September 17, 1972: "M*A*S*H" Premieres

Clockwise from top: William Christopher, Jamie Farr,

David Ogden Stiers, Loretta Swit, Alan Alda,

Harry Morgan and Mike Farrell.

September 17, 1972: M*A*S*H premieres on CBS, based on a 1970 film, which was based on a 1968 novel by Dr. Richard Hornberger, who really was a surgeon from Maine who served at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War, and wrote the book under the name Richard Hooker. However, in real life, he was very little like Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, the brilliant but womanizing, hard-drinking and practical-joking Chief Surgeon from the (fictional) little coastal town of Crabapple Cove, portrayed on the show by Alan Alda.

Only one actor from the movie was kept in the same role on the show: Gary Burghoff as the company clerk, Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly, the naive but generous teenager from a farm outside Ottumwa, Iowa, who got his nickname from being able to predict things, such as known that helicopters -- "choppers," they were always called on the show -- were coming in with wounded soldiers.

The other surgeons: Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson), the commanding officer, from Bloomington, Illinois, a good doctor and a decent guy, but every bit as much a womanizer (despite being married) and a boozer as Hawkeye, and totally unsuited to running a military unit; Captain John "Trapper" McIntire (Wayne Rogers), from Boston, also a womanizer (and married) and a hard drinker, but nearly as good a surgeon as Hawkeye; and Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville), a paranoid right-winger from Fort Wayne, Indiana who was a lousy surgeon, talked the Christian talk but broke as many commandments as he could.

Including cheating on his wife with the camp's blonde bombshell Head Nurse, Major Margaret Houlihan, known as "Hot Lips." She was a career officer and the daughter of a career officer, so she had no real hometown. And she was a dictator with her nurses. But she was also a great nurse herself, and never asked them to work any harder than she did, which was hard.

In the film, where she was played by Sally Kellerman, Frank (played there by the great Robert Duvall) gave her the nickname when he mentioned her lips to her, unaware that their tryst was being caught on a microphone that Hawkeye and Trapper had hidden. But on the show, where she was played by Loretta Swit, a visiting General mentioned the nickname in the pilot, and Hawkeye and Trapper acted as though they'd never heard it before.

One of the show's original surgeons was quickly dropped: Captain Oliver Jones, a black neurosurgeon played by 2 football players: Fred "the Hammer" Williamson in the movie, and Timothy Brown (usually listed as "Timmy" while he played) on TV. Unfortunately, the character had the racist nickname "Spearchucker."

The urban legend that the character was dropped because the Army had no black surgeons during the Korean War turned out to be incorrect: The writers simply realized that they wouldn't have enough stories for a neurosurgeon: While he could assist the other surgeons, Jones had trouble taking the lead on an operation, admitting, "Anything outside the skull, I'm dead."

Also dropped after the 1st season was Captain John Black, an anesthesiologist on loan from the Australian Army, nicknamed "Ugly John." He was played by John Orchard, who later returned for 1 episode as an Australian Military Policeman.

Initially minor characters, but eventually part of the main cast, were Lieutenant Francis Mulcahy (George Morgan in the pilot, William Christopher thereafter), a priest from Philadelphia who serves as the camp's chaplain, a CYO boxing coach but a kindhearted soul who never calls the men out on their adultery; and Corporal Max Klinger (Jamie Farr), a street kid from Toledo, Ohio, was given a choice of jail or the Army, chose the Army, and then ran whatever scam he could to get out, from dressing in women's clothes to faking deaths in the family to things crazy enough to get a psychiatric discharge, a "Section 8."

When the show began, the Vietnam War was still going on. But, set in the Korean War, 20 years earlier, it became an allegory for Vietnam, a satire on how the U.S. Army did not live up to his self-proclaimed efficiency, had ridiculous regulations, and provided the soldiers with horrible food.

Take all of that, throw in all the wounded soldiers, whom the surgeons somehow (even with Frank's bungling) managed to save 98 percent of, and the occasional enemy shelling (they were only 3 miles from the front, and occasionally had to "bug out" and activate the "Mobile" part of their name because the front had come to them), and Hawkeye's inability to stay serious, shown as a defense mechanism, becomes easy to understand: "Making a joke is the only way I can open my mouth without screaming."

The Season 5 episode "The General Practitioner" had this exchange, after Frank misquoted Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman:

Frank: Well, everybody knows thar war is Hell.

B.J.: Remember: You heard it here last.

Hawkeye: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.

Father Mulcahy, certainly qualified to ask: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?
Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me: Who goes to Hell?
Father Mulcahy: Um, sinners, I believe.
Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. But war is chock full of them: Little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

In a Season 2 episode, Hawkeye mentioned in a letter to his father, also a surgeon that he was making $413.50 a month. In 2022 money, that works out to about $4,738.61, or about $57,000 a year.

After 3 seasons, Stevenson had had enough, and left. So a script was written where Henry had gotten all his retention points, and he was discharged. But his plane to go home was shot down by a North Korean jet, and he was killed. That Season 3 finale, "Abysinnia, Henry" (a play on "I'll be seeing you" that Henry had used before), on March 18, 1975, was the 1st time a TV show had actually said that a main character had died when his portrayer hadn't. Previously, when an actor died, either the character was played by someone else, or written out and not mentioned again. The same thing was done when an actor simply left the show.

Rogers also left the show, but at least Trapper got to go home alive. He was replaced by Captain B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell), a native of Mill Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area, married with a baby girl that he had barely seen when he went over to Korea.

And Blake was replaced by Colonel Sherman T. Potter (Harry Morgan), an older man from Hannibal, Missouri, who was "regular Army" (most of them were Army Reserve), and had served in both World Wars (his service in the cavalry in World War I was mentioned many times), but was far better suited to commanding a military hospital.

Frank and Margaret often bullied Henry and went over his head. Potter showed them that they would no longer get away with this. He soon figured out how much rope to give Hawkeye, B.J., and Klinger, too, before pulling them back.

Like many actors who played despicable characters, Linville was actually a good guy, beloved by his castmates. But in 1977, after Season 5, Linville got tired of playing "Ferret Face" Frank. who he called "a cartoon." He was the one character who never really grew. Margaret had, softening a bit, even getting married to another Army officer. The last time viewers saw Frank, he was looking up at the helicopter taking Margaret and her husband to their honeymoon, and softly saying, "Goodbye, Margaret." He had married his wife Louise for her family's money; he truly loved Margaret. (Her marriage was a disaster, and they got divorced within a few months, within the show's continuity.)

Through convoluted circumstances, Frank was transferred Stateside in the Season 6 premiere, and his replacement was Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers), a Boston Brahmin who was every bit as conservative as Frank, but was a lot smarter (he was a Harvard graduate), he was considerably more refined (he frequently listened to classic music on his record player, and drank cognac instead of the "bathtub gin" from the distillery in the surgeons' tent, "The Swamp"), and was on Hawkeye's and B.J.'s level as a surgeon, so there was some reason for him to be pompous and egotistical. And he was both.

Early in Season 8, Burghoff left, and Radar was sent home on a hardship discharge: His father had died when he was really young, so his mother and his Uncle Ed were running the family farm. Now, Uncle Ed was dead, and Radar was sent home so his mother have to run the farm all alone.

That meant that Klinger was now the company clerk, and his added responsibility gave a little weight to the character. The crazy outfits and the schemes soon dwindled away, and while he was under-educated, he used some serious street-smarts to get the camp things it needed. As the man with the big nose and the bigger heart said, "I may be pathetic and inept, but I ain't dumb!" In the Season 10 episode "Promotion Commotion," he was promoted to Sergeant. Mulcahy had been promoted to Captain, in the Season 8 episode "Captains Outrageous."

Given the length of the show, some other turnover was to be expected. In Season 8, Staff Sergeant Zelmo Zale (Johnny Haymer), the dimwitted Brooklyn-born supply sergeant with whom Klinger frequently argued and sometimes physically fought, was phased out, and phased in was Staff Sergeant Luther Rizzo (G.W. Bailey), a shifty native of the Louisiana bayou who ran the motor pool. And yet, Private Igor Straminsky (Jeff Maxwell), who served the lousy chow, somehow got through the entire series without being dropped.

M*A*S*H tried to be realistic, getting historians, including medical historians, to help them get things right. But they got some things wrong. Certainly, at a real army base, the doctors would not have gotten away with so much tomfoolery (to use one of Potter's words). And if they drank that much, they wouldn't be fit to operate -- as Hawkeye pointed out when Alan's father, Broadway legend Robert Alda, played a visiting surgeon in the Season 3 episode "The Consultant."

For another thing, the continuity was all messed up. We were told in the Season 4 premiere, "Welcome to Korea," that Potter took command on September 19, 1952, that B.J. had arrived one week earlier, and that Frank and Radar were still there. But in Season 9, we're told that, by December 31, 1950, B.J., Potter and Charles were already there, and that Frank, Radar, Trapper and Henry Blake were all gone.

You could count that 1980 episode, "A War for All Seasons," covering all of 1951, as an outlier and non-canon. But in the series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen," Margaret says she's known Charles for 2 years -- so even if she's rounding up, we're talking the Summer of 1951, meaning there's no way B.J., Henry or Frank should still have been there by then.

Throw in the fact that Hawkeye went from living in Vermont, having a sister, and having his mother still being alive to living in Maine, being an only child, and having his mother die when he was 10. Henry's wife was Mildred, then Lorraine. The name Mildred was brought back for Potter's wife. On multiple occasions, Potter mentioned as having a son, who had a nose as big as Klinger's. On a later episode, he said he had a daughter. Later still, he said it was one daughter and no son.

Also, if Klinger (like his portrayer, whose real name is Jameel Farah) has Lebanese ancestry, are all his Lebanese relatives on his mother's side? Because Klinger isn't an Arabic name.

Poor Nurse Kelly. Or Kelley. Or Kellye. (Played by Kellye Nakahara.) We know her rank was Lieutenant throughout. But her name was never fully mentioned, or even definitively spelled. Early on, a couple of times, she was "Nurse Charlie," and another actress was called "Nurse Kelly."

After that, Nakahara's character was always referred to as "Nurse Kelly," suggesting that Kelly (however it was supposed to be spelled) was her last name. Funny, she didn't look Irish. Certainly, she didn't interact much with the very Irish characters of Trapper and Father Mulcahy. (Then again, Hawaii Five-O -- also on CBS, both the 1968-80 classic version and the 2010-20 reboot -- had a character named Chin Ho Kelly.)

But, twice, including in the next-to-last episode, "As Time Goes By," Margaret called her "Lieutenant Nakahara," suggesting that the actress' name was also the character's name. She said a few times that she was from Hawaii. In the real-time Season 8 episode "Life Time," she said she was (ethnically) half-Chinese and half-Hawaiian. But Nakahara is a Japanese name. And in the Season 10 episode "Communication Breakdown," she spoke fluent Japanese. Despite her previously-stated ancestry, and many chances to speak to wounded Chinese soldiers, at no time is she shown speaking Chinese.

Nor is Kellye ever shown speaking Korean, the language of the country they're actually in. Ironically, the only main character who shows any facility with Korean is Radar, who has some difficulty with English!

Indeed, it would have made sense (for any organization but this fictional version of the 1950s U.S. Army) to have a translator there. That could have been a good role for Kellye, and it would have given Nakahara much more screen time, instead of what she usually did: Stand in the background, assist the surgeons, or respond to requests: "Yes, Doctor," or (to Margaret), "Yes, Major."

Despite the "New Wave of Feminism" being underway by the time the show debuted in 1972, the nurse characters, aside from Margaret, really got short shrift, an issue addressed in the final season (Fall 1982), in an episode titled "Who Knew?" when one of the nurses dies in an accident, and no one seems to have learned much about her, not even Hawkeye, with whom she was on a date right before she died.

We know there were nurses named Able, Baker and Charlie (a reference to the "military alphabet"). A black nurse named Lieutenant Ginger Bayless (Odessa Cleveland) was a constant in Season 1. A nurse named Lieutenant Peggy Bigelow was frequently mentioned and shown, usually played by Enid Kent.

But the actresses playing these specific characters tended to change. This made no freakin' sense. The only nurse who tended to get significant screen time (if only to be in the background or to interact with Margaret and the doctors) was Kellye. And she was so underused, we might as well have called her "Uhura." (While Uhura is a Swahili name, like Obama, maybe, like Obama, it could sound Japanese.)

There's a few anachronisms as well. At one point, Hawkeye, hearing a lot of letters of Army acronyms spoken, mockingly sings, "M-O-U-S-E." The Mickey Mouse Club didn't start airing until 1955, 2 years after the war ended. In another episode, he references the assassination of Albert Anastasia, king of the New York Mob, which happened in 1957. And while Indochina is referenced in an episode, in the finale, it's called "Vietnam," and I'm not sure how widespread that name was in 1953.

The biggest anachronisms are the hairstyles. This was the Army. This was the 1950s. No way would Hawkeye, B.J. and Klinger have had that much hair. And I don't think the Fifties Army would have allowed B.J. to grow a mustache. Granted, Major Sidney Freedman, the Brooklynite psychiatrist played by Allan Arbus in one episode every season, had a mustache, but, being older and higher-ranking, they might have given him some leeway.

Another problem is the ages of the characters. When the show began, Burghoff was 29 playing 19, and mainly got away with it because he was short and had a high voice; when he left, he was 36 and balding, playing 21 or so. How old was Klinger? We're led to believe he was a street kid, who might've been soon out of high school, but he sometimes called Radar "Kid." Farr was 38 at the show's start. When the show ended, he was 49, and now playing a character possibly less than half his age!

Once, Charles specifically mentioned that he was "Harvard, Class of '43." This would make him 30 or so when he arrived. Granted, being bald and overweight didn't help, but did Stiers look only 30 to you? He was 35; when the show ended, if we believe his '43 reference, he was 41 playing about 32.

And none of the characters, except Potter, are mentioned as having served in World War II, which ended 5 years before the Korean War began. Not even Margaret, who, because of her father, has lived on Army bases her entire life. Clearly, she's qualified to be a U.S. Army Major, so she's probably at least 30. Which means she was at least 25 when "The Big One" ended. That doesn't mean she was already a combat nurse, but it does mean she was no kid. Certainly, midway through the series, there was a reference to her needing to color her hair to remain blonde.

So, no mention of World War II service for the doctors. Does this mean the doctors (Henry and Potter excepted) had student deferments? This would be understandable, if it meant medical school that could make them military doctors, especially since no one knew until 1945 that the war would end anytime soon.

That makes them at least 30 when the Korean War began, but look at the gray hair that Alan Alda and Mike Farrell had at the end: Alda was 47, Farrell 44. I'm 52 as of this writing, and I don't look nearly as old as any of the doctors, except Wayne Rogers, who played Trapper and always looked good for his age.

Larry Linville was just 4 years older than Gary Burghoff. There's no way that Frank, married with kids and a receding hairline, was just 4 years older than Radar. Though Burghoff usually wore a hat to hide his even more encroaching baldness.

Potter mentioned lying about his age to get into the Army for World War I, but in a later episode, he tells Sidney he's 62, meaning he was 27 when the U.S. got into "Dubya Dubya One," and possibly already a fully-qualified doctor.

The show, about a war that lasted 3 years, ran 11 years, and some of the actors, especially Alda, seemed to have aged even more than that. To again paraphrase General Sherman, fictional war is Hell.

Finally, there's the way the Army is portrayed. A U.S. Army that incompetent wouldn't have won World War II. And there's no way Hawkeye, Trapper and B.J. would've gotten away with half the things they got away with just because they were great surgeons, no matter how many favors Henry and Potter could call in to keep them out of the stockade.

As for Frank, and the even crazier occasional guest star Colonel Flagg, played by Edward Winter, they would have been removed much sooner than they were. Maybe Hawkeye and B.J. wouldn't have been willing to ruin Margaret's career over the truth of her affair with the married Frank later on -- notably, Charles wasn't willing to lie to ruin it and get himself transferred back to his dream job at Tokyo General Hospital -- but early, when she was frequently as bitchy as she wanted to be, oh yeah, Hawkeye and Trapper would have eagerly ruined her and Frank. In the Season 2 episode "The Trial of Henry Blake," they threatened to expose Frank and Margaret if they didn't back off, big-time.

That's the only way Frank, in temporary command after Henry's discharge, could have allowed Hawkeye the 5-day R&R he had in the Season 4 premiere, forcing him to miss Trapper's goodbye. No way Frank agrees to that otherwise.

A prominent feature of the camp was the signpost, with arrows names of cities, and their distances from the camp. The signs, from top to bottom, are: Boston (Trapper and Charles), Seoul (the South Korean capital), Coney Island (could represent Sidney or Zale), San Francisco (B.J. took that arrow home in the finale), Burbank (no character on the original show was said to have come from the Los Angeles area), Death Valley (ditto, and I'm not sure why they would choose one of the few places on the planet more desolate than that section of central Korea to be on the signpost), Toledo (Klinger), and Decatur (not sure if it's the one in Illinois or the one in Georgia, at any rate no character was from either).

In the early seasons, before Klinger was promoted from secondary to primary character (and, in Season 10, from Corporal to Sergeant), there was an Indianapolis sign (no character was said to come from there, although Frank was from Fort Wayne, Indiana), but it was replaced by a Toledo sign. Also, early on, there was a second Seoul sign underneath the Decatur sign, and underneath that there was a Honolulu sign (which could be for Kellye). But why weren't there signs for all the primary characters? At least, for the nearest cities: Portland (Maine, not Oregon) for Hawkeye, Chicago for Henry, St. Louis for Potter, Des Moines (Iowa's capital) for Radar, and Philadelphia for Mulcahy.

But for all the problems with M*A*S*H, it might be the greatest show in the history of television. In its 11 seasons, it won 14 Emmy Awards, including 7 for acting: 3 for Alda, 2 for Swit, and 1 each for Morgan and Burghoff. Alda also won an Emmy for directing, and another for writing.

The 1970 film version was the 1st major studio film to use the word "fuck," or any variant thereof, in its dialogue. The word is spoken during the football game near the end of the film by Captain Walt Waldowski, the camp dentist known as "The Painless Pole," when he says to an opposing football player, "All right, Bud, your fucking head is coming right off!" The actor, John Schuck, said in an interview that Andy Sidaris, who directed the football scene for Robert Altman, encouraged Schuck to "say something that'll annoy him."

The statement made it into the film without a second thought. Previously, under the Hays Code, such a word would have been forbidden, but the Motion Picture Association of America allowed it -- with an R rating.

Likewise, the TV show may have been the 1st to use the phrase, "You son of a bitch!" It was used 3 times: Twice by Hawkeye, to a Korean Colonel, and in the finale to Sidney Freedman for making him un-repress a horrifying memory; and once to him, by a General whose son Hawkeye was unable to save.

Three times on M*A*S*H, one of the antagonistic Majors borrowed the "I'm a doctor, not a… " line of DeForest Kelley's Leonard "Bones" McCoy on Star Trek. In the Season 5 episode "End Run," Frank sees a soldier with a wounded leg, and says, "Yuck!" Hawkeye says, "Frank, have you ever heard of 'patient morale'?" Frank says, "I'm a doctor, not an entertainer!" Hawkeye says, "You could've fooled me!"

In the Season 8 episode "The Yalu Brick Road," most of the camp is stricken with salmonella, and Margaret demands that Charles help her wash sheets. Charles, a chauvinist on top of everything else, says, "Margaret, I'm a doctor, not a woman!" In the Season 9 episode "The Foresight Saga," Charles objects to letting a teenage Korean boy whose village had been bombed stay in the Swamp's spare bunk: "I'm a doctor, not a social worker!"

In the Season 6 episode "The M*A*S*H Olympics," Charles offered a variation: When Potter saw him, Hawkeye, B.J., Margaret, Klinger and Mulcahy unable, between them, to push an overturned ambulance into an upright position, but 4 MPs could, he reminded them, "You people are in sorry shape! This is a mobile hospital! If we ever have to bug out, you people won't be able to lift a tent pole!" Charles said, "I'm a surgeon! I'm not a circus roustabout!" And in the Season 10 episode "A Holy Mess," when Margaret asked him how she was supposed to soft-boil an egg if water won't boil, he said, "I'm a surgeon, not a Hindu philosopher."

The last episode, running 2 1/2 hours, aired on February 28, 1983. Over 105 million viewers watched, making it the most-watched scripted episode in the history of American television, breaking the record set a little over 2 years earlier in the episode of Dallas where they finally answered the question of who shot J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman).

The record looks safe for all time, given the fragmentation of TV since (there were still only 3 major networks when the episode aired), and the fact that several much-hyped finales since then haven't come close: Cheers got 80 million in 1993, Seinfeld got 76 million in 1998, and, combined, The Sopranos in 2007, Breaking Bad in 2013 and Game of Thrones in 2019 got "only" 36 million.

Indeed, among all U.S.-based TV single-network broadcasts (not counting coverage of live news events), only 8 have ever gotten more viewers than the M*A*S*H finale. All of them have been Super Bowls: XLIV, XLV, XLVI, XLVII, XLVIII, XLIX (on February 1, 2015, New England Patriots over Seattle Seahawks, the record holder at 114 million), 50 and LI.

Incidentally, the most-watched Major League Baseball game ever was Game 7 of the 1986 World Series, New York Mets over Boston Red Sox, 60 million; the most-watched basketball game ever was Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, Michael Jordan in his then-presumed last game, Chicago Bulls over Utah Jazz, 29 million; and the most-watched hockey game ever was the 1980 Winter Olympic Gold Medal Game, U.S. over Finland, 33 million. In other words, the 3 most-watched games in the other "Big Four" North American sports, combined, had 112 million viewers, 2 million fewer than the most-watched Super Bowl.

Over the course of the show, the following characters appeared in this many episodes: Hawkeye, 251 (the only one to appear in all of them); Margaret, 236; Klinger, 216; Mulcahy, 213; Radar, 181; Potter, 180; B.J., 179; Kellye 167, more than 4 "regulars"; Charles, 131; Frank, 121; Trapper, 72; Henry, 72; Igor, 48; Ginger, 22; Zale, 20; Rizzo, 13; Sidney, 12; Ugly John, 11; Brigadier General Crandall Clayton, the official commanding officer of all 5 MASH units in Seasons 1 and 2, played by Herb Voland, 7; Flagg, 7; Spearchucker, 6.

And the characters had their names, or at least their nicknames, used in the titles of this many episodes: Hawkeye, 9; Margaret, 6; 4 each for Henry and Radar; Charles, 2; and 1 each for B.J., Potter and Mulcahy.

Herb Voland died in 1981, Johnny Haymer in 1989, Keye Luke (a veteran Asian actor who played 3 different roles in the series) in 1991, John Orchard in 1995, McLean Stevenson in 1996, Richard Hornberger in 1997, Larry Linville in 2000, Edward Winter in 2001, producer Larry Gelbart in 2009, Harry Morgan in 2011, Allan Arbus in 2013, Wayne Rogers in 2015, and William Christopher in 2016.

David Ogden Stiers, Soon-Tek Oh (who played 5 different roles in the series), John Fujioka (who played 3 different roles) and Beeson Carroll (who played Margaret's brief husband, Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott, in his debut appearance) died in 2018. Kellye Nakahara, producer Gene Reynolds, and theme song composer Johnny Mandel died in 2020. Mike Henry (who played Penobscott in the character's 2nd and last on-screen appearance) died in 2021, and producer Burt Metcalfe in 2022.

As of September 17, 2022, the 50th Anniversary of the pilot, Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, Gary Burghoff, Jamie Farr, Mike Farrell, Odessa Cleveland, Enid Kent, Jeff Maxwell, G.W. Bailey, Eileen Saki (bar owner Rosie) and Rosalind Chao (Soon-Lee, the Korean refugee that Klinger marries in the series finale) are still alive.

UPDATE: Eileen Saki died in 2023. Loretta Swit died in 2025.

It took me until 2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were Schrödinger's Decade. There was too much influence by television, and, at the same time, not enough of it. A lot of TV went too far, but there was also a lot of bad TV, and some of the good TV didn't go as far enough in doing good that it could have.

*

September 17, 1972 was a Sunday. It was also the day that ABC's police drama The Streets of San Francisco premiered, starring Karl Malden and Michael Douglas. Also debuting, interestingly enough, was an American celebrity of Korean descent: Comedian Bobby Lee, best known as a member of the cast of the sketch comedy series MADtv.

There was another debut that day: The Harry S Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City, Missouri. The new home of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs, Arrowhead Stadium, opened. Unfortunately for the Chiefs, like their last game at Kansas City Municipal Stadium, a Playoff game the preceding Christmas Day, they lost to the Miami Dolphins, in this case 20-10. Nobody knew it yet, but the Dolphins had begun what remains, through the 2021 season, the only undefeated-and-untied Championship season in NFL history.

The following April, adjacent to Arrowhead, Royals Stadium opened. It was renamed Kauffman Stadium in 1993. Both the Chiefs and the Royals still play at the Complex.

Other NFL games played that day:

* The New York Jets beat the Buffalo Bills, 41-24 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo. Joe Namath completed only 5 of 14 passes, 1 for a touchdown. But the Bills couldn't stop the Jets' ground game, as John Riggins rushed for 125 yards and a touchdown, and Emerson Boozer rushed for 50 yards and 2 touchdowns.

The Jets' defense held O.J. Simpson to only 41 rushing yards. He actually had more passing yards, 46, going 2-for-2 with an option pass to J.D. Hill for a 21-yard touchdown in the 3rd quarter.

* The New York Giants lost to the Detroit Lions, 30-16 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Cincinnati Bengals beat the New England Patriots, 31-7 at Schaefer Stadium (later Sullivan Stadium and Foxboro Stadium) in the Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Baltimore Colts, 10-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Johnny Unitas, starting what turned out to be his last season for the Colts, went 22-for-36 for 257 yards, but had no touchdown passes and 2 interceptions.

* The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Oakland Raiders, 34-28 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* The Green Bay Packers beat the Cleveland Browns, 26-10 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Atlanta Falcons beat the Chicago Bears, 37-21 at Soldier Field in Chicago.

* The Dallas Cowboys beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 28-6 at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas.

* The Denver Broncos beat the Houston Oilers, 30-17 at Mile High Stadium in Denver.

* The Los Angeles Rams beat the New Orleans Saints, 34-14 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* The San Francisco 49ers beat the San Diego Chargers, 34-3 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

* The next night, on ABC Monday Night Football, the Washington Redskins beat the Minnesota Vikings, 24-21 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

And these games were played in Major League Baseball:

* The New York Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles, 2-1 at Yankee Stadium. Fritz Peterson outpitched Dave McNally. Felipe Alou hit a home run for the Pinstripes. Brooks Robinson went O's-for-4.

* The New York Mets lost to the Chicago Cubs, 6-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Willie Mays was available for the Mets in this game, but did not play. For unlisted reasons, Met starter Jim McAndrew left after only 2 innings, having allowed 2 runs. He made his last 3 starts of the season, although he didn't pitch well in any of them, so it might not have been due to injury. Maybe it was just a precaution.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Buddy Bell hit a home run in support of Gaylord Perry. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Montreal Expos, 3-2 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt, who'd made his major league debut 6 days earlier, went 1-for-3. (In that debut, he got a hit off McAndrew. The day before this, he hit the 1st of his 548 career home runs, off Balor Moore.)

* The Atlanta Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 7-4 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Hank Aaron hit the 670th home run of his career.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Cincinnati Reds, 10-7 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Pete Rose went 1-for-5. Johnny Bench went 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Al Kaline went 1-for-4.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Minnesota Twins, 10-6 at Metropolitan Stadium. (The Vikings played there the next night, so there was time to convert it for football use.) Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-2 before leaving the game due to an injury. Rod Carew only appeared as a pinch-hitter and, uncharacteristically, struck out. The Royals led 6-0 going into the bottom of the 8th inning, but the Angels sent it to extra innings, and then the Royals scored 4 runs in the top of the 10th inning to win it.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-4 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Lou Brock went 2-for-3 with a walk. Joe Torre had an unusual day: He came to the plate 4 times, but was only charged with 1 at-bat: He had a sacrifice fly for an RBI, was hit with a pitch, and drew a walk, none of which is an official at-bat according to the rules, before flying out. For the Pirates, Roberto Clemente went 3-for-5. Willie Stargell went 1-for-5.

* The Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 15-11 at the Astrodome in Houston. Yes, that's a baseball game, not football. Lee May of the Astros and Willie Davis of the Dodgers hit home runs. May and César Cedeño each had 5 RBIs. May went 4-for-6, and Jimmy Wynn went 4-for-5 with 3 RBIs.

Frank Robinson, in his only season with the Dodgers, went 0-for-4, but did draw a walk. Bobby Valentine -- yes, that Bobby V -- went 4-for-5 with 2 RBIs. He was a decent player until injuries took their toll.

* The California Angels beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-1 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim).

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Texas Rangers, 4-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Jim "Catfish" Hunter went the distance for his 20th win of the season, and Reggie Jackson went 2-for-2 with 2 walks.

Also on this day, as a warmup for the Moscow half of the "Summit Series," Team Canada played the 2nd of back-to-back exhibition games against Sweden. After winning the night before, 4-1, they played to a 4-4 draw. Both games were played at Johanneshovs Isstadion, a.k.a. "Hovet," in the national capital of Stockholm.