The Curse of Kevin Mitchell: Now 32 Years

No, I won't stop posting this every year on the anniversary. Why should I? At least I used a different photo this time.

October 27, 1986: The Mets win the World Series. I was not happy about this.

They have not done so since. I am very happy about that.

After Game 7 was pushed back a day by rain, the Red Sox actually seem to be shaking off the historical, hysterical Game 6 loss. They lead the Mets, 3-0 in the bottom of the 6th inning. Bruce Hurst, with an extra day’s rest, is doing just fine. The Sox have chased Ron Darling. Sid Fernandez has relieved him. The Sox are just 12 outs away from their 1st World Championship in 68 years after all.

Can they hold it? These are the Boston Red Sox, what do you think? The Mets tie it up in the 6th. The idiot manager John McNamara brings in Calvin Schiraldi, who choked in the 10th the night before, to pitch the 7th, and Ray Knight leads off with a home run.  he Mets make it 6-3 by the inning’s end.

The Sox make it 6-5 in the top of the 8th, so there's still hope, but then Al Nipper serves one up to Darryl Strawberry, and he hits one out, and takes a leisurely stroll around the bases, allowing NBC to run about a dozen commercials.

The Mets let reliever Jesse Orosco bat for himself, and he drives in another run, and he gets the last out by striking out Marty Barrett. Mets 8, Red Sox 5. Orosco hurls his glove high into the Flushing air.

The Mets won their 1st World Championship on October 16, 1969. It took them 17 years and 11 days, but they had now won their 2nd World Championship.

Anyone then thinking that they wouldn't win their 3rd World Championship for at least another 29 years would have been asked what he was smoking.

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But, tonight, exactly 32 years later, the Mets are still looking for that 3rd World Championship. They've won just 2 more Pennants and just 2 more World Series games since that night -- 1 in 2000, and 1 in 2015. To make matters worse, following the 1st of those Pennants, they went on to lose to the Yankees in the World Series, 1 of 5 the Yankees have won since 1986.

Indeed, since October 27, 1986, the Mets have reached the Playoffs 6 times, not a bad total at all -- 8 of the other 25 teams then in existence have not done that well -- but the Yankees have done it 19 times. As late as 1992, before the Yankees started contending again, it could be argued that the Mets were the top baseball team in New York. It has never been true again -- even now, it cannot be credibly said to be true. Even if they do win this World Series, it will still be 27 to 3, with 2000 a permanent cloud over them.

What the hell happened? Well, when something goes wrong, people like to look for scapegoats. Someone frustrated with the Red Sox' inability to win a World Series since 1918 thought he found a reason: They hadn't won since they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919, and the phrase "The Curse of the Bambino" was born. The phrase was popularized by Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, and became the title of his 1990 book about the history of that franchise.

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December 11, 1986, a date which lives in Flushing infamy: The Mets sent Kevin Mitchell, Shawn Abner, Stan Jefferson, Kevin Armstrong and Kevin Brown (no, not that Kevin Brown, though he did also pitch for the Padres later) to Mitchell's hometown, San Diego, for Kevin McReynolds, Gene Walter and Adam Ging. Forget everyone else, if you hadn't already: The keys to this trade were Mitchell and McReynolds.

McReynolds was a good player, but he was not a member of the glorious '86 team that went all the way. When the Mets didn't go all the way again, he became a scapegoat, and got the hell booed out of him. Fair? Of course not.

But it wouldn't have mattered so much if Mitchell hadn't panned out. And, as far as his hometown Padres were concerned, he didn’t: On July 5, 1987, not even at the All-Star Break of his 1st season with them, he was batting just .245 in 62 games, so they sent him, and pitchers Dave Dravecky and Craig Lefferts, up the coast to the San Francisco Giants, getting back 3rd baseman Chris Brown, reliever Mark Davis (both of whom became All-Stars but never helped the team into the Playoffs) and 2 guys you don’t need to remember. So Mitchell-for-McReynolds didn’t help the Mets or the Padres.

These two Mitchell trades, however, helped the Giants tremendously. Before the trade, they had been in San Francisco for 29 years and had reached the postseason exactly twice, the last time, 16 years earlier. In 1987, the Giants won the NL West, as Mitchell responded to the change of scenery by hitting .306 with 15 homers and 44 RBIs in just 69 games for them.

In 1988, Mitchell tailed off a little, and the Giants tailed off a lot. But in 1989, he hit 47 home runs, had 125 RBIs, put up a sick OPS+ of 192, and made one of the great catches of all time, a running barehanded catch in St. Louis -- off the bat of defensive "Wizard" Ozzie Smith, no less -- that almost sent him barreling into the stands. Not since the salad days of Willie Mays had the Giants seen that kind of outfield defense.

He won the NL's Most Valuable Player award, and helped the Giants win only their 2nd Pennant in 35 years, while the Mets finished 2nd in the NL East for the 5th of 6 times in a span of 8 years – the others being the '86 crown and the '88 Division title.

Problems with his weight and other disciplinary issues led to Mitchell being traded several times. But he did help the Cincinnati Reds into 1st place in the NL Central Division when the Strike of '94 hit, and still had an OPS+ of 138 as late as 1996.

But he played his last big-league game in 1998 at age 36, and after bouncing around the independent minors, including stints in New Jersey with the Newark Bears and Atlantic City Surf, he called it a career. Sort of: He went back to his native San Diego, playing in an "adult baseball league" (no, no porn stars involved – that I know of), and won a title with his team in 2009.

At 54, he is now an instructor for youth baseball teams, and recently recovered from a nasty neck injury that put him in the hospital for a month. By the time he returned to Shea for the celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the title this past Summer, he was walking on his own again, and hoping to go back to his passion for motorcycles. He belongs to a motorcycle club (not a "biker gang" -- he calls it "Just a bunch of old guys having fun") called the Hood Beasts. That's their cap and jacket he's wearing in this photo.

It seems silly to suggest that he was angry about being traded by the Mets so soon after winning the Series, certainly not so angry that he would place a "curse" on them. After all, he went to his home town, the team he grew up rooting for. They soon traded him, but that worked out really well for him.  Perhaps not in terms of team success, but in terms of fame and fortune, getting away from the Mets was the best thing that could have happened to him.

Still, the fact remains that the Mets won a World Series, and were expected to win more; then, just 45 days after they won said Series, they traded Mitchell away, and they haven't won one since.

Are the Mets cursed? Or have they just been hit with a 3-decade-long combination of good competition and their own incompetence -- on the field, in the dugout, and in the boardroom?

Other teams have waited a longer. Some, a lot longer. Some of those teams have had bizarre moments and crashes-and-burns that suggest being cursed. Some haven't, and have just... not... gotten it done.

The Mets?

* Post-season chokes in 1988, 1999, 2006, 2015 and 2016.

* Regular-season chokes in 1998, 2007 and 2008.

* Near-misses, aside from those, in 1987, 1989, 1990 and 2001.

* Injury-riddled seasons, aside from those, in 1995, 1996, 1997, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2017. (Certainly, 2016 qualifies.)

* The Madoffization of the Wilpons' finances in 2008.

* And losses to teams they considered rivals in 1987 and 2006 (Cardinals), 1989 (Cubs), 1998 and 1999 (Braves), 2000 (Yankees), and now 2007 and 2008 (Phillies). That's... 19 out of 30 seasons with possible "Curse Material."

The Curse of Kevin Mitchell? Do you believe?

Met fans like to use the old line of 1965-74 relief pitcher Tug McGraw: YA GOTTA BELIEVE!

I'd rather believe in the curse on the Mets than believe in the Mets themselves.

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October 27, 939: Aethelstan the Good dies at about age 45, after 15 years as King of the Anglo-Saxons and 12 years as King of the English. For conquering York, then the last remaining Viking kingdom in the British Isles, thus uniting Wessex and Mercia, modern historians regard him as the 1st true "King of England."

But he never married and had no children, so he was succeeded by his half-brother, who became known as Edmund the Magnificent. Their grandfather, Alfred, remains the only English or British monarch ever to carry the description "The Great."


October 27, 1858: Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is born at 28 East 20th Street in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan. (He would drop the Jr. after his father died in 1880.) Over a century and a half later, he remains the only legitimately-elected President to have been born in New York City – although others have, at some point or another, lived in the City: Washington, both Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Grant, Arthur, Cleveland, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Obama. (Eisenhower was, for a time, president of Columbia University, and Obama was a student there. So was Monroe, at a time when it was still called King's College.)

TR was a member of the boxing team at Harvard University. (Yes, colleges once had boxing teams, even the Ivies.) He loved tennis, although, knowing it was considered an elitist sport, refused to allow the press to photograph him while he played. (He warned his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, not to let them take his picture while he played golf, another sport then considered elitist, but Taft didn't listen to him.)

Seeing a newspaper photo of a bloodied Swarthmore College player, Robert "Tiny" Maxwell, in 1905, TR called in the top football officials of the time, and told them to do something about the violence in the game, or he would act. Not knowing how far he would go, fearing he might pass a law banning the game, in 1906 they formed what became the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and passed rule changes including the forward pass.

Had he ordered football shut down, that might have given soccer its best chance to succeed in America until the current boom. But he didn't.

Mount Rushmore, outside Rapid City, South Dakota, has the faces of 4 Presidents, chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borghlum for the following reasons: George Washington, as the father of the country; Thomas Jefferson, not for writing the Declaration of Independence, but for the Louisiana Purchase, beginning America's westward expansion; Abraham Lincoln, for saving the Union and making the Transcontinental Railroad possible; and Theodore Roosevelt, for being the 1st President to really have a connection with the West, as he had a ranch in North Dakota.

When Epic Rap Battles of History did Winston Churchill vs. Theodore Roosevelt, Dan Bull, a British rapper playing Churchill, told "Epic Lloyd" Ahlquist, playing TR, "They put your fat head on a mountain to save face, but if Rushmore were a band, you'd play bass!"

I say that TR is "the only legitimately-elected President to have been born in New York City." Officially, he is the 1st of 2 Presidents to have been born in The City -- and he would have beaten the shit out of the 2nd. Granted, that would have required a lot of beating, because Donald Trump is full of shit. But TR was fond of what he called "The Strenuous Life."

October 27, 1866: In Philadelphia‚ the Unions of Morrisania‚ with future Cincinnati Red Stockings star George Wright playing shortstop‚ upset the Athletics‚ 42-29. This Philadelphia Athletics had no connection to the later American League team of the same name, which now plays in Oakland.

October 27, 1868, 150 years ago: Corvallis State Agricultural College is founded in the Oregon city of the same name. It will be named Oregon State Agricultural College in 1882, Oregon State College in 1937 and Oregon State University in 1961.

The Beavers' most famous athlete is Terry Baker, a lefthanded quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy in 1962, and, due to his aura as a "scholar-athlete," was also honored by Sports Illustrated as that year's Sportsman of the Year. Alas, his pro career was a bust, as he was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams, who already had Roman Gabriel. But he became one of Oregon's most distinguished lawyers.

Other notable Oregon State athletes include high jump innovator Dick Fosbury; basketball legends A.C. Green and Gary Payton; NFL stars Derek Anderson, T.J. Houshmandzadeh, Steven Jackson and Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson; and baseball star and current Yankee Jacoby Ellsbury.

Political alumni include former Oregon Governors John H. Hall and Douglas MacKay, former Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus (who, like McKay, also served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior), former Nevada Senator John Ensign, and former Congressman Norris Poulson, who, as Mayor of Los Angeles, helped clear the way for the Brooklyn Dodgers to move there.

Other notable alumni include Douglas Engelbart, the computer scientist who invented the "mouse" and helped develop e-mail; and Linus Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954 and for Peace in 1962 -- not only the only Peace Prize laureate to have won for another category, but the only person to win unshared Nobels in 2 different categories.

October 27, 1873: James John Davies is born in Tredegar, Wales, and moves with his family to the Pittsburgh area at age 8. Because the Welsh name "Davies" is pronounced "Davis," he later changed his name to James J. Davis.

"Puddler Jim" worked in the steel industry, and rose through the ranks of organized labor. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed him U.S. Secretary of Labor, and he held the office through his Administration, and throughout that of President Calvin Coolidge, and into that of President Herbert Hoover. He left the post in 1930 to accept an appointment to the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania. He was elected in his own right in 1932, 1938 and 1944, and died in office in 1945.

October 27, 1885: Frederick Hugh Lehman is born in Pembroke, Ontario. "Hugh,""Hughie,""Bull" or "Old Eagle Eyes" -- as Rocky Balboa would say, "Yo, you think you got enough nicknames?" -- was the 1st great goaltender as hockey became a professional game. He won the Stanley Cup with the 1915 Vancouver Millionaires. In 1926, he became the 1st starting goalie for the Chicago Blackhawks. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958, and died in 1961.

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October 27, 1904: The 1st Subway line opens in New York. It runs from City Hall to Grand Central Station (roughly today's 4, 5 and 6 trains), then turns onto 42nd Street (today's S, or Times Square-Grand Central Shuttle), then up Broadway to 207th Street (today's 1 train) before making one final curve into the Bronx to Bailey Street (this part is part of today's A train).

The Polo Grounds of the time, and its 1911 successor, were served by the 155th Street station that opened on this day. It was supposedly on this line in 1908 that Jack Norworth, a songwriter, saw a sign saying, "Baseball To-Day, Polo Grounds," inspiring him to write the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

It would be 1918 before "34th St.-Penn Station" opened to service the 1910-built Pennsylvania Station, and thus to the successor station and the "new" Madison Square Garden built on the site. The 34th Street station on the 8th Avenue side of Penn Station opened in 1932, as did the 42nd Street station that serves the Port Authority Bus Terminal that opened in 1950, and the 50th Street station that served the old Garden from 1932 until its closing in 1968.

The current 4 train station at 161st Street and River Avenue opened in 1917, and began serving Yankee Stadium at its opening in 1923; the D train station there opened in 1933, probably to coincide with the opening of the nearby Bronx County Courthouse. The Prospect Park station now used by the Q train became part of the City Subway in 1920, and was used to get to games at Ebbets Field.

The station now served by the 7 train opened in 1939 for the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, well predating the 1964-65 World’s Fair and the opening of Shea Stadium and the National Tennis Center. It was named "Willets Point Blvd." from 1939 to 1964 and "Willets Point-Shea Stadium" from 1964 to 2008, and has been renamed "Mets-Willets Point," as the MTA did not want to use the name "Citi Field" due to CitiGroup's role in the 2008 financial crisis.

October 27, 1910: Philadelphia Athletics manager, and part-owner, Connie Mack marries Catarina Hallahan. This is the 2nd marriage for Mack, widowed in 1892, and it will have dire consequences for the A's.

In the 1940s, as Mack, by then majority owner but in his 80s and quite senile, refused to step down as manager, the products of his 2 marriages were opposed to each other: His sons from his 1st marriage, Earle Mack and Roy Mack, on one side; his 2nd wife and their son, Connie Mack Jr., on the other. To make matters worse, Earle and Roy were feuding with each other, each thinking he should take over the team (as operating owner, if not as manager, though both had played and coached for Connie Sr.), but the only thing they seemed to agree on was that they hated Kate and Connie Jr. It got so bad that, at one point, Kate kicked the old man out of the house.

Connie Sr. desperately wanted to manage the team through the 1950 season, to make it 50 seasons in charge. He actually believed that, at age 87, he could manage one more Pennant winner. Well, Philadelphia did win a Pennant that year, but it was the Phillies, while the A's crashed to last place. Finally, with the anniversary out of the way, Earle, Roy and Connie Jr. swallowed their differences, made a brief, uneasy alliance for the good of the team, mortgaged the heck out of their various properties, bought out the other part-owners, ganged up on their father, and forced him out of the manager's job.

Connie Sr. kept his office at Shibe Park, but had no more power. And the sons once again agreed on nothing, and, with their respective finances in shambles, sold the team after the 1954 season, and they were moved to Kansas City. The Phillies bought Shibe Park, and renamed it Connie Mack Stadium. Connie Sr. lived until 1956, Roy until 1960, Kate until 1966, Earle until 1967, and Connie Jr. until 1996.

October 27, 1918, 100 years ago: Muriel Teresa Wright is born in Manhattan. Dropping her first name, Teresa Wright played Eleanor Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees. She died in 2005, the last surviving major castmember of the film.

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October 27, 1922: Ralph McPherran Kiner is born in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. He grew up in Alhambra, California, outside Los Angeles. From 1946 to 1952, he led the National League in home runs every year, twice topping 50 homers in a season.

He was a one-dimensional player, but he was the best player the Pittsburgh Pirates had. Still, the team wasn't doing well, on the field or at the gate, and team president Branch Rickey said, "We finished last with you, and we can finish last without you," meaning, "We can finish last without having to pay your salary," and sold him to the Chicago Cubs.

A back injury ended his career in 1955, after only 10 seasons. But in those 10 seasons, he hit 369 home runs. If it had been 20 years, double that, and it becomes 738 home runs – not as many as Hank Aaron and the cheating Barry Bonds ended up with, but more than the man who held the record then, Babe Ruth. Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn said, "Ralph Kiner can wipe out your lead with one swing."

Kiner allegedly said, "Home run hitters drive Cadillacs, singles hitters drive Fords." That line has also been attributed to Luke Appling, but he probably didn't say it, since he was a singles hitter (albeit one of the best ever).

Kiner went into broadcasting, and joined the staff of the expansion New York Mets in 1962. His postgame show Kiner's Korner did so much to teach a generation of us about the game. But Ralph's broadcasting, well, had its moments. Remembering early Met Marv Thronberry and '73 Met George Theodore, he called Darryl Strawberry "Darryl Throneberry" and "George Strawberry." He said, "Darryl Strawberry has been voted into the Hall of Fame five times in a row"– he meant the All-Star Team. He called Gary Carter "Gary Cooper." He called himself "Ralph Korner" many times.

He once called his broadcasting partner "Tim McArthur." At the end of the game, Tim McCarver said, "Well, Ralph, Douglas MacArthur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind, and the Mets obviously weren't prepared tonight.'" Kiner said, "He also said, 'I shall return,' and so will we, right after these messages."

Then there was, "Today is Father's Day, so for all you dads out there, Happy Birthday." Like Herb Score in Cleveland and Jerry Coleman in San Diego, he is sometimes cited as having said, "He slides into second with a standup double." But he definitely said, "Kevin McReynolds stops at third, and he scores." Like Phil Rizzuto across town with the Yankees, he frequently called home runs that ended up off the wall or caught.

My favorite Kinerism is when he cued up an ad for Manufacturer's Hanover, a bank now owned by CitiGroup, by saying, "We'll be right back, after this message from Manufacturer's Hangover."

He blamed his malaprops on hanging around Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra so much in the Mets' early days. But when he did call a home run correctly, it was with a variation on the classic theme: "That ball is going, it is going, it is gone, goodbye!" And he paid one of the great tributes to a player, when he cited the fielding of the Phillies' 1970s center fielder: "Two-thirds of the Earth is covered by water. The other third is covered by Garry Maddox."

A bout with Bell's palsy left him with a noticeable speech impediment, and as he reached the age of 80, his workdays were cut back, but into the 2010s, he still did Met games on Friday nights. As the Mets' radio booth is named for Bob Murphy, their TV booth is named for Kiner. The Pirates retired his Number 4, the Mets elected him to their team Hall of Fame, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He died in 2014, at age 91, and was, deservedly so, one of the game's most revered figures.

Also on this day, Ruby Ann Wallace is born in Cleveland. Known professionally as Ruby Dee, she played Rachel Robinson in The Jackie Robinson Story, while Jackie played himself. It's a little weird that two actresses (Ruby and Teresa Wright) who played wives of Baseball Hall-of-Famers, in films only 8 years apart, would have the same birthday.

Dee was married to Ossie Davis, who, among his own many acting achievements, did many of the voiceovers, including some concerning Jackie, for Ken Burns' Baseball miniseries. Until her death in 2015, Ruby lived in New Rochelle, New York, only 18 miles from Rachel Robinson in Stamford, Connecticut.

October 27, 1924: Percy Haughton dies at age 48, 2 days after suffering a heart attack, while coaching the Columbia University football team to a 27-3 win over Williams College at Baker Field. An All-American tackle at Harvard in 1898, he had coached Harvard to National Championships in 1908, 1910, 1912 and 1913. From 1916 to 1919, he owned the Boston Braves.

Also on this day, Clifford Holland dies of a heart attack in Battle Creek, Michigan, at age 41. He had gone there because of the stress of building the 1st major automobile crossing of the Hudson River from New York City to New Jersey. It would open in 1927, and be named the Holland Tunnel in his memory. He had also overseen the construction of 4 Subway tunnels under the East River, 3 from Manhattan to Brooklyn, 1 from Manhattan to Queens.

October 27, 1926: For the 1st time in their history, the New York Rangers fire their head coach. This would not seem to be a big deal to anyone who isn't a member of the Ranger organization, or a fan of the team. Except the firing happened before the team had even played a game.

The owner of the Rangers, and of their arena, the new (eventually the "old") Madison Square Garden, was George "Tex" Rickard -- hence, the team's name: Before a name could be officially selected, the press was already calling them "Tex's Rangers." To assemble the organization for him, Rickard (who liked hockey, but his specialty was promoting prizefights) hired Colonel John S. Hammond, a former hockey player and a hero of World War I.

On the recommendation of Charles Adams, owner of the Boston Bruins, Hammond hired another man who had been a hockey player and a hero of World War I: Lieutenant Constantine Falkland Cary Smythe. Conn Smythe had been the manager of the varsity team at the University of Toronto. With the Rangers, his job was to recruit players whom he would then manage (as general manager, as we would say today) and coach.

One of the players Hammond wanted to sign was Cecil "Babe" Dye, a 2-time NHL scoring champion who had helped the Toronto St. Patricks win the 1922 Stanley Cup. But Smythe flat-out refused to sign Dye, claiming that he was not a team player. Dye would be sold by the St. Patricks before the season started, to another expansion franchise, the Chicago Blackhawks. And he would end up playing at The Garden, for the New York Americans.

Furious at Smythe's defiance, Hammond fired him, and hired an established major league coach who had been one of the greatest defensemen in the game's history to that point: Lester Patrick. He would coach the team for the next 13 years, winning the 1928 and 1933 Stanley Cups, and be general manager for 20 years, adding another Cup in 1940.

A major hockey trophy and, from 1974 to 1992, a Division of the NHL would be named for Patrick. These 2 things would also become true of Smythe. Both of them are in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Interestingly enough, so is Babe Dye. You know who isn't? John Hammond. Then again, neither is Tex Rickard, although he is in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

October 27, 1928, 90 years ago: William Kyle Rote is born in San Antonio. Kyle Rote succeeded Doak Walker as the star running back at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, and teamed with Frank Gifford to form one of the great running tandems in NFL history. He helped the Giants reach 4 NFL Championship Games, winning in 1956.

A 4-time Pro Bowler, he was later a great sportscaster. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the New York Giants Ring of Honor. He died in 2002. His son Kyle Rote Jr. was one of the 1st well-known American soccer players, and his son Rock Rote is also a New York sportscaster.

October 27, 1929: William J. George (I don't have a record of what the J stands for) is born in the Pittsburgh suburb of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Bill George made 8 Pro Bowls as a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears, and led their defense to the 1963 NFL Championship.

He was killed in a car crash in Rockford, Illinois in 1982. He was only 52 years old. The Bears retired his Number 61. He was named to the NFL's 1960s All-Decade Team and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In a 1989 column for Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly called him, "The meanest Bear ever." In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him Number 49 on their list of The 100 Greatest Football Players.

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October 27, 1932: Harry Gregg is born in Magherafelt, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. A soccer goalkeeper, he played 5 years for Doncaster Rovers before being sold to Manchester United before the 1957-58 season.

He was on the plane that crashed and killed 20 of its 44 passengers, including 8 United teammates, in a snowstorm in Munich, Germany on the way back from a European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade in Yugoslavia (now Serbia). He pulled teammates Bobby Charlton, Jackie Blanchflower and Dennis Viollet, and manager Matt Busby, from the wreckage, probably saving their lives.

The Munich Air Disaster is blamed for short-circuiting United's great team of the 1950s, and (considerably less fairly) for preventing England from winning the 1958 and 1962 World Cups.  Gregg played for Northern Ireland in the 1958 World Cup, and was voted the outstanding goalkeeper of the tournament.

Injuries prevented him from playing in United's 1963 FA Cup Final win, and from getting enough appearances to qualify for league championship medals when United won in 1965 and '67. He later managed 4 different League teams, and is now retired from active service in the game.

He and Sir Bobby Charlton are the only players who were on the plane who are still alive, 60 years later. The other people on board who are still alive are: Stewardess Rosemary Cheverton; Eleanor Miklos, wife of a travel agent who was killed; and 2, technically 3, others who were saved by Gregg: Passenger Vera Lukić, her baby daughter Vesna, and her unborn child, who became her son Zoran. (An urban legend had it that her unborn son grew up to be 1980s Arsenal goalkeeper John Lukic, an Englishman of Serbian descent, but this is not the case.)

October 27, 1936: Albert Lee Stange is born in Chicago. Dropping his first name, Lee Stange played baseball and football at Drake University in Iowa. A knee injury ended his football career, but he made it to the major leagues as a pitcher.

He was an original member of the Minnesota Twins in 1961, and a member of the Boston Red Sox "Impossible Dream" team that won the 1967 American League Pennant. His career record was 62-61. He later served as a pitching coach, and managed the Tucson Toros for the Oakland Athletics. He died this past September 21, at age 81.

October 27, 1939: John Marwood Cleese is born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, in the West Country of England. The Monty Python performer is not an athlete? You try doing "Silly Walks" sometime. He's also narrated and starred in a documentary explaining soccer in a humourous vein. (You were expecting something completely different?) While Somerset currently has no soccer team in the top flight, he is a fan of the East London club West Ham United.

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October 27, 1940: John Joseph Gotti Jr. is born in The Bronx. From 1985, when he ordered the assassination of Paul Castellano, until 1992, when he was convicted of multiple charges including 5 murders, he was not only the head of New York's Gambino Crime Family, but the American Mafia's Capo di Tutti Cappi: The Boss of All Bosses.

It took the federal government 4 tries to bring "The Teflon Don" down. Probably because, the 1st 3 times, the U.S. Attorney was Rudolph Giuliani. He was also known as "The Dapper Don" for his fancy suits.

The fictional Corleones of The Godfather aside, he was the most famous gang leader in America since Al Capone. His style and ruthlessness made him a touchstone for rappers, particularly in Queens where he lived and in Brooklyn, even though Gotti was no friend to black people, running drugs into their neighborhoods and running prostitution rings in them. He was scum, and he died of cancer in prison, in 2002. As my father said when somebody like that died, "No great loss."

Despite being still in power, he was obviously the basis for Tony "the Tiger" Russo (Dean Stockwell) in the 1988 film Married to the Mob; and Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna) in the 1990 film The Godfather Part III. He was played by Anthony John Denison in Getting Gotti (1994), Armand Assante in Gotti: Rise and Fall (1996), Tom Sizemore in Witness to the Mob (1998), Sonny Marinelli in Boss of Bosses (2001), Danny Nucci in Sinatra Club (2010), and John Travolta in Gotti this year.

October 27, 1941: David Joseph Costa is born in Yonkers, Westchester County, New York. A defensive tackle, Dave Costa was a 4-time AFL All-Star, with the Oakland Raiders and the Denver Broncos. He died in 2013.

October 27, 1942: Lenny Sachs dies while coaching the football team at Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago. He was only 45 years old. A Chicago native, he played end for several early NFL teams, winning a Championship with the 1925 Chicago Cardinals. He also coached the basketball team at the city's Loyola University, going 16-0 in 1928-29, part of a 31-game winning streak.

October 27, 1945: Michael Ken-Wai Lum is born in Honolulu. An outfielder and 1st baseman, Mike Lum was the 1st American of Japanese descent to play in the major leagues, debuting with the Atlanta Braves on September 12, 1967.

On May 22, 1969, he became 1 of 3 players to be sent up to pinch-hit for Hank Aaron. Against Al Jackson of the Mets, he hit a double, driving in 2 runs. His 15-season major league career included a World Series win with the 1976 Cincinnati Reds. He last played in the majors with the 1981 Chicago Cubs, batting .247 for his career, including over 100 pinch hits. He is now a hitting instructor in the Pittsburgh Pirates' minor-league system.

Also on this day, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva is born. President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, "Lula" is largely responsible for the South American nation being one of the few countries that has thrived in the 2007-current global slowdown, and spearheaded the movement to get Brazil to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

In spite of being one of Brazil's most popular leaders ever, he was convicted of corruption charges including money laundering earlier this year, and is currently serving a 12-year term in prison. He is the 5th President of Brazil to be imprisoned.

October 27, 1947: Members of The Committee for the First Amendment fly to Washington, D.C., as part of the "Hollywood Fights Back" movement against the House Un-American Activities Committee's hearings investigating Communist influence in the American film industry. They were attempting to defend screenwriters accused of Communist activity: The Hollywood Ten.

Members of The Committee included directors John Huston, William Wyler and Billy Wilder; songwriter Ira Gershwin; singers Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne; and actors Myrna Loy (who founded the group with Huston and Wyler), Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz, Judy Garland & her director husband Vincente Minnelli, Groucho Marx, Edward G. Robinson, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Bette Davis, Melvyn Douglas, Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, Burt Lancaster, Burgess Meredith, Jane Wyatt, Dorothy Dandridge, and the last one still living, Marsha Hunt, who recently celebrated her 101st birthday.

Some of them, including Lucy, were registered Republicans, but they couldn't accept this garbage. Lucy and Bogie, in particular, testified in such a way that it could only be described as an artful way of telling the HUAC members to go to Hell. That night, the actors bought a 30-minute special on ABC Radio, and did another a week later.

It ended up ineffective. Marsha Hunt, in particular, saw her career shut down. She remains unrepentant, because she wasn't a Communist, and still believes that what had already been done before she stepped in was unfair. Ring Lardner Jr., son of the famous sportswriter, was the last surviving member of the Hollywood Ten, living until 2000.

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October 27, 1951: Jayne Harrison (no middle name) is born in Washington, D.C. The 1st black woman to win the Miss USA version of Miss Ohio (a few years before Halle Berry did), she became an actress under her married name of Jayne Kennedy. She was a regular correspondent on CBS' The NFL Today in the 1978 and 1979 seasons, the 1st black actress to appear on the cover of Playboy (but she didn't pose nude for the magazine), and the 1st black woman to host an exercise video. Some people were calling her "the black Farrah Fawcett."

She's stayed out of the public eye the last 30 years, and has raised 4 now-grown daughters.

October 27, 1952: Peter Dennis Vukovich is born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. An original member of the Toronto Blue Jays in 1977, he was a part of the best trade in Milwaukee Brewers history: From the St. Louis Cardinals, they got him, catcher Ted Simmons, and (by way of the San Diego Padres) reliever Rollie Fingers. It didn't matter who they gave up.

In 1981, Pete Vukovich led the American League in wins, and Fingers had a mind-boggling year that earned him the Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Awards, and the Brewers reached the Playoffs for the 1st time. In 1982, Vukovich got the Cy Young Award, and the Brewers won their 1st Pennant. Ironically, they lost the World Series to the Cardinals -- and they've never been to another.

A torn rotator cuff cut his career short in 1986, leaving him with a record of 93-69. In 1989, he appeared in the film Major League -- not as a pitcher, but as a rather repulsive slugger for the Yankees, Clu Haywood. He has since served as a Brewers broadcaster, the pitching coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates (for all intents and purposes, his hometown team), in the Pirates' front office, and now as a scout for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.

October 27, 1953: Robert Picardo (no middle name) is born in Philadelphia. He played Dr. Dick Richards on ABC's Vietnam War-centered drama China Beach, and Coach Cutlip on their other 1960s-set show of the 1980s, The Wonder Years.

But he's best known for his roles in science fiction. He played the Emergency Medical Hologram (a.k.a. "The Doctor") on Star Trek: Voyager, and in said role, he had more "I'm a doctor, not a... " lines than all other Star Trek physicians combined. He also played diplomat Richard Woolsey in the Stargate franchise. He recently returned to sci-fi TV, playing Ildis Kitan, father of Ilara Kitan, the Xeleyan Chief of Security on The Orville.

October 27, 1954: The divorce of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe is certified in San Francisco. Apparently, Joe wanted Marilyn to stay home and be a good little Italian wife -- even though, with a birth name of Norma Jeane Mortensen, Marilyn was of Scandinavian descent. And she wanted to keep acting. Supposedly, the last straw was the skirt-billow over the subway grate scene, filmed for The Seven Year Itch on September 15, 1954, in front of the Trans-Lux Theatre, at 586 Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street.

It's been alleged that Joe hit her on occasion. Even if that despicable possibility is true, in 1961, he got her out of a psychiatric institution to which she'd been committed. And, with rumors abounding that they might remarry, after she died in 1962, he organized her funeral and kept all the Hollywood leeches out.

For 20 years, he had roses sent to her grave every day, until he found out they were being stolen by tourists and local kids. He seemed never to have gotten over her. Nor have we all: Even in the 1st verse of "We Didn't Start the Fire" and the spoken-word part of "Vogue," respectively, Billy Joel and Madonna rhymed their names.

To paraphrase Elton John's song about her, "Candle In the Wind," I would've liked to have known her, but I wasn't born yet -- her candle may have burned out, but the world never will forget.

Also on this day, Francis Tierney Gray is born in Glasgow, Scotland. The left back was one of several Scottish players to star for Yorkshire club Leeds United in the latter half of the 1960s and the 1st half of the 1970s, as was his brother, winger Eddie Gray. Frank Gray arrived in time to help them reach, but not win, the Finals of the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1973. He won the League with them in 1974.

But then, legendary manager Don Revie retired, and Brian Clough, who had managed Derby County to the 1972 League title, was brought in. The Leeds players, including Gray, did not respond well to Clough, who got fired in just 44 days, before Jimmy Bloomfield came in and took them to the 1975 European Cup Final. Clough moved on to Nottingham Forest, and, ironically, bought Gray for the 1979-80 season, and, together, they won the European Cup and the League Cup.

Gray finished his playing career in 1992, as player-manager of Darlington. He managed other teams, including an Essex club named, interestingly enough, Grays Athletic. His most recent job with any team was managing Hampshire club Bashley in 2013. He now lives in Australia, and comments on Fox Sports Australia's coverage of the Premier League.

His son Andrew Gray (not to be confused with the former Everton striker turned announcer Andy Gray) also played for Leeds and Nottingham Forest, and now manages Leeds' Under-18 team. Eddie's son Stuart Gray played for Celtic and Reading, and played his father in the film version of The Damned United, about Clough's 44 days at Leeds. Oddly, Frank does not appear as a character in the film, although he and Eddie were both interviewed for its DVD extras.

October 27, 1955: Clark Griffith dies at the age of 85. "The Old Fox" would probably have been elected to the Hall of Fame strictly on his pitching with the Chicago White Stockings (forerunners of the Cubs), but he also managed the Chicago White Sox to the first American League Pennant in 1901, and nearly managed the New York Highlanders (forerunners of the Yankees) to the Pennant in 1904 – in each case, while still an All-Star quality pitcher -- or he would have been considered such, had there been All-Star Games back then.

He managed the Washington Senators, and was still pitching for them at age 45 in 1914. He bought the Senators in 1919, and their home, National Park, was renamed Griffith Stadium. However, in a play on the phrase describing George Washington, a comedian named Charley Dryden called them, "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League."

With Walter Johnson pitching, and 26-year-old "boy manager" and second baseman Bucky Harris leading the way, the Senators finally won a World Series in 1924 and another Pennant in 1925. With yet another "boy manager," shortstop Joe Cronin – who married Griffith's adopted daughter, Mildred Robertson – they won the Pennant again in 1933. But that was it: They finished 1 game out in 1945, and no Washington team has ever come close again.

Griffith's nephew and adopted son, Calvin Griffith, took over, and in 1959 publicly said he would never move the Senators. Of course, he did, just a year later. A monument to Griffith stood outside Griffith Stadium, and was moved first to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium and then to Nationals Park. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in the Pioneers & Executives category.

Also on this day, Rebel Without a Cause premieres, 27 days after the death of its star, James Dean, in a California car crash. It becomes the teen angst movie of all time.

The movie is often considered cursed: Dean was just 24, Sal Mineo was murdered at 37, Nick Adams died of a drug overdose at 38, Natalie Wood drowned at 43, William Hopper (son of Casey at the Bat reciter DeWolf) died of a stroke at 55, Rochelle Hudson died of a heart attack at 55, and future Get Smart Chief Ed Platt committed suicide due to depression at 58. On the other hand, some of the actors lived a long time, including a few that are still alive 62 years later, and one actress in it lived to be 96.

October 27, 1956: Matthew Andrew Cavanaugh is born in Youngstown, Ohio. The starting quarterback of the 1976 University of Pittsburgh team led by Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett, he led them to an undefeated season and the National Championship, won by winning the 1977 Sugar Bowl, of which he was named the Most Valuable Player.

In the NFL, though, he was a career backup, filling in for Steve Grogan with the New England Patriots, Joe Montana with the San Francisco 49ers, Randall Cunningham with the Philadelphia Eagles, and Phil Simms and Jeff Hostetler with the New York Giants. He won Super Bowl rings with the 1984 49ers and the 1990 Giants, but did not appear in either Super Bowl XIX or XXV.

He went on to become one of the game's most respected quarterbacks coaches. He won rings as the offensive coordinator of the 2000 Baltimore Ravens and the 2006 Pittsburgh Steelers. He guided Mark Sanchez to get the Jets into the AFC Championship Game in the 2009 and 2010 seasons. He is now the offensive coordinator of the Washington Redskins, working with Alex Smith and Colt McCoy.

Also on this day, Patty Sheehan (her full name, not "Patricia") is born in Middlebury, Vermont. She won the Women's PGA Championship in 1983, 1984 and 1993; and the U.S. Women's Open in 1992 and 1994. She was one of the earliest female golfers to come out, and she and her partner adopted 2 children.

October 27, 1957: Tony Morabito, the founding owner of the San Francisco 49ers, dies of a heart attack while watching his team play the Chicago Bears at Kezar Stadium. He was only 47, and, by his own admission, been "living on borrowed time" since a heart attack 5 years earlier.

The Niners were losing 17-7 when coach Buck Shaw was handed a note, reading only, "Tony's gone." He told the team, and, instead of being dispirited, rose up, and came from behind to win, 21-17.

The 49ers would tie the Detroit Lions for the NFL Western Division Championship, but lose a Playoff to the Lions. They would not get so close to a title again for 24 years. Control of the team remained in the Morabito family until 1977, when it was sold to Eddie DeBartolo.

Also on this day, Glenn Hoddle (no middle name) is born in the Hillingdon section of West London. The midfielder starred for North London soccer team Tottenham Hotspur, leading them to the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982, and the UEFA Cup in 1984.

He also helped AS Monaco, which is located outside of France but is a member of France's Ligue 1, to the 1988 Ligue 1 title and the 1991 Coupe de France. At the time, their manager was Arsène Wenger, who went on to manage Spurs' North London arch-rivals, Arsenal. Hoddle last played as a player-manager for the West London club Chelsea in 1995.

Wenger has said, "His control was superb, and he had perfect body balance. His skill in both feet was uncanny... I couldn't understand why he hadn't been appreciated in England. Perhaps he was a star in the wrong period, years ahead of his time."

Others have appreciated him, calling him the best English player of his generation. But that may just be because Tottenham are a classically "English" team -- while Arsenal, long having had stars who were Scottish and later Irish, and more recently French, Dutch and African, are a "foreign team" and thus unworthy of standing up to "English" clubs like Tottenham, Chelsea, West Ham and the Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and North-East clubs.

Hoddle's status as a player made the English want to like him as a manager, but in that capacity he was a joke. He got Chelsea to the FA Cup Final in 1994, and Tottenham to the 2002 League Cup Final, but he was unable to consummate the hype and lead either of his former clubs to glory.

In between, he managed the England national team to an ignominious crash out of the 1998 World Cup at the first knockout round, and his evangelism, his reliance on (not an affair with) "faith healer" Eileen Drury, and his remarks that the disabled were "being punished for sins in a former life" -- which would seem to conflict with the tenets of Christianity -- led to his sacking. He also failed as manager of Southampton, Swindon Town and Wolverhampton Wanderers, his last managing job, in 2006.

In 2008 he established a soccer academy, not in his native England but in Spain. He said he had received 26 management offers since then but has had to turn them all down "until the academy is able to run itself." In 2014, he joined the staff of another whacked-out London football personality, Harry Redknapp, at West London club Queens Park Rangers, but left the club in February 2015 when Redknapp also did. He's now a pundit for BT Sport (British Telecom).

Tony Cascarino, a former Chelsea teammate, has said Hoddle was "completely besotted with himself. If he had been an ice cream, he would have licked himself."

October 27, 1958, 60 years ago: Gordon Sidney Cowans is born in West Cornforth, County Durham, England. The midfielder won the 1977 League Cup, the 1981 Football League title, and the 1982 European Cup with Birmingham club Aston Villa. He is now an assistant manager for them.

October 27, 1959: Richard Preston Carlisle is born in Ogdensburg, New York, on the St. Lawrence River, across the border from Canada. Hockey player? No, basketball. He was a University of Virginia teammate of Ralph Sampson, was a guard on the Boston Celtics' 1986 World Champions, and briefly played with both the Knicks and the Nets. That would be quite a career for most guys.

Rick Carlisle was just getting warmed up. After retiring, the Nets kept him on as an assistant coach. He joined the staff of the Portland Trail Blazers, and his Celtic teammate Larry Bird brought him to the Indiana Pacers. He became head coach of the Detroit Pistons in 2001 (winning NBA Coach of the Year as a rookie in 2002), the Pacers in 2003, and the Dallas Mavericks in 2008, guiding them to the NBA Championship in 2011.

He enters the 2018-19 season, his 16th as a head coach, with a record of 718-578, having made the Playoffs in 12 of his seasons, and is 1 of 11 men to win the NBA title as a player and as a coach. Four others have been Celtics: Bill Russell, Bill Sharman, Tommy Heinsohn and K.C. Jones, who coached Carlisle on the 1986 title. The others are Buddy Jeannette, Red Holzman, Pat Riley, Billy Cunningham, Phil Jackson and Tyronn Lue.

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October 27, 1960: Trying to jump ahead of the National League‚ the American League admits Los Angeles and Minneapolis to the League, with plans to have the new clubs begin competition in 1961 in the new 10-team League.

At the same time, Calvin Griffith is given permission to move the existing Washington Senators franchise to Minneapolis/St. Paul‚ the "Twin Cities," where he will settle the "Minnesota Twins" at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, on the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River but equidistant from the downtowns of both cities. An expansion team is given the Washington Senators name.

(Coincidentally, the new Senators will be moved in 1972, to an existing and greatly-expanded minor-league park at point halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, and take the name of the State instead of that of a city: The Texas Rangers.)

AL President Joe Cronin says the AL will play a 162-game schedule‚ with 18 games against each opponent. The NL will balk‚ saying the two expansions are not analogous and that the AL was not invited to move into L.A.

Also on this day, Thomas Andrew Nieto is born in Downey, California. A backup catcher, Tom Nieto played in the World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1985 and lost. He was not listed on the World Series roster for the Minnesota Twins, but he did play for them in 1987 and won a World Series ring for them that way.

He served as a coach for both New York teams. He managed the Twins' Triple-A team, the Rochester Red Wings (a longtime Baltimore Orioles affiliate), and has also managed in the Yankees' farm system.

October 27, 1961: William Charles Swift is born in Portland, Maine. With the 1992 San Francisco Giants, Bill Swift went 10-4, and led the National League with a 2.08 ERA. In 1993, he went 21-8. In 1995, he helped the Colorado Rockies, in only their 3rd season, win the NL Wild Card. He finished 94-78, with 17 saves, and his 767 strikeouts lead all Maine-born pitchers. He is now the head coach at Arizona Christian University in Phoenix.

October 27, 1963: Leon Joseph Roberts is born in Berkeley, California, outside Oakland. By the time he became a baseball prospect, there had already been a Leon Roberts in the major leagues. So he went by his nickname, Bip Roberts.

He battled injury in a career that lasted from 1986 to 1998, but was an All-Star outfielder with the Cincinnati Reds in 1992. His only trip to the postseason was with the Pennant-winning 1997 Cleveland Indians. He finished with a lifetime batting average of .294, and has returned to his native East Bay, where he's been a high school coach, and now hosts the pregame show on Comcast SportsNetBay Area's A's broadcasts.

In 1995, with the San Diego Padres, he did a commercial for Major League Baseball, saying that his 1986 rookie card was worth $275. Teammate Tony Gwynn looked at a baseball card guide, and discovered that Bip had actually been looking at the value of a rookie card for Robin Roberts, while Bip's was worth 4 cents. Robin Roberts was already in the Hall of Fame, and Tony Gwynn was elected. Bip Roberts was not.

Also on this day, Marla Ann Maples is born in Cohutta, Georgia -- closer to Chattanooga, Tennessee than to Atlanta. An actress, she began an affair with Donald Trump in 1989, at a time when he wasn't particularly well-known outside the New York Tri-State Area. Indeed, the tabloid mess created when "The Donald" cheated on his Czech-born wife Ivana (mother of Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka) with Marla made him (and, by extension, her) national stars.

They married in 1993, shortly after the birth of their daughter Tiffany, and the guests at the wedding included Bill and Hillary Clinton, Rosie O'Donnell (all 3 of whom would become enemies of Trump's) and O.J. Simpson (who became a villain within months, and I recently called Trump the O.J. Simpson of politics). They broke up in 1999.

She remains active in charity work -- much more so than her supposed billionaire ex-husband. She may have arrived in the public consciousness as a stereotypical blonde bimbo and a trophy mistress/wife, but, at least from the neck up, she is more qualified to be President of the United States than her ex is.

October 27, 1964: Mary Terstegge Meagher is born in Louisville. Mary T. Meagher (always with the middle initial) swam her way to 3 Gold Medals (2 individual and 1 relay) at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Her sister, Anne Northup, served Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2003.

Also on this day, Mark Anthony Taylor is born in Leeton, New South Wales, Australia. He was Captain of the Australia national cricket team from 1994 to 1999, leading it to the Final of the 1996 Cricket World Cup. "Tubby" is now a broadcaster in the sport.

October 27, 1965: Catcher Bob Uecker‚ 1st baseman Bill White and shortstop Dick Groat are traded by the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies for pitcher Art Mahaffey‚ outfielder Alex Johnson‚ and catcher Pat Corrales.

In his 1st at-bat for the Phils against the Cards, White has to hit the deck, as a pitch from his former roommate, Bob Gibson, comes perilously close to his head. White would later say that Gibson's message was clear: "We're not teammates anymore."

Uecker, as has been his custom, found humor in the trade: "I was pulled over by the police. I was fined $400. It was $100 for drunk driving, and $300 for being with the Phillies."

Also on this day, a testimonial is held for Brian Clough at Roker Park in Sunderland, in England's North-East. Clough, a native of Middlesbrough in North Yorkshire, had been a star striker for Middlesbrough F.C., then was sold to Sunderland, before a knee injury curtailed his career on Boxing Day 1962. He called it "one of those grey, biting, forbidding days that only the North-East can produce." Today's sports medicine would have had him ready to go for the 1963-64 season. But, in those days, he was effectively finished at age 27.

While "The Boro" consider Sunderland their greatest rivals, Sunderland considers theirs to be Newcastle United, who are the opponents for this exhibition game. Among the "guest players" for "The Toon" were Liverpool's Scottish forward Ian St. John, and a pair of Arsenal players, former Newcastle star George Eastham and Tyneside native George Armstrong (also a North-east native, and not to be confused with the man of the same name who was then Captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs).

Newcastle won 6-2. As is usually the case in a testimonial, when the "honoured" player is able to play, Clough scores -- in fact, he scores both goals for the "Mackems," one a penalty. But Eastham is among the scorers for the "Geordies."

Clough's playing career was over at age 30, but his "football" legend was just getting warmed up. He was soon hired as manager of nearby club Hartlepool United, in England's 3rd division. He got them promoted to the 2nd. In 1968, he was hired by Derby County, then near the bottom of the 2nd division. He got them promoted to the 1st in 1969, and won the League with them in 1972 and got them to the Semifinals of the European Cup in 1973.

After a brief and disastrous spell managing Leeds United in 1974, he was hired by Nottingham Forest, ironically Derby's arch-rivals. He got them promoted to the 1st division in 1977, then had an English record streak of 42 games unbeaten, winning the League in 1978 and the European Cup in 1979 and 1980. He held on until 1993, when Forest were relegated, and he was finally fired, his alcoholism having rendered the former genius a liability.

He became a TV studio pundit for the sport, and was on hand at Middlesbrough in 2004 when Arsenal tied his record of 42 straight in a thrilling 5-3 win over The Boro. By the time the new record streak ended at 49 a few weeks later, Clough had died at 69, his health ruined by his drinking.

October 27, 1966: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown premieres on CBS. The 2nd Peanuts
special (after the previous year's A Charlie Brown Christmas) features the 1st animated renditions of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, Linus' myth of the Great Pumpkin, and Snoopy's adventures as "The World War I Flying Ace." Also, Charlie Brown kept getting a rock. Curse you, Red Baron!

Also on this day, Howard Alexander Smith dies in Princeton at age 86. A longtime official with the Republican Party in New Jersey, he was appointed to a vacancy in the U.S. Senate in 1944, and was elected in his own right in 1946 and 1952. He chose not to run again in 1958.

October 27, 1967: Star Trek airs the episode "Catspaw." In all its series, this is the one and only "holiday episode" that Trek canon has ever done, the holiday being Halloween.

It was also the 1st episode to include Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov. Series creator Gene Roddenberry was asked by a Russian, given Russia's contributions to spaceflight, why there were no Russians on the USS Enterprise. Chekov was his answer -- even though Chekov's own answers often ended with, "It was inwented in Russia," and his hairstyle was designed to look like Davy Jones of The Monkees.

Koenig once said, "Vhen they thought I vas 22, single and Russian, I got more fan mail than anybody except Spock. When they found out I was 31, married and American, the fan mail dried up." In fact, while the character of Chekov was 12 years younger than that of James T. Kirk, Koenig was only 5 years younger than William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

October 27, 1968, 50 years ago: Vincent Samways (no middle name) is born in Bethnal Green, East London. A midfielder, Vinny won the FA Cup with Tottenham Hotspur in 1991 and Everton in 1995 -- in each case, the club's last major trophy.

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October 27, 1970: Alain Boghossian is born in Digne-les-Bains, Provence, France. A midfielder, he is probably the greatest ethnic Armenian in soccer history, but chose to play his international football for the country in which he was born and raised. It paid off, as France won the 1998 World Cup.

He played for Olympique de Marseille, then helped Parma win the Coppa Italia and the UEFA Cup (now the UEFA Europa League) in 1999, and another Coppa Italia in 2002. He is now an assistant coach for the France national team, and helped them win another World Cup this year.

October 27, 1971: Theodoros Zagorakis is born in Kavala, Greece. The midfielder won the 2000 League Cup with Leicester City, and the 2002 Greek Cup with AEK Athens. In 2004, he captained Greece to win Euro 2004. In the Final, they beat Portugal on home soil, and Theo was named Man of the Match and Player of the Tournament. In 2014, he was elected to the European Parliament.

October 27, 1972: Brad William Radke is born in Eau Claire, in a part of Wisconsin that tilts toward Minneapolis rather than Milwaukee.  Somewhat appropriately, he pitched his entire 12-year career for the Twins, and was a member of their Playoff teams of 2002, '03, '04 and '06. He won 148 games in the majors, and has been elected to the Twins' Hall of Fame.

October 27, 1973: Jason Michael Johnson is born in Santa Barbara, California. The pitcher has had some terrible luck: He was a member of the original 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays; he was traded away by the Detroit Tigers (2005-06) and the Cleveland Indians (2006-07) the seasons before each reached their next Playoff berths; he played for the Boston Red Sox in 2006, the one season between 2002 and 2010 that they did not make the Playoffs; he pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers in their NL Western Division Championship season of 2008 but did not appear in the Playoffs; and was injured throughout 2009, resulting in his release by the Yankees.

All this would be bad enough, but he is also a diabetic, and he was the 1st MLB player to receive permission to wear an insulin pump on the field during games. His career record was 56-100.

October 27, 1976: Peerless LeCross Price is born in Dayton, Ohio. Yes, that's his real name. A receiver, he was a member of the University of Tennessee's 1998 National Champions. He played 9 seasons in the NFL, catching 403 passes, but the closest he ever got to a Super Bowl was the 2003 NFC Championship Game, where the Atlanta Falcons were beaten by the Philadelphia Eagles.

October 27, 1977: Jiří Jarošík is born in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic. A centreback, he won the Czech League with Sparta Prague in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003; the Russian Premier League with CSKA Moscow in 2003; the Premier League and the League Cup with West London's Chelsea in 2005; and the Scottish Premier League and Cup "Double" with Glasgow's Celtic in 2007.

Oddly, he was never selected for his country in a major tournament. He is now retired.

Also on this day, this question was asked on Match Game: "The African Tribesman said, 'Let me tell you why I hate dogs: Yesterday, one came up to me, and started (blank)ing the bone in my nose.'" That was bad enough, but the contestant was black. And so was one of the panelists, comedian Nipsey Russell. Another, Charles Nelson Reilly, used the line that was so often used for a questionable question on that show: "We're gonna get letters!" Another, Betty White, objected to the question on the basis that she loved animals, especially dogs.

The contestant said, "Chewing on." But Nipsey and Charles both said, "Burying," and the contestant was defeated. The other panelists were Brett Somers, Patty Duke and Richard Dawson. 

October 27, 1978, 40 years ago: Sergei Viktorovich Samsonov is born in Moscow. A longtime left wing for the Boston Bruins, he came very close to winning the Stanley Cup in 2006, when his Edmonton Oilers fell to the Carolina Hurricanes in 7 games. He is now a scout for the Hurricanes.

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October 27, 1983: Martín Manuel Prado is born in in Maracay, Venezuela. In a major league career that began in 2006, he has played 770 games at 3rd base, 273 games at 2nd base, 256 games in left field, 57 games at 1st base, 16 games at shortstop, 9 games in right field, and 4 games as a designated hitter. In other words, he's played every position except pitcher, catcher and center field -- and I wouldn't be surprised to see him experimented at those as well.

He's been to the All-Star Game and the postseason once each, with the 2010 and 2012 Atlanta Braves, respectively. In 2014, the Yankees got him from the Arizona Diamondbacks for Peter O'Brien, and he batted .316 in 37 games. Foolishly, general manager Brian Cashman refused to keep him as a possible 2nd baseman in place of the pathetic Stephen Drew, and traded him and David Phelps to the Miami Marlins. Prado's lifetime batting average stands at a nice .290.

Also on this day, Brent Aaron Clevlen is born in Austin, Texas. Despite his name, the outfielder has never played for the Cleveland Indians. He did, however, reach the World Series as a rookie with the 2006 Detroit Tigers. But he's been out of the majors since 2010, and is now playing in independent leagues.

October 27, 1984: East Brunswick High School defeats John P. Stevens High School 26-6, at Stevens' McGowan Stadium in Edison, Middlesex County, New Jersey. This game went a long way toward EB earning the Championship of the Middlesex County Athletic Conference. I was a sophomore at the time, and was at this game. It was Stevens' Homecoming, and 5,000 of their fans went home angry.

They would get their revenge. Their big running back, George Boothe, was unavailable for this game due to injury. He returned, and helped them make the Central Jersey Group IV Playoffs. In the Final, at EB's Jay Doyle Field, he scored 3 of their 4 touchdowns. Trailing the Hawks 27-20, the Bears came back, and scored a touchdown to make it 27-26 with a minute and a half to go.

Remembering the Orange Bowl at the beginning of the year, when Nebraska's Tom Osborne went for the 2-point conversion and the National Championship against the University of Miami, and not getting it, and losing 31-30 -- but forgetting that, unlike college football at the time, New Jersey's State Playoffs did have a provision for overtime -- EB coach Marcus Borden went for the 2-point conversion.

Steve Hughes, who would be named Middlesex County Offensive Player of the Year by The Home News, found running back Deric Rowe wide open in the end zone. It was 3:37 PM. Don't bet me on the time. Rowe later said he lost the ball in the Sun. It hit him in the chest, slipped through his fingers, and fell to the grass. We got the ball back one last time, but it was no use: Stevens 27, EB 26. Our undefeated State Championship season was gone. And, yes, 34 years later, it still hurts.

Deric played basketball for us, too, and we still cheered him every time he got the ball. But this was EB's "Bill Buckner moment" -- 2 years before Buckner had his own. There would be other close calls, including another 1-point loss to Stevens in next year's regular season, costing us the Conference Championship, and another loss to them in the State Final. But EB football hadn't won a "State Championship" (officially, Central Jersey Group IV Championship) since 1972.

Finally, we did it again in 2004, against Jackson Memorial at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway. Borden was still the head coach. I was there. We did it again in 2009, beating Brick Memorial at The College of New Jersey (formerly Trenton State College) in Ewing.

Both Deric Rowe and George Boothe ended up in legal trouble. Rowe played at Kansas State University, but dropped out, and served time for armed robbery, carjacking and kidnapping. He now lives in the San Diego suburbs. Boothe played at the University of Connecticut, but fell into drug use there, and became Central Jersey's "O.J. Simpson" -- the difference being that he was convicted for killing his girlfriend, in Atlanta in 1994. As far as I can tell, he is still in prison.

Also on this day, Larry Foust dies of a heart attack in Pittsburgh. He was only 56. A forward, he was an 8-time NBA All-Star, but had the dubious distinction of reaching the NBA Finals 4 times and losing them all: With the 1955 and '56 Fort Wayne Pistons, the 1959 Minneapolis Lakers, and the 1961 St. Loius Hawks.

Also on this day, Brayden Tyler Quinn is born in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. Though with a name like Brady Quinn and coming from a town named Dublin, it's not surprising that the quarterback spurned Ohio State for Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish. An All-American, he washed out in an NFL career that saw him play for Cleveland, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis and, in 2013, the Jets. He is now a color commentator for The NFL on Fox. He's married to gymnast Alicia Sacramone.

Also on this day, Kelly Michelle Lee Osbourne is born in the Westminster section of London. The singer and actress (who is probably not partially named for actress Michelle Lee), and judge on Lifetime's Project Runway Junior, is not actively involved in sports in any way, but her father, a singer of some renown, is a native of Birmingham, England, and a big fan of that city's Aston Villa F.C. But her brother Jack roots for arch-rival Birmingham City F.C.

It's also been joked that Ozzy is an "expert batsman," although that has nothing to do with either baseball or cricket.

October 27, 1985: The Kansas City Royals rout the St. Louis Cardinals 11-0 in Game 7, to win their 1st World Championship, and the 1st All-Missouri World Series since the Cardinals-Browns matchup of 1944. They become only the 6th team to rally from a 3-1 deficit and win the Series (and remain the last to do so). Series MVP Bret Saberhagen pitches the shutout while Cardinals ace John Tudor allows 5 runs in 2 1/3 innings.

The Cards are still upset over the blown call that cost them Game 6 – 30 years later, despite 5 Pennants and 3 World Series wins, they and their fans still are – and allowed it to affect their performances and their minds for Game 7.

After being lifted from the game‚ Tudor punches an electric fan in the clubhouse and severely cuts his hand. Fellow 20-game winner Joaquin Andujar is ejected for arguing balls and strikes during Kansas City's 6-run 5th inning, screaming at Don Denkinger, who blew the call at first base the night before and is now behind the plate. The Cardinals finish the World Series with a .185 team batting average‚ lowest ever for a 7-game Series.

It took the Royals 29 years to even reach the Playoffs again, and I began to wonder if they were cursed. But they won the Pennant in 2014, and went all the way in 2015, so if they were cursed, the curse was broken.

Also on this day, Billy Martin is fired by the Yankees for an unprecedented 4th time (not counting all those firings in 1977 that didn't take), and is replaced by former Yankee outfielder Lou Piniella‚ who had been the team's hitting instructor since retiring as a player in 1984.

October 27, 1986: On the very day the Mets won their last World Series to date, Jonathon Joseph Niese is born in Lima, Ohio. He pitched for the Mets from 2008 to 2015, appearing in all 3 rounds of the 2015 postseason, including 4 of the 5 games of the World Series. He was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for 2016, and then reacquired by the Mets, and released.

He was signed to minor-league deals by the Yankees last year and the Texas Rangers this year, but, each time, was released in Spring Training, and hasn't pitched in a regular season major league game in 2 years. Although plagued by injuries, he has a career record of 69-68.

Also on this day, David Andrew Warner is born in the Sydney suburb of Paddington, New South Wales, Australia. He is the Australia cricket team's vice captain and a member of their 2015 Cricket World Cup winners.

October 27, 1987: Andrew Bynum (no middle name) is born in Plainsboro, Mercer County, New Jersey. After 2 years at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, the center transferred to St. Joseph's High School of Metuchen, whose faculty and students still deny that they've ever recruited a student solely for his athletic ability. (There are black Catholics, but, as far as I know, Bynum is not one of them.)

After reneging on an agreement to attend the University of Connecticut, he declared himself for the 2005 NBA Draft. The Los Angeles Lakers made him the youngest NBA draftee ever, and, after preseason instruction from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- formerly the oldest NBA player ever -- on November 2, 2005, he played 6 minutes against the Denver Nuggets at the Pepsi Center, becoming the youngest NBA player ever: 18 years and 6 days old. The Lakers won, 99-97.

He won NBA Championships with the Lakers in 2009 and '10, and was an NBA All-Star in 2012. But he missed the entire 2012-13 season, and hasn't played since the 2013-14 season with the Indiana Pacers. If a guy plays in the major leagues of any sport at 18, you don't expect him to play his last game at 26.

But then, he does have 2 titles, and I don't think we'll be seeing any more 18-year-olds playing in the NBA -- certainly not for a team with a pedigree anywhere near the Lakers'.

Also on this day, Yi Jianlian is born in Heshan, Guangdong Province, China. Also a center, he is again playing in his homeland, after playing in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks, New Jersey Nets, Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks.

October 27, 1988, 30 years ago: Evan Marcel Turner is born in Chicago. He was named Big Ten Player of the Year as a senior in 2010, and Ohio State retired his Number 21. He now plays for the Portland Trail Blazers.

October 27, 1989: After a 10-day delay following the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the World Series resumes at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Rescue workers from both sides of San Francisco Bay, San Francisco and Oakland, throw out ceremonial first balls.

The title song from the 1936 musical film San Francisco, about the 1906 quake ("San Francisco, open your Golden Gate... ") is sung on the field by the cast of a San Francisco-based drag-queen stage show, Beach Blanket Babylon, and in the stands by 60,000 people. After the events of the last 10 days, suddenly no one has the energy to make bigoted or silly remarks about gay people, drag queens and people dealing, directly or otherwise, with AIDS.

Game 3 begins, but it is over nearly as quickly as it was 10 days earlier, as the Oakland Athletics hit 5 home runs, to beat the San Francisco Giants, 13-7. The A's can wrap it up tomorrow.

I wasn't aware of this at the time, although I had set my VCR to record it. I was otherwise engaged, at Jay Doyle Field in East Brunswick, to see EB play Madison Central of Old Bridge. We pulled one of the biggest upsets in the history of Middlesex County football, 10-9, ending Madison's 24-game winning streak. They'd beaten EB 33-0 in the 1987 Playoffs, 55-3 in the 1988 regular season, and 31-7 in the 1988 Playoffs. We'd graduated most of our good players, while they still had a lot left from their title teams.

*

October 27, 1990: Patrick Swayze is the guest host on Saturday Night Live, and, in one of the most fondly-remembered sketches of that era of SNL, the former professional dancer and star of Dirty Dancing plays a finalist to be a new Chippendales stripper -- against the morbidly obese Chris Farley.

Mariah Carey the the musical guest, making her national TV debut, and sings her 1st single, now the Number 1 song in the country, "Vision of Love." In baseball terms, the rookie knocks it out of the park.

October 27, 1991: The Minnesota Twins become World Champions with a 1-0 victory in 10 innings over the Atlanta Braves, behind Jack Morris's masterful pitching. Gene Larkin's single off Alejandro Pena scores Dan Gladden with the game's only run.

The game is the 1st Game 7 to go into extra innings since the Senators-Giants Series in 1924. Morris is named the Series MVP for the Twins‚ who win all 4 games in the Metrodome while losing all 3 in Atlanta -- repeating their pattern against St. Louis in 1987. Four of the 7 games are decided on the final pitch‚ while 5 are decided by a single run‚ and 3 in extra innings. All are Series records. Morris's 10-inning masterpiece is the last extra-inning complete game of the century.

Through the 2016 season, the Twins' record in World Series play is 11-10: 11-1 at home (3-1 at Metropolitan Stadium in '65, 4-0 at the Metrodome in '87 and again in '91, and they have yet to get that far at Target Field) and 0-9 on the road. However, since that day 25 years ago, they have never won another Pennant. The Braves have, although once in the World Series, they've rarely been better off.

October 27, 1992: Brandon Saad (no middle name) is born in Pittsburgh. A left wing, the Syrian-American won the Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2013 and 2015, and was an All-Star in 2016.

Also on this day, Stephan Kareem El Shaarawy is born in Savona, Liguria, Italy. The son of an Egyptian father and a Swiss-Italian mother, he could have played his international soccer for Italy, Switzerland or Egypt. He chose Italy, where he is known as Il Faraone (The Pharoah) due to his Egyptian heritage. He represented his country at Euro 2016, but Italy did not qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

Because the winger was born in 1992, he wears Number 92 with AS Roma, as he previously did with AC Milan.

October 27, 1994: Kurt Happy Zouma -- yes, that is the name he was born with -- is born in Lyon, France. His parents emigrated to France from their native Central African Republic, a former French colony, but he chose to play his international football for France. Although he helped them win the Under-20 World Cup in 2013, but he was not selected for the 2014 World Cup, and an injury excluded him from Euro 2016 on French soil. Nor was he selected for the 2018 World Cup, which France won. He has played for France since.

He began his club career at French club Saint-Étienne, and now plays for West London club Chelsea (though is currently on loan to Everton), with whom he won the Premier League and the League Cup in 2015, and the Premier League again in 2017. His brother Lionel Zouma is a midfielder for Bourg-en-Bresse in France, Asteras Tripoli in Greece, and, unlike his brother, plays internationally for the Central African Republic.

October 27, 1997: Lonzo Anderson Ball is born in Anaheim. The guard was an All-American at UCLA, and now plays for the Lakers. Maybe someday, he'll live up to his father's hype. Unless and until he does, he's just a West Coast version of Stephon Marbury.

October 27, 1999: The Yankees defeat the Braves‚ 4-1‚ to win their 25th World Championship. Roger Clemens gets the win‚ hurling 4-hit ball before leaving the game in the 8th inning, to finally get his first World Series ring, 13 years after his only previous appearance, with the ill-fated '86 Red Sox.

Mariano Rivera gets the save‚ his 2nd of the Series. Jim Leyritz hits a solo homer in the 8th, the last home run, and the last run, in baseball in the 20th Century. The last out is Keith Lockhart flying out to left field, where the ball is caught by Game 3's hero, Chad Curtis. Rivera wins the Series MVP award. It is also the last major league game for New York baseball legend -- if not quite "hero" -- Darryl Strawberry, who goes 1-for-3 as the Yankee DH, his last hit a single off John Smoltz in the 2nd inning.

Four years earlier, as the final out was registered of the 1995 World Series, NBC's Bob Costas called the Braves "The Team of the Nineties." That label made sense at the time. Going into this Series, in the decade, the Braves had won 8 Division Titles and 5 Pennants, but just that 1 World Series; the Yankees had won 3 Division Titles (4 counting the strike-shortened 1994), 3 Pennants and 2 World Series.

This Series decided it, and in indisputable fashion, as the Yanks were now 2-0 over the Braves in Series play in the decade. This time, after the final out, Costas gets it right: "The New York Yankees. World Champions. Team of the Decade. Most successful franchise of the Century."

*

October 27, 2001: Game 1 of the World Series, the 1st ever played in the Mountain Time Zone. The Arizona Diamondbacks pound the Yankees by a score of 9-1 behind Curt Schilling, who hurls 7 innings to win his 4th game of the postseason. Craig Counsell and Luis Gonzalez (cough-steroids-cough) homer for Arizona as Mike Mussina takes the loss for New York.

October 27, 2002: The Angels win their 1st World Series in 42 years of play – under any name -- as they defeat the San Francisco Giants‚ 4-1‚ in Game 7. John Lackey gets the Series-clinching win, making him the 1st rookie to win Game 7 of a World Series since Babe Adams of the 1909 Pirates. (My, how times have changed.)

Garret Anderson's bases-loaded double in the 3rd inning scores 3 runs for Anaheim. Troy Glaus is named Series MVP. The Giants had a 5-0 lead in Game 6, and were up 5-3 and just 9 outs away from winning the Series, but they blew it.

Soon, people begin to wonder if the Giants are a "cursed team." The Curse of Horace Stoneham? The Curse of Captain Eddie (Grant)? The Curse of Candlestick? The Kurse of Krukow? Who knows. And, now that the Giants finally have won 3 World Series as a San Francisco team, who cares?

This is the 21st World Series to be played between two teams of the same State, the 7th from a State other than New York, and the 4th from California. In each case, it remains, through 2017, the last.

October 27, 2003: The Red Sox announce that manager Grady Little's contract will not be renewed for 2004. They also say it has nothing to do with Little's decision to stay with Pedro Martinez in Game 7 of the ALCS. Readers of Jim Bouton's book Ball Four have the right words for this: "Yeah, surrrre!"

Sox fans come up with a rather cruel joke: "What do Grady Little and Don Zimmer have in common? Neither could take out Pedro."

October 27, 2004: The Curse of the Bambino is finally broken. Well, sort of. The Boston Red Sox win their 1st World Series in 86 years with a 3-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium.

Derek Lowe ends up as the winning pitcher in all 3 postseason series-clinchers for the Sox, the 1st pitcher of any team to do so. (Andy Pettitte became the 2nd in 2009.) Johnny Damon hits a home run for Boston. Manny Ramirez is voted Series MVP‚ as he leads Boston to the 4-game sweep with a .412 BA and 4 RBI.

Some people had joked that the Red Sox winning the World Series would be a sign of the Apocalypse. Well, according to the Bible, one such sign is the Moon turning blood red -- and, in fact, there was a full lunar eclipse during the game. (Although this was hardly a surprise, as newspapers and news networks had mentioned it before nightfall.)

A sign held aloft at the victory parade in Boston sums it all up: "Our (late) parents and g'parents thank you." So many people said, "We wanted them to win it in our lifetime, just once." Well, as Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe said in the following weeks, "There was no spike in the obits. We checked. All those people who said they couldn't die until the Red Sox won a World Series decided to live a little longer."

Of course, they didn't win it just once in those people's lifetimes – except for those who died between October '04 and October '07. And now that we know that the Red Sox are a bunch of lying, cheating, dirty, low-down, no-good bastards, we can tell the truth: They still haven't really won a World Series since 1918*. The Curse lives.

So all those Sox fans who weren't old enough to suffer through Harry Frazee, Johnny Pesky, Harry Agganis, Tony Conigliaro, Larry Barnett, Bobby Sprowl, Bucky Dent, John McNamara and Bill Buckner – though most of them did get through what Nomar, Pedro and Grady put them through – and showed more bastardry in victory than their forebears ever showed in defeat can kiss my 27 rings (well, 7 in my lifetime – for the moment), and then they can kiss my Pinstriped ass.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah. Also on this day, Arsenal play for the 1st time since their 49-game League unbeaten streak was broken by some major cheating that Manchester United were allowed to completely get away with. It's a League Cup match at the City of Manchester Stadium, and ends in a 1-1 draw.

Making their Arsenal debuts are Spanish goalkeeper Manual Almunia and Swiss centreback Philippe Senderos. Both would infuriate Arsenal fans. In Senderos' case, it was less his never really panning out, and more his being the 1st player to receive the Number 6 jersey since Tony Adams, the longtime Captain known as "Mr. Arsenal," had retired. Fans never warmed up to him. He was loaned out to A.C. Milan in 2008 and to Everton in 2010, and was sold to Fulham at the start of the next season. Having played for Switzerland in the 2006, 2010 and 2014 World Cups, he now plays in America, for the Houston Dynamo.

With Almunia, it was different. He had to go into the 2006 UEFA Champions League Final when starter Manuel Almunia was wrongly sent off by the referee, and managed to keep the clean sheet going until Samuel Eto'o scored in the 76th minute, a goal that should have been disallowed as offside. Four minutes later, Juliano Belletti won the game for Barcelona.

Lehmann went back to Germany in 2008, making Almunia the starter. He was not up to the standard of legendary Arsenal goalies Alex Wilson, George Swindin, Jack Kelsey, Bob Wilson, Pat Jennings, John Lukic, David Seaman and Lehamnn.Fans sang, to the tune of "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,""Manuel will not let them score, Al-mu-ni...a!" But, just as often, they called him "The Clown." He was not re-signed after his contract ran out in 2012, and, after 2 years at Watford, he retired.

Also on this day, Paulo Sergio Oliveira da Silva dies. Better known as Serginho, the Brazilian played for São Caetano as a defender, and was playing for his team in a Campeonato Brasileiro match against São Paulo when he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest 60 minutes into the match.

A later autopsy showed Serginho's heart to weigh 600 grams, twice the size of an average human heart, causing mystery towards his real cause of death. He had just turned 30, and his team was defending league champions. His son Raymundo followed in his father's footsteps and also played in the Brazilian league.

Also on this day, The West Wing airs the episode "The Birnam Wood." President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and his staff take the Prime Minister of Israel and the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority to Camp David, and, somehow, negotiate a solution that never seems to have occurred to any real-life President.

But White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry has been arguing with him, and, after telling him the solution won't work, and being told by Bartlet that it would, says to his best friend, whom he prodded into running for President and has guided in that office for 6 1/2 years, "My counsel is no longer of use to you." He resigns. A few minutes later, after taking a walk in the woods, he has a heart attack, and nearly dies.

What was not known to the general public at the time is that Leo's portrayer, John Spencer -- like his character, a recovering alcoholic whose heavy drinking had compromised his health -- had cancer. This storyline enabled him to step away from the show for treatment. Alas, Spencer's illness returned the following season, and he died, forcing the writers to kill Leo off as well.

October 27, 2006: The St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Detroit Tigers, 4-2, to take the 2006 World Series. Jeff Weaver – Jeff Fucking Weaver? Are you kidding me?!? – gets the win for St. Louis, who get a pair of RBIs from Series MVP (and former Trenton Thunder shortstop) David Eckstein. Sean Casey homers for Detroit.

After the 2004 Series, when the Cardinals lost to the Red Sox, Cardinal fans began to speculate about a Curse of Keith Hernandez. Hernandez had helped the Cards win the 1982 Series, but manager-GM Whitey Herzog didn't like him and traded him to the Mets in 1983.

After this, the Cards reached but lost the Series in '85 (on the Don Denkinger blown call and their Game 7 11-0 meltdown) and '87, blew a 3-games-to-1 lead in the '96 NLCS, reached the Playoffs in 2000 and '02 but failed to win the Pennant, and looked awful in losing the '04 Series. Someone brought up pitcher Jeff Suppan's baserunning blunder in '04, and noted that he wore Number 37, which was Hernandez's number in '82.

But this win, in the Cardinals' 1st season at the 3rd Busch Stadium, their 10th title, 2nd all-time behind the Yankees and 1st among NL teams, erases any possibility of a curse on them. It should be noted that the Cards' 83 regular-season wins are the fewest of any team to win a World Series in a full 162-game, or even 154-game, season.

Also on this day, Joe Niekro dies. The longtime knuckleballer, and brother of knuckleballing Hall-of-Famer Phil Niekro, had pitched in the postseason for the Houston Astros in 1980 and '81, and finally got his ring with the '87 Twins. He won 221 games, joining with Phil to become the winningest brothers in baseball history. On May 29, 1976, he hit his only big-league home run, off Phil. He died of a brain aneurysm at age 61.

His son Lance Niekro pitched for the San Francisco Giants, and since 2012 has been the head coach at Florida Southern College in Lakeland.

October 27, 2007: After 25 years at the drafty, unsuitable arena at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, the New Jersey Devils play their 1st game at the Prudential Center in downtown Newark. The Ottawa Senators spoil the party, winning 4-1, with Chris Neil scoring the 1st goal. Brian Gionta scores the 1st for the Devils.

Also on this night, in the 1st World Series game ever played in the State of Colorado, Daisuke Matsuzaka becomes the 1st Japanese pitcher to start a World Series game. (Hideki Irabu was on the Yankees' World Series roster in 1998 and '99, but did not start any games. Hideo Nomo never appeared in a World Series.) He allows 2 runs on 3 hits in 5 1/3rd innings, to get the win against the Rockies in the 10-5 Red Sox Game 3 victory.

After paying $51.1 million for the rights simply to negotiate with the righthander, Boston obtained "Dice-K" from the Seibu Lions, signing the World Baseball Classic MVP to a 6-year deal worth $52 million.

With where the Sox have been since, especially with Dice-K missing so many games due to injury, how does the deal look now? Pretty good, since he did help them win a World Series. (Well, as far as I know, he isn't one of the steroid freaks that helped the Sox cheat their way to said victory -- but with all of those injuries, you could wonder.)

October 27, 2008, 10 years ago: Game 5 of the World Series begins at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. But it doesn't end on this night, and I don't mean because it ends after midnight tonight. Unless you mean well after midnight tonight.

The Phillies take a 2-0 lead in the 1st inning when Shane Victorino knocks in Jayson Werth and Chase Utley. Tampa Bay cuts the lead in the top of the 4th, as Carlos Peña doubles and scores on Evan Longoria's single. The Rays then tie the game in the top of the 6th when B. J. Upton scores from 2nd base on a Peña single.

But it had already been raining all game, and as the Phillies get out of the inning, the umpires suspend the game. After the game was suspended, umpiring crew chief Tim Tschida told reporters that he and his crew ordered the players off the field because the wind and rain threatened to make the game "comical." The Phils' Chase Utley agreed, saying that by the middle of 6th inning, "the infield was basically underwater."

Under normal conditions, games are considered to be official games after 5 innings, or 4 1/2 if the home team is leading at that point. However, postseason games are operated by the Commissioner's Office, and thus are subject to the Commissioner's discretion of how to handle the scheduling of the games.

So, with rain for the rest of the night in the forecast for Philadelphia, and remembering the fuss made when, due to entirely different circumstances, he had declared the 2002 All-Star Game a tie after 11 innings, Commissioner Bud Selig informed both teams' management before the game began that a team would not be allowed to clinch the Series in a rain-shortened game.

This was the 1st game in World Series history to be suspended. There had been 3 tied games in the history of the World Series: 1907, 1912, and 1922, all of them called due to darkness, as artificial lighting had not yet been brought to ballparks. (Not until 1949 would lights be used on a dark day for a Series game, and not until 1971 would a Series game start at night.)

In general, no ties would be needed under modern rules, which provide for suspension of a tied game and resumption of it at the next possible date. Weather has caused numerous delays and postponements in Series history (notable postponements beforehand coming in 1911, 1962, 1975, 1986, 1996 and 2006), but never any suspended games before 2008.

Rain continues to fall in Philadelphia on Tuesday, further postponing the game to Wednesday, October 29, when the Phils finish it off.

*

October 27, 2010: Game 1 of the World Series, the 1st ever for the Texas Rangers. It doesn't go so well for them. The highly-anticipated matchup of the Rangers' Cliff Lee and the San Francisco Giants' Tim Lincecum goes by the boards, and turns into a slugfest. The Giants score 6 runs in the bottom of the 5th inning, and win 11-7.

October 27, 2011: Game 6 of the World Series. In 1986, the Red Sox had a 2-run lead in the 10th inning of Game 6, and were 1 strike away from winning their 1st World Series in 68 years... and blew it. Exactly 25 years and 2 days later...

The Texas Rangers had a 2-run lead in the 9th inning of Game 6, and were 1 strike away from winning the 1st World Series in the 51 years of the franchise, 40 of them in their current location... and blew it... and then had the exact same setup in the 10th inning, and blew it again! David Freese hit a game-tying triple in the 9th. He wasn't involved in the 10th inning comeback, but in the bottom of the 11th, he hit a walkoff home run, and the Cardinals won, 10-9.

If the '86 Red Sox were not officially off the hook for the biggest World Series choke ever seen to that point, thanks to the Red Sox of 2004 and '07, they were now, thanks to the Rangers having a bigger one.

October 27, 2012: Game 3 of the World Series. Gregor Blanco triples home Hunter Pence in the top of the 2nd, and Brandon Crawford singles home Blanco. Those are the only runs of the game, as the Giants beat the Detroit Tigers 2-0. Ryan Vogelsong, Tim Lincecum and Sergio Romo combine on a 5-hit shutout, moving the Giants to within 1 game of the title.

October 27, 2013: As if the interference call ending last night's game wasn't weird enough, Game 4 of the World Series also has a weird ending. The Red Sox win the 1st World Series game to ever end on a pickoff, beating the Cardinals, 4-2.

Kolten Wong, a 23 year-old rookie pinch-running for Allen Craig, is caught off 1st base by Boston closer Koji Uehara, ending the Busch Stadium contest with the dangerous Carlos Beltran at the plate.

The Cardinals had momentum after the previous night's wacky ending, but now, they won't win another game that counts until March 31, 2014.

October 27, 2015: Game 1 of the World Series at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. The Kansas City Royals played in the World Series just last year. The Mets? Not since October 26, 2000, 15 years earlier.

Matt Harvey starts for the Mets. The 1st pitch thrown by "The Dark Knight" is hit by Alcides Escobar for an inside-the-park home run, the 1st in Series play since Mule Haas of the 1929 A's. Curtis Granderson hits a home run of Royals starter Edinson Vólquez, giving the Mets a 3-1 lead. But the Royals tie it in the bottom of the 6th, taking Vólquez off the hook. Only then is he told that his father died earlier in the day.

The Mets took a 4-3 lead in the top of the 8th, and were just 2 outs away from taking Game 1, when Jeurys Familia blows his 1st save opportunity since July 30, by giving up a home run to Alex Gordon. He becomes the 5th player, the 1st since Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius of the 2001 Yankees, to hit a game-tying 9th inning home run in World Series play.

The game went into extra innings, and Granderson made a sensational catch of a Jarrod Dyson drive in the 11th. But in the bottom of the 14th, David Wright, the Mets' 3rd baseman and Captain -- and, to hear Met fans tell it, "the face of New York baseball" now that Derek Jeter has retired -- makes a throwing error that lets Escobar reach 1st. Ben Zobrist singles him over to 3rd, and Eric Hosmer flies out to center, a sacrifice fly that brings home the winning run. Royals 5, Mets 4.

This was the 1st time in World Series history that the same player scored both the 1st run of the game on the 1st pitch, and the last run of the game on the last pitch. The game tied the record for the longest game by innings in World Series history, shared with Game 2 in 1916 and Game 3 in 2005. The loss made 42-year-old Bartolo Colón the oldest player ever to lose a World Series game.

It was also the 7th time in the Mets' 25 World Series games to that point in which they had a lead and blew it. That ratio would get worse.

October 27, 2017: Game 3 of the World Series. Yuli Gurriel backs Lance McCullers Jr. with a home run, and the Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-3 at Minute Maid Park. For the 1st time in their 56-season history, they take a lead in a World Series, 2 games to 1.

Through the 2018 season, Lance McCullers Jr. has won 29 regular-season games -- plus 1 more in the postseason. Lance McCullers Sr. was also a major league pitcher, and won 28 games -- but never appeared in the postseason.

Also on this day, based on the results of a recently-held referendum, the autonomous community of Catalonia declares independence from Spain and the founding of the Catalan Republic. But the Constitutional Court of Spain declared the referendum illegal, and Spain did not recognize Catalonia as an independent state.

Nor did the European Union, nor did any country therein. Nor did the United Nations, nor did any of the permanent members of its Security Council: America, Britain (also an EU member, for the moment), France (also an EU member), Russia and China. While some other places attempting to become "breakaway republics" have voiced support for Catalonia, there is little they can do. Every country on Earth has, thus far treated the issue as a domestic matter within Spain.

If independence does happen, it could have a big effect on sports, particularly soccer. Instead of Spain's La Liga being, essentially, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and the 18 Dwarfs, it would take Barcelona, their crosstown rivals Espanyol (who would almost certainly have to change their name), and Girona FC out, and force a new national league to be formed. And Real Madrid would truly be domestically dominant.

October 27, 2266: If we presume that the last 3 digits and the decimal points of the "Stardates" on Star Trek represent a percentage of that year to that point, then, with the Stardate being 2821.5, the episode "The Galileo Seven" begins on this date. Seven members of the USS Enterprise's crew, investigating a quasar-like phenomenon, are stranded when their shuttlecraft crash-lands on a planet within.

Because of the quasar's interference, finding them is difficult, even for the highly-skilled crew of the Enterprise. As Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) says in his Captain's Log, "Finding a needle in a haystack would be child's play by comparison."

On the shuttle, the ship's Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), says that the craft doesn't have enough fuel to take off again, unless they can jettison 450 pounds. As the First Officer, Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy), in command of the mission, points out, this is "the weight of three grown men." The other six officers, including one woman, are not happy to hear this, and the mission is tense thereafter. In the end, circumstance ends up making Spock's command decision for him.

The episode was based on a 1939 film titled Five Came Back, which included a young Lucille Ball -- who, as head of Desilu Productions, was partly responsible for Star Trek reaching the airwaves, and no doubt recognized the storyline.