The Death of Lou Gehrig

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.  So said a fictional version of Babe Ruth in the 1993 film The Sandlot. Lou Gehrig, undoubtedly, belongs in the latter category.  Stricken by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, the Yankee slugger died on June 2, 1941 at the...

Wynn, World Series, and White Sox

Not since Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven others received lifetime banishments from baseball had White Sox fans suffered a collective depression akin to the one on October 8, 1959—Chicago’s beloved team from the South Side lost the World Series to the Los Angeles...

Jim Palmer’s No-Hitter

Jim Palmer began his major league career in 1965, when the Braves played their last season in Milwaukee, the Astros unveiled the Astrodome, and Bert Campaneris became the first player to play all nine positions in a major league game. Throughout his 19 seasons—all in...

The Great Holdout of 1966

In March of 1966, Bobby Hull set an NHL scoring record for a single season, Gemini 8 brought NASA one giant leap closer to a manned moon landing by completing the first docking with another space craft, and Julie Newmar set hearts of males from eight to eighty beating...

McGraw and McGillicuddy

One was pugnacious.  The other, almost regal. When John Joseph McGraw took the field, he embraced baseball games as bouts, thus earning his nicknames Mugsy and Little Napoleon. When Cornelius McGillicuddy managed the Philadelphia Athletics, he wore a suit rather than...