Talk about your must-see TV. Twenty-two years ago today, Mike Tyson fought for the first time in over four years after serving three of those years in prison for the rape of Desiree Washington. His opponent was a pudgy Irishman from Boston named Peter McNeeley, a journeyman with no talent and no real desire and just about nothing to recommend him. McNeeley had no business being in the ring with Joey Buttafucco, let alone Kid Dynamite, and the fight, as with so many Tyson contests back in the day, did not make it out of the first round. McNeeley was down twice in the blink of an eye, and after 89 seconds his trainer had seen enough and jumped into the ring to save his charge. Mills Lane ruled it a DQ, and the Tyson circus was back in business.

The most amazing thing for me to remember about this fight is that it was, at the time, the biggest gate in boxing history, totaling somewhere in the vicinity of $15 mill. It seems bizarre in retrospect that such an obviously lopsided affair could generate that kind of loot, but I myself vividly remember the feeling that I had to see this fight, and if I’d had a spare $1500 laying around, I gladly would have shelled it out for a ringside seat. Tyson was such compelling drama back then that it simply didn’t matter who he was fighting – all that mattered was that he was back in the ring. One wonders when, if ever, boxing will produce a star that animates such overwhelming interest again.

Eighty-seven years ago today, Major League baseball experienced a tragedy that would lead to its first and only fatality caused by injuries suffered on the field. On August 16, 1920, Cleveland Indians’ shortstop Ray Chapman was hit on the head by a pitch from Yankees submarine-baller Carl Mays. The impact was so loud that Mays thought it had struck Chapman’s bat and ran in to field the ball.

The ball had in fact hit Chapman right in the temple, fracturing his skull. Blood flowed from his ears, nose and mouth after he collapsed at the plate. Amazingly, he briefly regained consciousness while being carried to the dugout (what an awful moment that must have been) before passing out again. He was rushed to the hospital where surgery was performed upon him to no avail. He died at 4:30 a.m. the next morning.

Chapman was a prototypical shortstop of the era – hit for average, stole a lot of bases, flashed the leather with aplomb. He was known to crowd the plate, and Carl Mays was known not to dig that. It’s the type of confrontation that takes place at least once in every baseball game, and yet of course they wear helmets today. Oddly, this incident didn’t speed the regular acceptance of the batting helmet, which did not become mandatory in the bigs until 1971. The death of Ray Chapman did spur a significant rule change, however, one that forced umpires to replace the game ball every time it became unrecognizably dirty. It seems just like good bloody sense to us today, but remember this was the age of the doctored ball, and every pitcher at the time would pretty much work a fresh baseball into the shade of a turd before they even thought about throwing their first pitch. Mays was notorious for this, and it was said that Chapman never even saw the pitch that killed him.

The Indians, wearing black armbands to commemorate Chapman, went on to win their first World Series that year. Chapman was replaced at short by rookie Joe Sewall, who would go on to man the position for ten more years in Cleveland in a Hall-of-Fame career.

(Check out the New York Times account of the Chapman incident. Note that the outcome of the game – 4-3 Cleveland – gets the lead paragraph.)

I.
In the backyard we got a lot of trees.
In our home I’ve watched them leap
From limb to limb.
Unbelievable.

II.
Did you ever get one in your attic?
They’re not too cute
When they get in your attic.
I’ll tell you that.

III.
I would not harm a squirrel.
I don’t want to get those animal lovers . . .
I got them in my attic.
No, I got,
But I got a squirrel cage
Then took them out in the woods
Over by Yogi’s house
And dropped them off.

[June 7, 1991 / Texas at New York / John Habyan pitching to Steve Buechele / Ninth inning, one out, bases empty / Tie score, 4-4]

From O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto, edited by Hart Seely and Tom Peye (Ecco, 1997).

Rizzuto,

Even at your absolute worst, you were always at your best. Cobb respected you, Williams fought for you, and we will all remember you as a gritty winner on the field and a joyful disaster in the booth.

Tonight, I am going to go get a cannoli at the Fortunato Bakery and somehow through the cosmic airwaves, I am going to try and send the taste of it your way. For all the sweetness you sent out in your life, you have a lot coming back.

Goodbye Scooter. We’ll miss you.

Love,

No Mas

Thirty-one years young, Tiger Woods won his 13th major yesterday, solidifying his status as the greatest front-runner in the history of the game, and also all but making it a statistical certainty that he will hunt down the Golden Bear and eventually surpass Nicklaus’s golfing gold-standard of 18 major championships.

It’s been pointed out everywhere today that Tiger 13th major victory came in his 44th start in a major, while it took the Golden Bear 53 majors to win 13. In fact, at the age of 31 Jack had only nine majors to his name, winning, like Tiger, only one in his 31st year, the 1971 PGA. In taking home the ’71 Wanamaker Trophy, Jack achieved what was then thought of as an almost unimaginable feat, becoming the only golfer in history to win each of the Grand Slam tournaments twice in his career.

Tiger of course became the second to do that when he won the British Open in 2005, and now it seems almost a sure thing that he also will become the second golfer to win 18 majors, and perhaps even 19. Of course there are a lot of variables – injury, burnout, a prolonged case of the yips. But the guy seems so focused out there, and so determined to catch Nicklaus, that it feels like a done deal already. Yes, it will take some kindness from the golf gods as he begins to age, because as some wise man once pointed out, time is a ruthless foe. But then again let’s face it – when it comes to the golf gods, Tiger Woods has always found himself in good favor. In fact, he might as well be Achilles himself, and there ain’t a Hector in sight.

In looking backward at the events at Saratoga race-course 50 years ago, one of the strangest twists of fate occurred to the winner of the 1957 Alabama Stakes, which is the most prestigious race for 3-year-old fillies at the scenic upstate New York track.

The winner that year was the chestnut filly Here and There, who was bred and raced by Robert Kleberg’s King Ranch. This was an era of great influence for the famous Texas ranch, which had expanded its holdings to include a significant amount of acreage in Kentucky and some of the best racehorses in the world. Two of the most successful horses that King Ranch bred and raced were Assault, winner of the Triple Crown in 1946, and Middleground, who won the 1950 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. This pair were the best sons of a stallion named Bold Venture, who had won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in 1936.

But in addition to being a top-class racehorse and a better than average sire, Bold Venture passed along a peculiar fault. Although the condition wasn’t known when his sons began racing, most had fertility problems if used as stallions. Assault was sterile, and Middleground wasn’t much better, typically getting fewer than 10 foals per crop.

Here and There was in Bold Venture’s third group of foals and was her sire’s first stakes winner. She was good going a distance like the mile and a quarter of the Alabama, and her success at Saratoga offered hope to King Ranch with these talented but infertile horses.
The night of the Alabama, however, the King Ranch barn at Saratoga caught fire, and among the horses killed was Here and There. The picture above is of Here and There in the winner’s circle at Saratoga after the Alabama. Presumably, it is the last picture taken of the filly before her death that night.

The filly’s dam was bred back to Middleground several times and produced one of the stallion’s best subsequent horses, the stakes winner Disperse, who also ran third in the 1960 Belmont Stakes.
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Frank Mitchell lives on a farm where he writes and raises horses about 30 minutes from Keeneland. He’s written two books on horse-racing and writes a regular column on Thoroughbred bloodlines for Daily Racing Form that can be found at drf.com.

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the entire first season of SNL is now available on ITunes. I learned this myself last night entirely by chance and immediately downloaded the Richard Pryor episode, which was famously run on a ten-second delay lest ole Rich get superblue on a moment’s notice.

This revelation got to me wondering – who was the first athlete to host SNL? I ran through the roster from the first season and saw no sports figures (some of the people they had hosting that shit the first season too… Buck Henry evidently was BIG back then), so I set out to do some research only to quickly discover, as I so often do these days, that Wikipedia had already done it for me.

I have to pat myself on the back, because my guess was that it had to be O.J., and although it wasn’t, he was second. The first is utterly inexplicable to me – Fran Tarkenton, on January 29, 1977. My initial thought was that it had to be because he was hosting That’s Incredible, which as anyone of a certain age remembers was a stratospheric phenomenon for about six months back in the dizzle. But That’s Incredible didn’t premiere until 1980. Tarkenton wasn’t doing any media at the time as far as I know – maybe some ads. But primarily he was just the undersized scrambling quarterback for the Vikings who couldn’t win the big one. I mean, don’t get me wrong – he was a great player and a big star. But myself, I don’t remember him being quite the level of star that gets chosen to host SNL.

As I mentioned, O.J. was the next athlete to host the show, February 25, 1978 (followed by Bill Russell of all people on November 3, 1979). I couldn’t find any clips of the Juice’s outing in ’78, but I did find this clip of him on an anniversary show looking back at an SNL moment he evidently participated in from 1977. Looks funny too.

Nineteen years ago today, Wrigley Field saw its first night game ever, as the Cubs took on the Phils under the lights in a game that would only last three and a half innings before rain prematurely ended the evening. The gods, evidently, do not like it when you tinker with tradition.

The Cubs were up 3-1 when the storms came – Ryne Sandberg had smacked a three-run dinger off the Phils’ starter Kevin Gross. In that Philly was involved, you can imagine that my primary interest in this historic event was to reminisce about the Phils’ lineup that night, but of course in that it was a rainout there’s no boxscore. So I had to turn to the night before, August 7th, 1988, when the Phils beat the Cubs 7-4 in the last day game of the day-games-only era at Wrigley. Starting eights are below:

PHILLIES
Phil Bradley – LF
Bob Dernier – CF
Juan Samuel – 2B
Mike Schmidt – 3B
Lance Parrish – C
Chris James – RF
Ricky Jordan – 1B
Jackie Gutierrez – SS

Cubs
Mitch Webster – CF
Ryne Sandberg – 2B
Mark Grace – 1B
Andre Dawson – RF
Rafael Palmeiro – LF
Vance Law – 3B
Jody Davis – C
Shawon Dunston – SS

Wow. I mean, wow. That is an ugly team the Fightins put out on the field. Ooh man, those were lean years at the Vet. The Bob Dernier/Juan Samuel era (and may I just interject here that I am a big fan of the ’88 Topps cards, especially that Samuel jammie up there). Actually, ’88 would be Samuel’s last year in a Phils uniform, and the last full season for a much more important Phil, ole Schmitty. Mike Schmidt, just two years removed from his third MVP award, suffered through an injury plagued ’88 and then abruptly retired in May of 1989. He just wasn’t the type who was going to let himself suck for too long out there, and I dig that about him.

On the Cubs side, well, they had a nice-looking team, one of the cursed bunches over the years who certainly had the firepower to win it all and just didn’t get it done. Don Zimmer was in his first year at the helm, The Hawk was in the midst of an MVP season (and even deeper in the midst of what hopefully will turn out to be a Hall-of-Fame career), a 23-year-old Rafael Palmeiro was emerging as a dangerous hitter (although not yet a power-hitter… hmm), and Grace and Sandberg were in their first season together as the right side of the Cubs’ infield, a combination that would continue for nine more years. This is the foundation of the squad that would win the NL East the very next season, only to get spanked by the Giants in the NLCS.

A final note on the pitching in this August 7th Cubs/Phils game – in his last of four seasons with the Phils, the great submarine captain Kent Tekulve came in to relieve starter Dave Palmer, followed by closer Steve Bedrosian, Bedrock, who was coming off his Cy Young campaign in 1987. And for the Cubs? Well, their starter was a young junkballing southpaw who was suffering through a miserable 9-15 year… a 25-year-old by the name of Jamie Moyer.

(There’s not much to say about Bonds and the record that we haven’t already said, so today this open letter that we printed to Bad Bad Barry back in March seems particularly appropriate.)
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“If I don’t keep a level head, how’s the next person going to handle it? If Hank didn’t keep his head clear, how was I going to deal with it?” – Barry Bonds

Dear Barry,
Let us be very, VERY clear about this, lest you harbor any doubts. We worship Henry Aaron. We collect Henry Aaron baseball cards like they’re gold bullion. We think Henry Aaron is one of the true unsung heroes of the civil rights movement and the entire 20th century.

You, sir, are no Henry Aaron. There is NO comparison between your pursuit of his all-time home run record and his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s record. If you are expecting that this recent revelation about threats on your life will elicit such comparisons, and a concomitant sympathy and admiration, prepare yourself to be deeply disappointed. If you have received death threats, we are sincerely sorry. But let’s face it – at this point your veracity is questionable, and the historical implication you’re hinting at by even raising the issue and invoking Aaron’s name is self-serving and preposterous. We have long made our peace with the fact that you, in all of your roided-up, churlish splendor, are going to surpass the record set by such a courageous, dignified American as Henry Aaron. But we still draw a distinction between the two achievements as clearly as we do those of Ben Johnson and Jesse Owens. We believe that history will do the same.

Sincerely,
No Mas

On this day in 1967, Jason Grimsley was born in Cleveland, Texas. Young Jason would grow up to become a relief pitcher for the Indians, Angels, Yankees, and Diamondbacks as well as one of the most underappreciated cheaters the game has ever known.

To begin with, no mere Niekro could ever compete with the truly Roald Dahlian ring to his villainous name: Grimsley. And while performance enhancers are a dime a dozen these days, will another player ever climb through an air conditioning duct to steal a corked bat from the umpires dressing room? Even if Grimsley failed to realize that bringing a replacement bat with a signature that was not Albert Belle’s might tip off the boys in blue, that is an achievement that will stand the test of time.

Back in those Cleveland days, Jason Grimsley seemed like a crook a Goodfella could love (“Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut”), but in the end he proved that there is truly no honor among theives. Less Blinky Palermo than Rafael Palmeiro, when they put the squeeze on Jason, he cracked liked an eggshell. And so mister name namer, in honor of your 40th birthday, one of your so-called friends would like to sing you a little song: