September 8, 1974: Evel Knievel at the Snake River Canyon

September 8, 1974: Evel Knievel tries to jump over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho, on a "sky-cycle."

For people too young to remember Knievel (pronounced Keh-NEE-vil), he was the kind of figure who defies description. He was a 1970s phenomenon, a proper coming together of man and moment, hero and hype level. He was the King of the Daredevils, wearing star-spangled jumpsuits, big collars, big belts with big buckles, and making a fool of himself in Las Vegas. Which makes him sound like the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, except Elvis also had some great shows in Vegas.

Robert Craig Knievel was born on October 17, 1938 in Butte, Montana. He claimed he'd adopted the stage name "Evel Knievel" after being arrested for, no joke, reckless driving, and sharing a cell with a man known as William "Awful" Knofel. He made it "Evel" instead of "Evil," and wore white instead of black, because he didn't want anyone to think he was associated with motorcycle gangs like the Hell's Angels.

He participated in rodeos, ski jumping events, and served in the U.S. Army before marrying Linda Joan Bork and starting a semi-pro hockey team. To support his family, Knievel started the Sur-Kill Guide Service, and later worked as an insurance salesman.

Eventually, he opened a Honda motorcycle dealership in Washington, D.C., but faced difficulties promoting Japanese imports. After the dealership closed, Knievel worked at a motorcycle shop where he learned motocross stunts that would later contribute to his daredevil career.

He put together a show featuring other bikers, and called it Evel Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils. He gradually increased the number of cars he could jump over, until June 19, 1966, in Missoula, in his home State of Montana: He tried to jump 12 cars and a cargo van, but his back wheel hit the top of the van, he fell, and he ended up with a broken arm and several broke ribs. But he survived, and that began his legend.

On March 25, 1967, he cleared 15 cars at Ascot Park in Gardena, California. He tried that again on July 28, 1967, in Graham, Washington. He landed his cycle on the last vehicle, a panel truck, was thrown from his bike, and suffered a serious concussion. He went back there on August 18, and his injuries were more serious.

He recovered and, on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1967, the same day that CBS broadcast the NFL Championship Game -- the Ice Bowl in Green Bay -- Knievel tried to jump 140 feet, over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. He wanted it broadcast live on ABC Wide World of Sports. ABC said no: They told him to film it, and, if they thought it worthwhile, they would buy it, would broadcast it later. So Knievel got two friends to film it: Actor-director John Derek, and Derek's then-wife Linda Evans.

He did the jump, but he couldn't stick the landing, and was thrown over the handlebars. This was his worst set of injuries yet. But he didn't die. He lived to jump again, and was doing so by March 25, 1968. ABC refused to buy the Caesars film. As his legend grew, his production company rented the film to ABC, which would, eventually broadcast it -- many times.

On January 7 and 8, 1971, he sold out the Astrodome in Houston on back-to-back days. On the following February 28, he jumped 19 cars at the Ontario Motor Speedway in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, California. Doug Senecal was then 10 years old and living in Massachusetts, and was fascinated. In 2015, using the name Doug Danger, he wore the same costume and drove the same cycle that Knievel used in the Ontario jump, and set a new record, jumping 22 cars in Sturgis, South Dakota.

On March 3, 1972, at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco, Knievel made a successful jump, but, because of a short landing area, tried to stop short, and got hurt. He didn't get back to jumping until November 10, 1973. It was on this occasion that ABC finally agreed to put him on Wide World live, for what would be the 1st of 6 such appearances. There were 50 cars stacked at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and he got over them successfully, and landed successfully.

As far back as 1968, Knievel told the media that his dream was to jump from one side of the Grand Canyon in Arizona to the other. But the Canyon is included in the National Park system, controlled by the U.S. Department of the Interior, which denied him every time he asked, no matter what safety precautions he suggested. In 1971, while flying from one stunt to another, he was over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho, and he was struck by its natural beauty. Since the federal government had no control over that, that's what he set his mind on.

ABC refused to broadcast this one, fearing that he was finally going to be killed. Of course, they were already set to broadcast the Heavyweight Championship fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, which had people thinking that Foreman might actually kill Ali in the ring. (Instead, Ali knocked Foreman out.) And Wide World of Sports broadcast all kinds of dangerous events, from cliff diving in Mexico to all kinds of auto races: The Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Formula 1 and Grand Prix in Europe and South America. So who was kidding who?

So Knievel hired boxing promoter Bob Arum's company, Top Rank Productions, to put the event on closed-circuit television, and broadcast it to movie theaters, as if it were a major prizefight.

By this point, Knievel had learned that you couldn't just guess, or do it "by feel." He had accepted that he had to embrace the science of it -- which meant hiring people smarter than himself to figure it out. An ordinary motorcycle wasn't going to be able to do it. He hired aeronautical engineers Doug Malewicki and Robert Truax to build him a rocket-powered vehicle to jump across the Snake River.

On September 8, 1974, at 3:36 PM Mountain Time -- 5:36 Eastern -- the Skycycle was launched at the south rim of the Snake River Canyon, west of Shoshone Falls, Idaho. But the launch caused the drogue parachute to prematurely deploy, resulting in too much drag. The vehicle did reach a point over the north rim, but the wind caught the parachute, and blew it back to the south side of the canyon. The Skycycle crashed into the rock wall, and viewers were sure that Knievel had been killed.

Instead, at that point, crashing into the rock wall was the better option. He survived with only minor injuries. But he couldn't get out of the vehicle himself: His harness had malfunctioned. Had he landed in the water, he would have drowned before the rescue crew could get to him.

He had failed. But he had lived. The spectacle mattered more than the result. And, with Watergate reaching a climax that day with President Ford pardoning former President Nixon, America needed this kind of distraction. Evel Knievel had become the biggest thing in America.

On May 26, 1975, Wide World of Sports broadcast his attempt to jump over 13 buses at Wembley Stadium in London. These were not the "double-decker buses" that London is known for, but they were certainly taller than the kind of cars he was used to jumping. Frank Gifford, who was part of CBS' broadcast crew for the Ice Bowl, and wasn't there at Caesars, had since come to ABC, and had become friends with Knievel, and was the lead broadcaster for this event.

Over 90,000 people saw Knievel take off with not enough speed, and he hit the landing ramp with his front wheel, causing the bike to "trampoline" up, throwing him. His landing would have been bad enough, but the bike, with its wheels still spinning, kept going, and landed on top of him. The spinning of the wheel burned through his jumpsuit, extending his injuries.

He never lost consciousness. Gifford was among those who rushed to help him. They got him to a standing position, and he took a microphone, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen of this wonderful country, I've got to tell you that you are the last people in the world who will ever see me jump. Because I will never, ever, ever jump again. I'm through."

Gifford begged him to get on a stretcher for his ride to the hospital. Despite knowing his injuries included a broken pelvis -- because he'd done that before -- he said, "I came in walking, I went out walking!"

Like a great boxer, of course he couldn't stay retired. Just 5 months later, on October 25, he jumped 14 Greyhound buses at the Kings Island amusement part outside Cincinnati. At 133 feet, it was his longest successful jump. And it was Wide World of Sports' highest-rated broadcast ever. Again, he retired. Again, he lied, and came back, with a successful jump at Seattle's new Kingdome.

Inspired by the film Jaws, he wanted to jump a tank full of live sharks. On January 31, 1977, he rehearsed the jump at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. He lost control of the motorcycle, and hit a cameraman, Thomas Geren, and a wall. He broke both of his arms, but heard that Geren had sustained a permanent eye injury. That was it: He was willing to risk his own life and limb, but not someone else's. He never jumped again. As it turned out, though, Geren regained his full vision. Though relieved, this time, Knievel kept his word, and never jumped again.

The Guinness Book of World Records listed him as having suffered 433 separate breakings of bones. He said he had broken 35 different bones over his career. It all left him in terrible pain, especially in his back.

He turned to painting, a much calmer pastime -- and one he shared with another famous Wide World of Sports crasher, Slovenian ski jumper Vinko Bogataj, victim of the 1970 "agony of defeat" fall. He supported his son Robbie Knievel's daredevil career, addressing the crowds at Robbie's events. He did safety-themed commercials, telling kids to wear helmets while riding their bicycles, to stay away from drugs, and one on radio for the New York City Transit Authority, telling people not to try "stunts" on Subway trains or buses: "Take it from a daredevil, me, Evel Knievel: Some stunts are just plain stupid."

But his health declined. His many surgeries required blood transfusions that led to Hepatitis C, and needed a liver transplant. It looked like he wouldn't get one, and, in 1999, he was told that he only had a few days to live. He decided to leave the hospital, and die at his home. On the car ride home, he got a call that a liver was available. Take a wild guess as to how the donor died: In a motorcycle accident. (On the NBC hospital drama ER, the characters called motorcycles "donorcycles.")

In 2005, to raise relief funds for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, he worked with Harley-Davidson, makers of all his motorcycles, to lead a group of cyclists on a fundraising ride around Harley's hometown of Milwaukee. But he suffered a stroke shortly before the event, and had to limit his effort to an autograph-signing session.

Evel Knievel may have been on ABC Wide World of Sports 6 times, but what he did was not a sport. He died on November 30, 2007, outside Tampa in Clearwater, Florida -- not due to the effects of any or all of his crashes, but due to lung disease and diabetes.

Maxim, a magazine geared toward men, always with a scantily clad woman on the cover, printed his last interview. He said, "You can't ask a guy like me why I performed. I really wanted to fly through the air. I was a daredevil, a performer. I loved the thrill, the money, the whole macho thing. All those things made me Evel Knievel. Sure, I was scared. You gotta be an ass not to be scared. But I beat the hell out of death."

In 1999, Robbie Knievel jumped a portion of the Grand Canyon owned by the Hualapai Indian Reservation, out of the federal government's jurisdiction. In 2016, stuntman Eddie Braun, working with Evel's son Kelly and Ronald Truax's son Scott, successfully piloted a replica of the 1974 Skycycle over the Snake River Canyon. Braun idolized Evel, and had insisted that the jump would have worked if the parachute hadn't deployed too soon. He proved himself right.

UPDATE: It took me until 2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were Schrödinger's Decade. There were too many ridiculous distractions from the rotten things going on in the world; and, at the same time, not enough of them.

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September 8, 1974 was a Sunday. As I said, this was also the day that President Gerald Ford issued a pardon for former President Richard Nixon. I have a separate entry for that event.

These Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 11-3 at Shea Stadium, where they were played while the original Yankee Stadium was being renovated. Al Kaline, in his last few weeks as an active player, went 2-for-3 with a walk and 3 RBIs. He collected his 3,000th career hit 16 days later.

* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-3 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Tom Seaver went the distance for the win. Lou Brock went 0-for-3, but was hit by a pitch and grounded into a force play, and stole 2nd base both times. That gave him 103 stolen bases for the season, 1 short of what was then the major league record set by Maury Willis in 1962. He would raise the record to 118.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 8-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 1-for-4. Rookie Robin Yount only appeared as a late defensive replacement.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-3 at Atlanta Stadium. (It was renamed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium the next season.) Hank Aaron went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Montreal Expos, 8-2 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Willie Stargell went 2-for-4.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Baltimore Orioles, 7-4 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Brooks Robinson went 0-for-4.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-4 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Pete Rose, Tony Pérez and Dan Driessen hit home runs for the Reds, but it wasn't enough. Johnny Bench went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 11-10 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Willie Montañez went 3-for-5 with 4 RBIs. Mike Schmidt went 2-for-4 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Bob Boone went 2-for-5 with 3 RBIs. For the Cubs, Jerry Morales hit a grand slam.

* The Minnesota Twins beat the Kansas City Royals, 8-4 at Royals Stadium (later Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. Harmon Killebrew did not play. Rod Carew went 1-for-5. George Brett went 2-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Houston Astros beat the San Diego Padres, 3-2 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the California Angels, 1-0 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Jim Kaat (6 2/3rds innings) and Terry Forster combined on a 7-hit shutout. Frank Robinson appeared as a pinch-hitter for the Angels, but did not reach base. Four days later, he was traded to Cleveland. After the season, he was named their player-manager, the 1st black manager in Major League Baseball.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Oakland Athletics, 5-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Reggie Jackson went 1-for-4.

The NFL opened its season the following Sunday. One college football game was played: Notre Dame, then ranked Number 3 in the country, beat Georgia Tech, 31-7 at Grant Field in Atlanta. 

May 15, 1943: ABC Is Founded

May 15, 1943: The American Broadcasting Company (ABC), takes over the radio stations of the NBC Blue Network. This is recognized as the birthdate of "The Alphabet Network."

ABC would lag well behind NBC, CBS, and even MBS (Mutual Broadcasting System) for many years. And the DuMont Television Network would lead it in TV operations for a while. It was the Army-McCarthy hearings, broadcast live from the U.S. Capitol Building in June 1954, that are said to have "made" ABC as a major network -- if only the 3rd-biggest, behind NBC and CBS. It did, however, surpass DuMont, which went out of business in 1956; and Mutual, which never made the jump to television, limiting itself to radio for its entire existence, 1934 to 1999.

It would be sports that lifted ABC up. In 1960, broadcasting from Rome, it brought the Olympics to America live. The following year, ABC Wide World of Sports began, showing people sporting events, as the title suggested, from all over the world. In 1970, it began broadcasting ABC Monday Night Football. Monday Night Baseball followed in 1976.

By that point, ABC was airing situation comedies like Happy Days, and police dramas like Starsky & Hutch, and the two bigger networks had slipped. NBC entered the darkest period in its history, and CBS dipped in the ratings just enough for ABC to become Number 1 for the 1st time. Now, when people spoke of the "Big Three networks," it was not only no longer a joke to include ABC, they were, for a time, an obligatory 1st.

Despite the encroachment of Fox in the 1980s, and the cable boom thereafter, ABC remains one of the Big Three.

*

May 15, 1943 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1 at the Polo Grounds. Mel Ott, by this point also the Giants' manager, hit a home run to win it the game the bottom of the 11th inning. It is the 447th home run of his career, the most in National League history to that point, a record he will extend to 511, and hold until surpassed by a later Giant, Willie Mays, in 1966.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 13-6 at Ebbets Field. Al Glassop hit a home run. 2nd baseman Billy Herman, a future Hall-of-Famer, went 3-for-5 with 5 RBIs against his former team.

* The Boston Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 1-0 at Braves Field in Boston. Nate Andrews pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Johnny Vander Meer.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Stan Musial went 1-for-5. Mort Cooper was the winning pitcher, and helped his own cause with a home run.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 2-0 at League Park in Cleveland. Jack Salveson pitched a 4-hit shutout.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Washington Senators, 8-1 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.

* The New York Yankees and the St. Louis Browns were rained out at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The game was made up on August 10. The Browns won, 10-2.

* And the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox were rained out at Comiskey Park in Chicago. This game was also made up on August 10. The White Sox won, 4-2.

May 6, 1961: Tottenham Win The Double

May 6, 1961: Tottenham Hotspur, of Middlesex, defeat Leicester City, of the East Midlands, 2-0 in the FA Cup Final at the original Wembley Stadium in West London. "Spurs" had already won the Football League Division One title, so this meant that they had won "The Double" -- or "done The Double."

It was the 1st time it had been done in the 20th Century. The only previous Double winners were Preston North End of Lancashire, in the 1st Football League season of 1888-89; and Birmingham side Aston Villa, in 1897.

It was Spurs' 2nd League title. The 1st came in 1951, with 2 of their players going on to become legendary managers. One was Alf Ramsey, who led Ipswich Town of Suffolk to the League title in 1962, and the England national team to win the World Cup on home soil. The other was Bill Nicholson, who managed this '61 Spurs team, captained by Northern Ireland's Danny Blanchflower, playing a style that became known as "champagne football."

The game was scoreless at the half, thanks in part to the skill of Leicester goalkeeper Gordon Banks, who would be the starting goalie on that 1966 England team. But Bobby Smith scored in the 66th minute, and Terry Dyson iced it in the 75th. Blanchflower received the Cup from Katharine, Duchess of Kent, substituting for her husband Edward's 1st cousin, Queen Elizabeth II. 

This would be the 1st soccer game shown on ABC Wide World of Sports -- but it would be broadcast 2 weeks later, on May 20. Soccer was never truly a priority for American TV networks, until the 21st Century, when they began to see how much money they could make on it.

Early the next season, Tottenham acquired perhaps their greatest player ever, forward Jimmy Greaves, and finished 2nd in the League, and successfully defended the Cup, They won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1963, becoming the 1st team from anywhere in the British Isles to win a European trophy. (Such competitions had only begun in 1955.) They won another FA Cup in 1967. By that point, the Double team had already begun to break up, including through tragedy: Midfielder John White was struck by lightning on a golf course in 1964, dying at age 27.

Spurs fans like to say that they were the 1st London team to win the Double. This is not true: It would take the London Government Act 1963, taking effect on January 1, 1965, for Tottenham, both the neighborhood and the team, to be brought within the city limits of London.

In 1971, the team that had been in North London since 1913, Arsenal, would win both the League and the Cup, with their Captain, Frank McLintock, having played on the '61 Leicester team that lost this Final. For Arsenal, it was the 1st of, now, 3 "Doubles," the others coming in 1998 and 2002.

Because of their relationship with Arsenal, 4.7 miles away, Spurs fans have both a superiority complex (the "real" team in North London, the "champagne football" tag, '61 coming before '71) and an inferiority complex (no League titles since '61, to Arsenal's 6, including 2 clinched at White Hart Lane; no FA Cup wins since '91, to Arsenal's 9; no trophies at all since the 2008 League Cup, to Arsenal's 4; and Arsenal being far more popular, not just in London, but worldwide).

Since then, the Double has also been won by Liverpool in 1986; Manchester United in 1994, 1996 and 1999, with the UEFA Champions League added in 1999, making it England's only "European Treble"); West London team Chelsea in 2010; and Manchester City in 2019, with the League Cup added, making it England's only "Domestic Treble."

Tottenham fans also have a "The year ends in one" complex: 1901, FA Cup; 1921, FA Cup; 1951, League title; 1961, The Double; 1971, League Cup; 1981, FA Cup, 1991, FA Cup. Well, it doesn't always work out: Domestic football was put on hold during World War II, including 1941; and they won nothing in 1911, 1931, 2001 (including a loss to Arsenal in an FA Cup Semifinal), 2011 (including a late-season collapse that dropped them to 5th, out of the Champions League places) and 2021 (losing the League Cup Final).

UPDATE: In 2023, Manchester City won England's 2nd European Treble.

*

May 6, 1961 was a Saturday. Actor George Clooney was born.

American-style football was out of season. Basketball and hockey had ended their seasons the previous month. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Los Angeles Angels, 5-3 at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. You read that right: The American League's Angels were named for a team of the same name in the Pacific Coast League, a Cubs farm team from 1925 to 1957. Cubs owner William Wrigley Jr. built them a ballpark that resembled Cubs Park in Chicago, and named both of them Wrigley Field.

Roger Maris hit his 3rd home run of the year, but Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra both went 0-for-3. Leon Wagner hit 2 homers for the Halos, Albie Pearson 1, as Art Ditmar started and didn't have it.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 9-5 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente reached base 5 times: 4-for-4 with a walk, and an RBI.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 11-8 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Al Kaline went 2-for-6 with an RBI.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 6-1 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Ernie Banks went 2-for-4 for the Cubs, and Stan Musial did not play for the Cards.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Kansas City Athletics, 6-0 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 with an RBI triple, and Jackie Brandt hit a home run, in support of Steve Barber, who pitched a 5-hit shutout, striking out 10. That day, his arm was neither sore nor a little stiff. (Ball Four reference.)

* The Milwaukee Braves and the Cincinnati Reds got rained out at Milwaukee County Stadium. It was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Braves led the opener 4-0 going into the 8th inning, but the Reds scored 3 in the 8th and 2 in the 9th to win it, 5-4. Frank Robinson hit a home run off Warren Spahn. The Reds then won the nightcap, 4-0, as Jim O'Toole pitched a 5-hit shutout. Hank Aaron went 0-for-7 with a walk in the twinbill.

* The Boston Red Sox and Minnesota Twins got rained out at Fenway Park in Boston. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on June 27. The Twins swept, 6-5 and 6-3. Harmon Killebrew went 3-for-7 in the 2 games, while rookie Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-9. Yaz sure didn't look like a future Hall-of-Famer that night.

* The Cleveland Indians and Washington Senators got rained out at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on June 28. The Indians won the 1st game, 3-2; and the Senators won the 2nd game, 5-2.

* The Philadelphia Phillies and the San Francisco Giants got rained out at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. It was made up as part of a doubleheader on June 29. The Giants won the 1st game, 8-7, on a home run in the top of the 10th by Willie Mays, his 3rd homer of the game. The Giants completed the sweep, 4-1.

April 29, 1961: "ABC Wide World of Sports" Premieres

April 29, 1961: ABC Wide World of Sports premieres. The first events it covers are 2 of America's premier track & field meets: The Pennsylvania Relay Carnival, a.k.a. the Penn Relays, at Franklin Field on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; and the Drake Relays, at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

By the nature of its name, the show covers sports from not just all over America, but all over the world. This included sports often seen in the Olympic Games, like track & field, swimming, cycling, and Winter Olympic sports like ski racing, ski jumping, figure skating and speed skating.

There was lots of auto racing: The Indianapolis 500, NASCAR, and Grand Prix and Formula 1 events from Europe. Sometimes, there would be oddball competitions, like the Soap Box Derby, and "The World Lumberjack Championships." (It's the kind of thing that can't really be explained: You have to see it to believe it.)

The traditional North American sports were usually not shown. Baseball? Only the annual Little League World Series and the College World Series. American football? No: ABC did show college games on Autumn Saturdays, often before WWOS, but as part of a separate broadcast package; and were the 1st network to broadcast the American Football League. Basketball? Only the Harlem Globetrotters. Hockey? Maybe the amateur World Championships, which the U.S. almost never got far in. (NBC was usually the network broadcasting the NHL to the U.S. in those days.)

Boxing? Yes, but usually on a delay of a few days. Horse racing? Yes, including the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing: The Kentucky Derby in Louisville, the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, and the Belmont Stakes just outside New York City. And other major horse races, such as the Santa Anita Derby outside Los Angeles. Golf? Yes, as ABC, then as now, owned the rights to the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship.

From the beginning, the host was Jim McKay. He liked to say that the two best sports to cover were horse racing and golf, because they were the sports with the best stories. He was wrong that they were the two best sports -- after all, golf is not a sport -- but I loved his reasons.

The show's introduction was narrated by McKay, and written by Stanley Ralph Ross, who later wrote for the TV shows Batman and The Monkees, and co-created the 1975-79 Wonder Woman TV show:

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport: The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition! This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!

The show hosted a number of U.S. TV firsts:

* 1961: Wimbledon (which has been exclusively on NBC since 1969), the Little League World Series, the Indianapolis 500, the British Open, and the 1st sporting event behind the Iron Curtain televised in the U.S.: A U.S. vs. Soviet Union track meet. It enabled Valeriy Brumel, the last great high jumper to use the "scissors kick" method, to become one of the few Warsaw Pact athletes to gain popularity in America.

* 1962: The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Final (on CBS since 1982), the Grey Cup (the Canadian Football League championship game), and the Daytona 500. That year, with no knowledge that the record would happen, the show also broadcast the Los Angeles Invitational track meet at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, at which Jim Beatty ran the 1st indoor sub-4-minute mile.

* 1967: The 1st color broadcast of the Monaco Grand Prix.

For many Americans, it was their first exposure to soccer beyond their local clubs and school teams. It would broadcast highlights from the World Cup, the European Championships, England's FA Cup Final, and the European Cup Final (the tournament now known as the UEFA Champions League).

The show turned several figures into heroes in our country as well as in theirs. Boxers like Italy's Nino Benvenuti and Nigeria's Dick Tiger; gymnasts like the Soviets' Olga Korbut and Romania's Nadia Comăneci; auto racers like Scotland's Jackie Stewart, who became a commentator for WWOS; and tennis players like Australia's Rod Laver, Margaret Court, John Newcombe and Evonne Goolagong.

And then there was Vinko Bogataj, the Slovenian whose failed ski jump, while competing for Yugoslavia, at a meet in Germany in 1970, became the clip the show used in its opening montage when it wanted to illustrate "the agony of defeat."

When the show was preparing to celebrate its 20th Anniversary in 1981, they found him, and invited him to come to America -- not an easy thing to do, since Slovenia was still part of Yugoslavia, a Communist country. He was long retired from competition, and had become a ski instructor, a forklift operator, and a painter. He was not famous in his own country, and had no idea that he was famous in America. When he was introduced at the anniversary dinner, he got the longest standing ovation of anyone -- longer even than the one granted to Muhammad Ali, who asked him for his autograph.

In 1979, ESPN went on the air, and began to cover the kind of events, every day, that Wide World covered on Saturdays and Sundays. ABC saw the writing on the wall, and bought ESPN in 1984. With this in mind, Wide World of Sports became more and more redundant, and it was canceled, its final edition airing on January 3, 1998. In 2006, ABC folded its ABC Sports Division, and made ESPN, effectively, that. Jim McKay died in 2008.

*

April 29, 1961 was a Saturday. Football was out of season. The NBA and NHL seasons had ended a few days earlier. These Major League Baseball games were played that day, and, of course, none of them were broadcast on ABC Wide World of Sports:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-2 at Yankee Stadium. Yogi Berra hit a home run, while Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris each went 1-for-3, Maris adding an RBI, in support of Ralph Terry.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 5-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Brooks Robinson went 3-for-5, and Milt Pappas pitched a 6-hit shutout.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4 with a 2-RBI double, and Frank Robinson went 1-for-4 with a 2-run home run.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-5 at Tiger Stadium. Carl Yastrzemski went 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs, and Al Kaline went 1-for-4.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs, 9-4 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4 with a solo home run.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the Milwaukee Braves, 7-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Willie Mays went 0-for-4, but Willie McCovey went 3-for-5 with 2 home runs and 4 RBIs, and Orlando Cepeda went 2-for-5 with a solo home run. Hank Aaron went 0-for-4.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-2 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Stan Musial did not play for the Cardinals in this game.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 13-9 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* And the Los Angeles Angels beat the Minnesota Twins, 4-1 at the West Coast version of Wrigley Field. The American League's version of the Angels replaced the Pacific Coast League's version, which were a Cubs farm team, and 1920s Cubs owner William Wrigley Jr. built their ballpark to look like the one in Chicago, and named the L.A. park Wrigley Field before he gave that name to the Chicago park.

Also, Arsenal lost to Everton, 4-1 at Goodison Park in Liverpool.

March 7, 1970: The Agony of Defeat for Vinko Bogataj

March 7, 1970: Vinko Bogataj achieves an unusual kind of fame, and he doesn't even know it. And it wasn't by winning. It was by losing, disastrously.

The 22-year-old native of Brezovica, in what is now the independent nation of Slovenia, was competing for Yugoslavia in the World Ski Flying Championships in Oberstdorf, in the Bavarian Alps of what was then West Germany, on the border of Austria. (Such was the nature of the multiethnic, multireligious Yugoslavia that Bogataj's hometown was closer to Oberstdorf than it was to the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, now in Serbia.)

The event was covered by American network ABC, for its program Wide World of Sports, even though there were no American competitors. The show's introduction was narrated by the show's host, Jim McKay, and written by Stanley Ralph Ross, who later wrote for the TV shows Batman and The Monkees, and co-created the 1975-79 Wonder Woman TV show:

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport: The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition! This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!

Going into the March 21, 1970 broadcast, the scene used to symbolize "the agony of defeat" in their opening montage was of a downhill skier falling. Perhaps this was foreshadowing. That day, they broadcast the World Ski Flying Championships, contested 2 weeks earlier. 

A light snow had begun falling at the start of the competition, and by the time Bogataj was ready for his third jump on the Heini Klopfer Hill, the snow had become quite heavy. Midway down the inrun for his jump, Bogataj realized that the conditions had made the ramp too fast. He attempted to lower his center of gravity and slow his jump. Instead, he lost his balance completely, and hurtled out of control off the end of the inrun, tumbling and flipping wildly, and crashing through a light retaining fence near a crowd of spectators before coming to a halt.

ABC's announcer was Bud Palmer, a Princeton graduate who played for the early New York Knicks before moving into broadcasting. He said, "Lot of speed on that track now. Look out! Look at him go! Oh! Oh, baby! What a terrible fall!"

Bogataj suffered a mild concussion and a broken ankle, and was competing again 6 weeks later. By that point, WWOS had begun using Bogataj's fall to represent "the agony of defeat" in the opening montage, a decision made by coordinating producer Dennis Lewin. The show kept that sequence as such until the end of its run in 1998.

When the show was preparing to celebrate its 20th Anniversary in 1981, they found him in Lesce, Slovenia, and invited him to come to America -- not an easy thing to do, since Yugoslavia was a Communist country. He was long retired from competition, a ski instructor, a forklift operator, and a painter, and had no idea that he was famous in America. When he was introduced at the anniversary dinner, he got a longer standing ovation than anyone -- even Muhammad Ali, who asked him for his autograph.

In 1991, for the show's 30th Anniversary, while on his way to an interview with Wide World of Sports about the incident, he got into a small automobile collision. His first line to the reporter was, "Every time I'm on ABC, I crash."

Vinko with one of his paintings

In his own country, he became known for his painting. He married and had 2 daughters. As of March 7, 2022, he is still alive.

*

March 7, 1970 was a Saturday. Actress Rachel Weisz was born.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There were 3 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 111-104 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Billy Cunningham scored 36 points and grabbed 20 rebounds for the Sixers. But the Knicks got 29 points from Willis Reed, and 25 from Dave Stallworth.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the San Diego Rockets, 134-126 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit.

* And the Cincinnati Royals beat the San Francisco Warriors, 121-119 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California.

There were 3 games in the American Basketball Association:

* The Washington Capitols beat the Denver Rockets, 144-128 at the Washington Coliseum. Rick Barry scored 45 points for the Caps.

* The Dallas Chaparrals beat the Kentucky Colonels, 129-124  at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas. Louie Dampier scored 55 points for the Colonels. But the Chaps, who became the San Antonio Spurs in 1973, got 34 from Manny Leaks and 33 from Glen Combs.

* And the Carolina Cougars beat the New Orleans Buccaneers, 116-102 at the Loyola Fieldhouse in New Orleans. Bob Verga scored 41 for the Cougars.

There were 5 games played in the NHL:

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers played to a tie, 5-5 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Yes, The Spectrum hosted both the NBA and the NHL on the same day.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins and the St. Louis Blues played to a tie, 2-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 8-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The Los Angeles Kings beat the Oakland Seals (for the time being, their arch-rivals), 5-3 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* And the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers were not scheduled.