But the big story of the day is political, in the growing scandal known as Watergate, which began on June 17, 1972, with a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, perpetrated by 5 men working for the committee working to re-elect President Richard Nixon.
Whether Nixon knew about the break-in beforehand and authorized it has never been established, but he worked like crazy to cover it up. On July 16, 1973, it was revealed that there was a tape-recording system in the Oval Office at the White House, and that these tapes could prove Nixon guilty -- or, perhaps, prove him innocent; or, at least, provide enough reasonable doubt as to get him acquitted of any criminal charges.
On August 29, John Sirica, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered Nixon to turn the tapes over. Time magazine would name Sirica its Man of the Year for 1973.
On October 19, in an effort to get away with whatever he did that was recorded on those tapes, Nixon offered Congress a compromise: He would allow Senator John Stennis to review the tapes, and present Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox with summaries.
On this day, Cox publicly refuses to accept this compromise. He knows that Stennis is not only a conservative from Mississippi and a supporter of Nixon's -- he's a conservative Southern Democrat, a.k.a. a "Dixiecrat," and no friend of mainstream Democrats -- but also 72 years old and hard of hearing. If those tapes reveal that Nixon committed an impeachable offense, Stennis might not hear it properly. And even if he does, he might refuse to admit it to Cox, and claim his poor hearing caused him to miss it. Cox isn't buying it, and has enough guts to press onward.
Nixon decides that, in order to survive as President, he has to fire Cox -- whom he had never fully trusted, as Cox had been Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy and an old friend of JFK's, and thus a partisan Democrat.
So he instructs his Attorney General, Elliot Richardson (in the photo on the right on that Daily News front page), the man who had hired Cox and had the power to fire him, to fire him. Richardson refuses, because he thinks it will spark a Constitutional crisis. Nixon says do it or you're fired. Richardson does the honorable thing, and resigns his post.
So Nixon goes to the next man in line, Richardson's Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus. He tells Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. He refuses. Nixon says do it or you're fired. Ruckelshaus still refuses, but does not resign. Nixon fires him.
So with the top 2 men in the U.S. Department of Justice now gone, Nixon goes to the Number 3 man, the Solicitor General, and tells him to fire Cox. He does, because he values Nixon more than he values the Constitution.
Word quickly gets out, and the Washington press corps quickly dubs these events "The Saturday Night Massacre." People wake up the next morning to bold headlines in their Sunday papers. The Sunday morning news shows, NBC's Meet the Press, CBS' Face the Nation, and ABC's Issues and Answers (the predecessor program to This Week), can talk about nothing else.
The pressure on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Nixon vastly increases. And, with the Vice Presidency vacant, as Spiro Agnew has resigned and Gerald Ford has not yet been confirmed by either house of Congress as the new VP, the next man in line is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Carl Albert -- a Democrat, and, while from a Southern State, Oklahoma, considerably more liberal than Stennis.
Carl Albert
If Nixon had died, were impeached by the House and removed by the Senate, or were pressured into resigning, or had the 25th Amendment invoked by his Cabinet and removed that way, and Albert were still next in line at the time, it would have been a political earthquake, much bigger than the end of Nixon's Presidency actually turned out to be.
Within days, Nixon realizes what a blunder he has committed, and tells the Acting Attorney General to appoint a new Special Prosecutor. That man would be Leon Jaworski. By December 6, Ford would be confirmed by both houses and sworn in as Vice President, and the danger of Nixon being impeached and removed, and replaced by a President of the other party, was gone, and things calmed down in Watergate -- for a while.
There would be ramifications, of course -- some lasting much longer than the Nixon Administration itself. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed that same former Acting Attorney General to the U.S. Supreme Court, as his judicial views fit the archconservative vision that Reagan had for the country. But his role in the Saturday Night Massacre was held against him -- although it's possible that he might have been rejected by the Senate anyway. His name was Robert Bork. (That's him, in the photo on the left.)
On April 26, 1974, the Yankees traded 4 pitchers to the Cleveland Indians: Fritz Peterson, Fred Beene, Steve Kline and Tom Buskey. Essentially sending away half their pitching staff, this became known as the Friday Night Massacre.
But the trade was necessary: It got rid of 4 pitchers who didn't take the game as seriously as they did their social lives, and it brought in 2 players who would be essential in the Yankees' 1976, '77 and '78 Pennants: 1st baseman Chris Chambliss and pitcher Dick Tidrow. (They also got pitcher Cecil Upshaw, but he was injured, turned out to be a nonfactor, and was traded after the season.)
And on November 2, 1975, Ford, trailing in the polls for the '76 election to both Reagan in the race for the Republican nomination and to a generic Democrat in the general election, "reshuffled" his Cabinet, letting some men go, and moving others to new posts. Among these, he asked Henry Kissinger, who had been both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor for 2 years, to stay at State but resign as NSA. It was 2 days after Halloween, and the media dubbed this the Halloween Massacre.
UPDATE: After campaigning to return to the Presidency in 2024, partly on the lie that the Administration of President Joe Biden had "weaponized the Department of Justice," Donald Trump weaponized it, ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after his political opponents, while giving special treatment to those public figures who went along with him.
He ordered the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (which includes Manhattan, The Bronx, and the Counties of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Rockland, Orange and Sullivan), Danielle Sassoon, to drop the office's corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. This was done because Adams, despite being black and a Democrat, had agreed to work with Trump on the "migrant crisis." It was a blatant quid pro quo that, in the past, would have forced both men to resign their offices.
Sassoon, a conservative who had clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, followed the path of Elliot Richardson, and chose to resign rather than carry out Trump's order. She said, in a letter to Bondi, "It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams's opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment."
Also resigning was the lead prosecutor on the case, Hagan Scotten, who wrote to Emil Bove, the Acting Deputy Attorney General, Bove, saying of the motion to dismiss the charges against Adams, "I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to me."
*
As Nixon himself would have said, I have made it perfectly clear: October 20, 1973 was a Saturday. Among the major college football games played that day were these:
* Number 1 Ohio State beat Indiana, 37-7 at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Indiana.
* Rivalry: Number 2 Alabama beat Number 10 Tennessee, 42-21 at Legion Field in Birmingham.
* Number 3 Oklahoma beat Number 16 Colorado, 34-7 at Owen Field in Norman, Oklahoma.
* Number 4 Michigan beat Wisconsin, 35-6 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.
* Number 5 Penn State beat Syracuse, 49-6 at Archbold Stadium in Syracuse, New York.
* Number 6 University of Southern California (USC) beat Oregon, 31-10 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
* Number 7 Missouri beat Oklahoma State, 13-9 at Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri.
* Number 8 Notre Dame beat Army, 62-3 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York.
* Number 9 Louisiana State University (LSU) beat Kentucky, 28-21 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
* Number 11 Nebraska beat Number 18 Kansas, 10-9 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.
* One ranked team lost to an unranked team: Number 19 Arizona lost to Texas Tech, 31-17 at Arizona Stadium in Tucson.
* Rivalry: Virginia Tech beat Virginia, 27-15 at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia.
* Rivalry: Minnesota beat Iowa, 31-23 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.
* Rivalry: Texas beat Arkansas, 34-6 at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
* Navy beat Air Force, 42-6 at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.
* Yale beat Columbia, 29-0 at Baker Field in Upper Manhattan.
* Rutgers beat Delaware, 24-7 at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey.
* Princeton beat Colgate, 37-21 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.
There were no NFL games played that day. But a very big baseball game was played at the Oakland Coliseum: Game 6 of the World Series.
The New York Mets just need to win 1 of the last 2 games against the Oakland Athletics in Oakland, and they will have their 2nd World Championship in 5 seasons -- it has been 11 years since the Yankees went all the way. And Tom Seaver, "The Franchise," is on the mound. What can go wrong?
This can go wrong: Met manager Yogi Berra has sent Seaver out on just 3 days' rest, hoping that "Tom Terrific" can close out the defending World Champions on their own patch, so that no Game 7 will be necessary.
But Reggie Jackson, not yet a New York baseball legend, hits 2 doubles, scores 1 run and knocks in 2. Jim "Catfish" Hunter, also a future Hall-of-Famer and a future New York baseball legend, pitches brilliantly. The A's beat the Mets 3-1. So there will be a Game 7 tomorrow.
To this day, many Met fans are angry at Yogi for starting Seaver on short rest. I'm sure some of them thought of Yogi as a Yankee and hated him for that reason alone. They shouldn't: There are only 5 human beings who have managed the Mets to a Pennant: Yogi, Gil Hodges, Davey Johnson, Bobby Valentine and Terry Collins. And only Johnson, Valentine and Collins are still alive.
There are 8 National Basketball Association games played on this day:
* The New York Knicks do not play like defending World Champions, losing to the Chicago Bulls, 85-69 at Madison Square Garden. Indeed, in the other 7 NBA games played that day, only 1 other team scored fewer than the Bulls' 85, but that 85 was enough to win this game.
* The Capital Bullets play their 1st home game after 10 years in Baltimore, at the Cole Field House on the campus of the University of Maryland, in College Park, just inside the Capital Beltway. At this point, the Bullets are one of the better teams in the NBA, and they prove it, beating the Boston Celtics 96-87. Phil Chenier leads all scorers with 26 points.
It will take until December 2 for their new arena, the Capital Centre in Landover, on the other side of the Beltway, to be ready for the Bullets to play there. They then changed their name to the Washington Bullets. The following season, it also became home to an NHL expansion team, the Washington Capitals. In 1997, both teams would move into a new arena in the District of Columbia, now known as the Capital One Arena, and the Bullets would change their name to the Washington Wizards.
* The Buffalo Braves beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 116-100 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.
* The Phoenix Suns beat the Atlanta Hawks, 118-108 at The Omni in Atlanta.
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 101-88 at the Cleveland Arena.
* The Golden State Warriors beat the Kansas City Kings, 100-81 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena (now the Oracle Arena).
* The Detroit Pistons beat the Houston Rockets, 107-104 at the Hofheinz Pavilion (now the Fertitta Center) in Houston.
* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat their regional rivals, the Seattle SuperSonics, 123-108 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.
There were 3 games played in the American Basketball Association:
The Virginia Squires beat the Utah Stars, 106-95 at The Scope in Norfolk.
* The Carolina Cougars beat the Kentucky Colonels, 105-102 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.
* And the San Antonio Spurs beat the Indiana Pacers, 92-66 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.
There were 6 games played in the National Hockey League:
* The New York Rangers lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
* The New York Islanders lost to the Buffalo Sabres, 2-1 at the Nassau Coliseum.
* The Atlanta Flames beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum.
* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the California Golden Seals, 5-3 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.
* The St. Louis Blues and the Minnesota North Stars played to a 4-4 tie, at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* And the Los Angeles Kings beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 3-0 at The Forum in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California.
There were 3 games played in the World Hockey Association:
* The New York Golden Blades lost to the Quebec Nordiques, 8-1 at Le Colisee de Quebec.
* The Cleveland Crusaders beat the Toronto Toros, 6-4 at the Cleveland Arena, which also hosted a Cavs game that day.
* And the Vancouver Blazers beat the Chicago Cougars, 4-3 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.
In notable college football games played that day:
* Number 1 Ohio State beat Indiana, 37-7 at Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Indiana.
* In their traditional 3rd Saturday in October meeting, Number 2 Alabama beat Number 10 Tennessee, 42-21 at Legion Field in Birmingham.
* Number 3 Oklahoma also beat a ranked opponent, Number 16 Colorado, 34-7 at Owen Field in Norman, Oklahoma.
* Number 4 Michigan beat Wisconsin, 35-6 at Michigan Stadium in the Detroit suburb of Ann Arbor.
* Number 5 Penn State beat Syracuse, 49-6 at Archbold Stadium in Syracuse.
* Number 11 Notre Dame beat Army, 62-3 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. Army hadn't beaten Notre Dame since 1958, and still hasn't, losing 15 games over those 63 years.
* In New Jersey, Rutgers beat the University of Delaware, 24-7 at the old Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway.
* Princeton beat Colgate, 37-21 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.
* And New York City's only major team of the time, Columbia University, lost to Yale, 29-0 at Baker Field.
Also, what would become my high school, East Brunswick in Middlesex County, New Jersey, beat New Brunswick, 41-0 at Memorial Stadium in New Brunswick.
And Arsenal drew 1-1 with Ipswich Town at Highbury.
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