December 8, 1980: John Lennon is Killed

Howard Cosell and John Lennon, December 9, 1974.

Six years later, John would be dead.

December 8, 1980: The New England Patriots are playing the Miami Dolphins at the Orange Bowl in Miami, a game being broadcast on ABC Monday Night Football. As John Smith of the Patriots comes onto the field to attempt a last-play game-winning field goal, Howard Cosell gives an announcement about another Englishman named John:

Cosell: But it's suddenly been placed in total perspective for us. I'll finish this. They're in the hurry-up offense.

Frank Gifford: Third down, four. Foreman. (Chuck Foreman is stopped on a run.) It'll be fourth down. (Quarterback Matt) Cavanaugh will let it run down for one final attempt. He'll let the seconds tick off to give Miami no opportunity whatsoever. (Whistle blows.) Timeout is called with three seconds remaining. John Smith is on the line. And I don't care what's on the line, Howard: You have got to say what we know in the booth.

Cosell: Yes, we have to say it. Remember: This is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City -- the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles -- shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash, which, in duty bound, we have to take. Frank?

Gifford: Indeed, it is.

Lennon had been shot at 10:50 PM, Eastern Standard Time. Cosell had read an initial report, before the full facts were known: Five shots had been fired, four of them hit Lennon, and, according to the doctors who tried in vain to save him, any one of the four that hit him, had it been the only one, would have done enough damage to kill him. He was pronounced dead at 11:15. He was 40 years old.

Cosell made the announcement a few minutes later. On December 9, 1974, Monday Night Football had broadcast a game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Washington Redskins at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Redskins won, 23-17. Lennon had attended, and Cosell interviewed him at halftime.

Cosell was already 43 years old when The Beatles first arrived in America, and hardly in their target group, but his journalistic instincts kicked in, and, surprising those of us who knew him only as a blowhard who tried to convince people he knew more about things than he did, he handled it like a complete professional.

Lennon had been living in America for a little over 3 years, and knew who Cosell was, and said of American football, "It makes rock concerts look like tea parties." The interview went very well, and, off-camera, Cosell even introduced Lennon to another attendee, the outgoing Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. (I was sure I had seen video footage of Lennon and Reagan talking and laughing together that night, but I can't find a still photo of it anywhere.)

Now, 6 years earlier, almost to the day, Lennon was dead, and Reagan was the President-elect, having defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter a month earlier. Less than 4 months later, Reagan would be shot as well, but would barely survive.

When Cosell spoke the words, "dead on arrival," the camera caught Smith looking right into it, and nodding, as if he had heard what Cosell had said. Of course, none of the players knew anything about it until the game was over. Smith missed his game-winning field goal. The game went to overtime, and Uwe von Schamann, born in West Berlin, Germany but raised in Fort Worth, Texas, won it for the Dolphins with a field goal, 16-13.

This being a Monday, the Pats-'Phins game was the only NFL game scheduled. This being December, no MLB games were scheduled. Only one game was played in the NBA: The Seattle SuperSonics beat the San Antonio Spurs, 104-99 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

Only one game was played in the NHL: The Calgary Flames beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-2 at the Forum in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California.

November 26, 1982: Holmes vs. Cobb: The Bloodbath That Changed Boxing

November 26, 1982: Larry Holmes wins a unanimous decision over Randall "Tex" Cobb at the Astrodome in Houston, and retains the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

This fight was broadcast live on ABC on the night after Thanksgiving, meaning families may have been watching it together. It was 13 days after Korean boxer Kim Duk-koo was fatally injured in a live televised fight with Lightweight Champion Ray "Boom-Boom" Mancini.

Between them, these 2 fights led to changes in boxing. The maximum of 15 rounds was reduced to 12. A standing eight-count for any knockdown was required. And any fighter knocked out automatically had his license suspended for 45 days, for his own safety.

Howard Cosell, for years ABC's lead boxing announcer, called the Holmes-Cobb fight. He was so appalled by the beating the Cobb took that he vowed never to broadcast another professional prizefight. He kept that vow, as the only fights he broadcast thereafter were the amateur ones, with tighter rules, in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Upon hearing that Cosell was quitting boxing, Cobb said, "I can do my sport no greater service."

As of November 26, 2022, Holmes and Cobb are both still alive. As far as I know, neither has been mentally impaired due to boxing.

*

November 26, 1982 was a Friday: As I said, the day after Thanksgiving. Baseball was out of season. The NFL was in midweek. There were 2 college football games that day, both of them major rivalries, and both clashes between highly-ranked teams. Number 2 Penn State beat Number 5 University of Pittsburgh, 19-10 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. And Number 3 Nebraska beat Number 11 Oklahoma at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Penn State was then an independent, and thus had no Conference Championship to win. Nebraska clinched the Big Eight Conference title. Penn State went to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, which became a de facto National Championship game, because they were playing the Southeastern Conference Champions, Number 1 Georgia. Nebraska went to the Orange Bowl in Miami, and played Number 13 Louisiana State University.

The games were being played at the same time, the Orange Bowl on NBC and the Sugar Bowl on ABC, and Nebraska's only hope of winning the National Championship was to blow LSU out, and hope that Penn State beat previously undefeated Georgia in a dull game. Instead, it was a very good game, although for those of us who don't like Penn State, it was a bad result: The Nittany Lions won, 27-23. And the Tigers held the Cornhuskers to another classic, with Nebraska winning, 21-20. So Penn State got the National Championship.

There were 8 games in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Phoenix Suns, 110-99 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Utah Jazz, 137-103 at the Boston Garden.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 120-102 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 132-118 in overtime at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan.

* The Washington Bullets beat the Indiana Pacers, 87-85 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Chicago Bulls, 122-120 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio. George Gervin led all scorers on the day with 44 points.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the San Diego Clippers, 117-115 at the San Diego Sports Arena (now the Pechanga Arena). Magic Johnson scored 32 points.

* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Denver Nuggets, 127-106 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

And there were 6 games in the NHL:

* The New Jersey Devils and the Vancouver Canucks played to a tie, 4-4 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Hartford Whalers, 4-3 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Washington Capitals beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 5-3 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landcover, Maryland.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the St. Louis Blues, 8-6 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins and the Minnesota North Stars played to a tie, 6-6 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Edmonton Oilers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 6-5 at the Winnipeg Arena.

October 6, 1978: Thurman Munson, the Damaged Man

October 6, 1978: Game 3 of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium. The winner will take a 2-1 lead in the series. George Brett of the Kansas City Royals hits 3 home runs off Jim "Catfish" Hunter of the New York Yankees, including when leading off the game.

Reggie Jackson, "Mr. October," as he had off Al Hrabosky, "the Mad Hungarian," to clinch Game 1 of the series, hit a home run in the 2nd inning. But Brett homered again in the 3rd, to make it 2-1 Royals. With 1 out in the bottom of the 4th, Thurman Munson doubled. Reggie singled him home to tie it. Lou Piniella grounded to short, and Freddie Patek threw it away, allowing Reggie to score and Piniella to make it to 3rd. It was 3-2 Yankees.

Graig Nettles then flew to left. Clint Hurdle caught it, Piniella tagged up to try to score, and Hurdle made a perfect throw to nail him at the plate. Ron Luciano, the most demonstrative umpire of all time, pumped his fist to call Piniella "Out! Out! Out!" The inning was over.

"Sweet Lou" had a fit, with what a pro-Yankee writer called a "Wild Man of Borneo" act. I was 8 years old at the time, and already a huge Yankee fan, and I was sure the Yankees were robbed. Seeing the play again many years later, I saw that Lou was out by a mile.

And then Brett led off the top of the 5th with his 3rd home run of the game. Catfish, who had overcome a shoulder injury to be vital for the Yankees down the stretch, pitched 6 innings. Other than Brett's homers, he had allowed no runs on 4 hits, so it wasn't like he was pitching badly. He just got beat 3 times.

Reggie had hit 3 in Game 6 of the previous year's World Series, and Babe Ruth had hit 3 homers in a World Series game twice. This was only the 4th time anybody had hit 3 in any postseason game, and nobody had ever done 4. (Through the 2021 season, that's still true.) Yankee fans were worried that this would be it.

Reggie drove Roy White home with a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 6th, to retake the lead, 4-3. Manager Bob Lemon, himself a Hall of Fame pitcher, brought Rich "Goose" Gossage in to relieve Catfish in the 7th. In the top of the 8th, he gave up a double to Amos Otis, gave up an RBI single to Darrell Porter, struck Pete LaCock out, gave up a single to Hurdle, and gave up an RBI groundout to Al Cowens, before getting Patek to ground out to end it, but it was 5-4 Royals.

With 1 out in the bottom of the 8th, White singled. Munson stepped up against Royals reliever Doug Bird. Munson was, and remains, the only Yankee to win the American League's Rookie of the Year award and its Most Valuable Player award, in 1970 and 1976 respectively. He was named the Yankees' Captain in 1976. From 1975 to 1977, he had 3 straights seasons of at least a .300 batting average and 100 runs batted in. But he had battled injuries, to his shoulders and his knees. Statistically, 1978 was a down year for him.

(Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio all debuted before the Rookie of the Year award did, in 1947. Mickey Mantle did not have an exceptional rookie season. Derek Jeter won the Rookie of the Year in 1996, but was cheated out of at least 2 and possibly 3 MVP awards.) (UPDATE: Aaron Judge was named ROY in 2017 and MVP in 2022, '24 and '25.) 

Munson crushed a pitch, 470 feet to left-center field. Appropriately, it went into Monument Park. On ABC, broadcasting along with Keith Jackson and the still-active pitcher Tom Seaver, Howard Cosell, who admired Munson, laughed: "Ho-ho! The damaged man!" The Goose finished it off in the 9th, and the Yankees won, 6-5.

This is what I love most about Munson: At the moment when the Yankees most needed him to hit a home run, the banged-up Captain hit the longest home run of his career.

At this point, the only players honored in Monument Park were the big 4: Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle – along with owner Jacob Ruppert, general manager Ed Barrow, managers Miller Huggins, Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, and the plaque honoring the Mass delivered by Pope Paul VI.

The next Plaque to be dedicated would be the one for the Mass delivered by Pope John Paul II, but the next one for a Yankee would be, sadly, for Munson himself.

Since Brett, 3 homers in an LCS game has been done in the American League by Adam Kennedy, of the team then known as the Anaheim Angels, against the Minnesota Twins, in Game 5 in 2002; and in the National League by Kiké Hernández, of the Los Angeles Dodgers, against the Chicago Cubs, in Game 5 in 2017.

*

October 6, 1978 was a Friday. Football was in midweek. It was a little early for the NBA, NHL and World Hockey Association seasons to start. So the only other score on this historic day was in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series.

The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 9-4 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Steve Carlton not only outpitched Don Sutton -- a fellow member of the Hall of Fame and the 300 Win and 3,000 Strikeout Clubs -- but hit a home run in his own cause. Greg Luzinski also homered for the Phils, Steve Garvey for the Dodgers. But this would be the only game the Phils would win in this series, as the Dodgers clinched the next day. The Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series.

Also on this day, on CBS, the Wonder Woman TV series airs the episode "The Deadly Sting." Agent Diana Prince (Lynda Carter) investigates the manipulation of college football players into throwing their games. Footage of Notre Dame games against Texas and USC was used. Among the guest stars are former Los Angeles Rams stars Roman Gabriel and Deacon Jones, former TV Tarzan Ron Ely, and, as a player before he became a Coach, Craig T. Nelson.

September 21, 1970: "Monday Night Football" Premieres

September 21, 1970: Monday Night Football premieres on ABC. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and ABC Sports chairman Roone Arledge had gotten together, and brought the NFL not just to the one major network at the time that didn't have NFL broadcasts -- in this 1st season after the NFL-AFL merger, CBS had the NFC games, and NBC had the AFC -- but to prime-time television.

Anybody in the entire country who was a football fan could watch a single game, and, as Terry Bradshaw, then a rookie quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers, would later put it, "Monday Night Football was an event!" As much as anything -- the NFL's TV package overall, the replacement of the NFL Championship Game with the Super Bowl, the pace of the sport, or its violence -- MNF is what elevated the NFL above Major League Baseball as America's favorite sports league.

The 1st broadcast team was Keith Jackson, ABC's lead college football announcer; Howard Cosell, the ABC sportscaster with the huge ego and the following to match; and Don Meredith, the recently-retired quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys.

Cosell, once a great newspaper columnist, and already the host of a 15-minute Sunday night wrapup show on ABC, was an easy choice for Arledge. He also wanted to pull Curt Gowdy from NBC, but failed; then tried to pull Vin Scully, also the voice of baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers, from NBC, but failed; then tried to pull Jack Buck, also the voice of baseball's St. Louis Cardinals, from CBS, but Buck felt he'd been treated badly in a previous stint with ABC, and refused. So Arledge settled for Jackson, a Southern gentleman broadcaster in the mold of baseball's Red Barber and Ernie Harwell.

Arledge knew he wanted a former player for the 3-man team, and wanted former New York Giants superstar running back Frank Gifford, who had been a sideline reporter for CBS. But his contract with them was ironclad, so he suggested Meredith, who won Arledge over.

The 1st game was at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Cleveland Browns were a good team, having reached the last 2 pre-merger NFL Championship Games, and having won the Championship as recently as 1964. But they weren't an especially interesting team, nor in a major media market.

Fortunately for ABC, their opponents were the New York Jets, with the biggest name in pro football, Joe Namath, at quarterback. Namath had taken the Jets to a stunning upset victory in the Super Bowl 2 seasons earlier, and was a ratings magnet, a guarantee as sure as the one he made that the Jets would win that Super Bowl.

Municipal Stadium was jammed with 85,703 fans, and they saw Homer Jones -- who, a few years earlier, as a receiver for the New York Giants, had invented "spiking" the football upon scoring a touchdown -- return Jim Turner's 2nd-half kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown, which put the Browns up, 21-7. Jackson yelled, "He could go all the way!" That expression was not yet widely known to football fans, but it became so.

Oddly, this time, Jones didn't spike the ball: He just dropped it out of his hands, like players used to do. Or, sometimes, they would hand the ball to the closest official. Or, and this was more common in the early days of the game, they would just bend down and put the ball on the ground, which is where the word "touchdown" comes from.

Namath led a comeback, and it was 24-21 Cleveland with 47 seconds left to play, and the ball on the Jet 25. A field goal would only have tied it, and not until 1974 would the NFL have regular-season overtime. Namath threw a pass, and it was intercepted by Billy Andrews, who returned it for a touchdown. The Browns won, 31-21. An ABC camera caught Namath hanging his head, and Jackson said, "There's a depressed Joe Namath."

Not depressed in the least was ABC: They got a 33 share, meaning 1/3rd of the national TV audience was watching, a big improvement over their Monday night movies. A big feature that drew fans in was the halftime show, which featured highlights of all the preceding day's games, narrated by the often-imitated, but thankfully never-duplicated Cosell.

Keith Jackson was the greatest announcer that college football has ever had, but he never really fit in with the pro game. So, in 1971, when Gifford's CBS contract ran out, Keith went back to the campuses, and Frank was in. That was the triad that made Monday night famous: Cosell and, as he put it, Giffaroo and Dandyroo.

Cosell was usually the smartest man in the room, and never let anybody forget it. He frequently belittled Meredith as a Texas hick. Finally, Meredith had enough, and left, spending the 1974, '75 and '76 seasons with NBC.

In preseason games in 1974, former Kansas City Chiefs defensive back Fred "the Hammer" Williamson was tried, but proved unacceptable to his boothmates and the censors. In time for the regular season, Arledge hired former Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras, who had turned to acting, and had just played Mongo in Blazing Saddles. He proved more capable, but not much more.

ABC even reflected its trouble finding a 3rd man in the booth by airing an episode of The Odd Couple in which New York sports columnist Oscar Madison (played by Jack Klugman) was hired for a tryout game, even though the character hated Cosell (making his 2nd appearance as himself on the show), and Cosell embarrassed Oscar on the air, leading to Oscar's firing. (Gifford did not appear in the episode.)

In 1975, Johnny Pearson's song "Heavy Action" became the show's theme song, and it remains the most famous, as familiar to NFL fans as the classical marches favored by NFL Films' highlight packages. In 1989, the show debuted a new theme song, with country music star Hank Williams Jr. reworking his 1984 hit "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" as "All My Rowdy Friends Are Here On Monday Night." But "Heavy Action" was still used as the preview music, usually with Gifford narrating.

Meredith returned to ABC and MNF in 1977, but his contract called for him to do 14 games a year. When the NFL expanded to a 16-game schedule the next season, he chose which 2 games he wouldn't do, and ABC had to honor this. In 1979, to work around this, ABC hired recently-retired Minnesota Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton.

On December 9, 1974, the game was the Washington Redskins beating the Los Angeles Rams at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Cosell found out that former Beatle John Lennon and outgoing California Governor Ronald Reagan were at the game. He managed to snag interviews with both of them, and even introduced them to each other (off-camera). In spite of their wildly divergent politics, the meeting was cordial. Cosell asked Lennon, born and raised in the football (soccer)-mad city of Liverpool, England, what he thought of American football, and he said, "It makes rock concerts look like tea parties." 

Cosell was already 45 years old when The Beatles arrived in America, so he didn't particularly care; and he must have known that Lennon was sick of answering the question; but Cosell also knew that many Beatle fans were watching, and that he would be a poor journalist if he didn't ask it, so he did: "Will The Beatles ever get back together?" Lennon had usually said they wouldn't. This time, he gave fans hope by saying, "You never know."

Six years later, almost to the day, on December 8, 1980, a definitive answer came. By this point, Reagan was President-elect. This was a game with just Cosell and Gifford, at the Orange Bowl in Miami, a game the Miami Dolphins ended up winning in overtime over the New England Patriots. The announcers were handed a news bulletin saying that Lennon had been shot and killed.

Cosell, his background in straight journalism, asked whether they should announce it themselves, or wait for ABC headquarters in New York to break away to a special report. Gifford talked him into announcing it, and so, millions of people first heard about the death of John Lennon from Howard Cosell.

On September 5, 1983, MNF covered the Dallas Cowboys' win over the Washington Redskins at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Alvin Garrett of the Redskins caught a pass and ran it in for a touchdown, and Cosell said, "Look at that little monkey go!" Cosell had called other short-of-stature players a "little monkey," and even used the expression on his grandchildren. This time, though, the subject of the expression was black, and a firestorm erupted. After all the things Cosell had said and done over the years, ABC accepted that the end of the season was time for him to go.

That same year, former Buffalo Bills running back O.J. Simpson replaced Tarkenton as the fill-in for Meredith, or for Cosell when ABC had him broadcast baseball's Playoffs. Also that year, Simpson was asked by director James Cameron to star in a science fiction film, The Terminator. But the studio rejected the idea, thinking that nobody would accept O.J., enormously popular for his football playing and TV commercials, as a killer. In 1995, Cosell died, and Simpson was acquitted of a double murder.

For 1984, the broadcast trio was Gifford, Meredith and Simpson. Ironically, Meredith's performance seemed to weaken without Cosell to banter with. In 1985, Simpson was out, switching to NBC; and Gifford and Meredith were joined by Namath.

In 1986, ABC switched to a 2-man booth, with Gifford and their lead baseball announcer, Al Michaels. After a single season with that setup, former St. Louis Cardinals offensive tackle Dan Dierdorf joined them. Former Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Lynn Swann became the main sideline reporter. This setup would remain in place until 1998, when Gifford left in the wake of a sex scandal.

In 2006, The Walt Disney Company, which had bought both ABC and ESPN, shifted MNF to ESPN, and it has aired there ever since. In 2011, inappropriate comments about President Barack Obama in an interview by Hank Williams Jr. led ESPN to drop his theme song, bringing it back in 2017, once Obama was out of office.

Today, former Fox broadcast duo Joe Buck (son of Jack Buck and formerly Fox's lead baseball announcer) and Troy Aikman (like Meredith, a former Dallas Cowboy quarterback) are the lead announcers for Monday Night Football. It remains prime time TV's most popular sports program, although it will never be like it was under Howard, Frank and Dandy Don -- or even Frank and Al and Dan.

Of the 26 teams in existence in 1970, the last team not to have appeared on Monday Night Football was the Buffalo Bills, on October 29, 1973, a 23-14 win over the Kansas City Chiefs.

Of the 28 teams in existence in 1976, the Dallas Cowboys have appeared the most, 93 times, going 54-39; the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have appeared the least, 27 times, although they have a winning record on Monday night, 15-12; the Cowboys have won the most, although their 54 wins are followed close behind by the San Francisco 49ers with 53 and the Pittsburgh Steelers with 52; the New York Giants have lost the most, going 25-46-1, although the Washington Redskins/Commanders are right behind, at 32-45, and so are the Miami Dolphins, at 45-44; the Seattle Seahawks have the best winning percentage, .705, 31-13; and the Cincinnati Bengals are just behind the Giants with the worst winning percentage, their 13-26 giving them a .333 to the Giants' .354. 

The most common matchup: The Raiders and the Denver Broncos have faced each other 20 times, with the Broncos leading 10-9-1.

*

September 21, 1970 was, of course, a Monday. The Browns-Jets game was the only NFL game played that day. These 9 Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 5-2 at Yankee Stadium. Jim Lyttle hit a home run in support of Fritz Peterson.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 2-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. The Sox runs scored on solo homers by Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Mark Belanger, one of the best-fielding shortstops ever, but also one of the worst hitters in the game, went against type, and singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 12th inning. Boog Powell hit a home run off Joe Niekro. Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson each went 1-for-4.

For the Tigers, Al Kaline went 2-for-6 with an RBI. Kaline was a Baltimore native, and, in 1974, playing in his hometown, collected his 3,000th career hit.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Houston Astros, 2-0 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Don Gullett (5 innings), Clay Carroll (2) and Wayne Granger (2) combined on a 4-hit shutout. This willingness to pull pitchers quickly and make full use of his bullpen gave Sparky Anderson, a rookie manager for the Reds at age 36 but already with white hair, the nickname "Captain Hook." But it also helped him become a Pennant-winning manager in his rookie year, as the Reds reached the World Series, losing it to the Orioles.

* The San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Juan Marichal pitched a 6-hit shutout. Willie Mays went 3-for-4 with a home run and 4 RBIs. It was his 2,690th game played in center field, setting a new major league record, which still stands. I have a separate entry for this event.

* A doubleheader was split at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Chicago White Sox won the opener, 8-4. The Kansas City Royals won the nightcap, 8-2.

* The California Angels beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 7-6 at Milwaukee County Stadium.

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Minnesota Twins, 6-0 at the Oakland Coliseum. Vida Blue pitched a no-hitter, missing a perfect game only through a 4th-inning walk of Harmon Killebrew, and outpitching Jim Perry. Bert Campaneris hit a home run, and Reggie Jackson went 0-for-3 with a walk.

Blue was just getting warmed up: From September 11, 1970 to August 15, 1971, he was as good as any pitcher in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era, going 24-4 with an ERA of 1.66. For the 1971 season, he went 24-8, and was named the American League Most Valuable Player. But he held out at the start of the 1972 season, and for a man playing for a team owned by Charlie Finley, that was a huge mistake. He was often good after that, but was never great again.