On this day, July 18, 1976, Romania’s Nadia Comaneci scored the first perfect ten in the history of Olympic gymnastics with her performance on the uneven bars. The sprightly fourteen-year-old from Romania captured the hearts of the Montreal crowd and instantly destroyed the self-image of every Olympic gymnast past, present and future. She also unwittingly empowered her coach Belya Karolyi, who now had total perfection on his resume, to randomly alternate between screaming at teenage girls and giving them fatherly shoulder rubs–a tactic he would continue to employ for the next thirty years with total impunity.

Note: At the end of the routine you can see the scoreboard wasn’t even set up for the possibility of a ten and she is actually given a one. Can anyone identify the other girl wearing the two-tone sweatsuit and the extremely pained expression: is that Nellie Kim?

The New York Post revealed a few tantalizing excerpts from Joe Dimaggio’s diaries today, which are expected to fetch upwards of 1.5 million dollars at auction at Sotheby’s.

Among the scandalous revelations:

1. The Yankee Clipper had extremely poor penmanship.

2. He was not pleased with Mr. Coffee’s initial contract offer.

3. On February 1, 1992, at the La Gorce Golf Club in Miami, his tab was $38 and he left a seven dollar tip.

4. He hated airplane food.

5. He hated banquets in his honor.

6. He hated Old Timers Day because everyone in the clubhouse asked him for an autograph.

7. Sparky Anderson asked him for six autographs.

I just gotta know how many autographs Earl Weaver asked him for. And what about Lasorda. I’ll bet Tommy went for at least four autographs. I may not have 1.5 million just now, but when Knopf puts the complete and unexpurgated Dimaggio out in hardcover, I can tell you one thing, I will have my $85 at the ready.

NY Post: Joe D’s Diary is a Diamond in the Rough

On this day 66 years ago, July 16, 1941, the number 56 was etched into baseball’s annals forever when Joe DiMaggio hit safely in his 56th consecutive game, going 3-4 (two singles and a double) against the Indians in a 10-3 win for the Bombers.

Of course, no one knew right then that 56 was the number that would be associated with Joe D for all of baseball eternity. The streak had been going on for over two months, had survived numerous scares, and completely captivated all of America in the process, even prompting the recording of a song that became a nationwide hit (see below – if you’re using Safari, the player might not work – try Firefox).

It was the very next day, 66 years ago tomorrow, that the gods finally stopped smiling on Joltin’ Joe. After 56 games of near-misses and bizarre scrapes, including DiMag getting some hero’s treatment on a probable error in game number 30 to keep the streak alive, to leaning out over the plate to smack a certain ball four for a single off Philadelphia’s Johnny Babich in the 38th game, to having his favorite bat stolen right before the 42nd game – after all of that, it was only natural that it took some otherworldly plays in the field to finally clip the Yankee Clipper.

Those plays were executed by Indians’ third-bagger Ken Keltner, if not the Brooks Robinson of his day, certainly the Graig Nettles. He robs DiMaggio of certain hits in both the first and the seventh with Nettlesian backhands off hotshots down the line. Both times, DiMag is out by a hair at first. In his final at-bat of the game, Joe D faced Cleveland reliever Jim Bagby Jr., on his way to becoming a trivia question answer for all time. Joltin’ Joe grounded meekly into a doubleheader, and the streak was over as might have been predicted, not with a bang but with a whimper.

It’s odd, though, isn’t it, that for all the amazing things that DiMaggio did as a ballplayer, what are the first things you think of when you hear his name? A 56-game hitting streak and Marilyn Monroe, with Mr. Coffee a distant third. Even the true immortals ultimately get boiled down to a couple Wikipedia bullet points. I’m not sure that bodes so well for the rest of us ham-and-eggers.

On this day, July 15, 1931, Kid Chocolate, born Eligio Sardinias, defeated Benny Bass at Philadelphia’s Barker Bowl for the junior light-weight championship of the world and became the first Cuban ever to wear a title belt.

Born in 1910 in Havana, where five years later Jess Willard would take Jack Johnson’s crown, Chocolate got his fighting start defending his turf against rival newsboys. As he rose through the amatuer ranks he was spotted by “Pincho” Guttierez, a manager who dreamed of bringing the lightning fast featherweight to New York to seek fame and fortune.

They quickly found it. The Kid won his first forty-five professional fights and quickly built a following with his stylish footwork, good looks and lightning fast hands. The newspapermen dubbed him “The Chocolate Bon Bon” and a young Sugar Robinson, who later said he had never seen anything like Chocolate’s fluid style, became his friend and disciple.

In 1930, Chocolate’s unbeaten streak came to an end at the Polo Grounds against the heavier Jackie “Kid” Berg, and he also suffered losses to Fidel LaBarba and “Battling Battalino”. But after some time away from the ring, Chocolate came back and TKOed Benny Bass in the seventh to finally claim the title.
He would later KO Lew Feldman at a packed Madison Square Garden to add the featherweight crown, and he went on to defend it twice, but after being knocked out by Tony Canzoneri in 1933, he began a long and steady decline. He fought his last bout in Havana in 1938 and died in his native city fifty years later. Unlike the other great Cuban champions of the fifties and sixties: Benny Paret (who died in the ring fighting Emile Griffith), Kid Gavilan and Luis Rodriguez (who both elected to stay in the States after the Cuban revolution outlawed professional boxing), Kid Chocolate’s achievements are recognized by the Cuban government: he has a stadium named after him near the Capiltolio in Havana.

He has also been more recently blessed with a living legacy. After seeing what he felt was a resemblance to himself in old fight pictures, rising middleweight Peter Quillin–also of Afro Cuban descent–took on the name “Kid Chocolate” and added the flourish of throwing out Hershey’s kisses to the crowd before each one of his fights. So far it seems Quillin has substance to go with the shtick: he is 13-0 with eleven knockouts.

On this day in 1968, Hank Aaron joined the 500 Club, with a three run blast off Mike McCormick. These days, standards at The Club have slipped and they’ll let just about anybody in–Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Frank Thomas–one of the new guys on the admissions committee even voted for Fred McGriff. “Ah, what the hell, he’s only seven short…”

But back in Aaron’s time, they didn’t give you any breaks. There were only seven guys in it before ol’ Hammerin Hank knocked on the door: Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Eddie Matthews who had been accepted exactly one year before. The first time Hank came round, Williams made some vague threats about “initiation rituals” and even brandished a paddle briefly, but in the end, he just gave Hank a scotch and soda and hung his picture up on the wall with everybody else’s. Those were the good old days when you could still get a seat at the bar on a Tuesday night.

Today, there are twenty one members of the club, and the pool room’s just overrun. Meanwhile with A-Rod fixing to make himself the youngest member of all time in the next couple weeks and Thome, Manny, and Sheff threatening to break in before the end of the season, the old timers are talking a whole lot of ain’t like it used to be and threatening to open something called “The 005 Club” right across the street. The word is that a few of the younger guys will be invited, but definitely not Double B. Not even Willie would argue for him. As The Splendid Splinter said himself, “A club has got to have standards otherwise it just ain’t a club no more.” Amen, my brother.

In honor of two old New York baseball shows worth checking out this weekend (Glory Days at the Museum of the City of New York and HBO’s Ghosts of Flatbush), we take you back to the No Mas x Frank 151 Sports issue for a chat with the owner of Bamonte’s, the official trattoria of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Since 1900, both working class locals and well-heeled epicures have been frequenting Bamonte’s, an iconic Italian bar and restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days celebrity diners include Jack Nicholson and Mike Piazza, but in the 40s and 50s Dem Bums were the ones turning heads in the joint.
Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, or Duke Snider might stop by to celebrate a big victory with clams casino or get over a tough loss with the famous veal scaloppini. The Brooklyn Sym-Phony Orchestra, five Dodger fanatics who provided a hand-made soundtrack for every game at Ebbets Field, were such regulars Bamonte’s was their unofficial clubhouse.

Lovingly watched over by the ghosts of the boys of summer, Bamonte’s continues to thrive today. Proprietor Anthony Bamonte and his childhood friend and daytime bartender Johnny Pizariello recently took a moment to reminisce about the good old days.

Chris Isenberg: The trolley used to run from Ebbets Field to here?
Anthony Bamonte: It used pass on Lorimer Street.
Johnny Pizzariello: You know that was one of the ways, supposedly, that the Dodgers got their name, people dodging to get out of the way of the trolley. Nobody knows for sure.

CI: How many stops to Ebbets Field from here?
AB: I don’t know exactly, 20 minutes, half-hour?
JP: Yeah, the bus on the corner now goes to where Ebbets Field used to be. It’s the same route.
AB: It wasn’t like today, see. The ballplayers were regular guys from what I remember. They had a job plus they played baseball. It wasn’t like today. I mean a lot of these baseball players today are regular also. But in those days it was a working class job. Those fellas couldn’t put two dimes together right, right John?

CI: This neighborhood was mostly Dodgers fans?
AB: Well you had quite a few Yankees fans too. You were either a Dodger fan, a Yank fan, or a Giant fan. But these guys, if you threw a dime down they would fight you for it. Right Johnny? Going back to those days those guys were die-hard fans.

CI: So you would have both factions in here rooting?
AB: Most of the fellas here used to be Dodgers fans.

CI: Did you get to go to any of the World Series games?
AB: No, just regular season. I didn’t go that often. Little Joe-Joe, the midget [who at 92 is the last surviving member of the Brooklyn Sym-Phony], he used to give me one cymbal and he’d hold the other and say, ‘That’s my partner. He’s coming in with me.”

The Sym-Phony. They would play things like ‘Three Blind Mice” to get on the umpires. When they first started, it was just like a nothing thing, really. Who knew it was gonna be like it is today? They just donated the drum to the Hall of Fame [Cooperstown].

CI: So when Jackie Robinson came up you were seven, do you remember people talking about him at that time in the neighborhood?
AB: One thing I do remember is one time he had to go on the field and there was a threat on his life. Someone was going to shoot him. He went out there anyway. He was a brave man.

CI: How did the neighborhood feel about him breaking the color line? Was the opinion mixed?
AB: I don’t really remember that.
JP: New York wasn’t bad at all. He had trouble in other cities, like St. Louis. New York had a lot of blacks at that time. There was no racial things in New York in the 40s and 50s. That all started in the 60s.

CI: Can you tell me a little about ’55 when the Brooklyn Dodgers won it and how the neighborhood and people in here reacted?
AB: When the team won, at night they would go around in cars and trucks and they would have horns or anything that would make noise. They would hang a dummy that would say Yankees or whoever off of a pole on the truck. They would go through the neighborhood of the Yank fans and they would ‘give ‘em the business”. Remember the time they used to go around with the dummy on the truck Johnny?
JP: Yeah, they hung the dummies on the lamp posts too.
AB: You don’t see none of that today.

CI: In ’55 did they go nuts in here?
AB: Yeah it was like a big thing for people, from what I could remember. John, what do you remember from on the Northside in ’55?
JP: The tickertape parade on Broadway and in the neighborhoods. It had nothing to do with the city. The people themselves had their own parade.
AB: It was a different era, different type of people, different attitudes. You know what it was in those days? You had that loyalty. Today, I don’t really think there’s loyalty, not compared to what it was in those days.

CI: Who were you closest to out of the ballplayers that came in over the years?
AB: Tommy Lasorda, and then I became friendly with Joe DiMaggio at that time. Joe came here for like seven years.
CI: Can you tell us about DiMaggio?
AB: Joe was a good guy, to me anyways. At the beginning, see, Joe is the kind of guy who waits to see the person you are. Once he sees what kind of person you are, he either likes you or he doesn’t. Anytime he used to come to New York, he used to come here. Joe was a good person. We used to reminisce about the good times.

CI: What did DiMaggio like to eat?
AB: Tomatoes, pasta, ravioli, he used to like the sausages and the peppers. He loved tomatoes. It’s a funny thing he loved tomatoes, and Tommy LaSorda loved tomatoes. I used to get these tomatoes and he used to say, ‘Anthony where do you get these tomatoes?” And I would tell him Florida, and he would say, ‘No way, you get these in Florida? No way, I come from Florida and they don’t…” And I used to tease him and say, ‘Well Joe that’s because they are all up here.” I had to go downstairs one day and I showed him the box. ‘Joe here’s the box.” Joe would say, ‘How come they don’t have them in Florida?” I would tell him, ‘Don’t ask me, ask them in Florida. What am I gonna do, lie to you?”

CI: Do you watch baseball anymore? Do you go to any games?
AB: No, I don’t follow it too much.

CI: How come you aren’t interested anymore?
AB: I was never what you call a real fan, I mean I watched it, but not like Johnny.
JP: When they were playing baseball then there was nothing else. Today, with television there’s a hundred things going on, too many things. Baseball that was it, nothing else was going on.
AB: That’s true.
JP: Football wasn’t big, basketball wasn’t big. Nothing!
AB: That’s why baseball was the American sport, it was like stickball. You played stickball on the street.

CI: When did they first start talking about the Dodgers leaving?
JP: That was 1957. They hated O’Malley, they made dummies of him and they burned them.
AB: We had a flag pole in the yard and the Hall of Fame sent me a letter, they wanted the flag pole. Someone told them that the flag pole came from Ebbets Field, I could have told them it came from Ebbets Field. They wouldn’t know the difference. Someone made them understand that it was from Ebbets Field. As far as I know it came from the American Legion Post, if it was from Ebbets Field, it was news to me.

CI: What did the Dodgers Sym-Phony guys do when they took the Dodgers away?
AB: After they left that was it. Those guys still came in. They were regular guys, nothing special, like me. They were regular working people. They did this as a pleasure, out of loyalty to the Dodgers.

CI: How upset were they when the Dodgers left?
AB: They were all upset.
JP: Everyone was upset.
CI: What do you think it did to Brooklyn and the neighborhood when they left?
AB: It took the sport out of it, you feel like you didn’t have a team to root for.
JP: The expression was, when the Dodgers and Giants moved to California that’s when baseball stopped becoming a sport and it became a business.
AB: It’s all big business today. Look at football, the same way, when the hell did you ever see football being played on turf? Football was always played on dirt from what I could remember, same thing with baseball.

PHOTO CAPTION
Carl Furillo (about to pitch the ball), Joe-Joe the Midget (L of Furillo), and the rest of the fellas playing Bocce Balls in Bamonte’s yard, circa 1941. ‘They would play for 10 Cents beers. Whoever lost would pay the round.” -Anthony Bamonte

Photo: Matthew Modine
Words: Chris Isenberg and Bud Schmeling

On July 11, 1804, 203 years ago this morning, one of the greatest mano-a-mano battles in American history was fought, and the result was conclusive. Sworn enemies Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr duelled on a bank of the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey – Hamilton was mortally wounded, and died a gruesome death the following day.

Duelling was a familiar practice at the time. In fact, Hamilton’s son, Philip had been killed just three years prior on the same riverbank in Weehawken, duelling to defend his father’s honor (those Hamiltons – tremendously honorable, but unsound on the matter of duelling).

How these two Founding Fathers – one the first and most influential Secretary of the Treasury in the history of the Union, the other a war hero and third Vice President of the U.S. – came to be trading shots in the wee hours of the morning 203 years ago is a story as generally stupid as most questions of honor. Burr had recently lost a race for Governor of New York in spectacular fashion, and blamed his ignominious defeat on the many public condemnations mounted by his rivals. One of these rivals was Hamilton – the two had been at loggerheads for years. Oddly, like so many insults of the Gentlemanly Era, the one that provoked Burr to reach for his duelling pistol seems awfully tame by today’s standards. Motherfucking ass-licking gutterswine? Not quite. The line that led to Hamilton’s murder was included in a letter written by Dr. Charles Cooper to Hamilton’s father-in-law, a letter that eventually was published in the Albany register as an anti-Burr piece. It reported that Hamilton had offered a “despicable opinion” of Burr at a dinner party.

What that opinion was exactly, no one knows. Burr didn’t know, or care. As far as he was concerned, it was despicable, and so it was on. He demanded an apology, and Hamilton refused, on the hilarious grounds that he’d insulted Burr so many different times in so many different places that he couldn’t remember if the actual insult at question had ever happened. Therefore, he reasoned, he couldn’t apologize for it. Burr found this explanation highly unsatisfactory, and it was on to the guns.

What actually transpired in the duel is still disputed today, and sadly there was no referee. What is known is that neither Burr nor Hamilton were any strangers to the duelling arts. There were two seconds at the affair, William P. Van Ness for Burr and Judge Nathaniel Pendleton for Hamilton. The general understanding of the chain of events is that Hamilton fired first at the ground, a customary gesture in duels of gentlemanly disavowal of the whole business, one that, obviously, begs a similar retort. Burr was having none of it, however. Without a second thought, he shot the shit out of Hamilton, something that Hamilton himself evidently noted out loud as he collapsed to the ground. “You shot me?” he said. That Burr replied, “Damn right bitch,” has never been corroborated.

Today some believe that Hamilton didn’t purposefully waste his shot, but that he simply misfired. There’s much speculation that he may have been suicidal. Burr’s behavior requires little speculation – he wanted to kill the man, and then he killed him. By all accounts, Burr was a murderous motherfucker who did not play.

Hamilton died the next day at the house of a friend in Manhattan. One of the last things he did before his death was to renounce the practice of duelling, which must have been a great relief to those crowded around his deathbed, lest he decide to squeeze in one last duel right before he died.

With the 2007 All-Star Game on tap for tonight, I thought we’d take it back thirty years to the 1977 edition, which was fittingly held at Yankee Stadium, and fittingly included both Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin. This was less than a month after the infamous dugout fight between the two principals at Fenway, and you can see from the batting orders below that Billy still wasn’t showing Reggie any love.

National League

Joe Morgan, 2B – Reds
Steve Garvey, 1B – Dodgers
Dave Parker, OF – Pirates
George Foster, OF – Reds
Greg Luzinski, OF – Phils
Ron Cey, 3B – Dodgers
Johnny Bench, C – Reds
Dave Concepcion, SS – Reds
Don Sutton, P – Dodgers

American League

Rod Carew, 1B – Twins
Willie Randolph, 2B – Yankees
George Brett, 3B – Royals
Carl Yastrzemski, OF – Red Sox
Richie Zisk, OF – White Sox
Reggie Jackson, OF – Yankees
Carlton Fisk, C – Red Sox
Rick Burleson, SS – Red Sox
Jim Palmer, P – Orioles

As had been his wont all season with the Yankees, Billy batted Reggie sixth, behind freakin Richie Zisk of all people. Talk about an insult. And Reggie wasn’t the only person Billy managed to piss off in this game – he also courted the ire of Nolan Ryan, who he left off his original roster and who then subsequently spurned his offer to substitute for teammate Frank Tanana, which prompted a war of words between the two.

Meanwhile, the N.L. manager Sparky Anderson had no such personnel issues, and his squad, filled with members of his own Big Red Machine, put the game on ice before many fans had even made it to their seats. Joe Morgan led off with a dinger off of A.L. starter Jim Palmer. After Steve Garvey flew out, Dave Parker singled, and George Foster (in the midst of his 52-HR monster season) doubled him home. Then the Bull, Greg Luzinski, hit a two-run blast. 4-0. Garvey added a home run in the third to make it 5-0. Not a great outing for Jockey Jim Palmer.

The A.L. clawed back with two in the sixth and another in the seventh (couple of RBI’s from the aforementioned Zisk in there) to make it 5-3 but in the top of the 8th the N.L. added a deuce that took the wind out of their sails. The final was 7-5, with Palmer getting the loss, and Don Sutton, the MVP, the winner. It was the sixth straight victory for the National League in a streak that would eventually reach eleven consecutive games.

Examining the rosters I’m amazed at the depth of both squads. The A.L. boasted seven future Hall-of-Famers – Yaz, Reggie, Palmer, Eck (still a starter with Cleveland), Carew, Fisk, and Brett – while the N.L had eight – Bench, Carlton, Morgan, Schmidt, Seaver, Sutter, Sutton, and Winfield – along with one more-than-deserving Hall-caliber player who would be later be banned from Cooperstown due to his wagering proclivities.

More than all of those superstars, however, it’s the lesser (but nonetheless great) players on these rosters that trigger my nostalgia. The Braves’ Willie Montanez backed up Garvey at first, and just hearing the name makes me feel seven years old again. Manny Trillo and Bruce Sutter were both still Cubs, Goose Gossage was still a Buc, Joaquin Andujar was still an Astro and Winfield was still in San Diego. On the A.L. side of things, how do these names strike you – Don Money, Dave LaRoche, Ron Fairly… and Butch Freakin Wynegar for Christ sake? Oh my childhood rises before me. Also, one sad memory – a second-year phenom named Fidrych sat the bench for the A.L., selected for the team but unable to pitch, suffering already from the injury that would prematurely end his career.

(P.S. – I used only 1977 Topps cards for this piece, and may I just say here that I think these are my favorite cards of all time, or at least of my lifetime. I’m also partial to the ’71′s (classy) and the ’72′s (freaky-deeky) but nothing for me matches the perfectly balanced design of the ’77′s, particularly the All-Star cards, which still today fill my stomach with excited butterflies. I realize this is a MUCH bigger topic to be covered in full some other time, but I’d thought I’d just throw it out there to get things rolling.)

Beyond the fact that I liked Turturro as Billy Martin and even Daniel Sunjatta as a suspiciously slender Reggie Jackson, but thought Oliver Platt was badly miscast as Steinbrenner, my real problem with The Bronx is Burning was the whole premise of the adaptation: this project should have been a documentary.

What makes Mahler’s book great is the weaving of New York City’s 1977 storyline,the mayoral race, graffiti writers, newspapermen, cops, the disco scene, the 44 caliber killer, the blackout,with the ’77 Yankees storyline. City history and sports history are on completely equal footing.

In the dramatized Bronx is Burning last night on ESPN, which seemed not to have the budget to afford extensive period shooting on location, the city history part of the story boiled down to a ten second documentary clip on Abe Beam letting go of civil servants and some extremely wonky Son of Sam scenes, which only served as a painful reminder how much better Spike Lee had already treated the exact same material.

The inter-cutting of documentary footage,from Chambliss’ ’76 pennant winning blast to Abe Beam at the City Hall podium, and especially the post-episode interviews with Reggie Jackson and former Sport Magazine contributor Robert Ward (who got the infamous ‘straw that stirs the drink” interview and plays himself in the mini-series), raised the prospect again and again of how much better a documentary could have been.

Without a doubt, to serve its audience, ESPN even if they had gone the documentary route, would have had to give the NYC side stories a lot less airtime than the book did. Still a doc that leaned more towards ESPN’s own ‘Once in a Lifetime” and less to PBS’s ‘Unforgiveable Blackness” would have been a million times better the pale and static imitation they’ve served up. If the producers thought they needed a little star power, they could’ve had Turturro narrate and spent the rest of the extra budget they would’ve saved clearing music for a great soundtrack (ala Once in a Lifetime).

Overall, it’s encouraging that ESPN had the ambition to take on a project of this dimension, but so far the execution is pretty disappointing.

People, people, I have an announcement to make. I’m getting married tomorrow up in Amherst. I leave today. After the wedding I’m off to Mexico for a few weeks, and so I’m turning over the No Mas reins to the august I-Berg and the one and only Madsear (expect a lot of rugby talk and glut of reminiscences about the time a certain somebody met Dick Tidrow when he was eight). I’ll be filing some dispatches now and then, although not that many, because I have a lot of nothing to do, a hell of a lot of nothing. But I’ll be back at the helm on the 23rd – until then, enjoy the guest curating and keep your gloves up. – L