile North and South in the 5 years between his surrender at Appomattox Court House and his death.

But in the 4 years in between, he was no hero. He betrayed his country to fight for, as he saw it, his "home" of Virginia. And he commanded the Army of a nation founded on the principles of white supremacy and slavery. The question of whether he should have statues, or his name on public schools and other government institutions, goes on.

October 12, 1872: The University of Oregon is founded by an act of the State legislature. Its motto is Mens agitat molem -- "The mind moves mountains." It is built in Eugene, where it remains. Ironically, its original name was Oregon State University, the name that would be adopted by Corvallis State Agricultural College in 1937. The schools are arch-rivals, and their annual late-November football game is known as the Civil War.

UO is best known for 3 things: Winning the 1st NCAA basketball tournament in 1939, its association with Nike boss Phil Knight, and its hideous football uniforms.

October 12, 1874: The University of Nevada is founded in Reno. But it is far lesser-known than is Las Vegas campus, a.k.a. UNLV.

Also on this day, James Timothy Burke is born in St. Louis. He was a 3rd baseman, playing for the 1st American League Pennant winners, the 1901 Chicago White Sox. He then jumped back to the National League, and won another Pennant with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

In 1905, he closed his playing career as player-manager for his hometown St. Louis Cardinals, and he won a World Series ring as a coach with the 1932 Yankees. He lived until 1942.

October 12, 1878, 140 years ago: Thomas Truxtun Hare is born in Philadelphia. He played guard, kicked and punted at the University of Pennsylvania, his hometown Ivy League school, and was named to the All-America team 4 times, later earning a law degree at Penn. A 2008 Sports Illustrated article awarded retroactive Heisman Trophies, and said that Truxtun Hare would win the 1900 Heisman.

He later practiced law and became a novelist, and lived until 1956. His son, Truxtun Hare Jr., was an All-American at Yale.

October 12, 1882: John Preston Hill is born in Culpeper, Virginia, and grows up in Pittsburgh. A left fielder, a baseball historian has called "Pete" Hill "black baseball's first superstar." He played professionally from 1889 (at age 16) until 1925, starring for the Trenton, New Jersey-based Cuban X-Giants (like the Globetrotters with "Harlem," and the Lincoln Giants with "Lincoln," the name "Cuban" practically advertised their blackness), the Philadelphia Giants, the Chicago-based Leland Giants, and Rube Fosters Chicago American Giants.

He died in 1951. In 2006, he was 1 of 16 "overlooked" pre-1947 black baseball legends elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

October 12, 1884: John Rutherford (no middle name) is born in Percy Main, Northumberland, England. Like many Scotsmen, or (in his case) men of Scottish descent, his nickname was Jock. A winger, he starred for the closest Football League club to Northumberland, Newcastle United, winning the League title in 1905, 1907 and 1909. He appeared in 5 FA Cup Finals for them, but only won once, in 1910. Jock Rutherford later played 13 seasons for Arsenal, and died in 1963.

October 12, 1892: The University of Illinois and cross-State rival Northwestern University play each other in football for the 1st time, on the Illini's campus in Champaign. The game is a 16-16 tie. Illinois leads the rivalry, 55-51-5. Despite their infamous football woes, Northwestern has won 5 of the last 6, and 11 of the last 15.

Black players had appeared in the American Association, a major league that played from 1882 to 1891, up until the 1887 season. But none would play in the NL until 1947.

October 12, 1896: Volatile New York Giants owner Andrew Freedman is found guilty of an April 22 assault on baseball writer Edward Hurst. He receives a suspended sentence -- most likely, because he was rich, and the judge didn't want to put a rich man in jail.

Freedman was a piece of work. He was a director of the Interborough Rapid Transit company (IRT), which ran horse-drawn carriage lines in New York, and built the City's 1st Subway in 1904. He raced yachts. He seemed to be a respectable New York businessman.

But in 1895, he bought the Giants, and became New York's 1st fabulously wealthy but eccentric sports-team owner, preceding George Steinbrenner by nearly 80 years, Donald Trump (who owned the USFL's New Jersey Generals) by nearly 70, and Larry MacPhail by over 40.

But he underpaid his players, even by the standards of the day. His star pitcher Amos Rusie sat out the entire 1896 season, rather than accept a pay cut. Freedman suspected anyone who opposed him of anti-Semitism -- and was the target of some genuine anti-Jewish bigotry. Finally, in 1902, he sold the Giants to John T. Brush, and was out of baseball, and all of baseball rejoiced. He died in 1915, only 55, but worth over $4 million -- about $95 million in today's money.

October 12, 1898, 120 years ago: The University of Michigan and the school now known as Michigan State University play each other in football for the 1st time. The Wolverines beat the Spartans 39-2 in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines lead the series, 69-36-5. They will play each other in East Lansing on October 20.

So far, no Michigan-based filmmaker -- admittedly the best-known one, Michael Moore, only seems to make preachy documentaries -- has decided to make a movie about what would happen if the superhero Wolverine took on the ancient Spartan army.

October 12, 1899: The American League is founded by Byron Bancroft "Ban" Johnson, a Cincinnati sportswriter. It plays as a minor league in 1900, and goes all-out as a major league in 1901.

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October 12, 1905: Richard Benjamin Ferrell is born in Durham, North Carolina. A catcher, Rick Ferrell was an 8-time American League All-Star, including playing in the 1st 6 All-Star Games from 1933 to 1938. He played for the St. Louis Browns, Boston Red Sox and Washington Senators from 1929 to 1947, and, except for the 1945 Senators, 1 game out, never came close to a Pennant.

He was later a scout and an executive for the Detroit Tigers, the team that beat his Senators out for that 1945 Pennant. His work for them got him World Series rings in 1968 and 1984. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984, retired from the Tiger organization in 1992, and died in 1995.

His brother, Wes Ferrell, won 193 games as a pitcher and hit 37 home runs, more than any other player who was primarily a pitcher. (Babe Ruth, of course, did not stay a pitcher.) It is a common belief among baseball fans that the wrong brother was elected to the Hall.

October 12, 1906: Joseph Edward Cronin is born in San Francisco. Both shortstop and manager for the Washington Senators, he led them to the 1933 AL Pennant, still the last Pennant ever won by a Washington baseball team (unless you count the Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues, and even then they split their "home" games between Washington and Pittsburgh).

Senators owner Clark Griffith, himself a former pitcher good enough to make the Hall of Fame even if he hadn't been a pioneering team owner, liked Cronin so much he let him marry his daughter Mildred. But when Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey offered the perennially broke Griffith big bucks for Cronin, he sold his son-in-law, his shortstop, and his manager off all in one fell swoop. The price: $225,000 -- about $4.3 million in today's money.

Yawkey made Cronin his shortstop and manager, but ego made Cronin the manager keep Cronin the player at shortstop long after his skills had deteriorated. This caused the Red Sox to trade away the star shortstop of their Louisville farm team, Harold "Pee Wee" Reese.

True, this allowed Johnny Pesky to become an All-Star shortstop once Cronin finally accepted that he didn't have it anymore, but it also led the greatest of all Red Sox, Ted Williams, to say that if the Sox had Phil Rizzuto at short, they would have won "all those Pennants" instead of the Yankees.

Finally, in 1946 -- a year after he finally retired as a player, which may not be a coincidence -- Cronin led the Red Sox to the Pennant, but lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, a loss often blamed on… drumroll please… shortstop Pesky "holding the ball." (His 40th birthday fell on a travel day during the Series.)

Cronin only lasted another year as manager, then was "promoted" to team president. He left the team presidency in 1959 when he was offered the presidency of the American League, a post he held until 1973.

That the Red Sox became the last team to integrate is often blamed on owner Yawkey and his drinking buddy, Michael "Pinky" Higgins, who famously declared that there would never be a (racial slur beginning with N) on the team as long as he was the manager, as which he was hired in 1955. And, once Yawkey fired him in 1959, the Sox then integrated. However, about a year later, Yawkey hired him back, and at that point, Higgins managed more black players than his fired successor, Rudy York, or the man hired to replace York, Bucky Harris.

Could it be that the real Yawkey drinking buddy/roadblock to integration was Cronin? After all, the year that the Sox integrated, with Elijah "Pumpsie" Green, was 1959, the very year Cronin left to become AL President.

Joe Cronin is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and his Number 4 has been retired by the Red Sox. But if he hadn't managed the Sox to that '46 Pennant, I wonder if he would have deserved these honors. After all, he wasn't a great shortstop for the same length of time that his contemporaries Rizzuto, Reese, Luke Appling, Lou Boudreau or Marty Marion were. (Marion is the only one of these not in the Hall, and I think he deserves it.) And, as far as I can tell, he was the 1st manager ever to walk out to the mound and tell his pitcher, "Don't give him anything good to hit – but don't walk him."

October 12, 1907: At Detroit's Bennett Park, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown throws a 2-0 shutout, beating the Tigers to capture the World Championship for the Cubs. Although Game 1 ended in a 3-3, 12-inning tie, Chicago becomes the first club to sweep a Fall Classic.

The last surviving member of the Cubs' 1907 World Champions was rookie 3rd baseman Henry "Heinie" Zimmerman, who was also the last survivor of their 1908 World Champions. He lived until 1969.

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October 12, 1910: With the AL's season ending a week earlier than the NL's‚ the champion Philadelphia Athletics tune up with a 5-game series against an AL all-star team‚ which includes Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers‚ Tris Speaker of the Red Sox‚ Doc White and Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox‚ and Walter Johnson of the Senators.

The A's drop 4 out of 5 to the all-stars‚ but manager/part-owner Connie Mack will later state‚ "Those games‚ more than anything else‚ put the Athletics in a condition to outclass the National League champions." These are not baseball's first "all-star games," but they were very consequential as far as determining the World Champions of baseball -- indeed, an entire era.

October 12, 1911: Vijay Madhavji Thakersey is born in Bombay, British India -- now known as Mumbai, India. Under the name Vijay Merchant, he played for what was then named "Bombay Cricket Team" (now Mumbai Cricket Association) from 1929 to 1951, and played 10 test matches for India.

He is regarded as the founder of the Bombay School of Batsmanship, that placed more importance on proper technique, steely temperament, and conservative approach rather than free flow of the bat, a tradition broken and remolded only after the arrival of Sachin Tendulkar in the late 1980s.

His batting average (in cricket, that means runs divided by outs) of 71.64 is the 2nd-highest first class average in history, behind only that of Australia's Don Bradman. CB Fry, who starred in English cricket from the 1890s to the 1910s, and finished his career with Europeans, a club based in India, said, "Let us paint him white and take him with us to Australia as an opener." He died in 1987, age 76.

October 12, 1912: Woolwich Arsenal lose to fellow Londoners Chelsea 1-0 before 20,000 at the Manor Ground in Plumstead, Southeast London. The Gunners have now won only 1 of their 1st 8 League games. They are on course to be relegated.

They would be, for the only time in the team's history. But team owner Henry Norris was already preparing to build a new stadium, across the River Thames, in the Highbury section of North London. It would enable Arsenal, who dropped the geographic identifier in 1914, to get much more money in gate receipts, and get back into the Football League Division One. The 2018-19 season would be their 100th straight in the top flight, had it not been for the FA canceling seasons 1939-40 through 1945-46 due to World War II.

October 12, 1913: Following the World Series, which his New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, John McGraw hosts a reunion for Hughie Jennings and the old NL version of the Baltimore Orioles, 20 years after their 1st Pennant.

After a night of heavy drinking‚ McGraw blames his longtime friend‚ business partner and teammate Wilbert Robinson, perhaps baseball's 1st great pitching coach, for too many coaching mistakes in the 1913 Series. "Uncle Robbie" replies that McGraw made more mistakes than anybody. McGraw fires him. Eyewitnesses say Robbie doused McGraw with a glass of beer and left.

Six days later, Robbie will begin a legendary 18 years as manager of the crosstown Brooklyn franchise‚ replacing Bill Dahlen. The team will carry the nickname Robins‚ as well as Dodgers‚ during his tenure.

Robbie and Mac won't speak to each other for 17 years, and after winning 3 straight Pennants together, McGraw will win just 1 Pennant in the next 7 years, while Robbie will win 2 -- the only Pennants the Brooklyn team will win between 1900 and 1941.

This is not the beginning of the rivalry between the Giants and the Dodgers, not by a long shot. That rivalry had its beginning in rivalries between clubs of New York (Manhattan) and Brooklyn when they were separate cities prior to 1898, even going back to the days of amateur baseball in the 1850s and '60s. And the rivalry between Manhattan and Brooklyn would have happened even if baseball had never been invented. (But what cruel person would want to live in such a world?)

But the McGraw-Robinson bustup is the beginning of a rivalry that ruined one of baseball's great friendships, not resolved until both men were retired and near death. Still, they both ended up in the Hall of Fame -- neither lived to see the Hall's establishment, though -- and are buried in the same Baltimore cemetery.

Somebody should write a book about it: We've seen books about the Giants, about the Dodgers, about the Dodger-Giant rivalry, about McGraw, and even about the old Orioles -- but the McGraw-Robinson relationship is a fascinating one. They're like the John Adams and Thomas Jefferson of baseball: Great friends in a great cause, then a nasty split and a nastier rivalry, and the relationship was repaired and the great friendship restored toward the end.

October 12, 1916: The Red Sox defeat the Dodgers/Robins, 4-1, and win the World Series by the same margin. After winning back-to-back World Series – still the only manager in the history of Boston baseball to do so – Bill Carrigan announces his retirement. He will return to the post in 1927, but, without future Hall-of-Famers such as Speaker, Harry Hooper and, uh, Babe Ruth, he will finish at the bottom of the American League instead of the top.

The last surviving member of the 1916 Red Sox was pitcher Ernie Shore, who lived until 1980.

Also on this day, Club América is founded in Mexico City. They are the most popular sports team in Mexico, but, as so often happens (as with the Yankees), the most popular team has even more people who hate them. This is likely due to their being the most successful team: They have won 16 League titles between 1924 and 2014, the Copa México 6 times between 1938 and 1974, and the CONCACAF Champions League 7 times: 1977, 1987, 1990, 1992, 2006, 2015 and 2016. (Despite being 2-time defending Champions, they did not qualify for the 2017 tournament.) All of these are records.

Since 1966, they have played at the 87,000-seat Estadio Azteca. They have 3 major rivalries, playing El Super Clásico with C.D. Guadalajara (a.k.a. Chivas), El Clásico Capitalino with Mexico City's Club Universidad Nacional, and El Clásico Joven with Mexico City's Cruz Azul (Blue Cross).

As would be expected, the majority of their current players are Mexican, and all of their players are Latin American. All are Spanish-first-speakers except Brazilian midfielder William da Silva (Portuguese). But they currently have 1 American player, a son of Mexican immigrants: Ventura Alvarado, a 24-year-old centreback from Phoenix.

Also on this day, Estádio Vila Belmiro opens in Santos, São Paulo state, Brazil, as the home of Santos Futebol Clube. In the 1st game, Santos beat Clube Atlético Ypiranga, 2-1. Now named Estádio Urbano Caldeira, it seats 16,068, and has been the home of Santos Futebol Clube ever since, including Pelé from 1956 to 1974.


October 12, 1917: Roque Gastón Máspoli Arbelvide is born in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. Roque Máspoli was the goalkeeper for the Uruguay team that won the 1950 World Cup. At club level, he played for both of the arch-rival Montevideo clubs. With Nacional, he won Uruguay's league in 1934 and 1939; with Peñarol, he won titles in 1944, 1945, 1949, 1951, 1953 and 1954.

He later managed Peñarol to League titles in 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1986, and the Copa Libertadores, South America's "Champions League," in 1966.

In 1997, he managed the national team at age 80, making him the oldest national team manager in any country. He died in 2004.

October 12, 1918, 100 years ago: There were 8 Major League Baseball players (all of them Americans) who died serving their country in World War I, and 2 of them did so on this day.

Lieutenant Alexander Thomson Burr, U.S. Army Air Service, a Chicagoan known as Tom Burr as a pitcher, played just 1 game in the majors, in the outfield for the Yankees in 1914 and never got to bat -- a true "Moonlight Graham." He is killed in a plane crash, in Cazaux, France.

It was an accident: Rather than being shot down, another U.S. pilot crashed into him -- what became known as "friendly fire." His plane caught fire, and crashed into a lake. It took 12 days to find his body. He wasn't quite 25 years old.


October 12, 1920: The Cleveland Indians win their 1st World Series, in Game 7 of the best-5-out-of-9 Series, 3-0 over Uncle Robbie's Dodgers/Robins, as Stan Coveleski outduels fellow future Hall-of-Famer Burleigh Grimes for his 3rd win of the Series. It will be 21 years before the Dodgers get back into the Series; for the Indians, 28 years.

The last survivor of the 1920 Indians was rookie Joe Sewell, who took over at shortstop for Ray Chapman after he was killed by a pitch from Carl Mays of the Yankees on August 16. Sewell went on to a Hall of Fame career as a 3rd baseman, and ended up with the Yankees, winning another Series in 1932. He lived until 1990.

October 12, 1921: Game 7 of the World Series -- not the deciding game, as this one was best-5-out-of-9. Phil Douglas outpitches Carl Mays, and the New York Giants beat the Yankees 2-1. The Giants can wrap it up tomorrow in Game 8.

Also on this day, Jaroslav Drobný is born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). He survived the Nazi occupation of his homeland to become one of the world's top athletes: A great tennis player, and a hockey player who led his country to the 1947 amateur World Championship and a Silver Medal at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. But didn't like how the subsequent Communist government was using him for propaganda, and he defected while at a tournament in Switzerland in 1949.

Egypt offered him citizenship. He is the only citizen of an African nation ever to win a Grand Slam tennis tournament: The French Open in 1951 and 1952, and Wimbledon in 1954. He had sustained an eye injury in hockey, so he wore glasses on the tennis court. He is the only man to win major championships in both tennis and what we in North America would consider one of the "Big Four" sports. He is also the only man to win Wimbledon while wearing glasses. (Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova did so, but by the time he won it in 1975, Arthur Ashe had switched to contact lenses.)

He soon moved to London, became a British citizen, married an Englishwoman, and wrote a memoir, Champion in Exile. He died in 2001, shortly before his 80th birthday.

Also on this day, Leslie Horvath (no middle name) is born in South Bend, Indiana. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame, but, despite being born in South Bend, he didn't go to the University of Notre Dame.

Shortly after he was born, his family moved to the Cleveland suburb of Parma, Ohio, and he grew up there, and went to Ohio State University, winning the National Championship as a sophomore in 1942 and the Heisman Trophy as a senior in 1944, the Buckeyes' 1st Heisman winner. His Number 22 was retired.

He played for the Los Angeles Rams in 1947 and 1948, and for his hometown Cleveland Browns in 1949, winning the Championship of the All-America Football Conference. But he never played in the NFL, deciding to enter the profession for which his degree qualified him: Dentistry. Dr. Les Horvath lived until 1995.

Also on this day, Senator Philander C. Knox of Pennsylvania dies in office, at age 68 in Washington. He had previously served 3 Presidents: William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt as Attorney General, and William Howard Taft as Secretary of State.

October 12, 1923: In front of the largest paying crowd in baseball history to that point, 62,430 fans are on hand at Yankee Stadium. They see Casey Stengel hit his 2nd home run of the World Series. The round-tripper proves to be the difference when Giant hurler Art Nerf outduels Yankee starter Sam Jones in Game 3 of the Fall Classic, 1-0.

The Giants now lead 2 games to 1. They will not win another game that counts until the following April.

Also on this day, Alfred Perry Lucas dies in Great Waltham, Essex, England. He was 66. Known in cricket records as A.P. Lucas, but known to his friends as Bunny Lucas and to fans as The Boss, playing the game at its highest level from 1874 to 1907.

October 12, 1926: John Irvin Kennedy is born in Jacksonville, Florida. A shortstop, he played in the minor leagues from 1951 to 1961, on April 22, 1957, he became the 1st black player for the Philadelphia Phillies. This made the Phillies the last team in the National League to integrate, and left the Boston Red Sox of the American League the only one not yet having done so.

Given that, 10 years earlier, the Phillies, then managed by Ben Chapman, heaped so much racist abuse on the 1st black player of the modern era, Jackie Robinson, it is appropriate that Kennedy's debut takes place at Robinson's home ballpark, Ebbets Field. It is also appropriate that Kennedy, wearing Number 8, enters the game in the 8th inning as a pinch-runner for Solly Hemus, who would later be revealed as one of the era's nastiest racists. Kennedy is stranded at 2nd base, and is not put into the field. The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Phillies, 5-1.

Kennedy already 30 years old, makes only 5 appearances for the Phillies, coming to the plate twice without reaching base, and is sent back down to the minors in May. He dies in 1998, just 72 years old.

He should not be confused with John Edward Kennedy, a white infielder (mostly 3rd base), who played in the major leagues from 1962 -- playing in Washington while John Fitzgerald Kennedy was President -- until 1974, including winning a World Series ring with the 1965 Dodgers, and playing for the Yankees in 1967 and the infamous Seattle Pilots of 1969.

Also on this day, Mkrtych Pogosovich Simonyan is born in Armavir, in the Soviet Union. Of Armenian descent, he took the Russian name Nikita Pavlovich Simonyan. A striker, from 1949 to 1959, he starred for the most popular sports team in the USSR, Spartak Moscow.

He helped them win Soviet Top League titles in 1952, 1953, 1956 and 1958, and the Soviet Cup in 1950 and 1958 (meaning they "did the Double" in 1958). He is the all-time leading scorer for the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian 1st division. He helped the USSR win the Olympic Gold Medal in 1956, and reach the Quarterfinals of the 1958 World Cup.

He didn't stop there. He managed Spartak to the Soviet Top League title in 1962 and 1969, and the Soviet Cup in 1963, 1965 and 1971. Returning to his native Armenia, he led Ararat Yerevan to the Soviet League and Cup Double in 1973. He managed the Soviet national team from 1977 to 1979.

At age 92, he is the greatest-ever athlete of Armenian descent, and the greatest living Soviet or Russian soccer player.

October 12, 1929: Game 4 of the 1929 World Series, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, remains one of the wildest in postseason history. Having started a seemingly washed-up Howard Ehmke in Game 1 and having it work, Connie Mack starts 45-year-old Jack Quinn.

This seems to work, too, until the 6th, when the Chicago Cubs start scoring. By the time they stop, they lead, 7-0. Cub manager Joe McCarthy starts Charlie Root, who would later become a victim of McCarthy's Yankees, including Babe Ruth’s "called shot," though this quirk of history/legend does not do Root justice, as he was a fine pitcher for many years. Root enters the bottom of the 7th with an 8-0 lead.

Then the A's come storming back. Hack Wilson, a great slugger but not the best of outfielders even when not drunk or hungover, misjudges a fly ball from Mule Haas, and it turns into a 3-run inside-the-park home run, making the score 8-7 Cubs.

One of the runners scoring on the play is Al Simmons, and the great slugger storms into the dugout, yelling, "We're back in the game, boys!" and his momentum causes him to crash into Mack – already 67 years old, if not the elderly figure most of us imagine him to have always been. Simmons apologizes profusely, but Mack, a former big-league catcher and familiar with ballplayers crashing into him, is just as enthused and tells him, "That's all right, Al."

The A's score a Series record 10 runs in the inning, and ace Lefty Grove comes in to relieve and finish the Cubs off, as 10-8 remains the final score. The A's close down the shellshocked Cubs the next day.

Also on this day, Sanford Stadium opens in Athens, Georgia. Named for Dr. Steadman Vincent Sanford, an English professor and an early supporter of the school's athletic program, the University of Georgia opens it with 15-0 win over Yale in front of 30,000 fans. Since UGa had been founded by missionaries from Yale, and had also borrowed Yale's team name of Bulldogs, they were the invited guests.

Known for the hedges that surround the field, and the end zone containing the crypts for the deceased Uga the Bulldog mascots, Sanford Stadium has seen several expansions and renovations that have put its current seating capacity at 92,746. It hosted the soccer games of the 1996 Olympics, even though Athens and Atlanta, despite being in the same State, are not all that close.

With stars like Frankie Sinkwich, Charlie Trippi, Theron Sapp, Fran Tarkenton, Jake Scott, Herschel Walker, Garrison Hearst, Champ Bailey and Knowshon Moreno, the Georgia Bulldogs have won 12 Southeastern Conference Championships since moving in, as well as the 1942 and 1980 National Championships. They've also had All-Americans named Johnny Carson (not the talk show host), Randy Johnson (not the baseball pitcher) and George Patton (not the general).

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October 12, 1930: Denis Joseph Germain Stanislaus Brodeur is born in Montreal. He was the goaltender for the Canada hockey team that won the Bronze Medal at the 1956 Winter Olympics. Later, he was the team photographer for the Montreal Canadiens and Expos. He is best remembered, though, as the father of Martin Brodeur. He lived until 2013.

October 12, 1935: Anthony Christopher Kubek is born in Milwaukee. The American League Rookie of the Year with the 1957 Yankees, he played shortstop in the World Series against his hometown team (not that they were there while he was growing up), the Milwaukee Braves, in his 1st 2 seasons, losing in 1957 and winning in 1958, and excelling in both Series.

In Game 7 of the 1960 Series, the day after his 25th birthday, he was hit in the throat by a ground ball that took a bad hop off a pebble on the Forbes Field dirt. That led to a Pittsburgh Pirates rally, and the Pirates won the game on Bill Mazeroski's home run.

But in 1961, Kubek and 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson formed one of the best double-play combinations in baseball history, as the Yankees won the Series, aided by Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs. They won the Series again in 1962, although Kubek missed much of the season due to military service. They won Pennants again in 1963 and '64, but lost the Series both times. Kubek had been in the majors for 8 seasons, and had won 7 Pennants and 3 World Series.

He played for England in the 1958 World Cup, and moved to North London club Arsenal in 1964 -- ironically, then managed by Wolves' greatest player ever, Billy Wright. But in 1966, he broke his leg in a game, and his playing career was over at age 30.

The next season, Arsenal fired Wright (a great player but a terrible manager), and hired Bertie Mee as manager. Mee made Howe his assistant coach, and, together, they built the team that won the League and FA Cup "Double" in 1971.

Howe built a tough defense, with goalkeeper Bob Wilson, right back Pat Rice, left back Bob McNab (father of actress Mercedes McNab), centrebacks Frank McLintock and Peter Simpson, and defensive midfielder Peter Storey. With the midfield also having George Graham and George Armstrong -- future Arsenal manager and reserves manager, respectively -- and a forward line of John Radford, Ray Kennedy, and the iconic long-haired Charlie George, Arsenal were a juggernaut in 1970-71.

A lot of it involved changing positions: Graham was moved from forward to midfield, Storey from right back to midfield, and McLintock, the team Captain, from midfield to central defense. McLintock, a lantern-jawed Scotsman, was the team's rock, and they followed his lead as much as Bertie's and Don's.

As McLintock put it, "Once we were one-nothin' up, that was it. You could go get yer fish 'n' chips, yer cup o' tea, get on yer bike. Because I don't think we gave up a 1-0 lead all season." I checked, and he was right: They didn't. They did, however, come from behind a few times, including in extra time in the Cup Final against Liverpool.

After that annus mirabilis, Howe's old club, West Brom, wanted him as manager. "I can't take it back," he said. "That was the time when I left when I should have stayed, because that team, the Double team, had more in them." He was probably right: Arsenal came close to the League title again in 1972 and '73, and lost the FA Cup in the '72 Final and the '73 Semifinal. With his guidance, they could have won more trophies.

He left West Brom after 4 years to become head coach at Turkish giants Galatasaray, and then an assistant at Leeds United under his former England teammate Jimmy Armfield (not to be confused with his former England teammate and Arsenal player Jimmy Bloomfield), and then returned to Arsenal in 1977, under his former defense partner Terry Neill. They reached 4 cup finals in 3 years, but only won 1, the 1979 FA Cup.

When Neill was fired in 1983, Howe was promoted to the manager's role. "That's the time when I stayed when I should have left!" he said, making the point that he ended up using pretty much the same system that Neill had, so it wasn't really a change.

This was after several of the club's better players had been sold off, resulting in the 4th-to-7th-place side (the Football League Division One then had 22 teams) that became known as "Boring, Boring Arsenal." In 1986, despite having won 4 straight matches and not being threatened with firing, he decided he'd had enough, and resigned. From that time onward, very few managers of English clubs have left their jobs by their own choice.

He helped former Arsenal teammate Bobby Gould lead South London club Wimbledon to the 1988 FA Cup, in a stunning run that ended with a grand upset of Liverpool in the Final. He assisted another former England teammate, Bobby Robson, on the England team at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, also assisting Terry Venables with England at Euro '96. He and Gould switched places to manage and assist, respectively, at West London's Queens Park Rangers, and, in his last managing job, he got Coventry City promoted to the Premier League in 1993.

He coached Arsenal's youth team from 1997 to 2003, and then retired for good, having sent to the big club such players as Ashley Cole and Cesc Fabregas. He taught them about defending and passing, but it's a shame he couldn't teach those 2 about loyalty. He became a pundit for the BBC and Channel 4, and died on December 23, 2015, at the age of 80.

October 12, 1937: Robert Paul Hawkins is born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Paul Hawkins, a.k.a. Hawkeye, never won a race, and was killed in a crash at the RAC Tourist Trophy at English track Oulton Park on May 26, 1969. He was 31.

October 12, 1938, 80 years ago: Leo Durocher, already the Brooklyn Dodgers' shortstop, is named their manager. He will hold the post for nearly 10 years, nearly all of them controversial.

He had previously been a virtual coach on the field for Frankie Frisch on the St. Louis Cardinals when they won their "Gashouse Gang" World Series in 1934. However, unlike Joe Cronin in Boston, Durocher would recognize that his shortstop skills were fading, and allow Pee Wee Reese, whom the Dodgers had purchased from the Red Sox, to succeed him in the field and in the lineup.

Also on this day, Murray Chass is born in Pittsburgh. From 1969 to 2008, he covered baseball for The New York Times; from 1986 to 2008, he was its chief baseball writer. He was given the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the Baseball Hall of Fame's award that is tantamount to election for broadcasters.

After being unwillingly retired by the Times, he began a blog, Murray Chass On Baseball. He has been roundly criticized for it, including for a 2011 post in which he accused St. Louis Cardinals legend Stan Musial of racism for refusing to seat black teammates at a St. Louis restaurant he owned. Curt Flood Jr., a writer and the son of one of the players involved, came forward and denied that the event ever happened. Given the elder Flood's admission, "I am glad that God made my skin black, but I wish He had made it thicker," I believe that, if the event had happened, it would have been revealed much sooner. Musial, still alive at the time, made no comment.

Also on this day, Robert James Miller is born in Chicago. Bob Miller has broadcast for the Los Angeles Kings since 1973. The Hockey Hall of Fame honored him with its Foster Hewitt Award, tantamount to election for broadcasters.

October 12, 1939: Gerald Allen Hill is born in Torrington, Wyoming, and grows up in nearby Lingle. A running back, Jerry Hill played for the Baltimore Colts from 1961 to 1970, losing Super Bowl III by winning Super Bowl V. Still alive, he was named Wyoming Football Player of the Century.

Pabst Brewery, current makers of Colt 45 malt liquor, claim that it was named for Hill and his uniform number, rather than the Colt .45 handgun. The fact that the brand was invented by the Baltimore-based National Brewing Company, makers of National Bohemian Beer (a.k.a. Natty Boh), which Pabst bought out, and the fact that the brand still has both a horse and a horseshoe on its label, makes this claim very plausible, if not definitive.

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October 12, 1940: Irving Lee Goode is born in Newport, Kentucky. A guard, Irv Goode was named to the University of Kentucky's All-Century Team -- in football, not in their storied basketball program. He played 10 seasons for the NFL version of the St. Louis Cardinals, then won Super Bowls VII and VIII with the Miami Dolphins in 1973 and 1974. He is still alive.

Also on this day, Lawrence Joseph Jeffrey is born in Goderich, Ontario. A left wing, he is 1 of 13 surviving players from the 1967 Stanley Cup Champion Toronto Maple Leafs. He also played for the New York Rangers.

October 12, 1943, 75 years ago: George Moorhouse dies in Long Beach, Long Island, New York. He was only 42, and, like singer Harry Chapin would 38 years later, the cause was a heart attack while driving on Long Island. He was the 1st native of England to play in the World Cup -- but England didn't play in the World Cup until 1950, because of a dispute with FIFA, the governing body of world soccer.

A Liverpool native, Moorhouse served in the British Merchant Marine during World War I. A left back, he played for hometown club Tranmere Rovers, then came to North America, playing for semipro teams in Montreal and Brooklyn, and then, from 1923 to 1937, for soccer teams that carried the names of established Big Apple sports teams: The New York Giants (baseball and football), the New York Yankees (baseball), and the New York Americans (hockey).

Apparently, residency qualified him for the U.S. national team under the rules of the time, and he 1st played in a 1926 win over Canada. He was selected for the team for the 1st World Cup in 1930, and the U.S. reached the Semifinal in Uruguay before falling to Argentina. In 1934, he was named Captain of the U.S. team in the 1934 World Cup in Italy, but the team was eliminated in the 1st round in a loss to Mexico. He was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1986.

October 12, 1944: Frank Sinatra appears at the Paramount Theater in New York's Times Square. A full house of 3,664 is on hand to see him. About 25,000 others, mostly teenage girls -- "bobbysoxers" in the lingo of the day -- are turned away, and they vent their frustrations by smashing store windows.

It becomes known as the Columbus Day Riot, and for those Sinatra fans who grew up to have kids screaming over Elvis Presley and/or the Beatles, complaining that they never acted that way over a musical act they liked, well, guess what, old-timers, you did.

Just as One Direction ain't no Beatles, and Justin Timberlake ain't no Elvis, singers from Bobby Darin to Harry Connick Jr. to Sean Combs have deluded themselves into thinking they were "the new Sinatra," but none of them is in Sinatra's league. The man has more charisma dead than any of them do alive.

What does this have to do with sports? Well, by itself, nothing. But Sinatra was a big sports fan. He sang “There Used to Be a Ballpark” about Ebbets Field, although he remained a Dodger fan after they moved to L.A. He was a great boxing fan who talked Life magazine into making him their official photographer for the 1971 "Super Fight" between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier – and, I have to say, he knew what he was doing: He took good pictures.

On a 1972 Pittsburgh Steelers roadtrip to San Diego, the Steeler fan club known as "Franco's Italian Army" (named after the half-black, half-Italian running back Franco Harris, as well as for the general whose "Italian Army" enabled him to win the Spanish Civil War) invited Sinatra, then living in nearby Palm Springs, and offered to make him an "Honorary General" in the Army. Although he had no connection to Pittsburgh, he posed for pictures with them and accepted a helmet with generals' stars on it.

Also on this day, Mike Bookie dies in a U.S. Army training accident at Camp Eglin, Florida. He was only 40. Like George Moorhouse, he was a star of American soccer in the 1920s and '30s, and was also on the 1930 World Cup team, although he didn't get into a game. He was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame along with Moorhouse in 1986.

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October 12, 1954: The American League owners approve the shift of the Philadelphia Athletics franchise to Kansas City. Roy and Earle Mack, sons of the now-senile 92-year-old Connie Mack, sell the A's to Arnold Johnson, a Chicago-based trucking magnate, 25 years to the day after the team’s magnificent 10-run inning in the '29 World Series.

Johnson's bid is $3‚375‚000 -- about $31.7 million in today's money -- for the team and the stadium‚ Shibe Park, recently renamed Connie Mack Stadium. He says he will sell the stadium to the Phillies for $1‚675‚000, although Phils owner Bob Carpenter, a very wealthy man as a member of both the Carpenter and the duPont families, says, "I need Shibe Park like I need a hole in the head."

One of the offers for the team is from a wealthy Texas group that proposes to move the A's to Los Angeles, but Kansas City, long a hotbed of minor league and Negro League baseball, gets major league status for the first time since the Kansas City Packers of the Federal League in 1915 – or, if you don't count that, since the Kansas City Cowboys of the old American Association in 1889.

The A's had won AL Pennants in 1902, 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1929, 1930 and 1931. They had won the World Series in 1910, 1911, 1913, 1929 and 1930. Connie Mack had built 2 dynasties, then broke them up because he needed money.

Unlike in Boston, where the Red Sox stayed and the Braves left, and St. Louis, where the Cardinals stayed and the Browns left, in Philadelphia, the more historically successful team was the one that moved. But while the A's had 9 Pennants to the Phillies' 2, and 5 titles to the Phils' none, the Phils had money, and the A's didn't, and since both teams couldn't survive in the city, the one without the money went.

October 12, 1955: The St. Louis Cardinals fire manager Harry "the Hat" Walker, and replace him with former big-league pitcher Fred Hutchinson. Walker, like his brother, former Dodger slugger Fred "Dixie" Walker, was a really good hitter in his day. But he was not such a good manager. He would return to the Cards as a coach, and later manage the Pittsburgh Pirates, and would also take the Houston Astros into their 1st Pennant race in 1969. But his day as a player was done.

He had used himself as a pinch-hitter in the '55 season, but his firing means that, for the first time in the history of baseball, there are no current player-managers.

There have been only 5 player-managers since: Solly Hemus of the 1959 Cardinals, Frank Robinson of the 1975-76 Indians, Joe Torre of the 1977 Mets, Don Kessinger of the 1979 White Sox, and Pete Rose of the 1985-86 Reds. But, from 1955 onward, player-managers would be frowned upon. The last player-manager to get his team into a Pennant race was Lou Boudreau with the '51 Red Sox. The last to win a Pennant, much less a World Series, was Boudreau, with the '48 Indians.

October 12, 1956: Allan James Evans is born in Dunfermline, Scotland. A centreback, he played for hometown soccer team Dunfermline Athletic, but is best remembered for playing for Birmingham club Aston Villa, helping them win the 1981 League title and the 1982 European Cup. He later managed West Bromwich Albion in England and Greenock Morton in Scotland. He now coaches at Truro and Penwith College.

October 12, 1957: North Carolina State beats Florida State 7-0 at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee. The N.C. State touchdown is scored when a receiver beats his cover man, who was playing both offense (wide receiver) and defense that day.

That Seminole player had previously hurt one knee in a game, and hurt his other knee and lost his spleen as the result of a car accident. He realizes that, for all his promise in football at Palm Beach High School, he is never going to play pro football, so he quits. It may have been premature: He had no way of knowing that the AFL would begin play in 1960.

He transfers to Palm Beach Junior College, and, taking the advice of his policeman father, studies to become a parole officer. But one of his professors had written a play, and encouraged him to audition for it. It led to him winning an award, which included a scholarship to a summer stock theater in New York's Hudson Valley. The rest is history. The gridder-turned-actor's name was Burt Reynolds.

He would return to football in 1974, filming The Longest Yard, and was later a part-owner of the USFL's Tampa Bay Bandits, named after his 1977 classic Smokey and the Bandit, although the logo was of a Wild West bandit, not Reynolds' car-racing, bootlegging Bo Darville. For the record, the $80,000 the Bandit was offered at the time of the film's release on May 27, 1977 -- 2 days after Star Wars, so that must have been some weekend at theaters -- is worth about $334,000 today. Burt Reynolds died this past September 6, at age 82

October 12, 1958, 60 years ago: For the 1st time since the Giants moved to San Francisco, Willie Mays plays baseball in New York City. At Yankee Stadium, 3 days after the conclusion of the World Series, the Say Hey Kid leads a team of National League All-Stars that also includes former Brooklyn Dodgers Gil Hodges and Johnny Podres, plus future Hall-of-Famers Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Richie Ashburn and Bill Mazeroski -- but not, oddly, Hank Aaron. I guess Hank, just beaten by the Yankees in Milwaukee, didn't want to go back to Yankee Stadium so soon.

They play a team of American League All-Stars captained by Mickey Mantle, including his Yankee teammates Whitey Ford and Elston Howard, and former teammate Billy Martin, plus Hall-of-Famer Nellie Fox and All-Stars Rocky Colavito (a Bronx native) and Harvey Kuenn. All of them, including Mays and Mantle, had Frank Scott as their agent.

The game was not broadcast, on either television or radio, and 21,129 fans came out -- which doesn't sound like much, especially in the 1st year with the Dodgers and Giants gone, but it was more than any of them averaged the year before, the last year with all 3 of them in New York.

And most of them were cheering for the NL team -- whether it was because they missed the Giants and Dodgers in general, or Willie in particular, or they simply hated the Yankees, or whether Yankee fans couldn't be bothered to show up for a game that didn't count for anything but filling the players' pockets, I don't know. (And that was the reason the game was played: Both Mantle and Mays were having money problems at the time.)

The NL team won, 6-2. Mays went 4-for-5. Mantle went 1-for-2 before taking himself out.

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October 12, 1960: Game 6 of the World Series. Whitey Ford pitches a 7-hit shutout, and singles home the 1st run of a 12-0 Yankee rout of the Pirates at Forbes Field. There will be a Game 7 tomorrow, also in Pittsburgh.

The Yankees had won their 3 games 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0. The Pirates had won their 3 6-4, 3-2 and 5-2. It seems as though a high-scoring game favors the Yankees. And the Yankees will score 9 runs in Game 7, while the Pirates hadn't yet scored more than 5. Sounds like a Yankee title. Except...

Back in New York, the United Nations General Assembly is meeting at the UN Building on the East River at 42nd Street. The Philippines' Ambassador, Lorenzo Sumulong, claims that the Soviet Union is conducting "colonial policy" in Eastern Europe. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, visiting America, represents his own country, calls Sumulong a "jerk," a "stooge," a "lackey," and a "toady of American imperialism."

Sumulong resumes his speech, and Khrushchev starts pounding his fist on the table. This is captured on film. Supposedly, he removes his shoe, and starts banging that on the table as well. That was not captured on film, and a photograph supposedly showing it was found to be doctored, and from an earlier incident.

In his own memoirs, Khrushchev claimed he'd done it to protest something done by the fascist Franco regime in Spain. But that speech was in Moscow on October 1, and his shoes were not mentioned in the Soviet media at the time. His son Sergei wrote a biography of him, and said he couldn't find any visual evidence of the shoe-banging. Both NBC and Canada's CBC say they have no footage of Khrushchev banging his shoe on any table, while Italy's RAI say they do, but they haven't produced it.

Like Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev wasn't much of a sports fan. Unlike Stalin, Khrushchev did understand how sports could be used as propaganda. This was a few weeks after the Olympics in Rome, one of those occasional East vs. West sports encounters; 5 months after Khrushchev embarrassed President Dwight D. Eisenhower over the shot-down U-2 spy plane piloted by Gary Powers; and during the debates to succeed Ike, between his Vice President, Richard Nixon, and Senator John F. Kennedy, one of which was to be held the following night.

A few days later, Khrushchev went to California, and was cheered in San Francisco. "This is the damnedest city," said Frank Conniff of the arch-conservative Hearst newspapers, including their flagship, the San Francisco Examiner, and the New York Journal-American. "They cheer Khrushchev and boo Willie Mays."

October 12, 1961: Miguel Porlán Noguera is born in Totana, Murcia, Spain. Known as Chendo, he was the right back on 7 of Real Madrid's La Liga titles from 1986 to 1997, and the 1998 Champions League title.

October 12, 1962: Charles Sidney Fernandez is born in Honolulu. Usually called Sid, he wore Number 50 because Hawaii is the 50th State -- which would be repeated by a later Mets postseason hero, Benny Agbayani.

A 2-time All-Star, the 1st Hawaiian native ever to appear in the All-Star Game, "El Sid" was 114-96 in a career that included the Mets' 1986 World Series win and 1988 Division title, and closed his career with another division title on the 1997 Houston Astros. He was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series -- John Franco and Noah Syndergaard are the only Mets to be winning pitchers in a World Series game since.

He later worked in Hawaii State government, and went into coaching. A "portly portsider" and a "hefty lefty" during his career, subsequent '86 Mets reunions have shown that, while his ex-teammates Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling have put on a lot of weight since then, Sid has noticeably lost weight.

October 12, 1963: At the last baseball game played at the historic Polo Grounds, the Latin stars from the NL beat their AL peers, 5-2, in the 1st and only "Hispanic Major League All-Star Game."

The postseason exhibition, in which Twins 1st baseman Vic Power, a native of Puerto Rico, is honored as the top Latin American player during a pregame ceremony, includes future Hall of Famers Luis Aparicio, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente, and Juan Marichal.

Also on this day, Number 2-ranked Texas defeats Number 1 Oklahoma 28-7 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. This sparks them to a National Championship season, and another Number 1 vs. Number 2 matchup at the Cotton Bowl stadium, beating Number 2 Navy, led by Heisman Trophy winner Roger Staubach, 28-6 in the 1964 Cotton Bowl Classic

Also on this day, Luis Andrew Polonia Almonte is born in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The left fielder won a Pennant with the Oakland Athletics in 1988, before coming to the Yankees in the trade that sent Rickey Henderson back to the Yankees. He was traded to the California Angels in 1990, but was sent back to the Yankees in 1994, and then to the Atlanta Braves, where he won the 1995 World Series.

The Braves sent him to the Baltimore Orioles in 1996, but they sent him right back, and he won another Pennant, but lost the World Series to the Yankees. He played in Mexico for 2 seasons, went to the Tigers, and in 2000 finished his career with another title in his 3rd run with the Yankees. A career .293 hitter, he has been elected to the Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame, and now runs a baseball school in the Dominican Republic.

Also on this day, Robert Andrew Mimms is born in York, Yorkshire, England. A goalkeeper, Bobby Mimms played for several English soccer teams, including filling in for an injured Neville Southall in the 1986 FA Cup Final, the 1st All-Merseyside Final, where his Everton lost to Liverpool.

In 1994, he was with Blackburn Rovers, and they finished 2nd in the Premier League. In 1995, despite losing on the last day of the season, they won the League, for his only major trophy. He has since gone into coaching.

Also on this day, Alan McDonald is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A centreback, he played 16 season with Queens Park Rangers, and played for Northern Ireland at the 1986 World Cup. He managed Belfast-based Glentoran to Northern Ireland's league title in 2009. He died of a heart attack while playing golf in 2012. He was only 48.

Also on this day, Raimond Aumann (no middle name) is born in Augsburg, Germany. A goalkeeper, he won 6 Bundesliga titles with Bayern Munich, a Turkish league title with Beşiktaş in 1995, and the World Cup with West Germany in 1990. He is now Bayern's fan club coordinator.

October 12, 1964: Game 5 of the World Series. The game goes to extra innings, but in the top of the 10th, Pete Mikkelsen wastes a nice Mel Stottlemyre effort, by allowing a home run... to Tim McCarver. Yes, that Tim McCarver. Bob Gibson goes all 10 innings, and the Cardinals beat the Yankees, 5-2. The Cardinals now need to win only 1 of the 2 possible games in St. Louis.

October 12, 1965: Following the departure of the Braves for Atlanta, a Milwaukee-based used-car salesman founds Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc., named for the former minor-league team from the city, in the hopes of attracting an expansion team or buying an existing team and moving it to the Beer City.

The salesman's name is Allan Huber Selig. Yes, Bud Selig. He bought the Seattle Pilots on the eve of the 1970 season, moved them, and renamed them the Milwaukee Brewers, and was Commissioner of Baseball from 1992 to 2014.

This, after starting out as a used-car salesman. He had become rich and famous by selling cars to the Braves players, including selling rookie catcher Joe Torre his first car. Now, he is out of power, having taken baseball to new heights, but also having damaged the sport more than any other Commissioner.

Also on this day, Arsenal play the national team of Israel in a friendly. The result is a 2-2 draw. The Arsenal goals are scored by Joe Baker, a good forward in decline; and Peter Simpson, a younger defender on the rise.

This is in the early stage of an awful season for Arsenal, one which will see them finish a terrible 14th in the Football League Division One. Billy Wright, once one of England's greatest players but a terrible manager, will be relieved of his duties at the conclusion of the season. Bertie Mee will be hired, and the rest is history.

Also on this day, Jean-Jacques Daingeault is born in Montreal. Usually listed as "J.J. Daigneault," the defenseman reached the NHL with the Vancouver Canucks in 1984, got to the Stanley Cup Finals with the Philadelphia Flyers in 1987, won the Cup with the Montreal Canadiens in 1993, played for the Islanders in 1997-98, became an original Nashville Predator the next season, and closed his career with the Minnesota Wild in 2001. He is now an assistant coach with the Canadiens.

October 12, 1966: Wilhelmus Maria Jonk is born in Volendam, Netherlands. A midfielder, while with Ajax Amsterdam, he won the Dutch League in 1990, the UEFA Cup in 1992 and the KNVB Cup (equivalent to the FA Cup) in 1993. With PSV Eindhoven, he won the KNVB CUp in 1996 and the League in 1997.

With the death of Johan Cruyff in 2016, he now runs the Cruyff Football organization with Johan's son Jordi.

October 12, 1967: Baseball and the Summer of Love converge on Fenway Park in Boston for Game 7 of the World Series, as a fan holds up a sign saying, "THE RED SOX ARE VERY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE."

But the prediction made the day before, after a Game 6 win, by Sox manager Dick Williams, of "Lonborg and champagne," does not happen: On only 2 days' rest, Gentleman Jim has nothing, and gets shelled. Even opposing pitcher Bob Gibson, himself on only 3 days rest (and having won Game 7 in '64 on just 2) hits a home run off him. The Cardinals win, 7-2, for Gibson's 3rd win of the Series, the team's 2nd title in 4 seasons, and their 7th World Championship.

For the Red Sox, "the Impossible Dream" came to an end a game too soon, but the season did revitalize the franchise, restoring its profitability and its place of veneration among the people of New England. They lost the World Series, but they cannot be called a failure. Without this season, the Red Sox might have ended up leaving Fenway Park, sharing a stadium out in Foxboro with the NFL's Patriots. Or owner Tom Yawkey, who really wanted out of Fenway, might have moved them out of Boston entirely.

So, even more than 2004, this is the most important season in Red Sox history. Years later, after the Red Sox failures of 1975, 1978 and 1986, but before the tainted triumphs of 2004, 2007 and 2013, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy would write that, of all Red Sox teams, this one is absolved from criticism by "Red Sox Nation" -- which, he says, essentially began that summer.

By the same -- pardon my choice of words here -- token, this was an incredibly important season in St. Louis. The holdovers from the 1964 season proved it was no fluke, and, much more so than the '64 team, the '67 team, with its mixture of white stars (Tim McCarver, Dal Maxvill and an aging but still power-hitting Roger Maris), black stars (Gibson, Lou Brock and Curt Flood) and Hispanic stars (Orlando Cepeda and Julián Javier) showed St. Louis, still thinking of itself as a Southern city, what integration could really do. Fans in Brooklyn had learned that 20 years earlier.

Yet, somehow, the 1964-68 Cards, as good as they were, have not been celebrated by Baby Boomers as much as have the 1950s and ’60s Yankees, the 1950s Dodgers, the '60 and '71 Pirates, the 1962-66 Dodgers, the 1962-66 Giants, the 1966-71 Orioles, the '67 Red Sox, the '68 Tigers and the '69 Mets. Hopefully, that's mainly because St. Louis was, and is, one of baseball's smallest markets. Still, the Cardinals were then, and are now, one of baseball's most profitable and most admired franchises.

This was also the last game for Elston Howard, who had been traded by the Yankees to the Red Sox in midseason. In his last at-bat, against Gibson, he flied to left field in the 5th inning, being removed for a pinch-hitter.

There are 14 surviving players from the '67 Cards, 50 years later: Gibson, Brock, Cepeda, McCarver, Maxvill, Javier, Steve Carlton, Mike Shannon, Ray Washburn, Eddie Bressoud, Bobby Tolan, Ed Spiezio, Dick Hughes and Larry Jaster.

October 12, 1968, 50 years ago: Leon Lett Jr. (no middle name) is born in Mobile, Alabama. He appeared in 2 Pro Bowls and won 3 Super Bowls as a defensive tackle with the Dallas Cowboys. But that's not how he is remembered.

In Super Bowl XXVII, he picked up a fumble, and tried to return it for a touchdown, and was waving the ball in the air, when the Buffalo Bills' Don Beebe ran up behind him and knocked it out of his hand at the 1-yard line. It was embarrassing, but it didn't matter, because the Cowboys won, 52-17.

Just 10 months later, on Thanksgiving Day 1993, a rare snowstorm blanketed the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, and the hole in the Texas Stadium roof protected the fans, but not the players. Pete Stoyanovich of the visiting Miami Dolphins attempted a game-winning field goal. The Cowboys blocked it, but while his teammates were celebrating, Lett wisely realized that the ball was still live.

He tried to recover it, but slipped on the slick artificial turf, and accidentally kicked the ball, and the Dolphins recovered it at the 1-yard line with 3 seconds left. Stoyanovich tries again, and the Dolphins win.

The Cowboys went on to win the Super Bowl anyway. All was forgiven, as the Lett is now the Cowboys' defensive line coach.

October 12, 1969: The Mets win a World Series game for the 1st time, taking Game 2 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Al Weis' 9th-inning single breaks up a pitchers' duel between the Mets' Jerry Koosman (who is relieved in the bottom of the 9th by Ron Taylor) and the Orioles’ Dave McNally.

The film Frequency tells the fictional tale of an atmospheric phenomenon that allows a 1999 NYPD detective and Met fan, played by Jim Caviezel, to use his father's old ham-radio set to talk to his father, a 1969 fireman, played by Dennis Quaid.

October 12, 1969 was the day the father died in a fire, when the son was just 6, and the son is able to warn him from the future. The result is that the father, and the teenage girl he would have failed to rescue from the fire, get out alive.

But the interference with time means that, because she wasn't preparing for her husband's funeral, the cop's mother, a nurse, goes to work, and saves the life of a serial killer who would otherwise have died, and several more women end up dying – including the mother herself, played by Elizabeth Mitchell (who, unlike Quaid, is actually younger than Caviezel).

Now, instead of having his mother but not his father from 1969 to 1999, he now has his father but not his mother from 1969 to 1989 – the father living long enough to see the son graduate from the police academy, but dying from smoking before the son makes Detective.

Using the ham radio, father and son, roughly the same age as each other, track down the killer, played by Shaun Doyle, a Canadian actor who appeared on the series Lost, Big Love and Lost Girl. He was so creepy in Frequency that he really should have played the Joker in The Dark Knight, and not just to save Heath Ledger's life. Seriously, look at his face and his hair (in the 1969 sequence) at the end of the film, and tell me he wouldn't have made a good Joker.

The kicker is that, as a result of his 1969 confrontation with the killer, the father begins to be suspected for the killings (which do not yet include his wife) by a young cop, played by Andre Braugher, who will be the son's mentor and boss in 1999.

The way the father gets out of this, and back on the killer's trail, is that Game 5 of the Series is being shown on a TV behind them. Having been told what's going to happen by his son from 30 years in the future, he tells the cop (whose nickname is Satch, after baseball legend Satchel Paige) about the Cleon Jones shoe-polish incident and the subsequent Donn Clendenon home run.

When it happens, the cop realizes the father really is telling the truth about these messages from his son from the future, releases him, and… well, you'll just have to see the movie. It’s a fantastic thriller, and I highly recommend it -- even though the Mets are glorified in it.

Also on this day, with a connection to the Mets, José Antonio Valentín is born in Manati, Puerto Rico. The infielder last played in the majors for the Mets in 2007, and his only trip to the postseason was with the AL Central Champion White Sox in 2000. 

He is now the 1st base coach for the San Diego Padres. His brother Javier also played in the majors, and his son Jesmuel plays in the Phillies' system.

Also on this day, Albert Dwayne Roloson is born in Simcoe, Ontario. He goes by Dwayne, while others call him Roli. The goalie debuted with the Calgary Flames in 1997, was Dominik Hasek's backup on the Buffalo Sabres team that reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 1999, was Manny Fernandez's backup on the Minnesota Wild team that reached the Western Conference Finals in 2003, and was the Edmonton Oilers' starting goalie in the 2006 Stanley Cup Finals.

He later played for the Islanders, and last played in the NHL in 2012 with the Tampa Bay Lightning. He was the last active NHL player who was older than I was, and is now a coach in the Anaheim Ducks' minor-league system.

Also on this day, Sonja Henie dies of leukemia at age 57. The 1928, 1932 and 1936 women's Olympic Gold Medalist in figure skating, the Norwegian turned to acting and, while she wasn't much of an actress, she skated in most of her films, which were all profitable, making her one of the highest paid performers in Hollywood. (Making her a skating precursor of Elvis Presley, whose fans would go to the movies to hear him sing regardless of how good the rest of the movie was.)

Although she had met Adolf Hitler before World War II and been on friendly terms with him (as well as with several other world leaders), she was not a Nazi or a fascist, and supported the Allied effort. She had affairs with Joe Louis and Tyrone Power, was linked with Liberace (probably to deflect questions about him being gay), and was married 3 times, including to Yankee co-owner Dan Topping. She had no children.

*

October 12, 1970: Tanyon James Sturtze is born. Not a Yankee pitcher I care to say anything else about. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts -- was he a "Manchurian Candidate" for the nearby Red Sox?

Charlie Ward Jr. (his full birth name) is also born on this day, in Thomasville, Georgia. The 1993 Heisman Trophy winner led Florida State to that season's National Championship, but no NFL team would draft him, so he played for the NBA's Knicks, not for the Giants or the Jets. Which is too bad, because, for a time, when the Giants had Dave Brown and Kent Graham, and the Jets had Neil O’Donnell and Bubby Brister, Ward was the best quarterback in New York. He did, however, play in the 1999 NBA Finals for the Knicks.

He is now a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, and the head football coach at Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola, Florida, where his son Caleb played for him.

Kirk Thomas Cameron is also born on this day, in Los Angeles. He has spent most his time since Growing Pains went off the air making Christian Fundamentalist-themed films, including the movie versions of the Left Behind fables.

His sister Candace Cameron, one of the stars of Full House, is also a fundamentalist, and married hockey star Valeri Bure (who also has a famous brother, hockey legend Pavel Bure).

October 12, 1971: Anthony James Fiore is born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. Tony didn't last long as a major league pitcher, but he did reach the Playoffs with the 2002 Minnesota Twins.

At least he's still alive. That is not the case with Bronzell La James Miller, born on this day in the Seattle suburb of Federal Way, Washington. The defensive end was an original 1995 Jacksonville Jaguar, a 1998 Grey Cup winner with the Calgary Stampeders, and an actor before dying of cancer in 2013.

October 12, 1972: The Oakland Athletics defeat the Detroit Tigers, 2-1, and take the American League Pennant. The winning run is scored by Reggie Jackson on the front end of a double-steal, but Reggie tears his hamstring, and is unable to play in the World Series. He will make up for that many times, as he is the only man to win World Series MVPs with two different teams, the A's in '73 and the Yankees in '77.

After the game, in spite of the joy of the Pennant, Johnny "Blue Moon" Odom and Vida Blue give new meaning to the term "the Swingin' A's" when the starting pitcher and the game's closer begin to brawl in the clubhouse. Odom, who left after 5 innings having allowed a run on 2 hits, takes exception to the universal choke sign made by Vida Blue, when the reliever used the gesture to answer his own question, "How come you starters can't finish what you begin?"

Also on this day, the New England Whalers made their debut, in the World Hockey Association. They defeated the Philadelphia Blazers 2-0 at the Boston Garden. They would win the 1st WHA title in 1973. Tired of being mistreated by their landlords, the NHL's Bruins, they would move to Hartford in 1974.

In 1979, following the WHA's collapse, they were allowed into the NHL, and changed their name to the Hartford Whalers. In 1997, they moved to become the Carolina Hurricanes, winning the Stanley Cup in 2006.

Also on this day, the Winnipeg Jets, the team that came to define the WHA in so many ways, debuted. So did the obligatory New York Tri-State Area franchise in the league, the New York Raiders. Christian Bordeleau scored 4 goals, including the club's 1st, and the Jets won, 6-4. Only 6,273 fans come out, mainly because the legal maneuvering that would allow Bobby Hull to play for the Jets had not yet been settled, and he wasn't available.

The Raiders wanted the new Nassau Coliseum, but got pushed around by the expansion Islanders. The Garden was willing to take them in, but they were low priority. Marvin Milkes, the Seattle Pilots general manager made infamous by Jim Bouton's book Ball Four, was their GM -- that should tell you what kind of organization they were. Their main radio announcer was a young John Sterling.

By midseason, their ownership had bailed, the league took them over, they spent the 1973-74 season in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill as the Jersey Knights -- the only South Jersey team ever to be remotely considered "major league," and folded.

The Jets would be considerably luckier, settling the situation with Hull (the Golden Jet, for whom the team was named), reaching the 1st WHA Finals (where they lost to the Whalers), and winning the title in 1976, '78 and '79.

Taken into the NHL, and stripped of their big stars (Hull played out the string in Hartford, while Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson were sold to the Rangers), they collapsed immediately, set an NHL record for longest winless streak, and became known as Lose-ipeg. They would recover somewhat, but never got close to a Stanley Cup, and became the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996 and the Arizona Coyotes in 2014. The Atlanta Thrashers became the new Winnipeg Jets in 2011.

October 12, 1973: Lesli Guillermo Brea is born in Berkeley, California. He briefly pitched for the Orioles in 2000 and '01.

Also on this day, Martin Edward Corry is born in Birmingham, West Midlands, England. He played club rugby union for Bristol and Leicester Tigers. He won the Six Nations tournament with England in 2000, 2001 and 2003, and captained them in 2005 and 2007. He is now involved in a youth rugby program.

October 12, 1974: For the first time, teams from California oppose each other in the World Series. The Oakland A's beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 at Dodger Stadium. Reggie Jackson homers, and so does Ken Holtzman, becoming the last pitcher to hit a home run in a World Series game for 34 years.

Rollie Fingers relieves Holtzman in the 5th, and pitches all the way to the 9th, when he gives up a home run to Jimmy Wynn to get the Dodgers to within 3-2.  A's manager Alvin Dark brings in starter Jim "Catfish" Hunter to get the last out.

October 12, 1975: Game 2 of the World Series. Bill Lee takes a 2-1 lead into the 9th inning. The dream feels very close for Red Sox fans. But the Cincinnati Reds come from behind and beat Boston 3-2, and tie up the Series.

Also on this day, Miller Brewing Company debuts a TV commercial for their Lite beer. It features Yankee Legends Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, then about to turn 44 and 47 years old:

Number 7: "Whitey, if we'd had a great-tasting beer that was less filling in the old days, can you imagine where we'd be now?"

Number 16: "Yeah: The Beer Drinkers Hall of Fame."

Lite would also do commercials with Billy Martin, including their most famous one, which also had George Steinbrenner. They also did one with Yogi Berra, with "Yogi-isms" written for him, confusing the heck out of the barflies, including a young, not-quite-bald-yet Jason Alexander.

But Anheuser-Busch eventually offered Mickey more money to switch to their Natural Light, and do a commercial with malaprop-prone comedian Norm Crosby. They also did one with Crosby and, as he put it, "Catfood Hunter."

Considering how Mickey killed himself with drinking -- and so did Billy -- these ads are a lot less funny now. On the other hand, Whitey drank just as much, and he's still alive.

Also on this day, having been kept out of Yankee Stadium by its renovation, and out of City-owned Shea Stadium by Mayor John Lindsay due to their intention to leave for New Jersey's Meadowlands, and forced to play in the Yale Bowl in New Haven for 2 seasons, the Giants play their 1st game at Shea, having been allowed by a new Mayor, Abe Beame. They lose 13-7 to the Dallas Cowboys.

Also on this day, Marion Lois Jones is born in Los Angeles. She was supposed to be one of the heroines of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and she won 3 Gold Medals in sprinting. But she was stripped of her medals after it was revealed she cheated, and lied about it under oath during the BALCO investigation, and was also guilty of check fraud. She served 6 months in prison.

She married shot-putter C.J. Hunter, split from him, and began seeing sprinter Tim Montgomery. When their son, Tim Jr., was born, I joked that he'd become the world's fastest baby. (He's now 13.) But she and Tim Sr. never got married. She later married Barbadian sprinter Obadele Thompson, and they have 2 children.

Having played on a National Championship women's basketball team at the University of North Carolina, after she got out of the joint, she signed for the WNBA's Tulsa Shock, and played for them in the 2010 and '11 seasons.

October 12, 1976: The Cincinnati Reds need to win Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, at home at Riverfront Stadium, to complete their sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies and repeat as Pennant winners. The Phils don't make it easy, leading 3-0 going to the bottom of the 7th inning.

The game does not end benignly, as Phils starter Jim Kaat tires in the bottom of the 7th, allowing 4 runs, including a 2-run triple by Cesar Geronimo. The Reds led 4-3, but the Phils came back, and led 6-4 going to the bottom of the 9th.

But the Big Red Machine are not done. George Foster and Johnny Bench hit back-to-back home runs off Ron Reed. Manager Danny Ozark brings in Gene Garber, who walks Dave Concepcion. Ozark brings in Tom Underwood, who walks Geronimo, and gives up a sacrifice bunt to Ed Armbrister and an intentional walk to Pete Rose. Griffey hits a bouncer that Bobby Tolan at 1st base can't handle, and Concepcion scores the Pennant-winning run.

For the 2nd straight year, and for the 4th time in the last 7 seasons, the Reds are in the World Series. The Phils' best season in 26 years ends ignominiously, but this is only the 1st time, of what turns out to be 3 straight seasons, that they will blow a key NLCS game due to a fielding miscue.

The American League Championship Series moves to New York for Game 3, the 1st LCS game at Yankee Stadium. With the series tied 1-1, the Kansas City Royals score 3 runs off Dock Ellis before the Yankees can even come to bat.

But a Chris Chambliss home run cuts the deficit to 3-2 in the 4th inning, and Royals manager Whitey Herzog goes through 4 pitchers as the Yankees score 3 runs in the 6th. The Yankees win, 5-3, and need just 1 more win for their 1st Pennant in 12 years.