September 24, 1957: The Camp Nou Opens In Barcelona

September 24, 1957: Futbol Club Barcelona open a new stadium, the Camp Nou. The opening event is a Catholic Mass, attended by 90,000 people, not a soccer game (football match).

From 1926 to 1957, FC Barcelona had played at Camp de Les Corts, having expanded it to 60,000 seats. But their post-World War II success meant that they needed more seats, and it was impossible to expand the stadium any further. Camp Nou would eventually hold over 120,000 fans, before its conversion to all-seater brought capacity down to 98,000, meaning it was still the biggest club soccer stadium in Europe.

Barcelona became identified with the resistance of the people of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia, which opposed Francisco Franco and the Fascists, and were seriously oppressed. They are so deeply engrained in Catalan culture that they have adopted the slogan "Mes Que Un Club" (More Than a Club). It's even "written" into the seats at their stadium, the 98,000-seat Camp Nou.

As a result, Real Madrid have been seen as a "cheating" club, somehow turning draws into wins and losses into draws, with dives for penalties and "horror tackles" overlooked by the referees. Eventually, Barcelona learned how to do that, too, especially in European tournaments like the UEFA Champions League, to the point where they became known as "UEFAlona."

Since moving into the Camp Nou, Barça have won Spain's La Liga 20 times, for a total of 26 (UPDATE: They won a 21st in 2023, making 27); the Copa del Rey, the King's Cup, Spain's version of the FA Cup, 19 times, for a total of 31; and won the European Cup/UEFA Champions League 5 times: In 1992, 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015. (They've also lost the Final in 1961, 1986 and 1994.)

In addition, the Camp Nou has hosted 2 Champions League Finals: 1989, with A.C. Milan beating Steaua București; and 1999, with Manchester United coming from behind in stoppage time to beat Bayern Munich. It also hosted 5 games in the 1982 World Cup, and the soccer games for the 1992 Olympics.

A renovation plan was approved in 2022. Barça will play the 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons at Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, the main stadium for the 1992 Olympics. 

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September 24, 1957 was a Tuesday. It was the day that President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce the law desegregating Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. I have a separate entry for that.

American football was in midweek. And the starts of the NBA and NHL seasons were a month away. But a full slate of Major League Baseball games was played:

* The most significant was, as already widely believed but not yet officially confirmed, the last game  at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. I also have a separate entry for that.

The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0 on a 5-hit shutout by rookie lefthander Danny McDevitt. The Dodgers would have the next 2 days off, and close their history as a Brooklyn-based team away to the Philadelphia Phillies, losing the finale.

Two nights earlier, Duke Snider had hit the last 2 home runs at the ballpark. The last play was Dee Fondy grounding to short, where, appropriately, Pee Wee Reese, a Dodger since 1940, threw to Gil Hodges for the last out.

* The New York Giants, who had already announced their move to San Francisco for the 1958 season, lost to the Phillies, 5-0 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Curt Simmons pitched a 4-hit shutout. Willie Mays went 0-for-3. Five days later, on Sunday, September 29, the Giants would play their last game at the Polo Grounds, and lost to the Pirates, 9-1.

For the next 4 seasons, New York's National League baseball fans, unwilling to give up baseball, but unwilling to switch to the American League's New York Yankees, took the Pennsylvania Railroad from Penn Station in New York to the North Philadelphia station, and walked the 7 blocks from Broad Street down Lehigh Avenue to 21st Street, and walked into Connie Mack Stadium to watch the Phillies play the Los Angeles Dodgers or the San Francisco Giants.

If they were feeling particularly adventurous, they would drive down, and risk their cars, parking in the North Philly ghetto. Some would cheer their old heroes. Some would boo them.

In 1962, the New York Mets arrived, and the former fans of the Dodgers and the Giants would join in a "marriage of convenience" -- one which produced "The New Breed," the Met fans too young to really remember the former teams.

* The Yankees? They didn't play that night. Nor did the Baltimore Orioles, the Cleveland Indians, or the Detroit Tigers.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 2-1 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Ted Williams hit a home run.

* The Cincinnati Redlegs -- from 1954 to 1958, the Reds used that name due to the stupidity of the Red Scare -- swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Reds won the opener 4-3, and the nightcap 11-9. Over the 2 games, Ernie Banks went 2-for-9 with a home run and 2 RBIs for the Cubs; while, for the Reds, Frank Robinson went 1-for-6 with an RBI, and Wally Post homered in both games.

* The Milwaukee Braves, having clinched their 1st NL Pennant the night before on an 11th-inning home run by Hank Aaron, beat the St. Louis Cardinals at Milwaukee County Stadium again, this time 6-1 in the regulation 9 innings. In this game, Aaron went 1-for-5, but the hit was a grand slam. Stan Musial went 1-for-2 with 2 walks.

* And the Chicago White Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 7-6 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. 

January 29, 1932: Salvador Dalí's "The Persistence of Memory" Is Introduced

January 29, 1932: La persistència de la memòria -- "The Persistence of Memory" -- a painting by Salvador Dalí is first publicly displayed, at the Julien Levy Gallery, at 602 Madison Avenue at 58th Street.

Levy was an art dealer from New York, and had opened his gallery the year before. He could do this because he had befriended many European painters, including Dalí, then 27, and a native of Figueres, Catalonia, in eastern Spain. He had previously introduced photographer Henri Carter-Bresson to America, and would later do the same for the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

On January 29, 1932, Levy opened America's first multi-media exhibition of "Surrealist" work. He had bought The Persistence of Memory, and displayed it along with works by Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, and others.

The Persistence of Memory is certainly surreal: It shows a coastline with four pocket watches that all appear to be melting. The one in the middle is draped over a human-looking (but not that human-looking) facial profile with its eye closed. Dalí claimed that this was a "self-portrait," and that the closed eye and the fact that the figure isn't clearly formed is meant to suggest that both he and the viewer are "in a dream state," and that he (Dalí) was trying hard to remember what the figure actually looked like -- hence, "the persistence of memory."

The watch in the lower left corner is orange, and covered with ants. Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay. The watch next to it has a fly on it, perhaps as a symbol of uncleanliness. And another watch is draped over a branch of a dead tree in the upper left.

The painting is often called "The Soft Watches" or "The Soft Clocks." Ilya Prigoine, a Russian chemist who defected to Belgium and won the Nobel Prize, once asked Dalí if the soft watches were inspired by Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Dalí said no, that the real inspiration was a Camembert cheese, melting in the Sun.

Dalí had painted it the year before Levy introduced it, which was also the year that the Spanish Republic was established, overthrowing the centuries-old monarchy of Spain. This was also the era after World War I, in which Spain was neutral, but most of Europe had suffered terribly, and this suffering was often depicted in art, especially in Germany the nation that was the war's main aggressor and biggest loser. (Unless you consider Russia to be a bigger loser, which might be accurate.)

It was also during the Great Depression, which would lead to, among other things, the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, which would lead to, among other things, the fall of the Republic and the establishment of a Fascist state that lasted until 1975. Picasso, a native of Málaga in Andalusia, in southern Spain, whose painting Guernica depicted the horrors of the aerial bombing of that city, did not live to see the fall of Fascism in Spain, but Dalí, who praised Franco's Falangists and returned to Spain in 1948, did.

Dalí kept up his surreal work, and his surreal lifestyle, including walking unusual pets such as an ocelot or an anteater around whatever city he was in, until his death in 1989, at age 84. From 1929, marrying her in 1934, until her death in 1982, he lived with Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, a Kazakh known as Gala Dal. They had no children together, but she had a daughter from her previous marriage, Cécile Éluard, who lived until 2016. 

Julien Levy died in 1981. Today, a men's clothing store named Always In Vogue is on the site of the Levy Gallery.

Since 1934, The Persistence of Memory has been on display at the Museum of Modern Art, at 11 W. 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan. On March 23, 2022, I finally visited MoMA for the first time, and saw it -- although I didn't know it was there. I figured some of his work would be, and some of his well-known works are. But I was there to see Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. (van Gogh died 14 years before Dalí was born.)

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January 29, 1932 was a Friday. English soccer player Tommy Taylor, one of the Manchester United "Busby Babes" who died in the Munich Air Disaster of 1958, was born on this day.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And there were no games scheduled in the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.

I could have done an entry for the date on which Dalí finished the painting, to get some scores, but I couldn't find an exact date for that.