November 18, 1992: "Seinfeld" Airs the Episode "The Contest"

Top: Michael Richards (left) and Jerry Seinfeld.

Bottom: Jason Alexander (left) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

November 18, 1992: The NBC sitcom Seinfeld airs its most famous (or infamous) episode, "The Contest."

Jerry Seinfeld (playing a fictionalized version of himself), his ex-girlfriend and still-friend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and his across-the-hall neighbor Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) are having lunch at Monk's Café, near their apartments on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Jerry's longtime best friend, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), walks in, and confesses that, while visiting his parents in Queens, he used the bathroom, found a magazine with some pictures of beautiful women in it, and, how shall I put this... took matters into his own hands. And his mother caught him.

Why George would mention this while the others were eating, only he knew. But he said he would never do it again. The others don't believe him. Jerry says he can go longer without doing it than George. George says, "Care to make it interesting?" In other words, bet money on it. All four of them get in on it, although George, taking note that it's different for a woman, tells Elaine, "You gotta give us odds!" She offers to put up $150, to the $100 for the guys. ($100 then would be about $210 in 2022 money.)

Jerry had told Kramer, "You'll be out before we get the check!" Sure enough, Kramer is the first to plunk his money down on Jerry's kitchen counter, having seen a naked woman walking around in an apartment across the street from Jerry's. For Jerry, the situation is complicated by this, and also by the fact that he's dating a woman named Marla (played by a pre-Frasier Jane Leeves) who claims to be a virgin. It's never stated whether actually having sex violates the term of the agreement.

In George's case, the situation is complicated by the fact that, after she saw him doing it, his mother was so shocked that she fell, hurt her back, had to be hospitalized, and was given a room alongside a younger woman, who received a daily sponge-bath from a nice-looking nurse. George could only see the silhouettes through a curtain, but he couldn't take his eyes off them.

(This would be lampooned 3 months later, in "The Outing," when a reporter mistakenly believed that Jerry and George were a gay couple, George's mother saw the story in the newspaper, threw her back out again, and, this time, in the bed next-door, there was a buff young man getting a sponge-bath from a buff young male nurse. Again, George could only see the silhouettes through a curtain, but it was bad enough.)

In Elaine's case, the situation is complicated by the fact that John F. Kennedy Jr. is working out at the same gym she goes to. And complicated further by the fact that they start dating, and that JFK Jr. had a reputation for womanizing similar to that of his father. (The actor playing him is not credited, and his face is not shown.)

But, other than Kramer, they all claim that they haven't "caved." The expression "Master of Your Domain" was entered into the American pop-culture lexicon. At Monk's, George claims, "I am King of the County," Jerry claims, "Lord of the Manor," and Elaine claims, "I'm Queen of the Castle."

Well, Elaine caves next, and Jerry says, "Oh, my God, the Queen is dead! I thought you'd make it at least into the Spring!" And one thing leads to another, and, as the show so often did, the strings of the plots run together. Marla is about to let Jerry have sex with her, and he tells her she has no idea of what a relief this is, and that proves to be a mistake, because he has to tell her why. She leaves him, and as she walks out of the building, she runs into JFK Jr., who has gotten tired of waiting for Elaine (who had told him that was her building, which it wasn't), and they end up in bed.

Oddly, the episode ends without revealing whether Jerry or George won. The implication is that, after watching the naked woman across the street together, George went home, and he and Jerry "caved" at the same time. Ten months later, the episode "The Puffy Shirt" aired, and George claimed to have won The Contest. But in the show's finale, when everybody thinks the plane is going to crash, George doesn't want it on his conscience anymore, and confesses to Jerry: "I cheated in The Contest!"

It should be noted that this episode and the 1996 episode "The Abstinence" can't both be canon. In the latter episode, George says, "I can do six weeks while standing on my head. I'm like a sexual camel." Furthermore, in that episode, not getting any action, even on his own, made George stop thinking about sex, and allowed his true brainpower to flourish, and made him smarter almost immediately. In "The Contest," George was just as dumb, and just as obsessed with sex, in the first couple of days. Unless, of course, he had already "cheated."

"The Contest" is one of several "Seinfeld" episodes that’s hard to watch now -- but not, in this case, because of the subject matter. Rather, it's because John F. Kennedy Jr. is a character in it, and he died young, a little more than a year after the show's finale.

*

November 18, 1992 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that DC Comics released Superman #75, featuring the story "The Death of Superman." I have a separate entry for this event. The fact that Jerry Seinfeld is a major Superman fan, with a Superman magnet visible on his refrigerator and other memorabilia in his apartment, makes it even weirder.

Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. But there were 3 games played in the NBA. The Orlando Magic beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 120-110 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. The Utah Jazz beat the Boston Celtics, 92-91 at the Boston Garden. The Phoenix Suns beat the Sacramento Kings, 127-111 at the new AmericaWest Arena. (It's now named the Mortgage Matchup Center.)

There were 4 games played in the NHL. The New Jersey Devils beat the Buffalo Sabres, 3-2 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands. Valeri Zelepukin, Tom Chorske and Alexander Semak scored the goals for New Jersey.

The Minnesota North Stars beat the Washington Capitals, 5-4 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland. The Hartford Whalers beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-2 at the Hartford Civic Center. (It's now named the PeoplesBank Arena.) The Edmonton Oilers beat the Vancouver Canucks, 4-2 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.

None of these games held a moment of silence in memory of Superman before they started. 

November 4, 1963: The Kennedy Kids In the Oval Office

November 4, 1963: With First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy away, President John F. Kennedy did something she would not have allowed: He let Cecil Stoughton, the official White House photographer, into the Oval Office. He took pictures of JFK playing with his children Caroline and John Jr.

Always protective of her privacy, and her family's, Jackie didn't like it when pictures were taken of the kids, but Jack knew it helped the family's image. Both the photo of Caroline and John dancing, and John under the Resolute Desk, became icons of the "Camelot" era.

The desk was a gift from Britain's Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute, which the U.S. Navy had rescued from its own failed mission to rescue a lost ship. (The ship they were looking for was later found by another ship, but all hands they were looking for had long been lost.)

The 1,300-pound desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford. The kneehole panel that John Kennedy Jr. played in was added in 1945.

President Kennedy was assassinated 18 days later. The desk was put in storage, and later became part of a traveling exhibit of items that would later be put into his Presidential Library in Boston. But it never made it there: President Jimmy Carter asked for it to be returned to the White House, which it was, and every President since has used it. Every Presidential Library, including JFK's, has a replica of the Oval Office as it looked during his Presidency, including a replica of the desk then in use.

Interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 1997, John F. Kennedy Jr., then 36 years old, said that he didn't remember playing under the desk. He also said he didn't remember giving the salute to the coffin at the funeral, which took place on his 3rd birthday. He did say he remembered his father calling him "Sam," which he didn't like.

Apparently, it was the President yelling, "John! John!" after his son that led to John Jr. being nicknamed "John-John," which followed him for the rest of his life.

Cecil Stoughton, the photographer, was an Iowa native, and 43 years old at the time of the photos. He had also taken several photos of JFK on his yacht off the coast of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; the photo of John and Robert Kennedy with Marilyn Monroe at the old Madison Square Garden in 1962; and the photo Lyndon Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One after the assassination.

From 1967 to 1973, he was the official photographer for the National Park Service. He died in 2008, and, like President Kennedy and his brothers, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

*

November 4, 1963 was a Monday. This was also the day The Beatles played the Royal Variety Show in London, in front of Elizabeth the Queen Mother. I have a separate entry for that date.

Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek: There would be no Monday Night Football for another 7 years. The NBA and NHL seasons were underway, but no games were scheduled for either league on this day. 

October 20, 1968: Jacqueline Kennedy Marries Aristotle Onassis

October 20, 1968: A year of shocking events hasn't run out of them yet. This one disturbed people on a level they didn't know they had.

Jacqueline Kennedy, former First Lady of the United States, widow of the martyred President John F. Kennedy, the most popular person in America, married Aristotle Onassis, Greek shipping tycoon, on Skorpios, a private island that Onassis owned in the Ionian Sea.

In his 1988 book 1968 in America, journalist Charles Kaiser called it "the final shock." Kennedy fans couldn't believe that she was remarrying, especially to someone seen to be, in spite of his great wealth, a low-class person. Catholics couldn't believe she was marrying a man who was not only was divorced, but from a woman who was still alive. And people who may not have liked the Kennedys, but considered themselves to be American patriots, were infuriated that she would be living abroad with Onassis.

No one was willing to see it from her perspective. She had lost her husband, and had just lost his brother, who was both Jack's and Jackie's best friend, both to senseless acts of violence, on American soil. The great America could not protect its President or one of its Senators. Jackie had 2 small children. What was she supposed to think? That her children were safe?

This was not about love. Living abroad with "Ari," she, Caroline and John Jr. would have both financial security, about which she had always worried, personal security.

Her saintly image shattered, the woman now known as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, or Jackie Onassis, or "Jackie O," was now fair game for comedians. The NBC variety show Laugh-In had sketches showing Jackie as a flighty, free-spending fool, while Ari was oblivious to everything.

But, for the first time, the real Jackie was living on her own terms. She even took her kids and her new husband to Shea Stadium for the 1969 World Series between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles.

While they were married, they lived on Skorpios, Onassis' house in the Greek capital of Athens, Onassis' apartment in central Paris, Jackie's 5th Avenue apartment in Manhattan, Jackie's horse farm in Peapack, New Jersey, and on Onassis' yacht, named Christina O for his daughter, who was 17 at the time of the marriage. By maintaining her friendships with Bobby's widow Ethel, and the last surviving brother, Ted, Jackie remained part of the Kennedy orbit.

Aristotle Onassis died in 1975. His financial legacy was severely limited under Greek law, which dictated how much a non-Greek surviving spouse could inherit. After 2 years of legal wrangling, Jackie accepted a settlement of $26 million from Christina, his sole heir, and waived all other claims to the Onassis estate. (Christina died in 1988, from a heart attack, only 37 years old.)

A two-time widow at 46, Jacqueline did not marry a third time, although, in 1980, she was often seen in the company of Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-born diamond merchant. They were together for the rest of her life. She lived mostly in New York, became a book editor, and led the effort to save Grand Central Terminal from replacement and destruction. She died in 1994, 64 years old, from non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She was buried next to President Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.

*

October 20, 1968 was a Sunday. This was also the day that Dick Fosbury won the Gold Medal in the high jump at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. In so doing, he changed the event forever, using the technique that became known as the Fosbury Flop. I have a separate entry for that event.

In the NFL:

* The New York Giants lost to the San Francisco 49ers, 26-10 at Yankee Stadium.

* The Chicago Bears beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 29-16 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* The Cleveland Browns beat the Baltimore Colts, 30-20 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

* The New Orleans Saints beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 16-12 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* The Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions played to a tie, 14-14 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit.

* The Dallas Cowboys beat the Minnesota Vikings, 20-7 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The football version of the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Washington Redskins, 41-14 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.

* And the Los Angeles Rams beat the Atlanta Falcons, 27-14 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

And in the American Football League:

* The New York Jets beat the Houston Oilers, 20-14 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Boston Patriots beat the Buffalo Bills, 230-6 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Miami Dolphins beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 24-22 at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati.

* The Kansas City Chiefs beat their arch-rivals, the Oakland Raiders, 24-10 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* And the San Diego Chargers beat the Denver Broncos, 55-24 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium).

The baseball season ended 10 days earlier, with the Detroit Tigers beating the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 7 of the World Series. There were no games in the NHL. There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 114-96 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. The Lakers got 36 points from Elgin Baylor, 20 from Jerry West, but only 15 from Wilt Chamberlain. The Sixers got 35 points from Hal Greer.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Detroit Pistons, 106-88 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit.

* The Phoenix Suns beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 116-107 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

* And the San Diego Rockets beat the San Francisco Warriors, 123-108 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California. Elvin Hayes had 32 points and 24 rebounds for the Rockets, who moved to Houston in 1971.

And there was 1 game played in the American Basketball Association: The Oakland Oaks beat the Indiana Pacers, 144-133 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum (now the Corteva Coliseum) in Indianapolis.

July 16, 1999: The Death of John F. Kennedy Jr.

July 16, 1999: John F. Kennedy Jr., son of the 35th President of the United States, and, fairly or not, heir to so many Americans' dreams, dies in a plane crash of the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He was 38 years old. Lost along with him are his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, 36; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, 34.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was born on November 25, 1960, in Washington, D.C., 17 days after his father was elected President. He and his sister, Caroline, 3 years older, became the first children to live in the White House since those of Theodore Roosevelt, over half a century earlier. Most Presidents are in their 50s or older, but JFK was 43, the youngest ever elected, and only TR ever took office younger; while his mother, formerly Jacqueline Bouvier, at 31, was the youngest First Lady since Frances Cleveland in the 1880s.

At one point, Jackie could be heard yelling at him, as a toddler, "John! John!" The media misunderstood this, and began calling him "John-John," a nickname that stuck with him for life, one he didn't like. As an adult, he always referred to himself as simply "John Kennedy," a common enough name without the middle initial that gave it away.

When interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in 1996, he said he didn't remember the picture of himself dancing with Caroline in the Oval Office while their father clapped along, or the picture of himself playing under the desk while his father worked, both taken mere days before JFK's assassination. He also said he didn't remember the salute he gave as his father's casket passed by during the funeral procession, on his 3rd birthday, November 25, 1963. "I remember he used to call me 'Sam,'" he said, "and I didn't like that. I said, 'My name's not Sam, it's John.' And he said, 'Okay, Sam.'"

In the one and only interview she gave after the assassination, to William Manchester a few days later, Jackie mentioned something a bit off-color: Once, JFK said good night to his son, and John said, "Good night, poo-poo-head!" and ran off. And JFK, laughing, said, "Come back here! You can't call the President of the United States a poo-poo-head!" If only he could have known what every President since him has been called, by people considerably older.

Jackie took John and Caroline back to New York. After marrying Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, they divided their time between Jackie's apartment on 5th Avenue and Ari's private island, Skorpios. Jackie took them to the 1969 World Series at Shea Stadium.

He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, which was attended by both Presidents George Bush -- but not his father, who had gone to Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut. Unlike his father, his grandfather and his 3 uncles, all Harvard men, he attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, which would later be attended by his uncle Ted's son, Patrick. In 1988, he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, and it was well-received enough that people began to believe a political career was in his future.

He then attended New York University School of Law, but needed 3 tries to pass the New York State bar exam. He became a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, lived in the Tribeca neighborhood, and rode a bicycle to work, even though the family fortune meant that he could have afforded a limousine.

Like his mother and his sister, he guarded his privacy intensely, and it was difficult to confirm stories about who America's most eligible bachelor was dating. Apparently, like his father and grandfather before him, he had a thing for actresses, including dating Brooke Shields, Sarah Jessica Parker, and, for 4 years, Daryl Hannah.

On September 21, 1996, a few weeks after founding George, a political magazine named after George Washington and aimed at younger readers, he married Carolyn Bessette, who worked in New York's fashion industry. This took many people by surprise: Not only was she not famous in her own right, but the general public didn't even know they were dating.

It was still believed that he would run for political office, as a stepping-stone to becoming President like his father. With the defeat of Governor Mario Cuomo -- whose son Andrew would one day be Governor, and had married Kerry Kennedy, daughter of John's uncle Robert F. Kennedy -- by Republican George Pataki in 1994, it was speculated that John would oppose Pataki in 1998. He chose not to.

When Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat who had been a sub-Cabinet official under his father, announced his retirement rather than run in the 2000 election, the wide guess was that John would run for Moynihan's seat. He never publicly denied it, but there was no indication that he was making preparations to run for the seat, which ended up being won by First Lady Hillary Clinton.

But the spectre of tragedy has long hung over the Kennedy family. In addition to his father's assassination in 1963, his uncle Robert was assassinated while running for President in 1968. His uncle Ted (Edward M. Kennedy) was involved in a fatal car crash the following year. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest brother of Jack, Bobby and Ted, was killed in service in World War II in 1944. One of their sisters, Kathleen, was killed in a plane crash in 1948. Another, Rosemary was left hopelessly disabled in 1940, in a surgical attempt to cure the apparent disability she already had.

Several of Bobby's kids had gotten involved in drugs, and it killed Bobby's son David in 1984. And Bobby's son Michael had been killed in a skiing accident in 1997. At the time, John was taking flying lessons, and he remembered that his mother, who died of cancer in 1994, was worried that he might die in a plane crash. He resumed his lessons, anyway.

On July 15, 1999, I attended the New York Yankees' game against the Atlanta Braves at the old Yankee Stadium, a 6-2 defeat. Unbeknownst to me until after the weekend, when the media showed footage of it on TV, John and Carolyn Kennedy had also attended the game. Despite the family's Boston roots making most of them Boston Red Sox fans, and the Shriver wing of the family coming from Baltimore and being Baltimore Orioles fans, JFK Jr. was, apparently, a Yankee fan.

The following day, John, Carolyn, and Carolyn's sister Lauren, who worked for brokerage firm Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, left New York for Essex County Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey. They were headed for the family home, known as the Kennedy Compound, in Hyannis Port, on Massachusetts' Cape Cod, for the wedding of Bobby's last child, Rory Kennedy, born 6 months after her father's assassination, to Mark Bailey. They had met through their work, as both are documentary filmmakers.

Traffic out of Manhattan, understandable due to it being evening rush hour on a Friday, was bad, and it wasn't until 8:38 PM that John was able to take off in the Piper Saratoga that he had bought 3 months earlier. The plan was to land at Martha's Vineyard Airport, on the island off the coast of Massachusetts, not far from another island, Nantucket; drop Lauren off there; and then take off again with Carolyn for Barnstable Airport on the mainland.

It was later determined that the plane hit the Atlantic Ocean at 9:41 PM, and that the most likely cause was spatial disorientation: As an under-experienced pilot, John may have been lower in the air than he realized.

At 2:15 AM on July 17, the Kennedy family notified Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod that the plane had not arrived. I woke up Saturday morning to the news that the plane was missing. Knowing of the "Kennedy Curse," I was convinced he and whoever was with him on the plane were dead.

It was a weird, and very hot, weekend, which also included the perfect game pitched by David Cone of the Yankees: The plane and the bodies hadn't been found, so we didn't have confirmation that they were dead, so a small hope still lingered. The tent set up for the wedding became the focal point of the family's vigil.

But fragments of the plane were found on the 19th. Late at night on the 20th, the fuselage was found. On the afternoon of the 21st, the bodies were found, all still strapped into their seats. Autopsies proved that they died on impact. All 3 were cremated, and their ashes scattered at sea.

Even more than for his father, who had accomplished many things as President, the question of "What might have been" hangs over the memory of John F. Kennedy Jr. At the John F. Kennedy Museum in Hyannis Port, there is a statue of both of them as grown men, arms around each other. A copy is in Rapid City, South Dakota, along with statues of all the other Presidents at a public park.

The Kennedy-Bailey wedding was postponed to August 2. Rory and Mark have 2 daughters and a son. George magazine printed a memorial issue for John, and folded in 2001.

The psychotic QAnon movement believes that John will return from the dead and tell people to support Donald Trump, and save America from sin. I guess they forgot, or are too insane to consider, than John was a Democrat, and, like the rest of the Kennedy family, would oppose Trump. Indeed, given the legal pursuit of Trump, it's entirely possible that John Kennedy Jr., rather than Alvin Bragg, might be leading one of the prosecution teams against Trump.

*

July 16, 1999 was a Friday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day, all of them in Interleague Play:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Atlanta Braves, 10-7 at Yankee Stadium. Neither starting pitcher, Greg Maddux and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, got out of the 5th inning. The Yankees led 7-6 going into the 9th inning, but Mariano Rivera blew the save, including giving up a home run to Andruw Jones. It was 1 of 2 homers hit by Andruw on the night, and Ryan Klekso also hit 2 homers, and Chipper Jones hit 1. Derek Jeter hit a home run, and he and Ricky Ledee each got 3 hits for the Yankees, but it wasn't enough.

* The New York Mets beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 9-7 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Matt Franco hit a home run in support of Rick Reed. Wade Boggs had an RBI double.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-4 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Montreal Expos, 9-4 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. This was one of the rare Oriole games between 1982 and 2001 in which Cal Ripken Jr. did not appear.

* The Florida Marlins beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 4-2 at the SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) in Toronto.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cleveland Indians, 11-3 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. 

* The Colorado Rockies beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-2 at Cinergy Field (formerly Riverfront Stadium) in Cincinnati.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Minnesota Twins, 11-10 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The wind was blowing out: The Cubs got home runs from Sammy Sosa, Henry Rodriguez, Jeff Blauser and former Twin Gary Gaetti; while the Twins got them from Torii Hunter, Chad Allen and Ron Coomer.

* A doubleheader was split at Milwaukee County Stadium. The Milwaukee Brewers won the opener, 2-0. The Kansas City Royals won the nightcap, 12-10.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-8 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Mark McGwire hit 2 home runs.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 9-8 at The Ballpark (now Choctaw Stadium) in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Todd Zeile drew a walk off Dan Plesac with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th, to win it.

* The Houston Astros beat the Detroit Tigers, 2-1 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Anaheim Angels, 3-1 at Edison International Field (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim).

* The Oakland Athletics beat the San Francisco Giants, 4-2 at the Oakland Coliseum (then named the Network Associates Coliseum). Barry Bonds went 0-for-3, but did draw a walk -- not an intentional one.

* And the San Diego Padres beat the Seattle Mariners, 2-1 at the new Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park) in Seattle. Ken Griffey Jr. went 1-for-4. Tony Gwynn did not enter the game.

One more game of note: In the independent Atlantic League, the Newark Bears played their 1st home game at Riverfront Stadium, across from Broad Street Station, and beat the Lehigh Valley Black Diamonds, 9-8 on a walkoff home run. Sadly, despite winning Pennants in 2002 and 2007, the Bears, named for a former Yankee farm team, never caught on, and went out of business in 2013. Their stadium was demolished in 2019, only 20 years old.