How Long It's Been: Tottenham Won the League

Since Spurs last won the League, either as The Football League or as The Premier League (or "The Premiership"), Liverpool have won it 14 times. Manchester United have also won it 14 times. Arsenal have won it 6 times. Chelsea, of West London, and Manchester City have won it 5 times. Everton, "the other team" in Liverpool, have won it 4. Leeds United have each won it 3. Derby County have won it twice. And the following clubs have won it once each: Aston Villa of Birmingham, Blackburn Rovers, Ipswich Town, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City. Spurs? Not once.

The European Cup Final was won by Benfica, of Lisbon, Portugal, although their sensational Mozambicquean forward Eusebio was still a rookie at the top European level and did not play. Benfica beat Barcelona. This was the 1st time in the 6 years that the European Cup was contested that it was not won by the other big club in Spain, Real Madrid.

No British team had yet won it. The following season, as defending English champions, Spurs would advance to the Semifinals, but would lose to Benfica as Eusebio dazzled. Some Spurs fans still think the refs cheated them, and that they would have beaten Real Madrid, with Alfredo di Stefano, in the final, as Benfica went on to do.

Some of the clubs that have gone on to define European football in the years since were virtual unknowns outside their own countries: Liverpool, Chelsea, Olympique de Marseille, Juventus, Ajax Amsterdam, Bayern Munich. The two Milan clubs, AC Milan and Internazionale, were known but neither had yet won the European Cup.

Manchester United were known, but were still struggling to recover from the Munich Air Disaster in 1958, when they were trying to take off after refueling on their return from a European Cup Quarterfinal against Yugoslavian club Red Star Belgrade.

Arsenal, of course, were known: When Dynamo Moscow, then the dominant club in the Soviet Union, wanted to tour Britain in 1945, right after World War II, they insisted upon playing Arsenal at Highbury, saying it wouldn't have been a true test of their mettle if they didn't. If they knew then who Tottenham were, they didn't show it. But in 1961, the whole world knew.

Of the 1960-61 Spurs: Midfielder John White was struck by lightning and killed on a golf course in 1964, only 27 years old; Captain and midfielder Danny Blanchflower died in 1993, manager Bill Nicholson and goalkeeper Bill Brown in 2004, forward Bobby Smith in 2010, left back Ron Henry in 2014, midfielder Dave Mackay in 2015, right back Peter Baker in 2016; and the following are still alive: Centreback Maurice Norman, winger Cliff Jones, forward Les Allen and winger Terry Dyson.

In America, their version of professional football had stretched from coast to coast by 1946, but the other major sports had only just done so. Basketball was in its 1st season with the Lakers, formerly in Minneapolis (Minnesota, "the Land of 10,000 Lakes") in Los Angeles. It was only in 1958 that baseball teams arrived in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The South had just gotten pro football in Dallas and Houston, and a Houston baseball team existed on paper to debut in one year, but the National Basketball Association would not arrive until 1968. In 1973, a basketball team called the San Antonio Spurs would begin play, and have now won 5 titles. 

The National Hockey League still had only 6 teams, all in the northeastern quadrant of North America: Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, and the teams that had just finished the Stanley Cup Finals the day before, Chicago beating Detroit. The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup on April 16, 1961, and finally ended their 49-year drought, 2nd-longest of any team in NHL history, on June 9, 2010. So even the Hawks have gone all the way more recently than Spurs.

All but one of the 16 teams then in MLB were playing in stadiums with permanent lights, but there were no artificial turf fields, and no domes (retractable or otherwise). There was no designated hitter, and no regular season interleague play. And no divisional play or Playoffs, just the World Series: If you won over 100 games and another team won more – as would happen that year, with the Detroit Tigers winning 101 and still finishing 8 games behind the New York Yankees – you were out of luck.

Most of the big records in North American sports still stood. Babe Ruth was still the leader in home runs for a single season and in a career. Ty Cobb still held the records for hits in a career and for stolen bases in a season and in a career (although the last of these is dubious, as 1900 was often a cutoff point and there was a player before that who had more career steals).

Walter Johnson still held the record for pitching strikeouts in a career, and Bob Feller for a single nine-inning game and a season (although an official finding an error would later discover that another pitcher held that last record).

The record for points in an NBA game was still 71 by Elgin Baylor, but Wilt Chamberlain would break that record the next season with 78, and then again that season with the still-standing 100.

Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion had just become the 2nd hockey player, after his recently retired Montreal Canadiens teammate, Maurice "the Rocket" Richard, to score 50 goals in a season; Richard still had the career mark.

No NFL player had yet passed for 40,000 yards, nor run for 10,000, and only Don Hutson had scored over 100 touchdowns. Nor had any player passed for 4,000 yards nor run for 2,000 in a single season.

The record for sacks in a game, a season, a career? Nobody knew, as David "Deacon" Jones, the great Los Angeles Rams defensive end who created the term for a tackle of the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage, was still a few days away from entering the NFL through its draft. Floyd Patterson was the Heavyweight Champion of the World.

Spurs had dethroned Lancashire club Burnley as League Champions, and West Midlands club Wolverhampton Wanderers as FA Cup holders. They would win the Cup again the next year, defeating Burnley. The defending champions in American sports were the aforementioned Blackhawks, the Boston Celtics, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Green Bay Packers. 

The defining athletes of my childhood? Most were still in school. More to the point of the team and sport in question: Charlie George was 10, Ossie Ardiles was 8, Liam Brady was 5, Glenn Hoddle was 3, and none of the players on the Arsenal and Spurs teams that played each other in the 1991 and 1993 FA Cup Semifinals had yet been born except for Gary Lineker and Pat Van Den Hauwe of Spurs, and David O'Leary of Arsenal. That's right: Tony Adams, Alan Smith, Michael Thomas and Paul Gascoigne weren't even twinkles in their daddies' eyes.

Terry Venables, who managed Spurs in those games, was an 18-year-old rookie at Chelsea when Spurs last won the League. Arsenal manager George Graham was 16, and a few months away from making his professional debut with Aston Villa.

Arsène Wenger was 11, Harry Redknapp was 14. Alex Ferguson was playing in his native Scotland for St. Johnstone. José Mário dos Santos Mourinho was a year and a half from being born.

George Swindin, former Arsenal goalkeeper, was Arsenal manager, but without success. Liverpool was in the Second Division, although under Bill Shankly it was about to get promoted back to the First. Walter Winterbottom was England's manager, Johnny Haynes its Captain.

Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne of Britain -- that hasn't changed -- but Prince Edward had not yet been born. Nor had Diana Spencer. The Prime Minister was Harold Macmillan. Alec Douglas-Home was his Foreign Secretary, Edward Heath his Lord Privy Seal. Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden were still alive.

Harold Wilson was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, and James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher were also in Parliament. John Major was working in his father’s garden-ornament business. Jeremy Corbyn was about to turn 12, Gordon Brown was 10, Tony Blair was about to turn 8; and David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer had not been born yet. 

John F. Kennedy had just been inaugurated as President, Lyndon Johnson as Vice President. Dwight D. Eisenhower had just left the office, with his Vice President, Richard Nixon, beginning an odd semi-exile. Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman, and the widows of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, were still alive. Gerald Ford was in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jimmy Carter was farming in Georgia, and thinking about running for the State Senate.

Ronald Reagan was still an actor, and still a Democrat, although an increasingly conservative one: He had given speeches denouncing JFK's economic and social plans, saying, falsely and stupidly, "Under the tousled boyish haircut, it is still old Karl Marx."

George Herbert Walker Bush was in the oil business in Texas, and his family included a 14-year-old boy named George who was a freshman at his father's alma mater, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Joe Biden was in college. In junior high school were Billy Blythe and Hillary Rodham, although we don't remember them by those names today. Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson (Obama) had not yet been born.

The Governor of the State of New York was Nelson Rockefeller, the Mayor of the City of New York was Robert Wagner Jr., and the Governor of New Jersey was Robert Meyner. The Pope was John XXIII. The current Pope, Benedict XVI, the Father Joseph Ratzinger, was teaching at the University of Bonn in his native Germany. The holder of the Nobel Peace Prize was Albert Lutuli, President of the African National Congress.

There were 22 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. There had been Civil Rights Acts in 1957 and 1960, but not that of 1964, nor the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Fair Housing Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, Title IX or legalized abortion.

Children in American public schools could still be forced to say a Christian, most likely Protestant, prayer. There were still living veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Boer War.

The Soviet Union had just sent the 1st man into space, Yuri Gagarin, 5 days before Spurs last won the League. The United States followed soon thereafter, and President Kennedy then told a joint session of Congress that America "should commit itself, before this decade is out, to reaching the goal of putting a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to the Earth."

It would not be done with computers as we now understand them. Most computers took up much of a big room. My mother, who was in high school at the time, claims that one of her first jobs was in a city office building where a computer took up an entire floor. There was no Internet. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee? They would all have their 6th birthdays that year.

There were a few cars with telephone hookups, but not many, and there were certainly no cordless phones – indoor or outdoor. It would be another year before Telstar was launched, making satellite television possible. Color television existed, but was not in every American home. It would be 1965 in the U.S., and 1969 in the U.K., before most TV shows were in colo(u)r.

The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building. Credit cards were still a relatively new thing, and there were no automatic teller machines. There were artificial kidneys, but no artificial hearts. Transplanting a kidney was possible, but not a heart, lung or liver.

The Olympic Games have since been held in America 4 times, Canada and Japan 3 times each; Austria, France, Russia and Korea twice each; and once each in Mexico, Germany, Bosnia, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, Italy, China, Britain and Brazil. The World Cup has since been held in Germany and Mexico twice each, and once each in America, England, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, Brazil and Russia.

When Tottenham last won the League, 60 years ago, Ernest Hemingway, Whittaker Chambers, Ty Cobb and Edith Wilson were still alive. All would die later in 1961, as would the 1st of the Marx Brothers to do so, Chico.

Major films of 1961 included the film version of West Side Story, Breakfast at Tiffany's, El Cid (in which Charlton Heston solidified his lucky bastardhood by fooling around with Sophia Loren at the peak of her Lorenness), La Dolce Vita, the original version of The Parent Trap, and what might have been Elvis Presley's last good feature film, Blue Hawaii. There hadn't been a live-action Batman since Robert Lowery in 1949, and with the previous year's death of George Reeves, Superman was in an interregnum as well.

Major novels of 1961 included Ian Fleming's James Bond story Thunderball (but there had been, as yet, no Bond films), John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy, Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers, and J.D. Salinger's last published work, Franny and Zooey.

Joseph Heller published a novel about a World War II pilot, and wanted to title it Catch-18. But Leon Uris had just come out with Mila 18, so, thinking it a funnier-sounding title, changed it to Catch-22. Tennessee Williams produced his play The Night of the Iguana, the late Frantz Fanon's nonfiction work The Wretched of the Earth was published, and Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

No one had yet heard of Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil, Monty Python, Alex Portnoy, John Rambo, Spenser: For Hire, George Smiley, The Punisher, Basil Fawlty, Rocky Balboa, T.S. Garp, Arthur Dent, Jason Bourne, Derek "Del Boy" Trotter, Hannibal Lecter, Edmund Blackadder, Celie Harris, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Ryan, John McClane, Alex Cross, Alan Partridge, Bridget Jones, Harry Potter, Robert Langdon, David Brent, Bella Swan, Lisbeth Salander or Katniss Everdeen.

Television shows that debuted in 1961 included The Avengers (the British spy series that wouldn't be shown in the U.S. until 1966), ABC Wide World of Sports, Car 54 Where Are You (cop comedy), Mr. Ed (sitcom about a talking horse), Ben Casey (medical drama), The Dick Van Dyke Show (a groundbreaking sitcom) and The Mike Douglas Show (a groundbreaking daytime talk show).

The Number 1 song in Britain was Elvis' version of "Wooden Heart," from his film G.I. Blues. His version was not released as a single in America, but a cover version by Joe Dowell would hit Number 1 there. 

In America, the current Number 1 hit, soon to top the British charts as well, was the Marcels' doo-wop reworking of the 1934 Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart classic "Blue Moon." This would be turned into the unofficial theme song of the blue-clad Manchester City Football Club, and rewritten about a thousand other ways for British soccer teams.

The Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best – did not yet know of the existence of Brian Epstein, nor he of theirs. They did know Ringo Starr as one of the best drummers in Liverpool, but the idea of him replacing Pete was, at the time, ridiculous. And the idea of a British music group topping the U.S. charts was ludicrous.

Bob Dylan had recently arrived in New York, and was getting his first notices. Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel were in the 6th grade. Michael Jackson, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, and Prince Rogers Nelson were 2 1/2 years old.

Inflation has been such that what $1.00 would buy then, $8.80 would buy now -- or, in the nation in question, what cost £1.00 then would cost £23.20 now. (This was before the British pound was "decimalised" on February 15, 1971.) A U.S. postage stamp was 4 cents. A New York Subway token was 15 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 27 cents, a cup of coffee 35 cents, a McDonald's meal 45 cents, a movie ticket $1.00, a new car $2,850, and a new house $12,550. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had closed the day before at 692.06. 

American telephone numbers were still based on "exchanges," based on the letters on a rotary dial. So a number that, today, would be (718) 293-6000 (this is the number for the Yankees' ticket office, so I’m not hurting anyone's privacy), would have been CYpress 3-6000.

There were no ZIP Codes, either. They ended up being based on the old system: The old New York Daily News Building, at 220 East 42nd Street, was "New York 17, NY"; it became "New York, NY 10017." Of course, Britain still uses the postal codes that were in place in 1961: Arsenal's Islington was, and is, N5, while Tottenham is N17.


In the Spring of 1961, there were successful coups in South Korea and the Dominican Republic, and a failed one in Portugal. Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Jerusalem. Amnesty International was founded. The Freedom Rides, challenging public-facilities segregation in the southeastern U.S., began.

Gary Cooper, and George S. Kaufman, and Carl Jung died. Lothar Matthaus, and Don Mattingly, and Isiah Thomas were born. So were actors Eddie Murphy, George Clooney and Tim Roth. And British Isles-born singers Enya and Susan Boyle.

April 17, 1961. Tottenham Hotspur won the English Football League. They have not done so since. It's been 60 years.