September 30, 1964: The Phillie Phlop Is Completed

Unused game program from the 1964 World Series,

which was to be sold at Connie Mack Stadium,

with the other flag blank, since the opponent was yet to be determined.

September 30, 1964: The Philadelphia Phillies complete what remains the most stunning regular-season collapse in Major League Baseball history, losing their 10th straight game, 8-5 to the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. 

Going into the games of September 21, the Phillies led the National League by 6 1/2 games. There were 12 games left. Their Magic Number to clinch the Pennant was 6: All they had to do was win half of their remaining games, 6 out of 12, and it wouldn't have mattered what any other team did. The Phils would have won the Pennant.

Unused 1964 World Series press pin for the Phillies

Instead, the following happened:

* 1. September 21, at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia: Cincinnati Reds 1, Phillies 0. The only run came in the top of the 6th inning, when Hiraldo "Chico" Ruiz stole home plate, while Frank Robinson, the greatest power hitter the Reds franchise has ever had, was at the plate. It would have been an incredibly dumb move had it failed. But it worked. "The Chico Ruiz Game" has haunted Phillies fans ever since.

* 2. September 22, at Connie Mack Stadium: Reds 9, Phillies 2. This time, Robinson did hit a home run, and Chris Short, 17-7 going into the game, didn't get out of the 5th inning.

* 3. September 23, at Connie Mack Stadium: Reds 6, Phillies 4. This time, it was Ruiz hitting a home run, and Vada Pinson 2 of them.

* 4. September 24, at Connie Mack Stadium: Milwaukee Braves 5, Phillies 3. Jim Bunning came into the game 18-5, but lost.

* 5. September 25, at Connie Mack Stadium: Braves 7, Phillies 5. Manager Gene Mauch seemed to have pushed the right buttons all season long, until now. In this game, he started Short on just 2 days' rest, and he pitched 6 shutout innings, but allowed 2 runs in the 7th and 1 in the 8th. Johnny Callison homered for the Phils in the bottom of the 8th, momentarily saving them.

Both teams scored 2 runs in the 10th, the Braves on a home run by Joe Torre, the Phils on an inside-the-park home run by eventual NL Rookie of the Year Richie Allen (who hadn't yet begun to insist upon being called "Dick Allen"). But a bad throw by catcher Clay Dalrymple on a stolen base by Gene Oliver allowed the Braves to win it the 12th.

* 6. September 26, at Connie Mack Stadium: Braves 6, Phillies 4. The Phils led 4-0 after 2 innings, and 4-3 going into the 9th, with Art Mahaffey putting in a good start on full rest. But Bobby Shantz, the former Philadelphia Athletics ace back in his hometown, couldn't hold the lead, due in part to an error by 2nd baseman Tony Taylor, and Rico Carty hit a bases-loaded triple. It was Shantz's 39th birthday, and he made only 1 more big-league appearance, 3 days later. Hank Aaron went 2-for-5. Joe Torre went 3-for-4.

* 7. September 27, at Connie Mack Stadium: Braves 14, Phillies 8. Callison hit 3 home runs, helping to cement his case as the NL Most Valuable Player, should the Phils win the Pennant. But Bunning, sent out by Mauch on 2 days' rest, didn't get out of the 4th inning. He and his replacement 7 allowed straight hits, and allowed runs to score on 6 straight plays. Torre hit a home run (although not in the 4th).

There was a small omen for the Phillies: The pitcher who relieved Bunning would go on to become one of the most important figures in team history. He was a 20-year-old righthander from nearby Newport, Delaware. His name was Dallas Green.

* 8. September 28, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis: Cardinals 5, Phillies 1. Again, Mauch sent Short out on 2 days' rest, against Bob Gibson. Future Yankee broadcaster and NL President Bill White went 3-for-4 with an RBI. Future Cardinal broadcaster Mike Shannon went 1-for-3 with 3 RBIs.

* 9. September 29, at Busch Stadium: Cardinals 4, Phillies 2. Dennis Bennett was fully-rested, but didn't get out of the 2nd inning. For the Cards, Ray Sadecki got his 20th win of the season.

* 10. September 30, at Busch Stadium: Cardinals 8, Phillies 5. Tim McCarver hits a home run for the Cards, while Alex Johnson hits one for the Phils. Ironically, the winning pitcher for the Cards is Curt Simmons, whose drafting into the Korean War in 1950 cost him the chance to pitch for the Phils in their last World Series to this point, in 1950. Simmons also turned out to be the last surviving player from those 1950 Phillies "Whiz Kids."

None of it would have mattered if the Reds hadn't won 9 straight from September 20 to 27 (3 of them over the Phillies); and the Cardinals hadn't won 8 straight from September 24 to 30 (the last 3 over the Phillies). The Cards' Ken Boyer ended up winning the MVP.

Now, despite a Rookie of the Year season from Allen, a near-MVP season from Callison, and a near-Cy Young Award season from Bunning, they are 2 1/2 behind the Cardinals, while the Cincinnati Reds are 1 game back. The Phils have 2 games left, the Cards 3, the Reds 4. The Phils could still win the Pennant if they win their last 2 games, although a 3-way tie for the Pennant is still possible.

It was not to be. And, for those people in the Delaware Valley old enough to remember the Phillie Phlop of '64, not even the World Series wins of 1980 and 2008 could erase the scar on their hearts with "1964" branded onto it.

In 1978, the Phillies founded the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame, electing a Phillies figure every year since, and a Philadelphia Athletics figure every year from 1978 to 2003. From the 1964 team, they have elected Jim Bunning, Chris Short, Dick Allen, Johnny Callison, Tony Taylor, general manager John Quinn, and, for what he did as their later manager, Dallas Green. Richie Ashburn, by then a broadcaster, has also been elected. Interestingly, they have not elected manager Gene Mauch. Allen, Callison, Ashburn and Campbell have also been elected to the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame.

*

September 30, 1964 was a Wednesday. These other baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium. This was crucial, because the American League race was also coming down to the wire with multiple teams still in it. The Yankees would end up winning the Pennant by just 1 game over Chicago and 2 over Baltimore.

The Yankees won the opener, 7-6. Mickey Mantle and Joe Pepitone hit home runs for the Yankees, Al Kaline for the Tigers. Ralph Terry was the winning pitcher, in relief of Al Downing. The Yankees won the nightcap, 11-8. Kaline homered for the Tigers again, and Bill Roman also hit one. But Tom Tresh hit one for the Pinstripes. Jim Bouton, later the author of Ball Four, started and won.

* The New York Mets lost to the Milwaukee Braves, 6-5 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Denis Menke won the game with a home run off Willard Hunter in the bottom of the 12th inning. Hank Fischer started, Warren Spahn pitched the 9th and 10th innings in relief, and Clay Carroll, later a bullpen mainstay of the Cincinnati Big Red Machine, was the winning pitcher.

Hank Aaron went 0-for-4, but he did draw 2 walks. Joe Torre went 1-for-6 with an RBI. Jim Hickman went 5-for-6 with an RBI for the Mets, and Charley Smith went 3-for-6 with 2 RBIs, but it wasn't enough.

* The Cleveland Indians shut the Boston Red Sox out for the entirety of a doubleheader at Fenway Park, 5-0 and 3-0. A young Luis Tiant, later to pitch so well for the Red Sox, allowed them just 4 hits in the 1st game, 2 of them by Félix Mantilla.

Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4 in the 1st game, and didn't play in the 2nd; while Tony Conigliaro, just 19 years old, didn't play in the 1st game, and went 2-for-4 in the 2nd. But the rest of the Red Sox only got 5 hits off Sam McDowell in that 2nd game.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, but the 2 teams then in the Chesapeake region. The Baltimore Orioles won the 1st game, 8-4, with Jerry Adair hitting 2 homers. The Washington Senators won the 2nd game, 6-3. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 in each game, and had an RBI in the 1st one.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 1-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Jerry May singled home future Met World Series hero Donn Clendenon with the winning run -- in the top of the 16th inning. Roberto Clemente did not play. Nor did Willie Stargell. Jerry May got 3 hits, the entire rest of the Pirates only 2 -- in 16 innings. Chico Ruiz went 4-for-8, but the rest of the Reds lineup got only 5 hits. Pete Rose went 0-for-7. Frank Robinson went 1-for-4, and drew 3 walks.

The Reds' Jim Maloney, who would go on to take 2 no-hitters into the 10th inning the next season, keeping 1 but losing the other game in the 11th inning, here went 11 innings allowing no runs on 3 hits. The Pirates' Bob Veale went 12 1/3rd, allowing no runs on 7 hits. Veale struck out 16 batters, Maloney 13. The winning pitcher was Al McBean, the losing pitcher Lou Tsitouris.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Athletics, 6-1 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-4, but Jimmie Hall and Don Mincher homered for the Twins.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 2-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. A 2-hit shutout was pitched by -- no, not Sandy Koufax, and not Don Drysdale, but John Purdin. It was his 1st major league win. There would be only 5 more. Both Cub hits were by catcher Dick Bertell.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Houston Colt .45s, 2-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Houston 3rd baseman Bob Aspromonte made an error on Jim Davenport's grounder in the bottom of the 11th, allowing Tom Haller, who had homered earlier, to score the winning run. Willie Mays went 0-for-4, but did draw a walk. The next season, the Colt .45s would rename themselves the Houston Astros.

* And the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Angels were not scheduled for this day. The White Sox won their last 9 to finish within 1 of the Yankees, but it wasn't enough.

And in one of the best things that could have happened on any day, Italian actress Monica Bellucci was born.

September 23, 1969: "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid" Premieres

September 23, 1969: Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid premieres, with Paul Newman as Robert Leroy Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy; Robert Redford as Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid; and Katharine Ross as Etta Place, a.k.a. "The Sundance Woman." It was one of the earliest "revisionist Westerns," telling the story of the Wild West more like how it actually was, than the traditional, far simpler story.

Scriptwriter William Goldman and director George Roy Hill knew that the 1960s were changing things, so they made a Western for the times. They had the vision. Or, as Goldman had Newman/Cassidy say, "I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals."

The real Butch and Sundance were active in the Rocky Mountains, especially Utah and Wyoming, in the 1890s. Targeted by local sheriffs and -- "Who are those guys?" As it turned out, the Pinkerton detective agency -- in 1901, they fled to South America, and became farmers in Bolivia. In 1908, when that stopped panning out, they went back to robbery.

The story that we've all heard is that, on November 3, 1908, the Bolivian Army cornered them in a piazza, and beat them in a shootout. It's been said that Butch was an expert robber, but never killed anyone in his life, until the end, when he used his last 2 bullets on an already-wounded Sundance, and then on himself.

But it's also been said that the army caught someone else, and that Butch and Sundance survived, got away, and went back to America, and lived a while longer. Director George Roy Hill finished the last scene with them frozen and still fighting, with the sound of gunfire all around them, giving the illusion that, maybe, just maybe, they pulled off the million-to-one escape.

Lessons to be learned from this movie:

1. Nothing lasts forever, not even the Wild West.
2. Use enough dynamite, no more.
3. There are no rules in a knife fight.
4. The man who is the best at something might not be the best man at it for you.

5. Don't worry about being unable to swim when the fall will probably kill you.

6. Life, especially a life of crime, is harder in a foreign country, especially when the dominant language is not your first language.

7. If you got a woman who looks like a young Katharine Ross, and she says we should go home because it's too dangerous to stay where we are, go home.

8. Western movies rarely tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

*

September 23, 1969 was a Tuesday. These Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 8-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski hit 2 home runs, and American League Comeback Player of the Year Tony Conigliaro hit 1, knocking Mel Stottlemyre out of the box after 4 innings.

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2 at Shea Stadium. Bud Harrelson singled home the winning run against Bob Gibson in the bottom of the 11th inning. Tug McGraw was the winning pitcher, with 4 innings of relief of Jim McAndrew. Lou Brock went 2-for-6 in defeat. The next night, the Mets beat the Cards, 6-0, and clinched the National League Eastern Division title.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-3 with 2 walks. Willie Stargell went 0-for-5.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Baltimore Orioles, 3-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Orioles' only run came on a homer by Frank Robinson. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-3. But the O's, already having clinched the AL Eastern Division title, were doomed in this game by back-to-back bases-loaded walks of Ken Harrelson and Tony Horton by Tom Phoebus in the 3rd inning. Sam McDowell went the distance for the win.

* The Cincinnati Reds swept a doubleheader from the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-3 and 5-2. Over the 2 games, Pete Rose went 6-for-10 with a home run and 2 RBIs, and Johnny Bench went 1-for-6 with a walk and 2 RBIs.

* The Montreal Expos beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Ernie Banks went 0-for-4.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Royals, 6-2 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Harmon Killebrew went 1-for-3 with a walk. Rod Carew went 2-for-5.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros, 10-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Hank Aaron went 2-for-5 with 2 RBIs.

* The San Diego Padres beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-4 at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Willie Mays went 0-for-3 with a walk. The night before, he hit his 600th career home run against Mike Corkins of the Padres.

* The California Angels beat the Seattle Pilots, 5-4 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Following a home run by Don Mincher in the 4th inning, the Pilots took a 4-2 lead in the top of the 6th, but, if you read Ball Four by the since-traded Jim Bouton, you can probably guess what happened: The bullpen blew it in the bottom of the 6th.

* The Oakland Athletics swept a doubleheader from the Chicago White Sox at the Oakland Coliseum, 4-3 and 5-3. Reggie Jackson went 0-for-4 in the opener, but in the nightcap, he went 1-for-2 with 3 walks, his hit being his 47th home run of the season. In spite of his illustrious career, 47 would remain his career high.

* And the Detroit Tigers and the Washington Senators were rained out at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Senators swept, 8-4 and 7-4. Jim Hannan outpitched Denny McLain, and then the Senators beat Mickey Lolich. Al Kaline did not play in the 1st game, and went 1-for-5 in the 2nd game.

September 20, 1964: The Giants' Collapse and the Tittle Photo

September 20, 1964: The New York Giants lose to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 27-24 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh. Steeler defensive end John Baker hit Giant quarterback Y.A. Tittle hard enough to give him a concussion, crack his sternum, and injure the cartilage in his ribs. Defensive tackle Chuck Hinton intercepted the pass that Tittle threw on the play, and returned it for a touchdown.

Morris Berman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette took a picture of Tittle kneeling on the grass after the hit, blood dripping from his famously bald scalp. While the P-G refused to publish it, preferring what it called "action shots," Berman took it to Life magazine, which published it in its October 2, 1964 issue. The photo became iconic, with Charlton Heston re-enacting it while playing an aging quarterback in the 1969 film Number One.

There were no hard feelings for the hit: Baker later ran for Sheriff in Wake County, North Carolina, and Tittle went there to campaign for him during one of his re-election bids. He served 24 years.

But it was the beginning of the end, for Tittle and that generation of Giants. Under quarterback Charlie Conerly, with running back Frank Gifford, offensive tackle Roosevelt Brown, defensive end Andy Robustelli, linebacker Sam Huff, and safety Emlen Tunnell -- all but Conerly have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- the Giants won the NFL Championship in 1956.

They reached the NFL Championship Game again in 1958 and 1959, losing each time to the Baltimore Colts. After head coach Jim Lee Howell left, replaced by Allie Sherman, and replacing Conerly with San Francisco 49ers star Tittle, they reached the Championship Game again in 1961 and 1962, losing both to the Green Bay Packers, and in 1963, losing to the Chicago Bears. Tittle battled through injury and the cold in that '63 title game, but it was not to be, and it was the closest he ever came to winning a championship.

But, as the New York Yankees, with whom they shared Yankee Stadium, did shortly thereafter, the Giants all seemed to get old, or hurt, or both, at once. They finished 2-10-2 in 1964. "That was the end of the road," Tittle later said. "It was the end of my dream. It was over."

But, at the time, he held most of the major career passing records that would later be broken by Johnny Unitas, then Fran Tarkenton, then Brett Favre, then Peyton Manning, then Tom Brady: 4,395 passes, 2,427 completions, 33,070 yards, 242 touchdowns, and 39 rushing touchdowns for a quarterback.

The Giants wouldn't make the Playoffs again until 1981. They would win the Super Bowl for the 1986 season.

*

September 20, 1964 was a Sunday. These other NFL games were played:

* The San Francisco 49ers beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 28-24 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* The Dallas Cowboys beat the Washington Redskins, not yet their arch-rivals, 24-18 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

* The Cleveland Browns and the football version of the St. Louis Cardinals played to a tie, 33-33 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Baltimore Colts beat the Green Bay Packers, 21-20 at the new Green Bay City Stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Stadium would be renamed Lambeau Field the next year.

* The Chicago Bears beat the Minnesota Vikings, 34-28 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* And the Los Angeles Rams and the Detroit Lions played to a tie, 17-17 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

There were 2 games in the American Football League. The Buffalo Bills beat the Denver Broncos, 30-13 at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo. And the Boston Patriots beat the San Diego Chargers, 33-28 at Balboa Stadium in San Diego.

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Kansas City Athletics, 4-0 at Yankee Stadium. Jim Bouton pitched a 2-hit shutout. I guess he smoked them inside. That's a reference to his later book, Ball Four, which is appropriate, since the losing pitcher in this game turned out to be one of his 1969 Seattle Pilots teammates, John O'Donoghue. Mickey Mantle went 0-for-3 with a walk. Roger Maris went 1-for-4.

* The New York Mets lost to the Houston Colt .45s, 1-0 at Colt Stadium in Houston. The next year, the Colts became the Astros, and they moved next-door, into the Astrodome. Bob Bruce outpitched Tom Parsons. The only run scored on a sacrifice fly by Walt Bond, to score Joe Morgan in the bottom of the 7th.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Boston Red Sox, 12-4 at Fenway Park in Boston. Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI. Bob Allison went 2-for-5 with a home run, a walk and 4 RBIs. Tony Oliva went 4-for-5 with 3 RBIs. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Los Angeles Angels won the opener, 8-5. Bobby Knopp drove in 2 runs with a double in the top of the 10th inning. The Baltimore Orioles won the nightcap, 8-2. Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 3-for-8 with a home run and 5 RBIs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-6 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Lou Brock, Dick Groat and Mike Shannon hit home runs for the Cards. Frank Robinson went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Pete Rose went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs.

* A doubleheader was split at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Detroit Tigers won the 1st game, 6-5. The Cleveland Indians won the 2nd game, 7-2. Over the 2 games, Al Kaline went 2-for-7 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Washington Senators, 4-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Felipe Alou and Rico Carty hit home runs for the Braves. Hank Aaron did not play. Ernie Banks hit a home run for the Cubs.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Jim Bunning outpitched Jim Brewer. The Phillies now led the National League by 6 1/2 games, with 12 games left in the regular season. They lost their next 10 games.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Hal Lanier singled Tom Haller home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning. Willie Mays went 0-for-1, but had 3 walks. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-4 with a walk. Willie Stargell went 2-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs.

September 16, 1964: The 1st Female Broadcaster for an MLB Team

Betty Caywood interviews John O'Donoghue

(left) and Jim Gentile.

September 16, 1964: Betty Caywood is hired to provide color commentary on radio broadcasts of Kansas City Athletics games for the rest of the season. This makes her the 1st female broadcaster for a Major League Baseball team.

Born in Chicago in 1931, she grew up in Kansas City, and returned to the Chicago area to earn a degree in speech therapy from Northwestern University. She then worked as a weather reporter for a Chicago television station, where she was watched by A's owner Charlie Finley on his farm in northwestern Indiana.

She had also modeled, and taught speech and drama at a high school in Salina, Kansas, about 175 miles west of Kansas City. Divorced with 2 young children, she said modeling and broadcasting paid more than teaching.

Finley wasn't exactly progressive, but he'd do anything for good publicity (except spend more money). He hired her to do color commentary, alongside Monte Moore and George Bryson. "The idea is that putting a woman on the staff will appeal to the dolls," he told a newspaper reporter.

In her 1st game, the A's lost to the Boston Red Sox, 10-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Tony Conigliaro, the Sox' 19-year-old local phenom, hit 2 home runs. The Sox also got home runs from Bob Tillman and Dick Stuart, the 1st baseman so bad a fielder, he was nicknamed Doctor Strangeglove. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-4.

By her own admission, she didn’t know much about baseball then. Her next game was 2 days later, with the A's playing the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. When the legendary Red Barber called her over during the game, he asked who was batting. She had no idea. He asked who he was by his number, which was 7. She did not know it was Mickey Mantle. Barber asked her what the batter was doing. “I said striking,” she later said. Red told her it was "swinging."

Because her job was so unusual for a woman, she even appeared as a mystery guest on the CBS show What’s My Line? that week.

She called the A's last 16 games of the season, in which they went 3-13, although none of it was her fault: They went 57-105 for the season. She was not rehired for 1965, and wouldn't have taken the job if she was. Not many women have entered baseball commentary since. She joked, "I was so bad, there were no more."

She soon met Jordan Bushman, a principle with Bushman Construction Company. They married, raised 2 more children, and were married for over 50 years. At one point, she said, she got an offer to host The Today Show. But that would have meant moving to New York City, where she did not like the look of schools and living conditions for her children. "Barbara Walters owes me her job," she said.

On August 16, 2008, Betty Caywood Bushman broadcast one more game, invited to join the team on radio station WHB, broadcasting the Kansas City T-Bones, of Kansas City, Kansas, in the independent Northern League. She lived until 2020.

On August 3, 1993, Gayle Gardner became the first woman to do televised play-by-play of an MLB game. The Cincinnati Reds beat the Colorado Rockies, 5-4 in 10 innings at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. In 1997, Suzyn Waldman was hired as the 1st non-interim female broadcaster for an MLB team, joining the Yankees' radio team, providing color commentary alongside play-by-play announcer John Sterling. Through the 2022 season, she is still there.

UPDATE: In 2024, Jenny Cavnar was hired by the Oakland Athletics, as MLB's 1st female play-by-play announcer.

*

September 16, 1964 was a Wednesday. Actress Molly Shannon, best known as a castmember of Saturday Night Live, was born.

These other baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Los Angeles Angels, 9-4 at Yankee Stadium. Jim Bouton, future author of Ball Four, was the winning pitcher. This was when he could still smoke them inside. Roger Maris hit a home run. Mickey Mantle went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The New York Mets beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-0 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Tracy Stallard, best known for giving up Maris' 61st home run of the 1961 season, may have had his best game: He went the distance for the win, pitched a 5-hit shutout, walked only 2, and struck out 10, outpitching Gaylord Perry.

George Altman went 3-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Willie Mays did not play. Willie McCovey went 0-for-3. Duke Snider, in one of his last games as an active player, and looking very odd in a Giants uniform, did not reach base as a pinch-hitter.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Baltimore Orioles. 2-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Camilo Pascual outpitched Wally Bunker. Harmon Killebrew hit a home run. Brooks Robinson went 4-for-4, and drove in the Orioles' only run.

* The Cleveland Indians swept a doubleheader from the Washington Senators, 3-1 and 3-2 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Chicago White Sox outpitched the Detroit Tigers, 4-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 0-for-4.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Frank Robinson went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Pete Rose went 1-for-5. Ernie Banks went 1-for-3 with an RBI. Ron Santo hit a home run.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Hank Aaron did not play. Joe Torre went 0-for-4. But Denis Menke, a prototypical good-field/no-hit 2nd baseman for the era, drove in all the Braves' runs with a home run. Lou Brock went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Houston Colt .45os beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-5 at Colt Stadium in Houston. The day before, the Phillies were 88-57, and led the National League by 6 games with 17 games to play. From this game onward, they went 4-13, and blew the Pennant. The next year, the Colts moved into the Astrodome, and renamed themselves the Houston Astros.

* And the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-5 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Vern Law was the winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-3 with a walk.

September 14, 1978: Jim Bouton Completes His Comeback

September 14, 1978: The Atlanta Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The winning pitcher is Jim Bouton.

In 1962, '63 or '64, seeing Bouton listed as the winning pitcher of a game would not have been a surprise. From 1965 to 1970, it would have been a surprise, but not a big one.

Bouton hadn't won a game in 8 years. And it wasn't because he'd been losing for 8 years straight.

He was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1939, and grew up in nearby Bergen County until the family moved to the suburbs of Chicago. He pitched at Western Michigan University, and was signed by the New York Yankees. When he reached the major leagues in 1962, he was given uniform Number 56, a very high number for the time. Later that season, clubhouse manager Pete Sheehy said he could now receive a smaller number, recommending 29. Jim said that he would rather keep 56, to remind him of just how difficult it is to stay in the major leagues.

The Yankees won the World Series in 1962, and Bouton, 7-7 that season, got a ring. They won the Pennant in 1963, and he went 21-7. The won the Pennant again in 1964, and he went 18-13, winning 2 more games in the World Series, but the Yankees lost. Still, at age 25, his future looked limitless.

Then the limits came. In 1965, all the Yankee stars seemed to get old or hurt, or both, all at once. Bouton hurt his elbow, and his great fastball was gone. He was left exposed in the 1969 expansion draft, and the Seattle Pilots chose him, converting him to a reliever with a knuckleball that they didn't really trust.

Jim began keeping a diary of the 1969 season. In it, he noted that, contrary to their public image, where ballplayers were all nice guys who never swore, never cheated on their wives, never drank anything stronger than a milkshake, had normal hobbies like hunting and fishing, and were always pro-God and pro-America, could be the other way around. There had always been a great amount of immaturity among athletes, and Jim wrote about it. He also wrote about how team management hurt players, in ways large and small.

He also wrote about how he was frustrated that the Pilots only used him in non-pressure situations, until trading him to the Houston Astros in late August. The Astros were only a little better in this regard, but Jim seemed happier. The Pilots went bankrupt, were bought, and moved, and became the Milwaukee Brewers for 1970.

The diary, under the title Ball Four, was published the next June, with saucy excerpts printed in Look magazine in May. The public reaction was horrible. Jim was booed in every ballpark. When they played the Cincinnati Reds, Pete Rose yelled from one dugout to the other, "Fuck you, Shakespeare!"

When the Astros came into New York to play the Mets, Daily News sports columnist Dick Young, once liberal but grown conservative and nasty in his middle age -- his backstab of Tom Seaver on behalf of Mets management was yet to come -- wrote that Jim had become "a social leper." That night, before the game, Dick came to Jim, and Jim said the comment didn't bother him. Dick said, "I'm glad you didn't take it personally." That became the title of Jim's sequel book.

Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn summoned Jim to his Midtown office. He told Jim to disavow the book before it could be published in full form, say that he'd made a lot of it up, or that Shecter had made a lot of it up, or that Shecter had manipulated him into saying the controversial things.

Jim refused to lie, and wouldn't back down. He said it was all true. He said that any player whose marriage was now on the rocks because of what he wrote was probably not in a particularly strong marriage anyway. He struck back, and said that he purposely left a lot of things out, like certain players going for underage girls (which as we have since seen, may have included the aforementioned Rose), or spouting racist and anti-Semitic remarks, and that he was actually trying to protect the sport from what would have happened had he named names with such things.

Like boxer Muhammad Ali, track star Tommie Smith and baseball player Curt Flood at the time, and like football quarterback Colin Kaepernick many years later, Jim was willing to stand for something, even if it meant sacrificing everything.

He said the backlash wasn't getting to him. But on July 29, with a record of 4-6 and an ERA of 5.40, despite having pitched decently in 9 of his last 11 outings, he was sent down to the minor leagues. The knuckleball didn't work there, either.

Finally, Jim got an interesting offer: Al Primo, inventor of the "Eyewitness News" format, had gone to WABC-Channel 7 in New York, and wanted Jim, with his willingness to tell the truth and use his sense of humor, to be his sports anchor. On August 12, the Astros, probably glad to be rid of the bad publicity, gave Jim his unconditional release, and he spent the next 5 years doing sports behind anchors Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel.

He left TV journalism, and announced a comeback. In 1977, he went back to the Pacific Northwest, and signed with the Portland Mavericks, in the Class A Northwest League. Getting the knuckleball to work again, he did well enough there that Ted Turner signed him to a contract with the Atlanta Braves. Jim was assigned to the Savannah Braves of the Class AA Southern League, and did well enough there to become a September callup. He had become, in his own words, the 1st player to make the major leagues twice.

On September 10, 1978, at age 39, he put on Braves uniform Number 56, took the mound at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, started against the defending National League Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, and went 5 innings, allowing 6 runs, and ended up as the losing pitcher.

Four days later, the experiment was redeemed: He started against the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park, allowed 1 run, unearned, in 6 innings, and the Braves beat the Giants 4-1. Ironically, while the Giants' run was unearned, it was on a throwing error by Jim. The Braves got a run on a suicide squeeze bunt by Glenn Hubbard, another on a single by a rookie named Dale Murphy, another on a double by Jerry Royster, and one more on a single by Hubbard. Jim had gone without a major league win between July 11, 1970 and September 14, 1978 -- 8 years, 2 months and 3 days.

He made 3 more starts: A no-decision against the Astros in Houston, a tough loss to the Reds in Atlanta, and a battering against the Reds in Cincinnati. That was on September 29, 1978, his true major league finale. In one of those games, Rose, who, earlier in the season, had collected his 3,000th career hit and had a 44-game hitting streak, hit a home run off Bouton, seemingly making his point.

But, much more so, Bouton had made his point. But an unintended consequence of his comeback was that he fell below .500 for his career: His 1978 record of 1-3 (with an ERA of 4.97, an ERA+ of 83, and a WHIP of 1.586) dropped him, lifetime, from 61-60 to 62-63. His final ERA was 3.57, his ERA+ 99, his WHIP 1.264.

So Rose got the last laugh, right? Well, Bouton spent the rest of his life still eligible to participate in professional baseball. In 1989, Rose was permanently banned from the sport. He still is.

Jim continued to be an iconoclast, accepting interviews about Ball Four, until stricken with a debilitating illness in 2012. He died in 2019, 50 years after starting the book.

UPDATE: Rose died in 2024. Shortly thereafter, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred reinstated him.

*

September 14, 1978 was a Thursday. This was also the day that the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy premiered. I have a separate entry for that event. Also, Ron DeSantis, a Republican elected Governor of Florida in 2018, and definitely not a man that Jim Bouton would have liked, was born on this day.

These other Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 4-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Graig Nettles hit 2 home runs, and Reggie Jackson went 1-for-4, in support of Ed Figueroa. It was his 15th win of the season, on the way to becoming the 1st, and still the only, Puerto Rican pitcher to win 20 games in a season.

* The New York Mets beat the Montreal Expos, 7-6 at Shea Stadium.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 11-5 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt went 2-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-4 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Willie Stargell went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs. Lou Brock did not play.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-3 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Sox were still choking, before rebounding to get back into a last-day tie with the Yankees in the American League Eastern Division. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-4.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Robin Yount hit a home run. Rookie Paul Molitor did not play. Eddie Murray went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-1 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. George Brett went 1-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.

* The California Angels beat the Texas Rangers, 16-1 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. The Angels scored 13 runs in the top of the 9th inning. Lyman Bostock, Rick Miller, Brian Downing and Ron Jackson each had 3 hits for the Halos, including a home run by Jackson. Just 10 days later, Bostock would be dead, shot in a case of mistaken identity.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-1 at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Dave Winfield went 3-for-4. Johnny Bench went 1-for-4. Pete Rose? He went 2-for-4, and probably didn't notice that Bouton was pitching that night.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Astros, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Seattle Mariners, 6-5 at the Kingdome in Seattle.

* And the Minnesota Twins and the Toronto Blue Jays were not scheduled.

September 9, 1969: Rod Laver's Grand Slam & The Black Cat Game

September 9, 1969: Two big events in sports happen in Queens, in New York City.

In tennis, the Grand Slam is winning all 4 majors: In chronological order, the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon (the British championship) and the U.S. Open. From 1905, when the Australian Open, the newest of them, was first staged until 1961, it was achieved only once, in 1938, by Don Budge.

One big reason was that, early on, the distance from Australia to, well, pretty much anywhere else in the world meant that a lot of the best players simply didn't go to compete in it. As a result, Australian men and women won it more often than even home-court advantage would suggest they would. Another reason is that, due to the French Open having a clay court, players who are used to that surface have an advantage over those who aren't used to it, and upsets are common there. Another reason is that these tournaments weren't as "open" as their names suggest: Only amateur players were eligible, and some of the best players turned professional early.

One of those best players was Rod Laver. In 1962, at the age of 24, the Rockland, Queensland, Australia won all 4, and it was a big deal. Then, having nothing left to prove as an amateur, he turned professional.

But in 1968, the rules changed, and the majors allowed professionals. So now, truly, the best of the best were playing in the biggest tournaments. On January 27, 1969, at the Milton Courts in Brisbane, Queensland, Laver beat Spanish player Andrés Gimeno, 6–3, 6–4, 7–5, to win the Australian Open. On June 8, at Stade Roland Garros in Paris, he beat fellow Australian Ken Rosewall, 6–4, 6–3, 6–4, to win the French Open. On July 5, at Centre Court in London, he beat another Australian, John Newcombe, 6–4, 5–7, 6–4, 6–4, to win Wimbledon.

When the U.S. Open began at the Forest Hills Stadium in the neighborhood of the same name in Queens, it became the biggest event in tennis history at the time: In only the 2nd year of everybody-eligible, there was a chance at a fully legitimate Grand Slam, which neither Laver in '62 nor Budge in '38 had really won. And the growth of television sports coverage meant that anybody who wanted to see it didn't have to travel to the site and hope that tickets were available. (The Forest Hills Stadium, built in 1923 and still standing, only seats 14,0000 people.) They could turn on the tube and watch.

In the 1st Round, Laver beat Luis-Agusto Garcia of Mexico, 6-2, 6-4, 6-2. In the 2nd Round, he beat Jaime Pinto-Bravo of Chile, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2. In the 3rd Round, he beat another Chilean, Jaime Fillol, 8-6, 6-1, 6-2. He had a serious challenge in the 4th Round, by American player Daniel Ralston. He won the 1st set, 6-4; then dropped the next 2, 6-4, 6-4; but came back to win the last 2, 6-2 and 6-3.

In the Quarterfinals, he was seriously pushed again, by fellow Australian Roy Emerson. Emerson won the 1st set, 6-4. The next 2 sets went to tiebreakers, and Laver won them, 8-6 and 13-11. Laver won the 4th set, 6-4. In the Semifinal, he faced Arthur Ashe. A year earlier, Ashe became the 1st black man to win the U.S. Open. Laver won in straight sets, but 2 of the sets went to tie breakers: 8-6, 6-3 and 14-12.

(Althea Gibson became the 1st black person to win it the U.S. Open, and also the 1st to win Wimbledon, in 1957, and again in 1958. Ashe would go on to become the 1st black man to win Wimbledon, in 1975.)

The Final was against Tony Roche, yet another Australian. This was the golden age of Australian tennis, and they haven't reached those heights since. Roche won the 1st set, 9-7. But Laver took control from there, going 6-1, 6-2, 6-2.

He had won the Grand Slam. It was the 1st ever won against full competition, and there has never been another. Jimmy Connors never did it: He won all but the French in 1974. Nor did Björn Borg: He won 5 straight Wimbledons and 6 French Opens in 8 years, but never won the U.S. or the Australian. Nor did John McEnroe: He never won the French or the Australian. Nor did Ivan Lendl: He never won the French. Nor did Andre Agassi: He won all 4, but never more than 2 in the same year. Nor did Pete Sampras: He never won the French, either. Nor did Roger Federer: He won all but the French in 2004 and again in 2006; and his only French win came in 2009, and he won Wimbledon that year, too, but not the other 2. Nor did Rafael Nadal: He won all but the Australian in 2010.

In 2016, Novak Djokovic, having already won that year's Australian and the previous year's Wimbledon and U.S., won the French, making him the 1st man since Laver to hold all 4 titles at once. But that's not the Grand Slam: He didn't do all 4 in the same calendar year. He did win all but the French in 2011 and 2015. He won the French after winning the Australian in 2016, but didn't win Wimbledon or the U.S. He won the Australian, the French, and Wimbledon in 2021, but lost the U.S. in the Semifinal. That's the closest anyone has come since Laver.

Three women have achieved a single-calendar-year Grand slam: Maureen Connolly in 1953, Margaret Court in 1970, and Steffi Graf in 1988.

In 1988, a new main stadium for the Australian Open opened in Melbourne. It is named the Rod Laver Arena. The Milton Courts were demolished in 2002.

*

The U.S. Open has been held in Queens since 1915. In 1978, it was moved from Forest Hills. the neighborhood whose name had come to mean "the U.S. Open," to Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, site of the 1939-40 and 1964-65 New York World's Fairs, across Roosevelt Avenue from Shea Stadium, home of baseball's New York Mets from 1964 to 2008 and football's New York Jets from 1964 to 1983.

And on September 9, 1969, an iconic moment took place at Shea. But let's take a step back, to set this moment up:

In 1969, the 1st season of Divisional Play, the Chicago Cubs won 11 of their 1st 12 games. They had a 5-game winning streak in May, a 7-game winning streak in June, and another 7-game winning streak in August. On August 16, they beat the San Francisco Giants, 3-0 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. They led the National League Eastern Division by 9 games, with 42 games to go. The Division title was hardly wrapped up, but they were in great shape.

But they slipped. Not much at first: On September 3, they were still 5 games up with 24 games to go. The problem was, the New York Mets, who had lost an average of 108 games over their 1st 6 seasons before improving to 73-89 in 1968, went on a tear. On September 7, with the Cubs having lost 4 straight, the Mets had closed to within 2 1/2 games of the Cubs, with a 2-game series between the teams set for Shea.

On Monday, September 8, Tommie Agee put the Mets up 2-0 with a home run off Bill Hands in the bottom of the 3rd inning. The Cubs tied the game against Jerry Koosman in the top of the 6th. But Agee led off the bottom of the 6th with a double, and Wayne Garrett singled. Agee tried to score, and the instant replay clearly showed that he was out. But Satch Davidson, the home plate umpire, ruled him safe.

Cub catcher Randy Hundley, whose son Todd would eventually catch for both of these teams, knew Agee was out, and was furious at the blown call, enough to jump higher in the air than any man loaded down with catcher's equipment could be expected to. Leo Durocher, formerly manager in New York with first the Brooklyn Dodgers, then the New York Giants, was now managing the Cubs, and he ran out of the dugout to argue. Davidson held his call, and the Mets' 3-2 lead held up. The Mets were now within a game and a half of the Cubs.

The September 9 game was started by a pair of future Hall-of-Famers: Tom Seaver of New York was 20-7, and Ferguson "Fergie" Jenkins of Chicago was 19-12. The Mets led 4-0 in the top of the 4th, thanks in part to a home run by Donn Clendenon. With 1 out, Glenn Beckert on 2nd base, and Billy Williams at the plate, Ron Santo was in the on-deck circle.

And then, a black cat, often thought of as a symbol of bad luck, ran into the field. It ran in front of Santo. Then it stopped in front of the Cub dugout, and looked right at Durocher.

The men in the Cub dugout overheard Santo saying, "Oh, man, we're fucked now." Durocher, a baseball lifer, superstitious as hell, and one of the great practitioners of baseball profanity, yelled, "Somebody get that fucking cat out of here! Get him away from me!"

The cat then ran away, and disappeared under the stands. To this day, no one knows for sure whether the cat got out there on its own, or if someone had it and released it. (If anyone did know, they have never spoken up.) The most likely explanation was given by the Mets' Ed Kranepool: Like many stadiums, Shea had rats, cats were brought in to eat the rats, and this was probably one of those cats. Unless someone kept a record of those cats, there's no way to tell how long this cat lived.

In this case, the legend far exceeds the truth: The cat had absolutely no effect on either the game or the Pennant race. What became known as the Cubs' "September Swoon" was already well underway. Santo got a hit to drive Beckert home. But that only got the Cubs to within 4-1, and the Mets won, 7-1, to get within half a game.

The next day, the Mets swept a doubleheader from the expansion Montreal Expos at Shea, and the Cubs lost away to the Philadelphia Phillies. For the 1st time in their history, the Mets were in 1st place, and the cat didn't have anything to do with it: It was a convenient symbol, not the cause.

The Cubs' losing streak reached 8 games the day after that. On September 24, despite the Cubs beating the Expos at Wrigley Field, the Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals at Shea, and clinched the NL East title. It was the first time a National League team from New York had finished 1st since the 1956 Dodgers. The Mets ended up winning the Division by 8 games over the Cubs.

The Mets went on to win the World Series, while the '69 Cubs have had to live with words like "September Swoon," "choke," "black cat" and "curse" ever since. Whie Ernie Banks (who didn't even play in the Black Cat Game) was a member of the 500 Home Run Club, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his 1st year of eligibility, it took a long time for their other stars to make it: Jenkins was elected in his 3rd year, Williams was elected in his 6th, and Durocher (whose true Hall credentials came well before he arrived on the North Side of Chicago) and Santo didn't get in until after they died.

Then again, only 2 members of the '69 Mets are in the Hall of Fame: Seaver, and Nolan Ryan, who, despite being a key figure in on the Mets' pitching staff in the postseason, hadn't yet found his control, and so his true Hall credentials came after he was traded away. Manager Gil Hodges has finally been elected to the Hall, but that was for what he did as a player. Agee and Cleon Jones had very good careers, but not at Hall of Fame level.

In 1969, the Chicago Cubs had the better collection of players, but the New York Mets had, if not the better team, then, certainly, the better team performance.

As did the performances of the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers and the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies before this, and the 1978 Boston Red Sox after this, the 1969 Chicago Cubs left their fans mentally scarred to the point that a later World Championship -- 1955 in Brooklyn, 1980 and 2008 in Philadelphia, 2004 and 3 more since in Boston, and 2016 in Chicago -- couldn't fully ease the pain.

Mike Royko, the great newspaper columnist who was with the Chicago Daily News in 1969, and turned 37 a few days after the Black Cat Game, would one day write, "New York didn't need that 1969 Pennant. It should have been ours. All we wanted was the one lousy Pennant. It would have kept us happy for the rest of the century. But New York took that from us, and I can never forgive them for that."

Royko died in 1997, having lived to see another Cub disaster in 1984. Michael Wilbon, co-host of Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, grew up in Chicago, remains a Cub fan, and says he still hates the Mets. Which is funny, because his co-host is Tony Kornheiser, who grew up on Long Island as a Met fan. (They were colleagues at The Washington Post when ESPN hired them, and remain close friends despite their baseball and geographic divides.)

An interesting side note: The cat got pretty close to the Cubs' batboy, Jim Flood, and he even got into a photograph taken of the incident. He became a lawyer, and, when the Cubs finally won another Pennant in 2016, people told him to stay away from cats and goats, bringing up another piece of Cub lore, "the Curse of the Billy Goat." The Cubs won the World Series, anyway. In a 50th Anniversary interview in 2019, Flood said he had 4 cats, and 1 of them was black. He named that cat Fergie, after Jenkins, an African-Canadian.

UPDATE: The Cubs have a team Hall of Fame. Inducted from their 1969 near-miss team team were shortstop Ernie Banks, left fielder Billy Williams, 3rd baseman Ron Santo, shortstop Don Kessinger, 2nd baseman Glenn Beckert, catcher Randy Hundley; pitchers Ferguson Jenkins and Ken Holtzman; manager Leo Durocher; coach and scout John "Buck" O'Neil, owner Philip K. Wrigley, clubhouse manager Yosh Kawano, public address announcer Pat Pieper; and broadcasters Jack Brickhouse, Lou Boudreau and Vince Lloyd.

From between the 1969 near-miss and the 1984 Playoff berth, they have inducted outfielder José Cardenal, 1st baseman Bill Buckner, and pitchers Rick Reuschel and Bruce Sutter.

*

September 9, 1969 was a Tuesday. These other games were played in Major League Baseball that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 2-0 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. And it wasn't either Denny McLain or Mickey Lolich who pitched the shutout, either: It was Mike Kilkenny, outpitching Fritz Peterson. Roy White and rookie Thurman Munson each had 2 of the Yankees' 8 hits.

* The Montreal Expos beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-2 at Jarry Park in Montreal. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-4, and Willie Stargell went 1-for-4.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-2 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Lou Brock went 2-for-4 with a walk, a stolen base, and an RBI. Joe Torre went 1-for-2 with 3 walks and an RBI.

* The Baltimore Orioles swept a doubleheader from the Washington Senators at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, 6-1 and 3-2. Frank Howard homered in the opener, but that was the only run that Mike Cuellar allowed. Tom Phoebus won the nightcap, despite a home run from Mike Epstein, a slugger who apparently didn't mind being called "Superjew." Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 2-for-6 with 2 walks and 4 RBIs, while Frank Robinson went 0-for-3 with a walk in the 1st game and didn't play in the 2nd.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1 at Atlanta (later Atlanta-Fulton County) Stadium. Hank Aaron went 1-for-3 with a walk. Ralph Garr singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning. Phil Niekro went all 10 innings for the win.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 3-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-5 with an RBI.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Dick Dietz and Willie McCovey hit home runs for the Giants. (In spite of the Giants finishing 2nd to the Braves in the NL West, and Seaver's Cy Young Award season, it was McCovey who was named the NL's Most Valuable Player that year.) Willie Mays went 2-for-5. For the Reds, Pete Rose went 0-for-1 before leaving the game due to an injury, and Johnny Bench went 1-for-4.

* The Houston Astros beat the expansion San Diego Padres, 9-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Larry Dierker outpitched Phil Niekro. Jim Bouton, in the process of writing Ball Four and having been traded from the Pilots to the Astros, did not get into the game, since Dierker went the distance.

But it was a noteworthy day in the book. Tommy Davis, the former NL batting champion who had been traded from Seattle to Houston a week after Bouton was, confirmed Bouton's suspicions that most of the Pilot players thought he was "weird," and that manager Joe Schultz, instead of acknowledging that Bouton was, at the least, working hard and always thinking, egged them on by making fun of Bouton in front of the other players.

This was also the night when, after the game, the postgame spread included a big pot of chicken a la king. The players hated it. And they went on a 6-game losing streak. After the 5th loss, Bouton wrote, "Has anybody noticed that we haven't won a game since we ate that chicken a la king?"

* The Minnesota Twins beat the California Angels, 11-7 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Rod Carew went 1-for-5.

* The expansion Kansas City Royals beat the team that had abandoned Kansas City after the 1967 season, the now-Oakland Athletics, 2-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Reggie Jackson went 0-for-4.

* And the Chicago White Sox and the expansion Seattle Pilots were not scheduled to play.

Also, New Zealand supermodel Rachel Hunter was born on this day.

August 31, 1969: Rocky Marciano's Plane Crash

August 31, 1969: Rocky Marciano and 2 others are killed when their Cessna 172, flying from Midway Airport in Chicago to Des Moines, crashes near Newton, Iowa, 30 miles from their destination. Marciano was a day short of his 46th birthday.

He was born on September 1, 1923, as Rocco Francis Marchegiano, outside Boston in Brockton, Massachusetts. "The Brockton Blockbuster" first fought for the Heavyweight Championship of the World in 1952, against Jersey Joe Walcott, and got knocked down in the 1st round. He got up, and knocked Walcott out in the 13th round. In the rematch, he knocked Walcott out in the 1st.

Like Jack Dempsey, he was a nice guy out of the ring, and hell in it. Like his idol, Joe Louis, he won a lot of fights where he seemed to be losing. His holding of the title made him the 1st Heavyweight Champion to be embraced by television viewers. The fact that he was white and ethnic, not black like Louis or later Champions like Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali, shouldn't have helped, but did.

He retired in 1956, at 49-0, with 43 knockouts. Among his victims were former Heavyweight Champions Louis, Walcott and Ezzard Charles, and reigning Light Heavyweight Champion Archie Moore, whom he beat in what turned out to be his last fight. He is the only Heavyweight Champion who retired undefeated, and stayed retired. He became an announcer for fights, and even hosted a talk show where he would interview a celebrity and then show a famous fight, sometimes one of his own.

As with Buddy Holly 10 years earlier, the pilot was inexperienced flying at night and in bad weather, and crashed in rural Iowa.

*

August 31, 1969 was a Sunday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the expansion Kansas City Royals, 5-3 at Yankee Stadium. Fritz Peterson was the winning pitcher. Roy White went 1-for-3 with 2 RBIs. Thurman Munson had made his major league debut that month, but on this day, the catcher was Frank Fernández, who had an unusual day: no official at-bats, 4 walks, and a run scored.

* The New York Mets split a doubleheader with the San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. The Mets won the opener, 8-0. Tom Seaver pitched a shutout, allowing 7 hits and 3 walks, striking out 11. The Mets got good production from the bottom of their order: Ron Swoboda, Jerry Grote and Al Weis each had 2 RBIs, while Seaver himself had 1 on a single.

The Giants won the nightcap, 3-2. Ron Taylor walked Jim Davenport with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th inning, messing up a good start by Jim McAndrew. Swoboda hit a home run. Willie Mays did not play in either game.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the California Angels, 5-4 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Frank Robinson went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Washington Senators beat the Oakland Athletics, 8-3 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. The Senators got home runs from Frank Howard, Mike Epstein, Ken McMullen and Bernie Allen, as Casey Cox outpitched Jim "Catfish" Hunter. Reggie Jackson went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Atlanta Braves, 8-4 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Ken Holtzman not only outpitched Phil Niekro, but hit a home run for the Cubs. So did Billy Williams. Ernie Banks went 0-for-4. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-5 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Johnny Bench and Tony Pérez hit home runs, and Pete Rose went 3-for-4 with an RBI.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the expansion Seattle Pilots, 7-2 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline did not play in this game, but Willie Horton hit 2 home runs, and Don Wert hit one. Earl Wilson outpitched Gene Brabender. Maybe the Pilots could have used Jim Bouton. Alas, they had traded him to Houston a few days earlier, as told in Bouton's book Ball Four.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 7-6 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-2 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Harmon Killebrew and Ted Uhlaender hit home runs. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-4.

Killebrew won the American League home run race with 49. Howard hit 48. After getting to 31 by the All-Star Break, Reggie Jackson ended up with 47.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Houston Astros, 6-4 at the Astrodome in Houston. Roberto Clemente went 0-for-2 with 3 walks. Willie Stargell went 1-for-5 with 2 RBIs. The Astros used 4 pitchers. Jim Bouton was not one of them. This game did not make a fellow proud to be an Astro.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the National League's 2 expansion teams played a doubleheader at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). The San Diego Padres won the 1st game, 5-2. The Montreal Expos won the 2nd game, 6-1. In contrast to the AL, where the Royals only lost 93 games and the Pilots 98, the Expos and Padres both lost 110, bad even by the standards of 1st-year teams.

August 29, 1967: "The Fugitive" Finale

Left to right: Barry Morse as Lt. Philip Gerard,

David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble,

and Bill Raisch as "one-armed man" Fred Johnson

 

August 29, 1967: The final episode of The Fugitive airs on ABC. It becomes the most-watched program in the history of American series television.

The Fugitive premiered on September 17, 1963. The premise was delivered in the series' opening narration:

The Fugitive, a QM Production. Starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent victim of blind justice. Falsely convicted for the murder of his wife, reprieved by fate when a train wreck freed him en route to the death house.

Freed him to hide in lonely desperation, to change his identity, to toil at many jobs. Freed him to search for a one-armed man he saw leave the scene of the crime. Freed him to run before the relentless pursuit of the police lieutenant obsessed with his capture.

This narration was read by William Conrad. "QM" was Quinn Martin, who specialized in crime dramas. In the 1970s, he created and produced The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, and Cannon, starring Conrad.

"Dick" Kimble was a pediatrician in Stafford, Indiana, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, Helen (played in flashback scenes throughout the series by Diane Brewster). The town of Stafford is fictional, but in the series finale, it is suggested that it is near South Bend, home of the University of Notre Dame. His story was based on the case of Dr. Sam Sheppard, a neurosurgeon in the suburbs of Cleveland, whose wife Marilyn was murdered in 1954. He was convicted, but insisted on his innocence all the way. He never escaped, but got a 2nd trial, and was exonerated in 1966, while The Fugitive was still on the air. 

The show's creator, Roy Huggins, always insisted that the show was not based on the Sheppard case, but that claim wouldn't have held up in court.

In 1960, Route 66 had pioneered the theme of a TV show without a single set location, with a protagonist (or, in that show's case, two) going all over the country, helping people when they could, and then, when the job was done, moving on. The Fugitive added the man-on-the-run angle, which would be copied by many shows, most notably the 1977-82 CBS version of The Incredible Hulk.

Barry Morse played Lieutenant Philip Gerard, who was accompanying Kimble to the prison where he was to be executed, and thus "lost" him. It's a matter of honor for him to bring Kimble back to justice. He doesn't care that Kimble says he's innocent: Gerard is upholding the decision of the people in accordance with the law. This made him the 1st TV show antagonist who wasn't a stereotypical bad guy: He was fighting for justice in an official way, just as Kimble was in an unofficial way.

A few times, Gerard almost caught Kimble. On some occasions, they even saved each other's life, at which point Gerard's sense of honor let him give Kimble a head start on the next phase of his run.

At first, Gerard has no doubt as to Kimble's guilt. He attended the trial, and was witness to the evidence. But as the series went on, doubt crept in. At one point, when someone asked him if Kimble killed his wife, he said, "The law said he did," but he said it without conviction -- if you'll pardon my choice of words.

This fascinating dynamic made the show one of the most popular of the 1960s. And so, in what was a rarity at the time -- but not unprecedented: The Dick Van Dyke Show had already done it -- a definitive final episode was written for the show, without the network canceling it outright. Huggins knew that people wanted "the one-armed man" to be caught, and for Kimble to be vindicated.

The actual killer was played by Bill Raisch, and he was a hero in real life: He lost his right arm when he was badly burned while serving in the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II. Before, he had been a dancer, hard to believe because of his large, bulky frame. He took to acting, and had a good career of it.

And so, on Tuesday night, August 22, 1967, "The Judgment, Part I" aired. At the end, Kimble, having tracked "the one-armed man," whose name he now knows is Fred Johnson, to Los Angeles, makes contact with a friend of the family living there, a court stenographer named Jean Carlisle (Diane Baker). After 6 years on the run (an origin story, not the pilot episode, established that timeline), he's not only closing in on his quarry, he has found love again. He is about to get into a taxi to pursue his lead on Johnson, when Gerard catches him. He takes no pleasure in the arrest: "I'm sorry. You just ran out of time."

Seven nights later, "The Judgment, Part II" begins the way the pilot began, with Kimble and Gerard handcuffed together, sitting on a train. Kimble now knows that Gerard has doubts as to his guilt, suggests that Johnson is also going back to Stafford, and begs Gerard to allow him 24 more hours to prove his innocence. Gerard goes for it.

Spoiler alert for a 55-year-old TV episode: At an abandoned amusement park, there is a final confrontation. Johnson shoots Gerard in the leg, and runs up a tower. Kimble chases him, they fight -- the stub of Johnson's missing right arm being a more effective weapon than you might think -- and Kimble beats a confession out of Johnson. But Johnson regains the advantage, and is about to shoot Kimble, when Gerard picks up a rifle and shoots him. Johnson falls, and is dead before he hits the ground.

Coming down from the tower, Kimble knows that Johnson's confession is now useless. But Kimble's detective work had forced a friend who had witnessed the original murder, Lloyd Chandler (J.D. Cannon), afraid to come forward at the time because it would suggest that he and Helen Kimble were having an affair, to admit what he saw.

The episode ends with Kimble and Jean walking out of the courthouse. He sees Gerard, and shakes his hand. Both men got what they wanted: The law upheld, and justice done. A police car pulls up. Kimble stops, but the policemen walk right past him, having no reason to pursue him. Conrad's closing narration: "Tuesday, August 29: The day the running stopped."

According to the Nielsen Ratings, over 78 million people watched, breaking the record of the February 9, 1964 edition of The Ed Sullivan Show, when The Beatles made their American debut. The Fugitive finale held the record until 1980, surpassed by "Who Done It," the episode of Dallas where it was revealed who shot J.R. Ewing. That record lasted until 1983, the finale of M*A*S*H. Although several Super Bowls have had more viewers, these remain the 3 highest-rated episodes of American TV shows.

David Janssen had previously starred on Richard Diamond, Private Detective. He would later star on O'Hara: U.S. Treasury, and as another private detective on Harry O. He did not live long enough to see Dallas break The Fugitive's record, or even to see J.R. get shot: He died on February 13, 1980, only 48 years old, of a heart attack while filming the movie Father Damien. (Ken Howard of The White Shadow was cast as his replacement.) Barry Morse had called Janssen "one of the hardest-working actors in the U.S.A.," and it appears he worked himself to death. But his prodigious smoking and drinking didn't help.

My generation was too young to have seen The Fugitive -- it's been suggested that knowing the ending "killed it" for syndication, making people not want to watch it -- and thus we didn't know Janssen. But we did know Morse, as Dr. Victor Bergman on the 1975-77 science fiction series Space: 1999. 

Bill Raisch died in 1984, Quinn Martin in 1987, Diane Brewster in 1991, William Conrad in 1994, Roy Huggins in 2002, J.D. Cannon in 2005, and Barry Morse in 2008. As of August 29, 2022, Diane Baker is still alive.

A 1993 film version of The Fugitive starred Harrison Ford, and Tommy Lee Jones as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard. This time, the one-armed man does not act alone, but is a hitman for an enemy of Kimble's. To help generate publicity for it, NBC aired the show's pilot episode and each part of the two-part finale over 3 nights. This enabled me to see it for the first time. It also generated interest in not only the movie, but in the show itself: Ever since, it's been in regular syndication on cable nostalgia networks.

The Fugitive lives on: The 1998 film Wrongfully Accused, a spoof film, starred Leslie Nielsen; a 2000-01 CBS series starred Tim Daly as Kimble and Mykelti Williamson as a black Gerard; and a 2020 Quibi series rewrote the premise by having Boyd Holbrook play a completely different character, accused of a completely different crime, and Kiefer Sutherland as a detective who immediately finds evidence that the accusers have the wrong man, and pursues both man and angle.

*

August 29, 1967 was a Tuesday. Future Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was born.

It was the off-season for the NFL the AFL, the NBA, the brand-new ABA, and the NHL. But these Major League Baseball games were played -- not that any fan of The Fugitive was going to leave his TV room to go watch them: 

* The New York Yankees also had a 2-parter, against the Boston Red Sox at the old Yankee Stadium. The season was an anomaly for the era: The Red Sox were challenging for the Pennant, and the Yankees were nowhere near it. The twi-night doubleheader began at 5:00 PM, and Mickey Mantle didn't play in either game.

The Red Sox won the opener, 2-1. Jim Lonborg, on his way to winning the American League Cy Young Award, outpitched the Yankees' ace, Mel Stottlemyre. Jose Tartabull (father of future Yankee Danny) brought home a run with a suicide squeeze bunt in the 3rd inning.

Both teams scored in the 7th: Lonborg helped his own cause with an RBI single, and Tom Tresh got the Yankees on the board with a home run. Other than that, Lonborg only allowed 3 baserunners: Singles by Steve Whitaker and Bill Robinson, and he hit Mike Hegan with a pitch. No walks. 

The 2nd game, the rescheduling of a June 19 rainout, remains the longest game in the history of the Yanks-Sox rivalry. Ken Harrelson hit a home run in the top of the 2nd to give Boston a 2-0 lead. Whitaker tripled home a run in the bottom of the 4th. Roy White hit a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 7th. The game stayed tied, and went to extra innings.

The Red Sox had men on 1st and 2nd with 2 outs in the top of the 10th, but Dooley Womack -- yes, Ball Four freaks, the Dooley Womack -- got the 3rd out without allowing a run. Former Yankee Norm Siebern singled home a run off Womack in the top of the 11th, but Whitaker tied it with a home run in the bottom of the 11th, against a rookie reliever who hadn't yet discovered mustaches: Future Yankee Albert Walter "Sparky" Lyle.

The Yankees got 1st and 2nd with 2 out in the bottom of the 12th, and again in the bottom of the 13th, but didn't score either time. Elston Howard, recently traded by the Yankees to the Red Sox, walked to lead off the top of the 14th. This time, the cliche about walks, especially the leadoff variety, being a killer did not hold true. 

The Red Sox loaded the bases with 2 outs in the top of the 15th, but Joe Verbanic got out of it. The Yankees had 1st and 2nd with 1 out in the bottom of the 15th, but couldn't score. The Yankees got a leadoff walk from John Kennedy (no relation to the late President) in the bottom of the 16th, but couldn't bring him around. Mike Andrews walked to lead off the top of the 17th, but was stranded. The Yankees again got 1st and 2nd with 2 outs in the bottom of the 17th, and again in the bottom of the 19th, but couldn't score either time.

Jim Bouton was now pitching in the top of the 20th. With his elbow shot, his great fastball gone, and not yet having sufficient confidence in his knuckleball, he loaded the bases with 2 out. But he got Howard to ground out to end it. With 1 out in the bottom of the 20th, Kennedy singled, Bouton (nobody was left on the bench, so he had to bat for himself) was hit with a pitch, and Horace Clarke singled Kennedy home.

The Yankees had won, 4-3, in a game ending near 2:00 AM. Bouton, later to be the author of Ball Four, was the winning pitcher. The losing pitcher was Darrell "Bucky" Brandon, who was to be his teammate on the 1969 Seattle Pilots.

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Cal Koonce pitched a 5-hit shutout. The Mets only got 4 hits themselves, but 1 was a solo home run by Ron Swoboda.

* The Washington Senators beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-0 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. Dick Bosman pitched a 5-hit shutout. The stadium would be renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-3 at Atlanta (later Atlanta-Fulton County) Stadium. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4, his hit a solo home run. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Jim Bunning only allowed 2 hits, but 1 was a leadoff double by Vada Pinson in the bottom of the 7th. He advanced to 3rd base on a groundout, and Lee May drove him in with a sacrifice fly. Gary Nolan pitched 7 scoreless innings, and Billy McCool and Ted Abernathy were needed to finish off the 7-hit shutout.

* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-3 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Athletics, 9-8 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Chico Salmon got the winning run home on a fielder's choice in the top of the 10th inning.

* The Detroit Tigers swept a doubleheader from the California Angels at Anaheim Stadium. They won the 1st game 4-2, and the 2nd game 2-1.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays went 2-for-3 with a solo home run.