October 26, 1921, 100 years ago: Joseph Franklin Fulks is born in Birmingham, Kentucky. Jumpin' Joe starred at Murray State University in his home State, and they retired his Number 26. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II.
When the NBA was founded as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, he played for the Philadelphia Warriors, and averaged 23.2 points per game to become the league's 1st scoring champion. He led the Warriors to the 1st Championship of the league, beating the Chicago Stags 4 games to 2 in the Finals, clinching on April 22, 1947, at home at the Philadelphia Arena.
From the dawn of the league until Elgin Baylor's 64 points in a 1959 game, Fulks held the NBA single-game point-scoring record, topping out at 63 on February 10, 1949, against the Indianapolis Jets. He played in the 1st 2 NBA All-Star Games, in 1951 and 1952, and retired after the 1954 season.
He worked as the recreation director of the Kentucky State Penitentiary until March 21, 1976. Ironically, it was a crime outside the prison walls that killed him: His girlfriend, Roberta Bannister, had a son named Gregg, and they argued over a gun, and Gregg shot Joe with it. Joe was only 54 years old.
On a 1996 ESPN Classic broadcast, sports columnist and basketball historian Bob Ryan tried to put the pre-24-second-shot-clock era (1946-54) into perspective, and said, "I'm not gonna kid you: I don't think Jumpin' Joe Fulks makes it in today's NBA, except maybe as a 12th man."
Nevertheless, Fulks was named to the NBA's 25th Anniversary Team in 1971, and was posthumously elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978. He is also a member of the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. But the Warriors have not retired the Number 10 he wore for them.
They moved to the Bay Area in 1962, and the Syracuse Nationals became the Philadelphia 76ers the next season. The Sixers have retired 10, but for Maurice Cheeks, and they don't acknowledge the Dubs' achievements in their city.
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October 26, 1863: The Football Association is formed at the Freemasons Tavern in Holborn, Central London. Although there were football clubs (soccer teams) in England already (and a few of these are still in operation, though most on an amateur level), the rules of the game across the country were not uniform. So the founding of the FA is considered the "birthday" of English football.
The meeting was held after Ebenezer Cobb Morley, chairman of Barnes Football Club in South London, and possessor of a name the still-living Charles Dickens could have thought up had Morley not been born in 1831, before Dickens was ever published, wrote a letter to Bell's Life, a London newspaper, suggesting that football should have a unified set of rules.
Morley drafted the first "Laws of the Game," was hired as the FA's 1st secretary, and its 2nd president, serving from 1867 to 1874. And he was still a player, though 35 years old: He played for Barnes against Richmond in the 1st game played under his rules. (As opposed to Alexander Cartwright, who, in 1846, was the umpire in the 1st non-intrasquad baseball game played under the rules he has been widely credited with writing.)
Morley was a lawyer, was also active in rowing, and later served as a member of the Surrey County council and a Justice of the Peace. He died in 1924.
October 26, 1868: A crowd of 10‚000 is at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn to see the Mutual Club of New York capture the national amateur baseball championship of the year by defeating the Atlantics of Brooklyn for the 2nd time‚ 28-17.
This is the 1st time that a New York City club has won a postseason series designed to crown the national champions of baseball – or, if you prefer, the “World Champions.” However, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings declare themselves openly professional next year, it makes this the last "world championship" won by an amateur baseball team.
October 26, 1870: In a rematch of the game that finally ended their unbeaten streak at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn the previous June, the Cincinnati Red Stockings take on the Atlantics of Brooklyn‚ on neutral ground in Philadelphia. Led by 1st baseman Joe Start, the Atlantics score 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th to beat the mighty Reds‚ 11-7.
This was, effectively, the end of the 1st era of organized baseball, the all-amateur era. The next season, the National Association, the 1st professional league, began play. The Boston Red Stockings were formed, taking about half of the Cincinnati players, and they continued to dominate baseball in the 1870s. The National League came along in 1876. The Boston club won NA Pennants in 1872, '73, '74 and '75, and NL Pennants in 1877 and '78, before poachings from other teams finally forced them off their perch. They won just 1 Pennant between 1878 and 1891, before starting a new dynasty.
The Atlantics weren't so lucky, as they refused to join the NA, and lost most of their good players to that league. They continued to play an independent schedule until folding in 1882, baseball's first great team (founded in 1855) going out not with a bang, but with a whimper.
It would be the late 1880s before Brooklyn had another championship-quality team, the one that would eventually become the Dodgers. While Brooklyn outpaced Manhattan in the 1860s and the early 1870s, it would be the other way around until the late 1890s. The Dodgers (then the Superbas) won Pennants in 1899 and 1900.
But in 1902, John McGraw became Giants manager, and Manhattan ruled the City (with the brief exception of the 1916 and 1920 Brooklyn Pennants) until the original Yankee Stadium opened in The Bronx in 1923, and the northernmost Borough ruled until the 1969 Met Miracle. So Queens ruled NYC baseball in the first half of the 1970s and the latter half of the 1980s. Other than that, it's been all Bronx since the end of the Harding Administration. The Mets' 2015 Pennant and 2016 Wild Card berth hasn't changed that.
October 26, 1877: What we would later call "Major League Baseball" suffers its 1st scandal. Charles Chase, vice president of the club known as the Louisville Eclipse, confronts George Hall‚ the National League home run leader in 1876 with 5‚ and pitcher Jim Devlin with charges that they threw road games in August and September of this past season.
Both admit to throwing non-league games -- an exhibition game in Lowell‚ Massachusetts on August 30, and another in Pittsburgh on September 3 -- and implicate teammates Al Nichols and Bill Craver. Hall implicates Devlin, saying that the 2 helped in losses to the NL's Cincinnati Reds (no connection to the current team of that name) on September 6, and to the minor league Indianapolis Blues on September 24‚ but he argues, that since the Reds were about to be suspended and the games nullified‚ it amounted to an exhibition game. The accused players will end up being permanently banned from baseball.
Also on this day, Eustace James Newton is born in Indianapolis. A pitcher, "Doc" Newton pitched in the major leagues from 1900 to 1909, including 1905 to 1990 with the New York Highlanders, the team that became the Yankees in 1913. His career record was 54-72, and he died in 1931.
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October 26, 1881, 140 years ago: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the initials stood for "Old Kindersley") is fought in Tombstone, Arizona Territory -- actually on Fremont Street, a couple of blocks from where the Corral was.
October 26, 1881, 140 years ago: The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (the initials stood for "Old Kindersley") is fought in Tombstone, Arizona Territory -- actually on Fremont Street, a couple of blocks from where the Corral was.
While the Earp brothers and Dr. John Holliday were no angels -- by the standards of the time, the Earps were a lot like a Mob family (just as Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William H. Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, killed in the New Mexico Territory earlier that year, was essentially a hitman) -- the Clanton Gang, a.k.a. "The Cowboys," was worse. So if there were any "good guys" in this fight, it was the Earps, and they won.
For the record: Wyatt Earp was not hit, Morgan Earp was hit in the shoulder but recovered quickly, Virgil Earp was shot through the calf and also recovered quickly, and Doc Holliday (a dentist, so it wasn't just a nickname) was saved when a bullet hit his holster, allowing him to escape with only a bruise; Cowboys leader Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne were both unarmed, and ran away from the scene without being hit, while the other 3 -- Tom's brother Billy Clanton and the brothers Frank and Tom McLaury -- were killed. (Frank was 33, Tom was 28, Billy Clanton just 19.)
As was the case in the major cities of the East in those days, there was a partisan divide reflected in competing newspapers. The Tombstone Nugget took the Cowboys' side, saying, "Blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttle cock." The Tombstone Epitaph (one of the best newspaper names ever) took the Earps' side, saying, "The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the Marshal was entirely justified in his efforts to disarm these men, and that being fired upon they had to defend themselves which they did most bravely."
Since the Epitaph had gotten the sanction of the Associated Press, that's the version that the public outside Arizona would come to accept as the truth. The coroner's report backed it up, essentially proving that Billy Clanton did not have his hands raised, thus making Ike Clanton a liar when he said Billy was trying to surrender, thus vindicating the Earps from the charge that it was murder instead of self-defense.
It didn't help the Cowboys' case that none of them lived past 1887 (Ike was shot while resisting arrest for stealing a horse, age 40; Billy Claiborne was killed by Frank Leslie a year after the Corral shootout, just 22), while both Wyatt and Virgil Earp lived into the 20th Century, with Wyatt spreading tall tales about his deeds all the way up to his death in 1929, 48 years after the shootout. (He was 80. Virgil died in 1905, age 62.)
And while there would be setbacks -- in the next year, Morgan would be killed (30) and Virgil badly wounded -- today, the Clantons would be forgotten if things had been settled peacefully. Then again, so might the Earps and Doc Holliday. (The Doc was already suffering from tuberculosis, and died in 1887, age 36. His last words were a comment on the fact that he was dying in bed, with bare feet, rather than in a gunfight with his boots on: "This is funny.")
The incident inspired the films My Darling Clementine in 1946, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, and both Wyatt Earp and Tombstone in 1994. It also inspired, ironically, TV science fiction, first with an episode of Doctor Who in 1966; and, more recently, with Wynonna Earp, with a supernaturally-immortal Holliday helping Wyatt's great-great-granddaughters fight monsters (and having a baby with the titular Wynonna, a choice forced on the scriptwriters by star Melanie Scrofano's real-life pregnancy).
In the 1983-84 TV season, NBC aired a series titled The Rousters, starring Chad Everett as Wyatt Earp III, who ran both a carnival and a bounty-hunting business. In spite of that show and the later Wynonna Earp, in real life, Wyatt is not known to have had any children.
DeForest Kelley played Ike Clanton in a TV version of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on a 1955 episode of You Are There, played Morgan Earp in the 1957 film adaptation, and in the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun," his Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy was forced by an alien to stand in for Tom McLaury.
That episode nearly aired on the anniversary: October 25, 1968. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) was forced to stand in for Ike Clanton, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) as the considerably younger Billy Clanton, Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as Frank McLaury, and Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) as Billy Claiborne.
Tombstone, founded in 1879, was a frontier boomtown of 5,300 people, due to nearby silver mines, with a population of about 14,000 by the time of the gunfight -- a huge amount for a town in the West in that era. An 1886 fire ended the boomtown status, but its status as a County Seat saved it from being completely abandoned by the time Arizona gained Statehood in 1912.
In 1964, Detroit-based investors bought the Corral and several other historic buildings, and turned Tombstone into a "living history museum," a Wild West counterpart to Colonial Williamsburg. They also bought The Tombstone Epitaph. In 1975, the daily paper was converted into a weekly. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona.
Today, the population of "The Town Too Tough to Die" is listed as 1,380 -- and they may get that population doubled in tourists. It is 184 miles southeast of Phoenix, 70 miles southeast of Tucson, and 35 miles north of the Mexican border.
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For the record: Wyatt Earp was not hit, Morgan Earp was hit in the shoulder but recovered quickly, Virgil Earp was shot through the calf and also recovered quickly, and Doc Holliday (a dentist, so it wasn't just a nickname) was saved when a bullet hit his holster, allowing him to escape with only a bruise; Cowboys leader Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne were both unarmed, and ran away from the scene without being hit, while the other 3 -- Tom's brother Billy Clanton and the brothers Frank and Tom McLaury -- were killed. (Frank was 33, Tom was 28, Billy Clanton just 19.)
As was the case in the major cities of the East in those days, there was a partisan divide reflected in competing newspapers. The Tombstone Nugget took the Cowboys' side, saying, "Blood flowed as water, and human life was held as a shuttle cock." The Tombstone Epitaph (one of the best newspaper names ever) took the Earps' side, saying, "The feeling among the best class of our citizens is that the Marshal was entirely justified in his efforts to disarm these men, and that being fired upon they had to defend themselves which they did most bravely."
Since the Epitaph had gotten the sanction of the Associated Press, that's the version that the public outside Arizona would come to accept as the truth. The coroner's report backed it up, essentially proving that Billy Clanton did not have his hands raised, thus making Ike Clanton a liar when he said Billy was trying to surrender, thus vindicating the Earps from the charge that it was murder instead of self-defense.
It didn't help the Cowboys' case that none of them lived past 1887 (Ike was shot while resisting arrest for stealing a horse, age 40; Billy Claiborne was killed by Frank Leslie a year after the Corral shootout, just 22), while both Wyatt and Virgil Earp lived into the 20th Century, with Wyatt spreading tall tales about his deeds all the way up to his death in 1929, 48 years after the shootout. (He was 80. Virgil died in 1905, age 62.)
And while there would be setbacks -- in the next year, Morgan would be killed (30) and Virgil badly wounded -- today, the Clantons would be forgotten if things had been settled peacefully. Then again, so might the Earps and Doc Holliday. (The Doc was already suffering from tuberculosis, and died in 1887, age 36. His last words were a comment on the fact that he was dying in bed, with bare feet, rather than in a gunfight with his boots on: "This is funny.")
The incident inspired the films My Darling Clementine in 1946, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957, and both Wyatt Earp and Tombstone in 1994. It also inspired, ironically, TV science fiction, first with an episode of Doctor Who in 1966; and, more recently, with Wynonna Earp, with a supernaturally-immortal Holliday helping Wyatt's great-great-granddaughters fight monsters (and having a baby with the titular Wynonna, a choice forced on the scriptwriters by star Melanie Scrofano's real-life pregnancy).
In the 1983-84 TV season, NBC aired a series titled The Rousters, starring Chad Everett as Wyatt Earp III, who ran both a carnival and a bounty-hunting business. In spite of that show and the later Wynonna Earp, in real life, Wyatt is not known to have had any children.
DeForest Kelley played Ike Clanton in a TV version of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on a 1955 episode of You Are There, played Morgan Earp in the 1957 film adaptation, and in the Star Trek episode "Spectre of the Gun," his Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy was forced by an alien to stand in for Tom McLaury.
That episode nearly aired on the anniversary: October 25, 1968. Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) was forced to stand in for Ike Clanton, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan) as the considerably younger Billy Clanton, Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as Frank McLaury, and Ensign Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) as Billy Claiborne.
Tombstone, founded in 1879, was a frontier boomtown of 5,300 people, due to nearby silver mines, with a population of about 14,000 by the time of the gunfight -- a huge amount for a town in the West in that era. An 1886 fire ended the boomtown status, but its status as a County Seat saved it from being completely abandoned by the time Arizona gained Statehood in 1912.
In 1964, Detroit-based investors bought the Corral and several other historic buildings, and turned Tombstone into a "living history museum," a Wild West counterpart to Colonial Williamsburg. They also bought The Tombstone Epitaph. In 1975, the daily paper was converted into a weekly. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Arizona.
Today, the population of "The Town Too Tough to Die" is listed as 1,380 -- and they may get that population doubled in tourists. It is 184 miles southeast of Phoenix, 70 miles southeast of Tucson, and 35 miles north of the Mexican border.
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October 26, 1910: The Washington Post headlines a rumored trade that, had it gone through, would have been the biggest in baseball history in terms of the one-for-one names involved, with Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators going to the Detroit Tigers for Ty Cobb.
Tigers president Frank Navin scoffs at the story‚ saying he would never trade Cobb‚ but praising Johnson "as the best pitcher in the country." Cobb was about to turn 24 and had just finished his 5th full season of baseball; Johnson was 23 and had just finished his 4th season. This would have been like trading Juan Soto for Julio Urías now.
Also on this day, John Joseph Krol is born in Cleveland. Cardinal Krol was Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, a period that included the construction of Veterans Stadium and The Spectrum, the 76ers' NBA Championships of 1967 and 1983, the Flyers' Stanley Cups of 1974 and 1975, the Phillies' World Series win in 1980, and Villanova's 1985 National Championship. He died in 1996.
October 26, 1911, 110 years ago: The Philadelphia Athletics win their 2nd straight World Series. Chippewa pitcher Albert "Chief" Bender cruises to his second victory‚ a 4-hit 13-2 breeze. The A's cap the win with a 7-run 7th‚ battering three tired Giant hurlers‚ Red Ames‚ Hooks Wiltse‚ and Rube Marquard.
Overall‚ the Giants manage just 13 runs and a .175 batting average off Bender‚ Jack Coombs and Eddie Plank, gaining revenge for the Christy Mathewson-dominated Series of 1905 when the Giants embarrassed the A's.
Because of the NL's extended playing season‚ and a record 6-day rain delay, this is the latest ending ever for a World Series‚ and would remain so until the strike-delayed 1981 Series.
The last survivor of the 1911 A's was center fielder Amos Strunk, who lived until 1979.
Also on this day, Sidney Gillman (no middle name) is born in Minneapolis. With the Los Angeles Rams, Sid Gillman used the passing game of Norm Van Brocklin to Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch and Tom Fears to win an NFL Championship as an assistant coach in 1951 and a Western Division title as head coach in 1955.
He became the 1st head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1960 (they played their 1st season in Los Angeles before moving down the Coast), coaching quarterbacks like Jack Kemp, Tobin Rote and John Hadl, and receiver Lance Alworth, and reached 5 of the 1st 6 AFL Championship Games, in 1960, '61, '63, '64 and '65, winning in 1963 – still the only time in major league sports that a San Diego team has gone as far as their league allowed them to go. (They did not play the NFL Champion Chicago Bears, and if they had, it might have been the AFL's best chance to make a statement until Joe Namath and the Jets beat the Colts 5 years later.)
It was Gillman's wide-open passing game that helped to give the AFL its first positive reviews and its reputation as a League where anything could happen at any time, contrasting with the NFL, then comparatively very conservative despite having such quarterbacks as Johnny Unitas, Sonny Jurgensen and Bart Starr.
Gillman later served as an assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles, helping head coach Dick Vermeil develop Ron Jaworski, and with the Los Angeles Express of the USFL, where he helped to develop Steve Young.
NFL coaches who played or coached under him include Vermeil, George Allen, Al Davis, Chuck Noll and Chuck Knox. Coaches who played or coached under those men include: With Davis' Oakland Raiders, John Madden, Tom Flores, Art Shell, Bill Walsh and Jon Gruden; with Allen’s Redskins, Jack Pardee, Richie Petitbon and Joe Bugel; with Noll's Steelers, Bud Carson and Tony Dungy; with Vermeil's Eagles, Herman Edwards. Walsh's "coaching children," and thus Gillman's "grandchildren," include Mike Holmgren, Jim Fassel, Sam Wyche, George Seifert and Dennis Green; through them, Gillman's "great-grandchildren" include Andy Reid, John Fox, Mike Shanahan, Jeff Fisher, Brian Billick, Lovie Smith and Mike Tomlin.
Gillman was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1983, one of the 1st primarily-AFL figures to be so honored. He is also a member of the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame and the San Diego Hall of Champions.
Also on this day, Mahalia Jackson (no middle name) is born in New Orleans. She is often regarded as the greatest singer of gospel music ever, of any race, of any gender, of any era. As far as I know, she had nothing to do with sports, but I want to mention her anyway.
She sang at the March On Washington in 1963, and, supposedly, saw Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was wrapping up his speech, and she remembered a previous speech of his, and said to him, "Martin, tell them about the dream." He did so, and a strong call for social justice became something larger than even all the people on that stage, which also included A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis, Daisy Bates, Rosa Parks, Walter Reuther, Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee, Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey, Mary Travers, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
If that story is true, then Mahalia performed a greater service to the human race than most people ever do to the God who created it, and to whom she sang so superbly.
October 26, 1921, 100 years ago: Roland Joseph McLenahan is born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. A defenseman, he was one of the players more or less frozen out by the NHL's 1942-67 6-team structure. He played 8 games for the Detroit Red Wings in 1946, but that was it. On the other hand, he played for minor-league teams in Washington, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo and Cincinnati from 1935 to 1957, and was a 4-time All-Star at that level.
In 1957-58, his 1st season after retiring as a player, he coached the Rochester Americans to the Calder Cup, the championship of the American Hockey League. He served as a scout with the Montreal Canadiens, and served his country and his Province in youth sports until his death in 1984. He was elected to the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 1982, and that Hall gives out an annual Roly McLenahan Award to an outstanding amateur athlete from the Province.
Also on this day, Frances Scott Fitzgerald is born in St. Paul, Minnesota. She would be the only child born to either F. Scott Fitzgerald or his wife Zelda Sayre. "Scottie" became a journalist, writing for The Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine. She married twice, and had 4 children, all with her 1st husband, and died of cancer in 1986.
Also on this day, the Chicago Theatre opens, inside the Loop at 175 North State Street. The 3,880-seat theater was a big movie palace, straddling the silent and talking eras, and also featured live jazz, making it not at all a surprise when its famed marquee became the logo for the 2003 film version of the musical Chicago, which was set in 1927. Since 2007, it has been owned by the Madison Square Garden Corporation.
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October 26, 1930: Fair Park Stadium opens in Fair Park on the east side of Dallas. In 1937, with the establishment of the city's New Year's Day "bowl game," it was renamed the Cotton Bowl.
October 26, 1930: Fair Park Stadium opens in Fair Park on the east side of Dallas. In 1937, with the establishment of the city's New Year's Day "bowl game," it was renamed the Cotton Bowl.
Seating 92,000, it hosted the Cotton Bowl Classic from 1937 to 2009. It was home to Southern Methodist University football from 1932 to 1978, and SMU used it for home games again from 1995 to 1999. Two short-lived teams called the Dallas Texans used it, the NFL team of 1952 that became the Baltimore Colts the next year, and the AFL team of 1960 to 1962 that became the Kansas City Chiefs. Those Texans won the 1962 AFL Championship there.
It was the 1st home of the Dallas Cowboys, from 1960 to 1971, when Texas Stadium opened. The North American Soccer League's Dallas Tornado used it in 1967 and 1968, and the Major League Soccer team formerly known as the Dallas Burn, now just "FC Dallas," used it from 1996 to 2005.
Today, with both the Cowboys and the Cotton Bowl Classic playing at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the Cotton Bowl is mainly the host of 2 games: The annual Red River Rivalry between the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma every 2nd Saturday in October, during the Texas State Fair; and the Heart of Dallas Bowl.
October 26, 1931, 90 years ago: Charles Comiskey dies of heart disease at age 72. One of the great players of the 1880s with the St. Louis Browns (forerunners of the Cardinals), he practically invented the way 1st base was played, and he was a major figure in the Players' League revolt of 1890.
But when offered the chance to start, own and run a team in the new American League in 1901, which became the Chicago White Sox, he betrayed the players who followed him by pinching pennies, much as later hockey greats Art Ross, Conn Smythe, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux would do.
Known as "the Old Roman" despite being of Irish descent, he built the ballpark that would bear his name, Comiskey Park, and built a franchise that would win 4 Pennants and 2 World Series in his lifetime. But he also indirectly caused, and made much worse, the greatest scandal in sports history, the Black Sox Scandal of 1919-21. His reputation as a great player and a smart, canny executive has been wiped out, replaced by one as a cheap, nasty old bastard.
On this same day, the Frankford Yellow Jackets defeat the Chicago Bears, 13–12 at Wrigley Field. Due to the Great Depression, this turned out to be the last game the Jackets ever played. The next day, the team's owner, the Frankford Athletic Association of Northeast Philadelphia, returned the franchise to the NFL, and the Frankford Yellow Jackets were out of business.
On July 9, 1933, former University of Pennsylvania football teammates Bert Bell and James Ludlow "Lud" Wray bought the territorial rights to a Philadelphia team from the NFL. And their new team, named the Eagles after the Blue Eagle symbol of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, at first wore the Jackets' colors, powder blue and gold, switching to green and white in 1954.
But they did not purchase the Yellow Jackets team itself, only the local rights to a team. As a result, the NFL does not consider the Eagles to be a continuation of the Jackets, and the Eagles do not claim the Jackets' 1926 NFL Championship as one of their titles, along with those they won in 1948, 1949, 1960 and 2017.
This 1931 game also marked the last time a Philadelphia-based NFL team would win an away game over the Bears until October 17, 1999, when the Eagles defeated the Bears 20–16 at Soldier Field.
October 26, 1938: The Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury after its North London neighborhood, hosts a match between the England national team and a team representing "The Rest of Europe." The game commemorates, on the actual anniversary day, the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the Football Association. A crowd of 40,185, including King George VI, sees England win 3-0. It was the 2nd full England match to be shown live on British television.
The England team consisted of Arsenal's left back Eddie Hapgood (Captain) and left half Wilf Copping, Chelsea's goalkeeper Vic Woodley, Tottenham's right back Bert Sproston and inside right Willie Hall, Huddersfield's right half Ken Willingham, Wolverhampton Wanderers' centre half (and future title-winning manager) Stan Cullis, Stoke City's outside right Stanley Matthews, Everton's centre forward Tommy Lawton and outside left Walter Boyes, and West Ham United's inside left Len Goulden. Hall, Lawton and Goulden scored.
The Rest of Europe team included 5 players from recent World Cup winners Italy, 2 Germans, a Frenchman, a Belgian, a Hungarian, and a Norwegian. Only 1 of the 5 Italians was on the forward line, so even then, Italy was a defense-first footballing nation. It was Silvio Piola, considered too young for their 1934 World Cup winners, but starred on the 1938 version while playing his club soccer for Lazio in Rome. The Belgian, Ray Braine, was his country's 1st professional footballer, when he signed for Sparta Prague in 1930.
The last survivor of each team was Cullis, who lived until 2001; and Pietro Rava of Italy and Juventus, who lived until 2006.
Also on this day, for the 1st time, an ice hockey match is televised. Oddly, this does not occur in Canada, or in America, or in any of the European nations that we now associate with the game, such as Russia or Sweden. It is in England, on the BBC, between Harringay Racers of North London and Streatham Redskins of South London. The broadcaster, at least, was a Canadian: Winnipeg-born Stuart MacPherson.
I don't have a record of the result, although Harringay finished ahead of Streatham in the English National League in the 1938-39 season. Harringay won it the preceding season, 1937-38, and Streatham had won it in 1934-35. Harringay folded in 1957, and have since been replaced by a new team using the name. Streatham are still in business.
In 1940, New York station W2XBS (forerunner of WNBC-Channel 4) would become the 1st TV station to broadcast an NHL game, a 6-2 New York Rangers win over the Montreal Canadiens at the old Madison Square Garden. Just 3 days after that, they would broadcast the 1st televised basketball game, also at the old Garden. That station had already done, all in New York City in 1939, the 1st TV broadcasts of baseball, at Ebbets Field; college football, at Columbia University's Baker Field; and the NFL, at the Polo Grounds.
In 1952, CBC would bring Hockey Night In Canada from radio to TV, and it quickly became, and remains, Canada's favourite (that's how it's "spelt" up there) TV show. But the U.S. -- ABC/ESPN, NBC and Fox have all tried -- has never really gotten hockey broadcasts right. "Glow puck," anyone?
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October 26, 1941, 80 years ago: The 1st Superman movie premieres -- sort of. For Paramount Pictures, Max Fleischer produces, and his brother Dave Fleischer directs, Superman, a.k.a. The Mad Scientist. It runs 10 minutes, and is the 1st of 17 cartoon serials produced by Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios. They are still known as "the Fleischer Superman Cartoons."
This 1st one begins by detailing Superman's origin: Born on Krypton, sent to Earth by his scientist father to escape the planet's explosion, he is found and adopted by the Kents, discovers his powers growing up as Clark Kent, gets a job as a reporter for the Daily Planet newspaper in Metropolis, and fights crime and stops disasters as Superman.
This intro borrows a few Superman clichés that had debuted on radio the year before: "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!" "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!" And Clark's role as a "mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper." And "a never-ending battle for truth and justice!" The 1952-58 TV series The Adventures of Superman would use all of these, expanding the last to "...for truth, justice and the American Way!" This serial also debuts the nickname "the Man of Steel," and the idea of Clark changing clothes in a Planet storeroom. (The phone booth idea would come later.)
The voice of Superman is Bud Collyer, who had already played him on radio, and would later host the TV game show To Tell the Truth. Lois Lane is voiced by Joan Alexander, and Perry White by Julian Noa, also reprising their radio roles, but the character of Jimmy Olsen does not appear.
Another fictional strongman whose cartoons were produced by Fleischer, Popeye, was voiced by Jack Mercer, who plays the mad scientist here -- but he is not named, and it is never suggested that he is the man who is already Superman's nemesis, Lex Luthor. The narrator is Jackson Beck, who voiced Popeye's nemesis, Bluto (listed as "Brutus" on occasion).
October 26, 1946, 75 years ago: Columnist Westbrook Pegler, writing for the Hearst Corporation's papers, including the New York Journal American, writes a critical piece about the off-field relationship between Brooklyn Dodger manager Leo Durocher‚ actor George Raft and well-known gamblers. This is the first of a few articles that will lead up to the suspension of Durocher for the entire 1947 season.
Pegler was an alcoholic and a lunatic, who had already called for the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which nearly happened in 1933. In the 1950s, due to her civil rights activism, he would call for the assassination of FDR's widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. And one of his last public acts would be to do the same in 1968, for Robert Kennedy, which did happen. After that, he couldn't be hired by anyone except the John Birch Society -- the Tea Party/MAGAts of their day -- and, finally, even they fired him for being too extreme. But, in the case of Durocher, and in a few others, Pegler turned out to be right.
The recent movie 42, about Jackie Robinson and his introduction to the white major leagues, suggested that Durocher was actually suspended by Commissioner A.B. "Happy" Chandler because the local Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) was threatening to boycott the Dodgers due to Durocher's affair with actress Laraine Day (whom he married as soon as his divorce from his current wife became final).
Another factor is that, while Durocher was associating with known gamblers (big mistake), and didn't think it should be considered a big deal (bigger mistake, at least as far as his baseball career was concerned), he suggested that Yankee co-owner Larry MacPhail was doing the same, and accused Chandler of a double standard: Durocher was being targeted for it, while MacPhail was getting away with it. The fact that MacPhail had previously been the Dodgers' president, and thus Durocher's boss, and that their relationship was always stormy, didn't help.
Another of the Yankee ownership triumverate, Del Webb, definitely had Mob ties, through his construction empire. The 3rd member, Dan Topping, was no angel, but he was almost certainly not mobbed up. With MacPhail, it was possible, but less likely than with Webb. Yet Durocher accused MacPhail, not Webb. Whatever the truth may have been, Durocher was suspended for what Chandler called "conduct detrimental to the game."
He would return for the 1948 season, then, when Mel Ott was fired as manager of the Dodgers' arch-rivals, the New York Giants, the Giants called Dodger president Branch Rickey, and asked him if they could offer Durocher the job. Rickey, one of the great moralizers of the era, who had kept Durocher as long as he could stand him, was happy to offer permission, and Leo took the job.
Durocher was fully authorized, and completely within his rights, to jump ship. But Dodger fans didn't understand this, which made him the most-hated figure in the history of Dodger fandom, a traitor, a turncoat. Sort of like Sol Campbell going from Tottenham captain to Arsenal star -- if, that is, the Dodgers had been actively pushing Durocher out, which they hadn't. So it's more like Roger Clemens going from the Red Sox to the Yankees -- if Clemens hadn't spent 2 years in Toronto in between.
Also on this day, Gran Estadio de La Habana opens in the Cuban capital of Havana. A full house of 31,000 sees a game between Havana teams Almendares (named for a Havana neighborhood and popularly known as the Scorpions) and Cienfuegos (named for a team from that city, but playing home games in Havana and known as the Oilers). Almendares win, 9-1.
The aforementioned Branch Rickey used it as the Dodgers' Spring Training headquarters in 1947, to ease the pressure on Jackie Robinson. He would use it again in Spring Training 1953, when he was president of the Pittsburgh Pirates. From 1954 to 1960, it was the home of the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class AAA International League. But in 1961, Fidel Castro banned professional sports in Cuba. There are those who believe that, if Cuba had never gone Communist, eventually, Major League Baseball would have expanded to Havana.
Later known as Estadio Cerro, and now as Estadio Latinoamericano, the ballpark, with its short fences (poles 325 feet away, power alleys just 345) is home to the Cuban national team, and to one of the state-sponsored (and thus not really "amateur") teams, Industriales, which has won so much and has gained so many fans all over the country, they are considered "the Yankees of Cuba."
Estadio Latinoamericano and the national team also hosted exhibition games against the Baltimore Orioles in 1999 (preceded by a visit of the Cuba team to Baltimore's Camden Yards) and the Tampa Bay Rays in 2016, the latter attended by the respective Presidents, Barack Obama and Fidel's brother Raul Castro.
Also on this day, Patrick Leonard Sadjak is born in Chicago. We know him as Pat Sajak, a simplification of the pronunciation of his birth name. Since 1981, he has been the host of the syndicated TV game show Wheel of Fortune. If he continues to host through 2026, he will surpass Bob Barker, formerly of The Price Is Right, as the longest-running host of any singe game show.
I used to say that he bore a resemblance to Vice President Dan Quayle, who was born a few months later. As it turns out, they share crazy right-wing politics, too.
October 26, 1947 Hillary Diane Rodham is born in Chicago, and grows up in the nearby suburb of Park Ridge. And, yes, growing up, she was a Cub fan. In 1994, then First Lady, Hillary Clinton was invited to throw out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Day at Wrigley Field.
Donald Trump claims to be a Yankee Fan. Can't we trade him? To a team on Mars, or further away?
*
October 26, 1951, 70 years ago: Desperate for money to pay a mounting tax bill, Joe Louis, who stood as Heavyweight Champion of the World longer than anyone (12 years, 1937-49) and defended the title more than anyone (25 times), climbs into the ring at the old Madison Square Garden for a purse of $300,000 – about $3.16 million in today's money. He fights Rocky Marciano, then a rising contender who idolized Louis. Rocky had told the press, "This is the last guy I want to fight." It had nothing to do with his own ability, or whatever Louis had left.
It is a mismatch: Marciano is 28, is in superb shape, and has a sledgehammer for a right hand; Louis is 37, struggles with his weight, and his arms and legs, once the fastest in the fight game despite his being a heavyweight, have terribly slowed. Marciano actually knocks Louis out of the ring in the 8th round.
Marciano goes back to his dressing room and cries over what he has done to his greatest hero, and even goes over to see him and says, "I'm sorry, Joe." Sugar Ray Robinson, then Middleweight Champion, was in Louis' dressing room to console him, and was also crying.
Eleven months later, Marciano knocked Jersey Joe Walcott out to become the Heavyweight Champion. Louis, still needing money, humiliated himself as a professional wrestler, and not a very good one. Both men's lives ended badly: Marciano's in a plane crash in 1969, just before his 46th birthday; Louis' in a wheelchair, unable to pay his medical bills, with Frank Sinatra hosting a benefit concert for him in Las Vegas in 1978, which kept Louis afloat until he finally passed away in 1981, at 67.
As a Sergeant in the U.S. Army in World War II, he was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, on the order of President Ronald Reagan, and with Sinatra delivering the eulogy.
October 26, 1955: The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio -- Olympic Ice Stadium -- opens in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Veneto, in the Italian Alps, near the border with Austria. It was the main stadium for the 1956 Winter Olympics, then seating 65,000.
With just 5,842 people according to Italy's most recent census, Cortina is one of the smallest municipalities ever to host an Olympic Games. Nevertheless, it has been selected again, as the site of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The Stadio Olimpico del Ghiaccio still stands, and will host the curling events at the '26 Games. But, having been converted to an all-seater facility, its capacity is down to 27,958, and so a larger stadium will be built for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
October 26, 1957: The Cincinnati Royals play their 1st regular-season game after moving from Rochester. They beat the Syracuse Nationals 110-100 at the Cincinnati Gardens.
Despite having future Hall-of-Famers in Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and Jack Twyman, they never won a title, only getting as far as the 1963 and 1964 NBA Eastern Conference Finals.
In 1972, they moved again, to Kansas City. Since that city already had a baseball team named the Royals, they didn't want to make the same mistake that the NFL's Chicago Cardinals made when they moved to St. Louis, so they changed the name but kept the royalty theme, and became the Kansas City Kings. In 1985, they moved again, and became the Sacramento Kings.
Being small markets, neither Rochester, nor Cincinnati, nor Kansas City has ever regained an NBA team.
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October 26, 1961, 60 years ago:Keith B. Griffin is born in Columbus, Ohio. (I can find no record of what the B stands for.) Despite being born in the hometown of Ohio State University, and being the younger brother of O-State's Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin, the running back instead attended the University of Miami. He was the player shown on the cover of Sports Illustrated after Miami's shocking win over Nebraska in the 1984 Orange Bowl gave them the National Championship.
He wasn't done winning. He played 5 seasons for the Washington Redskins, and was a member of their Super Bowl XXII winners. Archie's pro career was an injury-induced bust. He did reach Super Bowl XVI with his home-State Cincinnati Bengals, but they lost. He lost a fumble during the game, but that ended up not mattering.
Also on this day, Mark Anthony McDermott is born in the New York suburb of Waterbury, Connecticut. We know him as Dylan McDermott. He played Bobby Donnell on The Practice. He also starred in each of the 1st 2 seasons of American Horror Story, although as different characters, as each season of that show tells a different story.
Also on this day, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is born in Nairobi, Kenya. The son of Jomo Kenyatta, the country's founding father and 1st President, he was elected its 4th President in in 2013, and re-elected in 2017.
The Swahili word "uhuru" means "freedom." It is for this reason that the black African character on the original Star Trek series was named Uhura. There was also a Jamaican reggae band named Black Uhuru.
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October 26, 1971, 50 years ago: Anthony Deane Rapp is born in Chicago. He played Mark Cohen in the original 1996 Broadway production of the musical Rent, and again in the 2005 film version. He now plays Lieutenant Commander Paul Stamets, Chief Engineer aboard the eponymous starship, on the TV series Star Trek: Discovery. This is the 1st openly gay character in a Star Trek series.
October 26, 1974: The Richfield Coliseum opens in Richfield, Ohio. The location was chosen because it was about halfway between the downtowns of Cleveland and Akron. This was a very stupid thing to do.
It was home to the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers from 1974 to 1994, the World Hockey Association's Cleveland Crusaders from 1974 to 1976, the NHL's Cleveland Barons from 1976 to 1978, the Major Indoor Soccer League's Cleveland Force from 1978 to 1988, their successors the Cleveland Crunch from 1989 to 1992, and the International Hockey League's Cleveland Lumberjacks from 1992 to 1994.
In 1975, Muhammad Ali had his 1st defense of his regained Heavyweight Championship of the World there, surprisingly getting knocked down by Chuck Wepner before flooring the otherwise overmatched "Bayonne Bleeder" in the 15th and final round. This fight inspired Sylvester Stallone to write Rocky.
The location was terrible, and the Cavs could never fill its 20,000 seats, so the Gateway Arena (now the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse) Arena was built downtown. The Coliseum was demolished in 1999, and the site is now part of a National Forest.
October 26, 1984: Michael Jordan makes his NBA debut. He scores 16 points and has 11 assists, and is outscored by 3 Chicago Bulls teammates: Orlando Woolridge with 28, Quintin Dailey with 25 and Steve Johnson with 18. The Bulls beat the Washington Bullets, 109-93 at Chicago Stadium.
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October 26, 1985: Time travel is first demonstrated at the Twin Pines Mall (or is that the Lone Pine Mall?) in Hill Valley, California -- or, rather, is dramatized in the film Back to the Future. But even more dramatic events are unfolding at Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, starting at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, about 19 hours after Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) made his trip back into time.
October 26, 1985: Time travel is first demonstrated at the Twin Pines Mall (or is that the Lone Pine Mall?) in Hill Valley, California -- or, rather, is dramatized in the film Back to the Future. But even more dramatic events are unfolding at Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, starting at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, about 19 hours after Marty McFly (played by Michael J. Fox) made his trip back into time.
The St. Louis Cardinals lead the cross-State Kansas City Royals 1-0, and need just 3 more outs to win the World Series. Jorge Orta hits a ground ball to 1st baseman Jack Clark. Clark flips to reliever Todd Worrell, who is covering the base. Orta is unquestionably out. The instant replay cameras and the photograph above confirm this. Except 1st base umpire Don Denkinger blows the call, and calls Orta safe.
The next batter, Steve Balboni, pops up, and Clark can’t handle it, and Balboni singles on his next swing. A passed ball by Darrell Porter, a Royal postseason hero from 1980 but now the Cardinal catcher (having been their postseason hero in 1982), makes it men on 2nd and 3rd, and Hal McRae is intentionally walked. Dane Iorg steps up, and singles home Orta and Balboni, and the Royals have a 2-1 walkoff win to force a Game 7 at home.
The Cardinals are furious. So are their fans. Understandably so. They all think Denkinger stole the World Series from them. They still think so, 36 years later.
There's just one problem with this theory: There was still 1 game to go. If the Cardinals had won Game 7, Denkinger's blown call would have been just a footnote.
So Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog should have taken his team into the clubhouse and said, "Men, we got screwed tonight, but there's nothing we can do about it now. So let's win this thing tomorrow, and what happened tonight won't matter." Instead, the White Rat whined about the call to the media, and let it get into his head, and into his team's heads.
The shock isn't that the Cards lost Game 7 by a whopping 11-0. The shock is that the Royals won it by only 11 runs. It is the biggest blowout in Game 7 history, previously reached only by, oddly enough, the Cardinals, when they beat the Detroit Tigers in 1934 (the Joe Medwick Game).
In 2015, someone did a "Win Expectation" study of that game. Before the swing, the Cardinals had an 81 percent chance of winning the game -- meaning a 1 in 5 chance of losing. That's hardly ridiculous. If the right call had been made, giving the Cardinals an out, they would have had an 89 percent chance -- a 1 in 11 chance of losing, unlikely but still not outrageous for the Royals to have come from behind to win. Even with the call blown, the Cards had a 67 percent chance -- a 2/3rds chance. They still should have won it.
Don Denkinger was still respected enough by the baseball establishment to be put behind the plate for the 1987 All-Star Game, and named crew chief for the 1988 American League Championship Series, the 1991 World Series, and the 1992 ALCS, before retiring in 1998 after 30 season in the majors, 22 as a crew chief. He is now 85 years old, and still lives in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa.
The Cardinals have since won 3 World Series. For those among their fans who have not yet done so, it's time to move on.
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October 26, 1991, 30 years ago: Game 6 of the World Series. The Minnesota Twins are hosting the Atlanta Braves at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, broadcast live on CBS. While the game is still going on, NBC airs Saturday Night Live.
This episode would be the debut of Ellen Cleghorne's character Queen Shenequa, but it opens with their version of NBC's political talk show The McLaughlin Group, with Dana Carvey playing host John McLaughlin. He and all the panelists are wearing Halloween costumes. Then, Carvey keels over with a knife in his back, and the real McLaughlin takes over -- but stays in character, exaggerating his tagline, "Wrong!" the way Carvey does.
When host Christian Slater comes out, he sees the entire audience doing the Braves' Tomahawk Chop and War Chant. He turns and sees McLaughlin and executive producer Lorne Michaels watching the game, rather than watching hthe show they're actually working on, doing the Chop with the big red foam Tomahawks, and wearing Indian headdresses. With the game in extra innings, Michaels says, "Braves in 6." McLaughlin says, "Wrong! Braves in 7!"
They're both wrong: Kirby Puckett makes a great catch and hits a dramatic home run in the bottom half of the 11th inning, to give the Twins a 4-3 win, and tie the Series. What has been shaping up as one of the best World Series ever will go to a Game 7 that will be worthy of it.
October 26, 1994: Had the baseball season been permitted to reach a conclusion, Game 4 of the World Series would have been played on this day, at the home park of the American League Champions.
October 26, 1995: The KeyArena opens at the Seattle Center complex, taking the place of the Seattle Center Coliseum. The Seattle SuperSonics make the NBA Finals in their 1st season there, but are moved to Oklahoma City in 2008.
It was also home to the WNBA's Seattle Storm and the basketball teams of Seattle University. It has now been replaced by the 3rd arena on the site, the Climate Pledge Arena, for the Seattle Kraken, an expansion team that just debuted in the NHL. Seattle also hopes it will become the home of a moved or expansion NBA team that will become the new Sonics. In the interim, the Storm played at Hec Edmondson Pavilion on the campus of the University of Washington.
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October 26, 1997: Game 7 of the World Series at whatever the combined Marlins-Dolphins stadium in the Miami suburbs was called at the time. The Cleveland Indians jump out to a 2-0 lead over Florida‚ and are just 2 outs away from winning their 1st World Series in 49 years.
But Jose Mesa, not for the first time nor for the last, blows the save, and the Marlins claw their way back and tie the score in the bottom of the 9th on a sacrifice fly by Craig Counsell. In the last half of the 11th‚ Edgar Renteria gets his 3rd hit of the game‚ driving home Counsell with the winning run‚ as Florida wins Game 7 by a score of 3-2.
This was, after 1962, only the 2nd World Series where neither team won back-to-back games: The Marlins won Games 1, 3, 5 and 7; the Indians won Games 2, 4 and 6. This was also the Series with the greatest extremes of weather: The 4 games in South Florida were the 4 warmest on record for Series games, while the 3 in Cleveland were 3 of the 4 coldest (the previous coldest, in New York in 1976, remains 3rd), and Game 4 is the only Series game to be played in a snowfall except for one in Chicago in 1906.
The Marlins, in just their 4th season of existence (as opposed to the Indians, in their 97th), thus become the fastest team in baseball history to win a World Series title‚ 3 years quicker than the 1969 Mets. Livan Hernandez, the pitcher who fled Cuba (and would soon be followed by his brother Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez) is named Most Valuable Player of the Series.
This Series is sweet vindication for manager Jim Leyland, who lost 3 straight NLCS while managing the Pittsburgh Pirates; for Bobby Bonilla, who played for Leyland on those Pirates, bad-attituded his way out of his native New York with the Mets, and flopped the year before with the Baltimore Orioles; for Alex Fernandez, who pitched for the talented Chicago White Sox team that fell just short in 1990, lost the ALCS in ’93 and was screwed over by the strike in ’94, and was injured and unable to pitch in the postseason, so his teammates put his Number 32 on their caps; and for Gary Sheffield, who was already gaining a reputation as a bad apple that nobody wanted to keep around for very long, despite his obvious talent for power hitting, and this remained his only World Series win.
For the Indians, who hadn't won a Series since 1948, went from 1954 to 1995 without winning a Pennant, went from 1959 to 1994 without even being in a Pennant race, stood to be the AL's Wild Card if the standings at the time of the Strike of '94 had held to the end of the season, lost the '95 Series despite winning 100 of 144 games in the regular season, lost the '96 ALDS to an inferior Oriole team, and won just 86 games in this regular season but had defeated the favored Yankees and the Seattle Mariners before this crushing defeat, it is not just a crushing defeat, where they came closer to winning the World Series without doing so than any team ever had except the '86 Red Sox (and now the 2011 Texas Rangers).
No, this loss meant that, like the Red Sox, the Indians now have a reputation of being a choking team. They have never shaken it, despite return trips to the postseason in 1998, '99, 2001 and '07 – blowing a 2-1 lead in the '98 ALCS, 3-1 leads in the '07 ALCS and the '16 World Series, and a 2-0 lead in the '17 ALDS.
Also on this day, D.C. United wins its 2nd MLS Cup, in the league's 2nd season, beating the Denver-based Colorado Rapids, 2-1 on home soil at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Jaime Moreno and Tony Sanneh score the goals.
October 26, 1999: Game 3 of the World Series. Andy Pettitte did not have his good stuff, but Tino Martinez, Chad Curtis and Chuck Knoblauch helped the Yankees come from 5-1 down to send the game to extra innings. Curtis led off the bottom of the 10th, and knocked one out for a 6-5 win.
The following night, the Yanks wrapped up the sweep, the 25th World Championship, the title of Team of the Decade (it ain't about Division Titles, Braves fans), and the title, as NBC's Bob Costas said that next night, of "Most Successful Franchise of the Century."
Like fellow late 1990s Yankee Dynasty players Roger Clemens and John Wetteland, Curtis was among the most faith-vocal players of his era. Also like Clemens and Wetteland, he would later be accused of what would once have been quaintly called "morals charges," relating to his time as a high school athletic trainer in Michigan. He was sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison, and served 7.
But Jose Mesa, not for the first time nor for the last, blows the save, and the Marlins claw their way back and tie the score in the bottom of the 9th on a sacrifice fly by Craig Counsell. In the last half of the 11th‚ Edgar Renteria gets his 3rd hit of the game‚ driving home Counsell with the winning run‚ as Florida wins Game 7 by a score of 3-2.
This was, after 1962, only the 2nd World Series where neither team won back-to-back games: The Marlins won Games 1, 3, 5 and 7; the Indians won Games 2, 4 and 6. This was also the Series with the greatest extremes of weather: The 4 games in South Florida were the 4 warmest on record for Series games, while the 3 in Cleveland were 3 of the 4 coldest (the previous coldest, in New York in 1976, remains 3rd), and Game 4 is the only Series game to be played in a snowfall except for one in Chicago in 1906.
The Marlins, in just their 4th season of existence (as opposed to the Indians, in their 97th), thus become the fastest team in baseball history to win a World Series title‚ 3 years quicker than the 1969 Mets. Livan Hernandez, the pitcher who fled Cuba (and would soon be followed by his brother Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez) is named Most Valuable Player of the Series.
This Series is sweet vindication for manager Jim Leyland, who lost 3 straight NLCS while managing the Pittsburgh Pirates; for Bobby Bonilla, who played for Leyland on those Pirates, bad-attituded his way out of his native New York with the Mets, and flopped the year before with the Baltimore Orioles; for Alex Fernandez, who pitched for the talented Chicago White Sox team that fell just short in 1990, lost the ALCS in ’93 and was screwed over by the strike in ’94, and was injured and unable to pitch in the postseason, so his teammates put his Number 32 on their caps; and for Gary Sheffield, who was already gaining a reputation as a bad apple that nobody wanted to keep around for very long, despite his obvious talent for power hitting, and this remained his only World Series win.
For the Indians, who hadn't won a Series since 1948, went from 1954 to 1995 without winning a Pennant, went from 1959 to 1994 without even being in a Pennant race, stood to be the AL's Wild Card if the standings at the time of the Strike of '94 had held to the end of the season, lost the '95 Series despite winning 100 of 144 games in the regular season, lost the '96 ALDS to an inferior Oriole team, and won just 86 games in this regular season but had defeated the favored Yankees and the Seattle Mariners before this crushing defeat, it is not just a crushing defeat, where they came closer to winning the World Series without doing so than any team ever had except the '86 Red Sox (and now the 2011 Texas Rangers).
No, this loss meant that, like the Red Sox, the Indians now have a reputation of being a choking team. They have never shaken it, despite return trips to the postseason in 1998, '99, 2001 and '07 – blowing a 2-1 lead in the '98 ALCS, 3-1 leads in the '07 ALCS and the '16 World Series, and a 2-0 lead in the '17 ALDS.
Also on this day, D.C. United wins its 2nd MLS Cup, in the league's 2nd season, beating the Denver-based Colorado Rapids, 2-1 on home soil at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Jaime Moreno and Tony Sanneh score the goals.
October 26, 1999: Game 3 of the World Series. Andy Pettitte did not have his good stuff, but Tino Martinez, Chad Curtis and Chuck Knoblauch helped the Yankees come from 5-1 down to send the game to extra innings. Curtis led off the bottom of the 10th, and knocked one out for a 6-5 win.
The following night, the Yanks wrapped up the sweep, the 25th World Championship, the title of Team of the Decade (it ain't about Division Titles, Braves fans), and the title, as NBC's Bob Costas said that next night, of "Most Successful Franchise of the Century."
Like fellow late 1990s Yankee Dynasty players Roger Clemens and John Wetteland, Curtis was among the most faith-vocal players of his era. Also like Clemens and Wetteland, he would later be accused of what would once have been quaintly called "morals charges," relating to his time as a high school athletic trainer in Michigan. He was sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison, and served 7.
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October 26, 2000: The Euro, the currency of the European Union, which had started, on January 1, 1999, at $1.10 in comparison to the American dollar, drops to 83 cents. This remains its all-time low. Its all-time high is $1.60, achieved on July 15, 2008.
More importantly for me, on this day, Game 5 of the World Series is played at Shea Stadium. Jeter and Bernie Williams homer off Al Leiter. Pettitte and Leiter give it their all. The game is tied 2-2 in the top of the 9th. Two outs. Posada on 2nd, Scott Brosius on 1st. Not great speed on the basepaths.
Luis Sojo, playing 2nd base because Knoblauch's fielding difficulties limited him to DH status, is coming up to bat. Leiter had thrown 141 pitches. A number that would not have caused Catfish Hunter and Tom Seaver to flinch, but by the standards of the 1990s and 2000s, a lot.
Met Manager Bobby Valentine's choices are not good:
* A: Stick with an exhausted Leiter. He would be pitching on brains, courage and fumes, and pray that he gets the out that sends it to the bottom of the 9th still tied.
* B: Put in Armando Benítez. He led the National League in saves that year and saved Game 3, but also blew Game 1 for Leiter, and also blew a Division Series game against the Giants (which the Mets ended up winning anyway), and had previously messed up 2 ALCS games against the Yankees for the Orioles (including the Jeffrey Maier Game). Or...
* C: Put in John Franco. He was the winning pitcher in Game 3, and also pitched well in Game 4, but would be pitching for the 3rd day in a row. And he was 39: There was a reason Valentine had taken the closer's job from Franco and given it to Benítez.
Valentine decided a tired Leiter was better than an aging, potentially tired Franco and an inconsistent, unreliable Benítez. Although I frequently accused Valentine of overmanaging, and sometimes outright stupidity, I can't fault him for this choice. If he had put in the very popular New York native Franco and lost anyway, he might have gotten away with it. But if he had put in the already suspicious Benítez and he blew yet another, Valentine would have been run out of Flushing on the Long Island Railroad.
Leiter throws his 142nd pitch to Sojo. He knocks it up the middle. A Met fan once told me that Rey
Valentine decided a tired Leiter was better than an aging, potentially tired Franco and an inconsistent, unreliable Benítez. Although I frequently accused Valentine of overmanaging, and sometimes outright stupidity, I can't fault him for this choice. If he had put in the very popular New York native Franco and lost anyway, he might have gotten away with it. But if he had put in the already suspicious Benítez and he blew yet another, Valentine would have been run out of Flushing on the Long Island Railroad.
Leiter throws his 142nd pitch to Sojo. He knocks it up the middle. A Met fan once told me that Rey
Ordóñez would have stopped this grounder. This Met fan was a fool: Ordóñez would not have gotten it. Mike Bordick was the shortstop that night, and he was a good shortstop, and he couldn't quite get it.
Base hit for Sojo. Posada comes around 3rd. Center fielder Jay Payton's throw... never makes it to Mike Piazza at the plate, instead hitting Posada in the back and getting away, toward the backstop. This enables not only Posada to score the tiebreaking run, but also Brosius to score an insurance run as well. Yankees 4, Mets 2.
Bottom of the 9th. Two out. The Mets get a man on. Piazza comes up to the plate. If you're a Met fan, this is the man you want up: The best offensive player the Mets have ever had (cough-steroids-cough), one of the best fastball hitters of his time, power hitter against power pitcher, Mariano Rivera.
But if you're a Yankee Fan, there’s no one you'd rather have on the mound, and there's no one you’d rather get as the final out. It was similar to the final matchup of the 1978 Boston Tie Party, with Carl Yastrzemski, one of the greatest fastball hitters ever, and the most beloved player in his franchise's history (remember, Sox fans didn't always love Ted Williams), coming up to try to save his club against one of the fastest and most fearsome pitchers ever, Rich "Goose" Gossage.
Yaz popped up to end that game in victory for the Yankees; 22 years later, Piazza gets considerably better wood on his pitch, and hits one deep to straightaway center field.
For a moment, many of us, myself included, think, "Uh-oh, no!" Translation: "Tie game, Mets will go on to win it, and take the next 2 in The Bronx, and the Yanks will have choked it away."
Because we had grown up with the Mets as the team that won and the Yanks as the team that fell short. We had the arrogance of Yankee Fans of old, but deep down, in places we don't like to talk about at parties, we had the fears that came so easily to fans of the Indians, the pre-2004 Red Sox, the pre-2007 Phillies, the pre-2016 Cubs -- and the post-2006 Mets.
Because we had grown up with the Mets as the team that won and the Yanks as the team that fell short. We had the arrogance of Yankee Fans of old, but deep down, in places we don't like to talk about at parties, we had the fears that came so easily to fans of the Indians, the pre-2004 Red Sox, the pre-2007 Phillies, the pre-2016 Cubs -- and the post-2006 Mets.
But Piazza had juuuust gotten under it. The ball has too much height and not enough distance. As the clock strikes 12:00 midnight, Bernie stands on the warning track, it's an easy catch, and it's over.
Jeter becomes the 1st player ever to be named Most Valuable Player of the All-Star Game and the World Series in the same season. Still, he would never be named MVP of a regular season. At the site of his 1st game as a manager, 23 years earlier, Torre is picked up by his grateful players, and carried off the field.
There were 25,000 people at Shea chanting "Let's Go Yankees!" and "We're Number 1!" Eventually, the owner came out to talk to the press, and he and the announcers couldn't talk, because the Yankee Fans were so loud, chanting "Thank you, George!" Imagine that, thousands of people saluting George Steinbrenner at Shea Stadium.
I loved it. October 26, 2000 – actually, the final out came just before midnight, so it was really October 27 that we celebrated – remains my favorite moment as a sports fan.
For the 1st time, the Mets had the chance -- their first, their best, maybe their last -- to beat the Yankees in a Subway Series, and to irrevocably "take over New York." And while they had their chances and fought hard, in the end, the better team won.
The Yankees have beaten the Mets in a World Series. The other way around has never happened. And it never will. Never, never, never. Or, in the words of Flushing's own Fran Drescher, "It begins with an N and ends with an A: Nev-a." As a Yankee Fan said then, "The Yankees have scoreboard over the Mets for all time."
This was the 26th World Championship. And for those of us who grew up as Yankee Fans during the Mets'"glory" years of 1984 to 1990, the Dynasty That Never Was, and had to deal with the unearned arrogance of the Flushing Heathen, the filthy bastards, delusional that their 2 titles outweighed our 22 (until 1996; now 27), damn fools to believe that the 1986 Mets could have beaten the Yankees of 1927, 1938, 1941, 1953, 1961 and 1978, and eventually even the 1998 juggernaut... for us, this was the greatest, sweetest moment of them all.
We beat the Mets. And it wasn't close. All 5 games were close, but winning in 5 games is domination. And we clinched at their place, on their field, at the William A. Shea International Airport, at the Flushing Toilet.
This was the 13th World Series game played at Shea. An unlucky 13th. It was also the last, which no one (not even a wiseass Yankee Fan like me) could have predicted at the time.
No matter how bad the 2004 ALCS was, losing the 2000 World Series to the Mets would have been 10 times worse. As we saw in 2015, we don't have to live around very many Red Sox fans with their cheated-for arrogance, but we do have to live around Met fans with their unearned arrogance.
How arrogant are Met fans? Some insist that 2000 and the other World Series the Yankees have won since 1978 don't count, because they used steroids; therefore, the count since 1986 is 1 to 0, and the count since 1962 is 2-2. These fans are idiots: We have more evidence against the 2000 Mets (Piazza) than we do against the 1996-2009 Yankees. So if 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009 don't count for the Yankees, then 2000 doesn't count for the Mets, either.
For the moment, the count remains 27 to 2, and 5 to 0 since 1986.
For the moment, the count remains 27 to 2, and 5 to 0 since 1986.
I once saw a Met fan with a cap that had the 2000 World Series logo on the side, but razored off, with some of the stitching still visible. That's how much it bothers them. It should bother them: It basically erased their team's reason to exist.
As we've seen, the Yankees are (depending on your point of view: again, or still) the better team now. And let us not pretend that any Met World Series win -- be it 1969, 1986, or any future win -- is better than all of the Yankees' World Series wins.
Most of all, winning the 2000 World Series means that, as Paul Louis, an online friend who was the same age I am, put it, "The Yankees have scoreboard over the Mets for all time."
Sadly, early in 2021, Paul died from COVID. He was born right after his beloved New York Jets won the Super Bowl, and never lived to see them win another.
Also on this day, The Euro, the currency of the European Union, which had started on January 1, 1999 at $1.10 in comparison to the American dollar, drops to 83 cents. This remains its all-time low. Its all-time high is $1.60, achieved on July 15, 2008.
October 26, 2002: Game 6 of the World Series, at what was then known as Edison International Field of Anaheim – the former "Big A" briefly nicknamed "the Big Ed." The San Francisco Giants lead the Series 3 games to 2, and lead 5-0 after 6½ innings, thanks to home runs by Shawon Dunston and Barry Bonds.
The Anaheim Angels score 3 runs in the 7th to make it 5-3, but the Giants are still just 9 outs away from their 1st World Championship since moving to San Francisco 45 years earlier, their 1st in any city since they were in New York 48 years earlier.
But they choke. The Angels, having already scored the 3 runs in the 7th, score 3 more in the 8th on a home run by Scott Spiezio, and win, 6-5. The Series will go to a Game 7 in Anaheim tomorrow night.
October 26, 2004: The Red Sox win Game 3 of the World Series with a 4-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Memorial Stadium. Finally making his 1st World Series start, Pedro Martinez hurls 7 shutout innings to put the Sox up 3-games-to-0. Manny Ramirez homers and drives in a pair of runs for the Sox‚ while Larry Walker hits one out for the Cards. The Sox can achieve their 86-year-old dream tomorrow night.
October 26, 2005: The Chicago White Sox shut out the Astros‚ 1-0 at Minute Maid Park in Houston‚ to sweep the World Series and win their 1st World Championship since 1917, the 1st for either Chicago team in that time. Freddy Garcia gets credit for the win‚ as Jermaine Dye drives home the game's only run. Dye is named the Series MVP.
Ozzie Guillen, a native of Venezuela, becomes the 1st foreign-born manager to win a World Series. The Astros, in the Series for the 1st time in their 44-season history, are still, through 2016, winless in World Series games. Their all-time record in postseason games is 24-38.
He was the starting goaltender for North London club Arsenal, winning the League title in 1948 and 1953 and the FA Cup in 1950. He later managed the club from 1958 to 1962, but not well. He also managed Peterborough United, Norwich City, Kettering Town, Cardiff City and Corby Town.
October 26, 2008: In a 10-2 rout of the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 4 of the World Series at Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Joe Blanton hits a home run, the 1st pitcher to do so in a Series game in 34 years. Ken Holtzman of the A's was the last hurler to accomplish the feat when he went deep off Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers in 1974 -- also in Game 4.
October 26, 2009: Castle airs the Halloween-themed episode "Vampire Weekend." When 2 college kids -- one an artist who dressed as a vampire, the other a writer who dressed as a werewolf -- who were writing a graphic novel about a present-day vampire in New York are killed, mystery writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and the detectives at the NYPD's 12th Precinct connect the murders to one committed 18 years earlier.
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October 26, 2013: Game 3 of the World Series is played at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and it has the weirdest ending of any Series game ever. (Even weirder than Game 4 of 2020.)
In the bottom of the 9th inning, with the score tied 4-4, Red Sox pitcher Brandon Workman gives up a 1-out single to Yadier Molina. Boston closer Koji Uehara is brought in to face pinch-hitter Allen Craig, who doubles on the 1st pitch. Jon Jay hits a grounder to 2nd baseman Dustin Pedroia, who makes a sensational diving stab, and throws home to catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who tags out the sliding Molina for the 2nd out.
But then Saltalamacchia throws to 3rd, trying to get Craig, who was running on the play, and decided to slide towards Will Middlebrooks, knocking him down. However, the ball glanced off Middlebrooks' glove and Craig's body, caroming into foul territory down the left field line. When Craig starts toward home, he runs over Middlebrooks, who winds up slowing Craig down as he tries to take off for home.
The 3rd base umpire, Jim Joyce, calls obstruction on the play. Home plate umpire Dana DeMuth
determines that Craig would have scored without the obstruction, and awards the Cardinals the run, giving them a 5-4 win, and a 2–1 lead in the World Series. As far as I know, this is the only game in baseball history where a game-winning run was awarded without the runner having touched the plate.
This was 28 years to the day after an umpire's incorrect call set in motion a series of events that cost the Cardinals a World Championship. Had the Cardinals gone on to win the Series, it would have become an epic moment, and Red Sox fans would fume about getting screwed for the rest of their lives -- even though, unlike the Denkinger call in 1985, this call was correct. We know they would have forever fumed, because Sox fans old enough to remember the 1975 World Series are still fuming about the alleged "interference" of Ed Armbrister of Cincinnati in the 10th inning of another Game 3.
But, of course, the Sox won the Series (by cheating), so this play is a footnote. A bizarre footnote, but a footnote nonetheless.
This was 28 years to the day after an umpire's incorrect call set in motion a series of events that cost the Cardinals a World Championship. Had the Cardinals gone on to win the Series, it would have become an epic moment, and Red Sox fans would fume about getting screwed for the rest of their lives -- even though, unlike the Denkinger call in 1985, this call was correct. We know they would have forever fumed, because Sox fans old enough to remember the 1975 World Series are still fuming about the alleged "interference" of Ed Armbrister of Cincinnati in the 10th inning of another Game 3.
But, of course, the Sox won the Series (by cheating), so this play is a footnote. A bizarre footnote, but a footnote nonetheless.
October 26, 2015: Supergirl premieres on CBS. After its 1st season, it moves to The CW, becoming part of its "Arrowverse" franchise of superhero dramas. Melissa Benoist plays Kara Zor-El, a native of Krypton who, in a manner of speaking, has 2 secret identities: Kara Danvers, a media figure; and the titular superheroine.
The original version of the character debuted in May 1959, in Action Comics #252, as a cousin to Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Kal-El. Superan's father, Jor-El, and Supergirl's father, Zor-El, were brothers and scientists. The character had previously been show in the 1984 film Supergirl, starring Helen Slater, as part of the franchise started by the Christopher Reeve Superman films.
Nods were given to previous superhero franchises, including Dean Cain, Superman in the 1990s series Lois & Clark, as Jeremiah Danvers, Kara's adoptive father; and Lynda Carter, the title character on the 1970s Wonder Woman series, as Olivia Marsden, President of the United States, who has to resign when it is revealed that she is, herself, an alien. The show will conclude in a few weeks after 6 seasons.
October 26, 2016: Game 2 of the World Series. Behind the pitching of Jake Arrieta, The Chicago Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 5-1 at Progressive Field, and even the Series.
After winning all 8 games he managed with the Boston Red Sox, and winning game one with the Indians, this was the 1st time Terry Francona lost a World Series game as a manager. He was 9-0. It was the 1st World Series game the Cubs had won since Game 6 in 1945.
October 26, 2018: Game 3 turns out to be the longest game in World Series history. Joc Pederson gives the Dodgers the lead with a home run in the 3rd inning, and Jackie Bradley Jr. ties it for the Red Sox with a home run in the 8th, to make it 2-2.
The Red Sox scored in the top of the 13th on a walk, a wild pitch and a single-and-error. But the Dodgers tied it on a walk, a fly out, and a single-and-error of their own. As the game went on and on, Twitter users began making jokes about its length: This game had started at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and was moved to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Sandy Koufax had started the game for the Dodgers, Cy Young for the Red Sox; Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson had traded home runs in the 14th, and so on.
Max Muncy nearly hit a walkoff home run in the bottom of the 15th, but his drive hooked just foul. He finally hit one in the bottom of the 18th, giving the Dodgers a 3-2 win. Nathan Eovaldi, normally a starting pitcher, had thrown 7 innings in relief before taking the loss. His effort helped save the Boston bullpen, keeping their relievers fresh. This would be the only game the Dodgers would win in the Series.
The 18 innings broke the Series record of 14, set by the same teams in 1916, and tied by the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros in Game 3 in 2005. The first pitch was at 5:10 PM Pacific Time (8:10 Eastern), and it ended at 12:30 AM (3:30 Eastern). At 7 hours and 20 minutes, it broke the record of that 2005 Game 3, 5 hours and 41 minutes, and tied the record for longest postseason game ever, set in Game 4 of the 2005 National League Division Series, won by the Astros on Chris Burke's home run against the Cardinals. This game was longer than the entire 1939 World Series, a 4-game sweep by the Yankees over the Reds, which took a combined 7 hours and 5 minutes to play.