June 16, 1961: Rudolf Nureyev Defects

June 16, 1961: Rudolf Nureyev, at 23 probably already the most famous male ballet dancer in the world, defects to the West at Le Bourget Airport in Paris. He had heard that the Soviet government had learned that he was going to gay bars in the city, and he was worried that he would be imprisoned if he went home.

To his credit, President John F. Kennedy, having just come off a difficult summit meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Austria, did not gloat over this, as Khrushchev might have had an American superstar gone the other way. Nevertheless, it was the most spectacular defection of a pop-culture figure of the entire Cold War.

Nureyev's star shone ever brighter in the West. He appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show with ballerina Margot Fonteyn in 1965, and on The Muppet Show in 1978, closing the show by copying Fred Astaire in dancing and singing "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails."

He would not return home until 1987, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev allowed him to visit his dying mother. He lived in Paris until his death in 1993, from the effects of AIDS, and is buried outside the city, in a cemetery for expatriate Russians.

He remains the most famous male ballet dancer of all time, ahead of Sergei Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky, who did have a champion thoroughbred horse named for him. (Not only were Diaghilev and Nijinsky also gay, they were even a couple for a time.)

On June 29, 1974, history repeated itself: Mikhail Baryshnikov of the Kirov Ballet, the greatest male Russian dancer since Nureyev, defected to the West while in Toronto, eventually dividing his time between New York and Paris. Unlike the others, Baryshnikov was straight.

In a 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Gorbachev, and Swedish online star Felix Kjellberg, a.k.a. "PewDiePie," played Baryshnikov. Gorbachev rapped, "I had the balls to let Baryshnikov dance, playa!" Except it was Nureyev, and letting an exile come home to see his dying mother didn't take balls, just decency. It wasn't even possible in Baryshnikov's case: His mother died by suicide when he was only 12. While he has returned to his native Latvia, and is ethnically Russian, as of 2022, he has never visited Russia since his defection.

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June 16, 1961 was a Friday. It was the off-season for the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. There was a full slate of Major League Baseball games played on the day. Keep in mind, there were then 18 teams in the majors, with Los Angeles and Minnesota added to the American League, but the Mets and Houston not yet added to the National League until the next season.

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 4-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Bill "Moose" Skowron hit a home run, but Bill Bruton went 4-for-4, and an Al Kaline double off Bill Stafford gave the Tigers the win. The Yankees and Tigers would battle for the American League Pennant until a Yankee sweep in Detroit in early September settled it. The Yankees won 109 games, the Tigers 101.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 14-9 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-1 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-2 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Baltimore Orioles, 3-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Los Angeles Angels, 4-0 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Lew Krausse, whose father Lew Sr. pitched for the A's in Philadelphia, pitched a 3-hit shutout for the Kansas City edition.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* And the Chicago Cubs beat the San Francisco Giants, 12-6 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.