November 11, 1916: Rutgers Stands By Paul Robeson

November 11, 1916: The football team at Rutgers College stands up for their best player -- a month after cowardly refusing to do so.

On October 14, Rutgers were hosting Washington & Lee University at Neilson Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Washington & Lee is in Lexington, Virginia, and is named for George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Lee was the leading General of the Confederate States of America. Virginia was still a Southern State. And it had only been 51 years since the end of the American Civil War.

And Paul Robeson was a sophomore offensive lineman, tackle and guard, for Rutgers. And he was really good. And he was black. And the Washington & Lee players refused to play against him, because of his race.

So Rutgers head coach George Sanford benched Robeson. A friend of him called it "a wound that never healed." The game ended in a 13-13 tie.

A month later, West Virginia University sent its team to play Rutgers. West Virginia had seceded from Virginia and rejoined the Union in 1863. And their campus is further north than one-quarter of Rutgers' home State of New Jersey. Nevertheless, the Mountaineer players also insisted that Robeson not play.

This time, Sanford stood up for Robeson, saying that if the Mountaineers didn't want to play against a black man, they could go home. They didn't want to forfeit either the game, or the money their school would make by playing, so they played, and Robeson made a game-saving tackle near the goal line to preserve a 0-0 tie. Afterward, the WVU players lined up to shake his hand.

In 1917 and 1918, Robeson was considered by many observers to be the best player in the country. In 1920, making his all-time All-American team, Walter Camp, the legendary Yale player and coach who invented the "All-American team" concept, named Robeson the best defensive end he'd ever seen.

Robeson's pro career was brief, but he did play for the 1st champions of the league that became the NFL, the Akron Pros, led by black coach and back Fritz Pollard. Robeson went on to bigger things in the law, music, acting and social activism.

Rutgers' original name, in use from 1766 to 1825, was Queens College. Their administration building, opening in 1825, it still known as Old Queens. And so, when they began intercollegiate sports, their teams became known as the Queensmen.

In 1925, the name was changed to the Chanticleers. A chanticleer is a rooster, a fighting cock. There was precedent: The University of South Carolina calls their teams the Gamecocks -- although calling them the Cocks for short is a bit problematic. New Brunswick's radio station, and the carrier for Rutgers' football games, at 1450 on the AM dial, named their call letters after the ChanTiCleers: WCTC.

But too many people associated "Chanticleer" with "chicken," and thus with cowardice. So, in 1955, a student vote was held, and the name chosen the most was "Scarlet Knights." And so they have been ever since.

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November 11, 1916 was a Saturday. These other noteworthy college football games were played that day:

* Harvard beat Princeton, 3-0 at Harvard Stadium in Boston.

* Army beat Maine, 17-3 on The Plain in West Point, New York.

* Cornell beat Michigan, 23-20 at Schoellkopf Field in Ithaca, New York.

* Dartmouth and Pennsylvania played to a 7-7 tie at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

* Navy beat North Carolina State, 50-0 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Georgia Tech, 5 weeks after beating Cumberland College 222-0, took it relatively easy on Alabama, beating them 16-0 at Grant Field in Atlanta. Tech went 8-0-1, and were retroactively named National Champions by the Billingsley Report in 1996.

* Rivalry: Tennessee beat Vanderbilt, 10-6 at Waite Field in Knoxville, Tennessee.

* The University of Pittsburgh made Washington & Jefferson continue to pay for their racism, beating them, 37-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Pitt went 8-0, and were retroactively named National Champions by most sources other than Billingsley.

* Notre Dame beat South Dakota, 21-0 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

October 8, 1921: The 1st Football Game on Radio

The 1921 University of Pittsburgh football team

October 8, 1921: For the 1st time, a football game is broadcast on radio. KDKA in Pittsburgh, who had debuted by broadcasting the previous year's Presidential election results, and earlier this year had become the 1st station to broadcast a baseball game, heads for the gridiron.

Harold Arlin, a foreman at KDKA's parent company Westinghouse, was the announcer., for radio's 1st football game, as he had been 2 months earlier for radio's 1st baseball game. He was an engineer working for the station's owner, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. Although he had no background in the nascent radio industry, or in anything else that required the use of his voice, like stage acting, the company assigned him to call these games.

The opponents are the University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University, a rivalry later nicknamed The Backyard Brawl, at Forbes Field, home of baseball's Pirates. Pitt wins, 21-13. 

Forbes Field

On September 14, 1923, Arlin became the 1st boxing announcer over radio, going to the Polo Grounds in New York, to announce Jack Dempsey's wild comeback to knock Luis Firpo out and retain the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

But after 1921, Arlin never broadcast the Pirates again. He became known as radio's first celebrity interviewer, conducting interviews with William Jennings Bryan, Lillian Gish, Will Rogers and Babe Ruth. He later moved to Mansfield, Ohio, and ran Westinghouse's plant there. He lived until 1896.

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October 8, 1921 was a Saturday. Some of the other notable college football games of the day:

* The University of Iowa upset Notre Dame, the defending National Champions, 10-7 at Iowa Field in Iowa City. Iowa Stadium was built in 1929, and was renamed Kinnick Stadium in 1972.

* The University of California, on its way to being declared National Champions for 1921, beat the University of Nevada, 51-6 at California Field in Berkeley. California Memorial Stadium was built 2 years later, on the profits of Cal's "Wonder Team."

* Army beat Lebanon Valley College of Annville, Pennsylvania, 33-0 on The Plain at West Point, New York. Michie Stadium opened in 1924.

* Harvard beat Indiana University, 19-0 at Harvard Stadium in Boston. But 3 weeks later, Harvard would be the victims of a stunning upset, 6-0 at Harvard Stadium, by Centre College of Danville, Kentucky.

* In New York City, Columbia beat Wesleyan University, 14-3 at South Field. Baker Field, on which today's Wien Stadium was built, opened in 1923. Fordham beat the Catholic University of America, based in Washington, D.C., 10-0 at Fordham Field in The Bronx. And New York University lost to Brown, 13-0 at Andrews Field in Providence, Rhode Island. 

* In New Jersey, Princeton beat Colgate, 19-0 at Palmer Stadium. And Rutgers lost to Lehigh, 7-0 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick.

October 8 was an off-day in the World Series, which was played entirely at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, and which the New York Yankees led over the New York Giants, 2 games to 1. But the Giants would win it, 5 games to 3. This remains the last World Series not to be a best-4-out-of-7.

And Arsenal lost to Sunderland, 1-0 at Roker Park in Sunderland, in the North-East of England. 

October 1, 1932: Babe Ruth's Called Shot

 

October 1, 1932: Game 3 of the World Series is played at Wrigley Field in Chicago. There was bad blood between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs, because the Cubs had acquired former Yankee shortstop Mark Koenig late in the season, he'd helped them win the Pennant, and the team had announced that, whatever their individual players' shares of the World Series money would be, he would get only half as much.

The Yankees, including Babe Ruth himself, publicly called the Cubs cheap, and there was some rough stuff in the 1st 2 games at Yankee Stadium. When Ruth and his wife Claire got off the train at Union Station in Chicago, Cub fans were waiting for them, throwing garbage at them, and spitting on them. Neither was naive: The Babe had been treated badly before, and Mrs. Ruth, under her maiden name of Claire Hodgson, was an actress, and was used to rough customers. But this was over the line.

In Game 3, the Yankees took a 4-1 lead, including home runs by Ruth and Lou Gehrig (in that case, not back-to-back). But the Cubs tied it up in the bottom of the 4th. Ruth led off the top of the 5th, and the Cub fans were abusing him like crazy. In the Cubs dugout, the "bench jockeying" was nasty as well.

Ruth was no stranger to this. Because of his large, wide nose and big lips, there had been suggestions that he was part black. Research into his family history showed him to be almost completely German -- in fact, because his grandparents were born in Pennsylvania, before moving to Baltimore, they were "Pennsylvania Dutch" -- ethnically Amish, if practicing Catholics.

But that didn't stop people from indulging in rumors, and one of the names he was sometimes called was "(N-word) Lips." On one memorable occasion, which may be apocryphal, he heard this particular insult, walked over to the opposing dugout, and said, "Listen, you guys, call me 'bastard' or 'cocksucker,' or whatever you want, but lay off the personal stuff, would ya?"

Charlie Root was pitching for the Cubs, and he threw a called strike. The Babe didn't like the pitch, and the Cubs' bench jockeying got worse. A home movie -- sadly, silent, and with all the crowd noise, we probably wouldn't be able to hear what the players were saying, anyway -- shows Ruth waving his right hand at the Cub dugout, a classic "Ah, go on, ya bum" gesture.

The way the story is usually told, including on a newsreel by Ruth himself, there were only 3 pitches in this at-bat. In fact, Root's next 2 pitches were out of the strike zone, and called balls. His 4th pitch was called a strike. The home movie shows Ruth pointing directly at Root -- twice. His arm is not extended. Contrary to legend, he is not pointing at a spot beyond the outfield fence, as if to say, "I'm going to hit the next pitch there."

But he is sending a message. Cubs catcher Gabby Hartnett claimed Ruth said, "It only takes one." Another source said Ruth said, "You got one more, kid!" (To the Babe, who was terrible with names, if you were a young guy, you were "Kid"; if you were older, you were "Doc"; and if he didn't like you, or sometimes even if he did, you were "You son of a bitch!") Gehrig, in the on-deck circle, told a reporter that what Ruth yelled at Root was, "I'm gonna hit the next pitch right down your goddamned throat!"

So, yes, Babe Ruth called his shot.

Root threw him one more pitch. The Babe crushed it to dead center field. Longtime Cub observers said it was the longest home run ever hit in Wrigley Field to that point. The now-familiar center field scoreboard wouldn't go up until 1937, and no player has ever hit it with a home run. Supposedly, Roberto Clemente once missed it by less than a foot. Had it been there in 1932, the Babe's blast might have hit it.

The crowd knew that the Babe had made his point, and, like the Russian fans turning from Drago to Balboa in Rocky IV, switched sides, and cheered him as he rounded the bases, making a few more gestures, as if to say, "I told you so!"

For the rest of their lives, all the Cubs who had been interviewed on the subject said he didn't "call his shot." Charlie Root said that if Ruth had done that, "I'd have put one on his ear, and knocked him on his ass." Offered the chance to play himself in The Babe Ruth Story, the awful 1948 film starring William Bendix, Root, who went 201-160 for his career and died in 1970, said, "Not if you're going to show him pointing," and turned it down.

For the rest of their lives, all the Yankees who had been interviewed on the subject said he did it, including Charlie Devens, who pitched for the Yankees from 1932 to 1934, and was the last living player from the team.

There was one exception: Frank Crosetti, the Yankees' shortstop. I used to think that was why Crosetti never appeared at Old-Timers' Day between 1968, his last season as a Yankee coach, and 2002, when he died. It turned out that he simply didn't accept the invitation, preferring not to cross the country from his home in Stockton, California.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Governor of New York, and running for President, threw out the ceremonial first ball at the game, and according to a reporter covering his campaign, threw his head back and laughed when Ruth hit the home run. But through his entire 12-year Presidency, FDR never publicly offered his opinion on whether Ruth had "called his shot."

Francis Cardinal Spellman, then the Archbishop of New York, was at the game, and he said Ruth did it. So did John Paul Stevens, then a 12-year-old Chicago schoolkid, later a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and a Cub fan to the end of his life in 2019. If a Cub fan could admit it, then that's good enough for me.

The next batter was Gehrig, and he also hit his 2nd home run of the game. The Yankees hung on to win, 7-5, and completed the sweep the next day.

It was Ruth's 10th World Series, and his 7th World Series win. And it was his 15th home run in World Series play. In each case, it would be his last. The Washington Senators would win the American League Pennant in 1933, and the Detroit Tigers in 1934 and 1935. Ruth retired early in the 1935 season. In 1936, Joe DiMaggio made his Yankee debut, teaming with Gehrig to start a new dynasty.

Ruth's Called Shot remains, along with Bobby Thomson's 1951 Pennant-winning "Shot Heard 'Round the World," one of the two most talked-about home runs in baseball history, more so even than the World Series Game 7-winning shot by Bill Mazeroski in 1960, or the home runs that broke Ruth's records: Single-season, 61 by Roger Maris in 1961, then 70 by Mark McGwire in 1998, then 73 by Barry Bonds in 2001; and career, 715 by Hank Aaron in 1974, then 756 by Bonds in 2007.

UPDATE: Among the Yankees' many traditions is Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. From this 1932 team, they have honored right fielder George "Babe" Ruth, and 1st baseman Lou Gehrig, with Monuments. They have honored manager Joe McCarthy, catcher Bill Dickey, and pitchers Charles "Red" Ruffing and Vernon "Lefty" Gomez with Plaques. McCarthy never wore a number, but the team retired Number 3 for Ruth, 4 for Gehrig, and 8 for Dickey. They have also honored team owner Jacob Ruppert and general manager Ed Barrow with Plaques.

Along with each of the preceding, 3rd baseman Joe Sewell is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But it is for his earlier playing for the Cleveland Indians, and he is not honored in Monument Park.

The Cubs have a team Hall of Fame. Inducted from their 1932 Pennant winners have been catcher Charles "Gabby" Hartnett, 2nd basemen Rogers Hornsby and Billy Herman, 3rd baseman Stan Hack, left fielder Riggs Stephenson, right fielder Hazen "Kiki" Cuyler, pitcher Charlie Root, manager Charlie Grimm, team owner Philip K. Wrigley, executive Margaret Donahue, and public address announcer Pat Pieper.

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Of course, this was the only baseball game of the day. And it was the off-season for the NHL. And the NBA hadn't been founded yet.

But October 1, 1932 was a Saturday, so while all the NFL games played that weekend were played the next day, there were college football games played, including 2 major rivalries.

The University of Michigan opened its season by beating Michigan State University, 26-0 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. This was the depth of the Depression, so only 33,786 fans came into what has since been nicknamed "The Big House," then seating 85,752, to see the Wolverines blank the Spartans. The Michigan went on to win the Big Ten Conference.

Another Big Ten team, the University of Minnesota, played its 1st game under head coach Bernie Bierman. They beat South Dakota State, 12-0 at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Over the next 9 seasons, 1933 to 1941, Bierman would lead the Golden Gophers to 7 Conference Championships and 5 National Championships.

The University of Southern California beat Washington State University, 20-0 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Only 35,000 paid to get into the 100,000-seat Coliseum. USC would go on to win the Pacific Coast Conference, a forerunner of today's Pac-12.

In a rivalry later to be known as "The Backyard Brawl," the University of Pittsburgh beat West Virginia University, 40-0 at the old Mountaineer Field in Morgantown, West Virginia. (Built in 1924, it was replaced with a new Mountaineer Field, now named Milan Puskar Stadium, elsewhere on campus in 1980.)

Pitt had no conference to win, but were invited to play USC in the Rose Bowl on January 2, 1933. USC left no doubt as to who was the better team, winning 35-0. But the various outlets that selected National Champions in those days were divided, some picking USC, some picking Michigan. Under the current format, USC would have played Michigan in the Rose Bowl to decide it.

The University of Notre Dame did not play that day, opening their season a week later. Army beat Furman University 13-0 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. Navy lost to the College of William & Mary, 6-0 at Thompson Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.

In New York City, Columbia beat Lehigh 41-6 at Baker Field in Manhattan. Fordham beat the University of Baltimore, 69-0 at Fordham Field in The Bronx. New York University beat Hobart College, 33-0 at Ohio Field in The Bronx.

In New Jersey, Rutgers beat Pennsylvania Military Academy, 20-6 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick. And Princeton beat Amherst College at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.

Also, Arsenal beat Blackpool, 2-1 at Bloomfield Road, in Blackpool, Lancashire.

September 22, 1994: "Friends" Premieres

Left to right: Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer,

Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow

September 22, 1994: The sitcom Friends premieres, at 8:30 PM U.S. Eastern Time, in between NBC's established hit sitcoms Mad About You and Seinfeld. It helped to make Thursday night fit the Peacock Network's slogan of "Must See TV."

The main cast, each of whom had some sitcom experience (though not all successfully), was as follows:

* Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, a 25-year-old chef from a never-specified town on New York's Long Island. She has an apartment in New York City's Greenwich Village. On the show, the address is given as 425 Bleecker Street. In real life, that address does not exist. The real building used for exterior shots was at 90 Bedford Street, on the corner of Bleecker. The apartment is secretly in her grandmother's name, and, between that and rent control, enables her to live there cheaply.

In such groups, there's always a leader, and, for this group, Monica is it, by force of personality. She is incredibly competitive, a control freak and a neat freak, who was fat as a teenager and worked it off through sheer willpower. Her love-life is bad: As Joey points out, when she begins the episode by saying she's got a date, "Come on! You're going out with the guy. There's gotta be something wrong with him!" This line gets retroactively funnier when she and Chandler end up together.

* David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Monica's brother, 2 years older. He's an anthropologist who works at a thinly-disguised version of the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. He's a nerd who takes things personally. While Monica almost never mentions faith, Ross cares about being Jewish.

In the pilot episode, his wife, Carol (played in the 2nd episode by Anita Barone, and thereafter by Jane Sibbett), has just left him, after discovering at age 27 that she's a lesbian. In the 2nd episode, she is revealed to be pregnant, and, with son Ben's birth in the next-to-last episode of Season 1, Ross has to negotiate a three-way parenting thing.

* Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green. A stereotypical JAP (Jewish-American Princess), she was Monica's best friend in high school, but they drifted apart. She got a nosejob and a dentist fiancée, but, in the pilot, she leaves him at the altar, runs into Central Perk, the coffee bar where the gang hangs out, finds Monica, and the two reconnect.

Rachel moves in with Monica, and, having to take care of herself for the first time in her life, gets a job waitressing at Central Perk. She's not very good at it, but Gunther (last name never revealed, played by James Michael Tyler), the manager, keeps her on, because he has a serious crush on her.

Not as serious as Ross, though: He'd been in love with her ever since high school, but, in the present as well as in the past, he can't bring himself to tell her.

(NBC had debuted the hospital drama ER 3 days earlier, and it had a character named Rachel Greene, with an E on the end, the daughter of the show's initial main character, a preteen at that point. She gets phased out after her parents' divorce, only occasionally reappearing, including in the finale, where she's graduated medical school and interning at her late father's hospital.)

* Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay. Her father left when she was little, and her mother committed suicide when Phoebe was 14, so she lived on the street until meeting Monica, and became her college roommate. She eventually moved out due to Monica's issues. She's a masseuse, who moonlights as a singer, with weird songs based on her weird life, often performing at Central Perk.

Kudrow had previously appeared on another NBC Thursday night sitcom, Mad About You, as Ursula, the ditzy waitress at a bar called Riff's. In Friends' 1st season, it is established at Phoebe are identical twins, albeit with very different personalities. This becomes a problem later on when Ursula dates Joey, and later still when uses Phoebe's name to star in porno movies, including Buffay the Vampire Layer. It's only when Joey notices a tattoo that Ursula has but Phoebe doesn't that they know it's not Phoebe.

* Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing. Also a product of a broken home: His mother is a romance novelist, and his father is a drag singer in Las Vegas, who left the family when Chandler was 9, right after Thanksgiving dinner. Chandler had been Ross' college roommate, and has a cubicle job at the show's beginning, but soon gets promoted to an executive job -- a vague job that is never really defined.

* And Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani. The Staten Island native, now Chandler's roommate in an apartment across the hall from Monica and Rachel, is an actor and a womanizer. At first, he seemed to be of reasonable intelligence. But, as the show went on, he got dumber.

And that was typical of the show: Over the course of 10 seasons, the characters eventually became parodies of what they originally were, their annoying characteristics getting worse. Ross and Rachel got together, then split up in Season 3 (the show's "jump the shark" moment), went back and forth, had a baby together in Season 8, and finally ended up together in the series finale. Monica and Chandler got together in the Season 4 finale, married in the Season 7 finale, and, after fertility issues, adopted twins in the series finale. Phoebe married someone from out of the circle (played by a pre-Avengers Paul Rudd), and Joey went to Hollywood to pursue his acting dream. The spinoff Joey did not do well, its last episode airing on August 23, 2006, ending the franchise after 12 years.

Monica and Ross' parents were played by Elliott Gould and St. Elsewhere actress Christina Pickles. Rachel's parents were played by Marlo Thomas and Tony-winning Broadway star Ron Leibman. Phoebe's birth parents were played by Teri Garr and Bob Balaban, familiar to NBC Thursday night viewers as NBC executive Russell Dalrymple on Seinfeld. Joey's parents were played by Brenda Vaccaro and Robert Costanzo, an actor who usually played blue-collar guys (as he did on that show) and mobsters. And Chandler's parents were played by Morgan Fairchild and... Kathleen Turner, to emphasize the fact that his father wasn't just gay, but transgender.

Which brings me to this point: In addition to the characters' bad points getting deepened as the show went along, a lot of things about the show don't hold up well. The cast was nearly all-white, with very few minority characters. The gay jokes -- about the actually gay characters, and the perception that straight characters might be gay -- now seem really insensitive. And Ross' transformation from a lovable loser to a nasty jerk, acting as more of a control freak where Rachel was concerned than Monica ever was with anyone, is a black mark on the show.

Still, the show remains a favorite among people of Generation X, people who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, like me. It was the 1st TV show to show us as adults, however immature. The 1st season was wonderful; the 2nd, really good; the 3rd, pretty good; but as soon as Ross and Rachel went, or didn't go, "on a break," it never really recovered. It reached 10 seasons, lasting until May 6, 2004, mostly on inertia.

UPDATE: Matthew Perry was the first member of the main cast to die, on October 28, 2023. James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther -- never quite "The Seventh Friend" -- died on October 24, 2021.

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September 22, 1994 was a Thursday. Baseball's Strike of '94 was on. But there was a score on this historic day, in college football: Virginia Tech, ranked Number 14 in the country, beat semi-rival West Virginia, 34-6 at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg, Virginia.