In 2013, he was acquired by North London club Arsenal, and, within a 2-month span in 2014, won the FA Cup with Arsenal and the World Cup with Germany. He won the FA Cup again in 2015 and 2017. With Germany, he also finished 3rd at the 2010 World Cup, and reached the Semifinals of the European Championships in 2012 and 2016.
In 2018, he has faced the harshest criticism of his career. Some Arsenal fans, unwilling to accept that their best player is a foreigner and a practicing Muslim, have called him "lazy," even though the statistics prove this to be an incredibly stupid lie.
And when Germany got knocked out of this year's World Cup in the Group Stage, Özil took more heat for it than anyone. The truth is, none of the great German players -- not goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, not centreback Mats Hummels, not central midfielders Sami Khedira and Toni Kroos, not winger Julian Draxler, not forwards Marco Reus and Thomas Müller, all but Reus (injured for that tournament) holdovers from the 2014 World Champions -- played up to their established standards.
With the criticism, Özil announced his retirement from "international football." But during this international break, Germany has continued struggling. Someone noticed that whoever runs the English Twitter feed for the national team, a.k.a. "Die Mannschaft," posts a picture of a white, blond, blue-eyed -- or, as they said in Nazi times, "Aryan" -- player when they win, but a black, immigrant and/or Muslim player when they lose or draw.
Just when you thought Germany was helping to lead the world through tolerance, they fall back into old stereotypes. Then again, other nations that should know better do this, too. "God bless America."
Mesut Özil remains one of the top 5 players in the world. Especially when you consider that he doesn't need to dive, or otherwise play dirty. He remains an idealist in an increasingly cynical sport. He loves his fans, and his loves his team. Considering what's been happening lately with both his club team (improved with him) and his national team (continued to decline without him), I'd say he's proved his point.
To the tune of "Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus, even if the rhyme structure is off, but that's how they sing it, now that Arsène Wenger, who brought him to Arsenal, has moved on:
We've got Özil
Mesut Özil
I just don't think you understand
He's Unai Emery's man
He's better than Zidane
We've got Mesut Özil!
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October 15, 1582: Pope Gregory XIII orders that the Julian Calendar, which is scientifically off by 11 days, be replaced by a new calendar. The difference in the new Gregorian Calendar is that years ending in -00, while divisible by 4 and thus traditionally "leap years," adding a 29th day to the month of February, will now only be leap years if they are divisible by 400. For example, 1600 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. 2000 was, 2100 will not be.
The new calendar was necessary because certain holy days, such as Ash Wednesday and Easter, were calculated astronomically, and did not fall on the same day every year. Gee, wouldn't it have been simpler to just make them fall on the same day every year? Say, Ash Wednesday is the 3rd Wednesday in February, while Easter is the 1st Sunday in April? Leave it to organized religion to complicate things. As Bill Veeck said, "Religion is like baseball: Great game, lousy owners."
The Catholic world, including Spain and Portugal and their colonies, adopted the Gregorian Calendar immediately. In other words, October 4, 1582 was immediately followed by October 15, 1582. That year, October 5 through October 14 simply never happened.
But not everyone adopted it at once. Protestant nations, such as Britain and the states that would make up modern Germany, didn't. Eastern Orthodox nations such as Greece and Russia didn't, either. Britain didn't adopt the Gregorian Calendar, and January 1 as New Year's Day, until 1752.
As a result, while George Washington's date of birth is now listed as February 22, 1732, as a man born in the British Empire under the Julian Calendar, he considered his birthdate to be February 11, 1731 -- as the Empire then celebrated the New Year on March 25. Such dates falling between October 4, 1582 and September 13, 1752 are now listed as "O.S." for Old Style.
Russia adopted the Gregorian Calendar after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. This is why the year's 2 revolutions are skewed, date-wise: The "February Revolution" that deposed the Czar is now listed as having happened on March 8, not February 23 (O.S.); while the Bolshevik Revolution is also known as the October Revolution, beginning October 25 (O.S.), but now listed as November 7 (N.S. or New Style). The next year, 1918, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey becomes the last major nation to switch over.
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October 15, 1671: Lewis Morris is born in what is now the Morrisania section of The Bronx. He was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Colony of New York, and the Colonial Governor of New Jersey, dying in office in 1746. Morris County, New Jersey is named for him.
His son was Robert Hunter Morris, a Chief Justice of the Colony of New Jersey. His grandchildren included Lewis Morris, who signed the Declaration of Independence; Staats Long Morris, a General in the War of the American Revolution; Richard Morris, who was also a Chief Justice of New York, by that point a State; Robert Morris, Chief Justice of the State of New Jersey; and Gouverneur Morris, who did much of the actual writing of the text of the Constitution of the United States (if not the writing down of it on the parchment), and later served as a U.S. Senator from New York.
October 15, 1795: Friedrich Wilhelm Hohenzollern is born in Berlin. As Frederick William IV, he was King of Prussia from 1840 until his death in 1861.
October 15, 1802: Louis-Eugene Cavaignac is born in Paris. He was the French general who put down the Paris edition of the European Revolutions of 1848, known as the June Days Uprising. He then ran for President, but lost to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who soon become Emperor Napoleon III. Cavaignac died in 1857.
October 15, 1810: Alfred Moore dies in Elizabethtown, North Carolina at age 54. He was a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1800 to 1804.
October 15, 1817: Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko dies from complications of a stroke, in exile in Solothurn, Switzerland. He was 71, and a hero of 5 nations: America, France, Belarus, Lithuania, and his native Poland.
He came to America in 1776, to assist the Continental Army in its war of Revolution against Britain, fighting in the battles of Ticonderoga, Saratoga, Guilford Courthouse, Hobkirk's Hill and James Island. He was both a soldier and an architect, and he designed a fort at West Point, New York, that was the beginning of the U.S. Military Academy.
Along with Kazimierz Pułaski, he is the greatest hero of Polish-Americans. His house in Philadelphia is now part of Independence National Historical Park, near the National Polish-American Museum, and a bridge over Newtown Creek, connecting the highly-Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn with Long Island City, Queens, is named for him. It was built in 1939, and a replacement, which will also be named for him, has now opened. And if you're a Honeymooners fan, that's pronounced "Kosh-CHOOSH-koh," not "Koss-key-USS-koh."
What does he have to do with sports? Not much, unless you want to count the "Army" sports teams at West Point. But there is a National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame, in the Detroit suburb of Orchard Lake Village, Michigan. Members include former Yankee 1st baseman Bill "Moose" Skowron, former Yankee shortstop and broadcaster Tony Kubek, former Yankee reliever Bob Kuzava, pitching brothers (both former Yankees) Phil and Joe Niekro, Stan "the Man" Musial, Carl Yastrzemski, 1955 Brooklyn World Series hero Johnny Podres, 1960 Pittsburgh World Series hero Bill Mazeroski; Heisman Trophy winners Johnny Lujack, Leon Hart and Vic Janowicz, Jets legend Joe Klecko and his former coach Walt Michaels, Super Bowl winning-coaches Hank Stram and Mike Ditka, Pro Football Hall-of-Famers Ditka, Stram, Alex Wojciechowicz (a New Jersey native), Lou Creekmur (ditto), Frank Gatski and Mike Munchak, Super Bowl MVP Mark Rypien; New Jersey basketball heroes Carol Blazejowski, Mike Gminski, Kelly Tripucka (also his father, star quarterback Frank Tripucka) and Bobby Hurley; boxers Stanley Ketchel (more about him a little later) and New Jersey native Bobby Czyz; and New Jersey-born figure skater Elaine Zayak.
October 15, 1818, 200 years ago: Irvin McDowell (no middle name) is born in Columbus, Ohio. The Union General lost both Battles of Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia, in 1861 and 1862. He died in 1885, at age 66.
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October 15, 1859: Josiah Quincy VI is born in Boston. One in a long line of public servants in his family, he, like his grandfather and great-grandfather, served as Mayor of Boston, in his case from 1896 to 1899. This included National League Pennants won by the Boston Beaneaters (forerunners of the Atlanta Braves) in 1897 and 1898. He died in 1919.
October 15, 1872: Edith Bolling is born in Wytheville, Virginia. She was a direct descendant of Rebecca Rolfe, formerly named Pocahontas, and was also related to the families of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Robert E. Lee. Essentially, she was Virginia royalty.
Which meant that her family owned slaves, and she was proud of her Confederate heritage. She married a jeweler named Norman Galt, but her only child lived only a few days, and she couldn't have any more. Her husband died in 1908.
In August 1914, Ellen Wilson, the First Lady, died. Helen Woodrow Bones, President Woodrow Wilson's cousin, became the White House hostess and unofficial First Lady. She introduced the two of them, and soon he proposed to her.
She accompanied him to Philadelphia's Baker Bowl for Game 2 of the 1915 World Series, when he became the 1st sitting President to attend a World Series game. She also accompanied him to the theater -- not a good idea, especially since it was the 50th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln being killed in a theater in Washington -- and the play was so boring that Wilson began drawing her attention away. The Washington Post reviewer made one of the all-time typographical errors: "The President gave himself up for the time being to entering his fiancee." It wasn't caught until after the first edition had hit the streets, at which point the correct phrase, "...entertaining his fiancee," was put in.
They were married on December 18, 1915. In October 1919, as the Wilsons were riding a train around the country so the President could make speech in support of the League of Nations, he suffered a stroke, and she ordered the train back to Washington and the rest of the tour canceled. Shortly after their return, he had a bigger stroke, and was essentially paralyzed on his left side for the rest of his life.
For the rest of his term, until March 4, 1921, she was what we would now call the White House Chief of Staff, deciding who could and could not see him. It has been argued that she was "the real President" or "running the country." If the bigots who voted for Donald Trump and hated Hillary Clinton for being a powerful woman had only known this -- but they might have approved, because, being more Southern that he was, she was a bigger racist than he was.
They bought a house near Dupont Circle after he left the White House, and he died in 1924, his last word being to call out her name. She stayed there until her death on December 28, 1961 -- the very day that the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, Interstate 95's crossing of the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia, at the southern tip of D.C., was to be dedicated. She had been invited, and planned to attend. The dedication went on without her.
October 15, 1875: Charles Timothy O'Leary is born in Chicago. A weak-hitting shortstop, he played for the Detroit Tigers' Pennant-winners of 1907, '08 and '09. He coached under Miller Huggins with both the St. Louis Cardinals and the Yankees, and in 1920 made the mistake of getting in a car driven by Babe Ruth, who had an accident. O'Leary was thrown from the car, but survived.
On September 30, 1934, Charley O'Leary was called out of retirement by the St. Louis Browns, a couple weeks shy of his 59th birthday. In a pinch-hitting appearance, he O'Leary singled and scored, becoming the oldest Major League Baseball player to bat, the oldest to successfully collect a hit, and the oldest to score a run. Until surpassed Satchel Paige in 1965, he was oldest to ever play in the major leagues. He died in 1941, age 65.
He claimed to have been born in 1882, but research in 2010 revealed him to have been born in 1875, making him the oldest player to bat or to get a hit, in each case surpassing the previously-believed records set by Minnie Miñoso -- through no fault of Minnie's, or of the Chicago White Sox owner who set the apparent record up, Bill Veeck.
October 15, 1881: Harmar Denny McKnight organizes a new Allegheny Baseball Club of Pittsburgh in anticipation of a proposed new league, which becomes the American Association. This is the birth of the club known today as the Pittsburgh Pirates, although they cite their 1887 entry into the National League as their "date of birth," and wore centennial patches on their sleeves in the 1987 season.
October 15, 1886: Meyer C. Ellsenstein (I can find no record of what the C stands for) is born in Manhattan. He moved to Newark, and became a Golden Gloves boxer, and then handball champion of New Jersey.
He became a dentist and a lawyer, and "Doc" Ellenstein served on Newark's City Council and, from 1933 to 1940, Mayor. This included the glory years of their minor-league baseball team, the Newark Bears. He lived until 1967. His son, Robert Ellenstein, was a noted actor.
October 15, 1892: Charles "Bumpus" Jones of the Cincinnati Reds‚ making his major league debut‚ pitches a no-hitter against the Pirates‚ winning 7-1 on the final day of the season. Jones‚ who won 16 games in a row in the minors‚ will have a tough time the following season when the pitching distance is increased from 50 feet to 60 feet, 6 inches. He will go 1-4 with a 10.93 ERA, and will never pitch in the majors again.
October 15, 1894: Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the French Army is arrested for spying, giving French military secrets to Germany at their embassy in Paris. He was convicted based on the flimsiest of evidence, largely because he is Jewish. He is sentenced to one of the most notorious prisons in world history, Devil's Island, in French Guiana, on the northern coast of South America. (Since the independence of Belize in 1981, French Guiana has been the only territory in the mainland Americas that remains under the control of a European nation.)
In 1896, evidence was discovered, proving his innocence and another man's guilt, but it took until 1899 for him to be pardoned, and 1906 to be officially exonerated, with his previous rank, decorations, privileges and benefits restored. It was one of the worst examples of anti-Semitism against an individual that the world has ever seen. Dreyfus lived peacefully until 1935. The Republic of France closed Devil's Island in 1953.
October 15, 1897: William Chase Temple, a coal, citrus and lumber magnate based in Pittsburgh‚ who also owns the Pirates and as such donated a trophy that has been contested for the last 4 baseball seasons by the 1st- and 2nd-place finishers in the National League‚ is dissatisfied with this year's contest. He will attend the League meeting, and ask that the Temple Cup be returned to him. The League will investigate the charge that the players agreed beforehand to divide the receipts equally.
In 1894, despite finishing 2nd, the New York Giants had won the Temple Cup by sweeping the NL Champion Baltimore Orioles in 4 straight. In 1895, the 2nd-place Cleveland Spiders took the Champion Orioles in 5. In 1896, the Pennant-winning Orioles got half of their revenge, sweeping Cleveland in 4. In 1897, the 2nd-place Orioles defeated the Champion Boston Beaneaters (forerunners of the Braves) in 5.
These games are not, however, generally considered to have been for the "world championship," and, after the 1899 season, the Orioles were consolidated out of the NL, making possible the brief 2-year presence of a franchise of the same name in the AL, and then a minor-league team of that name from 1903 to 1953, before the St. Louis Browns moved and returned the City of Baltimore and the Orioles name to the major league level.
There was also a Dauvray Cup, donated by actress Helen Dauvray, wife of Giants star John Montgomery Ward. The Giants won it in 1888 and 1889, but the 3-league strife of 1890 led to its end.
And there was the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup, only awarded once, in 1900, when the 2nd-place Pirates thought they were a better team than the Pennant-winning Brooklyn Superbas, and challenged them to a postseason series, with a trophy donated by a Pittsburgh newspaper. The Pirates were wrong, the Dodgers beat them 3 games to 1. Or maybe they were just premature: The Pirates won the next 3 Pennants. That trophy was never again contested.
Today, the Temple Cup and the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup can be seen in the museum section of the Baseball Hall of Fame, while the Dauvray Cup has long since been lost.
I've occasionally wondered if baseball history would have been any different if the game had a prominent trophy such as the Stanley Cup as a prize all those years. Would the White Sox have thrown the 1919 World Series if they knew it meant they would not win the Temple Cup, or the Dauvray Cup?
The current trophy, the Commissioner's Trophy, with its ring of flags, was first awarded in 1967, but it still isn't as identified with its sport as the Stanley Cup, or the Super Bowl trophy, also first awarded that calendar year, and renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy after Lombardi's death in 1970.
The trophy has been won the following number of times: The Yankees 7 times, the Cardinals and A's 4 each; 3 times each to the Reds, Giants and Red Sox *, 2 each to the Pirates, Orioles, Tigers, Mets, Twins, Blue Jays, Marlins, Phillies and Royals, and once each to the Braves, Diamondbacks, Angels, White Sox, Cubs and Astros. The Indians have won 2 World Series, but they won them before the Commissioner’s Trophy was created, so they don't have one.
October 15, 1899: The Cincinnati Reds close out the season with 16-1 and 19-3 home victories over the hapless Cleveland Spiders. John "Bid" McPhee‚ usually considered the best 2nd baseman of the 19th Century‚ plays in both games‚ the last of his career, with all 18 being spent with the Reds.
Cleveland finishes deep in the cellar with 20 wins and 134 losses‚ 84 games out, a "winning" percentage of .149. They also conclude a 36-game road trip (1-35) after setting a mark earlier this year with a 50-game road trip. They lost 24 straight at one point (the worst ever, the worst since being the 1961 Phillies with 23), and 40 out of their last 41. These all remain records for professional baseball futility.
The reason for the Spiders' futility is that they were bought by the owners of the St. Louis team that would soon be renamed the Cardinals. This system, known as "syndicate baseball," was legal at the time. And, as St. Louis natives, the owners brought all of the good Cleveland players, including pitcher Cy Young – but not Louis Sockalexis, the once-powerful but now injured and alcoholic Penobscot tribesman who has been called "the original Cleveland Indian"– to St. Louis. The result is a Cleveland team that may not even have been, by today's standards, Triple-A quality.
The Spiders, the Baltimore Orioles, the Louisville Colonels and the Washington Nationals will be consolidated out of the National League within weeks, though this makes the American League, and its franchises in Cleveland, Washington and, at least for two years, Baltimore, possible.
In their 13-season history, the Spiders were 827-938, a percentage of .4685. Minus that last season, they were 807-804, .5003. They deserved a better fate: They had on their roster, at one time or another, Hall-of-Famers Cy Young, John Clarkson, Buck Ewing, Bobby Wallace, George Davis and Jesse Burkett, plus Cupid Childs, Chief Zimmer, Patsy Tebeau, Lave Cross, Louis Sockalexis, Lou Criger, Kid Carsey and Jack O'Connor, any one of whom would have been an All-Star had there been an All-Star Game in the 1880s or 1890s.
They never won a Pennant, but finished 2nd in the NL in 1892, 1895 and 1896, and were 81-68 (5th out of 12) in 1898 before the syndicate broke them up. They were not a failed franchise: They got sabotaged.
The last surviving 1899 Cleveland Spider appears to have been right fielder Lewis "Sport" McAllister, who lived until 1962. I say, "appears to have been," because no date of death is known for pitcher Frank Bates, who went 3-19 that season, losing his last 14 decisions. The last record anyone has of him is from 1918. He would have been 85 years old when McAllister died, so it is possible he was the last survivor.
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October 15, 1903: George William Haas is born in Montclair, Essex County, New Jersey. A center fielder, "Mule" Haas had a brief callup with the 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates, but did not appear in the World Series for that title-winning team.
He didn't get back up to the major leagues until 1928, with the Philadelphia Athletics, but he made the most of his second chance. In Game 4 of the 1929 World Series, his inside-the-park home run was a key play as the A's erased an 8-0 deficit to the Chicago Cubs, scoring 10 runs. There would not be another inside-the-park home run in the World Series for 86 years. He then hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th to tie Game 5, and the A's clinched the Series later in the inning. He helped them win the Series again in 1930, and another Pennant in 1931.
But with his finances broken by the stock market Crash of 1929, manager and part-owner Connie Mack soon began to sell off his players, and Haas went to the White Sox in 1933. He returned to the A's for his last season, 1938, and retired with a .292 lifetime batting average. He died in 1974.
October 15, 1904: Alonzo Cornell dies at age 72 in Ithaca, New York, where his father Ezra Cornell had founded Cornell University. Alonzo had served as Governor of New York from 1880 to 1882. During that time, the Troy Haymakers, from the Albany area, were moved to Manhattan to become the New York Gothams -- later, the Giants.
October 15, 1905: Angelo Schiavio is born in Bologna, Italy. The forward played his entire career with hometown club Bologna FC, winning Serie A (the Italian league) in 1925, 1929, 1936 and 1937, and the Mitropa Cup (the closest thing there was to a European Cup at the time) in 1932 and 1934.
His goal in extra time gave Italy the 1934 World Cup over Czechoslovakia, on home soil in Rome. He was the last survivor of that team, living until 1990, shortly before Italy hosted the World Cup again. In between, he managed Bologna and Italy.
October 15, 1908, 110 years ago: John Kenneth Gailbraith is born in Iona Station, Ontario. The economist ran the Office of Price Administration during World War II, preventing profiteers from using the war as an excuse to raise prices or rents. After the war, he was a co-founder of Americans for Democratic Action, a group aiming to push for liberal policies without the taint of Communist influence.
President John F. Kennedy, who attended Harvard University at the same time, appointed him U.S. Ambassador to India. His books included The Great Crash, 1929 (1954), The Affluent Society (1958), The Nature of Mass Poverty (1979), and The Economics of Innocent Fraud (2004). He remained a liberal icon until his death in 2006.
He once said, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." He used to be right about that. He is not right about it anymore. The modern conservative is no longer engaged in that search.
It's not because he has found a superior moral justification for selfishness. There isn't one. Rather, the moral conservative has come to the conclusion that he no longer needs a moral justification for selfishness. He believes that selfishness is self-justified, and believes it to be "moral" on that basis.
October 15, 1910: Stanisław Kiecal, a.k.a. Stanley Ketchel, a.k.a. the Michigan Assassin, Middleweight Champion of the World since 1907, is murdered at the Conway, Missouri ranch where he was training. He was 34.
The murderer was a ranch hand named Walter Dipley. He and the ranch's cook, Goldie Smith, were a couple (but not married), and set Ketchel up to be robbed. Dipley was captured the next day. At the trial, Smith said she had no idea Dipley was going to rob Ketchel. They were both convicted of murder anyway, and sentenced to life in prison, but Smith's conviction was overturned, and she served just 17 months. Dipley served 23 years.
The writer John Lardner (son of Ring and brother of Ring Jr.) wrote, "Stanley Ketchel died yesterday, shot by the husband of the woman who was cooking his breakfast"– the implication being that Dipley was a jealous husband who had caught Ketchel having an affair with his wife. It was great writing, but it wasn't true.
Ketchel's manager, a con artist named Wilson Mizner, was told about Ketchel's death, and said, "Tell 'em to start counting ten over him, and he'll get up." Mizner is also believed to be the source of the classic lines, "If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research" and "Be kind to the people you meet on the way up, because you're going to meet the same people on the way down."
Also on this day, the University of Illinois -- or so it now claims -- hosts the 1st Homecoming, the tradition of welcoming back former students and members. Illinois beats the University of Chicago 3-0.
October 15, 1911: In an exhibition game at the Polo Grounds in New York‚ Honus Wagner‚ Walter Johnson‚ Gabby Street and other white major leaguers take on the Lincoln Giants‚ a star-studded black team featuring John Henry "Pop" Lloyd‚ Dick McClelland‚ and Louis Santop. (Being named for Abraham Lincoln was a sign that it was an all-black team, just as Lincoln's name on a school was an indication of a black neighborhood, in the days before Martin Luther King was killed.)
Johnson strikes out 14 to give the white all-stars a 5-3 win. Wagner, Johnson, Lloyd and Santop would all be elected to the Hall of Fame.
October 15, 1912: In Game 7 on a cold day in Boston‚ the Giants catch up with Joe Wood's smoke‚ teeing off for 6 runs on 7 hits before the 32‚694 fans have settled down. Jeff Tesreau wobbles to an 11-4 win, and the Series is tied at 3-all. (Game 2 was called because of darkness while still tied.) The only Boston bright spot is Tris Speaker's unassisted double play in the 9th‚ still the only one ever by an outfielder in Series play.
Before the game‚ Red Sox management foolishly releases a block of tickets set aside for a fan club known as the Royal Rooters to the general public. When the Rooters march on to the field shortly before game time‚ they find "their" seats taken. The Rooters refuse to leave the field, and the club resorts to using mounted policemen to herd them behind the left-field bleacher rail or out of the park.
When the Red Sox win the coin flip after today's game to determine the site for the deciding match‚ the upset Royal Rooters boycott the finale‚ lowering the attendance. Imagine that, the Boston Red Sox management doing something to upset their loyal fans. Good thing that didn't become a trend, right?
October 15, 1917: After the White Sox' Urban "Red" Faber and the Giants' Rube Benton match 3 scoreless innings in Game 6‚ the Sox' Eddie Collins leads off the 4th, and hits a grounder to Henry "Heinie" Zimmerman at 3rd base. Collins takes 2nd when the throw gets past 1st baseman Walter Holke. Joe Jackson's fly to right field is dropped by Dave Robertson‚ and Collins goes to 3rd.
When Oscar "Happy" Felsch hits one back to the pitcher‚ Collins breaks for home. Benton throws to 3rd to catch Collins‚ and catcher Bill Rariden comes up the line. But with Zimmerman in pursuit, Collins keeps running and slides home safely. Zimmerman will be blamed for chasing the runner‚ but he shouldn't be, because nobody was covering home plate, so he didn't have anybody to whom he could throw.
The Giants come back with 2 runs on Buck Herzog's triple in the 4th‚ but Faber, a future Hall-of-Famer, wins his 3rd game of the Series 4-2, and the White Sox take the Series.
This turns out to be the last World Series won by a Chicago team for 88 years – partly due to the fault of at least 6 and possibly 7 White Sox "throwing" the Series 2 years later.
A letter signed by 24 members of the World Series Champion Chicago White Sox and manager Pants Rowland contains complaints concerning not receiving their full winners' share after beating the Giants. The written request, which will be discovered as a tattered document more than 40 years later in boxes stored at the Hall of Fame library, may explain the Black Sox' motivation for fixing the Fall Classic the 2 years later.
The last surviving member of the 1917 White Sox was right fielder Harry "Nemo" Leibold, who lived until 1977.
Also on this day, the French execute a spy in Paris. Her name is Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, she's Dutch, she's been a prostitute and a dancer, pretending to have been from Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and she's been playing both sides of World War I. The world came to know her as Mata Hari. She was 41.
On the 1990s TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the future archaeology legend (played at that age by Sean Patrick Flanery), at the time a volunteer soldier in the Belgian Army, is said to have lost his virginity to Mata Hari. This was probably not a good idea, since not only was she a double agent, but she is also said to have had syphilis. In other words, she might not have lived to an old age anyway.
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October 15, 1920: Mario Gianluigi Puzo is born in Manhattan. In his screenplay for The Godfather Part II, the character of Hyman Suchowsky, a young Jewish mobster played in that part of the film by John Megna, is asked by his new boss, young Vito Corleone, to pick a new name. He chooses Rothstein, in honor of the man behind the Black Sox Scandal, saying: "I've loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919." This name is later shortened to "Hyman Roth."
The older Roth is played by Lee Strasberg, and the character was based on real-life mobster Meyer Lansky, who, unlike Roth, not only outlived the 1959 finale of that film, but was still alive when the film was released in 1974, and phoned Strasberg to compliment him on his performance.
October 15, 1923: The Yankees win Game 6 of the World Series, riding a 1st-inning homer by Babe Ruth and the pitching of "Sad" Sam Jones, to beat the Giants 6-4 at Polo Grounds, and clinch their 1st World Championship.
This was not, however, the 1st title for many of the Yankee players. Some of them, including Ruth and Jones, had won titles with the Boston Red Sox in the 1910s. In fact, of the 25 men on the Yankee roster when they won their 1st World Championship, 12, nearly half, had been Red Sox sold off by Boston owner Harry Frazee.
This was also the beginning of the end for Giant manager John McGraw and his style of baseball: Finally, the Yankees had put together a team that did not have to simply rely on Ruth's home runs to beat McGraw's style of "inside baseball"– what would, today, be called "small ball."
The Giants would win another Pennant the next season, but that would be the last under McGraw’s leadership. In the 85 seasons after that, in New York and San Francisco combined, the Giants took 8 Pennants, still more than most teams have. Up until this moment, the Giants had won 11 Pennants and 3 World Championships, either through the World Series, pre-1900 postseason series, or the title of the only league then playing; the Dodgers, 6 and, by the means available to them to win a "world championship" at the time, 3, but none since 1900; the Yankees, 3 and none.
From the Yankees' 3rd Pennant in September 1923 until the end of the Giants' and Dodgers' last season in New York, September 1957, the count was: Yankees, 21 and 17; Giants, 7 and 2; and Dodgers, 7 and 1. (Since 1957, the Giants have since added 3 more Pennants, and won the World Series each time; the Dodgers have added 9 Pennants and 5 World Series, but none of either since 1988 -- although they are in this year's National League Championship Series.)
The last surviving member of the 1923 Yankees was center fielder Ladislaw Waldemar Wittkowski, a.k.a. Lawton Walter Witt, a.k.a. Whitey Witt, who lived until 1988.
October 15, 1924: Leonard Rosenson is born in Chicago, and grows up on a Lake Michigan resort his family owned in South Haven, Michigan. When he went into acting, to avoid anti-Semitism, he took the name Mark Lenard.
He is best known for playing Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan, father of Mr. Spock, in the Star Trek franchise. He did so in the Original Series episode "Journey to Babel," the Animated Series episode "Yesteryear," in 3 films (The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country), and in 2 Next Generation episodes, "Sarek" and "Unification."
Oddly, he was less than 7 years older than Spock's portrayer, Leonard Nimoy, but it was established that Vulcans lived longer than humans. "Journey to Babel" established that Sarek was 102 years old. Spock is later established as having been 37 at the time. According to "Unification," Sarek lived to be 204; according to Star Trek Beyond (which is not canon, but did take Nimoy's real-life death into account), Spock had lived for 162 years.
He was also the 1st actor to portray a Romulan, as the Bird of Prey captain in "Balance of Terror"; and the 1st to portray a ridged Klingon, as the battlecruiser captain at the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture -- which also made him the 1st person ever to publicly speak the Klingon language. He remains the only actor ever to play all 3 of the franchise's main "alien" races: Vulcan, Klingon and Romulan; and was the 1st actor to play any 3 non-human species.
Lenard also appeared on Mission: Impossible while Nimoy was a castmember, played Peter Ingalls (brother of Charles Ingalls, played by Michael Landon) on Little House on the Prairie, and returned to science fiction in the 1979 version of Buck Rogers. One of his last roles was in the touring play The Boys In Autumn, playing a middle-aged, bitter Huckleberry Finn, with Walter Koenig (Chekov in Star Trek) as the older Tom Sawyer. Lenard died in 1996.
October 15, 1925: A steady downpour yesterday and today has left the field at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh a muddy mess, as Game 7 of the World Series is played in the rainiest conditions in Series history. The weather forecast suggested rain for the next 3 days for both cities involved, Pittsburgh and Washington, making the moving of Game 7 to Washington a bad idea, and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was anxious to get it over with.
While I've never seen film of this game -- I don’t even know if any survives, although YouTube has footage from earlier in the Series -- it would have been just plain wrong to play if the rain were as bad as what Philadelphia and Tampa Bay faced when Game 5 of the 2008 Series was suspended. There was a 4-day delay due to rain in 1911, and there were 3-day delays in 1962 and 1975. It could have been done again.
It's a short day for Pirate starter Vic Aldridge: 3 walks and 2 hits‚ and he's out of there with just 1 out in the 1st. Walter Johnson takes a 4-0 lead to the mound. In what becomes known as "Johnson's Last Stand," the Bucs clobber the 38-year-old Big Train for 15 hits‚ good for 24 total bases. Max Carey's 4-for-5 gives him a Series-high .458.
The Senators make the most of 7 hits‚ scoring 7 runs‚ including shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh's home run‚ the 12th homer of the Series by both teams combined‚ then a Series record, despite Forbes Field and Washington's Griffith Stadium both having some of the most distant fences in the game. Johnson would have fared better but for 2 more errors by Peckinpaugh‚ his 7th and 8th‚ still the Series record for any position. The Senators made only 1 other error in the 7 games.
Ray Kremer picks up his 2nd win with a 4-inning relief effort‚ as the Pirates win 9-7. This is the Pirates' 1st World Championship in 16 years, and only one player remains from that 1909 title with Honus Wagner: Babe Adams, who had pitched and won 3 games in '09, and was riding out the string in '25. No Washington team has been as close to a World Series win since.
The last surviving member of the 1925 Pirates was shortstop Glenn Wright, who lived until 1984.
Also on this day, Theodore N. Lerner (I can't find a reference to what the N stands for) is born in Washington, D.C. The largest real-estate developer in the D.C. area, he has owned the Washington Nationals since 2006.
October 15, 1927: The Olympia Stadium opens in Detroit. The NHL's Detroit Red Wings played their 1st game there on November 15, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-0. (The Pirates would go out of business in 1931.)
From the outside, it looked more like a big brick movie theater, complete with the Art Deco marquee out front. But "The Old Red Barn" was home to the Red Wings from 1927 to 1979, during which time they won the Stanley Cup in 1936, '37, '43, '50, '52, '54 and '55.
The Olympia was also home to the Detroit Pistons from 1957 to 1961, the Detroit Falcons in the NBA's inaugural season of 1946-47, and the site of some great prizefights, including Jake LaMotta's 1942 win over Sugar Ray Robinson – the only fight Robinson would lose in his career until 1952, and the only one of the 6 fights he had with LaMotta that LaMotta won.
Elvis Presley did 2 shows there early in his career, an afternoon and an evening show on March 31, 1957. He returned to the Olympia on September 11, 1970; April 6, 1972; September 29 and October 4, 1974; and April 22, 1977. The Beatles played there on September 6, 1964 and August 13, 1966.
It was the neighborhood, not the building, that was falling apart: Lincoln Cavalieri, its general manager in its last years, once said, "If an atom bomb landed, I'd want to be in Olympia." It was not a nuclear attack, but an ordinary demolition crew, that took it down in 1987. The Olympia Armory, home of the Michigan National Guard, is now on the site. 5920 Grand River Avenue, corner of McGraw Street, on the Northwest Side. Number 21 bus.
Also on this day, Notre Dame plays Navy for the 1st time, at Municipal Stadium in Baltimore. Notre Dame wins, 19-6. It is one of the most lopsided rivalries in college football: Notre Dame leads 76-13-1. Municipal Stadium, which opened in 1922, was converted into Memorial Stadium in 1953-54.
Also on this day, William Rodman Henry is born in Alice, Texas. A pitcher, Bill Henry debuted with the 1952 Red Sox, was an All-Star with the 1960 Cincinnati Reds, and was on the Reds' 1961 Pennant-winner. He closed his career back in South Texas with the Houston Astros in 1969, with a record of 46-50, and died in 2014, at the age of 86.
October 15, 1928, 90 years ago: After just one season away from the club for which he'd played his entire big-league career, Walter Johnson signs a 3-year contract to manage the Senators‚ owner Clark Griffith having secured his release from the 2nd year of his contract to manage the minor-league Newark Bears. Tris Speaker, newly retired as a player, will take over as Newark's manager.
Despite being arguably the greatest pitcher and the greatest center fielder the game has yet seen, neither Johnson nor Speaker would lead the Bears to a Pennant. In fact, Johnson never won a Pennant as a manager, and Speaker never did except in 1920, when he had himself in his prime as a player.
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October 15, 1931: Boyd Gail Harris is born in Abigdon, in the Virginia Panhandle. I don't know why he dropped his first name and went with the feminine-sounding "Gail Harris," but he was a 1st baseman for the New York Giants from 1955 to 1957, and for the Detroit Tigers from 1958 to 1960. He died in 2012.
His son, Mark Harris, played in the minor leagues, and is now the hitting instructor for the Harrisburg Senators, the Double-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. He should not be confused with the Mark Harris who wrote the Henry Wiggen series of baseball novels.
October 15, 1933: The Philadelphia Eagles play their 1st game in the NFL. It doesn't go so well: They lose to the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, 56-0. The birth of the Eagles was made possible by Pennsylvania finally dropping its law banning sporting events on Sunday. Due to their proximity, Eagles vs. Giants will, eventually, become one of the NFL's best rivalries.
October 15, 1935: The St. Louis Eagles fold, after just 1 season. Before that, they had been the Ottawa Senators. The Great Depression had doomed both versions of the team.
Also on this day, Willie Eldon O'Ree (not "William") is born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He played 44 games for the Boston Bruins between 1958 and 1961, but was still playing at the hockey equivalent of Triple-A ball until he was 43, winning 2 scoring titles in the Western Hockey League.
It was hard to break into a team in the era of the "Original Six," when just 6 teams meant that there were only 120 spots open at the big-league level. It was harder still for O’Ree, because he was nearly blind in one eye. And on top of that, he faced discrimination because he was the 1st black player in the NHL. (At the time, the NHL was dominated by Canadians, and most black Canadians at the time were descended from runaway slaves, many of them marrying "First Nations" citizens -- what Canada calls American Indians.)
In his 45 games, he scored 4 goals and had 10 assists. He also had 26 penalty minutes. He said, "Race never started a fight. I never fought because I had to. I fought because I wanted to." Sounds like a Boston Bruin to me!
After he last played for the Bruins in 1961, not until the expansion season of 1974-75 would there be another black player in the NHL, Mike Marson of the hopeless 1st-year Washington Capitals. After these African-Canadians, the first African-American to play in the NHL was Val James, a left wing from Ocala, Florida, who played 7 games for the Buffalo Sabres in 1982 and 4 more for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1988, but spent most of his career in the minors.
O'Ree would go on to play in the Western Hockey League, for the Los Angeles Blades and the San Diego Gulls, scoring 328 goals in that league. He first played professionally for the Fredericton Junior Capitals of the New Brunswick Junior Hockey League in 1951, at age 15; and last for the San Diego Hawks of the Pacific Hockey League in 1979, at age 43.
His Number 24 was retired by the Gulls (now defunct, but the banner still hangs at the San Diego Sports Arena), and he has been elected to the San Diego Hall of Champions, the city's equivalent of a municipal sports hall of fame.
His hometown of Fredericton named its new arena Willie O'Ree Place, and his country has named him an Officer of the Order of Canada for his youth hockey work. His home Province has awarded him the Order of New Brunswick. The NHL gave him the 2000 Lester Patrick Award, for service to hockey in the U.S.
Also on this day, Bobby Joe Morrow is born in the Rio Grande town of Harlingen, Texas, and grows up in nearby San Benito. He won the 100 meters and 200 meters, and was part of the U.S. team in the 4x100-meter relay, winning 3 Gold Medals at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. He is still alive.
Also on this day, Barry McGuire (no middle name) is born in Oklahoma City, and grows up in California. The lead singer of the New Christy Minstrels, who had a hit with "Green, Green," in 1965 he took Phil Sloan's gloom & doom song "Eve of Destruction" to Number 1, despite most radio stations banning it.
He doesn't have much to do with sports, but there are times when I feel like sports is on the eve of destruction, and I don't mind to tell you, over and over and over again, my friend.
October 15, 1937: Rather than accept any trade offers‚ the Yankees release Tony Lazzeri, and allow him to make his own deal. That’s right: In the heart of the reserve clause era, a future Hall-of-Famer, not yet 34 years old, has been allowed to become a free agent. "Poosh-em-Up Tony" later signs as a player-coach with the Chicago Cubs, and retires as a player after the 1939 season.
October 15, 1938, 80 years ago: Ernest Green (no middle name) is born in Columbus, Georgia. A running back, Ernie Green played at the University of Louisville, and was named to their Ring of Honor. A 2-time Pro Bowler, he is 1 of 31 surviving members of the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns.
October 15, 1939: New York Municipal Airport is dedicated in Astoria, Queens. It was built because Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia demanded it, having once flown TWA with a ticket that said, "New York," and instead landing at Newark Airport. In 1953, it would be renamed for the late Mayor.
LaGuardia Airport is the source of the infamous planes that can be seen and heard at Mets home games and during the U.S. Open tennis tournament, just 2 miles across Flushing Bay. The takeoffs are much more of a problem than the landings, which are on a different flight path. Indeed, in my opinion, the plane noise is the one thing about Citi Field that is not an improvement over Shea Stadium: I think that's actually gotten worse.
Also on this day, for the 1st time in NFL history, a play from scrimmage goes 99 yards, from the offensive team's 1-yard line all the way down the field for a touchdown. Frank Filchock of the Washington Redskins throws to Andy Farkas, who takes the ball into the end zone for a touchdown against the Pittsburgh Pirates. (They would change their name to the Pittsburgh Steelers the next year.) The Redskins won, 44-14 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.
Also on this day, Gordon Gund (no middle name) is born in Cleveland. He played hockey at Harvard University and served in the U.S. Navy, and, like his father George Gund II, went into big business. But he was stricken with retinitis pigmentosa, and gradually went blind. He founded a foundation to fight the disease.
In spite of his blindness, he helped his brother George Gund III move the California Golden Seals hockey team to become the Cleveland Barons in 1976. But the team was losing money badly due to a bad lease at the Richfield Coliseum. After a failed bid to buy the Coliseum, the Gunds were allowed to purchase the financially failing Minnesota North Stars, and merge the 2 teams, thus folding the Barons and keeping the Stars afloat.
But the Stars still didn't make money. The Gunds jwanted to move them, and try the Bay Area again, but the NHL wouldn't allow it. The League did allow them to sell the Stars and take an expansion team, which became the San Jose Sharks, a highly profitable team. Gordon sold his share in 1992, while George retains a small share.
By 1983, the brothers had finally bought the Coliseum, and also bought the Cleveland Cavaliers. In 1994, they built the Gund Arena, across the street from the Indians' new ballpark. In 2005, they sold the team and the arena to Dan Gilbert, who renamed the building after his company: Quicken Loans Arena.
Gordon Gund lives in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey. Despite his blindness and his age (he is now 77), he has received acclaim as a sculptor, carving animals in wood and having them recast in bronze.
Also on this day, Stanley Mack Morrison is born outside Los Angeles in Lynnwood, California. A member of the University of California's National Championship basketball team in 1959, Stan Morrison later coached at the University of the Pacific, the University of Southern California and San Jose State. He led Pacific to the 1979 Pacific Coast Athletic Association (now the Big West Conference) title, led USC to the 1985 Pacific-10 regular season title, and won the PCAA/Big West Tournament with Pacific in 1979 and San Jose State in 1996.
He also served as the athletic director of the University of California's campuses in Santa Barbara and Riverside, retiring in 2011. He is still alive.
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October 15, 1943, 75 years ago: John Kerr (no middle name) is born in Glasgow, Scotland. A midfielder, he came to America, and played for several soccer teams, helping the New York Cosmos win their 1st North American Soccer League title in 1972. He played 10 games for the Canadian national team.
He went into coaching, mostly in Washington, D.C. and Virginia, and died in 2011. His son, also named John Kerr, played for the U.S. team, and is now the head coach at Duke University, his alma mater.
Also on this day, Carole Penny Marshall is born in The Bronx. There was already a "Carol Marshall" and a "Carole Marshall" registered with the Screen Actors Guild, thus making those names unavailable. And she and her brother, the late producer Garry Marshall, chose not to use the family name "Masciarelli," due to spelling issues and prejudice against Italians. So she became Penny Marshall. Her sister, also a producer, uses her married name: Ronny Harlin.
Penny became famous playing Myrna, the heavily-accented secretary of sports columnist Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple. Her boyfriend, and then husband, Sheldon, was played by her real-life husband at the time, Rob Reiner, who played Mike Stivic on All In the Family. Penny and Rob can be seen in the stands at Dodger Stadium on the official 1977 World Series highlight film. Their daughter is actress Tracy Reiner.
Penny became even more famous for playing Laverne DeFazio on
Laverne & Shirley. Later, she became a director, and directed Big, Awakenings, and one of the most beloved baseball movies ever, A League of Their Own. She put Garry and Tracy in the film.
Also on this day, John Franklin Street is born outside Philadelphia in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He served on Philadelphia's City Council from 1980 to 1998, including as its President from 1992 to 1998, and was praised for his work with Mayor Ed Rendell.
When Rendell reached the 2-term limit in 1999, Street ran to succeed him. Local CEO Sam Katz was the Republican nominee, and the race was very nasty, with 94 percent of black voters supporting Street, and 80 percent of white voters, plus both major newspapers, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, supporting Katz. Street won by 7,200 votes, and this remains the closest any Republican has come to being elected Mayor of Philadelphia since 1947.
There was a rematch in 2003. Katz added corruption charges to his tax-cutting platform, since, while not Street himself, several of his aides, including his brother, City Councilman Milton Street, had been investigated. It looked like Katz could win, and then in October, a bug was found in the Mayor's office. The FBI announced that they had planted it. It was going to kill Street's re-election bid.
Until he turned it around, saying that the FBI, under the control of the Republican President George W. Bush was investigating a black Mayor. This enraged both black voters and white liberals, already angry at Bush for the Iraq War, and Street won 58 percent of the vote.
Street's 2nd term was more contentious than his 1st, and when he left office in 2008, he was tremendously unpopular. He later taught at Temple University and served as Chairman of the Philadelphia Housing Authority. He is still alive.
October 15, 1945: James Alvin Palmer is born in Manhattan, and grows up in Scottsdale, Arizona. Jim Palmer helped the Baltimore Orioles win the World Series in 1966, 1970 and 1983, and when I say “helped” I don’t just mean he pitched very well in the regular season: He is the only pitcher to win World Series games in 3 different decades. He is in the Hall of Fame, and the Orioles have retired his Number 22.
At Scottsdale High School, he was 2 years ahead of future Vice President Dan Quayle, who was a star on their golf team.
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October 15, 1946: The World Series goes to a deciding Game 7 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Fans of the Boston Red Sox are confident: After all, no Boston team has ever lost a World Series. The Braves won one in 1914; the Red Sox won them in 1903, 1912, 1915, 1916 and 1918. Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals are also confident: They have Game 7 at home.
In the top of the 8th inning, Sox center fielder Dom DiMaggio, brother of Joe, ties the game 3-3 with a 2-run double, but pulls his hamstring on the play, and has to be replaced by Leon Culberson. In the bottom of the 8th, Enos Slaughter is on 1st for the Cards, and Harry Walker is up.
Slaughter takes off for 2nd on the hit-and-run. "Harry the Hat" drives the ball to center. Slaughter sees Culberson bobble the ball, and thinks he can score. He does.
It became known as "the Mad Dash" or "Slaughter's Sprint," and in the telling of the legend, Slaughter is usually said to have scored from 1st on a single. Not really: Walker did make it to 2nd and was credited with a double. But it is the go-ahead run, and the Cardinals win, 4-3.
For the Cardinals, led by Slaughter and the sensational Stan Musial, it is their 6th World Championship, their 3rd in 4 tries in the last 5 seasons. For the Red Sox, it is not only their 1st-ever World Series defeat, after not getting that far for 28 years, and the 1st-ever World Series loss for any Boston team, but it is the beginning of a stretch of 4 seasons in which they will end up bitterly disappointed 3 times.
Billed as the duel between the 2 best hitters in baseball‚ the Series sees Musial go 6-for-27 (.222) and Boston's Ted Williams 5-for-25 (.200 -- combined, the Splendid Splinter and Stan the Man batted .212). This will be the only Series of Williams' career, and the only one the Red Sox will play in a 49-year stretch from 1918 to 1967.
The Cardinals, at first, will fare little better, as they won’t play in another Series for 18 years. Musial, who spent the '45 season in the Navy, and that was the only season from '42 to '46 when the Cards didn't win at least the Pennant, had won a Pennant in each of his 1st 4 full seasons, he will play another 17 seasons without winning one, despite close calls in '47, '48 and '49 and 2nd-place finishes in '56 and his final season of '63.
Harry Brecheen wins 3 games for the Cardinals‚ the 1st lefthander ever to accomplish this. It is a feat that has been matched only by Mickey Lolich in 1968 and Randy Johnson in 2001. Brecheen won Games 6 and 7‚ a feat matched only by the Big Unit.
In the telling of the legend of the Mad Dash, Culberson threw the ball to the cutoff man, shortstop Johnny Pesky, who "hesitated" or "held the ball," and threw home too late. In 1986, in an interview on the 40th Anniversary -- and right before Bill Buckner committed an even more shocking World Series defensive miscue for the Sox -- Pesky said, "Even now, people look at me like I'm a piece of shit."
When the Sox finally won the Series again in 2004, all the old goats and ghosts began to be forgiven, and Pesky, a longtime player, coach, broadcaster and scout with the team, became known as "Mr. Red Sox." He would receive standing ovations at Fenway Park, the last on the ballpark's Centennial in 2012, as he died 4 months later, at the age of 93.
The truth is, he never should have been blamed in the first place.
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Johnny Pesky for the Boston Red Sox Losing the 1946 World Series
5. Dom DiMaggio's Injury. "The Little Professor" wasn't as good a center fielder as his brother Joe -- no one was, ever -- but he was better than just about anyone else in his generation. He might have been able to field the ball cleanly, unlike...
4. Leon Culberson. He not only bobbled the ball, but his throw to Pesky was a bit off. If Pesky had hesitated, that may have been the reason.
Culberson was a decent player, playing 6 seasons in the major leagues, and batting .266. He hit for the cycle in a game in his rookie season, 1943. Unfortunately, this is all he's remembered for -- if that. (After all, Pesky is the one who tends to get the blame, or else this sequence wouldn't be necessary.)
3. The Boston Bats. The Sox scored a grand total of 20 runs in the 7 games. They got shut out on 4 hits in Game 2. As I said, Ted Williams, the so-called "greatest hitter that ever lived," went 5-for-25 (.200) in his only postseason appearance. Roy Partee went 1-for-10 (.100). Tom McBride went 2-for-12 (.167). Pinky Higgins went 5-for-24 (.208). Culberson went 2-for-9 (.222).
And if you're looking to blame Pesky for something, look not at his fielding, but at his batting: 7-for-30 (.233). If any one of those guys had had a good Series at the plate, the result might have been different.
2. Enos Slaughter. He would have scored anyway. I've seen the film of the play many times. Culberson gets the ball to Pesky, and I simply cannot see that with which Pesky has been accused for the last 72 years: "Hesitating" or "holding the ball." And I don't think it would have mattered, as Slaughter scored by plenty.
In contrast, most of the Red Sox had never been in a Series before. And most of them would never get into another. The Sox fell off in 1947, lost a 1-game Playoff for the Pennant to the Cleveland Indians in 1948, went into the last 2 games of the 1949 season needing to win just 1 against the Yankees and lost them both, and hung close for most of 1950 and 1951 but didn't win either time.
VERDICT: Not Guilty.
Johnny Pesky was a .307 lifetime hitter, a good shortstop, and a good guy. The Red Sox rightfully retired his Number 6, and elected him to their team Hall of Fame. If he were ever to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, New York, I wouldn't mind at all.
He deserves better than to be remembered for a mistake, especially when it's not completely clear that he made a mistake -- and when, if he made a mistake, it was hardly all his fault, and not at all the biggest reason his team lost that World Series.
With the deaths in the past year of Boston's Bobby Doerr and St. Louis' Red Schiendienst, all the players from this World Series have gone to the great ballpark in the sky.
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October 15, 1947: Jimmy Husband (I don't have a full name for him) is born in Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, England. The striker helped Everton win the 1966 FA Cup and the 1970 Football League title. He later played in America for the Memphis Rogues, the Cleveland Force and the Oklahoma City Slickers. He is still alive.
In the 1997 film version of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, some kids in 1972 Maidenhead, Berkshire are shown trading stickers, the era's English equivalent of baseball cards. One of them receives one of Husband, and says, "Jimmy Husband! Brilliant!" Clearly, he was then thought of as a very good player.
But the DVD I got of the movie, clearly meant for the Canadian market -- it also carries the French title of Carton Jaune, or "Yellow Card" -- messed up the closed-captioning, so often necessary for movies made in England, and printed, "Jimmy Osmond!" on the screen. Now, in 1972, Jimmy Osmond, then just 9 years old, did have a hit song titled "Long Haired Lover from Liverpool," and Jimmy Husband's Everton play in Liverpool. But this was a dumb mistake.
October 15, 1949: For the 1st time, Gordon Smith, Bobby Johnstone, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Willie Ormond start as a forward line for Hibernian Football Club of Edinburgh, Scotland. They become known as The Famous Five. "Hibs" defeat Dumfries club Queen of the South 2-0.
Smith had been playing for Hibs since 1941. Johnstone, Reilly and Ormond had joined in 1946, and the four of them had helped Hibs win the Scottish league title in 1948. Turnbull joined the next season, and, together, they won the league in 1951 and 1952, just missing the title in 1950 and 1953.
Johnson left right before the 1955-56 season, and helped Manchester City in England's FA Cup that season, the only real success any of them had with any other club. That same season, as something of a "last stand," the remaining four played for Hibs in the 1st European Cup, and reached the Semifinals, before losing to French club Stade Reims.
Reilly left in 1958, Smith and Turnbull in 1959, and Ormond in 1961. Turnbull managed Hibs from 1971 to 1980. Ormond managed perhaps the best Scotland national side ever, into the 1974 World Cup. He managed Hibs' Edinburgh arch-rivals, Heart of Midlothian, a.k.a. "Hearts," before replacing Turnbull as a caretaker manager in 1980.
Ormond died in 1984. The others were still alive and on hand when Hibs opened the rebuilt north stand at their Easter Road stadium in 1995, renamed the Famous Five Stand. Reilly was the last survivor of the Famous Five, living until 2013.
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October 15, 1951: The pilot episode of I Love Lucy airs on CBS. The title explains the plot: "The Girls Want to Go to a Nightclub." Fred (William Frawley) and Ethel Mertz (Vivian Vance) are celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary, and Lucy (Lucille Ball) and Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) want to do something nice for, and with, them. Lucy and Ethel, as the title suggests, want to go to a nightclub, but Ricky and Fred want to go to a fight card at Madison Square Garden.
They come to an agreement. A stupid agreement. They set each other up with dates. Except all of Lucy's old boyfriends are married or otherwise busy, and Ricky, upon Lucy's claim that it was an American tradition, had long ago burned his "little black book." They end up calling the same woman, an old friend who "has connections to all the women in town." Since Ricky called her first, this friend tells Lucy, and so the couples are set up with... each other. Except Lucy and Ethel are in disguise. And Ricky and Fred don't recognize them at first. But Lucy gives them away, and she and Ethel get dragged to The Garden.
Not yet 3 years old, Tony Thomas must have seen this episode (and others) at some point, and, when he became a TV producer like his father Danny and his sister Marlo, and based half the episodes of Three's Company on it (and those others).
October 15, 1955: The Honeymooners airs the episode "The Golfer.""Hello, ball!" This collectible plate suggests what Ralph's golf outfit might have looked like in color. In the words of the immortal Robin Williams, "The manly sport of golf, where you can dress like a pimp, and no one will care! Where even a blind gay man would go, 'Oh, dear Christ! Those are loud! This is not Carnival!"
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October 15, 1962: After being postponed by 3 days of rain -- and with helicopters hovering over the Candlestick Park field to help dry it out -- Game 6 of the World Series is finally played. Billy Pierce allows a Roger Maris home run, but otherwise outpitches Whitey Ford, and the San Francisco Giants beat the Yankees 5-2.
No team has won 2 straight games in this Series, the 1st time it has ever happened: The Yankees have won all the odd-numbered games, while the Giants have won all the even-numbered games. Game 7 is an odd-numbered game.
October 15, 1963: A year and change after a North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur resulted in a 4-4 draw at Spurs' home, White Hart Lane, a crowd of 67,857 plows into Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, and if they've come to see goals, they are not disappointed. Spurs take a 2-0 lead after just 20 minutes, and lead 4-2 with 5 minutes to play, with George Eastham scoring 2 for Arsenal, including a penalty.
Then, with 5 minutes left, Joe Baker scores. And, in stoppage time, a supposedly injured but carrying-on Geoff Strong scores off a corner to forge yet another 4-4 draw that electrifies Islington.
Spurs' Bobby Smith complains that his goalkeeper, Bill Brown, had been interfered with, and that the equaliser should be waved off. The referee is having none of it. That ref is Dennis Howell, who would later be elected to Parliament and serve as Britain's Minister of Sport. Clearly, Prime Minister Harold Wilson (serving 1964 to 1970 and again 1974 to 1976) was not a Tottenham fan. (I looked it up: He was from Huddersfield, in Yorkshire.)
Also on this day, Stanley Purl Menzo is born in Paramaribo, the capital of Surniam, then a colony of the Netherlands in South America, but now an independent nation.
Several black soccer players from Surinam have gone to the Netherlands, combining Dutch "total football" with South American "sambafoot" to create a new version of "the beautiful game." Stanley Menzo was a goalkeeper, so he didn't do a lot of creating, but he did help Amsterdam club Ajax win the Eredivisie (the national league) in 1985, 1987, 1993 and 1996; the KNVB Beker (national cup) in 1986, 1987 (making a "Double"), 1993 (another Double) and 1996; the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1987, and the UEFA Cup in 1992.
He played for the Netherlands team at the 1990 World Cup and Euro 92. He later helped Lierse with Belgium's league in 1997 and its cup in 1999. He recently managed of Ajax Cape Town in South Africa, a club named for Dutch giants Ajax Amsterdam.
October 15, 1964: Game 7 of the World Series at Sportsman's Park – or, as Cardinals owner and Anheuser-Busch beer baron August Anheuser Busch Jr., a.k.a. "Gussie" Busch, has renamed it, Busch Stadium. The Cardinals start Bob Gibson, loser of Game 2 but winner of Game 5, on 2 days' rest. The Yankees start rookie Mel Stottlemyre, who had defeated Gibson in Game 2.
Lou Brock's 5th-inning home run triggers a 3-run frame and a 6-0 lead for Gibson. Mickey Mantle‚ Clete Boyer‚ and Phil Linz homer for New York – for Mantle, the record 18th and final Series homer of his career – and the Yanks close to within 7-5 in the 9th. But it's not enough, as an exhausted Gibson finds enough gas in his tank to finish the job, and the Cards are the World Champions.
Both Boyers‚ Ken for the Cards and Clete for the Yankees‚ homer in their last Series appearance. While they had homered in back-to-back games, Clete in Game 3 and Ken a grand slam in Game 4, this remains the only time in Series history that 2 brothers have both homered in the same game.
Although the Yankees (27) and the Cardinals (11) have each won more World Series than any other team in their respective Leagues, they have never met in another, despite both making the Playoffs in 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012 and 2015. (Both teams came close to making the Playoffs in 1974, the Cards just missed in 1981, and the Yanks just missed in 1985.)
For each manager, it is his last game at the helm. Johnny Keane had nearly been fired by Cardinal management in mid-season, and their come-from-behind run to top the Philadelphia Phillies had saved his job. But he had had enough, and he resigns.
Yogi Berra, after helping the Yankees to 14 World Series as a player and now 1 as their manager, also coming from behind, to top the Chicago White Sox, thinks he's done a good job, and expects to be offered a new contract. Instead, he gets fired, and Yankee management hires… Johnny Keane.
This will turn out to be a massive mistake. While the Cardinals will hire their former star 2nd baseman Red Schoendienst, who will lead them to the 1967 World Championship and the 1968 Pennant, Keane, already in ill health, will be a terrible fit for the Yankees, getting fired early in 1966, and he dies in 1967.
Del Webb and Dan Topping, who had owned the Yankees since 1945, had just sold the Yankees to CBS – yes, the broadcast network – and had cared little for keeping the farm system stocked. As a result, there was very little talent left to call up to the majors when the Yanks' current stars got hurt or old, and it seemed like they all got hurt or old at once.
In the 44 seasons from 1921 to 1964, the Yanks won 29 Pennants and 20 World Series, but fell to 6th place in 1965, 10th and last in '66. Despite a 2nd-place finish in '70, they were well behind the World Series-winning Orioles. They didn't get into a race where they were still in it in August until '72, to the last weekend still in the race until '74 (by which time George Steinbrenner had bought the team from CBS), to the postseason until '76 and the World Championship until '77.
In 2008, Buster Olney published The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, about the one that began in 1996, and ended at what's now called Chase Field in Phoenix on November 4, 2001. But no baseball dynasty, indeed no sports dynasty, was as, well, dynastic as the 1949-64 Yankees. Peter Golenbock's Dynasty: The New York Yankees 1949-64 tells of how it was built, and how it began to fall apart; David Halberstam's October 1964 tells of how both the Yankees and the Cardinals got to this Game 7, and what happened thereafter; both books put the teams in the context of their times, at home and abroad.
There are 19 surviving players from the 1964 Cardinals, 54 years later: Gibson, Brock, catchers Tim McCarver and future Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Uecker, shortstops Dick Groat and Dal Maxvill, 2nd baseman Julian Javier, 1st baseman (and future Yankee broadcaster and NL President) Bill White, infielder Jerry Buchek; outfielders Mike Shannon, Carl Warwick, Bob Skinner and Charlie James; and pitchers Roger Craig, Curt Simmons, Bob Humphreys, Gordie Richardson, Ray Washburn and Ron Taylor.
There are 13 surviving players from the 1964 Yankees: Pitchers Stottlemyre, Whitey Ford, Ralph Terry, Rollie Sheldon, Jim Bouton, Al Downing and Pedro Ramos; shortstops Linz and Tony Kubek, 2nd basemen Bobby Richardson and Pedro Gonzalez, outfielder Hector Lopez and 1st baseman Joe Pepitone. (In each case, this only counts players who were on the World Series rosters.)
None of them had any inkling that this was anything other than the last day of a great season, that it was The Last Day of the Yankee Dynasty.
*
October 15, 1966: The Boston Celtics open the NBA season by defeating the San Francisco Warriors, 121-113 at the Boston Garden. Rick Barry scores 41 points for the Warriors, but, as usual, the Celtics have a more balanced team, led by 29 points from Sam Jones.
Bill Russell scores only 8 points, but he had other things on his mind. Namely, he was now a player-coach, the 1st black coach in NBA history, and, unless you count Fritz Polland of the 1st NFL Champions, the 1920 Akron Pros (and the NFL was hardly a major league at that point), the 1st black coach in the history of North American major league sports. That this happens on the birthday of Willie O'Ree, and in the building he also called home with the Bruins, is interesting, but not especially relevant to Russell's story.
The Celtics would fall to the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference Finals this season, but Russell would lead them to the NBA title in 1968 and 1969 -- making him the most recent player-coach to lead a team to a World Championship.
Alas, while Bill Russell is still one of the Top 10 players in NBA history, he didn't do so well as a coach when he didn't have Bill Russell as a player: With himself playing, his coaching record is 162-83, for a winning percentage of .661; otherwise, with the 1974-77 Seattle SuperSonics and the 1987-88 Sacramento Kings, he's 100-122, .450; overall, 341-290, for a winning percentage of .540.
Also on this day, the Chicago Bulls make their NBA debut. Guy Rodgers scores 36 points, and they beat the St. Louis Hawks, 104-97 at the Kiel Auditorium. For most of their history, the Bulls will be at least good, and, at times, historically good.
Also on this day, Jorge Francisco Campos Navarrete is born in Acapulco, Mexico. The soccer player started as a striker with Mexico City club UNAM, a.k.a. Pumas, winning his national league in 1991. But he switched to being a goalkeeper, and won the league with Mexico City club Cruz Azul (Blue Cross) in 1997.
In 1998, Jorge Campos moved to the Chicago Fire, and helped them win the American version of The Double: The MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup. He helped Mexico win the CONCACAF Gold Cup in 1993 and 1996, and the Confederations Cup in 1999. He played in the World Cup in 1994, 1998 and 2002, and closed his career with Puebla in 2004. He now owns a restaurant, and commentates for TV Azteca.
October 15, 1967: The ABA's Denver Rockets play their 1st game, beating the Anaheim Amigos 110-105 at the Denver Auditorium. They will rename themselves after Denver's 1st NBA team, becoming the Denver Nuggets in 1974, and join the NBA in 1976.
October 15, 1968, 50 years ago: Didier Deschamps is born in Bayonne. That's Bayonne, in the Basque Country of southwestern France; not Bayonne, Hudson County, New Jersey. The midfielder captained France to victory in the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000.
As a player, he helped Olympique de Marseille win Ligue 1 in 1990 and '92, and the Champions League in 1993 -- the only French club ever to win the European Cup. With Juventus of Turin, Italy, he won Serie A in 1995, '97 and '98; the Coppa Italia in 1995 (making a Double), and the Champions League in 1996 (he is one of 20 players, thus far, to win the European Cup with 2 different clubs). With Chelsea, he won the 2000 FA Cup.
As manager, he led AS Monaco (which is not in France but is in the French football system) to the 2003 League Cup and the runner-up spot in Ligue 1 in 2003 and the Champions League in 2004; and Marseille to Ligue 1 in 2010 and 3 straight League Cups from 2010 to 2012. He is now the manager of the France national team, and took it to the Final of Euro 2016, but his substitutions proved disastrous, and they lost to Portugal in extra time.
But they won the 2018 World Cup, making him only the 3rd man to win the World Cup as both a player and a manager, following Mário Zagallo of Brazil (1958 and 1962 as a player, 1970 as manager) and Franz Beckenbauer of Germany (1974 and 1990).
October 15, 1969: Game 4 of the World Series at Shea Stadium, the Mets' Tom Seaver against the Orioles’ Mike Cuellar, in a rematch of Game 1. It turns out to be a brilliant pitching duel between the Fresno stuff-mixer and the Cuban curve and screwball master.
The Mets were clinging to a 1-0 lead in the top of the 9th, but the O's get Frank Robinson to 3rd and another runner on 1st with 1 out. Brooks Robinson hits a sinking liner to right field, which looks like a game-winning 2-run double. But Ron Swoboda dives and snares it. Frank still manages to tag up and score the tying run, sending the game to extra innings.
In the bottom of the 10th, tied at 1-1, Met manager Gil Hodges gambles on getting a run now or good work from his bullpen and a run at some later point, and sends J.C. Martin up to pinch-hit for Seaver. "Tom Terrific" is normally a good hitter by pitchers' standards, but this is no time for that. Martin bunts, and Pete Richert, who has relieved Cuellar, tries to throw him out at 1st, but his throw hits Martin on the wrist. The ball gets away, and Rod Gaspar, who had been on 2nd, comes around to score the winning run.
The Mets are now 1 win away from completing their "Miracle." The upset is nearly complete, and former Yankee and Met manager Casey Stengel no longer speaks sarcastically when he uses the word he used to describe the awful early Mets: When interviewed about it, he says, "The New York Mets are amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing… "
Also on this day, Vítor Manuel Martins Baía is born in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, outside Porto. The goalkeeper backstopped hometown club FC Porto to Premeira Liga titles in 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995 and 1995; and the Taça de Portugal (Portuguese Cup) in 1991 and 1994. He then left for FC Barcelona, where he won the Copa del Rey and the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1997, and a La Liga and Copa del Rey Double in 1998.
He returned to Porto, winning the Liga in 1999, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007 (that's 11 league titles); the Taça in 2000, 2003 (for a Double) and 2006 (that's 7 national cups); the UEFA Cup in 2003; and the UEFA Champions League in 2004.
He played for Portugal in Euro 2000 and Euro 2004 (on home soil), and in the 2006 World Cup. He retired at the end of the next season. He is, without much doubt, the greatest goalkeeper his country has ever produced. He later served as Porto's public relations director.
*
October 15, 1970: The Baltimore Orioles avenge their upset loss in last year's World Series, and claim their 2nd title with a 9-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds in Game 5 at Memorial Stadium.
After winning the 1st 3 games and then dropping Game 4 – this remains the only time in Series history that this has ever happened – the O's overcome a 3-0 deficit for the 3rd time in the Series. Frank Robinson and Merv Rettenmund each homer and drive in 2 runs.
Brooks Robinson‚ who has not only fielded so spectacularly that he has been nicknamed the "Human Vacuum Cleaner‚" but has also gotten several key hits, and fields the final out, easily wins the Series MVP award.
There are 14 surviving members of the 1970 Orioles: Both Robinsons, Palmer (who won this Series on his 25th birthday), Rettenmund, Richert, John "Boog" Powell, Davey Johnson, Andy Etchebarren, Bobby Grich, Dick Hall, Tom Phoebus, Terry Crowley, Eddie Watt and Dave Leonhard.
Also on this day, the Buffalo Sabres play their 1st home game. It turns into their 3rd straight loss, as they fall to the Montreal Canadiens 3-0 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
October 15, 1971: Julius Erving plays his 1st professional basketball game. The University of Massachusetts star, already known as Doctor J, suits up for the Virginia Squires against the Carolina Cougars at the Greensboro Coliseum. He scores 21 points, but it's former North Carolina star Charlie Scott who leads all scorers with 36, leading the Squires to a 118-114 victory.
Also on this day, Andrew Alexander Cole is born in Nottingham. One of the 1st great black soccer players in England, the striker is the 2nd-leading goal scorer in Premier League history – that is, the 2nd-highest in English league play since the 1st division of "the Football League" became the Premier League in 1992. Too bad he did most of it for Manchester United. He scored 187 times in Premiership play, although this is well behind the record of 260 held by former Newcastle United star Alan Shearer.
With Man U, he won the League in 1996, '97, '99, 2000 and '01; the FA Cup in 1996 and '99, and the UEFA Champions League in 1999, completing England's only European Treble. With Blackburn Rovers, he won the 2002 League Cup. He was usually known as Andy when he played, but now prefers to be called Andrew.
October 15, 1972: In what turns out to be his last appearance at a major league ballpark, Jackie Robinson, speaking prior to Game 2 of the World Series at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, urges baseball to hire a black manager. Jackie will die of a heart attack, brought on by years of weakening by diabetes, 9 days later.
The 1st African-American skipper will not be hired until 2 years later, just after the conclusion of the 1974 regular season, when the Cleveland Indians hire Frank Robinson to run the team.
In the game, the Oakland Athletics win Game 2, 2-1, as Joe Rudi clouts a homer and makes an amazing game-saving catch in the 9th to back up Catfish Hunter's pitching. Despite being without their best player, the injured Reggie Jackson, the A's take a 2-game advantage over the Big Red Machine as the Series moves to Oakland.
Also on this day, the Winnipeg Jets play their 1st home game. Despite winning their 1st 2 games on the road, over the hapless New York Raiders and the somewhat better Minnesota Fighting Saints, they lose this one, 5-2 to the Alberta Oilers at the Winnipeg Arena.
Also on this day, Fred Hoiberg (no middle name) is born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and grows up in Ames, Iowa. He went to both high school and college there, at Iowa State University, had his basketball Number 32 retired by them, and later served as their head basketball coach.
He played in the NBA for the Indiana Pacers, the Chicago Bulls and the Minnesota Timberwolves. In his final season, 2005, he led the NBA in 3-point shooting. He is now the head coach of the Bulls.
October 15, 1974: Game 3 of the World Series. The A's beat the Dodgers 3-2 at the Oakland Coliseum, despite Jim "Catfish" Hunter giving up a home run to Bill Buckner -- easily Buckner's greatest moment in baseball.
Buckner and the other Dodger players -- none of whom had ever played in a World Series until now -- had been talking trash, telling everyone they were better than the A's. After this game, they still believed it, including Buckner, who said, "You can't beat luck."
Over the next 14 seasons, the Dodgers would play in another 4 World Series, winning 2. Buckner would not play in another World Series for 12 years, and would learn what World Series luck was all about.
No one knows it at the time, but this is Catfish Hunter's last game for Oakland.
Also on this day, the Washington Capitals play their 1st home game, managing a 1-1 tie against the Los Angeles Kings at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. It was one of the few highlights of a season that saw them go 8-67-5.
Buckner and the other Dodger players -- none of whom had ever played in a World Series until now -- had been talking trash, telling everyone they were better than the A's. After this game, they still believed it, including Buckner, who said, "You can't beat luck."
Over the next 14 seasons, the Dodgers would play in another 4 World Series, winning 2. Buckner would not play in another World Series for 12 years, and would learn what World Series luck was all about.
No one knows it at the time, but this is Catfish Hunter's last game for Oakland.
Also on this day, the Washington Capitals play their 1st home game, managing a 1-1 tie against the Los Angeles Kings at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. It was one of the few highlights of a season that saw them go 8-67-5.
October 15, 1976: For the 1st time, a debate between the major-party nominees for Vice President of the United States is held, at the Alley Theatre in Houston. The Republicans have an all-athlete ticket: Incumbent President Gerald Ford had been an All-America center at the University of Michigan, while his running mate, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, had played basketball for the great Forrest "Phog" Allen at the University of Kansas.
But Dole blows it, calling World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War "all Democrat wars." He said that if you added up the American deaths from those wars, it could come to 1.6 million people, "about the population of Detroit."
About 116,000 American servicemen died in World War I -- which the Republicans wanted to get into well before the Democrats did. About 405,000 died in World War II -- which the Republicans didn't want to get into, because they preferred the Nazis to their natural enemies, the Communists. About 36,000 died in the Korean War, which the Republicans wholeheartedly supported, and indeed wanted to extend into mainland China, in the interest of fighting Communism. About 58,000 died in the Vietnam War, which the Republicans started, then the Democrats made their own mistakes, and then the Republicans made more. Total: About 615,000 -- a bit less than the population of Detroit now (a little under 700,000).
Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota, running under the Democratic Presidential nominee, former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, called Dole's remarks "disgraceful." They may have cost the Ford-Dole ticket the election, which was very close.
Also on this day, Carlo Gambino dies with the unusual trifecta for a mobster's death: Nonviolently (heart attack), out of prison (at his home in Massapequa, Long Island), and at a ripe old age (74). He had been head of the crime family that came to bear his name since the 1957 Apalachin Conference, and the American Mafia's "Boss of Bosses" since 1962.
October 15, 1977: The Yankees beat the Dodgers in Game 4 at Dodger Stadium, 4-2, to take a 3-1 advantage in the World Series. Reggie Jackson doubles and homers‚ and rookie lefthander Ron Guidry pitches a 4-hitter‚ striking out 7.
From August 10, 1977 through April 22, 1979, including the postseason, Guidry went 42-5 with a 1.93 ERA, one of the greatest runs any pitcher will ever have.
Also on this day, the football team at East Brunswick High School, eventually to be my school, defeats Cedar Ridge of Old Bridge 41-7, to advance to 5-0 on the season. They are thinking they might win the Middlesex County Athletic Conference title, make the Central Jersey Group IV Playoffs, and possibly even win them.
They didn't win another game for the rest of the season: They tied their next 2, and then lost their last 2, including a game to J.P. Stevens High School of Edison, which ended up going undefeated and winning both titles. In the 41 years since, only once has EB won their 1st 5 games.
Also on this day, the University of Texas, ranked Number 1 in the nation, defeats the University of Arkansas, 13-9 at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, thanks to the running of Heisman Trophy-winner-in-waiting Earl Campbell. This would be the only game the Razorbacks would lose all season.
Two weeks earlier, the Longhorns' Russell Erxleben had set a new NCAA record with a 67-yard field goal. In this game, the Razorbacks' Steve Little ties that record. It would be tied again a little over a year later, but a rule change shortly thereafter, eliminating kicking tees, has prevented anyone from seriously challenging the record.
Like Erxleben, Little was also his team's punter. He played 3 seasons with the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals, but was erratic, got released during the 1980 season, and within hours, was paralyzed from the neck down in a car crash. He lived until 1999, when life as a quadriplegic fully caught up with him.
Also on this day, David Sergio Trezeguet is born in Rouen, France, where his father, Argentine centreback Jorge Trezeguet, was then playing. He grew up in Argentina, but returned to France to play professionally (as a striker).
He won France's Ligue 1 with AS Monaco (which plays in that league despite not actually being in France) in 1997 and 2000, and Italy's Serie A with Turin club Juventus in 2002 and 2003. He was Serie A's Top Goalscorer, Footballer of the Year and Foreign Footballer of the Year in 2002. But he missed a penalty in the 2003 UEFA Champions League Final, one of the misses that made the difference as Juve lost to AC Milan in the 1st-ever UCL Final to be played by 2 teams from the same country.
He played on the France team that shocked Brazil in the Final to win the 1998 World Cup on home soil, and his "Golden Goal" beat Italy in the Final of Euro 2000. Italy got their revenge when they beat his France side in the 2006 World Cup Final. In spite of this, upon retiring in 2015, he went back to Italy to be a part of Juventus' management team.
October 15, 1978, 40 years ago: The Yankees beat the Dodgers in Game 5 at Yankee Stadium, 12-2, to take a 3-2 advantage in the World Series. Jim Beattie, the Yanks' 4th starter, who had a 6-9 record in the regular season, pitches the 1st complete game of his career. Bucky Dent, Mickey Rivers and Brian Doyle, substituting at 2nd base for the injured Willie Randolph, each collect 3 hits.
After taking the 1st 2 games in L.A., the Dodgers have been shellshocked by Graig Nettles' defensive display in Game 3 and Reggie Jackson's "Sacrifice Thigh" in Game 4, and have not recovered. The Series heads back to California, and the Yankees need to win only 1 of the last 2.
Also on this day, the San Diego Clippers play their 1st home game. The lose 98-94 to the Denver Nuggets at the San Diego Sports Arena.
October 15, 1979: The Utah Jazz play their 1st home game. They have even less luck than the Clippers did a year earlier, getting pounded by the Milwaukee Bucks, 131-107, despite 29 points from Pistol Pete Maravich.
Also on this day, Paul William Robinson is born in Beverly, East Yorkshire, England. A goalkeeper, he was in the net for North London club Tottenham Hotspur's last trophy, the 2008 League Cup. But he was also the starting goalie when Leeds United had one of the worst seasons in Premier League history in 2004, receiving a relegation from which they have not yet recovered. He retired after last season.
Also on this day, the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati airs the episode "Baseball." The station staffers take on their arch-rivals from station WPIG, and the boss, Arthur "Big Guy" Carlson (Gordon Jump), mocked as "the strikeout king," surprises everybody with a grand slam in the top of the 9th inning.
Newsman Les Nessman (Richard Sanders) takes the role of Timmy Lupus from The Bad News Bears, standing out in right field where he can do the least damage, saying, "Please don't hit it to me," and, of course, the ball that would be the last out is hit to him. He catches it.
Also on this day, CBS airs the M*A*S*H episode "Good-Bye, Radar." Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly is given a compassionate discharge after his Uncle Ed dies back on the farm in Ottumwa, Iowa, leaving his mother alone.
Gary Burghoff leaves the show, as, contrary to Larry Linville's portrayal of Major Frank Burns as a nice guy playing a rotten guy, he wasn't a nice guy, he just played one on TV, and the writers, the producers, and the rest of the cast had had enough of him.
If we're to believe the show, Hawkeye (Alan Alda), Trapper (Wayne Rogers), B.J. (Mike Farrell), Frank, and Charles (David Ogden Stiers) are all surgeons with some experience, probably putting them in their late 20s at the least; Margaret (Loretta Swit) served in World War II, making her at least 30; while Radar, in a 1974 episode, admits to being 19 years old, and Klinger (Jamie Farr) gives the impression of being not much older.
In reality, Burghoff was born in 1943, making him 36 years old by the time Radar was discharged. He was just 1 year younger than Stiers, and 4 years younger than Farrell and Linville. But, while Alda, Farrell and Swit were already going gray by this point, and Linville and (much more so) Stiers were noticeably balding, Burghoff had a bald spot, too, which is why Radar usually wore a hat. Burghoff was also missing a finger on his left hand, which is why he usually carried a clipboard in it. (Likewise, James Doohan was missing a finger on his right hand, which is why, on Star Trek, Scotty was noticeably lefthanded.)
*
October 15, 1981: The Yankees beat the A's, 4-0 at the Oakland Coliseum, and sweep the ALCS in 3 straight.
Once and future Yankee manager Billy Martin, a native of nearby West Berkeley, California, had previously played for the Oakland Oaks' 1948 Pacific Coast League champion under Casey Stengel, and now, once again, he had revived the fortunes of his hometown team, saving the A’s from total incompetence and irrelevance, taking them from 108 losses the year before he arrived to 2nd place in his 1st season to the AL West title in his 2nd.
This was the 5th time Billy had managed a team into the postseason, and with the 4th different team: Minnesota in 1969, Detroit in '72, the Yankees in '76 and '77, and now the A's in '81. He came close to making it 6 times with 5 different teams, with Texas in '74.
When introduced before Game 1 of this series at Yankee Stadium, Billy got a huge ovation. That made him very happy. George Steinbrenner couldn't be reached for comment. But in this series, the Yankees just had too much for the A's, and took their 33rd Pennant -- the A's, if you count their Philadelphia years, are 2nd among AL teams, with 12.
For reasons partly, but not entirely, his fault, Billy would never manage in the postseason again. And, for reasons partly, but not entirely, Billy's fault, the Yankees' 34th Pennant would not be soon in coming. Today, the total stands at Yankees 40, A's 16. (Red Sox? 13. If you count the last 3*.)
During this Game 3 at the Oakland Coliseum, "professional cheerleader" Krazy George Henderson, a native of nearby San Jose, leads what is thought to be the first audience Wave. "And anybody who says I didn't is a stinkin' liar," he would later say.
Robb Weller, later to co-host Entertainment Tonight, would say he invented the Wave himself, at a University of Washington football game. But the game in question happened 2 weeks later, so I'm inclined to believe Krazy George.
Now 74 years old and still a "free agent" cheerleader, Krazy George once came to a Trenton Thunder game I was at, and we won. I told him, "George, stick around, we need the wins!" To be honest, though (and I didn't tell him this), I've always hated the Wave. I find it juvenile.
People outside North America first saw the Wave during the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, and that's why they call it the Mexican Wave.
Also on this day, Abram Elam is born in West Palm Beach, Florida. A safety, he played in the NFL from 2006 to 2012, including the 2007 and '08 seasons with the Jets.
His brother Matt Elam, also a safety, played for the Baltimore Ravens, and now plays for the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders. Unfortunately, they had 3 siblings who were shot and killed -- in separate incidents. Abram's son, Kaiir Elam, is now rated as of the top high school defensive backs.
Also on this day, Mork & Mindy airs the episode "The Wedding," in which Mork (Robin Williams) and Mindy (Pam Dawber) get married. Mindy's father, Frederick McConnell (Conrad Janis), has known almost from the beginning of the show that Mork is an alien, and he's made his peace with that, but he comes to a startling realization: "You'll be Mrs. Mindy... Mork doesn't have a last name!"
She tells him he's been thinking about it, and has narrowed it down to Travolta or Pittsburgh. She says, "I've been trying to talk him into McConnell. Or Phoenix!" When they walk back down the aisle, Mork says to her, "Welcome to the family, Mrs. Pittsburgh!" In a later episode, though, he identifies himself as "Mork McConnell."
October 15, 1983: The Saddledome opens in Calgary, and becomes the home of the NHL's Calgary Flames. But they lose 4-3 to their arch-rivals, the Edmonton Oilers. Ever since, the building has hosted the Flames and the world's largest rodeo, the Calgary Stampede. In 1988, it was the main indoor venue for the Winter Olympics.
With the Oilers having moved out of the Northlands Coliseum, and the Detroit Red Wings out of the Joe Louis Arena, the Saddledome will soon be the 2nd-oldest arena in the NHL, after Madison Square Garden. There is a plan to build a new arena, and the Flames say that if it is not approved, they will have to move within a few years.
October 15, 1984: The Green Bay Packers play the Denver Broncos on ABC's Monday Night Football. No surprise there, for either team. They play in a snowstorm. Such weather is hardly unusual for either team, but it's a bit early on the calendar for that.
The blizzard hits Mile High Stadium in Denver, and the Packers, uncharacteristically, can't handle it, fumbling away their 1st 2 possessions deep in their own territory, and the Broncos take a quick 14-0 lead. The Pack try to come back, but it's not quite enough: The Broncos hold on, 17-14.
October 15, 1985: Aaron Agustin Afflalo is born in Los Angeles -- at UCLA Medical Center, to be precise. This turned out to be appropriate, because he went on to play basketball at UCLA. He was Pac-10 Conference Player of the Year in 2007. After spending last season with the Orlando Magic, he is now a free agent.
October 15, 1986: Desperate to win Game 6 of the National League Championship Series at the Astrodome, the Mets do not want to face Houston pitcher Mike Scott – a Met-killer both as a Met and an Astro – in a Game 7, especially in the Astrodome, where Scott is far better than he is on the road.
The Mets use that sense of desperation to score 3 runs in the top of the 9th to force extra innings. In the 14th, the Mets make their first bid to win. After Gary Carter opens with a single, a walk to Darryl Strawberry puts 2 runners on with nobody out. After Knight forces Carter at 3rd, Wally Backman drives a single to right. When Kevin Bass' throw to the plate sails high over Alan Ashby's head to the screen, Strawberry scores.
But with 1 out in the bottom of the 14th, and the Houston fans with their heads in their hands, Billy Hatcher shocks everyone with a line-drive home run off the left field foul pole. It was the 1st earned run allowed by the Mets bullpen in the entire series. Hatcher went 3-for-7 in the game, and his homer meant the Astros would be kept alive for at least one more inning. (This presages his heroics in the 1990 World Series.)
Both teams fail to score in the 15th, and the game goes to the 16th inning, the most innings in baseball's postseason history at that time. The Mets appear to take control of the game once again, this time coming up with 3 runs in the top half of the inning. The rally begins with Strawberry receiving a gift double when Hatcher and Bill Doran misplay his towering fly ball with 1 out. When Knight follows with a single to right, a poor throw to the plate by Bass allows the tiebreaking run to score, just as it had in the 14th. Jeff Calhoun then relieves Aurelio Lopez and uncorks a walk, two wild pitches, and a single by Lenny Dykstra to bring in 2 more runs, putting the Mets up 7–4.
But as they had in the 14th, the Astros refuse to go down without a fight in the bottom of the 16th. Jesse Orosco strikes out Craig Reynolds to open the inning, but a walk and 2 singles later, Houston has a run in and the tying run on base. Orosco induces Denny Walling to hit into a force play at 2nd for the 2nd out, but Glenn Davis singles home another run, bringing the Astros within 7-6.
The tying run is on 2nd, the winning run on 1st – a run that Met fans do not want to allow to score. So damned smug all season long, Met fans are now are freaking out over the possibility of facing Scott in the Dome in Game 7, and their magnificent 108-win season, their "inevitable" World Championship, going down in flames.
But Orosco strikes out Bass, ending the game. He throws his glove in the air, foreshadowing the end of the World Series. As the pitcher of record when the Mets took the final lead, he is was awarded the victory, marking the 1st time in postseason history that a reliever won 3 games in a series.
Despite a .189 batting average, the lowest average ever recorded by a winning team in a postseason series to that point, the Mets have their 3rd National League Pennant. Until 2015, it was the only one they'd clinched on the road.
My Grandma watched Major League Baseball for about 75 years, first as a Dodger fan in Queens and Newark, then as a Met fan in the New Jersey towns of Belleville, Nutley and Brick. I asked her once what her favorite game of all time was. This is the one she chose, without hesitation.
I can't say that I blame her. It wasn't a "heavyweight title fight," with big punches going back and forth. It was more like a middleweight or welterweight fight, with lots of jabs, until finally one fighter finished off a "death of a thousand cuts" and the other fell. It was an epic.
The same day, after being down 3 games to 1 in the ALCS, the Red Sox complete one the greatest comebacks in Playoff history by defeating the California Angels 8-1 to win the American League Pennant.
The game caps yet another heartbreaking failure for Angels skipper Gene Mauch‚ who in Game 5 was 1 strike away from reaching his 1st World Series in 25 seasons as a major league manager. He had previously been a part of the Phillies' collapse in 1964, a tough last-weekend Division loss for the Montreal Expos in 1980, and the Angels' 2-games-to-none choke against the Milwaukee Brewers in 1982. No manager ever managed longer without winning a Pennant. After the game‚ 2nd baseman Bobby Grich retired after a fine career with the Orioles and Angels.
The Mets and Red Sox winning Pennants on the same day -- with the Sox having beaten the Yankees out for the Division en route to doing so. This was a bad day to be a Yankee Fan. Over the next 12 days, it would get worse.
Also on this day, Jerry Smith dies. He played as a tight end for the Washington Redskins from 1965 to 1977, including in Super Bowl VII in 1973. He was a 2-time Pro Bowler, and is a member of the Washington Redskins Ring of Fame. When the 70 Greatest Redskins were selected on the team's 70th Anniversary, he was named to that list -- as were all 70 when the 80 Greatest Redskins were selected 10 years later.
But he was one of the earliest professional athletes who was known to be gay. He couldn't "come out," but his teammates knew. Vince Lombardi, coaching the Redskins in 1969 before dying of cancer, had a gay brother, and, despite his intense Catholicism, refused to accept anti-gay slurs on his team.
Jerry Smith became the 1st former pro athlete known to have died from AIDS. A Redskins logo with his Number 87 on it was added to the AIDS quilt.
Also on this day, Perfect Strangers airs the episode "Ladies and Germs." Larry (Mark Linn-Baker) fears that his cold will prevent him from going to the Bruce Springsteen concert. So Balki (Bronson Pinchot) gives him the Myposian cure for the common cold.
Unfortunately, instead of the mere teaspoon that he needs to take a 20-minute nap and wake up feeling cured, Larry drinks the entire jar. Balki yells, "That was enough for an entire village!" And Larry sleeps for 2 days and misses the concert.
Also on this day, Ken Burns' documentary Huey Long premieres, about the controversial Louisiana politician whose "Share the Wealth" program as Governor and U.S. Senator made him a national figure and the founder of a political dynasty, and a potential challenger to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, before his 1935 assassination on the steps of the State Capitol that he had built in Baton Rouge.
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October 15, 1988, 30 years ago: In one of the most improbable finishes in World Series history‚ pinch hitter Kirk Gibson hits a 2-run home run off Dennis Eckersley with 2 out and 2 strikes in the bottom of the 9th inning, to give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 win over the Oakland Athletics in Game 1.
The injured Gibson was not expected to play in the Series, and will not play in it again. It is the first World Series game to end on a home run since Game 6 in 1975.
Vin Scully, normally the voice of the Dodgers but broadcasting this game for NBC, said, "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened." Jack Buck, normally the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals but broadcasting on radio for CBS, said, "I don’t believe what I just saw!"
Yankee Fans of my generation had heard tall tales of Mickey Mantle limping up to home plate, looking like he had no chance, then hitting a home run anyway, and limping around the bases to the rapturous cheers of the Bronx faithful. But since we weren't old enough to have seen it, and the expense of videotape meant that so many of those old games were taped over by WPIX-Channel 11, we've hardly seen any footage of it. (Mickey’s 500th homer, on May 14, 1967, is an exception, thankfully preserved, showing both Mickey and the pre-renovation old Yankee Stadium in full color.)
Gibson, one of many players who got the tag "the next Mickey Mantle" -- and he got a lot more of the Mantle injuries than the Mantle homers -- gave my generation a glimpse of what that must have been like.
After the game, Eckersley coined the phrase "walkoff home run." The powerful A's, winners of 103 games, were expected to make quick work of the comparatively weak-hitting Dodgers, who barely scraped by the Mets in the NLCS. Instead, Gibson's homer set the tone for a very different Series.
It's also worth noting that Gibson had a good enough year to be named NL Most Valuable Player that season, and had previously hit 2 home runs in Game 5 of the 1984 World Series, to give the Detroit Tigers the championship. So he's one of the few players to be a World Series hero for 2 different teams -- in 2 different leagues, no less.
Gibson was the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and won the NL West title in 2011. He is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, as some predicted he might be, because injuries limited him to 252 home runs.
He, David Wells and Jake Peavy share ownership of a hunting ranch in Michigan. He's also an accomplished pilot. He was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He and his wife JoAnn have been married for almost 33 years, and they have 4 children. One, son Cam, has followed in his father's footsteps, playing baseball at Michigan State University and being drafted by the Tigers. Another son, Kevin, is playing hockey for a Detroit Red Wings farm team.
Eckersley was not unduly affected by this home run: He just kept on becoming one of the best relief pitchers ever, after having been a pretty good starter. He won 197 games in his career, and saved 390 others. He is one of 2 pitchers to have a 20-win season and a 50-save season, the other being John Smoltz. He is in the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame, and the A's have retired his Number 43. He's now a studio analyst for both TBS and the Red Sox' NESN.
Also on this day, Saturday Night Live airs the "Nude Beach" sketch. Although you can't see any, the word "penis" is mentioned 42 times. The next week, during her opening monologue, guest host Mary Tyler Moore apologizes.
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October 15, 1989: Wayne Gretzky scores a goal for the Los Angeles Kings for his 1,851st career point, surpassing Gordie Howe to become the NHL's all-time leading points scorer. The goal comes with 53 seconds left in regulation, tying the game against his former team, the Edmonton Oilers, a game the Kings go on to win in overtime.
Also on this day, Blaine Williamson Gabbert is born in the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin, Missouri. He played 3 seasons as a quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and was given the San Francisco 49ers' starting job after Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee during the National Anthem. He was not an improvement.
A fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, he played the 2017 season for the Arizona Cardinals football team, who used to play in St. Louis from 1960 to 1987, before he was born. He now backs up Marcus Mariota on the Tennessee Titans.
Also on this day, Alen Pamić is born in Žminj, Croatia. The son of former Croatia player and now FC Koper manager Igor Pamić, and the brother of Dinamo Zagreb player Zvonko Pamić, he was a midfielder for Istra 1961, a team in Croatia's 1st division.
On June 21, 2013, while playing off-season indoor soccer with friends in Kanfanar, near Istra, he suffered a heart attack and died. An autopsy showed that, like the Russian figure skater Sergei Grinkov, his cause of death was hypercholesterolemia -- plaque building up in his arteries faster than normal. He was only 23 years old.
October 15, 1992: The 2nd Presidential debate of this election is held at Robbins Field House, at the University of Richmond in Virginia. If President George H.W. Bush, the Republican incumbent, still had a chance of winning this election, he blew it 2 ways, one immediately followed by the other. By looking at his watch, he made it look like this debate, facing these undecided voters, wasn’t worth his time.
Then came a question which, to be fair, was poorly worded. Moderator Carole Simpson of ABC News had to clarify that the questioner, asking, "How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?" probably meant, "How has the recession affected you?"
But this was George Bush the father, not the son. He may have gotten into Yale because of his father, but he was a smart guy – though sometimes, a smart person can be utterly clueless. He tried to tie it in with interest rates and exports, and he had a point, but most people can't related to that.
In contrast, independent candidate Ross Perot gave a great answer: "It's made me leave my comfortable lifestyle and try to something for the American people." In other words, Perot may have been fabulously wealthy, more so than Bush and the Democratic nominee, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, combined, but he was willing to listen to real people with real problems -- or seemed to be.
Clinton gave an even better answer, showing that he was a politician who was in touch with the people he'd been elected to govern: "In my State, when people lose their jobs, there's a good chance I'll know them by their names. When a factory closes, I know the people who ran it. When the businesses go bankrupt, I know them."
I've looked for a record of the questioner's identity, and what's happened to her since, but I can't find it.
October 15, 1993, 25 years ago: The film Rudy is released. Sean Astin played Daniel Eugene Ruettiger, a.k.a. Rudy, a high school football player who tried to walk on at the University of Notre Dame, took a while to even qualify for the school, and sat on the bench until the last play of the last home game of his senior year, getting a sack that meant nothing to anyone but him and his family, in a 24-3 win over Georgia Tech.
Rudy Ruettiger, now 70 years old, built his experience into a book, and a film, and a career as a motivational speaker. What's his message? Probably something along the lines of, "If you believe in yourself, work hard, and persevere, you can achieve your dream."
Except that's not what happened to Rudy. It was more like, "If we let you on the team, will you shut the hell up about your dream? And if we let you play the last play of the last home game of your last year, then will you shut up about it, and leave us the hell alone thereafter?"
But, of course, he didn't -- and now, he has become what George Gipp became: A cash cow for Notre Dame. So, to hell with principles: Rudy makes us money, and so we love him.
Look, the guy overcame dyslexia. That's good. He volunteered and served in the U.S. Navy, while the Vietnam War was still going on, knowing that there was a chance he could be killed in combat, or injured to the point where his football career would be over, and survived to be honorably discharged. That's even better. And he did, however clumsily, achieve his dream.
But Mike Oriard tried to walk-on to the Notre Dame football team at the exact same time as Rudy. He made it. He was their starting center in 1969. He won a Rhodes scholarship. He was drafted in the 5th round by the Kansas City Chiefs, and played in the NFL for 4 seasons, and was a starter for 3, including a Playoff season. But has anyone ever offered him the film rights to his life story? Not that I know of.
October 15, 1994: East Brunswick High School loses a football game to Piscataway, 26-21, at home at Jay Doyle Field. Piscataway got the benefit of 2 bogus calls -- or, rather, non-calls, where the officials chose not to award penalties for pass interference that could have changed the result.
Both teams would make the Central Jersey Group IV Playoffs, and the rematch would take place at Piscataway's Dominic Ciardi Field in the Semifinals. In a game played in a drenching rain, Piscataway won again, and would win the Final, practically playing at home at the new Rutgers Stadium.
Shortly after the season, it was discovered that Piscataway had used an ineligible player in 2 Greater Middlesex Conference Red Division games -- though not the one in which they beat East Brunswick. They were stripped of the wins in those 2 games, thus giving EB a back-door Conference Championship -- and, 24 years later, it remains the last league title in the program's history. We haven't beaten Piscataway since 1990 -- 29 straight losses over 28 seasons.
October 15, 1995: Nine months after New York Jets owner Leon Hess hired Rich Kotite as head coach, saying, "I'm 80 years old, I want results now!" he gets a result. Not one he's looking for.
October 15, 1993, 25 years ago: The film Rudy is released. Sean Astin played Daniel Eugene Ruettiger, a.k.a. Rudy, a high school football player who tried to walk on at the University of Notre Dame, took a while to even qualify for the school, and sat on the bench until the last play of the last home game of his senior year, getting a sack that meant nothing to anyone but him and his family, in a 24-3 win over Georgia Tech.
Rudy Ruettiger, now 70 years old, built his experience into a book, and a film, and a career as a motivational speaker. What's his message? Probably something along the lines of, "If you believe in yourself, work hard, and persevere, you can achieve your dream."
Except that's not what happened to Rudy. It was more like, "If we let you on the team, will you shut the hell up about your dream? And if we let you play the last play of the last home game of your last year, then will you shut up about it, and leave us the hell alone thereafter?"
But, of course, he didn't -- and now, he has become what George Gipp became: A cash cow for Notre Dame. So, to hell with principles: Rudy makes us money, and so we love him.
Look, the guy overcame dyslexia. That's good. He volunteered and served in the U.S. Navy, while the Vietnam War was still going on, knowing that there was a chance he could be killed in combat, or injured to the point where his football career would be over, and survived to be honorably discharged. That's even better. And he did, however clumsily, achieve his dream.
But Mike Oriard tried to walk-on to the Notre Dame football team at the exact same time as Rudy. He made it. He was their starting center in 1969. He won a Rhodes scholarship. He was drafted in the 5th round by the Kansas City Chiefs, and played in the NFL for 4 seasons, and was a starter for 3, including a Playoff season. But has anyone ever offered him the film rights to his life story? Not that I know of.
October 15, 1994: East Brunswick High School loses a football game to Piscataway, 26-21, at home at Jay Doyle Field. Piscataway got the benefit of 2 bogus calls -- or, rather, non-calls, where the officials chose not to award penalties for pass interference that could have changed the result.
Both teams would make the Central Jersey Group IV Playoffs, and the rematch would take place at Piscataway's Dominic Ciardi Field in the Semifinals. In a game played in a drenching rain, Piscataway won again, and would win the Final, practically playing at home at the new Rutgers Stadium.
Shortly after the season, it was discovered that Piscataway had used an ineligible player in 2 Greater Middlesex Conference Red Division games -- though not the one in which they beat East Brunswick. They were stripped of the wins in those 2 games, thus giving EB a back-door Conference Championship -- and, 24 years later, it remains the last league title in the program's history. We haven't beaten Piscataway since 1990 -- 29 straight losses over 28 seasons.
October 15, 1995: Nine months after New York Jets owner Leon Hess hired Rich Kotite as head coach, saying, "I'm 80 years old, I want results now!" he gets a result. Not one he's looking for.
The Jets fall to 1-5, playing one of the worst games in team history -- including a Bubby Brister shovel-pass that gets turned into a "pick six" -- and the expansion Carolina Panthers get their 1st win ever, 26-15, at Frank Howard Field at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina.
Also on this day, Bengt Åkerblom, a center for Swedish hockey team Mora IK, is killed in a preseason exhibition game against Brynäs IF at his home arena, the FM Mattsson Arena (now known as the Smidjegrav Arena) in Mora. He died when, in mid-fall, his neck was cut by another player's skate. This had happened to Clint Malarchuk of the Buffalo Sabres in a 1989 game, and his life was saved. Åkerblom wasn't as lucky. He was only 28.
Also unlucky on this day is Marco Campos, killed while driving in a race at the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours in France. He was just 19, a rookie in only his 8th start (he hadn't yet won any), and remains the only driver ever killed in an International Formula 3000 race.
October 15, 1997: The Baltimore Orioles waste another magnificent effort by Mike Mussina, as the Cleveland Indians score the game's only run on Tony Fernandez's home run in the top of the 12th to win‚ 1-0. Mussina hurls 8 shutout innings and allows just 1 hit‚ while walking 2 and striking out 10. Charles Nagy does not give up a run in 7 1/3 innings for the Indians‚ while surrendering 9 hits‚ as the O's leave 14 batters on base.
The pitcher who gave up the Pennant-winning homer to Fernandez? Armando Benitez. It is not the last time he will mess up a postseason game, but it is the last time he will do so for the Orioles. The O’s now had a 4-6 record in postseason games played at Camden Yards. Having finally gotten back to the postseason in 2012, but crashed out in the 2012 ALDS and the 2014 ALCS, that record now stands at 6-8, including 1-7 in ALCS games.
Also on this day, the 1st supersonic (faster than the speed of sound) land speed record is set. Wing Commander Andy Green of Britain's Royal Air Force, had already set a record of 714 miles per hour on September 25, in the jet-powered Thrust SSC (SuperSonic Car), at Black Rock Desert in Utah. He tries again, in the same vehicle, at the same location, and does it: 763 miles per hour. This happens 1 day after the 50th Anniversary of Chuck Yeager becoming the 1st pilot to fly faster than sound.
Thrust SSC was designed by Green and Richard Noble, who held the previous record. The record of 763 still stands, but it might not for much longer: Green and Noble have designed a new car, Bloodhound SSC, and they think they could break the 1,000 MPH barrier.
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October 15, 2000: The Kansas City Wizards win the MLS Cup, defeating the Chicago Fire 1-0 on neutral ground at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington.
Despite such talents as American stars Peter Vermes, Chris Klein, Chris Henderson, and the Serbian-born American citizen Predrag Radosavljević, a.k.a. Preki (plus goalkeeper Tony Meola), and Scottish legend Mo Johnston, it is Danish forward Miklas Molnar who scores the only goal of the game, in the 11th minute. Despite having Hristo Stoichkov from Bulgaria, Piotr Nowak from Poland, and American stars DaMarcus Beasley, Carlos Bocanegra, and Croatian-ancestry but California-born-and-raised Ante Razov, the Fire couldn't find a spark against the Wizards.
The Wizards became Sporting Kansas City in 2011, and won another MLS Cup in 2013. The Fire, despite having won the Double of the MLS Cup and the U.S. Open Cup in 1998, have never won another.
Also on this day, the Yankees lose 6-2 to the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field, in Game 5 of the AL Championship Series. They still lead the series 3-2. Edgar Martinez and John Olerud hit home runs for the M's.
Dwight Gooden, whom the Yankees reacquired earlier in the season after he helped them win the World Series in 1996, pitched the 7th and 8th innings for the Yankees, without allowing a run. This turned out to be his last major league appearance. The former "Doctor K" had a career record of 194-112, and 2,293 strikeouts. There should have been more. And it wasn't just the drugs and the drinking that hurt him: He'd had serious injuries as well.
At ages 19 and 20, Doc was one of the best pitchers the game had ever seen. From 21 to 26, he wasn't that anymore, but was still one of the best pitchers in baseball. From 27 onward, he was just another injury-ravaged pitcher. He was about to turn 36, and was done.
Or, to put it another way: From 1984 to 1991, he went 132-53; from 1992 to 2000, he went 62-59. When he started, he seemed beyond human. As it turned out, he was all too human.
October 15, 2001: The Yankees defeat the A's‚ 5-3‚ to move into the ALCS. In doing so‚ they become the 1st team ever to win a best-of-5 series after losing the 1st 2 games at home. Derek Jeter gets a pair of hits to break Pete Rose's postseason record with 87. David Justice hits a pinch-hit homer for the Yanks.
They will face the Seattle Mariners, whose 116-win season nearly went down the drain against the Indians, but they came back from a 2-games-to-none deficit. Not the biggest choke in Indians' history, but bad enough.
October 15, 2003: The Florida Marlins complete a stunning comeback by defeating the Chicago Cubs‚ 9-6 in Game 7 at Wrigley Field‚ to win their 3rd straight game and the NLCS.
The Cubs seemed, at first, not to be affected by their Game 6 disaster, as homers by pitcher (!) Kerry Wood and aggrieved left fielder Moises Alou give them a 5-3 lead. But Florida bounces back to take the lead on Luis Castillo's RBI single in the 6th. Miguel Cabrera hits a 3-run homer for the Marlins.
Catcher Ivan Rodriguez, who wins his 1st Pennant after going 1-9 in postseason games with the Texas Rangers, is named the NLCS Most Valuable Player. (Cough-steroids-cough, cough-Bartman-cough-absolved-cough)
Meanwhile, Game 6 of the ALCS is played at Yankee Stadium, as the Hundred-Year War builds toward a crescendo. The Red Sox rally for 3 runs in the 7th inning to come from behind, and pull out a 9-6 victory over the Yankees to send it to a Game 7. Boston slugs 16 hits‚ including 4 by Nomar Garciaparra‚ and gets HRs from Jason Varitek and Trot Nixon.
October 15, 2005: Jason Collier, center for the Atlanta Hawks dies at age 28, of an enlarged heart, in the Atlanta suburb of Cumming, Georgia. The Hawks have retired his Number 40.
Also on this day, the football team at the University of Southern California puts its Number 1 ranking on the line, traveling to South Bend, Indiana to take on Number 9 Notre Dame. On the last play of the game, needing a touchdown (a field goal would not have helped), USC quarterback Matt Leinart copies Dan Marino's fake spike move, then tries a quarterback sneak. Running back Reggie Bush pushes him into the end zone for a 34-31 win.
Notre Dame fans, always the first to whine when stuff happens to them but silent when it happens in their favor, protested, saying "The Bush Push" was illegal. Actually, they were right. But the NCAA refused to overturn the result -- at first. In 2010, as a result of a scandal, the NCAA vacated all of USC's wins that season, including this one.
October 15, 2006: Game 4 of the NLCS at Busch Stadium. There will come a day when Met fans will, perhaps unfairly, rue the names of Carlos Beltrán and Óliver Pérez. This is not that day. Pérez
gives up home runs to Jim Edmonds, David Eckstein, and, with some foreshadowing, Yadier Molina. But he gets 2 homers from Beltrán, and 1 each from David Wright and Carlos Delgado, and the Mets beat the Cardinals, 12-5.
The series is tied, and, at the least, there will be a Game 6 at Shea Stadium. Met fans, in the only season between 1988 and 2015 in which they have gone further than the Yankees, have reason to have some confidence.
October 15, 2007: The Colorado Rockies beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 6-4 at Coors Field in Denver, and complete a sweep of the NLCS for their 1st Pennant. Matt Holliday's 3-run homer makes the difference.
No team had ever swept their way to the World Series since the Division Series began in 1995. The Rockies were also the 1st team to have a 7-0 start to a postseason since the 1976 Cincinnati Reds finished 7-0, sweeping both the LCS and World Series.
The Rockies now have a chance to match or beat the 1999 Yankees' achievement of 11-1, the best postseason record since the LCS went to a best-4-out-of-7 in 1984. They have now won 21 of their last 22 games. But it will be their last win of the season, as they are, themselves, swept in the World Series by the Boston Red Sox * .
October 15, 2008, 10 years ago: In Game 5 of the NLCS, the visiting Phillies beat the Dodgers, 5-1, to win their 1st Pennant in 15 years. Southpaw Cole Hamels, the series MVP, hurls his 3rd postseason win, and Jimmy Rollins starts Philadelphia attack with a leadoff home run to start the game.
October 15, 2009: Game 1 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium, a repeat of last year's Philadelphia-Los Angeles matchup. Clayton Kershaw gives the Dodgers a taste of what is to come: Being great in the regular season, but lousy in the postseason. Carlos Ruiz and Raúl Javier Ibañez tag him for home runs, and the Phillies win 8-6.
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October 15, 2010: Game 1 of the ALCS. The Yankees trail the Texas Rangers 5-0 going into the top of the 7th, thanks in part to a home run by Josh Hamilton. (Cough-steroids-cough) But a solo home run by Robinson Canó in the 7th, and 5 runs in the 8th, thanks in part to Alex Rodriguez coming through with a 2-run single, gives the Yankees a 6-5 win.
The winning pitcher, in relief, 7 years to the day after he couldn't get it done at Wrigley Field, is Kerry Wood. Unfortunately, this remains the last big postseason highlight by the Yankees for 2 years.
October 15, 2011: With another home run in the Game 6 clincher, a 15-5 Texas Rangers rout of the Detroit Tigers, Nelson Cruz sets a new record for the most round-trippers in a postseason series with 6. The Texas right-fielder, who ended the regular season in a slump, is named the ALCS MVP.
It is the 2nd straight Pennant for the Rangers, as they'd never won a Pennant in the preceding 38 seasons (49 if you count their time as the "new Washington Senators"). They will try to top their finish of last season by winning the World Series, against the Cardinals.
October 15, 2013: Game 3 of the ALCS. The Comerica Park lights go out in the 2nd inning, putting the game on hold for 17 minutes. When it resumes, the execrable John Lackey pitches 6 2/3rds scoreless innings, and a Mike Napoli home run is the only run of the game, as the Red Sox beat the Tigers 1-0. The Sox now lead the series 2-1.
October 15, 2014: The Kansas City Royals win their 1st Pennant in 29 years, beating the Baltmore Orioles 2-1 in Game 4 at Kauffman Stadium. Jason Vargas goes most of the way, to put the Royals in the World Series. The sweep is an embarrassment for the Birds, who scored just 1 run in each of the last 2 games.
October 15, 2015: The Mets win a posteason series. Stop laughing: They won one on this date in 1986, and came within a win of doing so on this date in 1969.
Despite trailing 2-1 going into the top of the 4th inning of the decisive Game 5, and being on the road at Dodger Stadium, the Mets tied it up. Daniel Murphy, seeing the infield shift for lefthanded hitter Lucas Duda, may have remembered the Johnny Damon double-steal in Game 4 of the 2009 World Series, and successfully tried the same, subsequently scoring on a sacrifice fly by Travis d'Arnaud.
Murphy then continued his sizzling late-season hitting with a home run off Zack Greinke in the 6th. That was all Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard in the 7th, and Jeurys Familia in the 8th and the 9th needed, and the Mets won, 3-2. Familia faced 16 batters in the series, and retired them all. He would not be as fortunate later on.
October 15, 2016: Dennis Byrd is killed in a car crash outside Claremore, Oklahoma, outside Tulsa. The former New York Jet defensive end, paralyzed in an on-field accident in 1992, with his Number 90 retired, was just 10 days past his 50th birthday.
On this same day, as part of their 100th Anniversary season (they were founded as the Toronto Arenas and began play in the 1917-18 season), the Toronto Maple Leafs abandon their policy of only retiring numbers of players whose careers ended early to death or career-ending injury -- thus applying only to the 6 of late 1920s-early 1930s right wing Irvine "Ace" Bailey and the 5 of late 1940s-early 1950s defenseman Bill Barilko -- and retire the numbers of all the players they had previously honored with "Honoured Numbers." (Note the British spelling by this Canadian team.)
They officially retire 1 for 1940s goaltender Walter "Turk" Broda and 1960s goaltender Johnny Bower; 4 for 1930s defenseman Clarence "Hap" Day and 1960s center Leonard "Red" Kelly; 7 for 1930s defenseman Frank "King" Clancy" and 1950s-60s defenseman Tim Horton; 9 for 1930s right wing Charlie Conacher and 1940s-50s center Ted "Teeder" Kennedy; 10 for 1940s center Charles Joseph Sylvanus "Syl" Apps and 1950s-60s right wing George "Chief" Armstrong; 13 for 1990s-2000s center Mats Sundin; 14 for 1960s center Dave Keon; 17 for 1990s left wing Wendel Clark; 21 for 1970s-80s defenseman Borje Salming; 27 for 1960s left wing Frank Mahovlich and 1970s center Darryl Sittler; and 93 for 1990s center Doug Gilmour.
As for the actual game, it was against a fellow "Original Six" team, the Boston Bruins, and the Leafs won 4-1.