George S. Halas took an eternal knee on this day in 1983, dying at the age of 88. It was not a day for mourning, because the man was an ass-kicker and name-taker his whole life and there wasn’t much to be done that he didn’t do before he laid down for good.

Here are some things you may not have known about Papa Bear Halas:

1. Even though he went to Illinois, he played for the U.S. Navy team in 1919 because he was in the Navy. He was the MVP of the Rose Bowl that year as Navy beat Mare Island 17-0.

2. He was a great baseball player. He played minor league ball after leaving the Navy and was eventually promoted to the Yankees, where he played right field for 12 games in 1919. It’s been a myth ever since that he was Babe Ruth’s predecessor in right for the Bombers, which is not true. (Here are Halas’s career baseball numbers in the bigs.) What I wouldn’t give for a picture of Halas in a Yankees uniform. Anyone who can direct me to one, please chime in. This picture below is of his high school team, Crane Tech. Halas is second from the left in the bottom row.

3. The Bears were originally called the Decatur Staleys. Halas played for this team, owned it, coached it, and handled all the club’s business and ticket sales. It was around about this time that he started having his trademark breakfast of rusty nails washed down with a cold glass of motor oil.

4. In a game in 1923, Halas stripped Jim Thorpe of the ball and returned the fumble 98 yards for a touchdown. It was an NFL record that stood until 1972, when Jack Tatum broke it with an 104-yard fumble return at Lambeau Field.

5. Halas was personally responsible for bringing two of the greatest football players of all time to the Bears – Red Grange and Sid Luckman. Below, Luckman sits to Halas’s right on the bench during their NFL championship season in 1946.

Five years ago tonight, President George Bush threw out the first pitch of Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. Only seven weeks after the September 11th attacks, it was clearly meant as some kind of a defiant act, the sort of meaningless macho bravado that has since become W’s calling card (“Mission accomplished…”). I do remember that he threw a strike from the regulation pitching rubber. THAT was defiant. Any terrorists watching that shit must have had second thoughts about winning a game 7 with W on the mound. Osama was like, “if Bush starts against us we’re going to have to be patient at the plate and make him waste pitches, get to their bullpen…” And look, say what you will about the 2000 election, but you know Al Gore would have rolled that thing up to Posada.

That same night, another overblown international figure was making a grandiose and otherwise useless appearance in the Big Apple. Michael Jordan kicked off his second unretirement, opening his career with the Wizards in a game against the Knicks at the Garden. There was no double nickel. There was no miracle last-second dish to Bill Wennington for the win. MJ scored 19 on 7 for 21 shooting from the field as the Wizards lost 93-91. He looked old and slow and committed two key turnovers in the final minutes before missing a buzzer-beater three for the win. His farcical third act was under way. In other words, the terrorists had already won.

“Ali bombaye! Ali bombaye!…”

When you think of LaMarr Hoyt, you first think of that gloriously awful era of White Sox uniforms, the Carlton Fisk era, the collars and the shorts and then those weird gray ones with the red and blue stripes across the middle and the numbers on the pants.

Once you get past that, you think of ’83, the year he won the Cy Young and the White Sox made the ALCS and got spanked by the Orioles, the same Orioles that went on to spank the Phils in the World Series in front of 13-year-old little Large and his mom.

After that, unless you’re the type of freak who remembers things like minor league trades and the fact that Hoyt was a throw-in on the Oscar Gamble deal that brought Bucky Dent to the Yankees… unless you remember shit like that, you’re pretty much tapped out on the LaMarr Hoyt front. There’s nothing else to remember. Exceptin of course a boatload of cocaine.

Twenty years ago today, Hoyt suffered his third drug arrest of 1986, this one at the U.S./Mexico border. It was the third strike for LaMarr and he was out. Then-commish Peter Ueberroth banned him for all of the ’87 season.

Hoyt’s career had been a blow-sniffing mess since ’83 anyway. The White Sox dealt him to the Pads at the end of the ’84 season (and get this, among the players they got in return was a young prospect named Ozzie Guillen) and LaMarr pulled it together for a decent ’85 campaign, 16-8. But in ’86, all the cocaine calling cards were on the table – erratic behavior, sudden disappearances and a skyrocketing ERA. Not to mention getting arrested for cocaine a lot.

Ueberroth’s season-long ban of Hoyt was eventually reduced to 60 days by an arbitrator, but it didn’t help. He was a raving drug fiend and everybody knew it. The Pads had seen enough of his crap and released him. In ’88, the White Sox gave him another shot but he didn’t make the squad. He failed some more drug tests. His career was ruined.

Today he’s clean and working for the White Sox. He probably wonders at least once a day how great he might have been if he hadn’t put ten years or so up his nose. It’s a thought shared by many.

Tough day for sudden deaths in sports. First the news about Joe Niekro, and then this morning former heavyweight champ Trevor Berbick was found dead in his native Jamaica. The police are treating the death as a homocide, because Berbick evidently died of “chop wounds to the head.”

Other than briefly holding the WBC belt, Berbick had two claims to fame – as the last man to fight Ali, and as the man who made the 20-year-old Mike Tyson the youngest heavyweight champion in history, courtesy of the devastating second-round KO Tyson laid on him in 1986.

Ex-boxing champ Berbick hacked to death in Jamaica (Bloomberg)

It’s funny – the name “Joe Niekro” hasn’t crossed my mind in years, not until a few days ago when I wrote that “Greasiest Greasers” piece and remembered that scene with the nail file on the mound with the Twins. Now, the news comes across today that Niekro died suddenly last night of a brain aneurysm. He was 61 years old.

As a tribute, I want to take you back to one of the greatest playoff performances in possibly the greatest playoff series of all time. It’s one that is near and dear to my heart – Phils/Astros NLCS, 1980. I know it doesn’t have the national juice of Yankees/Red Sox, and it was in the era of the five-game NLCS, but still… FOUR of the five games went to extra innings. The Phils prevailed despite twice being two runs down and five outs away from elimination. Just about every inning of the series was excruciating. The whole thing was one long heart attack.

Even with guys like Nolan Ryan, J.R. Richard and Ken Forsch in their rotation, Houston’s most reliable pitcher all season was Joe Niekro. He went 20-12, with his twentieth win being his most important, a one-game playoff between the ‘Stros and the Dodgers that put Houston in the NLCS. Niekro was brilliant that day, going all nine in a 7-1 victory.

Four days later, Niekro was back on the mound on three days rest, as the NLCS went back to the Astrodome with the series knotted a game apiece. Again, Niekro and his knuckleball carried the side, as inning after inning he put runners on base and battled his way out of jams. It was a non-stop fucking Houdini routine, the kind of outing that takes balls the size of basketballs. He pitched TEN shutout innings that night, before giving way to Dave Smith, who closed it out in the eleventh. I’ll never forget that game as long as I live. It was the kind of game that makes you think maybe being a sports fan isn’t all its cracked up to be. I was ten years old. It was my first introduction to a fact that I’ve since become intimately acquainted with – sports HURT.

Both ten-inning affairs, the next two games weren’t any less painful, despite the fact that the Phils won them. But they nearly killed us Philly fans, and I’m sure they did kill some Houston-ites. It’s amazing the Fightins had anything left to go on and win the Series after that shit. And it was a shame for Niekro too, because he was out of his mind that year. He surely would have gone on for some Hershiser/Jack Morris-type heroics and be ennobled in Fall Classic lore forever. Instead that one-man ten-inning Alamo is lost in the playoff annals.

Not for me, though. You never respect someone so much as when you rooted against them. So today I say rest in peace Joe Niekro. By all accounts you were a real stand-up guy, and I know from first-hand evidence that you had the heart of a lion.

No contest on this one. It’s too damn easy for all you No Mas buzzards to get your Google on. Don’t worry, we’ll think of some other way to give away our shit. But for now just, you know, figure out who’s who and then impress your friends and neighbors. It’s a pretty easy crew anyway, and I didn’t try and disguise them at all. That golfer will give you a little heartache, though, unless you’re a PGA freak.

Anyway, here they are, all born on October 28th, submitted for your approval…

I open up my new copy of Everlast magazine, thinking I might buy myself a new mouthguard or some flashy handwraps or something… and who do I see looking like the next heavyweight contender? Al Harrington. Evidently he’s very into boxing. His father and his stepfather were boxers. So he trains at Gleason’s in the offseason, and it seems like he really knows his shit. Look at him on the heavy bag over there. Man looks fierce.

This discovery gave us an idea. Forget Shaq/Kobe, or Ron Artest versus Detroit, or that long-awaited Kermit Washington/Rudy T. rematch. The bout we’re waiting for is Al Harrington v. Carmelo Anthony. Melo boxes, works out a lot, talks a lot of smack. They’re a good match sizewise – Melo is 6’8″, 230, Al is 6’9″, 245.

So how about it gents? Let’s make this happen. You can wear headgear if you want. But think about it – twelve rounds for the heavyweight championship of the NBA on HBO PPV. Winner fights Valuev. The shit would be bigger than Johnson/Jeffries.

…20 years ago tonight, when the Mets finished off the Red Sox in game seven of the ’86 Series and permanently etched the name ‘Bill Buckner” into the wretched annals of goathood?

Me, I was on the couch in my house in Springfield, PA, a sixteen-year-old Large rooting large for the Red Sox in spite of myself. Oh those 80′s Mets, I hated them. Gary Carter’s hair. Ray Knight’s face. Keith Hernandez’s moustache. If I had known better, I would have chanted ‘West Village” the entire game and got some very confused looks from my parents.

I remember that at the time it seemed like the Mets winning the series, or more, the Red Sox losing it, was a foregone conclusion after the game six debacle. Which makes it even easier to forget what a rollercoaster game seven it was.

Ron Darling started for the Mets and Bruce Hurst, with two wins already in the series, went for the Sox. Boston went up 3-0 in the second with back-to-back homers from Dwight Evans and Rich Gedman and a Boggs single knocking in Hendo. The Mets didn’t answer until the sixth, when they touched up Hurst for three, Hernandez driving home two with a bases loaded single and then a Carter fielder’s choice scoring pinch-runner Wally Backman.

Then the Mets put up another threespot in the seventh off the real goat of the series, game 6 and 7 loser (and former Met) Calvin Schiraldi. And that was that, although the Sox made it interesting in the top of the 8th with two runs off Roger McDowell before Davey Johnson brought in Orosco (who was probably only like 38 years old in 1986) to shut down the side. Orosco did the job, and made it easy on the New York’s collective ticker the next inning, pitching a 1-2-3 ninth.

No Mas presents a 20th anniversary tribute to Game 7 tonight at Classic Kicks, 298 Elizabeth Street (see the CI invite below). Lots of original Mets-inspired art and Reverend Vince and ’86 Series trivia and Brookyln beer and I-berg perpetrating his general retro mayhem. Yours truly will be in attendance. I’ll be the one looking glum in the corner, trying to get someone to talk to me about Bake McBride.

Game seven boxscore, 1986 World Series (retrosheet.org)

Tomorrow, Friday October 27th will be the 20th anniversary of the Mets’ Game seven victory in the 1986 Series. In honor of this momentous occasion, we will be having a small gathering at Classic Kicks on Elizabeth Street between Houston and Bleecker. We invite you to join us from seven to nine PM.

Highlights will include the unveiling of a new work by James Blagden and a special musical performance and blessing for the lost souls of ’86 by the Reverend Vince Anderson.

There is also an installation up at the store featuring highlights from last fall’s gallery show, James Blagden’s originals from the Illustrated History of Drugs in Sports, a sneak preview of Tyson artist Mickey Duzyj’s new skateboards, and a case full of artifacts from my ’86 Mets collection.

Brooklyn Brewery is kindly providing refreshments.

If you would like to join us, please RSVP to: admin@nomas-nyc.com

I hope to see you there,

ci