Scores On This Historic Day

October 1, 1927:  Michigan Stadium opens in Ann Arbor, 38 miles west of downtown Detroit. The University of Michigan defeats Ohio Wesleyan (not Ohio State), 33-0. At the time, it seated 72,000. By 1956, it would top 100,000. Today, officially, capacity is 107,601. The Michigan Wolverines had previously played at the Washtenaw County Fairgrounds from 1883 to 1892; Regents Field from 1893 to 1906, winning the National Championship in 1901, 1902, 1903 and 1904; and Ferry Field from 1907 to 1926, winning the National Championship in 1918 and 1923. Fielding Yost, Michigan's head coach from 1901 to 1926, and its athletic director from 1921 to 1940, had it set Michigan Stadium up so that the foundations could handle an expansion well beyond 72,000. He imagined as much as 150,000, since Soldier Field in Chicago could supposedly hold that many. A  later Michigan coach, Herbert "Fritz" Crisler, resumed the Wolverines' winning tradition that Yost began. In 1969, athletic directo...

October 1, 1921:  The New York Yankees go into this date with 4 games left in the regular season, and were 2 games ahead of the Cleveland Indians in the race for the American League Pennant. The season before, the Yankees had finished in 3rd place, 3 games behind the Indians, with the Chicago White Sox 2 games behind. This season, with 7 White Sox players banned for life for their role in the fixing of the 1919 World Series (actually 8, but 1 had already retired), it's between the Indians, who went on to win the 1920 World Series, and the Yankees. The Yankees had begun play in 1903, with the name "New York Highlanders" until 1912. And had never won a Pennant. In 1904, their 2nd season, they lost the Pennant to the team that would become the Boston Red Sox (and, eventually, their arch-rivals) on the last day of the season. In 1906, they finished 2nd, 3 games behind the White Sox. In 1910, they finished 2nd, but 14 1/2 games behind the Philadelphia Athletics. They didn'...

October 1, 1908:  The Ford Motor Company begins producing the Model T, a.k.a. "The Tin Lizzie." By 1913, Henry Ford would use the assembly line to crank out a near-continuous stream of them,  saying, "You can have any color car you want, as long as it's black."  He offered his workers $5.00 a day -- $159 in 2022 money. That works out to about $800 a week -- before taxes. He believed that a man should be able to buy the very thing his labor built. Ford was unusual in that he gave his black workers the same pay rate as his white workers. But he wasn't as enlightened as this would suggest: He was a notorious anti-Semite. He was also a micromanager who tried to run his workers' lives. And when they tried to unionize, he hired a security firm to beat up striking workers. He eventually caved in. In  1913, Ford started using an assembly line to build his cars. He was not the first executive to adopt the idea, nor even the first in the American automobile indust...

The Huntington Avenue Grounds, during the 1903 World Series October 1, 1903: The 1st World Series game is played, at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds in Boston. Denton True "Cy" Young, the man for whom the award for the best pitcher in each major league would one day be named, started for the home team, the American League Champions, the Boston Americans. Deacon Phillippe started for the visitors, the National League Champions, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Both teams were led by player-managers: Boston by 3rd baseman Jimmy Collins, Pittsburgh by left fielder Fred Clarke. This was the 1st Pennant for the Americans, and the 3rd overall and the 3rd straight for the Pirates. The AL had been founded in 1901, and offered the NL a deal: Accept us as a major league, separate but equal, and we will respect every contract you have, with any player. The NL refused, and the AL raided their rosters. After 2 years, an agreement was reached: The NL would accept the AL as an equal, the AL ...

October 1, 1902: The Fuller Building opens in Manhattan, at the intersection of 23rd Street, 5th Avenue and Broadway, across from Madison Square. Because of its triangular shape, it becomes known as the Flatiron Building. It was meant as the headquarters of the Fuller Company, a construction firm. They sold the building in 1925. The address is 175 Fifth Avenue. It is 285 feet tall, with 22 stories. Contrary to what some people have believed, it was never the tallest building in the world: At the time, that was City Hall in Philadelphia, 548 feet high. It wasn't even the tallest building in New York City: Three buildings in the City were then taller, topped by 309-foot World Building, named for the New York World newspaper. That building was demolished in 1955. Designed by skyscraper pioneers Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg,  locals placed bets on how far the debris would spread when the wind knocked the building down.  Newspapers of the time also claimed that "eve...

October 1, 1901: The Tale of Peter Rabbit is published. It becomes a classic of children's literature. Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866 in West Brompton, West London, and grew up isolated from other children, though her parents allowed her to have pets. With her family, she spent holidays (or, as Americans would say, "vacations") in Scotland, and in the Lake District of Cumbia, in England near the "border" with Scotland. Her observations of these places made her an expert on local plant life and animals (flora and fauna), and this inspired her writing. She wrote over 60 books, dropping her first name for her pen name, and many of them were scientific in nature. In her time, she may have been the world's leading author on the subject of fungi, including mushrooms. But it was her 23 Peter Rabbit books that gained her the most fame. She had 4 rabbits as a child, and named her main character after the nursery rhyme character Peter Piper, famous ...

His name was Seth Fleischauer. "Sad Mets Fan" was then 28 years old. He now lives in Los Angeles, runs an education company, and attended the Mets' 2015 Pennant clincher against the Dodgers. September 30, 2007:  One of the darkest days in Mets history. This is the game that got Tom Glavine branded "The Manchurian Brave" by Met fans. Having led the NL East by 7 games with 17 to go, the Mets have collapsed, but they go into the regular-season finale, against the Florida Marlins at Shea Stadium, needing a win or a Philadelphia Phillies loss to clinch their 2nd straight National League Eastern Division title, and a win or a Colorado Rockies loss to at least win the 1 Wild Card available at the time. Glavine starts. He walks Hanley Ramirez. He gets Dan Uggla to ground into a force play at 2nd base. So far, not terrible. But then, the roof caves in. He gives up a single to Jeremy Hermida. He gives up a single to Miguel Cabrera, scoring Ramirez. He gives up a double to...

September 30, 1991: The Jerry Springer Show premieres. There had been controversial talk shows on TV before, but this was the beginning of "trash TV. Gerald Norman Springer was born on February 13, 1944 in Highgate, and lived in East Finchley, both in North London, before moving as a child with his family to Kew Gardens, Queens, New York City. He was raised Jewish, and it would be decades before he found out that both grandmothers had died in Nazi concentration camps. He got a degree in political science from Tulane University in New Orleans, and a law degree from Northwestern University outside Chicago. In 1968, he worked on Robert F. Kennedy's Presidential campaign. In 1970, while working at a Cincinnati law firm, he ran for Congress, and lost. The next year, he was elected to the City Council. In 1974, he made the mistake of going across the river to Kentucky (where he figured he wouldn't be as well-known), and became the customer of a prostitute. He compounded the mi...

Left to right: Roy Orbison, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello September 30, 1987: A rock concert is held in the Coconut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. This was the same room where Robert F. Kennedy gave his last speech before being assassinated. Earlier in the year, Orbison had been among the 2nd class of inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Giving his induction speech was Bruce Springsteen. At that time, he said, "In '75, we got together to make Born to Run . I wanted lyrics like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector. But, most of all, I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. Now, everybody knows that nobody sings like Roy Orbison." A celebration of him was held at the Ambassador. Having gotten his start at Sun Records, like Elvis Presley, he was backed on this night by members of Elvis' Las Vegas band: Guitarists James Burton and John Wilkinson, bass guitarist Jerry Scheff, drummer Ronnie Tutt, and pianist Glen Hardin. Among those al...

Left to right: Nick Colasanto, Ted Danson, Shelley Long, John Ratzenberger, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt September 30, 1982:  The situation comedy  Cheers  premieres on NBC. It was about Sam Malone (played by Ted Danson), a former relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, who ruined his career by excessive drinking, and now ran a bar in Boston. This would seem to have been a bad idea, given his affliction, but he was good at it. The show was also about the bar itself, and the characters who were regular visitors. A photograph of a Sox pitcher hangs on a post at the bar, purported to be Sam. It's actually an earlier Sox pitcher, Jim Lonborg, the American League Cy Young Award winner when the Sox won their "Impossible Dream" Pennant in 1967. This establishes Sam's uniform number as being the same as Gentleman Jim's, 16. In reality, on the Pennant-winning Sox of 1975, 16 was worn by outfielder Rick Miller. Cheers  is the 1980s in a nutshell. Here are the Top 10 Reasons: 1...