November 11, 1889: Washington Is Admitted As the 42nd State

November 11, 1889: Washington is admitted to the Union as the 42nd State. It is the only State named after a President, George Washington. It is also the only State with a green State Flag, and the only State with a State Flag with the face of a real person on it, rather than a representation of some principle or other.

Other States have been named after people, but not Presidents:

* Delaware: Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, a colonial administrator.

* Pennsylvania: William Penn, its founder.

* Georgia: King George II of England.

* Maryland: St. Mary, mother of Jesus.

* South Carolina and North Carolina: King Charles I of England.

* Virginia: Queen Elizabeth II of England, "the Virgin Queen."

* New York: James, Duke of York, brother of King Charles II of England. James succeeded his brother, becoming King James II.

* Louisiana: King Louis IX of France, a.k.a. St. Louis, "the Crusader King." The City of St. Louis, Missouri was also named for him.

Washington was in the Northwest. It had been acquired as part of the Oregon Treaty of 1846. It has become known for its rainy climate; but, when the weather is good, it is known for its outdoor activities: Bicycling, camping in its forests, climbing Mount Rainier, riding the ferry from Seattle (including to Victoria, the Provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada), skiing in the Winter.

Its largest city, Seattle, is particularly known for the U.S. Navy base in nearby Bremerton; the accompanying aviation industry, as the birthplace of aircraft manufacturer Boeing; the computer industry, as the birthplace of Microsoft; and the coffee industry, as the birthplace of Starbucks. The State Capitol is Olympia.

Politically, Washington tends to vote Democratic. However, as with neighboring Oregon, and fellow Pacific Coast State California, the further inland you get, the more conservative people get. This is particularly true of "The Palouse": Eastern Washington (including Spokane), Eastern Oregon, and Northern Idaho, the State's Panhandle. The highest-ranking politician produced by the State has been Thomas S. Foley, who was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 1995.

That political divide is evident in the 2 major colleges with sports programs: The University of Washington, in Seattle, is generally thought of as liberal; while Washington State University, in Pullman, 288 miles to the east, is considered conservative. The annual Thanksgiving weekdn football game between "U-Dub" vs. "Wazzu" is known as the Apple Cup, named for the State's best-known agricultural product.

Seattle was home to the 1st American team to win the Stanley Cup, the 1917 Seattle Metropolitans. But after their league failed in 1926, the city, and therefore the State, didn't return to the major leagues until 1967, when the NBA expanded to include the Seattle SuperSonics. 

After decades with the Pacific Coast League, with teams called the Siwashes, the Turks, the Giants, the Purple Sox, the Indians, the Rainiers and the Angels, baseball tried the Seattle Pilots in 1969, but they were bankrupt and failed after 1 season. When the Kingdome opened in 1976, the NFL expanded to the Seahawks, and MLB expanded to the Mariners.

The Sonics won the 1979 NBA title, but were moved in 2008. There were new stadiums for the Mariners in 1999 and the Seahawks in 2002. The Seahawks won Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014. The Sounds won the MLS Cup in 2016 and 2019.

The Seattle Sounders played in the North American Soccer League from 1974 to 1983, and MLS expanded to include a new Sounders team in 2009. In 2021, the NHL expanded to include the Seattle Kraken, and the movement to bring in an expansion or moved team to become the new Sonics remains strong.

*

November 11, 1889 was a Friday. Baseball was out of season. Basketball was 2 years away from being invented. Hockey barely existed. There was 1 college football game on this day: Lehigh University beat Penn State, 106-0 at the Athletic Association's Grounds in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Lehigh coach Jake Robeson mercifully offered to stop the game with 5 minutes left on the clock, and it remains the worst loss in Penn State football history.

This was a long time ago: Teams would sometimes play 2 games in less than 1 week, and Penn State had played Lehigh's nearby arch-rival, Lafayette, just 2 days before, and lost that, 26-0. They did play 2 other games that season, and win both, also against Pennsylvania teams, Swarthmore and Bucknell. Penn State was not yet the power that it would become, and, because of the diversion of the schools' footballing prowess, Penn State have not played Lehigh since 1942, and Lehigh haven't beaten them since 1936.

September 26, 1969: "The Brady Bunch" Premieres

Top row, left to right: Maureen McCormick, Florence Henderson and Barry Williams.

Middle row: Eve Plumb, Ann B. Davis, Christopher Knight.

Bottom row: Susan Olsen, Robert Reed, Mike Lookinland.

September 26, 1969: The Brady Bunch premieres on ABC. The show was created by Sherwood Schwartz. Lots of people loved it then. Lots of people love it now.

I always hated it. I used to say that the two dumbest TV shows ever were Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. You should have seen the look on my face when I found out that Schwartz created Gilligan's Island, too.

Schwartz also wrote both theme songs, and the theme to this one told the story. A widowed architect, Mike Brady (Robert Reed), marries Carol Martin. (It's never said whether she's widowed or divorced.) He has 3 sons: Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (Christopher Knight) and Bobby (Mike Lookinland). She has 3 daughters: Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Cindy (Susan Olsen). The wife and the daughters take the Brady name. There's also a live-in housekeeper, Alice Nelson (Ann B. Davis).

The show ran for 5 seasons, with several notable guest stars: Baseball stars Don Drysdale and Wes Parker, football stars Joe Namath and Deacon Jones, Davy Jones of The Monkees, astronaut James McDivitt, E.G. Marshall and Vincent Price. There would be various sequel movies.

Reed died in 1992. Davis died in 2014. Henderson died in 2016. As of September 26, 2022, all of the "Brady Kids" are still alive.

*

September 26, 1969 was a Friday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-2 at Yankee Stadium. The Orioles had already clinched the American League Eastern Division title. Mike Kekich outpitched Jim Palmer. Bobby Murcer and Roy White each had 2 hits. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4. Frank Robinson went 0-for-1 with 2 walks.

* The New York Mets beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-0 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. The Mets had clinched the National League Eastern Division title 2 days earlier. Jerry Koosman pitched a 4-hit shutout.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Montreal Expos, 12-1 at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-5 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4. Al Kaline pinch-hit, and did not reach base.

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-1 at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the San Diego Padres, 10-4 at Atlanta Stadium (later renamed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). The Braves had already clinched the NL West. Hank Aaron hit his 554th career home run, Orlando Cepeda his 306th, and Clete Boyer his 140th.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 2-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Dock Ellis pitched a 5-hit shutout, to outpitch Ferguson Jenkins. Roberto Clemente went 2-for-3. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4.

* The Cincinnati Royals swept a doubleheader from the Houston Astros, 3-0 and 4-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Fans of Jim Bouton's book Ball Four, take note: He had already been traded to the Astros by this point. In the opener, Jim Maloney allowed just 1 hit, a single to Joe Morgan. Tommy Helms went 4-for-4. Bouton pitched the 9th inning, and allowed a run. Larry Dierker, already with 20 wins, went the distance in the nightcap, but lost. Over the 2 games, Pete Rose went 3-for-8, and Johnny Bench went 2-for-6 with a home run, 2 walks and an RBI. 

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the California Angels, 3-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Reggie Jackson went 2-for-4.

* The San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Willie Mays went 1-for-2 before leaving the game.

* And the Seattle Pilots beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-3 at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. The Twins had already clinched the AL West title. Harmon Killebrew hit a home run. Rod Carew went 1-for-2, then left the game. Wayne Comer won the game with a home run in the bottom of the 14th inning.

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 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 13, 1969: "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" Premieres

September 13, 1969: Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! premieres on CBS. It becomes one of the most popular "Saturday morning cartoons" of all time.

The voices of the characters:

* Don Messick as Scooby-Doo, a talking Great Dane, which is known as a cowardly breed of dog, and Scooby was a coward. And always hungry.

* Frank Welker as Fred Jones, the preppy blond leader of the gang, known as Mystery, Inc., and driver of their van, the Mystery Machine. Welker voiced several cartoon dogs, including Astro Jetson, and would take over as the voice of Scooby after Messick's death.

* Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers, a hippie who was as cowardly and as hungry as Scooby. Scooby seemed to be closer to Shaggy than to any of the others, though he would often steal Shaggy's food. Kasem was a superstar disc jockey in Los Angeles, and gave Shaggy the frightened exclamation "Zoinks!"

As a boy, I would read anything. And I noticed that Shaggy had the same voice as the Super Friends' version of Batman's crimefighting partner Robin. So I read the closing credits of both cartoons, wrote the names of the voice actors down, and looked to see if any of them matched. Sure enough, Kasem was the voice of both. As Shaggy would say, "Like, wow!" Or, as Robin would say, "Holy coincidence!" (Kasem's version did pretty much copy Burt Ward's from the 1966-68 Batman show.)

* Indira Stefanianna (Season 1, credited as Stefanianna Christopherson) and Heather North (Season 2) as Daphne Blake, the redhead who seemed to be not very bright, and also seemed to be Fred's girlfriend. This would be played up in the 2002 live-action film, in which Fred and Daphne were played by real-life husband and wife Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

* Nicole Jaffe as Velma Dinkley, a bespectacled intellectual who was probably the best detective of the group. When surprised, she would say, "Jinkees!"

As time went by, Velma was rumored to be a lesbian. This was unconsciously deepened by the fact that the character was based on Zelda K. Gilroy of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, played by Sheila Kuehl, who later became the 1st openly gay person elected to California's State Legislature.

As the cartoon debuted mere weeks after the Stonewall Riot, the idea that any of the characters could be gay couldn't have been said on the air. Even as late as the 2002 and 2004 live-action films, Velma was shown as being interested in male characters, including, on occasion, Shaggy. It was finally made canon that Velma was gay in a 2022 cartoon.

CBS aired 17 episodes from September 13, 1969 to January 17, 1970; then a 2nd season of 8 episodes from September 12 to October 31, 1970.

The theme song was written by David Mook and Ben Raleigh, performed by Larry Marks in Season 1 and George A. Robertson Jr. in Season 2.

What was in the Scooby Snacks? Many people have thought they were laced with marijuana. After all, Scooby and Shaggy always "had the munchies." But pot doesn't make you braver or more active. Quite the opposite: It makes you lazy.

There was an unmasking in every show, where the "ghost" or "monster" was shown to be all too human, usually trying to pull off some sort of fraud. In the public memory, their tagline is, "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

But that wasn't used very often. The first variation was in Episode 11, "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts," when a master of disguise, who'd impersonated a vampire, a werewolf, a Frankenstein-style monster and a gypsy fortune-teller, called them "these blasted kids and their dog!"

It wasn't until Episode 20, "Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright," in Season 2, before a professor studying ocean life, seeking to steal his partner's potentially lucrative invention, used the words "meddling kids," but he didn't use the words "And I would have gotten away with it, too." Nor did Mr. Carswell, the bank president who was embezzling from his own bank, and pretending to be the titular monstrous robber in Episode 21, "Jeepers It's the Creeper": He just yelled, "Meddling kids!"

In Episode 22, "Haunted House Hang-Up," the main "ghost" turned out to be the good guy, with an additional "ghost" admitting, "And I'd a-found it, if it wasn't for you snoopers!" Fred preceded this by saying, "Now, let's see who our phony phantom really is!" In the finale, Episode 25, "Don't Fool With a Phantom," Fred said, "Time to find out who you really are!" But Fred never, in the original run, ever said, "Now, let's see who you really are!"

Eventually, ABC bought the rights, and built a whole media franchise around Scooby and the gang, where the tropes became more common. But the 25 episodes of 1969 and '70 are generally considered to be not just the original, but the best episodes.

Don Messick died in 1997, Casey Kasem in 2014, Heather North in 2017. As of September 13, 2022, Nicole Jaffe is 82, Frank Welker is 76 and Indira Stefanianna is 75.

*

September 13, 1969 was a Saturday. Actor, director and playwright Tyler Perry was born. This was also the day of the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert. I have a separate entry for that event.

These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 5-2 at Yankee Stadium. Zoinks! Like, Gary Wagner outpitched Fritz Peterson. Rico Petrocelli hit a home run, Reggie Smith went 3-for-4 with an RBI, Tony Conigliaro went 1-for-3 with an RBI, and Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-2, but did draw 2 walks. And they got away with it, too, because the Yankees didn't have enough meddling kids. Bobby Murcer went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI, but rookie Thurman Munson went 0-for-4.

* The New York Mets beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-2 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Tom Seaver went the distance for the win. Ron Swoboda hit a grand slam. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4. Willie Stargell went 1-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Montreal Expos beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 7-5 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cleveland Indians, 10-5 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-1 with 2 walks and an RBI. Frank Robinson did not play.

* The Washington Senators beat the Detroit Tigers, 11-6 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Al Kaline entered the game as a pinch-hitter, and went 0-for-2.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros, 3-2 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Phil Niekro pitched 11 shutout innings for the Braves, allowing 6 hits. Larry Dierker pitched 12 shutout innings for the Astros, allowing 4 hits. Jimmy Wynn singled home 2 runs for the Astros in the top of the 13th.

But in the bottom of the 13th, Fred Gladding allowed single, double, walk, single. Jack Billingham got an out, but was immediately replaced by Wade Blasingame, who intentionally walked Hank Aaron, and then unintentionally walked Bob Aspromonte to give the Braves the win.

This game did not make a fellow proud to be an Astro. Maybe manager Harry Walker should have brought in Jim Bouton, whom the Astros had acquired from the Seattle Pilots on August 24. He was in the process of writing his diary of the season, which became the book Ball Four.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-0 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. John "Blue Moon" Odom pitched 8 shutout innings for the A's, before being relieved by Fred Talbot, who had been liberated from the expansion Seattle Pilots 16 days earlier. Paul Edmondson pitched 9 innings of 3-hit shutout ball for the ChiSox, but Wilbur Wood gave up 4 runs in the top of the 10th, including a 3-run home run to Dave Duncan. Reggie Jackson did not enter the game for the A's.

* The Kansas City Royals beat the Minnesota Twins, 1-0 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Dean Chance went the distance, allowing 4 hits -- and lost for the Twins. The expansion Royals started Roger Nelson, but he only pitched 1 inning before leaving the game with an injury. He didn't pitch again that season, and pitched only 9 major league innings in 1970, and battled injury thereafter, missing all of 1975, and last pitched in 1976, age 32.

Mike Hedlund pitched 6 innings, allowing just 2 hits. Ed Kirkpatrick singled home the only run of the game in the top of the 9th, making a winning pitcher out of Moe Drabowsky, who completed the 2-hit shutout. Shortstop Leo Cárdenas got both Twin hits. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-3 with a walk, and Rod Carew went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 7-4 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. The Cubs led 4-3 going into the bottom of the 8th, but the Cards scored 4 runs off Fergie Jenkins, Ken Johnson and Phil Regan. Lou Brock went 2-for-4 with a walk. Joe Torre went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs.

In this 1st season of Divisional play, the Cubs led the National League Eastern Division by as much as 9 games on August 16, but went 17-26 the rest of the way, falling behind the Mets on September 10, a collapse known as the September Swoon.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the San Diego Padres, 7-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the San Francisco Giants, 6-4 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Pete Rose went 1-for-5. Johnny Bench went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. Willie Mays entered the game as a pinch-hitter, and went 0-for-2.

* And a doubleheader was split at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. The Seattle Pilots won the opener, 6-4. Steve Hovley, Danny Walton and Don Mincher each got 2 hits, to make a winning pitcher of Diego Seguí, in relief of Marty Pattin. The California Angels won the nightcap, 4-2. Eddie Fisher (not the singer) outpitched Miguel Fuentes, the Dooley Womack and John Gelnar.

This was also the opening weekend of the college football season. But only 1 team ranked in the Top 20 played that day: Number 17 UCLA beat Oregon State, 37-0 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal traveled to Lancashire, and beat Burnley, 1-0 at Turf Moor. George Graham, later to manage them to success in the late 1980s and early 1990s, scored the game's only goal.

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 17, 1969: Hurricane Camille

August 17, 1969: Hurricane Camille makes landfall on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Its wind speed reached 175 miles per hour, making it a "Category 5 hurricane," the most dangerous kind. As of August 17, 2022, it is 1 of only 4 Category 5s to make an American landfall.

At a time when the American Southeast was not looked upon favorably by the rest of the country, due to its backward feelings on race, the State of Mississippi received more of this scorn than any other State. But it gained some sympathy on this occasion, since it took the worst of Camille's damage.

The storm produced the highest wave surge ever recorded in an American hurricane, 24 feet. It flattened the Mississippi coast; caused grave damage in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida as well; and had enough strength to move inland into the Appalachian Mountains of the Virginia Panhandle, and kill some people there. A total of 259 deaths are attributed to it.

The 1974 film Hurricane was inspired by Camille. It starred Larry Hagman, then known for playing the decent Major Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, and not yet the indecent J.R. Ewing on Dallas.

*

August 17, 1969 was a Sunday. It was also the 3rd and, officially, final day of Woodstock, and the 1st time New York's football teams, the Giants and the Jets, played each other. I have separate entries for those events. Also, basketball star Christian Laettner and New Kids On The Block singer turned actor Donnie Wahlberg were born on this day.

And these Major League Baseball games played:

* New York Yankees 5, Chicago White Sox 2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Jimmie Hall hit a home run for the Bronx Bombers. Stan Bahnsen started, and Mike Kekich won it in relief.

* Another doubleheader at Shea Stadium: The New York Mets beat the San Diego Padres 3-2 in each game. Duffy Dyer hit a home run in support of Jerry Koosman in the opener, and Ed Kranepool and Bud Harrelson each got 2 hits in support of Don Cardwell in the nightcap.

* Houston Astros 3, Philadelphia Phillies 2 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* Minnesota Twins 4, Washington Senators 3 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Tony Oliva's RBI single won it in the top of the 13th inning.

* Los Angeles Dodgers 9, Montreal Expos 3 at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* St. Louis Cardinals 5, Atlanta Braves 3 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Hank Aaron, Bob Tillman and Rico Carty hit home runs for the Braves, but all were solo blasts, and Steve Carlton was the winning pitcher for the Cards, as Lou Brock went 2-for-5, and Joe Torre went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* Pittsburgh Pirates 8, Cincinnati Reds 5 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Gene Alley, Al Oliver and Willie Stargell hit home runs. Roberto Clemente went 2-for-5. The Reds got homers from Pete Rose, Bobby Tolan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez, but it wasn't enough.

* Boston Red Sox 1, Kansas City Royals 0 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4, but Vicente Romo, Sparky Lyle and Sonny Siebert combined for a 4-hit shutout.

* California Angels 7, Cleveland Indians 6 at Anaheim (now Angel) Stadium.

* Detroit Tigers 9, Oakland Athletics 4 at the Oakland Coliseum. Catfish Hunter was knocked out of the box in the 4th inning, as the Tigers got 2 homers from Al Kaline, and 1 each from Jim Northrup, Don Wert, former Yankee Tom Tresh and Mickey Stanley. Denny McLain went the distance, despite giving up a home run to Reggie Jackson.

* Doubleheader at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. 1st game: San Francisco Giants 5, Chicago Cubs 3. 2nd game, Cubs 3, Giants 1. Over the 2 games, Willie Mays went 2-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Ernie Banks only appeared in this game as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base.

* Baltimore Orioles 4, Seattle Pilots 1 at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. Dave May (filling in at right field for Frank Robinson, who got the day off), Don Buford and Brooks Robinson homered for the O's, while Don Mincher hit one for the Pilots. Tom Phoebus won it, Fred Talbot lost it. Jim Bouton did not get into the game. A sweep for the Birds over the Pilots.

As Pilot manager Joe Schultz no doubt said, "Ah, shitfuck. Let's get 'em tomorrow, and then go pound some Budweiser." If Jim Bouton and his book Ball Four are to be believed, Joe Schultz would not have fit in well at Woodstock. 

August 15, 1969: Woodstock, Day 1

August 15, 1969: The Woodstock Music & Art Fair begins on Max Yasgur's dairy farm outside Bethel, Sullivan County, New York. Around 500,000 fans attended the 3-day event, a landmark in rock and roll history.

John P. Roberts and Joel Rosenman were New York entrepreneurs, and were building a recording studio in Woodstock, in Ulster County in the Catskill Mountains of New York. They thought of holding a rock concert to promote the studio. In the end, the studio became an afterthought, and was never built.

They contacted Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, who had organized the Miami Pop Festival the year before, bringing in 25,000 fans over 2 days. Between them, they began setting up what they had hoped would be an East Coast equivalent of the Monterey Pop Festival that had been held outside San Francisco in June 1967. Monterey Pop had gotten 50,000 people. The Woodstock promoters planned for 3 times that many, or 150,000.

Except they couldn't get a place to hold the show. The Town of Woodstock denied them a permit. So did Saugerties, and then so did Wallkill. Finally, Max Yasgur, a dairy farmer in Bethel, offered his farm as a site, as it had a slope which made for a natural amphitheater. It was 57 miles southwest of Woodstock, and 103 miles northwest of Times Square.

Tickets were $24 for the whole 3 days -- about $189, or $63 per day, in 2022 money. Sounds like a bargain. Maybe it would have been, if not for the rain and the mud.

Sure, it looked like a blast, if you saw the movie Woodstock, which was released on March 26, 1970, 7 months after the festival. Because that meant you didn't have to live through...

* The traffic jam, as bad as any as has ever hit the New York Tri-State Area. When Arlo Guthrie told the crowd, "The New York State Thruway's closed, man!" he wasn't kidding. The promoters expected around 150,000 people, and thought they had enough facilities, including the access roads, to handle that.

But, depending on whose figures you believe, anywhere from 300,000 (The New York Times on the day after) to 850,000 (cited by Richie Havens as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show 25 years later) showed up. The best-known figure is 500,000, due to the line in Joni Mitchell's song, "By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong." The next week's issue of Rolling Stone had the headline, "Woodstock: 450,000," and that is usually cited as the most accurate number.

(By the way, Joni wasn't there. Neither was Bob Dylan, whose supposed presence was said to be the reason so many people came -- the reasoning being that he actually lived in the town of Woodstock, which refused to host the festival. By the time they finally got the permit from the Town of Bethel, the posters with the name "Woodstock" had already been printed.)

In the 1970 Census, Buffalo was listed as having 462,768 people. If there were more than that at Woodstock (which is certainly possible), that would have made the Festival the 2nd-largest "city" in the State of New York, behind only the City of New York. And since about 3 times as many people as expected showed up, they had problems with...

* The food situation. There wasn't enough. To this day, there are nearby store owners who say they made a fortune selling sandwiches and soda to people going to the festival.

* The hygiene situation. Anyone who's ever been to a sold-out football game and had to use the bathroom, and has been foolish enough to wait until halftime, understands why baseball has 9 innings instead of 2 halves or 4 quarters. It's bad enough when 60,000 people want to use the john at once, in  a building designed to hold that many.

Now imagine that, out of 500,000 people, at any one time, 1 percent need to relieve themselves. That's 5,000. I don't know how many port-a-potties they had, but imagine that it was 100. That's 1 contained hole in the ground for every 50 people. That's not enough.

And I don't think there were shower facilities there, and lots of people stayed for the full 3 days. (Given the traffic, they may not have had much choice.) And remember, this was the middle of August in New York State. Hot. So even if it hadn't rained, producing all that dinginess and mud, those 600 acres must've given off some serious fumes, above and beyond anything that was being smoked. This, of course, gave rise to the myth of "the dirty hippie," which is also greatly exaggerated, but, at Woodstock, was bad enough.

* The medical situation. I don't know how many "bad trips" or overdoses there were. But the legend of someone getting on the microphone and warning Woodstockers about "the brown acid" (LSD, possibly laced with PCP, a.k.a. "angel dust") has been well-documented. Out of the 500,000 or so people who were there, it's been said that 3 died: One from an overdose, one from appendicitis, and one fool who decided to sleep under a tractor on a hill, and you can guess the result.

Now, there were almost certainly more murders, overdoses, accidents, medical miscues and "deaths by misadventure" that weekend in New York City, with all the modern medical facilities available, including some of the most honored hospitals in the world. But the men running Woodstock were woefully underprepared in this regard.

Anywhere from 1 to 3 births were said to have happened there (although no one has ever found a documented "Woodstock Baby"), to say nothing of the conceptions that happened there, and the couples that met and had children later on, so the deaths are probably more than balanced out. But then, if there were births at Woodstock, those required medical attention, too.

* The weather situation. Yeah, it rained. That's no myth. At one point, somebody onstage got all those people to chant, "No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain!" That worked about as well as chanting, "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fuckin' war!" As in, not at all.

No, on August 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1969, Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel Woods, Sullivan County, New York, where the festival was held, was not the place to be. In contrast, the next year, when the documentary about the festival was released, a movie theater showing it was the place to be. There, the millions of people who have said they were there could have a far better experience than the half a million or so who actually were there.

*

A band named Sweetwater was supposed to open the festival at 5:00 PM. But they were stopped by police en route. Richie Havens, who had made his name in the Greenwich Village folk revival of the early 1960s, was moved up. He looked out at the crowd, started strumming his acoustic guitar at warp speed, and just sang the word, "Freedom" over and over again, before segueing into "Motherless Child." He played until 5:54.

At 7:10, an invocation for the festival was given by a Hindu priest, Swami Satchidananda. At 7:30, Sweetwater finally went on. At 8:30, Bert Sommer -- not to be confused with Brett Somers -- took the stage, and got the first standing ovation of the festival for singing Simon & Garfunkel's song "America." (Neither Paul Simon nor Art Garfunkel attended, much less performed.)

At 9:20, Tim Hardin went on, and sang, among others, his 2 best-known compositions, "If I Were a Carpenter" and "Reason to Believe." Then it started to rain. Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar went on at 10:20, after 35 minutes of nobody wanting to play in the rain, and played 15 minutes. The Incredible String Band refused to go on, and at 11:00, Melanie Safka, another acoustic performer, was persuaded to go on, and played for 20 minutes. She later wrote "Lay Down (Candles In the Rain)" about the experience.

At 11:55, Arlo Guthrie, son of folk icon Woody Guthrie, came on, and said, "The New York State Thruway's closed, man!" At 12:55, another Greenwich Village folk music star, Joan Baez, came on. She was 6 months pregnant with her son, Gabriel Harris, who has since toured as her lead guitarist. At the time, her husband, David Harris, was in prison for draft evasion. Among her songs were the gospel tune "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome," which she had previously sung at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. She finished at 2:00 AM, and the show was closed for the night.

*

Major League Baseball games played on that Friday:

* New York Yankees 2, Chicago White Sox 1, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Fritz Peterson outpitched Gary Peters. Bobby Cox, now much better known as the Hall of Fame manager for the Atlanta Braves, went 3-for-4 and hit a home run for the Yankees. 

* Philadelphia Phillies 1, Houston Astros 0, at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* Minnesota Twins 2, Washington Senators 0, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. The Twins achieved this despite Harmon Killebrew going 0-for-4 and Rod Carew not playing. But Tony Oliva went 1-for-4 with an RBI, in support of Jim Perry, who allowed 7 hits in 7 innings, followed by Ron Perranoski allowing 2 in 2 to finish the shutout.

* Los Angeles Dodgers 9, Montreal Expos 2, at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* Atlanta Braves 8, St. Louis Cardinals 2, at Atlanta (later Atlanta-Fulton County) Stadium. For the Braves, Tony Gonazalez hit a home run, and Hank Aaron went 1-for-3. For the Cards, Lou Brock went 1-for-4 with an RBI, but Joe Torre went 0-for-4.

* Pittsburgh Pirates 5, Cincinnati Reds 1, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Buccos got home runs from Richie Hebner, Al Oliver, and 2 from Gene Alley. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4, and Willie Stargell went 2-for-5. Pete Rose went 1-for-4, and Johnny Bench went 0-for-4.

* Cleveland Indians 2, California Angels 1, in 12 innings at Anaheim (now Angel) Stadium.

* Oakland Athletics 4, Detroit Tigers 0, at the Oakland Coliseum. Lew Krausse pitched a 4-hit shutout, and hit a home run, to outpitch Mickey Lolich. Reggie Jackson and Al Kaline both went 1-for-4.

* San Francisco Giants 9, Chicago Cubs 0, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays and Dick Dietz hit home runs. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4.

* Baltimore Orioles 2, Seattle Pilots 1, at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4, and Frank Robinson went 1-for-5. Mike Cuellar outpitched Gene Brabender. While Pilots pitcher Jim Bouton (who did not get into this game) did mention the Moon landing in Ball Four, and also provided several discussions each on the subjects of music, fashion and hair, he did not mention Woodstock at all.

* Rained out, to play doubleheaders the next day: The New York Mets and the San Diego Padres at Shea Stadium in New York; and the Boston Red Sox and the Kansas City Royals at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

Also on this day, John Fetterman was born, later to be elected as a Democrat to be a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.