October 17, 1931: Al Capone Convicted

October 17, 1931: Al Capone, America's most famous criminal boss, is convicted of 5 counts of income tax evasion in federal court in Chicago. After 6 years as America's boss of all bosses, having half the Chicago Police Department on his payroll, and having as many admirers as opponents, he is sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

He ended up serving 8 years, first at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, and then at Alcatraz when it opened in San Francisco Bay in 1934. But he was afflicted with neurosyphilis, and was released into the custody of his family in Miami, after a doctor determined that he had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old. He died in 1947.

Despite the best efforts of Hollywood -- the gangster movies starring James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson that began even before Capone's conviction, and the Godfather movies of the 1970s -- it would take until the rise of John Gotti in New York in the mid-1980s for a real-life gangster to replace Capone as the defining figure in American organized crime.

And it would take until Michael Jordan started winning NBA Championships in 1991 for anyone to replace Capone as the first person anyone thought of when they thought of Chicago. Even Ernie Banks, Bobby Hull and Walter Payton couldn't do that.

Incidentally, if you've heard the song "The Night Chicago Died," which the British band Paper Lace took to Number 1 in 1974, the song is full of crap. There was never a shootout between Al Capone's men and the police. It was unnecessary: Half the CPD was on Capone's payroll. It was how they were able to get uniforms to impersonate policemen and pull off the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929. Also, there's no East Side of Chicago: That would be Lake Michigan. And if the singer was a kid in 1929, then, in 1974, he was a man in his 50s telling this story to kids over the radio.

For the record: Capone never met the other big crime figures of the era, including Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, or John Dillinger, even though Dillinger also operated in Chicago.

In a 2013 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, Capone was played by "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist, while "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Edward Teach, the legendary early 18th Century pirate known as Blackbeard.

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October 17, 1931 was a Saturday. The World Series had ended a week earlier, with the St. Louis Cardinals defeating the Philadelphia Athletics in a rematch of the previous year's Series. There was no NBA yet. The NHL season wouldn't start until November 12. And although it was not unusual for the NFL to play games on Saturdays at the time, there weren't any played on this day.

There were college football games played. But this was before the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) started ranking college football teams. So I can't tell you who the Number 1-ranked team in the country was, because there wasn't one.

It was the 3rd Saturday in October. In the South, that means the University of Alabama plays the University of Tennessee. In Knoxville, Tennessee won 25-0.

Today, it is hard to imagine Tulane University of New Orleans and Vanderbilt University of Nashville -- if there was a Southern equivalent of the Ivy League, they would both probably be in it -- being football powerhouses. But, at the time, they were. They both came into the week 3-0, and met at Nashville, and Tulane won 19-0.

In the New York Tri-State Area, New York University beat Rutgers 17-0 at Yankee Stadium. Princeton went to Ithaca, New York and lost to Cornell, 33-0. Columbia hosted Dartmouth at Baker Field, and won 19-6. And Fordham "hosted" Holy Cross at the Polo Grounds, and the game ended in a 6-6 tie.

Also, Arsenal drew with Bolton Wanderers, 1-1 at Highbury in North London.