November 21, 1964: The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge Opens

November 21, 1964: The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opens, connecting the New York City Boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island, via Interstate 278. It is the last great road project of New York's "master builder," Robert Moses. And, for the next 17 years, it is the longest suspension bridge in the world. In 2022, it remains the longest in the Americas.

In 1524, Italian (Florentine) explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano became the 1st European to sight the land that would become New York City, and its bodies of water, including the Hudson River (named for the later English explorer Henry Hudson) and "The Narrows," the strip of water between Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Up until the 1920s, Staten Island was isolated: Its only connections with any other land were by the Staten Island Ferry system, connecting it with Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the New Jersey cities of Bayonne, Elizabeth and Perth Amboy. In 1928, the Outerbridge Crossing was built, connecting it with Perth Amboy, and the original Goethals Bridge (replaced by the current bridge in 2017) connected it with Elizabeth. In 1931, the Bayonne Bridge opened. But this didn't help people trying to get to and from the rest of New York City.

A "Liberty Bridge" and tunnel connecting the Subway system to Staten Island were proposed around this time, but federal funding for these projects was blocked by a Congressman from The Bronx -- Fiorello La Guardia, who was elected Mayor in 1933. He believed that a public necessity should not be provided by private interests. (The controversy over the Ambassador Bridge, built around that time between Detroit and the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario, shows that he was right.)

In 1947, Moses was ready to try again, and got the federal government to approve a plan for a bridge, despite angry opposition from the people of Bay Ridge, the neighborhood where its Brooklyn anchorage would be. Considerably more people would be displaced on Staten Island, but, overall, the people of that Borough understood the benefits of having the bridge, and supported the idea. The Bay Ridge opposition led to the decision to put it, instead, at the uninhabited Fort Lafayette, so no houses would have to be demolished.

Still, it took years for the construction to be approved, and it did not begin until August 14, 1959. About 10,000 men worked on the construction. Three died: Paul Bessett, 58, who fell off the deck and struck a tower in 1962; Irving Rubin, 58, who fell off the bridge approach in 1963; and Gerard McKee, considerably younger at 19, who slipped off a catwalk in 1963. His death led to a strike by workers, demanding safety nets under the deck. After 5 days, they got the nets, and resumed work.

The opening ceremony was held on November 21, 1964, with a gold ribbon being cut by Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and Borough Presidents Abe Stark of Brooklyn and Albert Maniscalo of Staten Island. (Stark had been a clothing store owner, who advertised on the right field wall at the Dodgers' Ebbets Field: "HIT SIGN WIN SUIT.")

The towers are 693 feet high, making each of them, easily, the tallest structures in their respective Boroughs at the time. Since 2019, 2 buildings higher than the bridge's towers have been constructed in Brooklyn. 

The towers are are 4,290 feet apart. In 1981, this world record was broken by the Humber Bridge in Hull, Yorkshire, England. In 2022, the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, in the city of the same name in Turkey, opened, and set a new record of 6,637 feet.

There is no direct passenger rail connection between Staten Island and the rest of the City. The Staten Island Rapid Transit (SIRT) rail line goes from the St. George Ferry Terminal (St. George to South Ferry in Manhattan has long been the last remaining Staten Island Ferry) down the east and southern coast of the island to Tottenville, and is technically part of the City's Subway system. But the only way to get from it to the Subway proper is via the Ferry.

A bus line on Staten Island's Victory Boulevard was extended over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge to the 95th Street terminal of what's now the R Train in Brooklyn, but, unlike most Subway-to-bus (or vice versa) transfers in the City, this one is not free if done within 2 hours.

The Verrazzano -- the full name is rarely used -- is best known for 2 things: The highest tolls of any bridge or tunnel in the New York Tri-State Area, and being the starting point for the New York City Marathon. Since part of the idea for the Marathon was that it would use all Five Boroughs, the closest point between Staten Island and any other Borough was an easy choice, made even easier by the toll plaza being wide enough to accommodate thousands of runners.

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November 21, 1964 was a Saturday. Among the college football games played on this day were the following:

* Number 1 Notre Dame beat Iowa, 28-0 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.

* Number 3 Arkansas beat Texas Tech, 17-0 at Jones Stadium in Lubbock, Texas.

* Rivalry: Number 4 Nebraska were upset by Oklahoma, 17-7 at Owen Field in Norman, Oklahoma.

* Rivalry: Number 6 Michigan beat Number 7 Ohio State, 10-0 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.

* Rivalry: Number 8 Louisiana State beat Tulane, 13-3 at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.

* Number 9 Syracuse were upset by West Virginia, 28-7 at the old Mountaineer Field in Morgantown, West Virginia.

* Rivalry: Number 10 Oregon were upset by Oregon State, 7-6 at Parker Stadium (now Reser Stadium) in Corvallis, Oregon.

* Rivalry: Harvard beat Yale, 18-14 at Harvard Stadium in Boston.

* Rivalry: Lehigh and Lafayette played to a tie, 6-6 at Fisher Field (now Fisher Stadium) in Easton, Pennsylvania.

* Rivalry: Penn State beat Pittsburgh, 28-0 at Beaver Stadium in St. College, Pennsylvania.

* Rivalry: Maryland beat Virginia, 10-0 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Virginia.

* Rivalry: North Carolina beat Duke, 21-15 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

* Rivalry: South Carolina beat Clemson, 7-3 at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina.

* Rivalry: Florida State beat Florida, 16-7 at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee, Florida.

* Rivalry: Kentucky beat Tennessee, 12-7 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee.

* Rivalry: Purdue beat Indiana, 28-22 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana.

* Rivalry: Wisconsin beat Minnesota, 14-7 at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin.

* Rivalry: Missouri beat Kansas, 34-14 at Memorial Stadium (now Faurot Field) in Columbia, Missouri.

* Rivalry: Utah beat Utah State, 14-6 at Rice Stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah.

* Rivalry: The University of Southern California (USC) beat the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), 34-13 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

* Rivalry: Stanford beat the University of California, 21-3 at the old California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley.

* Rivalry: Washington beat Washington State, 14-0 at Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane, Washington.

* And in New Jersey, Princeton beat Cornell, 17-12 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton; while Rutgers lost to Colgate, 20-7 at the old Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway.

There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Baltimore Bullets, 103-94 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat their arch-rivals, the Boston Celtics, 108-96 at the Boston Garden.

* The St. Louis Hawks beat the Detroit Pistons, 100-94 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

* And the Cincinnati Royals beat the San Francisco Warriors, 111-104 at the Cow Palace in the San Francisco suburb of Daly City, California. For the Royals, Jerry Lucas had 29 points and 28 rebounds, Jack Twyman had 24 points, and Oscar Robertson had 21 points and 13 assists. For the Warriors, Wilt Chamberlain had 46 points and 21 rebounds -- just another day at the office for him.

Two games were played in the NHL. The Detroit Red Wings beat the Boston Bruins, also at the Boston Garden. And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 1-0 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens were not scheduled.

And in English soccer, the North London soccer team I would one day root for, Arsenal, traveled to the Birmingham area, and played West Bromwich Albion to a 0-0 draw at The Hawthorns.

October 14, 1961: "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" Is Published

October 14, 1961: The Death and Life of Great American Cities is published by Jane Jacobs. It changes the way people looked at American cities.

She was in the process of defeating New York City planning boss Robert Moses over his proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, between the Holland Tunnel and the Manhattan Bridge, which would have done to Greenwich Village, Tribeca, SoHo and the Lower East Side what his Cross Bronx Expressway did to The Bronx: Destroyed them.

Jane Isabel Butzner was born on May 4, 1916 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her brother was a federal Judge. She and her sister moved to New York for work during the Great Depression. Getting a job as a stenographer, Jane also made some money as a freelance writer. She loved that Greenwich Village, where she lived, was laid out before New York's 1811 street grid plan, and thus not only didn't follow it, but deviated from it in interesting ways.

In 1943, she got an article published in a magazine, about how Scranton had declined economically. That led to her being hired by the U.S. Department of State, to write for the Office of War Information. That led to her meeting Robert Hyde Jacobs Jr., an architect who was designing warplanes for Grumman Aircraft. They married the next year, and had a daughter and 2 sons.

Henry Luce, boss of Time, Inc.,. hired her for his magazine Architectural Forum. She began to write about the poor response to urban blight after World War II. She was invited to speak at Harvard University, and that led to her being transferred to a higher-profile Luce magazine, Fortune. She spent three years conducting research and writing drafts on "urban renewal," citing "slum clearance" as being as big a problem as slums themselves. In 1961, Random House published the result, as The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

In 1962, she resigned her position with Luce to become a full-time author, and concentrate on raising her children. In 1968, in fear of their sons being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, which they had been participating in demonstrations against, the Jacobses moved to Canada, to The Annex, a neighborhood adjacent to the campus of the University of Toronto and home to many of its students and faculty. In 1971, she helped kill another potentially neighborhood-destroying highway, the Spadina Expressway. It came to be seen as a watershed moment in local activism in Toronto.

She opposed the separation of Quebec from Canada (successfully) and the "megacity" concepts for Toronto and Montreal (unsuccessfully), yet supported the separation of Toronto from Ontario, to form a separate Province (which did not happen). She died on April 25, 2006, in Toronto, at the age of 89, having done much to preserve the 2 largest cities in North America. (Or 2 of the 3 largest, if you count Mexico, and thus Mexico City, as part of "North America.")

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October 14, 1961 was a Saturday. Fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi was born.

Among the notable college football games played that day were these:

* Number 1 University of Mississippi, a.k.a. Ole Miss, beat the University of Houston, 47-7 at Hemingway Stadium (now Vaught-Hemingway Stadium) in Oxford, Mississippi.

* Number 2 Iowa beat Indiana, 27-8 at Iowa Stadium (now Kinnick Stadium) in Iowa City.

* Number 3 Alabama beat North Carolina State, 26-7 at Denny Stadium (now Bryant-Denny Stadium) in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

* Rivalry: Number 4 Texas beat Oklahoma, 28-7 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

* Rivalry: Number 5 Michigan State beat Number 6 Michigan, 28-0 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

* Number 7 Ohio State beat Illinois, 44-0 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.

* Rivalry: Number 8 Notre Dame beat the University of Southern California (USC), 30-0 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.

* Number 9 Baylor were upset by Arkansas, 23-13 at Baylor Stadium (later Floyd Casey Stadium) in Waco, Texas.

* Number 10 Maryland were upset by North Carolina, 14-8 at Byrd Stadium (now SECU Stadium) in the Washington suburb of College Park, Maryland.

* Rivalry: West Virginia beat the University of Pittsburgh, 20-6 at Pitt Stadium in Pittsburgh.

* Rivalry: The University of Virginia beat Virginia Military Institute (VMI), 14-7 at Foreman Field in Norfolk.

* Rivalry: Wyoming beat Colorado State, 18-7 at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, Wyoming.

* Rivalry: The University of Utah beat Brigham Young University (BYU), 21-20 at Ute Stadium (later Robert Rice Stadium) in Salt Lake City.

* Among the service academies, Army beat Penn State, 10-6 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania; Navy beat Cornell, 31-7 at Schoellkopf Field in Ithaca, New York; and Air Force beat the University of Cincinnati, 8-6 at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati.

* Rutgers beat Bucknell, 21-6 at Memorial Stadium (now Christy Mathewson Memorial Stadium) in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. RU advanced to 3-0 on the season, and finished undefeated at 9-0.

* And, Rivalry: Princeton beat the University of Pennsylvania, 9-3 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton, New Jersey.

Baseball season ended 5 days earlier, when the New York Yankees beat the Cincinnati Reds in Game 5 to win the World Series. The NBA season started 5 days later. The NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 3-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 3-3 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

In New Jersey high school football, East Brunswick, then in only its 1st season of varsity football, later to be my Alma Mater, lost to Bridgewater-Raritan of Bridgewater, Somerset County, 14-0.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to Lancashire, and played Blackburn Rovers to a 0-0 draw at Ewood Park in Blackburn.

September 24, 1957: The Last Game at Ebbets Field

September 24, 1957: The last game is played at Ebbets Field. The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0 on a 5-hit shutout by rookie lefthander Danny McDevitt.

It was also the day that President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division to assist with the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. And it was the day the Camp Nou stadium opened in Barcelona, Spain. I have a separate entry for each of those events.

It was a Tuesday night, a school night, and Dodger fans were already depressed by the fact that the move was, though not yet officially announced, already heavily rumored. Only 6,702 fans came out.

Gladys Gooding was the organist and the National Anthem singer at Ebbets Field, and also at Madison Square Garden. This made her the answer to the snarky trivia question, "Who is the only person to 'play' for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers?" (Ray Castoldi has since done so for the Mets, the Knicks and the Rangers. John Kiley was Boston's version, having played the organ at Fenway Park and the Boston Garden.)

Having started with the Dodgers in 1942, Gooding had also written the team's theme song, "Follow the Dodgers." She began the tradition of tailoring "walkup songs" for the players. For Pee Wee Reese, it was "My Old Kentucky Home." For Gil Hodges, it was "Back Home Again in Indiana." For Carl Furillo, "the Reading Rifle," it was "The Pennsylvania Polka."

But for Duke Snider, who was born in Los Angeles and grew up in neighboring Compton -- yes, the Duke of Flatbush really was "straight outta Compton" -- her playing of "California, Here I Come" proved to be all true prophetic. (She also could have played it for Jackie Robinson, who grew up outside L.A. in Pasadena, but she might not have had a song for him. At any rate, he wasn't in this game, having retired after the 1956 season.)

An urban legend says that the reason that umpiring crews became standardized at four isn't just because there's four bases, but also because the umpires were tired of her playing "Three Blind Mice" every time a Dodger argued with an umpire.

But, all through this game, she played sad songs, many of them songs of endings, including "Am I Blue," "After You're Gone," "When I Grow Too Old to Dream," "Silver Threads Among the Gold," "Don't Ask Me Why I'm Leaving" and "How Can You Say We're Through." She was not used to playing the new form of music sweeping the country, rock and roll: The most recent tune she played was Doris Day's hit of the previous year, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)."

There was some appropriateness to her playing of "When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day." Not only was blue the Dodgers color, but that song was known as the signature song of crooner Bing Crosby, who was a part-owner of the Pirates, the opponent that evening. Crosby was not in attendance. She also played "Thanks for the Memories," the signature song of Crosby's former film partner, Bob Hope, who was a part-owner of the Cleveland Indians. He did not attend, either.

Jim Gilliam led off the bottom of the 1st inning with a walk. A bad pickoff throw by Pirate starter Bennie Daniels, making his major league debut, allowed Gilliam to reach 2nd base. Daniels struck Gino Cimoli out, but Elmer Valo doubled to right field, scoring Gilliam and putting the Dodgers up, 1-0.

Cimoli led off the bottom of the 3rd by beating out a grounder to 2nd. Valo grounded out, but Cimoli advanced to 2nd on the play. Hodges singled Cimoli home. That made it 2-0 Dodgers, and that was the last scoring play in the ballpark's history.

Daniels pitched the 1st 7 innings for the Pirates, and was the losing pitcher. Like Snider, he grew up in Compton. Unlike Snider, he was black. He was still with the Pirates in 1960, when they won the World Series. He was then lost to the "new" Washington Senators in the expansion draft, and, on September 21, 1961, he was the losing pitcher in the last game at Griffith Stadium in Washington, as the Senators lost to the Minnesota Twins, who had been the "old" Washington Senators. 

The last play at Ebbets Field was a groundout, Dee Fondy hitting the ball to shortstop Don Zimmer, who threw to 1st baseman Hodges, who thus became the last Brooklyn Dodger to play in a home game. The night before, Snider had hit the last Brooklyn home run.

After the last out, Gooding played, "May the Lord Bless and Keep You." Somebody turned on her record of "Follow the Dodgers." No one wanted to follow them to Los Angeles. She quickly reached for the record player, turned it off, and played the last song at Ebbets Field: "Auld Lang Syne."

(If you're familiar with the Brooklyn Dodger Sym-Phony Band, I have no record of whether any of them attended; and, if so, what songs they attempted to play.)

The Dodgers would have the next 2 days off, and close their history as a Brooklyn-based team away to the Philadelphia Phillies, losing the finale. The official announcement of the move was made on October 8. After 75 seasons, 45 of them at Ebbets Field, the Brooklyn Dodgers were dead.

(In the wake of the NFL's Washington Redskins, now the Washington Commanders, calling themselves "The Washington Football Team" in the interim of their name-change, I have taken to calling the L.A. version of the Dodgers "The Los Angeles Baseball Team.")

The ballpark was torn down in 1960. In 1962, the Ebbets Field Apartments opened. By the time I first visited, on June 18, 1988, the area, on the edge of the neighborhoods of Flatbush, Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, was a gang-riddled, drug-infested hole.

I last visited on December 29, 2012, and the area is still a bit iffy, but a far cry from what it was in the 1980s and early '90s. Brooklyn has gone from all but uninhabitable to actually hip since then. But it will never be what it was when the Dodgers were there.

September 24, 1957, a date which lives in misery. And yet, if the Dodger fans were so great, how come only 6,702 showed up? Huh? (Well, for one thing, the Dodgers were in fourth place. For another, that was also a Tuesday night, a workday and a school night.)

The Brooklyn Dodgers weren't moved. They were assassinated. To this day, Walter O'Malley, the banker's lawyer who owned the team in part from 1942 and wholly from 1950 to his death in 1979, is despised in the New York Tri-State Area.

Some people blame Robert Moses, New York City's "master builder," who refused to condemn the land, across from the Flatbush Avenue Terminal of the Long Island Rail Road on which O'Malley, to his credit, had decided to spend his own money, not taxpayer dollars, to build a new stadium, a domed facility that would be known as the Brooklyn Sports Center. But if O'Malley was truly the "visionary" that his apologists have claimed, he could have found a way around Moses. O'Malley's "vision" only seemed to work when it helped him make more money, not when it could have helped others.

The story is told of two Brooklynites, both boys of the 1940s and young men of the 1950s, who went on to write for the New York Post. Pete Hamill (Irish Catholic) and Jack Newfield (Eastern European Jewish) were having lunch, and one of them said so-and-so was "the worst person who ever lived." (Shades of Bob & Ray's "Worst Person in the World" sketch, later co-opted by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who admits to being heavily influenced by Bob & Ray.)

And Pete says, "Let's collaborate on a column: 'The Ten Worst Human Beings Who Ever Lived.' Let's start. I'll write my three worst on my napkin, you write your three worst on yours, and we'll compare."

And each of them ended up writing the same three names, in the same order: Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Walter O'Malley.

Today, of course, the more apt comparison is to Lord Voldemort from the "Harry Potter" stories. O'Malley is, for many old people originally from Brooklyn, He Who Shall Not Be Named. The one who said, "Avada Kedavara" to their childhood dreams. Lord Waltemort.

And yet, one person who escaped punishment was the Mayor, Robert Wagner Jr., son of the U.S. Senator from the State of New York who wrote the 1935 bills that became the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act. A former State Assemblyman and Borough President of Manhattan, he had been elected in 1953 with 46 percent of the vote, and was up for re-election just 6 weeks after the last game at Ebbets Field, and less than 7 week after the last Giants game at the Polo Grounds.

He had received letters saying things like, "I want the Dodgers in Brooklyn. And you can do it by building the Sports Center. You had better get it done, or you'll not get a vote for me." Wagner could have found a way around Moses. He did not try. Instead, up for re-election in mere weeks, he lost 2 major league baseball teams.

The Republican nominee was Robert Christenberry, former Chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission. He was endorsed by President Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon, and the State's most recent Republican Governor, 2-time Presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey. He never mentioned the loss of the Dodgers, or the loss of the Giants, instead basing his campaign around Wagner's apparent failures on the issue of crime.

Result? Overall, Wagner won 69 percent of the vote, Christenberry only 27. In no Borough did Wagner get less than 64 percent. In aggrieved Brooklyn, Wagner got 75 percent. He would be elected to a 3rd term in 1961. Most likely, this was due less to Christenberry's refusal to make the loss of the baseball teams an issue than it was to the strength of New York City's Democratic political machine, the weakness of its Republican Party, and the weakness of the State's Republican Party.

In 1971, Bob Aspromonte, a Brooklyn native, retired, making him the last active Brooklyn Dodger.

In 2012, roughly where O'Malley wanted to build the Sports Center, the Barclays Center opened, becoming the home of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets, formerly the New Jersey Nets and the Long Island-based New York Nets. Maybe, if there was any justice, the team that moved to Brooklyn should have been the Los Angeles Clippers.

Instead, the "Brooklyn Dodgers" of the other major sports have been the NBA's Minneapolis Lakers, who moved to Los Angeles in 1960; the NFL's Baltimore Colts, who moved to Indianapolis in 1984; and the Minnesota North Stars, who moved to Dallas in 1993.

Despite the move, the Los Angeles Dodgers honored some Brooklyn Dodgers with the retirement of their uniform numbers: 1, Harold "Pee Wee" Reese; 4, Edwin "Duke" Snider; 14, Gil Hodges; 39, Roy Campanella; and 42, Jackie Robinson, the last of these eventually retired for all of baseball.

While they played in Brooklyn, Tommy Lasorda (2), Jim Gilliam (19), Sandy Koufax (32) and Don Drysdale (53), retired number honorees, are better known for playing in Los Angeles. This is also true of manager Walter Alston and broadcaster Vin Scully.

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September 24, 1957 was a Tuesday. No NFL games were played. And the starts of the NBA and NHL seasons were a month away. But a full slate of Major League Baseball games was played. In addition to the Ebbets Field finale:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 18, 1962: Shakespeare In the Park

June 18, 1962: The Delacorte Theater opens in Central Park in Manhattan, at roughly the midway point between the American Museum of Natural History on the West Side, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the East Side, about where the intersection of 81st Street & 7th Avenue would be.

It was the idea of Joseph Papp, a poor Jewish kid from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who fell in love with the works of William Shakespeare. He thought "The Bard" should belong to everybody. He began producing and directing a series of Shakespeare workshops, then moved on to free productions on the Lower East Side. Eventually, the plays moved to a lawn in front of Turtle Pond in Central Park.

In 1959, Robert Moses, whose many City and State government positions included that of the City's Commissioner of Parks, demanded that Papp and his company charge a fee for the performances to cover the cost of "grass erosion." A court battle ensued. Papp continued to fight Moses, winning his enduring respect and the quote, "Well, let's build the bastard a theater."

Following this, Moses requested funds from the city for the construction of an amphitheater in the park. In 1961, the Delacorte was built, as an 1,800-seat amphitheatre. It was named for George T. Delacorte Jr., president of Dell Publishing, a Shakespeare fan who contributed $150,000 to the building's cost. The first performance held in the theater in 1962 was Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, starring George C. Scott and James Earl Jones.

Six months earlier, on December 1, 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs was published. She was in the process of defeating Moses over his proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway between the Holland Tunnel and the Manhattan Bridge, which would have done to Greenwich Village, Tribeca, SoHo and the Lower East Side what his Cross Bronx Expressway did to The Bronx: Destroyed them.

Papp died in 1991. Since 1962, over 5 million people have attended Delacorte productions, most of them of Shakespeare's plays.

In a 2011 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, guest performer George Watsky played Shakespeare, opposed by guest performer Mickey Meyer as Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, "Nice" Peter Shukoff playing the Cat in the Hat, and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist playing Thing 1 and Thing 2. This was the 1st time the series had 2 guest stars opposing each other, although Meyer as Seuss did not speak.

UPDATE: The Delacorte closed for renovations on September 4, 2023, and reopened on July 15, 2025.

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June 18, 1962 was a Monday. There were 5 baseball games played that day:

* The New York Mets lost to the Milwaukee Braves, 7-1 at the Polo Grounds. Hank Aaron went 3-for-5 with 5 RBIs, including his 267th career home run. There would be many more.

* The Cincinnati Reds swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-5 and 4-2 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Over the 2 games, Frank Robinson went 4-for-9 with a home run and 6 RBIs, and Roberto Clemente went 3-for-7 with a walk.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Athletics, 9-4 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-5 with an RBI.

* And the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 1-0 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Thsis was a matchup between perhaps the 2 best pitchers of their generation. For the Dodgers, Sandy Koufax pitched a 5-hit shutout, striking out 9 and walking none. For the Cards, Bob Gibson had a 2-hit shutout with 1 out in the bottom of the 9th inning, striking out 8 and walking 4, before Tommy Davis hit a home run to win it. Stan Musial went 2-for-3.