October 16, 1968: Stand For Something

October 16, 1730: Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, dies in Castelsarrasin, Occitanie, France. He was 72. One of the leaders of what was then known as New France, he founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701, commanded it until 1710, and then served as the Governor of Louisiana Territory until 1716, when a change of government in France led to trouble for him. 

King Louis XIV liked him, but he died in 1715, and the new King, his great-grandson Louis XV, was just 5 years old, and his regents weren't happy with Cadillac. He was sent to the Bastille prison upon his 1717 return, but was released and honored in 1718.

The fort he founded became the American city of Detroit. Its main public square and a brand of car would both bear the name Cadillac.

October 16, 1754: Morgan Lewis is born in Manhattan. A lawyer, he was a son of Francis Lewis, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and married Gertrude Livingston, uniting 2 of New York State's most prominent families.

He served in the Continental Army during the War of the American Revolution, including at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga, then in both houses of the State legislature, and was New York's Attorney General (1791-1801) and Governor (1804-07). In fact, his opponent in the 1804 election for Governor was Vice President Aaron Burr, and it was Alexander Hamilton's support for Lewis that led Burr to challenge him to their fateful duel.

When the War of 1812 broke out, President James Madison offered ex-Governor Lewis the post of Secretary of War. He declined, and served instead as Quartermaster General, rising to the rank of Major General (2 stars), and dipped into his vast private fortune to secure the release of prisoners of war. He was among the founders of New York University (NYU) in 1831, and lived until 1844, age 89.

October 16, 1758: Noah Webster Jr. is born in West Hartford, Connecticut. After serving in the Continental Army and the Connecticut House of Representatives, in 1828 he published the American Dictionary of the English Language, which standardized American spelling and eventually evolved into the Merriam-Webster Dictionary that we know today. He died in 1843.

October 16, 1760: Jonathan Dayton is born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The youngest signer of the Constitution of the United States, not quite 27, he later served as Speaker of the House and a U.S. Senator.

He lent money to Aaron Burr, and was thus connected to Burr's treason of 1805-06. He was exonerated, but his political career was over. He died in 1824. Dayton, Ohio and the high school in Springfield, Union County, New Jersey are named for him.

October 16, 1785: George Mercer Brooke is born in King William, Virginia. After serving in the War of 1812, in 1824 General Brooke established Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, making him the founding father of the Tampa Bay region.

He commanded the Western Division of the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War, and died in 1851.


She was a patsy, not a villain. She never did anything to harm the people of France. She never said, "Let them eat cake." And if she had, it would have been through obliviousness, not malice.

But the French Revolution wasn't interested in making sense. They weren't even interested in governing or properly serving the people who had once been so oppressed by the House of Bourbon. They just wanted revenge. Revenge and blood. And they got it. Think about that the next time you consider that the Tea Party might have a point.

She's been played in movies by, among others, Norma Shearer, Jane Seymour (who named herself after a Queen of England, the 3rd wife of King Henry VIII), Joely Richardson, Kirsten Dunst and Diane Kruger. 

What does she have to do with sports? Nothing, as far as I know, except as a warning: Don't believe everything you hear, and don't be so quick to chop someone's head off for a perceived slight. Although, in the Final of the 2006 World Cup, Zinedine Zidane would replace her and her husband as having the most famous head in France.

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October 16, 1832: George Crockett Strong is born in Stockbridge, Vermont. The Union General was killed at the Battle of Fort Wagner at Morris Island, South Carolina on July 30, 1863.

October 16, 1841: Queen's University is founded in Hamilton, Ontario. Its football team, the Golden Gaels, won 3 straight Grey Cups: 1922, 1923 and 1924. At the time, the "Super Bowl" of Canadian football was open only to amateur teams. Pro football had yet to come to them.

Queen's has remained one of the top performers in CIS, Canadian Interuniversity Sport, Canada's equivalent to the NCAA. Their football team has won the Vanier Cup, the National Championship (first awarded in 1965), in 1968, 1978, 1992 and 2009.

October 16, 1861: At the Atlantic Grounds on Bedford‚ Long Island (now part of Brooklyn)‚ a crowd of 8‚000 sees the host Atlantics score a record 26 runs in the 2nd inning to beat the Manhattan-based Mutuals‚ 52-27 in 6 innings. Because the 3rd game in the series will not be played‚ the Atlantics retain the "whip-pennant" for 1861.

Flying such a flag over your ground the season after winning a championship is the origin of the word "Pennant." It originated a few years earlier.

No, baseball (still all-amateur at this point -- at least, officially) did not stop for the American Civil War. On the contrary: Soldiers, North and South, got exposed to the game in the East, and took it home with them, helping to spread the game. It had already been first referred to as "the national pastime" as early as in 1856, but the Civil War made that term a lot more practical.

Also on this day, Richard Dudley Sears is born in Boston. He won the 1st 7 titles in the U.S. Open men's tennis tournament, 1881 to 1887 -- and then retired. He died in 1943.

October 16, 1865: Frederick Charles Albert Waghorne is born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, and grows up in Canada. A star in both hockey and lacrosse, he founded what is now the Greater Toronto Hockey League, the largest minor-league hockey organization in the world.

He also became a referee, and introduced the dropping of the puck for a faceoff instead of just lacing it on the ice, and replacing cowbells with whistles. "Old Wag" died in 1956, and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961, and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1965.

October 16, 1875: Brigham Young University is founded in Provo, Utah. Coach LaVell Edwards would turn the Mormon school into a football powerhouse, dominating the Western Athletic Conference in the 1970s and '80s, with quarterbacks like Gifford Nielsen, Marc Wilson, Heisman Trophy winner Ty Detmer, and Brigham's descendant Steve Young. They moved into the Mountain West Conference in 1999, and have been an independent in 2011.

October 16, 1876: James Hugh Sinclair is born in Swellendam, South Africa. I don't know what makes a cricket player great, but he scored the South African national team's 1st 3 Test centuries, and was the 1st person from any country to score a century and take five wickets in an innings in the same Test. He was a noted long-ball hitter, the equivalent of a great slugger in baseball.

Jimmy Sinclair played from 1892 to 1911, was also regarded as a good rugby player, and appeared in a match for the South Africa soccer team. He died on February 26, 1913, only 36 years old, although I can find no source as to why. This was, however, the pre-antibiotic days.

October 16, 1882: John L. Sullivan knocks S.P. Stockton out in the 2nd round in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Professional boxing was still illegal in America, so "The Great John L." and his handlers, and Stockton and his, and the promoter all had to be very careful about this fight, in which Sullivan defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World. That's why it was held in Fort Wayne, rather than Chicago, Detroit or Indianapolis: It was less likely to attract the wrong kind of attention.

October 16, 1883: William Harridge (no middle name) is born in Chicago. In 1911, American League President Ban Johnson hired him as his personal secretary. In 1927, he became the AL's Secretary, and in 1931 its President. He held that job until 1958, getting the League through the Great Depression and World War II, and overseeing the League's integration, and the moves of the St. Louis Browns to become the Baltimore Orioles and the Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City.

He lived until 1971. The next year, he was elected to the Hall of Fame. The AL's championship trophy is named for him. (The National League's is also named for a longtime League President, Warren Giles.)

October 16, 1884: Martin Joseph Walsh is born in Kingston, Ontario. A center, Marty Walsh won the Stanley Cup with the original Ottawa Senators in 1909 and 1911, and was also a star rugby player. He died of tuberculosis in 1915, only 28 years old. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

October 16, 1885: Dorando Pietri is born in Corregio, Italy. In 1908, he won the right to be Italy's runner in the Olympic marathon in London. Traditionally, the distance of the race was meant to be the distance from the battlefield at Marathon, where Greece defeated Persia at Marathon in 490 BC, to Athens, about 22 miles. Because this time, the distance from the starting line at Windsor Castle, home of King Edward VII, to the Royal Box at White City Stadium in London was 26 miles, 385 yards, a bit longer, this became the standard marathon distance around the world.

But it was July 24, the middle of Summer, and it was hot by British standards. After 24 miles, Pietri took the lead from South African runner Charles Hefferon. When he entered the stadium, he ran the wrong way. When he was redirected, he turned, and fell. British officials, including doctor and Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, helped him up. This happened 5 times. He finished 1st, with a time of 2 hours, 54 minutes, 46 seconds -- needing 10 minutes for the last 350 meters. He barely beat American runner Johnny Hayes.

The Italian flag was quickly run up the pole, and Pietri was quickly announced as the winner. The American team immediately lodged a complaint -- and it was upheld: Pietri was disqualified, and Hayes was given the Gold Medal.

But Pietri became a worldwide celebrity. The King's wife, Queen Alexandra, gave him a silver trophy. Irving Berlin wrote a song about him, "Dorando" -- though it was sung with a thick Italian accent and was very unflattering: "Dorando, he's-a good-a for not."

He was invited to tour America, and outraced Hayes at Madison Square Garden. He raced 22 times in America, winning 17. He went back to Italy, and opened a hotel with his brother with his earnings. It went bust, and he became an auto mechanic, living until 1942.

October 16, 1886: David Grün is born in Płońsk, Poland. As David Ben-Gurion, he is the founding father of the State of Israel, serving as its 1st Prime Minister from 1948 to 1954, and again from 1955 to 1963. He died in 1973, at 87.

As far as I know, he wasn't an athlete, although the Maccabiah Games, a.k.a. "the Jewish Olympics," have been held in Israel since 1932, before independence. Many Jewish Americans have taken part, including some natives of my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey. They will next be held in July 2017.

October 16, 1888, 130 years ago: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill is born in Manhattan. As far as I know, the great playwright had nothing to do with sports, although many a sporting event has seen like a Long Day's Journey Into Night. And Yankee Legend Mariano Rivera, Arsenal Legend Dennis Bergkamp, basketball legend George Gervin, pretty much any hockey player, and singer Jerry Butler would be interested in his play titled The Iceman Cometh.

October 16, 1894: Moshe Shertok is born in Kherson, Ukraine, and grows up in Ein Siniya, in what is now the West Bank. As Moshe Sharett, he was Israel's 1st Foreign Minister, from 1948 to 1956. From January 26, 1954 to November 3, 1955, he was also Prime Minister, succeeding the 1st, David Ben-Gurion. But he was not successful, and Ben-Gurion had to return. He died in 1965.

October 16, 1898, 120 years ago: Charles Shipman Payson is born in Falmouth, Maine. He married Joan Whitney, of the fabulously wealthy Whitney family. Joan was on the board of directors of the New York Giants baseball team, and, through her proxy, M. Donald Grant, was the only board member to vote against moving to San Francisco. She was then awarded the expansion franchise that became the Mets.

When Joan died in 1975, Charles inherited ownership. He let their daughter, Lorinda de Roulet, make the decisions. She let Grant make the decisions. The results were disastrous. Lorinda finally had enough, and talked Charles into selling the team to Nelson Doubleday and Fred Wilpon in 1980. Charles died in 1985.

Also on this day, William Orville Douglas is born in Maine Township, Minnesota, and grows up in Yakima, Washington. He went to Yale University, including its Law School, and taught there. He left to serve under Joseph P. Kennedy on the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Kennedy to be U.S. Ambassador to Britain, and Douglas to succeeded him as Chairman of the SEC.

In 1939, FDR appointed Douglas to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was a part of the rulings that struck down public segregation, established "one man, one vote," and other civil liberties. The last major ruling in which he took part was in forcing President Richard Nixon to turn over all the Oval Office tapes. He served until 1975, his 36 years still a record. He died in 1980.

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October 16, 1900: Leon Allen Goslin is born in Salem, New Jersey. A .316 lifetime hitter, "Goose" is the only native of South Jersey to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. (Mike Trout of Millville is off to a great start, but he's got a long way to go.)

He played in the World Series for the Washington Senators in 1933 and for the Detroit Tigers in 1934 and 1935, the last of these being his only World Championship. He and Tiger teammates Hank Greenberg and Charlie Gehringer became known as the "G-Men" in those early days of the FBI. His bottom-of-the-9th single scored Mickey Cochrane to win Game 6 and the Series in '35, for the Tigers' 1st World Championship. He lived until 1971.

October 16, 1901: Fresh off the publication of his memoir Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington, leader of what is now Tuskegee University in Alabama, is invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to have dinner with him at the White House.

The South was outraged. The Memphis Scimitar called it "the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States." Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina -- known as Pitchfork Ben for his declaration as Governor that, while Grover Cleveland was President, Cleveland "is an old bag of beef, and I am going to Washington with a pitchfork and prod him in his old fat ribs" -- said, "We shall have to kill a thousand (N-word)s to get them back in their places!

Theodore Roosevelt is remembered outside his home State today. So is Booker T. Washington. Ben Tillman is not. And if the Memphis Scimitar, and its successor the Memphis Press-Scimitar, are remembered today, it is for its August 17, 1977 headline, "A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard." It folded in 1983.

October 16, 1902: John P. Carmichael (that was his byline, the P may have stood for Patrick) is born in Madison, Wisconsin. He wrote for the Chicago Daily News from 1932 until 1970, including from 1943 onward as its sports editor. During World War II, he and his staff wrote to various baseball legends and asked them about their career highlights. In 1945, they were collected in the anthology My Greatest Day In Baseball.

Some of these players would later be interviewed by Lawrence S. Ritter for The Glory of Their Times, published in 1966, but some had already died before Ritter began his interviews in 1962, so this was a precursor to Ritter's book.

Ritter decided to start interviewing old players in 1961, when he heard that Ty Cobb had died. Carmichael interviewed Cobb. Ritter interviewed anybody he could find from the 1908 "Fred Merkle Game" who was still alive, which did not include Chicago Cubs legends Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, while Frank Chance had died in 1924; Carmichael got interviews from Tinker, Evers and Brown. Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson and Grover Cleveland Alexander were already dead when Ritter started; Carmichael got them all.

Already dead when Carmichael sent his staff out were the aforementioned Chance, Lou Gehrig, John McGraw, and McGraw's favorite player, Christy Mathewson. But one of the Daily News staff, Lloyd Lewis, included a story about Mathewson that he said was his "greatest day in baseball," and it was included in the book.

Carmichael interviewed new players for an update, published in 1963. I have both books, and consider them both to be treasures. The 2nd round of players included Yankees Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto and Tommy Henrich; and non-Yankees Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn and Jackie Robinson; but not Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, Duke Snider or Hank Aaron, all still active. Carmichael was given the Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink Award for sportswriters in 1974, and lived until 1986.

October 16, 1905: Ernst Kuzorra is born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, home of club side Schalke 04 (established a year before he was born). He and his brother-in-law, Fritz Szepan, were the forwards who led Schalke to win the German championship (at the time, a national tournament between 4 regional winners) in 1934, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1942, before World War II made it impossible to continue.

The Nazi regime wanted to use him for propaganda purposes, but he wouldn't go along with it -- not because he didn't believe in fascism, but because it wasn't in his nature to make public appearances off the field. He resumed playing after The War, retiring in 1950. He ran a tobacco shop, and was Schalke's greatest living legend until his death in 1990, at age 84.

October 16, 1909: Rookie Charles "Babe" Adams comes through with a 6-hit shutout as the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-0. It is his 3rd complete-game World Series victory, and gives the Pirates their 1st World Series win -- if not, technically, their 1st World Championship. (Since there was no World Series in 1901 and 1902, and the NL was widely considered the better League, the Bucs could claim "world championships" for those seasons, the way the New York Giants always did for 1904.)

The Pirates and Tigers combine for 34 errors‚ with Detroit contributing 19. Both of these figures remain World Series records. In the battle between the 2 best players in baseball, Pittsburgh's Honus Wanger excels much more than Detroit's Ty Cobb. Adams would be the only Pirate player still on the team when they won their next Pennant and Series, in 1925, 16 years later. By the time the Tigers won another Pennant, in 1934, 25 years later, none would be left.

Adams was the only rookie in the 20th Century to win a Game 7 in the World Series. The next to do it was John Lackey of the Anaheim Angels in 2002. Frank "Spec" Shea in 1947 and Mel Stottlemyre in 1964 would be rookies starting Game 7s for the Yankees, but Mel would lose, and while the Yankees did win in '47, Shea would not be the winning pitcher. Billy Martin was planning on using Ron Guidry had the 1977 Series gone to a Game 7, but the Yankees won Game 6 on Reggie Jackson's 3 home runs and Mike Torrez's complete game.

The last survivors of this World Series? For the Pirates, pitcher Albert "Lefty" Leifield, who lived until 1970; for the Tigers, left fielder Davy Jones, who lived until 1972 -- beating out, by just 2 days, shortstop Owen "Donie" Bush. Ironically, Bush would be the manager of the next Pirate title team. He was also the namesake of the ballpark in his hometown of Indianapolis, home of one of the great teams of Triple-A ball, the Indianapolis Indians, whom he would serve as manager for many years.

Also on this day, with boxing pretty much legal everywhere in America, Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson fights Middleweight Champion Stanley Ketchel in the San Francisco suburb of Colma, California. Talk about "punching above your weight": Ketchel was one of the best middleweights ever, but there's no way he should have had a chance against Johnson.

And, at first, he knew it. He and Johnson agreed to make it look good, but let it end in a draw, which would be the case if neither fighter quit or was knocked out. That way, Johnson would keep the heavyweight crown (Ketchel's crown was not officially up for grabs), and the big black man from Texas and the wiry Pole, known as the Michigan Assassin, would split the film distribution rights 50-50. It was a good deal.

The problem was, Ketchel was nuts. As boxing historian Bert Sugar put it, he "was half animal, anyway." After 11 rounds, he must have seen a weakness in Johnson (which no one else saw), and decided he could take him. He knocked Johnson down in the 12th. As with later heavyweight champs Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano, knocking Johnson down was the worst thing you could have done with him, because it only made him mad. Jack hit Stanley so hard, he not only went down, but a couple of his teeth became embedded in Johnson's glove. I've seen the film, and the legend is true: Johnson brushed the teeth out of one glove with the other.

Both men came to sad ends: Ketchel was murdered a year later, only 24 years old; while Johnson lost his title in 1915, after 3 years on the run from American authorities, forcing him to fight in other countries, and served a year in prison, eventually being killed in a car crash in 1946, at the age of 68.

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October 16, 1913: Ralph Rose dies of typhoid fever in San Francisco. He won the Gold Medal in the shot put at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, in 1908 in London, and in 1912 in Stockholm. But in those days before antibiotics, he was doomed at age 28.

October 16, 1917: With the U.S. role in World War I well underway, the day after the Chicago White Sox beat the Giants in the World Series, they play an exhibition game against each other for 600 soldiers at Garden City‚ Long Island. The Sox win‚ 6-4.

October 16, 1921: In defiance of a ban by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis on World Series participants playing postseason exhibitions‚ Yankees Babe Ruth‚ Bob Meusel and pitcher Bill Piercy launch a barnstorming tour in Buffalo. Five days later‚ they cut it short in Scranton. In the meantime, Ruth openly challenges Landis to act.

The Judge does act‚ fining the players their World Series shares -- $3‚362.26, or $48,500 in today's money -- and suspending them until May 20 of the 1922 season.

Also on this day, after playing the 1st season of the NFL, 1920, as the Decatur Staleys in downstate Illinois, the team founded by George Halas plays its 1st home game as the Chicago Staleys. They defeat the Rochester Jeffersons 16-13 at Cubs Park, later to be renamed Wrigley Field, in front of only 8,000 people. This was a typical crowd for the early NFL. The next year, to match the Cubs, Halas would change the name of the team to the Chicago Bears.

Also on this day, Matthew Daniel Batts is born in San Antonio. A catcher, Matt Batts was with the Red Sox when they had their 1948 and '49 end-of-season disappointments. He later ran a printing company and ran baseball clinics at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he died in 2013.


October 16, 1940: David Albert DeBusschere is born in Detroit. He pitched for the Chicago White Sox in the 1962 and '63 seasons, but he was also a basketball star in his home town, first for the University of Detroit, then for the Pistons, where he became the youngest head coach in NBA history, at 24, from 1964 to 1967.

He is 1 of only 12 athletes to have played in both Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association (or its predecessor, the Basketball Association of America). The others are, in reverse chronological order: Mark Hendrickson (NBA forward 1996-2000, MLB pitcher 2002-11), Danny Ainge, Ron Reed, Steve Hamilton, Gene Conley (the only man to win titles in both sports, with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and the 1959, '60 and '61 Boston Celtics), Dick Groat, Cotton Nash, Frank Baumholtz, Dick Ricketts, Howie Schultz, and, better known as an actor, Chuck Connors.

For a long time, Madison Square Garden would host NBA doubleheaders, with the Knicks playing the nightcap but not the opener. When the new Garden opened on February 14, 1968, Dave DeBusschere, playing for the Pistons, scored the new building's 1st basket.

The Knicks traded Walt Bellamy to the Pistons to get DeBusschere, already with a reputation as one of the league’s best defensive players. He led the defense that helped the Knicks win the NBA Championship in 1970 and 1973. He later served as head coach and general manager of the Knicks, and his Number 22 has been retired. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and named to the NBA’s 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.

My generation knows DeBusschere best as the Knick GM who won the 1st pick in the 1st-ever NBA Draft Lottery in 1985, selecting Patrick Ewing. Sadly, the great Double D suffered a heart attack and died in 2003, age 63.

Also on this day, Leonard Barrie Corbin is born in Lamesa, Texas. Better known as Barry Corbin, he's best known for playing Maurice Minnifield, boss of Cicely, Alaska, on the 1990s CBS series Northern Exposure.

He also played a basketball coach on the WB drama One Tree Hill, and, like his fellow Northern Exposure stars John Corbett and John Cullum, is also renowned for his commercial voiceover work. He now has the recurring role of Merle Tucker, Cameron's father, on Modern Family.

October 16, 1941: James Timothy McCarver is born in Memphis -- but, like James Paul McCartney Jr., born 8 months later, this James is best known by his middle name. He played from 1959 to 1980, and is the only baseball player to be thrown out of major league games in 4 different decades.

But he was also the catcher on the 1964 and '7 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals, and Steve Carlton's "personal catcher" on the Philadelphia Phillies. He had also caught Carlton on the '67 Cards, and has joked that he and Steve will be buried 60 feet, 6 inches apart. (So far, it has not been necessary for either.) Although he did not play in the 1980 postseason, and in fact served as a Phils broadcaster during the NLCS, he received a World Series ring when the Phils won.

But he is best known as a broadcaster, for the Mets and several networks, and has been elected to the broadcasters' wing of the Hall of Fame. He's also written several books about baseball.

The weird thing about McCarver is that the ballpark in his hometown, which served as the home of a series of Memphis teams from 1968 to 1999, was renamed Tim McCarver Stadium in 1978, while he was not only still alive, but still active in baseball. It has since been replaced by a more modern facility, and was demolished in 2005. Like Helen Hayes with the 1st Broadway theater named for her, McCarver has outlived the "playhouse" named for him.

No wonder that, when James Timothy McCarver joined James Paul McCartney Jr. as a recording artist, and recorded Tim McCarver Sings Songs from the Great American Songbook in 2009, one of the songs he chose was the one that Joe Raposo wrote about Ebbets Field for Frank Sinatra: "There Used to Be a Ballpark."

October 16, 1943, 75 years ago: Thomas Gemmell (no middle name) is born in Motherwell, Scotland. A left back, from 1961 to 1971, Tommy Gemmell helped Glasgow soccer team Celtic win 6 League titles, 4 Scottish Cups, and the 1967 European Cup, making him one of the "Lisbon Lions."

He came to America in 1973, and played for the Miami Toros of the original North American Soccer League. He later managed Dundee United and, twice, Albion Rovers. He died on March 2, 2017.

October 16, 1944: Kaizer Motaung is born in the Orlando East section of Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa. At the age of 16, he was signed as a forward to Orlando Pirates Football Club, the most popular soccer team in his country. At this time, soccer was seen as the sport of the oppressed black majority, while cricket and rugby were the sports of the minority white government.

He came to America to play for the Atlanta Chiefs, and helped them win the 1968 North American Soccer League title. When he returned to South Africa in 1970, he founded a new team in Johannesburg, named for himself and his American team: Kaizer Chiefs.

In spite of African tribal leaders traditionally being called "chiefs" by Europeans (the word comes from the French "chef," meaning "head" or "leader"), the team's logo, like that of its Atlanta predecessor, shows a Native American in a feathered headdress. The Chiefs and Pirates have the most spirited rivalry in African soccer (with the exception of Cairo, Egypt giants Al-Ahly and Zamalek), and their stadiums are just 4.6 miles apart. Along with Pirates chairman Irvin Khoza, Kaizer founded South Africa's current top league, the South African Premier League.

With Kaizer still being involved with the club as executive chairman to this day, and his son Bobby Motaung as vice-chairman, it has won 13 League titles, including in 2015; 15 national cups, most recently in 2014; and the 2001 African Cup Winners' Cup. The club is the most popular sports team in the country (ahead of the national rugby team, the Springboks, and the national cricket team), and it is remarked that, with their traveling fans, they never truly play an away game.

October 16, 1946: Gordie Howe makes his NHL debut. Wearing Number 15 instead of the familiar 9 that he will start wearing the next season, the 18-year-old right wing scores against Turk Broda, and the Detroit Red Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 3-3 tie at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

The goal will be the 1st of 786 that the man who becomes known as Mr. Hockey will score for the Wings, going on to win 4 Stanley Cups and becoming the greatest player the game has ever known, and I don't want to hear about no Number 99: Gordie was better. We lost him this year, at the age of 88.

Also on this day, Geoffrey Colin Barnett is born in Northwich, Chester, England. The goalkeeper was a career backup, not making enough appearances to qualify for the League title with Liverpool-based Everton in 1963 or North London's Arsenal in 1971, nor the FA Cup with Everton in 1966 or Arsenal in 1971. But in 1972, when Bob Wilson was injured in Arsenal's FA Cup Semifinal win over Stoke City, Barnett had to step in. They lost the Final 1-0 to Leeds United, but don't blame Barnett: Wilson wouldn't have stopped Allan Clarke's diving header, either.

In 1976, he came to America, and played for the Minnesota Kicks of the North American Soccer League, eventually alongside his former teammate, Arsenal legend Charlie George. He managed the team in its final season, 1981, but, through no fault of his, it folded. He returned to England and ran a pub in Cheshire until 2010, then came back to Minnesota, where he is now an official at a golf course.

Also on this day, Suzanne Marie Mahoney is born in San Bruno, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. We know her as Suzanne Somers. She starred in 2 ABC sitcoms, playing Chrissie Snow on Three's Company in the 1970s and Carol Lambert on Step By Step in the 1990s.

Despite being 72 years old and having survived breast cancer, she remains in the phenomenal shape that has allowed her to write several fitness books, make her own exercise videos, and serve as the spokeswoman for the Thighmaster. Which, I suppose, gives her a tangential relationship to sports.

October 16, 1948, 70 years ago: Leo David Mazzone is born in Keyser, West Virginia. He was the longtime pitching coach for the Atlanta Braves, and TV cameras frequently showed him rocking back and forth on the dugout bench, which drove Brave-haters crazy.

He was their pitching coach from 1979 to 1990, and they reached the postseason just once. But from 1991 to 2005, they made the postseason every year – except, of course, for 1994, when there was no postseason. In 2006, he was hired as the pitching coach for the Baltimore Orioles, and after two years of being unable to repeat his Atlanta magic, he was fired. He now works as a baseball analyst for Fox.

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October 16, 1950: Branch Rickey's contract as president, and de facto general manager, of the Brooklyn Dodgers expires. He is still owner of one-quarter of the franchise. With the death of quarter-owner John L. Smith, another quarter-owner, Walter O'Malley, buys Smith's share from his heirs, making him the largest owner: O'Malley 50 percent, Rickey 25 percent, and James and Dearie Mulvey each having 12.5 percent.

Dearie was the daughter of Steve McKeever, who with his brother Ed ran the construction company that helped former sole owner Charlie Ebbets build Ebbets Field in 1912-13; James was her husband.

O'Malley knew he could dominate the Mulveys, and did so until he finally bought them out in 1975. But he and Rickey were both very strong personalities, with little in common except cheapness, the Republican Party, and the belief that they always had to be right.

O'Malley hated everything about Rickey, including his favorite player, Jackie Robinson, and his favorite broadcaster, Red Barber; and would force Rickey, Robinson and Barber out of the organization -- all before moving the team, meaning he would have been a dirty bastard even if the team were still in Brooklyn to this day.

O'Malley offered to buy Rickey's quarter-share of the club. Seeing no reason to hold onto it -- he was not going to be offered a new contract as president, and, effectively, general manager with control over transactions and salaries -- Rickey decided to comply.

However, in a final act of spite, Rickey instead offered his percentage of the club to a friend for a million dollars. His chances at complete franchise control at risk, O'Malley was forced to offer more money, and Rickey finally sold his portion for $1,050,000 -- about $10.8 million in today's money. (In the era of free agency and big TV packages, basketball legend Magic Johnson bought the Dodger franchise for $1.4 billion in 2012.)

Rickey's son, Branch Rickey Jr. -- known as "Twig," but never to his face, or to his father's -- was already the Dodgers' farm director. After leaving the Dodgers, Branch Sr. was offered the position of general manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He took it, and took Branch Jr. with him to direct their farm systems. Health problems forced Branch Sr. to retire in 1955, but his contributions, and those of Branch Jr., would help lead to a World Championship for Pittsburgh in 1960.

Oddly, Branch Jr., who had diabetes, died first, in 1961; Branch Sr. died in 1965. Branch Jr.'s son, Branch Barrett Rickey (never "Branch Rickey III, but that's what people call him"), now 73, is the president of the Pacific Coast League, having also worked in the Pirates' organization, and also in that of the Cincinnati Reds (which makes sense, since Branch Sr. was from Ohio).

October 16, 1953: Al Sobotka is born. You probably won't recognize his name unless you're from Michigan, or maybe Windsor, Ontario. But he is the building operations manager for 2 Detroit arenas: The old Cobo Hall and the new Little Caesars Arena.

In this role, he is also the zamboni driver for the hockey team that plays at LCA, and before that at Joe Louis Arena, the Detroit Red Wings. He's also the guy who picks up any octopus that's thrown onto the ice, and if the Wings are winning, he'll twirl the octopus around over his head. The Wings have won 4 Stanley Cups while he’s been an employee, and they gave him a ring for each of them.

Also on this day, Paulo Roberto Falcão is born in Abelardo Luz, Santa Catarina, Brazil. A midfielder known by just his last name, he led Porto Alegre club Internacional to League titles in 1975, '76 and '79; and AS Roma to the Coppa Italia in 1981 and '84 and the League title in 1983. He also played for Brazil in the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. 

He briefly managed the Brazil and Japan national teams, now manages Sport Club do Recife in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Colombian footballer Radamel García named his son Radamel Falcao (with no accent mark over the 2nd A) in tribute, and the latter is now one of the biggest stars in the game.

October 16, 1956: Jules Rimet dies, 2 days after his 83rd birthday. He was the longtime president of FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the world's governing body for soccer. (The name "soccer" comes from a shortening of "association football" to "assoc.") He was the founder of the World Cup, whose championship trophy is named for him.

Also on this day, Melissa Louise Belote is born in Washington, D.C., and grows up in the nearby suburb of Springfield, Virginia. Just 15 years old, she swam to 3 Gold Medals at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. She swam at Arizona State University, and won the Honda-Broderick Cup as America's best female collegiate athlete for the 1976-77 schoolyear.

Now using her married name of Melissa Belote Ripley, she is a high school swimming coach in the Phoenix suburbs. She is a member of the International Swimming and Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. On my 1st visit to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in 1992, when she was just 35, she was already a member of the stadium's ring of honor, the Washington Wall of Stars.

October 16, 1957: Hall-of-Fame slugger Hank Greenberg is fired as general manager by the owners of the Cleveland Indians. Greenberg‚ one of the architects of the strong Cleveland teams of the early 1950s‚ will be replaced by Frank "Trader" Lane‚ but will continue as a minority shareholder in the team until Bill Veeck, who had hired him for the Indians in 1948, hires him for the front office of the Chicago White Sox when he buys them in 1959. Lane's hiring will be a disastrous one for the Indians.

October 16, 1958, 60 years ago: Timothy Francis Robbins is born in the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina, California, and grows up in New York. Despite all his work, he is still best known for playing Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh, a minor-league pitcher with "a million-dollar arm and a 5-cent head," in the film Bull Durham.

On the set, he met Susan Sarandon, who grew up in Edison, New Jersey. They were together for 21 years, although they never got married. They are both fans of the New York Mets and Rangers. Well, nobody's perfect.

Go ahead, Tim, blow out those 60 candles. Just blow ‘em out. Don't think, Meat, just blow.

October 16, 1959: Brian David Harper is born in San Pedro, California. He was the catcher for the Minnesota Twins on their 1991 World Championship team. He is now the hitting instructor for the Detroit Tigers' Class AAA team, the Toledo Mud Hens. His son Brett got as far as AAA ball in the Mets' system. They are not related to Bryce Harper.

Also on this day, George C. Marshall dies at age 78. The former 5-Star General was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army during World War II, planner of the D-Day invasion, Secretary of State and creator of the plan to rebuild postwar Europe that bears his name, and Secretary of Defense in the early part of the Korean War.

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October 16, 1960: Arch McDonald dies of a heart attack on a train going from New York to Washington. He was 59. In 1939, he had been the 1st radio voice of the Yankees, but never fit in with New York. That 1 season aside, he was the voice of the Washington Senators from 1934 to 1956, and of the Washington Redskins from their arrival in 1937 until his death.

He may have been the 1st baseball announcer to use the words, "going, going, gone" to describe a home run. Mel Allen, who teamed with him that 1939 season and then led the broadcasts until 1964, adopted it. McDonald would be posthumously awarded the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford Frick Award for broadcasters. (Allen and Red Barber would be its 1st recipients.)

Also on this day, Graeme Marshall Sharp is born in Glasgow, Scotland. A striker, he was a member of the Merseyside-based Everton team that won the FA Cup in 1984, the Football League and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1985, and the League again in 1987.

He played for Scotland in the 1986 World Cup, served as player-manager for Manchester-area team Oldham Athletic, and now hosts a radio show and serves as an Everton club ambassador.

October 16, 1961: Christopher John Doleman is born in Indianapolis, and grows up in York, Pennsylvania. The defensive end was an 8-time All-Pro, and was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the NFL's 1990s All-Decade Team, and the Minnesota Vikings Ring of Honor.

Also on this day, Paul Leon Vaessen is born in Gillingham, Kent, England. A forward, and the son of Gillingham and South London club Millwall forward Leon Vaessen, he debuted for North London's Arsenal in the UEFA Cup in the Autumn of 1978.

In 1980, only 18 years old, he traveled with Arsenal to Turin, where Italian giants Juventus had not lost a match in any European tournament in 5 years, and, as a late substitute, in the 88th minute, scored the goal that won a European Cup Winners' Cup Semifinal. It was the 1st time any British team had won away to Juventus. (Arsenal would lose the Final to Spanish club Valencia.)

Paul Vaessen was a teenager, living the dream. It turned into a nightmare. He wrecked his knee the next season, and played his last game before he was 21. He turned to drugs to kill the pain. In 1985, in a drug deal gone wrong near Millwall's ground, he was stabbed nearly to death. In 1998, he was charged with assaulting a policeman who'd arrested him for shoplifting in Farnborough, Hampshire.

On August 8, 2001, he died of an overdose in Bristol, Gloucestershire. The most spectacular tragedy in Arsenal's history, he wasn't quite 40 years old.

October 16, 1962: Game 7 of the World Series at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Tony Kubek, who missed much of the season due to military service, grounds into a double play in the 5th inning, but a run scores on the play. The score remains Yankees 1, Giants 0 in the bottom of the 9th. With 2 outs and Matty Alou on 1st‚ Willie Mays rips a double to right off Ralph Terry‚ but great fielding by Roger Maris keeps Alou from scoring.

The Yankees now have a choice to make: Have the righthanded Terry, who gave up Bill Mazeroski’s Series-winning homer in Game 7 in 1960, pitch to the next batter, the dangerous lefthander Willie McCovey; or walk him to load the bases and set up the Series-clinching out at any base, and pitch to the equally dangerous but righthanded Orlando Cepeda. Between them, they would hit 900 home runs in the major leagues (McCovey 521, Cepeda 379). Both were already All-Stars, and both had been Rookie of the Year (Cepeda in 1958, McCovey in '59). It's like choosing between the guillotine and the hangman's noose.

Oddly, despite all the talk about whether to pitch to McCovey or Cepeda, removing the tiring righthanded Terry for a relief pitcher, possibly a lefthander to pitch to the lefthanded McCovey, seems never to have been discussed.

They decide to pitch to McCovey. "Stretch" hits a screaming liner toward right field‚ but 2nd baseman Bobby Richardson takes one step to his left and snares it. Ballgame over, Yankees win, theeeeeeee Yankees win. Barely. It is the first World Series Game 7 that ends 1-0. There has since been only one more, in 1991, and that one went 10 innings.

It is the Yankees' 20th World Championship, their 2nd in a row. Terry, who had also won 23 regular season games, Game 5 of the Series, and soon the Cy Young Award, is awarded the Series MVP award. He is fully redeemed for having given up the Series-winning home run to Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates 2 years earlier.

However, the Yankees will not win another World Series for 15 years. The Giants? They would have to wait another 27 years just to get into another Series, and won't win one until 2010.

Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz, a Giants fan living in nearby Santa Rosa, soon draws a cartoon having Charlie Brown yell to the heavens, "Why couldn't McCovey's drive have been just three feet higher?" McCovey did his job, and the Giants took the Series to the last out of the last game. They just got beat by a team that was a little bit better.

Still alive from the 1962 World Champion Yankees, 56 years ago, are 11 players: Terry, Richardson, Kubek, Whitey Ford, Jim Coates, Bud Daley, and Hector Lopez; plus Joe Pepitone, Jim Bouton, Rollie Sheldon and Jake Gibbs, who never got into any of the Series games.

Surviving from the Giants are 9 players: McCovey, Cepeda, Willie Mays, Juan Marichal, Felipe Alou, Gaylord Perry, Bobby Bolin, Ernie Bowman, and, oddly, a man who'd been a Yankee World Series hero, Don Larsen. Billy O'Dell died this past September 12.

Also on this day, Manute Bol is born in Turalei, in what is now the Republic of South Sudan. The son of a Dinka tribal chief, he was 7-foot-6, and until Georghe Mursean, also a Washington Bullet, he was probably the tallest player in NBA history. He remains the only player ever to block more shots than he made.

He played for the Bullets, the Golden State Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers (where, naturally, he wore Number 76) and the Miami Heat. On both the Bullets and, previously, for the minor-league Rhode Island Gulls, his teammate was Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues, at 5-foot-3 the shortest player in NBA history.

After working in public relations for Ethiopian Airlines, and with African refugee groups, he was badly hurt in a car crash in 2004, and died of kidney failure in 2010. He was just 47.

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October 16, 1963: Two newly-moved NBA teams play their 1st games in their new cities. The Syracuse Nationals, having ended the era of small-town NBA teams that also included Rochester and Fort Wayne as recently as 1957, take the place of the Philadelphia Warriors, who moved to San Francisco (and adopted their current name, the Golden State Warriors, in 1971), and become the Philadelphia 76ers. With 26 points from Hal Greer, they beat the Detroit Pistons, 117-115 at Cobo Hall in Detroit.

The Baltimore Bullets, who took up the name of the 1946-54 Charm City franchise after 2 seasons as the Chicago Packers and Chicago Zephyrs expansion franchise, aren't so lucky: Walt Bellamy scores 32 points and Terry Dischinger 26, but the Boston Celtics beat them 109-95 at the Baltimore Civic Center (which still stands, now named the Royal Farms Arena).

October 16, 1964: The Cleveland Indians' Board of Directors, after deliberating for 4 hours, decide to keep the team in the Forest City after exploring options to possibly shift the franchise to any of 3 cities that they'd discussed: Seattle, Oakland, or Dallas.

Staying in Cleveland was the best of a few bad choices. Seattle had the 17,000-seat Sick's Stadium, which was eventually expanded to 25,000 seats, and was hardly major league quality even then. And there would always be the threat of rain. (The era of domed stadiums was about to begin.)

The city of Arlington, Texas, about halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, was about to build the 10,000-seat Turnpike Stadium, which eventually became the 43,000-seat Arlington Stadium. But where would the Indians play in the meantime? In 1962, Charlie Finley considered moving the Kansas City Athletics to Dallas and playing in the Cotton Bowl, but that's a football stadium, and either left or right field would have had a ridiculously close fence.

Oakland? The Coliseum was still 2 years away from opening, and Emeryville Park, home of the Pacific Coast League's Oakland Oaks, had already been demolished. Where were they going to play until the Coliseum opened? Would the Giants have given them permission to groundshare at Candlestick Park in the interim? Going from Cleveland Municipal Stadium to Candlestick would have been like going from a lion's den to a snake pit: Not a significant improvement. Finley would move the A's to Oakland in 1968, by which point the Raiders had already played 2 seasons there.

The Tribe signs a 10-year lease to use Municipal Stadium at a reduced rent, which includes an escape clause for the city and the club after any season. Despite the threat of having to move due to poor finances hanging over them through the 1960s, the '70s and the '80s, it would take until 1994 for them to move into a modern, suitable ballpark. And it would be in Cleveland.

Also on this day, Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister of Britain, as his Labour Party wins a close election. What made the difference? Was it the mismanagment by the Conservative Party under Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan (1957-63) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64)? Was it the 1963 sex scandal known as the Profumo Affair? Was it simply fatigue from 13 years of Tory governance (also including Winston Churchill, 1951-55, and Anthony Eden, 1955-57)? Or was it the photograph Wilson took, posing with The Beatles? Hard to say.

Also on this day, Francis "Patsy" Callighen dies in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio. The Toronto native was 58, and was a member of the New York Rangers' 1928 Stanley Cup winners.

Also on this day, Jean-Christophe Thomas is born in Châlons-en-Champagne, France. A midfielder, he came on as a late substitute for Olympique de Marseille in the 1993 UEFA Champions League Final, as "L'OM" became the 1st (and still only) French team ever to win the European Cup.

October 16, 1965: Byron Thomas Tolbert is born in Long Beach, California. A member of Arizona's 1st Final Four team in 1988, the power forward played 7 seasons in the NBA. Tom now hosts a sports-talk show on San Francisco's KNBR, and is an announcer for ABC's NBA coverage.

October 16, 1966: Stefan Reuter (no middle name) is born in
Dinkelsbühl, Bavaria, Germany. A right back, he helped Bayern Munich win the Bundesliga (German league) in 1989 and 1990, and was selected to play for West Germany in the 1990 World Cup, which they won.

He was signed by Juventus, but had a frustrating 1991-92 season, finishing runner-up in Serie A (the Italian league), the Coppa Italia, and Euro 92 (the 1st international tournament for a unified Germany since the 1938 World Cup). He moved on to Borussia Dortmund, and helped them win the Bundesliga in 1995, 1996 and 2002, and the UEFA Champions League in 1997. He also won Euro 1996 with Germany. He is now the general manager of Bundesliga club FC Augsburg.

October 16, 1967: The Dallas Chaparrals of the American Basketball Association play their 1st game. They beat the Anaheim Amigos 129-125. The Chaps would move in 1973, and become the San Antonio Spurs.

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October 16, 1968, 50 years ago: On the same day as the Smith & Carlos protest, the Milwaukee Bucks make their NBA debut. They play the team that will become their arch-rivals, the Chicago Bulls, and lose 89-84 at the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA (now the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena).