Most people forget that Reggie Jackson went to Baltimore when he left the A’s. In 1976, while second-year Yanks’ manager Billy Martin was leading the Bombers to their first World Series in 14 years, Reggie was playing out the string of his contract in Baltimore, traded there with Ken Holtzman for a package that included Mike Torrez and the young Don Baylor. He had a strong season, very Reggie-like – the Orioles didn’t get his best baseball by any means, but they had nothing to complain about. Reggie made sure that his year in baseball exile did not dampen his market value one iota. He was granted free agency on November 1, 1976. Before the month was over, he was a Yankee. It was on.

The saga of Reggie and the Yanks in ’77 is really one of the great sports stories of our time, and has prompted a glut of starry-eyed, head-shaking reminiscences, the most heavily publicized of which was ESPN’s mediocre mini-series, The Bronx Is Burning, based on the Jonathan Mahler book of the same name (ESPN Classic will re-run the entire series today starting at 4 p.m. – for I-berg’s review click here and for Large’s review of the book click here).

The story would be great no matter what had become of the ’77 Yanks, but it’s the fact that amidst all of the carnage they still managed to win the World Series, and it’s the way that they won it that elevates the saga into the Homeric (and, yes, homer-ic) zone of sagas. And the climactic moment came on this day thirty years ago, Yankees/Dodgers, Game 6 of the World Series, when Reggie Jackson put on what is still without question the greatest display of hitting the Fall Classic has ever known.

In his first-at-bat of the night, leading off the top of the second, Reggie took a walk from L.A. starter Burt Hooton (oh how Little Large HATED Burt Hooton). He soon came home on a Chris Chambliss two-run shot to right that tied the score at two.

His second at-bat also was against Hooton, and this time ole snarky-faced Burt thought he could get away with grooving a fastball on the first pitch to steal that all-important strike one. Reggie promptly sent that shit to the seats in right, a two-run shot that put the Bombers up 4-3 and sent Hooton to the showers.

Reggie would retire Hooton’s replacement, Elias Sosa, with the same tactics in the very next inning, launching a rocket to right off Sosa’s first-pitch fastball that just cleared the fence. Yanks were now up 7-3. The Stadium was rocking – the barbarians were at the gate. The smell of bad weed and burning flesh abounded in the bleachers. Shit was like Apocalypse Now out there. I remember meeting this guy at Mona’s in like, ’94, who had been in the bleachers that night, and he was one of those wild-eyed New York pub-crawling maniacs who you just know does not sleep indoors on a regular basis and who does not think that is a very big deal. He was missing teeth and chain-smoking Pall Malls and he smelled like dried urine. I imagine he was standard issue in the Yankee Stadium bleachers that night.

Even if Reggie’s run had stopped right there, it would have been enough for immortality. Of course it didn’t stop there. The fact that he even got another pitch in the remote territory of the strike zone that night is a head-scratcher until you remember that his third victim was knuckle-baller Charlie Hough. As Tim Wakefield has given us all ample opportunity to observe of late, that knuckleball either knuckles or it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, the wolves feed lustily. In the bottom of the eighth, Reggie led off, Hough gave him one of those knuckleballs that does more hanging than knuckling, and, well, you know. Center field, something like 477 feet. Freakin bedlam.

I-berg claims that he could have gone to this game but his pops wouldn’t let him go. By my calculation, the I was four in 1977, so that was probably some sound fathering from Big Steve. I’m sure he will log in a bit later with the rest of this story. If you have a hankering today to see game 6 in full, you can check it out on Classic at 2 p.m before the Bronx Is Burning marathon.

(Here’s my post from October 18th of last year. Of course, the Reggie anniversary is a little more monumental and deserves its own post. It’s forthcoming. Until then…)

On October 18, 1924, Harold ‘Red” Grange gave the greatest performance ever by a football player in a single game. He led his Fighting Illini to victory over the University of Michigan by running back the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown, and then breaking off touchdown runs of 67, 56 and 44 yards in the next ten minutes. In the second half, he rushed for another touchdown and then passed for one, lest anyone think he couldn’t throw. It was an outing that inspired a poem, Grantland Rice’s epic ‘The Galloping Ghost,” and more importantly, it was the cornerstone of a legend that allowed Grange to later become the first professional athlete to have his own candy bar.

In the annals of athlete candy, though, the Grange bar seems almost a footnote when compared to the impact of the Reggie bar. And Reggie probably never would have gotten his bar without his heroics on October 18, 1977, game six of the Yankees/Dodgers World Series. Three pitches, three swings, three home runs, and a superstar became a stratospheric phenomenon. By opening day of the ’78 season, the Reggie bar was ready for its debut, handed to fans as they entered Yankee Stadium. When Jackson hit a home run in the game, fans threw the bars on the field in celebration. Ever sensitive, Jackson later said he thought they were doing this because they didn’t like the candy.

On this day in 1938, a child was born to an unsuspecting, God-fearing couple in Montana, a child that would, after a misspent youth of wandering, popping wheelies with heavy moving equipment, getting thrown in jail, joining the rodeo, joining the army, playing semi-professional ice hockey, illegally hunting big game in Yellowstone, turning to a life of crime, getting thrown in jail again, joining the motocross circuit, selling insurance door to door, opening a Honda dealership, trying to scratch out a living by arm-wrestling locals for beer money… after ALL OF THIS, the child became a man, a Moses of sorts, a savior to every young boy who has ever dreamed a holy dream of jumping over a twenty-foot-long box of rattlesnakes and mountain lions on a rocket-powered motorcycle.

Yes. They named him Robert, but we know him as… EVEL. And someday, brothers and sisters, His awesomeness will defeat wackness on earth and we will live together as one in Awesome Paradise.

I quote from Scripture:

Everywhere in this world I go
No matter who or what I know’
The people they look and most of them stare
And I wonder if they really care
They see this king with his golden crown
Some of them smile but most of them frown

For YOU to do what I do is not right
But for ME it’s not wrong
What I’ve been trying to tell you all along
Is that it’s got to be
So, if you wonder why
The answer to that is
That just like you… I gotta be me.

-Evel Knievel, 1974

(Looks like I jumped the gun, No Masians – I thought Calzaghe/Kessler was this Saturday, but was corrected in a comment. It’s November 3rd. Why I was deluded on this point I’m not exactly sure. Never put the Calzaghe ahead of the horse. My apologies – L.)

This week of our non-stop big fights boxing autumn brings us the most significant bout in the 168-pound division since a certain Mr. Left Hook Lacy headed over to the U.K for a BEATDOWN. That beating was administered by Joe Calzaghe, the Welsh Elvis of the square circle, a southpaw speed merchant who despite nearly a decade of belt ownership as a super middleweight really earned his bones, at least here in the U.S., in that one fight with Lacy.

Lacy was big, a hard-puncher, and he looked like a killer, muscle-bound with a compact build reminiscent of Tyson. The c.w. was that he would have no problem walking through Calzaghe’s pitter-pat arsenal to deliver heavy artillery to the Welshman’s midsection. What happened, however, was that Calzaghe put on a crack boxing display that did not want for power, and opened up a can of whupass on Jeff Lacy along the same lines as the can that Floyd opened on Gatti (not quite that big, of course… nothing is quite that big).

On Saturday night in Cardiff, Calzaghe will face Denmark’s Mikkel Kessler, the Viking Warrior (I can’t decide if that nickname is awesome or wack – I go back and forth). This is a unification bout at 168 – Kessler owns the WBC and WBA editions of the belt, while Calzaghe owns the WBO and the Ring title. It’s a bout that sets up on paper to potentially be what we hoped we would see in Lacy/Calzaghe – Kessler is a hard-punching badass with a strong chin and a transparent style. He has a habit of keeping his hands low, his jab is perfunctory, and he’s not exactly a speed merchant. In short, he sets up perfectly for some Welsh rarebit right on the kisser. On the other hand, there’s always that puncher’s chance, and one thing about Kessler – he do punch. I’ll prognostificate later on in the week – for now I submit to you Exhibit A, our No Mas Knockout of the Week, the Viking putting the ole Norseman’s Now You See Me Now You Don’t onto Markus Beyer’s nose and with a single combination seizing the WBC crown.

Juan Diaz stopped Julio Diaz last night in Chicago to grab a third lightweight belt for himself, Julio’s IBF edition, which Juan can add to the WBA and WBO belts that he won from Acelino Freitas last April. Like Popo, Julio Diaz was forced by the Baby Bull to quit on his stool, although in Julio’s case it was his brother and cornerman who did him the favor of ending the bout. It was indeed a favor – Julio was taking one jaw-rattling headshot after another from Juan last night and after eight it was doubtful that he had yet won a round.

The Baby Bull is a curious phenomenon – a buzzsaw with whiplash hands and a soft middle who comes forward relentlessly, boasts almost no defense to speak of, routinely throws 100-120 punches a round and seemingly never gets tired. His power is suspect. Of 33 wins (against no losses), he has only 17 stoppages, which may seem like a high percentage until you consider the fact that most of those fights were with the denizens of Palookaville who are set up for young talents of Juan’s order like so many bowling pins. Last night’s bout was a good example of Diaz’s frightening volume and overall lack of pop – the blows that he repeatedly landed in flurries all over his opponent’s head and body were crowd-pleasing and head-snapping (Juan has a great punch-accompanying grunt that, like Maria Sharapova, adds considerable panache to his every strike), but Julio did not look much the worse for wear when his corner stopped the fight, and never once seemed dazed or hurt during the proceedings.

There are a lot of exciting bouts looming on the horizon in the 135 class right now – there’s the Baby Bull with his three belts, David Diaz, owner of the WBC belt, Joel Casamayor, in the eyes of many the lineal lightweight champion, and of course the little Filipino white whale named Manny Pacquiao, who claims that he is ready to jump up a weight class now that he’s singlehandedly retired all the big names at 130.

Word is that Pacquiao will fight David Diaz first, which is a borderline sexy fight that, lest Pacquiao have some unforeseen problem with the weight jump, he will win without too much resistance. Juan Diaz’s next fight is reported to be an IBF mandatory against Nate Campbell (The Galaxxy Warrior, word), which I think is a good fight for him and a potentially interesting bout. Juan is also calling out Pac Man, but I must say, I think that has problems written all over it for little Baby B. Pacquiao easily can match Juan’s staggering energy and punch output, and what’s more, when Manny hits you, you stay hit. One thing about Juan Diaz – he doesn’t exactly hide from you in there. He’s got a decent beard on him, as he showed again in the fight last night. Then again, never in his young career has he sucked down a six-Pac or two of Manny’s cold left hands. If that fight ever comes around, you can trust that I will be one of the multitudes betting on Pac to bag the Bull in under six rounds.

(p.s. Evander also lost yesterday, as I’m sure you’re aware. Good riddance. I’d like to think he would lay the gloves down now, but then again, I thought he would do that in ’99, and again in ’01, and then in ’03…)

October 13, 1960
The 1960 World Series, Yankees/Bucs, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Game 7, bottom of the ninth, the score knotted at nine. The Bombers have seized the momentum back from the Bucs after Pittsburgh’s five-run eighth, tying the score in the top half of the ninth on RBI’s from the dynamic duo, Mantle and Berra. In the bottom frame, the Pirates’ diminutive second baseman Bill Mazeroski leads off against Yanks’ hurler Ralph Terry. He looks at a ball, and on the next pitch launches a shot over the ivy-covered left-field fence, the first Series-winning walkoff home run in history (we won’t go into the second). It was a shot that made Maz an instant legend, probably got him into the Hall of Fame, and definitely got him a slew of righteous endorsement deals.

October 13, 1971
The 1971 World Series, Orioles/Bucs, Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Game 4 of the Series is an momentous event, the first night game in the history of the Fall Classic. The Pirates win 4-3 to tie the Series at two games a piece. The Bucs come-from-behind victory features a clutch pitching performance in relief from 21-year-old Bruce Kison, key RBI’s from Al Oliver and Willie Stargell (playing in left field), and a three-for-four evening from Roberto Clemente, the hands-down star of the Series and the eventual MVP (click here for a montage of Clemente’s heroics in ’71).

Twenty-one years ago today, in the top of the ninth, with the Angels just a strike away from the World Series, Boston’s Dave Henderson hit a two-run home run off Anaheim reliever Donnie Moore to put the Sox up 6-5 in game 5 of the ALCS. Eventually, Boston would win the game in extra innings and then romp through the next two, earning themselves a trip to Shea for some “what might have been” heartbreak of their own. The Angels, meanwhile, were devastated, and none worse than Donnie Moore himself. Here’s a post I wrote in July of 2006 on the anniversary of Moore’s death.
————————————————————————————–

As we here in New York prepare for the 20th anniversary of the ’86 Mets World Series triumph and what promises to be an autumnal barrage of drug and champagne-addled reminiscences, today is a day to remember a darker ghost hovering over the ’86 playoffs.

On this day seventeen years ago, July 18th, 1989, former Angels’ reliever Donnie Moore shot his wife Tonya three times in front of their three children at their house in Anaheim. Tonya and daughter Demetria fled to the hospital, at which point Moore turned the gun on himself and committed suicide in front of his two sons.

Would Moore have shot his wife, and then himself, had he not given up a two-strike, two-out, ninth-inning home run to Boston’s Dave Henderson in game five of the 1986 ALCS?

Maybe. We’ll never know. Moore was a troubled soul, plagued by depression and alcoholism even before the Henderson disaster. But clearly, that one pitch haunted him until his final moments. Moore pitched two more ineffectual seasons with the Angels, hounded by the boo-birds. He was out of baseball entirely by the time of his death. As Moore’s agent put it in the New York Times obituary for Moore, ‘He felt he was the next Ralph Branca.”

It’s odd how over the years Henderson’s home run has taken on the air of a fait accompli when in fact it was anything but, certainly no ‘shot heard round the world.” It was a blow for sure, a two-run homer that put the Red Sox up 6-5 in the top of the ninth. But the Angels came back to tie in the bottom of the ninth. The Red Sox won it in the eleventh, scoring the deciding run on a Henderson sac fly. Moore was still pitching.

That goddamn Dave Henderson.

Of course, the Angels still had a 3-2 lead in the series and had two games left to make it past the Sox into the Fall Classic (in retrospect a result that would have sat just fine with one Bill Buckner). But Boston romped in each effort, 10-4 in game 6, and 8-1 in game 7.

In conclusion, a few things to remember about this infamous game that made Dave Henderson a legend and Donnie Moore even more tortured than he already had been:

• Henderson did not start the game. He entered in the fifth for Tony Armas, who’d twisted his ankle.
• The Angels were leading the series 3-1 and went into the 9th leading 5-2. Don Baylor hit a two-run bomb off starter Mike Witt, and Angels manager Gene Mauch brought in Gene Lucas, who plunked Rich Gedman, bringing Henderson to the plate. Mauch called for Moore.
• For his decisions in the ninth, Mauch would be just as vilified as Moore by Angels’ fans after the series, Mauch who still carried the stigma of failure for having managed the 1964 ‘Pholdin” Phils.

All of these folks were born on this day – a forgotten wunderkind of women’s golf, an oft-forgotten member of the Wu, a snowboarding pioneer, a Redbirds’ hurler turned manager, a most athletic drummer, a Natural, a Knight and a King of UK football, a baseball-player cum blaxploitation heavy, a dunkatronic former Sonic, an on-the-level former Devil, a leading practitioner of manly literature, the second finest chess brain to be found in the Ukraine, and the greatest coach and QB BYU will ever see.

(No Mas is very proud today to announce the return of Deep Tennis, our weekly question-and-answer session with Steve Tignor of Tennis Magazine. Without further ado…)

Steve – I was noticing at the U.S. Open that the challenge system has done away with any need to argue with the ump. Is this good for tennis? Was there something to be said for the golden era of ump-arguing? Who was the best at it? Johnny Mac?

It’s hard to believe how quickly the instant-replay system has established itself as the norm in the sport. I didn’t realize it myself until a month ago, at the U.S. Open. I was walking out of Ashe Stadium after watching Tommy Haas beat James Blake in a fifth-set tiebreaker. Behind me, my fellow writer/blogger Peter Bodo mentioned that the match had been a major validation for replay. He was right: The final two points had been decided on close calls that had been challenged and confirmed by the computer system. If the opportunity to make those challenges hadn’t been available to the players, the match would have ended in a cloud of uncertainty and perhaps anger. As it happened, Blake and Haas smiled at each other as they waited for the replay’s verdict on the final point. Then they shook hands knowing they had gotten a fair shake (or as fair as possible). None of that seemed unusual to me, or even worth noting, until I remembered that the replay system had made its Grand Slam debut just last year at the Open.

That’s not to say it has eliminated arguments. Replay isn’t perfect; it has a margin for error of 3 mm, and sometimes the call shown on the screen appears to be nowhere near where the ball landed. Roger Federer, arguably the system’s most important constituent, isn’t sold on it. In the Wimbledon final this year, he had a mini-meltdown after it ruled against him for a second straight time. Beyond that, even without disputed line calls the pros find ways to vent their anger. One target has been the chair umpires, who many pros now feel leave too many of the calls up to the replay. But whether or not the system is 100 percent accurate isn’t the most important issue. What does matter is that it’s accurate enough to be universally agreed upon,the players see evidence on a screen, instead of having to trust the judgment of a linesperson.

Is this good for the sport? Do we miss the tirades of McEnroe and Connors? It wouldn’t be surprising: Misplaced nostalgia is a common theme in tennis. During the heyday of Jimbo and Johnny Mac, the consensus was that the game needed to return to its gentlemanly roots and the sportsmanship of the great Australians like Rod Laver. Twenty years later, in the peaceful era of Pete Sampras, a man who modeled himself on Laver, tennis was widely criticized for having no ‘personalities”,as Martin Amis said, the word was really just code for ‘a,holes.” The consensus in the 1990s was that we needed Jimbo and Johnny Mac back.

I don’t miss the meltdowns, personally: They brought a nasty vibe to a match and made the players look like prima donnas; they prolonged the proceedings unnecessarily; and they often led to one guy losing focus and not playing his best. But now that replay has cut off one angle of argument for good, maybe we can look back a little nostalgically at the tennis ‘personalities” of yore.

Along with big money and new racquet technology, it was the Open era that helped usher in the age of the brat. Not that there weren’t angry tennis players before,nobody could hold a candle to Pancho Gonzalez’s rage (not that anyone wanted to; they would have gone up in flames). But the prospect of playing for serious cash, and the subsequent influx in the 1970s of players from all over the world, diluted the original Anglo concept of tennis as rich man’s recreation. Here’s an honor roll of the men who happily took the sport down a notch or two.

Ion Tiriac
The wolf in the fold, Tiriac came from the grimy depths of communist Romania and began his athletic career as a hockey player. He wasn’t so much an arguer as an orchestrator. His masterpiece came in Bucharest in 1972, when he and his fellow Romanians nearly stole the Davis Cup from the U.S. squad. In the crucial match, against Mr. Upstanding himself, Stan Smith, the linesmen were robbing the American of everything they could, to the point where Smith intentionally kept the ball as far inside the lines as possible. Meanwhile, between points Tiriac was using the linesmen’s chairs to sit and take a rest. It almost worked, but Smith took over in the fifth set to clinch the tie for the U.S. Needless to say, Smith wouldn’t have had to deal with that in the age of instant replay.

Tiriac would never be deterred, though. After mentoring Ilie Nastase and Boris Becker and running various tournaments, he has become tennis’ first billionaire.

Ilie Nastase
‘Nasty” also came out of communist-controlled Romania, a place where you took what you could get, any way you could get it. Nastase wasn’t an angry man so much as a theatrical one,he could be funny or utterly exasperating depending on his mood. I have two favorite memories of him, both when he was past his prime:

,In a meaningless indoor match against Borg, Nasty lost the first set badly but made a run in the second. Each time he hit a winner, he would stop in his tracks and stare at Borg’s coach, Lennart Bergelin, who was sitting in the second row, as if to ask, ‘How could that happen to your Mr. Perfect over there?” The fans loved it. The third time he did it, even Borg cracked a smile.

,On a hot day in Hawaii, Nastase’s opponent, Peter Fleming, became dizzy. He took long, circular strolls around the court in between points. Rather than try to win the match as quickly as he could, Nastase toyed with Fleming. When he would get an easy ball, he would place it just within his opponent’s reach. You could see Fleming stopping and starting, trying to decide whether to run after the ball or not. Cruel, but funny.

Nastase’s umpire-baiting took two forms. It could be fun,nobody got as much comedy out of a blank stare,or nonsensical. In a night-session match at Flushing Meadows against John McEnroe in 1979, the umpire, Frank Hammond, Jr., defaulted Nastase for his bizarre ranting and stalling, but was forced to reinstate him when the crowd littered the court with beer cups in protest. Sounds like the good old days, right? I remember watching the match, which wasn’t half as amusing as it sounds now.

Jimmy Connors
Tiriac begat Nastase, who in turn begat Jimbo. The Romanian wild man taught the American mama’s boy about life on tour,the two were partners in mischief through the mid-70s. But where Nastase was a clown at heart and an erratic competitor, Connors had an American-style obsession with being No. 1. He was a politician’s son and knew how to put an audience in the palm of his hands; with that in mind, his early arguments could have an impish quality,he continued in the Nastase tradition of taking a seat and chatting with linesmen (in those days the players didn’t exclusively deal with the chair umpire; perhaps it’s another sign of the growing practicality in the sport,the chair ump is the only person with any power to change a call).

Connors’ late-career tirades were nastier, and if anything, more adolescent. He was defaulted in the fifth set of a match in Key Biscayne after an extended hissy-fit, and his legendary U.S. Open 4th-rounder with Aaron Krickstein featured this charming remark directed at the umpire: ‘You’re an abortion.” At the same time, that umpire helped motivate Connors to come back and turn the match into a classic. Jimbo loved to have someone to go to war against. We’ll never know who or what he would have found to be his adversary in the age of computer line-calling, but he would have found something.

John McEnroe
What may have most original about Johnny Mac’s arguing style was its lack of humor. It had none of Nastase’s or Connors’ theatricality, which, as I recall, was considered a little weird and scary at the time,’What is this guy’s problem?” seemed to be the common reaction to a McEnroe tirade. Few people had ever taken the game so seriously.

McEnroe never matched his arguing performance at Wimbledon in 1981, when he brought New York prep-school punk to the All England Club. It was his word choice as much as his rage that made his rants memorable. ‘You cannot be serious!” obviously,but when you think about it, it’s still a hilariously literate snap reaction to a bad call. ‘This guy’s the pits of the world”; and my favorite, ‘You’re a disgrace to mankind.” What makes the last one even better is that Superbrat was directing it at a chair umpire who also happened to be a former World War II RAF wing commander.

What wasn’t mentioned at the time was that McEnroe didn’t curse in 1981,in some strange way, he was too young for that. So it was always a drag in later years to hear him berate a linesmen as ‘f—ing” this or ‘f—ing” that. McEnroe reached his low point along those lines at the Australian Open in 1990, when he was defaulted by the tournament referee for telling him to . . . well, let’s just say it made ‘pits of the world” sound like the words of an overpolite child.

What would Mac have done in the replay era? I saw him play a senior event last year with the system in place. When the computer contradicted his famous eyesight, he didn’t argue. But he did give the screen his famous look: You know, hands on hips, held tilted, lips pursed, brow furrowed. He clearly thought the machine could not be serious.

—————————————————————————————-
Steve Tignor is the executive editor of Tennis magazine – for more of his writing, check out his weekly column, The Wrap, on the Tennis website.

Yankee hearts are heavy today. Saint Joe may soon be tossing a different bowl of pasta. Mariano is talking about testing the market (“I think we should see other people…”). An era is ending in the Bronx for sure, and with that in mind I thought it might be nice for those fans of the interlocking NY to look back at some more pleasant moments in Yankee history, moments from back in the day when, you know… the Yankees won the World Series every single year:

October 9, 1928
The Yanks finish off a four-game sweep of the Cardinals to win their second consecutive and third overall World Series championship. Babe Ruth sets the Reggie Jackson prototype, hitting three home runs, while Waite Hoyt goes nine innings to finish off the Cardinals 7-3 at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.

October 9, 1938
One decade later and the Yankees are up to their old tricks – namely, sweeping the World Series. This time the victim is the Cubs, the venue is Yankee Stadium, the score is 8-3 and the complete-game-throwing pitcher is Red Ruffing. This was a transitional Yankee year – young DiMaggio was in center, but the Iron Horse still prowled first base, although his health was rapidly waning. The next season would begin with “I consider myself… (self… self…)”, and end with another World Series sweep and the first of three MVP awards in the career of the Yankee Clipper.

October 9, 1958
1958 seems like a transitional year for all of baseball in retrospect. The Bums had left Brooklyn, and the Yanks would complete a ten-year period in which they won the World Series seven times. In nine of those ten years, the Bombers were in the World Series. The Yankees of that time remain the most powerful dynasty pro sports has ever known. The ’58 World Series against the Milwaukee Braves was no pushover, however – it went to a seventh game, played on this day 49 years ago at County Stadium in Milwaukee. The score was knotted at 2 going into the eighth when the Bombers exploded for 4 on an RBI single from Ellie Howard and a home run from Moose Skowron. Bob Turley, the ’58 Cy Young-winner, was heroic in relief of Don Larsen for the Yanks. Frank Torre was the Braves’ first baseman.

October 9, 1961
Mantle, Ford, Berra, Howard – this show had been running forever and still drew raves. Today in 1961 they won the World Series over the Reds in five, blowing the Reds off their own Crosley Field, 13-5. The Yanks scored five in the first and never looked back. Ralph Terry was shaky earlier (Mazeroski still in the rearview mirror for ole Ralph), but Bud Daley came in to masterfully right the ship. The injured Mantle didn’t even play – the unlikely big hitter on the afternoon was left-fielder Hector Lopez, who hit a home run and had five RBI’s.