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Connie Mack (baseball)

Connie Mack (baseball)

Cornelius Alexander Mack (December 22, 1862 – February 8, 1956), born Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy, was an American professional baseball player, manager, and team owner. As one of the greatest managers in Major League Baseball history, he holds records for wins, losses, and games managed. Born in East Brookfield, Massachusetts to Irish immigrants, Mack was a journeyman catcher who played 11 seasons in the National League beginning in 1886, the last three as a player-manager with the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1894 to 1896. In 1901, he became field manager and general manager of the fledgling American League's Philadelphia Athletics. He later acquired controlling ownership of the team. When New York Giants manager John McGraw called the Athletics "a white elephant nobody wanted," Mack adopted a white elephant as the team's logo, which the Athletics have used off and on ever since. However, he also cut a distinctive figure himself with his personal rejection of wearing a team uniform in favour of a business suit and tie. On the field, Mack was quiet, even-tempered and gentlemanly, serving as a father figure to his players as much as a coach, and was universally addressed as "Mr. Mack". Once, when he visited the mound to remove notoriously hot-tempered pitcher Lefty Grove from the game, Grove said, "Go take a [expletive]", when Mack held out his hand for the ball. Mack looked Grove straight in the eye and calmly said, "You go take a [expletive], Robert." Mack was also tight-fisted. Seeing baseball as a business, he once confided that it was more profitable to have a team get off to a hot start, then ultimately finish fourth. "A team like that will draw well enough during the first part of the season to show a profit for the year, and you don't have to give the players raises when they don't win," he said. The most famous example of Mack's tight-fistedness came on July 10, 1932, when the Athletics played a one-game series with the Cleveland Indians. To save train fare, Mack only brought two pitchers. The starting pitcher was knocked out of the game in the first inning, leaving only knuckleballing relief pitcher Eddie Rommel. Rommel pitched 17 innings and gave up 33 hits, but won the game, 18-17. Mack also had his generous side for players in need. His former star pitcher Chief Bender was on the team payroll as a baseball scout from shortly after his retirement as an active player in the 1920's until Mack himself retired as owner-manager in 1950. Veteran players welcomed the opportunity to play for Mack. The 1927 Philadelphia Athletics, though nowhere near as famous as the New York Yankees team of the same year, was probably one of the best second-place teams in history, featuring of future Hall of Fame players including veterans Ty Cobb, Zack Wheat and Eddie Collins as well as players such as Grove, Simmons and Cochrane in their prime and rookie Jimmie Foxx. Mack managed the Athletics through the 1950 season, when he retired at age 88. Through his unequalled 53 seasons as a manager, he won nine pennants, appeared in eight World Series and won five of them. He built two dynasties: from 1910-1914 (which featured Mack's famous "$100,000 infield" of Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Jack Barry and Stuffy McInnis); and again from 1929-1931 (which featured Hall of Famers Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons). His 1911 and 1929 teams are considered by many to be among the greatest baseball teams of all time, and his 3,776 lifetime wins are a major league record—as are his 4,025 losses and 7,878 games managed. Mack twice dismantled his dynasties; the first out of outrage when some of his star players started signing lucrative contracts with upstart Federal League teams, and the second due to financial difficulties due to the Great Depression. Besides his five World Series wins and four AL pennants, Mack's teams also finished last 17 times. His 1916 team, with a 36-117 record, is often considered the worse team in American League history; from 1915 to 1921 the Athletics finished last every year and compiled an abysmal .313 winning percentage. Mack was also known by the nickname "The Tall Tactician" and, in his later years, the "Grand Old Man of Baseball." Mack was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937. Mack's son Earle Mack played several games for the A's between 1910 and 1914, and also managed the team for parts of the 1937 and 1939 seasons when his father was too ill to do so. In more recent years, his descendents have taken to politics: Mack's grandson Connie Mack III was a member of the United States Congress from Florida from 1983-2001, and great-grandson Connie Mack IV is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 14th Congressional District. Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie Mack, Connie

December 22

December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 9 days remaining.

Events

- 1603 - Mehmed III Sultan of the Ottoman Empire dies and is succeeded by his son Ahmed I.
- 1807 - The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the U.S. Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.
- 1809 - The Non-Intercourse Act, lifting the Embargo Act except for the United Kingdom and France, passes the U.S. Congress.
- 1849 - The execution of Fyodor Dostoevsky is canceled at the last second.
- 1851 - The first freight train is operated in Roorkee in India.
- 1864 - Savannah, Georgia falls to General William Tecumseh Sherman, concluding his "March to the Sea"
- 1885 - Ito Hirobumi, a samurai, became the first Prime Minister of Japan.
- 1894 - The Dreyfus affair begins, in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason, on antisemitic grounds.
- 1910 - Chicago Union Stock Yards Fire, 21 firemen were killed.
- 1937 - The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.
- 1944 - German troops demand the surrender of United States troops at Bastogne, Belgium. See Battle of the Bulge
- 1944 - Vietnam People's Army is formed to resist Japanese occupation of Vietnam
- 1963 - Cruise ship Lakonia burns 180 miles north of Madeira with the loss of 128 lives.
- 1964 - Comedian Lenny Bruce is convicted of obscenity
- 1965 - In the United Kingdom, a 70mph speed limit is applied to all all rural roads including motorways for the first time. Previously, there had been no speed limit.
- 1974 - Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli vote to become the independent nation of Comoros. Mayotte remains under French administration.
- 1984 - Subway vigilante Bernhard Hugo Goetz shoots four African-American youths on an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City.
- 1988 - Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist and environmental activist, was assassinated.
- 1989 - After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist dictatorship.
- 1989 - Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.
- 1989 - Two Tourist coaches collide on the Pacific Highway north of Kempsey NSW (Kempsey Bus Crash).
- 1990 - Lech Wałęsa sworn in as President of Poland
- 1997 - Acteal massacre: Attendees at a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic activists for indigenous causes in the small village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas were massacred by paramilitary forces.
- 1999 - The Spanish Civil Guard finds near Calatayud (Zaragoza) another van loaded by ETA with 750 kg of explosives (see related event on December 21 1999).
- 1999 - Tandja Mamadou became President of Niger.
- 2001 - Burhanuddin Rabbani, political leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, handed over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by President Hamid Karzai.
- 2001 - Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.
- 2001 - Cc the cat, the first cloned pet, was born.

Births

- 1178 - Emperor Antoku of Japan (d. 1185)
- 1639 - Jean Racine, French dramatist (d. 1699)
- 1666 - Guru Gobind Singh, (d. 1708)
- 1694 - Hermann Samuel Reimarus, German philosopher and writer (b. 1768)
- 1696 - James Oglethorpe, English general and founder of the state of Georgia (d. 1785)
- 1723 - Karl Friedrich Abel, German composer (d. 1787)
- 1805 - John Obadiah Westwood, British entomologist (d. 1893)
- 1807 - Johann Sebastian Welhaven, Norwegian poet (d. 1873)
- 1819 - Franz Wilhelm Abt, German composer (d. 1870)
- 1853 - Teresa Carreño, Venezuelan pianist (d. 1917)
- 1856 - Frank B. Kellogg, U.S. Secretary of State, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1937)
- 1858 - Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer (d. 1924)
- 1860 - Austin Norman Palmer, American penmanship innovator (d. 1927)
- 1862 - Connie Mack, baseball executive and manager (d. 1956)
- 1869 - Edwin Arlington Robinson, American poet (d. 1935)
- 1872 - Camille Guérin, French veterinarian and bacteriologist (d. 1961)
- 1874 - Franz Schmidt, Austrian composer (d. 1939)
- 1876 - Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian poet and editor (d. 1944)
- 1883 - Edgar Varèse French-born composer (d. 1965)
- 1887 - Srinivasa Ramanujan, Indian mathematician (d. 1920)
- 1888 - J. Arthur Rank, American producer (d. 1972)
- 1898 - Vladimir Aleksandrovich Fock, Russian physicist (d. 1974)
- 1899 - Gustav Gründgens, German actor and director (d. 1963)
- 1903 - Haldan Keffer Hartline, American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1983)
- 1905 - Kenneth Rexroth, American poet (d. 1982)
- 1907 - Dame Peggy Ashcroft, English actress (d. 1991)
- 1912 - Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady of the United States
- 1917 - Gene Rayburn, American game show host (d. 1999)
- 1922 - Barbara Billingsley, American actress
- 1922 - Jack Brooks, American politician
- 1922 - Ruth Roman, American actress (d. 1999)
- 1937 - Eduard Uspensky, Russian writer
- 1944 - Steve Carlton, baseball player
- 1945 - Diane Sawyer, American journalist
- 1946 - Rick Nielsen, American musician (Cheap Trick)
- 1948 - Lynne Thigpen, American actress (d. 2003)
- 1949 - Maurice Gibb, Australian musician (The Bee Gees) (d. 2003)
- 1949 - Robin Gibb, Australian musician (The Bee Gees)
- 1951 - Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster
- 1958 - Frank Gambale, Australian guitarist
- 1962 - Ralph Fiennes, English actor
- 1967 - Dan Petrescu, Romanian footballer
- 1969 - Myriam Bédard, Canadian athlete

Deaths

- 1100 - Duke Bretislaus II of Bohemia
- 1603 - Mehmed III, Ottoman Emperor (b. 1566)
- 1646 - Peter Mogila, Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia (b. 1596)
- 1660 - André Tacquet, Belgian mathematician (b. 1612)
- 1681 - Richard Alleine, English Puritan clergyman (b. 1611)
- 1708 - Hedwig Sophia, duchess of Holstein-Gottorp, Swedish writer (b. 1681)
- 1738 - Constantia Jones, British prostitute (executed)
- 1767 - John Newbery, English publisher (b. 1713)
- 1788 - Percivall Pott, English physician and surgeon (b. 1714)
- 1806 - William Vernon, American merchant (b. 1719)
- 1870 - Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Spanish poet and writer (b. 1836)
- 1828 - William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist (b. 1766)
- 1880 - George Eliot, English writer (b. 1819)
- 1899 - Dwight L. Moody, American evangelist (b. 1837)
- 1902 - Richard von Krafft-Ebing, German psychiatrist (b. 1840)
- 1936 - Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger, Croatian paleontologist (b. 1856)
- 1939 - Ma Rainey, American singer (b. 1886)
- 1940 - Nathanael West, American writer (b. 1903)
- 1942 - Franz Boas, German anthropologist (b. 1858)
- 1943 - Beatrix Potter, English writer (b. 1866)
- 1947 - Hans Aumeier, German Nazi official and concentration camp commandant (b. 1906)
- 1959 - Gilda Gray, Polish-born American dancer and actress (b. 1901)
- 1965 - Richard Dimbleby, English journalist and broadcaster (b. 1913)
- 1979 - Darryl F. Zanuck, American producer (b. 1902)
- 1980 - Karl Dönitz, German politician and U-boat commander (b. 1891)
- 1985 - D. Boon, American singer and guitarist (The Minutemen) (b. 1958)
- 1988 - Chico Mendes, Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist, and environmental activist (assassinated) (b. 1944)
- 1989 - Samuel Beckett, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)
- 1995 - Butterfly McQueen, American actress (b. 1911)
- 1995 - James Meade, English economists, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1907)
- 2002 - Desmond Hoyte, President of Guyana (b. 1929)
- 2002 - Joe Strummer, British musician (The Clash) (b. 1952)
- 2003 - Dave Dudley, American singer (b. 1928)
- 2004 - Doug Ault, baseball player (b. 1950)

Holidays and observances

- In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs on or very close to this date. In the Southern Hemisphere, the summer solstice occurs around this time.
- Astrology: First day of sun sign Capricorn

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/22 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.tnl.net/when/12/22 Today in History: December 22] ---- December 21 - December 23 - November 22 - January 22 -- listing of all days ko:12월 22일 ms:22 Disember ja:12月22日 simple:December 22 th:22 ธันวาคม

February 8

February 8 is the 39th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 326 days remaining, 327 in leap years.

Events

- 421 - Constantius III becomes co-Emperor of the Western Roman Empire
- 1555 - Laurence Saunders is led barefoot to his execution and burned at the stake.
- 1587 - Mary, Queen of Scots is executed.
- 1601 - Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, rebels against Elizabeth I of England - revolt is quickly crushed
- 1622 - King James I of England disbands the English Parliament
- 1692 - A doctor in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony declares that three teenaged girls are under domination of Satan, leading to the Salem witch trials.
- 1693 - The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia is granted a charter.
- 1807 - Battle of Eylau - Napoleon defeats Russians under General Benigssen.
- 1837 - Richard Johnson becomes the first Vice President of the United States chosen by the United States Senate.
- 1849 - Roman Republic established
- 1855 - The Devil's Footprints mysteriously appear in southern Devon.
- 1867 - The Ausgleich results in the establishment of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary,
- 1887 - The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey Native American tribal land and divide it into individual allotments.
- 1900 - British troops are defeated by Boers at Ladysmith, South Africa.
- 1904 - Battle of Port Arthur: A surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese at Port Arthur, China starts the Russo-Japanese War.
- 1910 - The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce.
- 1915 - D.W. Griffith's controversial film The Birth of a Nation premieres in Los Angeles.
- 1918 - The Stars and Stripes newspaper publishes for the first time.
- 1922 - President Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio in the White House.
- 1924 - Death penalty: The first state execution using gas in the United States takes place in Nevada.
- 1936 - Jay Berwanger becomes the first person to be selected by a National Football League draft, by the Philadelphia Eagles.
- 1943 - World War II: Battle of Kursk - the Russian army captures the city
- 1943 - World War II: Battle of Guadalcanal - United States forces defeat Japanese troops.
- 1949 - Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary sentenced for treason.
- 1960 - Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issued an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor".
- 1963 - Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba are made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration.
- 1968 - American civil rights movement: A civil rights protest staged at a white-only bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina is broken-up by highway patrolmen leading to the deaths of three college students.
- 1969 - The last weekly issue of the Saturday Evening Post hits magazine stands.
- 1971 - The Nasdaq stock market index debuts.
- 1974 - After 84 days in space, the crew of the temporary American space station Skylab return to Earth.
- 1974 - Military coup in Upper Volta.
- 1978 - Proceedings of the United States Senate are broadcast on radio for the first time.
- 1979 - Denis Sassou-Nguesso became the President of the People's Republic of the Congo for the first time.
- 1983 - Racehorse Shergar is kidnapped in County Kildare, Ireland. The fate of the horse is still unknown.
- 1984 - 1984 Winter Olympics open in Sarajevo.
- 1985 - After 6-1/2 years, the television series The Dukes of Hazzard goes off the air.
- 1989 - An Independent Air Boeing 707 crashes into Santa Maria mountain in Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal, killing 144.
- 1993 - General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC settles the lawsuit the next day.
- 1996 - The U.S. Congress passes the Communications Decency Act.
- 2001 - Disney's California Adventure, the Disneyland Resort's second park in its 46-year history, opens.
- 2002 - Opening ceremony of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.
- 2005 - Israel and Palestinians agree to cease-fire.
Births

- 412 - Proclus, Greek philosopher (d. 487)
- 1191 - Yaroslav II of Russia (d. 1246)
- 1291 - King Afonso IV of Portugal (d. 1357)
- 1487 - Ulrich, Duke of Württemberg (d. 1550)
- 1552 - Agrippa d'Aubigné, French poet and soldier (d. 1630)
- 1577 - Robert Burton, English cleric and writer (d. 1640)
- 1586 - Jacob Praetorius, German composer (d. 1651)
- 1649 - Gabriel Daniel, French Jesuit historian (d. 1728)
- 1677 - Jacques Cassini, French astronomer (d. 1756)
- 1685 - Charles-Jean-François Hénault, French historian (d. 1770)
- 1720 - Emperor Sakuramachi of Japan (d. 1750)
- 1804 - Richard Lemon Lander, British explorer (d. 1834)
- 1807 - Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, English sculptor and naturalist (d. 1889)
- 1819 - John Ruskin, English author
- 1820 - William Tecumseh Sherman, American Union general (d. 1891)
- 1828 - Jules Verne, French author (d. 1905)
- 1834 - Dmitri Mendeleev, Russian chemist (d. 1907)
- 1851 - Kate Chopin, American author (d. 1904)
- 1878 - Martin Buber, German philosopher (d. 1965)
- 1880 - Franz Marc, German painter (d. 1916)
- 1886 - Charles Ruggles, American actor (d. 1970)
- 1888 - Dame Edith Evans, British actress (d. 1976)
- 1894 - Ludwig Marcuse, German author and philosopher (d. 1971)
- 1895 - King Vidor, American film director (d. 1982)
- 1902 - Demchugdongrub, Mongolian politician (d. 1966)
- 1903 - Greta Keller, Austrian-born cabaret singer and actress (d. 1977)
- 1906 - Chester Carlson, American physicist and inventor (d. 1968)
- 1911 - Elizabeth Bishop, American poet (d. 1979)
- 1911 - Big Joe Turner, American singer (d. 1985)
- 1918 - Fred Blassie, American professional wrestler (d. 2003)
- 1920 - Lana Turner, American actress (d. 1995)
- 1925 - Jack Lemmon, American actor and film director (d. 2001)
- 1926 - Neal Cassady, American writer (d. 1968)
- 1926 - Audrey Meadows, American actress (d. 1996)
- 1930 - Alejandro Rey, Argentine actor (d. 1987)
- 1931 - James Dean, American actor (d. 1955)
- 1932 - John Williams, American composer and conductor
- 1933 - Elly Ameling, Dutch soprano
- 1933 - Jack Larson, American actor
- 1937 - Manfred Krug, German actor
- 1940 - Ted Koppel, American journalist
- 1941 - Nick Nolte, American actor
- 1942 - Robert Klein, American comedian
- 1942 - Terry Melcher, American musician and record producer (d. 2004)
- 1948 - John Ford Coley, American pop singer
- 1949 - Brooke Adams, American actress
- 1950 - Dan Seals, American singer
- 1953 - Mary Steenburgen, American actress
- 1955 - John Grisham, American novelist
- 1961 - Vince Neil, American musician
- 1968 - Gary Coleman, American actor
- 1972 - Paul Wight, American professional wrestler
- 1974 - Seth Green, American actor
- 1977 - Dave Farrell, American musician (Linkin Park)
- 1977 - Yucef Merhi, Venezuelan artist
- 1983 - Jim Verraros, American singer
- 1987 - Jessica Huang, Saudi Arabian born Asian-American actress
Deaths

- 1250 - Robert I of Artois, French crusader (killed in battle) (b. 1216)
- 1250 - William II Longespee
- 1265 - Hulagu Khan, Mongol ruler (b. 1217)
- 1296 - King Przemysł II of Poland (b. 1257)
- 1587 - Mary, Queen of Scots (executed) (b. 1542)
- 1599 - Robert Rollock, Scottish educator
- 1623 - Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter, English politician (b. 1546)
- 1696 - Tsar Ivan V of Russia (b. 1666)
- 1709 - Giuseppe Torelli, Italian composer (b. 1658)
- 1725 - Tsar Peter I of Russia (b. 1672)
- 1749 - Jan van Huysum, Dutch painter (b. 1682)
- 1750 - Aaron Hill, English writer (b. 1685)
- 1768 - George Dance the Elder, English architect (b. 1695)
- 1772 - Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess of Wales (b. 1719)
- 1849 - France Prešeren, Slovenian poet (b. 1800)
- 1856 - Agostino Bassi, Italian entomologist (b. 1773)
- 1910 - Hans Jæger, Norwegian writer and political activist (b. 1854)
- 1921 - Peter Kropotkin, Russian anarchist (b. 1842)
- 1929 - Maria Christina, Queen Regent of Spain (b. 1858)
- 1956 - Connie Mack, baseball commissioner and manager (b. 1862)
- 1957 - Walther Bothe, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1891)
- 1957 - John von Neumann, Hungarian-born mathematician and physicist (b. 1903)
- 1960 - Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, English architect (b. 1880)
- 1964 - Ernst Kretschmer, German psychiatrist (b. 1888)
- 1973 - Max Yasgur, American Woodstock Festival host
- 1975 - Robert Robinson, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1886)
- 1977 - Eivind Groven, Norwegian composer and ethnomusicologist (b. 1901)
- 1984 - Karel Miljon, Dutch boxer (b. 1903)
- 1985 - Sir William Lyons, British automobile manufacturer
- 1990 - Del Shannon, American entertainer (suicide) (b. 1934)
- 1993 - N. Shanmugathasan, Sri Lankan communist leader
- 1994 - Raymond Scott, American actor and inventor
- 1998 - Halldór Laxness, Icelandic writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
- 1998 - Julian Lincoln Simon, American economist and author (b. 1932)
- 1999 - Iris Murdoch, Irish author (b. 1919)
- 2000 - Sid Abel, Canadian hockey player and coach
- 2000 - Derrick Thomas, American football player
- 2001 - Ivo Caprino, Norwegian animated film director
- 2002 - Joachim Hoffmann, German historian
- 2004 - Julius Schwartz, American comic book and science fiction editor
Holidays and observances

- Feast day of Saint Jerome Emiliani
- Slovenia - Prešeren Day, the Slovenian cultural holiday
External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/8 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050208.html The New York Times: On This Day] ---- February 7 - February 9 - January 8 - March 8 -- listing of all days ko:2월 8일 ja:2月8日 nb:8. februar simple:February 8 th:8 กุมภาพันธ์

United States

:For alternative meanings, see the disambiguation page for US, USA, United States, or American. The United States of America is a federal democratic republic situated primarily in central North America. It comprises 50 states and one federal district, and has several territories. It is also referred to, with varying formality, as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the States, or simply and most commonly, America. The official founding date of the United States is July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of the government was profoundly changed in 1788, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The date on which each of the fifty states adopted the Constitution is typically regarded as the date that state "entered the Union" (became part of the United States). Since the mid-20th century, following World War II, the United States has emerged as a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological, and cultural affairs.

Geography and climate

The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia, the Bahamas, and numerous smaller nations. It is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, in the west; the Arctic Ocean, in the northernmost areas; and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, in the eastern and southeastern areas. Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, sometimes abbreviated CONUS, and as the Lower 48. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower 48 by Canada. The archipelago of Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization. When inland water is included in the total area, only Russia and Canada are larger than the United States; if inland water is excluded, China ranks third and the U.S. ranks fourth. The United States' total area is 3,718,711 square miles (9,631,418 km²), of which land makes up 3,537,438 square miles (9,161,923 km²) and water makes up 181,273 square miles (469,495 km²). The United States' landscape is one of the most varied among those of the world's nations: among its many features are temperate forestland and rolling hills, on the east coast; mangrove, in Florida; the Great Plains, in the center of the country; the Mississippi–Missouri river system; the Great Lakes, four of the five of which are shared with Canada; the Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains; deserts and temperate coastal zones, west of the Rocky Mountains; and temperate rain forests, in the Pacific northwest. Alaska's tundra, and the volcanic, tropical islands of Hawaii add to the geographic diversity. Hawaii The climate varies along with the landscape, from tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida to tundra in Alaska and atop some of the highest mountains. Most of the North and East experience a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold winters. Most of the South experiences a subtropical humid climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. Rainfall decreases markedly from the humid forests of the Eastern Great Plains to the semi-arid shortgrass prairies on the high plains abutting the Rocky Mountains. Arid deserts, including the Mojave, extend through the lowlands and valleys of the southwest, from westernmost Texas to California and northward throughout much of Nevada. Some parts of California have a Mediterranean climate. Rainforests line the windward mountains of the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska.

History

American history started with the migration of people from Asia across the Bering land bridge approximately 12,000 years ago following large animals that they hunted into the Americas. These Native Americans left evidence of their presence in petroglyphs, burial mounds, and other artifacts. It is estimated that 2-9 million people lived in the territory now occupied by the U.S. before European contact, and the subsequent introduction of foreign diseases such as small pox that greatly diminished the native populations. Some advanced societies were the Anasazi of the southwest, who inhabited Chaco Canyon, and the Woodland Indians, who built Cahokia, located near present-day St Louis, a city with a population of 40,000 at its peak in AD 1200. Vikings first visited North America around 1000, but did not settle permanently. Following the discovery voyages of Christopher Columbus around 1492, other Europeans began to explore and settle there. During the 1500s and 1600s, the Spanish settled parts of the present-day Southwest and Florida, founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 and Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) in 1607. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, also in 1607. Within the next two decades, several Dutch settlements, including New Amsterdam (the predecessor to New York City), were established in what are now the states of New York and New Jersey. In 1637, Sweden established a colony at Fort Christina (in what is now Delaware), but lost the settlement to the Dutch in 1655. This was followed by extensive British settlement of the east coast. The British colonists remained relatively undisturbed by their home country until after the French and Indian War, when France ceded Canada and the Great Lakes region to Britain. Britain then imposed taxes on the 13 colonies, widely regarded by the colonists as unfair because they were denied representation in the British Parliament. Tensions between Britain and the colonists increased, and the thirteen colonies eventually rebelled against British rule. British Parliament, George Washington (1789-1797).]] In 1776, the 13 colonies split from Great Britain and formed the United States, the world's first constitutional and democratic federal republic, after their Declaration of Independence of that year, and the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783). The original political structure was a confederation in 1777, ratified in 1781 as the Articles of Confederation. After long debate, this was supplanted by the Constitution in 1789, forming a more centralized federal government. Prior to all these was the Albany Congress in 1754, in which a union was first seriously proposed. From early colonial times, there was a shortage of labor, which encouraged unfree labor, particularly indentured servitude and slavery. In the mid-19th century, a major division occurred in the United States over the issue of states' rights and the expansion of slavery. The northern states had become opposed to slavery, while the southern states saw it as necessary for the continued success of southern agriculture and wanted it expanded to the territories. Several federal laws were passed in an attempt to settle the dispute, including the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The dispute reached a crisis in 1861, when seven southern states seceded¹ from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, leading to the Civil War. Soon after the war began, four more southern states seceded. During the war, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, mandating the freedom of all slaves in states in rebellion, though full emancipation did not take place until after the end of the war in 1865, the dissolution of the Confederacy, and the Thirteenth Amendment took effect. The Civil War effectively ended the question of a state's right to secede, and is widely accepted as a major turning point after which the federal government became more powerful than state governments. Thirteenth Amendment). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of Manifest Destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. [http://americanart.si.edu/t2go/1lw/1931.6.1.html (more)] ]] During the 19th century, many new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the continent. Manifest Destiny was a philosophy that encouraged westward expansion in the United States. As the population of the Eastern states grew and as a steady increase of immigrants entered the country, settlers moved steadily westward across North America. In the process, the U.S. displaced most American Indian nations. This displacement of American Indians continues to be a matter of contention in the U.S. with many tribes attempting to assert their original claims to various lands. In some areas American Indian populations were reduced by foreign diseases contracted through contact with European settlers, and US settlers acquired those emptied lands. In other instances American Indians were removed from their traditional lands by force. Though some would say the U.S. was not a colonial power until the Spanish-American War when it acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the dominion exercised over land in North America the United States claimed is essentially colonial. The Philippines became independent in 1946. During this period, the nation also became an industrial power. This continued into the 20th century, which has been termed "the American Century" because of the nation's overriding influence on the world. The US became a center for innovation and technological development; major technologies that America either developed or was greatly involved in improving include the telephone, television, computer, the Internet, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, aviation, and aeronautics. In addition to the Civil War, another major traumatic experience for the nation was the Great Depression (1929 to 1939). The nation has also taken part in several major foreign wars, including World War I and World War II (in both of which the US later joined the Allies). During the Cold War, the US was a major player in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and, along with the Soviet Union, was considered one of the world's two "superpowers". With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the world's leading economic and military power. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States became very involved in police actions and peacekeeping, including actions in Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Liberia, and the first Persian Gulf War driving Iraq out of Kuwait. After attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States and other allied nations found themselves involved in what has come to be called the "War on Terrorism," which has primarily encompassed military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Government

Iraq of the United States.]]

Republic and suffrage

The United States is an example of a constitutional republic, with a government composed of and operating through a set of limited powers imposed by its design and enumerated in the United States Constitution. Specifically, the nation operates as a presidential democracy. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and local. Officials of each of these levels are either elected by eligible voters via secret ballot or appointed by other elected officials. Americans enjoy almost universal suffrage from the age of 18 regardless of race, sex, or wealth. There are some limits, however: felons are disenfranchised and in some states former felons are likewise. Furthermore, the national representation of territories and the federal district of Washington, DC in Congress is limited: residents of the District of Columbia are subject to federal laws and federal taxes but their only Congressional representative is a non-voting delegate.

Federal government

The federal government is the national government, comprising the Legislative Branch (led by Congress), the Executive Branch (led by the President), and the Judicial Branch (led by the Supreme Court). These three branches were designed to apply checks and balances on each other. The Constitution limits the powers of the federal government to defense, foreign affairs, the issuing and management of currency, the management of trade and relations between the states, and the protection of human rights. In addition to these explicitly stated powers, the federal government—with the assistance of the Supreme Court—has gradually extended these powers into such areas as welfare and education, on the basis of the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution.

The Congress

necessary and proper The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives consists of 435 members, each of whom represents a congressional district and serves for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population; in contrast, each state has two Senators, regardless of population. There are a total of 100 senators, who serve six-year terms. The powers of Congress are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. The Constitution also includes the necessary-and-proper clause, which grants Congress the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers."

The President

necessary-and-proper clause At the top level of the executive branch is the President of the United States. The President and Vice-President are elected as 'running mates' for four-year terms by the Electoral College, for which each state, as well as the District of Columbia, is allocated a number of seats based on its representation (or ostensible representation, in the case of D. C.) in both houses of Congress (see U.S. Electoral College). The relationship between the President and the Congress reflects that between the English monarchy and parliament at the time of the framing of the United States Constitution. Congress can legislate to constrain the President's executive power, even with respect to his or her command of the armed forces; however, this power is used only very rarely—a notable example was the constraint placed on President Richard Nixon's strategy of bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The President cannot directly propose legislation, and must rely on supporters in Congress to promote his or her legislative agenda. The President's signature is required to turn congressional bills into law; in this respect, the President has the power—only occasionally used—to veto congressional legislation. Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses. The ultimate power of Congress over the President is that of impeachment or removal of the elected President through a House vote, a Senate trial, and a Senate vote. The threat of using this power has had major political ramifications in the cases of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. The President makes around 2,000 executive appointments, including members of the Cabinet and ambassadors, which must be approved by the Senate; the President can also issue executive orders and pardons, and has other Constitutional duties, among them the requirement to give a State of the Union address to Congress once a year. Although the President's constitutional role may appear to be constrained, in practice, the office carries enormous prestige that typically eclipses the power of Congress: the Presidency has justifiably been referred to as 'the most powerful office in the world'. The Vice President is first in the line of succession, and is the President of the Senate ex officio, with the ability to cast a tie-breaking vote. The members of the President's Cabinet are responsible for administering the various departments of state, including the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the State Department. These departments and department heads have considerable regulatory and political power, and it is they who are responsible for executing federal laws and regulations. George W. Bush is the 43rd President, currently serving his second term.

The Courts

George W. Bush The highest court is the Supreme Court, which consists of nine justices. The court deals with federal and constitutional matters, and can declare legislation made at any level of the government as unconstitutional, nullifying the law and creating precedent for future law and decisions. Below the Supreme Court are the courts of appeals, and below them in turn are the district courts, which are the general trial courts for federal law. Separate from, but not entirely independent of, this federal court system are the individual court systems of each state, each dealing with its own laws and having its own judicial rules and procedures. A case may be appealed from a state court to a federal court only if there is a federal question; the supreme court of each state is the final authority on the interpretation of that state's laws and constitution.

State and local governments

supreme court of each state. Note that Alaska and Hawaii are shown at different scales, and that the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.]] The state governments have the greatest influence over people's daily lives. Each state has its own written constitution and has different laws. There are sometimes great differences in law and procedure between the different states, concerning issues such as property, crime, health, and education. The highest elected official of each state is the Governor. Each state also has an elected legislature (bicameral in every state except Nebraska), whose members represent the different parts of the state. Of note is the New Hampshire legislature, which is the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, and has one representative for every 3,000 people. Each state maintains its own judiciary, with the lowest level typically being county courts, and culminating in each state supreme court, though sometimes named differently. In some states, supreme and lower court justices are elected by the people; in others, they are appointed, as they are in the federal system. The institutions that are responsible for local government are typically town, city, or county boards, making laws that affect their particular area. These laws concern issues such as traffic, the sale of alcohol, and keeping animals. The highest elected official of a town or city is usually the mayor. In New England, towns operate directly democratically, and in some states, such as Rhode Island and Connecticut, counties have little or no power, existing only as geographic distinctions. In other areas, county governments have more power, such as to collect taxes and maintain law enforcement agencies.

Political divisions

With the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen colonies proclaimed themselves to be nation states modeled after the European states of the time. Although considered as sovereigns initially, under the Articles of Confederation of 1781 they entered into a "Perpetual Union" and created a fully sovereign federal state, delegating certain powers to the national Congress, including the right to engage in diplomatic relations and to levy war, while each retaining their individual sovereignty, freedom and independence. But the national government proved too ineffective, so the administrative structure of the government was vastly reorganized with the United States Constitution of 1789. Under this new union, the continued status of the individual states as sovereign nation states fell into dispute in 1861, as several states attempted to secede from the union; in response, then-President Abraham Lincoln claimed that such secession was illegal, and the result was the American Civil War. Since the Union victory in 1865, the independent status of the individual states has not been broached again by any state, and the status of each state within the union has been deemed by mainstream officials and academics to be settled as being subordinate to the union as a whole. In subsequent years, the number of states grew steadily due to western expansion, the purchase of lands by the national government from other nation states, and the subdivision of existing states, resulting in the current total of 50. The states are generally divided into smaller administrative regions, including counties, cities and townships. The United States–Canadian border is the longest undefended political boundary in the world. The U.S. is divided into three distinct sections:
- the "continental United States," also known as "the Lower 48" and more accurately termed the conterminous, coterminous or contiguous United States
- Alaska, which is physically connected only to Canada
- the archipelago of Hawaii, in the central Pacific Ocean. The United States also holds several other territories, districts, and possessions, notably the federal district of the District of Columbia, which is the nation's capital, and several overseas insular areas, the most significant of which are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. The Palmyra Atoll is the United States' only incorporated territory; it is unorganized and uninhabited. The United States Navy has held a base at a portion of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 1898. The United States government possesses a lease to this land, which only mutual agreement or United States abandonment of the area can terminate. The present Cuban government of Fidel Castro disputes this arrangement, claiming Cuba was not truly sovereign at the time of the signing. The United States argues this point moot because Cuba apparently ratified the lease post-revolution, and with full sovereignty, when it cashed one rent check in accordance with the disputed treaty.

Foreign relations and military

sovereign] The immense military and economic dominance of the United States has made foreign relations an especially important topic in its politics, with considerable concern about the image of the United States throughout the world. Reactions towards the United States by other nationalities are often strong, ranging from uninhibited admiration and mimicking of all things American to anti-Americanism. US foreign policy has swung about several times over the course of its history between the poles of strict isolationism and imperialism and everywhere in between. Three of the nation's four military branches are administered by the Department of Defense: the Army, the Navy (including the Marine Corps), and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime, but is placed under the Department of the Navy in time of war. The combined United States armed forces consist of 1.4 million active duty personnel, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard. Military conscription ended in 1973. The United States Armed forces are considered to be the most powerful military (of any sort) on Earth and their force projection capabilities are unrivaled by any other nation. The 2005 defense budget amounted to $401.7 billion, which is an increase of 4% over 2004 and of 35% since 2001. Over 50% of that number is spent in research & development. (For comparison, in 2004 the European Union (considered as the second-largest military force) had a combined total of 1.6 million troops, and a defense budget of €160 billion, with less than 10% of that being spent on R&D.)

Largest cities

The United States has dozens of major cities, including 11 of the 55 global cities of all types — with three "alpha" global cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The figures expressed below are for populations within city limits. A different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metro area populations, although the top three would be unchanged. Note that some cities not listed (such as Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) are still considered important on the basis of other factors and issues, including culture, economics, heritage, and politics. The twenty largest cities, based on the United States Census Bureau's 2004 estimates, are as follows:

Economy

The United States has the largest single-country economy in the world, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $40,100. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. gross domestic product The largest industry of the U.S. is now service, which employs roughly three quarters of the U.S. work force. The United States has many natural resources, including oil and gas, metals, and such minerals as gold, soda ash, and zinc. In agriculture, the U.S. is a top producer of, among other crops, corn, soy beans, and wheat; the United States is a net exporter of food. The U.S. manufacturing sector produces goods such as, cars, airplanes, steel, and electronics, among many others. Economic activity varies greatly from one part of the country to another, with many industries being largely dependent on a certain city or region; New York City is the center of the American financial, publishing, broadcasting, and advertising industries; Silicon Valley is the country’s primary location for high-technology companies, while Los Angeles is the most important center for film production. The Midwest is known for its reliance on manufacturing and heavy industry, with Detroit, Michigan, serving as the center of the American automotive industry; the Great Plains are known as the "breadbasket" of America for their tremendous agricultural output; the intermountain region serves as a mining hub and natural gas resource; the Pacific Northwest for fish and timber, while Texas is largely associated with the oil industry; the Southeast is a major hub for both medical research and the textiles industry. Several countries continue to link their currency to the dollar or even use it as a currency (such as Ecuador), although this practice has subsided since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Many markets are also quoted in dollars, such as those of oil and gold. The dollar is also the predominant reserve currency in the world, and more than half of global reserves are in dollars. The largest trading partner of the United States is Canada (19%), followed by China (12%), Mexico (11%), and Japan (8%). More than 50% of total trade is with these four countries. In 2003, the United States was ranked as the third most visited tourist destination in the world; its 40,400,000 visitors ranked behind France's 75,000,000 and Spain's 52,500,000. Labor unions have existed since the 19th century, and grew large and powerful from the 1930s to the 1950s. See Labor history of the United States. Since 1970 they have shrunk in the private sector and now cover fewer than 8% of the workers. However union membership has grown rapidly in the public sector, especially among teachers, nurses, police, postal workers, and municipal clerks. There have been few strikes in recent years. The United States' imports exceed exports by 80%, leading to an annual trade deficit of $700,000,000,000, or 6% of gross domestic product. It is the largest debtor nation in the world, with total gross foreign debt of over $13,000,000,000,000 (2005 estimate); and it absorbs more than 50% of global savings annually. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has increased the use of neoliberal economic policies that reduce government intervention and reduce the size of the welfare state, backing away from the more interventionist Keynsian economic policies that had been in favor since the Great Depression. As a result, the United States provides fewer government-delivered social welfare services than most industrialized nations, choosing instead to keep its tax burden lower and relying more heavily on the free market and private charities. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the national level ($5.15 per-hour), including the highest, Washington State at $7.35. Twenty-six states are the same as the federal level; two--Ohio and Kansas--are below; and six do not have state laws. America's wealth is relatively highly concentrated. The average C.E.O. earns 500 times the typical amount a worker grosses, this is up from 25 times in the late 1970s. In terms of wealth the top 1% of Americans own 40% of all assets and 50.1% of the country's income goes to the top twenty percent of households. Average wages for the majority of employees have been largely stagnating since the 1970s. America's poverty line defined as a family of four earning less than $19,157 is at 12.7% of the general population. Approximately one out of every five children in the United States grows up below the official poverty line. Among racial groups; African Americans have the lowest median income while Asians had the highest. Regionally, the southern states had the lowest median incomes while the West Coast and New England had the highest. The current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan remarked that the U.S.’s growing income inequality since the 1970s is, "not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing."[http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0614/p01s03-usec.html?s=itm] However, Greenspan also noted, "...you can look at the system and say it's got a lot of problems to it, and sure it does. It always has. But you can't get around the fact that this is the most extraordinarily successful economy in history."

Transportation

Alan Greenspan ]] Because the United States is a relatively young nation, most of the development of U.S. cities has taken place since the invention of the automobile. To link its vast territory, the United States built a network of high-capacity, high-speed highways, of which the most important element is the Interstate Highway system, commissioned in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and modeled after the German Autobahn. The United States also has a transcontinental rail system, which is used for moving freight across the lower forty-eight states. Passenger rail service is provided by Amtrak, which serves forty-six of the lower forty-eight states. Many cities in the United States have extensive mass-transit systems. New York City operates one of the world's largest and most heavily used subway systems. The regional rail and bus networks that extend into Long Island, New Jersey, Upstate New York, and Connecticut are among the most heavily used in the world. Air travel is often preferred for destinations over 300 miles (500 kilometers) away. In terms of passengers, seventeen of the world's thirty busiest airports in 2004 were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; in terms of cargo, in the same year, twelve of the world's thirty busiest airports were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Memphis International Airport. There are several major seaports in the United States; the three busiest are the Port of Los Angeles, California; the Port of Long Beach, California; and the Port of New York and New Jersey. Others include Houston, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Seattle, Washington; plus, outside the contiguous forty-eight states, Anchorage, Alaska, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Society

Demographics

Hawaii The mean center of the U.S. population continues to drift farther west and south. The fastest growing region is the western United States followed by the southern portion. According to Census 2000, the states that saw the greatest increases from 1990 were: Nevada (66.3%), Arizona (40%), Colorado (30.6%), Utah (29.6%), Idaho (28.5%), Georgia (26.4%), Florida (23.5%), Texas (22.8%), North Carolina (21.4%), and Washington (21.1%). [http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t2/tab03.pdf]

Ethnicity and race

:Main article: Racial demographics of the United States The United States is a very racially diverse country. According to the 2000 census, it has 31 ethnic groups with at least one million members each, and numerous others represented in smaller amounts. The majority of Americans descend from white European immigrants who arrived at the establishment of the first colonies (most after Reconstruction). This majority--69.1% in 2000--decreases each year, and is expected to become a plurality within a few decades. The most frequently stated European ancestries are German (15.2%), Irish (10.8%), English (8.7%), Italian (5.6%) and Scandinavian (3.7%). Many immigrants also hail from Slavic countries such as Poland and Russia. Other significant immigrant populations came from eastern and southern Europe and French Canada. Russia Hispanics from Mexico and South and Central America are the largest minority group in the country, comprising 12.5% of the population (2000 census). People of Mexican descent made up 7.3% of the population in the 2000 census, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. About 12.3% (2000 census) of the American people are African Americans (Blacks). African Americans are spread throughout the country, but their presence is largest in the South. Asian Americans--including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders--are a third significant minority (3.7% of the population in 2000). Most Asian Americans are concentrated on the West Coast and Hawaii. The largest groups are immigrants or descendants of emigrants from the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan. Indigenous peoples in the United States, such as American Indians and Inuit, make up 0.9% of the population (2000 census). About 35% live on Indian reservations.

Religion

Polls estimate that just under 80 percent of Americans are Christians of various denominations. The other 20 percent comprises other religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, other various faiths, and those without a specific religion. The United States is noteworthy among developed nations for its relatively high level of religiosity. According to a 2004 Gallup poll, about 44% of Americans attend a religious service at least once a week. However, this rate is not uniform across the country; attendance is more common in the Bible Belt—composed largely of Southern and Midwestern states—than in the Northeast and West Coast. In the Southern states, Baptists are the largest group, followed by Methodists; Roman Catholics are dominant in the Northeast and in large parts of the Midwest due to their being settled by descendants of Catholic immigrants from Europe (such as Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland) or other parts of North America (mainly Quebec and Puerto Rico). The rest of the country for the most part has a complex mixture of various Christian groups.

Education

West Coast's home at Monticello and the University of Virginia (library building shown above, and designed by Jefferson), the only collegiate campus on the list. Both sites are located in Charlottesville, Virginia.]] In the United States, education is a state, not federal, responsibility, and the laws and standards vary considerably. However, the federal government, through the Department of Education, is involved with funding of some programs and exerts some influence through its ability to control funding. In most states, all students must attend mandatory schooling starting with kindergarten, which children normally enter at age 5, and following through 12th grade, which is normally completed at age 18

Manager (baseball)

In baseball, the head coach of a team is called the manager; this individual controls matters of team strategy on the field and team leadership. The manager sets the line-up and starting pitcher before each game as well as making substitutions throughout the game. How much control a manager takes in player strategy varies from one manager to another. Some managers control pitch selection, defensive positioning, decisions to bunt/steal/pitch out, etc., while others leave these decisions to a player's discretion. Most find a balance somewhere in the middle.

Current MLB Managers

American League

National League

East Brookfield, Massachusetts

East Brookfield is a town located in Worcester County, Massachusetts. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 2,097. For geographic and demographic information on the census-designated place East Brookfield, please see the article East Brookfield (CDP), Massachusetts.

History

East Brookfield was first settled in 1664 and was officially incorporated in 1920, making it the "newest" town in The Commonwealth

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 26.9 km² (10.4 mi²). 25.5 km² (9.8 mi²) of it is land and 1.4 km² (0.5 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 5.11% water.

Demographics

As of the census ² of 2000, there are 2,097 people, 778 households, and 599 families residing in the town. The population density is 82.3/km² (213.0/mi²). There are 849 housing units at an average density of 33.3/km² (86.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the town is 98.52% White, 0.43% Black or African American, 0.24% Native American, 0.14% Asian, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.14% from other races, and 0.52% from two or more races. 0.76% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 778 households out of which 32.6% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 65.7% are married couples living together, 8.2% have a female householder with no husband present, and 22.9% are non-families. 18.9% of all households are made up of individuals and 9.6% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.70 and the average family size is 3.07. In the town the population is spread out with 25.6% under the age of 18, 6.3% from 18 to 24, 30.0% from 25 to 44, 24.7% from 45 to 64, and 13.3% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 39 years. For every 100 females there are 98.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 96.2 males. The median income for a household in the town is $51,860, and the median income for a family is $57,500. Males have a median income of $41,739 versus $28,250 for females. The per capita income for the town is $22,629. 3.9% of the population and 2.8% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 3.6% of those under the age of 18 and 9.2% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line. Category:Towns in Massachusetts Category:Worcester County, Massachusetts

Catcher

:Catcher is also a general term for a fielder who catches the ball in cricket. Katcher is one of the programs which make up konspire2B Catcher is a position played in baseball. The catcher crouches behind home plate and receives the ball from the pitcher. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the catcher is assigned the number 2 (see Baseball scorekeeping). Catching is arguably the most difficult and important task in baseball. Positioned behind home plate, the catcher can see the whole field, and therefore is in the best position to direct and lead the other players in a play. The catcher typically calls the pitches by means of hand signals, and therefore requires awareness of both the pitcher's mechanics and strengths and the batter's weaknesses. In addition, because the catcher's job is to catch pitches which often come in at speeds exceeding 90 miles per hour, the catcher wears protective equipment including a mask, chest protector, knee pads, and an extra-thick glove (see photo).

Injury

Despite being heavily padded, catchers routinely suffer the worst physical abuse in baseball. The catcher has the physically risky job of blocking the plate from runners. Catchers are also constantly getting bruised and battered by pitches, and have a long history of knee ailments stemming from the awkward crouched stance they assume. Because of this, catchers have a reputation as being slow baserunners; even if they have speed at the beginning of their careers, the eventual toll taken on their knees slows them down. Catchers also have an increased risk of circulatory abnormalities in the catching hand. A study of minor-league ballplayers showed that, of 36 players in various positions, all 9 of the catchers had hand pain during a game and several had chronic pain in the catching hand. Ultrasound and blood pressure tests showed altered blood flow in the glove hand of five of the catchers, a higher proportion than the other baseball positions in the study. (Ginn, et al., 2005) blood pressure Catchers in baseball use the following equimpment to help prevent injury while behind the plate:
- Mask - To protect their head
- Glove - Catchers use a special thick glove to lower the impact of the ball on their hand
- Shin Guards - Also called spike protecters, used to prevent injury from base runners advacing home with "spikes up"
- Chest Protector - Similar to a policeman's bullet proof vest, this piece of equimpment protects the catchers body from the impact of the pitch if he fails to catch it or stop it. "We used no mattress on our hands, No cage upon our face; We stood right up and caught the ball, With courage and with grace."

Hall of Fame Catchers

- Johnny Bench
- Yogi Berra
- Roger Bresnahan
- Roy Campanella
- Gary Carter
- Mickey Cochrane
- Bill Dickey
- Buck Ewing
- Rick Ferrell
- Carlton Fisk
- Josh Gibson
- Gabby Hartnett
- Ernie Lombardi
- Ray Schalk

All-Star Catchers

References

- PMID 15995112

External links

- [http://www.baseballcatchers.com/ Encyclopedia of Baseball Catchers]
- [http://www.baseballcatchers.com/ Stats, awards, photos and trivia related to catchers ]
- [http://members.tripod.com/bb_catchers/catchers/equip.htm Website on the history and evolution of catchers' equipment] Category:Baseball positions
- ja:捕手

National League

:This article refers to the American baseball league. For the English cricket league of the same name, please see National League (cricket). There is also a political party called the Indian National League. ---- The term National League generally refers to the organization more properly referred to as the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, the older (founded on February 2, 1876) of the two leagues constituting Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada. (The other major league is the American League.) Beginning with the 1903 season, the regular season champions of the two leagues have met annually in the World Series, with the exception of 1904 and 1994. After the absorption of the American Association by the League in 1892, the temporarily-redubbed "National League and American Association" was the only Major League until the American League rose to Major League status in 1901. The National League in 1876 consisted of eight teams, six of which were previously members of the defunct National Association. The teams were: the Chicago White Stockings (now the Cubs), the St. Louis Brown Stockings (folded in 1877), the Hartford Dark Blues (folded in 1877), the Boston Red Caps (now the Atlanta Braves), the Louisville Grays (folded in 1877), the Mutual of New York (folded in 1876), the Athletic of Philadelphia (folded in 1876), and the Cincinnati Red Stockings (folded in 1880; not the same as the modern Reds, who began play in 1882 as the Red Stockings and joined the National League in 1890). Of these teams, only the White Stockings (Cubs) and the Red Caps (Braves) have survived to the present day. The National League, which for the first 93 years of its existence competed equally in a single grouping, re-organized into two divisions of 6 teams (East and West) in 1969, with the division champions meeting in the National League Championship Series (an additional round of postseason competition) for the right to advance to the World Series. Beginning with the 1994 season, the league has been divided into three divisions (East, West, and Central), with the addition of a Wild Card team (the team with the best record among those finishing in second place) to enable four teams to advance to the preliminary Division Series. After contracting from twelve teams down to eight in 1900, the National League consisted of the same eight teams until 1962, when it added the New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s (renamed the Houston Astros in 1965). In 1969 the league added the San Diego Padres and the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals). That same year the league was divided into East and West Divisions. In 1993 the league expanded again, adding the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins. In 1998, the Arizona Diamondbacks were added as a new franchise and the Milwaukee Brewers moved over from the American League to make the National League what it is today. The National League is also known as the Senior Circuit, due to the fact that it has existed 25 years longer than the American League. Often characterized as being a more "traditional" or "pure" league, the National League (as of 2005 at least) has never adopted the designated hitter rule as did the AL during the 1970s. In theory, this means the role of the NL manager is somewhat expanded in comparison to the AL, because the manager must take offense into account when making pitching substitutions and vice versa. There are perceived to be fewer home runs and big offensive plays due to the presence of the pitcher in the batting order, although this is not always the case.

Teams

East Division

- Atlanta Braves
- Florida Marlins
- New York Mets
- Philadelphia Phillies
- Washington Nationals

Central Division

The NL Central Division is the only division in either league to have six teams; the others all have fewer.
- Chicago Cubs
- Cincinnati Reds
- Houston Astros
- Milwaukee Brewers
- Pittsburgh Pirates
- St. Louis Cardinals

West Division

- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Colorado Rockies
- Los Angeles Dodgers
- San Diego Padres
- San Francisco Giants

Franchise Moves since 1900

- 1953: Boston Braves move to Milwaukee
- 1958: Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles and New York Giants move to San Francisco
- 1962: Houston Colt .45s and New York Mets enfranchised
- 1966: Milwaukee Braves move to Atlanta
- 1969: Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres enfranchised
- 1993: National League enfranchises Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins
- 1998: National League adds Arizona Diamondbacks; Milwaukee Brewers move from the American League to the National League
- 2005: Montreal Expos move to become the Washington Nationals

NL Presidents 1876-1999

- Morgan G. Bulkeley 1876-1876
- William A. Hulbert 1877-1882
- Arthur H. Soden 1882-1882
- Abraham G. Mills 1883-1884
- Nicholas E. Young 1885-1902
- Harry C. Pulliam 1903-1909
- John A. Heydler 1909-1909
- Thomas J. Lynch 1910-1913
- John K. Tener 1913-1918
- John A. Heydler 1918-1934
- Ford C. Frick 1934-1951
- Warren C. Giles 1951-1969
- Charles S. Feeney 1970-1986
- A. Bartlett Giamatti 1986-1989
- William D. White 1989-1994
- Leonard S. Coleman, Jr. 1994-1999 Office eliminated in 1999. Bill Giles, son of former NL President Warren C. Giles, currently serves as honorary National League president.

Pittsburgh Pirates

:This article is on the baseball team. For the National Hockey League team (1925 - 1930), see Pittsburgh Pirates (NHL). Also, the National Football League's Pittsburgh Steelers were named the Pirates from 1933 to 1940. ---- The Pittsburgh Pirates are a Major League Baseball team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are in the Central Division of the National League.

Franchise history

The Team's Name

The original name of the franchise was the Pittsburgh Alleghenies, some contend this it from the county of which Pittsburgh is the seat of government, some after the mountain range in the region, and some the home city of Recreation Park and Exposition Park, Allegheny, Pennsylvania which would become Pittsburgh's northside after a 1907 annexation. In the 1890's the club was referred to as the Pittsburgh Innocents before the Pirates name stuck by the end of that decade. When the renegade Players League dissolved after the 1890 season, most of the league's player contracts were assigned to National League and American Association clubs, typically to their previous clubs provided they had been "reserved" by their former teams' owners. Highly-regarded second baseman Lou Bierbauer, who had previously played with the Philadelphia Athletics of the Association, was instead awarded to the Pittsburgh team on the grounds that the A's had not reserved him. This led to loud complaints by the Athletics that the Pittsburgh club were "Pirates". This incident (which is discussed at some length in The Beer and Whisky League, by David Nemec, 1994) quickly accelerated into a schism between the leagues that contributed to the demise of the A.A. The colorful epithet stuck with the Pittsburghers, and eventually became the club's official nickname. It was first acknowledged on the team jerseys in 1912, but even by the 1903 World Series, "Pirates" was in common usage.

Pre-1900

Professional Baseball started in Pittsburgh in 1876 though the teams of the era were "independents" barnstorming throughout the region and not affilated with any organized league, though they did have salaries and were run as a business organization [http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/P/Pittsburgh_Pirates.stm]. In 1882 the baseball team in the city joined the American Association as a founding member. After five mediocre seasons in the A.A., Pittsburgh became the first A.A. team to switch to the older, more respectable National League in 1887. In these early days, the club benefitted three times from mergers with defunct clubs. The AA club picked up a number of players from a defunct Columbus, Ohio team in 1885. In 1890, they merged with the Players League franchise in the city after that league folded. In 1900, the Pirates picked up several players from the defunct Louisville Colonels club, which shared an owner with Pittsburgh, when the NL contracted from 12 to 8 teams after the 1899 season.

1901-1969

Bolstered by former Colonels Honus Wagner (though he was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area) and Fred Clarke, the 1901-1903 Pirates completely dominated the National League, in part because they lost few star players to the rival American League. However, owing to injuries to their starting pitchers, they lost the first World Series ever played, in 1903 to Boston. Deacon Phillippe pitched five complete games, winning three of them; but it was not enough. With largely the same star players, the Pirates would continue to be a strong team over the next few years and got their first World Series title in 1909, defeating the Detroit Tigers in seven games. The decline of Honus Wagner, considered by many to be the greatest shortstop ever, and by a number of his contemporaries to be a greater player than Ty Cobb, led to a number of losing seasons, culminating in a disastrous 51-103 record in 1917, Wagner's last season. However, veteran outfielder Max Carey and young players Pie Traynor and Kiki Cuyler, along with a remarkably deep pitching staff, brought the Pirates back into the spotlight. The Pirates recovered from a 3-1 deficit to win the 1925 World Series over the Washington Senators, and reached the 1927 World Series before losing in a sweep to the New York Yankees, who at that time had built the most dominant team in baseball. The 1927 season was the first for the sharp-hitting combination of brothers Lloyd Waner and Paul Waner, who along with shortstop Arky Vaughan ensured that the Pirates had plenty of Hall of Fame-caliber position players through 1941. However, the crushing defeats of 1927, and also of 1938 when they lost the pennant to the Chicago Cubs in the final days of the season, took awhile to recover from. The post-World War II years were not kind to the Pirates, despite the presence of a genuine superstar in Ralph Kiner. The Pirates would have only one winning season until 1958, when Danny Murtaugh took over as manager. Murtaugh is widely credited for inventing the concept of the closer by frequently playing pitcher ElRoy Face late in close games. The 1960 team featured eight All-Stars, but was widely predicted to lose the World Series to a powerful New York Yankees team. In one of the most memorable World Series in history, the Pirates were defeated by more than ten runs in three games, won three close games, then recovered from a 7-4 deficit late in Game 7 to eventually win on a walk-off home run by Bill Mazeroski, a second baseman otherwise better known for defensive wizardry. (The 1960 Pirates were the only team between 1945 and 2001 to have not succumbed to the so-called "Ex-Cubs Factor" in the post-season.) The 1960s would continue with extremely solid defensive play by Mazeroski and the first Puerto Rican superstar, Roberto Clemente. Clemente was regarded as both one of the game's best all-time hitters and right fielders. Although not the first black-Hispanic baseball player (an honor belonging to Minnie Minoso), Clemente's charisma and leadership in humanitarian causes made him an icon across the continent. However, the Pirates struggled for the remainder of the decade, and Murtaugh was replaced by Harry Walker in 1965.

1970-1979 and "The Family"

Slugger Willie Stargell became a fixture in the Pittsburgh lineup in the late 1960s, and the Pirates would return to prominence in 1970 when Murtaugh returned as manager and the Pirates' home field, Forbes Field, was demolished in favor of the multi-purpose Three Rivers Stadium. In 1970, The Pirates won their first of five division titles over the next six years, and won their fourth World Series in 1971 behind a .414 Series batting average by Clemente. They also thought they had a genuine superstar pitcher (historically rare for the Pirates) in Steve Blass, who pitched two excellent games in the World Series and put together excellent seasons in 1968 and 1972. Clemente died tragically in a plane crash on December 31, 1972 while accompanying a shipment of relief supplies to the victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. He had reached the milestone of 3,000 career hits, a standup double, just a few months earlier, on September 30, 1972, in what would prove to be his last regular season hit. The Baseball Hall of Fame waived its usual waiting requirement and inducted Clemente immediately; Pittsburgh would eventually erect a statue and name a bridge and park near the stadium after him. In 1973, Blass suffered a mysterious breakdown in his pitching abilities and posted an outrageous 9.85 ERA. Some speculated that the emotional shock of his friend Clemente's death contributed to his breakdown. He retired soon afterwards; he has now been one of the Pirates' radio and TV announcers for almost two decades. Stargell, speedy Omar Moreno and power-hitting but ostentatious and unpopular Dave Parker became the cornerstones of the Pirates as Murtaugh left and Chuck Tanner took over as manager in 1977. Adopting the popular disco anthem "We Are Family" as their theme song, the Pirates won a fifth World Series, again in seven games, in 1979.

1980s & 1990s: The Leyland Era

Following was a period of decline until the Pirates were regarded as the worst team in baseball during the mid-1980s. Jim Leyland took over as manager, and the Pirates gradually climbed out of the cellar behind young and exciting players such as "outfield of dreams" Bobby Bonilla, Barry Bonds, and Andy Van Slyke; infielders Jay Bell and Jose Lind; and pitchers Doug Drabek and Stan Belinda. The Pirates would win the first three division titles of the 1990s, but failed to advance to the World Series each time, the second two losing closely contested seven-game series to the Atlanta Braves on questionable calls at the end of the final games. Before the 1993 season, Bonds left for a more lucrative contract with his hometown San Francisco Giants. Both Bonds and Bonilla complained about the preferential treatment given to fan favorite Van Slyke, although Bonilla flatly rejected Bonds's suggestion that racism was a motivating factor. Since then, the Pirates have not had a winning season. The closest to a winning team was the 1997 "Freak Show" team, which finished second in the NL Central, only being eliminated in the season's final week, despite having a losing record and a payroll of only $9 million. Their overall lack of success in the last decade have been blamed partly on former General Manager Cam Bonifay, who gave large contracts to players such as Derek Bell while failing to identify, develop, and retain numerous young potential star players. Despite poor play in 2001, Bell announced that he would begin "Operation Shutdown", a passive-aggressive ploy in which he would fail to play effectively in response to losing his role as a starter. The failure of the Pirates to compete in recent years has been blamed on "small market syndrome"; teams located in small cities such as Pittsburgh and Kansas City cannot compete with New York City and Boston without a salary cap or similar agreement, as the better players tend to gravitate towards cities where teams generate more revenue, meaning larger salaries.

2000-present: The PNC Park Years

The Pirates opened a new stadium, PNC Park, in 2001. Due to its simple, unpretentious concept and strategic usage of the remarkably beautiful Pittsburgh skyline, it is frequently regarded (as in a recent ESPN article) as currently the best park in baseball. Despite this, the Pirates' mediocre performance has translated to subpar attendance figures. Current General Manager Dave Littlefield was installed midway through the 2001 season and began overhauling the team to comply with owner Kevin McClatchy's dictum to drastically reduce the payroll. Enigmatic but talented third baseman Aramis Ramirez was traded to the Chicago Cubs in 2003 for a fairly minimal return under pressure to dump his $6 million salary for 2004, and he proceeded to become a star for the Cubs. Brian Giles was one of the National League's best hitters for several years, but he and his $9 million salary were also traded in 2003 to the San Diego Padres for youngsters Oliver Pérez, Jason Bay, and Cory Stewart. Pirate fans found this trade much more palatable in the short run, as Pérez led the majors in strikeouts per inning and Bay won the Rookie of the Year Award award in 2004, while Giles put up a subpar season by his standards. After the 2004 season, Kendall went to the Oakland Athletics in a cross-exchange of high-salary players. Though this rash of trades has not been popular in Pittsburgh, it is generally accepted that it can mostly be attributed to the aforementioned "small market syndrome." It is felt that Littlefield is attempting, with perhaps mixed success, to follow the blueprint created by overachieving small market teams such as the Oakland Athletics and Minnesota Twins, often referred to as the moneyball approach. Illustrating the Pirates rebuilding efforts is the fact that at the close of the 2005 season, the team fielded the youngest roster in baseball, with an average age of 26.6. (The next youngest team was the Kansas City Royals, with an average age of 27.1.) During the course of the season, 14 players were called up from its Triple-A affiliate, the Indianapolis Indians, 12 of whom made their first major league appearance.

All-Star Games

The Pirates have hosted the MLB All-Star Game a total of four times. The first game occurred on July 11, 1944. The National League won the competition 7-1, with 12 hits to the American League's 6 hits. The second time the All-Star game visited Pittsburgh was on July 7, 1959. The National League again took the game 5-4, getting 9 hits to the American League's 8 hits. The third All-Star game in Pittsburgh was on July 23, 1974. The National League again took the contest 7-2, with 10 hits against an American League effort of just 4. It was July 12, 1994 when the All-Star game visited Pittsburgh for the fourth time. It was a tight contest, with the A.L. leading by two runs going into the bottom of the 9th. The N.L. posted two runs that inning to tie the score and force extra innings. The N.L. won the game 8-7 in the bottom of the 10th inning. In 2006, PNC Park, will host the All-Star Game. Since the Pirates hosted the 1944 and 1959 games at Forbes Field and the 1974 and 1994 games in Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh will be the only team to have hosted the game in three diffent stadiums.

Trivia

100 Wins in a Season. There has been only one Pirate manager who has recorded more than 100 wins during a single season with the team. Fred Clarke did it first in 1902 with a 103-36 record, and a second time in 1909 with a 110-42 record. The Pirates won the Pennant in 1902, but went further in 1909 with a World Series victory over Detroit. 100 Losses in a Season. There have been six different Pirate managers who have suffered more than 100 losses in one season. Guy Hecker in 1890 (23-113), Jim Callahan and Honus Wagner in 1917 (51-103), Billy Meyer in 1952 (42-112), Fred Haney in 1953 and 1954 (50-104, 53-101), Chuck Tanner in 1985 (57-104) and Lloyd McClendon in 2001 (62-100).

Quick facts

:Founded: 1882, as a charter member of the American Association. Transferred to the National League in 1887. :Uniform colors: Black and gold :Logo design: Pirate caricature superimposed on crossed baseball bats :Official mascot: Pirate Parrot :Playoff appearances (14): 1903, 1909, 1925, 1927, 1960, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1979, 1990, 1991, 1992 :Current Manager: Jim Tracy :Current G.M.: Dave Littlefield

Baseball Hall of Famers

Retired Numbers

- 1 Billy Meyer, manager, 1948-52
- 4 Ralph Kiner, OF, 1946-53
- 8 Willie Stargell, 1B, 1962-82
- 9 Bill Mazeroski, 2B, 1956-72
- 20 Pie Traynor, 3B, 1920-37; manager, 1934-39
- 21 Roberto Clemente, OF, 1955-72
- 33 Honus Wagner, SS, 1900-17, wore number as a coach, 1933-51
- 40 Danny Murtaugh, manager, 1957-64, 1967, 1970-71 & 1973-76
- 42 Jackie Robinson (Brooklyn Dodgers 2B, retired by all 30 major league baseball teams)

Current roster

Minor league affiliations

- AAA: Indianapolis Indians, International League
- AA: Altoona Curve, Eastern League
- Advanced A: Lynchburg Hillcats, Carolina League
- A: Hickory Crawdads, South Atlantic League
- Short A: Williamsport Crosscutters, New York-Penn League
- Rookie: GCL Pirates, Gulf Coast League
- Rookie: VSL Pirates, Venezuelan Summer League

References

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External links

- [http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/pit/homepage/pit_homepage.jsp Pittsburgh Pirates official website]
- [http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/events/all_star/y2006/index.jsp?c_id=pit Pittsburgh Pirates official 2006 All-Star Game website] Category:MLB teams Category:Pittsburgh sports Category:Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ja:ピッツバーグ・パイレーツ

1896

1896 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

January - April

- January 4 - Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state.
- January 5 - An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.
- January 12 - H.L. Smith takes the first X-ray photograph.
- January 18 - The X-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.
- February 1 - The opera La bohème premieres (Turin).
- February 1 - Walter Arnold, of Kent, England, is fined for speeding in excess of the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph
- February 11 - Oscar Wilde's play Salomé premieres in Paris.
- March 1 - With the Battle of Adowa, Ethiopia defends its independence from Italy.
- April 3 - First edition of Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport is published.
- April 6 - Opening ceremonies of the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first modern Olympic Games.

May - August

- May 8 - Cricket: Against Warwickshire, Yorkshire sets a still-standing County Championship record when they accumulate an innings total of 887.
- May 18 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Plessy v Ferguson, introducing the "separate but equal" doctrine.
- May 26 - Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
- May 27 - The costliest and third deadliest tornado in U.S. history levels a mile wide swath of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, incurring $2.9 billion (1997 USD) in damages, killing more than 255 and injuring over 1,000 people.
- June 12 - J.T. Hearne sets a record for the earliest date of taking 100 wickets. It is equalled by Charlie Parker in 1931.
- June 15 - ? Earthquake and tsunami in Sanriku, Japan, kills 27.000
- July 9 - William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of gold speech.
- July 11 - Wilfrid Laurier becomes Canada's seventh prime minister.
- August 16 - Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in the Klondike.
- August 27 - The shortest war in the world - 9.02 - 9.40 between Britain and Zanzibar

September - December

- October 3 - Dalton brothers try to rob two banks but only Emmet Dalton survives the shootout
- October 5 - After a long siege, Brazilian government troops take Canudos in north Brazil, crushing Antonio Conselheiro and his followers
- November - William McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election.
- November 6 - Hale Johnson runs as vice-presidential candidate for Prohibition Party.
- November 16 - Cherry Sisters perform in Olympia Music Hall in New York City. At first audience is stunned but then begins to answer with catcalls...
- December 30 - Jose Rizal, Filipino scholar and poet, executed in the Philippines

Unknown dates

- Nepalese archaeologists rediscover the great stone pillar of Ashoka at Lumbini, using Fa Xian's records.
- Pontifical University of Maynooth is established by decree of the Vatican
- France establishes an administrative post in Abengourou, Côte d'Ivoire.
- Formation of the New York Telephone Company
- The great Realignment of the Republican Party of the United States of America

Births

- January 2 - Dziga Vertov, Russian filmmaker (d. 1954)
- January 4 - Everett Dirksen, American politician (d. 1969)
- January 4 - André Masson, French artist (d. 1987)
- January 12 - Rex Ingram, Irish director and actor (d. 1950)
- January 14 - Martin Niemöller, German theologian and pacifist (d. 1984)
- January 14 - John Dos Passos, American author (d. 1970)
- January 20 - George Burns, American comedian (d. 1996)
- January 23 - Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg (d. 1985)
- February 18 - André Breton, French writer (d. 1966)
- February 28 - Philip Showalter Hench, Americah physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1965)
- February 29 - Morarji Desai, Indian politician (d. 1995)
- March 1 - Dimitri Mitropoulos, Greek conductor, pianist, and composer (d. 1960)
- March 20 - Wilfrid Reid "Wop" May, Canadian World War I pilot (d. 1952)
- March 29 - Wilhelm Ackermann, German mathematician (d. 1962)
- April 15 - Nikolay Nikolayevich Semyonov, Russian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
- April 30 - Gary Davis, American musician (d. 1972)
- May 30 - Howard Hawks, American director (d. 1977)
- June 7 - Robert S. Mulliken, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
- June 7 - Douglas Campbell, American World War I flying ace (d. 1990)
- June 19 - Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (d. 1986)
- July 2 - Quirino Cristiani, Argentine animated film director (d. 1984)
- July 16 - Trygve Lie, first United Nations Secretary General (d. 1968)
- August 9 - Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist (d. 1980)
- August 15 - Gerty Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1957)
- August 18 - Jack Pickford, American actor (d. 1933)
- August 30 - Raymond Massey, Canadian-born actor (d. 1983)
- September 24 - F. Scott Fitzgerald, American writer (d. 1940)
- October 1 - Liaquat Ali Khan, first Prime Minister of Pakistan (d. 1951)
- October 12 - Eugenio Montale, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
- October 28 - Howard Hanson, American composer (d. 1981)
- October 31 - Ethel Waters, American singer and actress (d. 1977)
- November 8 - Bucky Harris, baseball player (d. 1977)
- November 10 - Jimmy Dykes, baseball player and manager (d. 1976)
- November 13 - Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister of Japan (d. 1987)
- November 14 - Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States of America (d. 1979)
- November 16 - Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists (d. 1980)
- November 17 - Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist (d. 1934)
- December 5 - Carl Ferdinand Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1984)
- December 6 - Ira Gershwin, American lyricist (d. 1983)
- December 14 - Jimmy Doolittle, American World War II general (d. 1993)
- December 21 - Leroy Robertson, American composer (d. 1971)

Deaths

- January 4 - Joseph Hubert Reinkens, German Old Catholic bishop (b. 1821)
- January 8 - Paul Verlaine, French lyric poet (b. 1844)
- April 30 - Hamilton Disston, Floridan developer (b. 1844)
- May 20 - Clara Schumann, German composer (b. 1819)
- August 10 - Otto Lilienthal, German aviation pioneer (b. 1848)
- August 17 - Bridget Driscoll, world's first automobile fatality
- October 11 - Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (b. 1824)
- October 11 - Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1829)
- October 23 - ? Columbus Delano, American statesman (b. 1809)
- December 10 - Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor of dynamite and creator of the Nobel Prize (b. 1833)
- December 30 - José Rizal, national hero of the Philippines (b. 1861)

Marriages

- February 20 - W.W. Denslow & Ann Waters Holden
- April 6 - Benjamin Harrison & Mary Scott Lord Dimmick
- April 8 - Jeanne Calment & Fernand Calment
- June 5 - Valborg Borchsenius & Johannes Norden Guldbrandsen
- June 26 - Jennette Lee & Gerald Stanley Lee
- July 22 - Queen Maud & King Haakon VII
- September 1 - W.S. Weatherwax & Anna L. Wallis
- October 15 - Lewis J. Selznick & Florence Flossie Sachs
- October 24 - King Victor Emmanuel III & Helen Petrovic-Njegos
- October 26 - Charles Fort & Anna Filing
- November 4 - Roberto Vittiglio & Wilhelmine Westphal
- December 1 - Neel Doff & Fernand Brouez Category:1896 ko:1896년 simple:1896 th:พ.ศ. 2439

1901

1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar).

Events

January-March

- January 1 - World celebrates what is regarded as the start of the new century. (Zero-ists' argument that new century should be celebrated in 1900 rejected worldwide).
- January 1 - The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia. Edmund Barton becomes first Prime Minister.
- January 1 - Nigeria becomes a British protectorate
- January 7 - Alferd Packer is released from prison after serving 18 years for cannibalism
- January 10 - The first great Texas gusher, oil discovered at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas Beaumont, Texas
- January 22 - Death of Queen Victoria. Her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales becomes King, reigning as King Edward VII. His son, Prince George, Duke of York becomes Duke of Cornwall.
- February 20 - The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
- February 25 - J.P. Morgan incorporates the United States Steel Corporation.
- March 2 - The U.S. Congress passes the Platt amendment, limiting the autonomy of Cuba as a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.
- March 6 - In Bremen an assassin attempts to kill Wilhelm II of Germany.
- March 17 - A showing of 71 Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris, 11 years after his death, creates a sensation.

April-June

- April 25 - New York State becomes the first to require automobile license plates.
- May 5 - Official end of the Caste War of Yucatàn, although mayan skirmishers will continue sporadic fighting for the next decade.
- May 9 - Australia opens its first parliament in Melbourne.
- May 27 - In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
- June 2 - Katsura Taro becomes Prime Minister of Japan
- June 12 - Cuba becomes US protectorate

July-September

- July 4 - The 1,282 foot (390 meters) covered bridge crossing the St.John River at Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada opens. It is the longest covered bridge in the world.
- July 24 - O. Henry is released from prison in Columbus, Ohio after serving three years for embezzlement from the First National Bank in Austin, Texas.
- August 21 - The Cadillac Motor Company formed in Detroit, Michigan, USA
- September 2 - Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.
- September 5 - The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (later renamed Minor League Baseball), is formed in Chicago, Illinois.
- September 6 - American anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies there eight days later.
- September 7 - The Boxer Rebellion in China officially ends with the signing of the Peking Protocol.
- September 9 - Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, was prime minister of South Africa from 1958 - 1966 (d. September 6 1966)
- September 14 - With the death of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt succeeds him as President of the United States.

October-December

President of the United States
- October 2 - Royal Navy's first submarine launched at Barrow
- October 24 – Michigan schoolteacher Annie Taylor goes down Niagara Falls in a barrel and survives
- October 29 - In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
- October 29 - Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.
- November 9 - Prince George, Duke of Cornwall becomes Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
- November 15 - Miller Reese Hutchinson patents Acousticon, a heavy hearing-aid prototype
- November 27 - U.S. Army War College is established.
- December 3 - US President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speech to the House of Representatives asking Congress curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".
- December 10 – Marie Curie receives doctorate. The first Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm.
- December 12 - Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal in Newfoundland, Canada; it is Morse code for the letter "S."

Unknown dates

- In the United Kingdom, Factory Act forbids child labor under 12
- Two typhoid outbreaks in USA
- Winston Churchill enters the House of Commons
- In Germany, Eugen Hollander makes the first known facelift to a Polish noblewoman
- Scotland Yard creates a fingerprint archive
- Cleveland Indians founded
- Europium discovered by Eugène-Antole Demarçay
- First prototype Harley-Davidson created
- Okapi discovered (previously known only to local natives)
- Independent Maya of Eastern Yucatán surrender to Mexico
- American Standard Version Bible first published.
- Intercollegiate Prohibition Association established in Chicago, Illinois.
- Mordecai Ham, American evangelist enters ministry.

Births

January-March

- January 3 - Ngo Dinh Diem, 1st President of South Vietnam (d. 1963)
- January 4 - CLR James, Trinidad-born writer and journalist (d. 1989)
- January 14 - Bebe Daniels, American actress (d. 1971)
- January 16 - Frank Zamboni, American inventor (d. 1988)
- January 26 - Stuart Symington, American politician (d. 1988)
- January 29 - E. P. Taylor, Canadian business tycoon (d. 1989)
- January 30 - Rudolf Caracciola, German race car driver (d. 1959)
- February 1 - Clark Gable, American actor (d. 1960)
- February 2 - Jascha Heifetz, Lithuanian violinist (d. 1987)
- February 10 - Stella Adler, American actress (d. 1992)
- February 25 - Zeppo Marx, American comedian (d. 1979)
- February 27 - Horatio Luro, Argentine horse trainer (d. 1991)
- February 28 - Linus Pauling, American chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Peace (d. 1994)
- March 4 - Charles Goren, American bridge player (d. 1991)
- March 17 - Alfred Newman, American film composer (d. 1970)
- March 21 - Karl Arnold, German politician (d. 1958)
- March 22 - Greta Kempton, American artist (d. 1991)
- March 24 - Ub Iwerks, American cartoonist (d. 1971)
- March 27 - Carl Barks, American cartoonist (d. 2000)
- March 27 - Erich Ollenhauer, German politician (d. 1963)
- March 27 - Eisaku Sato, Prime Minister of Japan, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1975)
- March 27 - Kenneth Slessor, Australian poet (d. 1971)

April-June

- April 1 - Whittaker Chambers, American spy (d. 1961)
- April 29 - Emperor Hirohito of Japan (d. 1989)
- April 30 - Simon Kuznets, Ukrainian-born economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1985)
- May 5 - Blind Willie McTell, American singer (d. 1959)
- May 7 - Gary Cooper, American actor (d. 1961)
- May 17 - Werner Egk, German composer (d. 1983)
- May 18 - Vincent du Vigneaud, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1978)
- May 20 - Max Euwe, Dutch chess player (d. 1981)
- May 21 - Horace Heidt, American bandleader (d. 1986)
- May 21 - Sam Jaffe, American film producer (d. 2000)
- June 3 - Chang Hsüeh-liang, Chinese military leader (d. 2001)
- June 17 - F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, English World War II hero (d. 1964)
- June 18 - Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (d. 1918)
- June 24 - Harry Partch, American composer (d. 1974)
- June 29 - Nelson Eddy, American singer and actor (d. 1967)

July-September

- July 9 - Dame Barbara Cartland English novelist (d. 2000)
- July 17 - Bruno Jasieński, Polish poet (d. 1938)
- July 20 - Heinie Manush, baseball player (d. 1971)
- July 31 - Jean Dubuffet, French painter (d. 1985)
- August 4 - Louis Armstrong, American jazz musician (d. 1971)
- August 8 - Ernest Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
- August 10 - Franco Dino Rasetti Italian scientist (d.2001)
- August 18 - Jean Guitton, French writer and philosopher (d. 1999)
- August 20 - Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
- September 9 - James Blades, English percussionist (d. 1999)
- September 12 - Ben Blue, Canadian comedian and actor (d. 1975)
- September 15 - Sir Donald Bailey, British civil engineer (d. 1985)
- September 22 - Charles B. Huggins, Canadian-born cancer researcher, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1997)
- September 23 - Jaroslav Seifert, Czech writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986)
- September 29 - Enrico Fermi, Italian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954)
- September 29 - Lanza del Vasto, Italian philosopher, poet, and activist (d. 1981)

October-December

- October 2 - Kiki, French singer (d. 1953)
- October 10 - Alberto Giacometti, Swiss sculptor (d. 1966)
- November 3 - Léopold III of Belgium (d. 1983)
- November 4 - Yi, Bang-ja, Crown Princess of Korea (d. 1989)
- November 22 - Joaquin Rodrigo, Spanish composer (d. 1999)
- December 5 - Walt Disney, American animator and film producer (d. 1966)
- December 5 - Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1976)
- December 16 - Margaret Mead, American cultural anthropologist (d. 1978)
- December 19 - Rudolf Hell, German inventor (d. 2002)
- December 25- Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (d. 2004)
- December 31 - Karl-August Fagerholm, Prime Minister of Finland (d. 1984)
- Nadezhda Alliluyeva-Stalin, second wife of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (d. 1932)

Deaths

- January 11 - Vasily Kalinnikov, Russian composer (b. 1866)
- January 21 - Elisha Gray, American inventor and appliance manufacturer (b. 1835)
- January 22 - Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India (b. 1819)
- January 27 - Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (b. 1813)
- February 11 - King Milan I of Serbia (b. 1854)
- February 22 - George Francis FitzGerald, Irish mathematician (b. 1851)
- March 13 - Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States (b. 1833)
- April 3 - Richard D'Oyly Carte, English impresario (b. 1844)
- June 2 - George Leslie Mackay, Canadian missionary (b. 1844)
- July 4 - Johannes Schmidt, German linguist (b. 1843)
- August 5 - Victoria, Empress of Germany (b. 1840)
- August 24 - Clara Maass, American Nurse (d. 1876)
- September 5 - Ignacij Klemenčič, Slovenian physicist (b. 1853)
- September 9 - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter (b. 1864)
- September 14 - William McKinley, 25th President of the United States (assassinated) (b. 1843)
- October 1 - Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan
- October 10 - Lorenzo Snow, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1814)
- October 29 - Leon Czolgosz assassin of U.S. President William McKinley (b. 1873)
- November 7 - Li Hongzhang, Chinese general (b. 1823)
- November 30 - Edward John Eyre, English explorer (b. 1815)
- December 1 - George Lohmann, English cricketer (tuberculosis) (b. 1865)

Nobel Prizes

- Physics - Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen
- Chemistry - Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff
- Medicine - Emil Adolf von Behring
- Literature - Sully Prudhomme
- Peace - Jean Henri Dunant, Frédéric Passy Category:1901 ko:1901년 ms:1901 ja:1901年 simple:1901 th:พ.ศ. 2444

American League

The American League (or formally the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs) is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball in the United States of America and Canada. It developed from a minor league, the Western League, that eventually aspired to major league status. The organization renamed itself the American League on October 11, 1899, and placed teams in the abandoned Cleveland market as well as on the south side of Chicago. This was done with the approval of the National League, which was at the time too embroiled in resolving its own internal conflicts that it did not recognize the potential threat such a move would pose to the National League's major league monopoly it had enjoyed since the American Association folded a decade earlier. During the 1900 season, the rechristened AL was still a minor league circuit subject to the National Agreement. Learning that many major leaguers were discontented with the National League, the AL leaders saw an opportunity. The AL declined to renew its National Agreement membership when it expired in October of 1900, and on January 28, 1901, the American officially declared itself a major league. It continued to expand into major league cities and to hire disgrunted National League players. A roster war was on. The older National League at first refused to recognize the new league, but reality set in as talent and money drained away to the new league. After two years of bitter contention a new version of the National Agreement was signed in 1903. This meant formal acceptance of each league by the other as an equal partner in major league baseball. The AL is often called the "Junior Circuit" because of the fact that it was elevated to Major League status 25 years after the formation of the National League. Unlike the NL, the AL uses designated hitters (DHs) to bat in place of pitchers. The league has used DHs since 1973.

Teams

Starting in 1901, the eight charter teams were the following:
- Baltimore Orioles
- Boston Americans (unofficial name)
- Chicago White Sox
- Cleveland Blues
- Detroit Tigers
- Milwaukee Brewers
- Philadelphia Athletics
- Washington Senators The Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit franchises exist today in their same 1901 cities. The Boston "Americans" later officially became the Red Sox, and the Cleveland Blues later became the Naps and then the Indians. Detroit is the only charter member of the Western League that is still in its original city dating back to 1894. The Milwaukee Brewers moved and became the St. Louis Browns in 1902, and moved again to become today's Baltimore Orioles in 1954. The original Baltimore Orioles moved to New York in 1903 and became the team now known as the New York Yankees. The Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955 and then to Oakland in 1968. The Washington Senators relocated in 1961, becoming the Minnesota Twins.

Expansion and relocation

The American League has expanded four times. The first occurred in 1961, when the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators joined the league, the latter replacing the original Washington franchise, which had just relocated to Minnesota. The Los Angeles Angels went through several name changes are today formally known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The second Washington franchise moved to Dallas-Fort Worth in 1972 and became the Texas Rangers. The second expansion occurred in 1969 when the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots joined the league. The Pilots stayed just one season in Seattle before moving to Milwaukee and becoming today's Milwaukee Brewers. In 1977, the third expansion occurred adding the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners. A fourth expansion took place in 1998 when the Tampa Bay Devil Rays joined, and in a reorganization, the Milwaukee Brewers moved to the National League.

Divisions

The American League is broken up into three Divisions, as follows:

AL Presidents 1901-99

- Ban Johnson 1901-27
- Ernest Barnard 1927-31
- Will Harridge 1931-59
- Joe Cronin 1959-73
- Lee McPhail 1973-84
- Bobby Brown 1984-94
- Gene Budig 1994-99 Office was eliminated in 1999, although Jackie Autry, former owner of the Anaheim Angels, currently holds the title of honorary American League president.

Other leagues

Several other sports have had leagues called "American League", usually with the sport name as a qualifier, such as the "American Football League" (which eventually merged with the National Football League, adopting the latter's name for the combination).

San Francisco Giants

The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California. They play in the West Division of the National League.

New York Giants history

Early days

One of the most storied clubs in American professional sports, the Giants began life as a second baseball club founded by John B. Day and Jim Mutrie. The Gothams (as the Giants were originally known) were their entry to the National League, while their other club, the Metropolitans (the original Mets) played in the American Association. While the Metropolitans were initially the more successful club, Day and Mutrie began moving star players to the Gothams and the team won its first National League pennant in 1888. It is said that after one particularly satisfying victory, Mutrie (who was also the team's manager) stormed into the dressing room and exclaimed, "My big fellows! My giants!" From then on, the club was known as the Giants. The Giants' original home stadium, the Polo Grounds, also dates from this early era. Originally located on the corner of 110th Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, the Polo Grounds moved uptown, to 155th Street and 8th Avenue. There the Giants would make it their home in New York City. Though considered "the worst owner in the world" during his time, Andrew Freeman changed the Giants' fortunes. In 1902, after a series of disastrous moves that left the Giants 53 1/2 games behind, Freedman signed John McGraw as a player-manager. McGraw would go on and manage the Giants for three decades, one of the longest tenures in professional sports. Under McGraw, the Giants would win ten National League pennants and three World Series championships. The Giants already had their share of stars during its brief history at this point, such as Smiling Mickey Welch, Roger Connor, Tim Keefe, Jim O'Rourke and Monte Ward, the player-lawyer who formed the renegade Players League in 1890 to protest unfair player contracts. McGraw would also cultivate his own crop of baseball heroes during his time with the Giants. Names such as Christy Mathewson, Iron Man Joe McGinnity, Bill Terry, Jim Thorpe, Mel Ott and Casey Stengel are just a sample of the many players who honed their skills under McGraw. The Giants under McGraw famously snubbed their first ever modern World Series chance in 1904--an encounter with the Boston Americans (now known as the "Red Sox")--because McGraw considered the new American League as little more than a minor league. His original reluctance was concern that the intra-city rival New York Americans or "Highlanders" looked like they would win the AL pennant. The Highlanders lost to Boston on the last day, but the Giants stuck by their refusal. The ensuing criticism resulted in Giants' owner John T. Brush leading an effort to formalize the rules and format of the World Series. The Giants were back in 1905, winning the Series over the Philadelphia Athletics, with Christy Mathewson nearly winning the Series single-handedly. It would be the last time (as of 2004) that the Giants would best the A's in the post-season, as they have since proven to be a nemesis to the Giants on both coasts. The Giants then had several frustrating years. In 1908 they finished in a tie with the Chicago Cubs and had a one-game playoff at the Polo Grounds (actually a replay of a controversial tied game resulting from Fred Merkle's "boner") which they lost to the Cubs, who would go on to win their second, and so far last World Series. That post-season game was further darkened by a story that someone on the Giants had attempted to bribe umpire Bill Klem. This could have been a disastrous scandal for baseball, but because Klem was honest and the Giants lost, it faded over time. The Giants experienced some hard luck in the early 1910s, losing three straight World Series to the A's, the Red Sox, then the A's again. After losing the 1917 Series to the Chicago White Sox (the other Chicago team's last World Series win until 2005), the Giants got it together and played in four straight World Series in the early 1920s, winning the first two over their tenants, the Yankees, then losing to the Yankees in 1923 when Yankee Stadium opened. They also lost in 1924, when the Washington Senators won their only World Series in their history (prior to their move to Minnesota).

1930-1950

McGraw handed over the team to Bill Terry in 1932, and Terry played for and managed the Giants for ten years, winning three pennants and one World Series. Aside from Terry himself, the other stars of the era were Ott and Carl Hubbell, one of three pitchers in baseball history to master the screwball (along with Mathewson and Fernando Valenzuela). Known as "King Carl" and "The Meal Ticket", Hubbell gained fame during the 1934 All-Star Game, when he struck out five Hall of Famers in a row: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin. Mel Ott succeeded Terry as manager in 1942, but the war years proved to be difficult for the Giants. In 1948, Leo Durocher became manager of the Giants, with some controversy--Durocher had been manager of the Giants' rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, but he had been accused of gambling in 1947 and had been suspended and the Dodgers let him go the following year. Durocher remained at the helm until 1955, and those eight years proved to be some of the most memorable for Giants fans, particularly because of the arrival of Willie Mays and two famous games.

The "Shot Heard 'Round The World" (1951)

One of the more famous episodes in major league baseball history, the "Shot Heard 'Round The World" is the name given to Bobby Thomson's walk-off home run that clinched the National League pennant for the Giants over their rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers. This game was the third of a three-game playoff series that was called after one of baseball's more memorable pennant races. The Giants had been thirteen and a half games behind the league-leading Dodgers, but under Durocher's guidance the Giants caught up to tie the Dodgers for the lead on the last day of the season.

Mays' catch (1954)

In game one of the 1954 World Series, Willie Mays made "The Catch" -- a dramatic over-the-shoulder catch off a line drive by Vic Wertz to deep center field which could otherwise have given the Cleveland Indians victory. The underdog Giants went on to win the World Series that year in four straight.

The move westward (1957)

The Giants' final three years in New York City were unmemorable. They stumbled to third place the year after their World Series win and attendances plunged. Despite objections from shareholders such as Joan Whitney Payson, majority owner Horace Stoneham entered into negotiations with San Francisco mayor George Christopher around the same time that Dodgers' owner Walter O'Malley was courting the city of Los Angeles. In the summer of 1957, both teams announced their moves West, and the golden era of baseball in New York City ended. New York would remain a one-team town until 1962 when Joan Whitney Payson founded the New York Mets and brought National League baseball back to the city. The "NY" script on the Giants' caps, along with the orange trim on their uniforms, and the blue background used by the Dodgers, would be adopted by the Mets. The Mets still use this color scheme today, with the addition of black in 1995, the same colors of the Giants orange and black were combined the Dodger blue.

San Francisco Giants history

In sharp contrast to the New York years, the Giants' fortunes in San Francisco have been mixed. Though recently the club has enjoyed relatively sustained success, there have also been prolonged stretches of mediocrity, along with two instances when the club's ownership threatened to move it out of San Francisco. Most disappointingly for the large fan base that they have maintained ever since their arrival in the city, the Giants have as yet failed to win a World Series title for San Francisco. After a brief sojourn in Seals Stadium, the Giants moved to Candlestick Park (sometimes known simply as "The Stick"), a stadium built on a point in San Francisco's southeast corner overlooking San Francisco Bay. The new stadium quickly gained a reputation for being one of the most inhospitable in baseball, with swirling winds and cold temperatures making for a torturous experience; the radiant heating system installed never worked. Candlestick Park's reputation was sealed during the 1961 All-Star Game, when a gust of wind shook pitcher Stu Miller so much during his delivery that he was called for a balk. The Giants no longer play at Candlestick Park, which has been renamed Monster Park and remains the home of the San Francisco 49ers football team.

1962

The Giants may never have won a World Series since moving to San Francisco, but they have been close, playing in three of them. In 1962, they lost by 4 games to 3 to the New York Yankees, losing the final game in the bottom of the ninth, 1-0, in a pitchers' duel. With Matty Alou on first base and two outs, Willie Mays sliced a double down the right field line. Rightfielder Roger Maris, whose 61 home run season in 1961 has historically overshadowed his great defensive work, quickly got to the ball and rifled a throw to the infield, preventing Alou from scoring the tying run. All Willie McCovey needed was a single. He hit a screaming line drive that was snared by second baseman Bobby Richardson, bringing the Series to a sudden end. Earlier in the inning, a failed bunt by Felipe Alou had ultimately resulted in Matty not scoring on Mays' double, which started a lifelong dedication to fundamentals on Felipe's part. In addition, to rub salt in the wound, Richardson was not originally positioned to catch the drive, he only moved there (three steps to the left) in reaction to a foul smash by McCovey on the previous pitch. Giants fan Charles Schulz made a rare reference to the real world in one of his Peanuts strips soon afterward. In the first two panels, Charlie Brown and Linus are sitting on a porch step, looking glum. In the last panel, Charlie cries to the heavens, "Why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?" Some weeks later, same scene. This time, Charlie cries, "Or why couldn't McCovey have hit the ball just two feet higher?"

The rest of the 1960s

Although the Giants didn't make another World Series until 1989, The Giants of the '60s continued to be pennant contenders thanks to several future hall-of-famers, including Gaylord Perry, who pitched a no-hitter with the Giants in 1968; Juan Marichal, a pitcher with a memorable high-kicking delivery; McCovey, who won the National League MVP award in 1969, and Mays, who holds the all-time franchise record for most home runs and hit his 600th career home run in 1969.

1970s

The Giants' next appearance in the post-season was 1971. After winning their division, they were easily defeated In the League Championship Series by the Pittsburgh Pirates and Roberto Clemente. The rest of the 1970s was a generally disappointing decade for the Giants, finishing no higher than third place in any season. In 1976 Bob Lurie bought the team, saving it from being moved to Toronto.

1980s

In 1981 the Giants became the first National League team to hire a black manager, Frank Robinson. However, Robinson's tenure lasted less than four years and was generally unsuccessful. In 1985, a year which saw the Giants lose 100 games (the most losses since moving to San Francisco), owner Bob Lurie responded by hiring Al Rosen as general manager. Under Rosen's tenure, the Giants promoted promising rookies such as Will Clark and Robby Thompson, and made canny trades to acquire such players as Kevin Mitchell, Dave Dravecky, Candy Maldonado, and Rick Reuschel. New manager Roger Craig served as the Giants' new manager from 1985 to 1992. In Craig's first five full seasons with the Giants, the team never finished with a losing record. Under Roger Craig's leadership (and his unique motto, "Humm Baby") the Giants won 83 games in 1986 and won the National League Western Division title in 1987. The team lost the 1987 National League Championship Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. The bright spot in that defeat was Giants outfielder Jeffrey Leonard, who was named the series MVP in a losing effort.Jeffrey Leonard Although the team used 15 different starting pitchers, the 1989 Giants won the National League pennant. They were led by pitchers Rick Reuschel and Scott Garrelts and sluggers Kevin Mitchell (the 1989 National League MVP) and Will Clark. The Giants beat the Chicago Cubs in the National League Championship Series, four games to one.

The at-bat (1989)

In Game 5, eventual 1989 NLCS MVP Will Clark (who hit .650, drove in eight runs, and hit a grand slam off of Greg Maddux in Game 1) came through in the cluch with a bases-loaded single off of the hard-throwing Mitch Williams to break a 1-1 tie in the bottom of the 8th inning Clark took the first fastball for a strike, then fouled one away. Williams' next pitch missed the outside corner to bring the count to 1-and-2. After Clark fouled off two more pitches, he hit a screaming line drive up the middle to bring in two runs. In the top of the 9th inning, Steve Bedrosian was shakey as he gave up a run. But ultimately, Bedrosian was able to get Ryne Sandberg to ground-out for out #3. Fittingly, the hero of Game 5, Will Clark caught the final out from second baseman Robby Thompson. For the first time in 27 years, the San Francisco Giants were the champions of the National League. After taking care of the Cubs, the Giants faced the Oakland Athletics in the "Bay Bridge Series". The series is perhaps best remembered because the Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17, 1989 disrupted the planned Game 3 of the series at Candlestick Park. After a ten-day delay in the series, Oakland finished up its sweep of San Francisco.

1990s

Following the '89 World Series defeat, a local ballot initiative to fund a new stadium in San Francisco failed, threatening the franchise's future in the city. After the 1992 season, owner Bob Lurie, who had previously saved the franchise from moving to Toronto in 1976, put the team up for sale. A group of investors from Saint Petersburg led by Vince Naimoli reached an agreement to purchase the team and move them across the country. However, Major League Baseball blocked the move, paving the way for the team to stay in San Francisco with an ownership group lead by Peter Magowan, the former CEO of Safeway. (As compensation, MLB granted Naimoli's group an expansion franchise, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.) Before even hiring a new General Manager or officially being approved as the new owners, Magowan signed superstar free agent Barry Bonds (a move which MLB initially blocked until some terms were negotiated to protect Lurie and Bonds in case the sale failed), a move that shaped the franchise's fortunes for more than a decade. The Barry Bonds era started with a bang as Bonds put up the numbers for the third MVP of his career: 46 homers, 129 runs, 123 RBI, .336/.458/.677/1.135, all career highs. This led the Giants to a great 103-59 record in Dusty Baker's first year as manager, which earned Baker the Manager of the Year award. But despite the Giants' great record, the Atlanta Braves -- fueled by their midseason acquisition of Fred McGriff from the San Diego Padres -- won the NL West by a single game. Desperately needing a win in the final game of the year to force a one-game playoff with the Braves, the Giants started rookie Salomon Torres against the Dodgers, and Torres lost the game. The period of 1994 to 1996 were not good years for the Giants, punctuated by the strike that cancelled the World Series in 1994. The strike cost Matt Williams a chance to beat Roger Maris' single season home run record - he was on pace for over 60 homers when the strike hit with 47 games left to play. The Giants then came in last place in both 1995 and 1996, as key injuries and slumps hurt them. The only bright spot was Barry Bonds, highlighted by his joining the 40-40 club with 42 homers and 40 stolen bases in the 1996 season. These bad times led the Giants to name Brian Sabean as their new general manager, replacing Bob Quinn. Prior to being named GM, he was already rumored to have engineered the deal to get Kirk Rueter from the Montreal Expos. In his first trade as GM, he shocked Giants fans across the world by trading Matt Williams for seemingly a bunch of spare parts, and the reaction was great enough for him to have to publicly explain: "I didn't get to this point by being an idiot... I'm sitting here telling you there is a plan." Sabean was proven right, as the players he acquired in the Williams trade - Jeff Kent, Jose Vizcaino, Julian Tavarez, and Joe Roa (plus the $1 million in cash that enabled them to sign Darryl Hamilton) - plus the trade for J.T. Snow enabled the Giants to win their first NL West division title of the 1990s in 1997. Unfortunately, the Florida Marlins ended the Giants' season with a 3-0 sweep in the first round of playoffs, as the Marlins marched on their way to their first World Series championship.

2000s

After 40 years at Candlestick Point, in 2000 the Giants opened their privately-financed ballpark, Pacific Bell Park. The inaugural season resulted in a surprising division title, with the team having the best record in the National League. The Giants lost the 2000 division series to the New York Mets, three games to one. In 2001 the Giants were eliminated from playoff contention on the second to last day of the season, but Barry Bonds gave fans something to cheer about as he hit a record 73 home runs that season. In 2002 the focus returned to the team, with the Giants winning the National League wild card. In the playoffs, they defeated the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS three games to two, and then the St. Louis Cardinals four games to one to stake claim to the Giants' first pennant since 1989. The team faced the winners of the American League wild card, the Anaheim Angels, in the 2002 World Series. The series' climax was during Game 6, with the Giants leading 5-0 in the seventh inning, just eight outs away from their first championship since moving to San Francisco. The Angels came back to win that game, then won Game 7 to claim their first MLB championship and break the hearts of Giants fans. Rebounding from the World Series loss in 2003, the Giants (under new manager Felipe Alou) recorded 100 victories for the seventh time in franchise history and the third time in San Francisco. The team spent every day of the season in first place, just the ninth team to do so in baseball history. The Giants lost to the eventual world champions, the Florida Marlins, in the Division Series, three games to one. In 2004, the Giants again avoided elimination from playoff contention until the last day of the season. The team finished one game out in the Wild Card race and two behind the division-winning Los Angeles Dodgers. The season ended with drama, as the Dodgers came from behind to defeat the Giants in a late season game, winning on a Steve Finley grand slam. The Giants' 2005 season has been the team's least successful since moving to its new stadium. Bonds missed most of the season, closer Armando Benitez was injured for four months, and ace Jason Schmidt struggled after numerous injuries. However, team management has taken advantage of the off year to give playing time to numerous young players, including pitchers Noah Lowry, Brad Hennessy, Kevin Correia, Scott Munter, Matt Cain, and Jeremy Accardo, as well as first baseman Lance Niekro and outfielders Jason Ellison and Todd Linden. The acquisition of Randy Winn from the Seattle Mariners also proved invaluable in the strech run. On May 25, 2005, the Giants held a celebration in honor of Baseball Hall of Famer Juan Marichal. A statue of Marichal was dedicated on the plaza outside of the ballpark. Leonel Fernández, the President of the Dominican Republic, was in attendance. In the two games which followed the ceremonies, the Giants wore uniforms with the word "Gigantes" on the front (the Spanish word for "Giants".) On July 14, 2005, the franchise won their 10,000th contest defeating their long-time rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-3, becoming the first professional sports franchise to have five digits in their winning total. On September 28, 2005, the Giants were officially eliminated from the NL West race after losing to the 2005 champion San Diego Padres. The team finished the season in third place, with a record of 75-87, their worst season - and first losing record - since 1996.

Rivalries

Giants-Dodgers

The historic rivalry between the Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers began when both clubs played in New York City (at the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field, respectively). Both franchises date back to the 19th century, and both moved to California in 1958, where the rivalry found a befitting new home, the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco having long been rivals in economic, cultural, and political arenas. Along with the feud between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, it is one of the longest lasting in baseball.

Giants-Athletics

Originating in New York and Philadelphia and in different leagues, the Giants and Oakland Athletics did not strike up a true rivalry until the Athletics moved to Oakland in 1968. (However, prior to their moves the teams did face off in World Series in 1905, 1911, and 1913.) The two teams' geographic rivalry was limited to fan discussions and exhibition games until the 1989 World Series, an earthquake-interrupted series won by Oakland, four games to none. With the advent of interleague play, the Giants and A's now play two regular-season series per year against one another, adding a recurring on-field confrontation to the long-standing off-field rivalry.

Quick facts

:Founded: December 7, 1882. The Troy Haymakers (or sometimes Trojans) were expelled from the National League after the 1882 season. New York had been without a club since 1878, when its club had been expelled; John B. Day was awarded the New York franchise, and so bought up the defunct Troy club. :Formerly known as: Colloquially known as "Jints" (rhymes with "pints") from their New York days. Also referred to in old days as "The Polo Grounders". :Uniform colors: Black, orange, and off-white :Logo design: The word "GIANTS" superimposed over a baseball. Alternatively, a script "G", or an intertwined "SF". :World Championships won (before advent of World Series) (3): 1888, 1889, 1894

Baseball Hall of Famers

Note: as of 2005 the Giants currently have more players in the Baseball Hall of Fame than any other franchise. However, only Cepeda, Marichal, Mays, McCovey and Perry were elected due to their performances in San Francisco.

Retired Numbers

- NY John McGraw, 3B, 1902-06; Manager, 1902-32 (played and managed in New York, before uniform numbers were worn)
- NY Christy Mathewson, P, 1900-16 (all in New York)
- 3 Bill Terry, 1B, 1923-36; Manager, 1932-41 (all in New York)
- 4 Mel Ott, OF, 1926-47; Manager, 1942-48 (all in New York)
- 11 Carl Hubbell, P, 1928-43 (the first National Leaguer to have his number retired, 1944)
- 24 Willie Mays, OF, 1951-72 (1951-52, 1954-57 in New York, 1952-53 in Korean War, 1958-72 in San Francisco)
- 27 Juan Marichal, P, 1960-73
- 30 Orlando Cepeda, 1B, 1958-66
- 44 Willie McCovey, 1B-OF, 1959-73 & 1977-80

Current roster

Minor league affiliations

- AAA: Fresno Grizzlies, Pacific Coast League
- AA: Connecticut Defenders, Eastern League
- Advanced A: San Jose Giants, California League
- A: Augusta GreenJackets, South Atlantic League
- Short A: Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, Northwest League
- Rookie: AZL Giants, Arizona League

References

- Hynd, Noel (1988). The Giants of the Polo Grounds: the glorious times of baseball's New York Giants. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-23790-1.

External links

- [http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/sf/homepage/sf_homepage.jsp San Francisco Giants official web site] Category:MLB teams Category:San Francisco sports ja:サンフランシスコ・ジャイアンツ

White elephant

A white elephant (also albino elephant) is a rare kind of elephant. In Myanmar two have been found and caught, the second one in 2002 after an elephant finding team had searched for one month. In Thailand, white elephants are sacred and a symbol of royal power; all those discovered are presented to the king (usually this is ceremonial — they are not taken into captivity) and the more white elephants the king has, the greater his standing. The current king Bhumibol Adulyadej owns ten — considered a great achievement, and probably due to modern communications. A white elephant in Thailand is not necessarily albino, although it must have pale skin. Candidate animals are assessed according to a series of physical and behavioural criteria (including eye colour, the shape of the tail and ears, and intelligence). Those which pass the tests are then assigned to one of four categories and are offered to the king, although the lower grades are sometimes refused. In the past, lower grade white elephants were given as gifts to the king's friends and allies. The animals needed a lot of care and, being sacred, could not be put to work, so were a great financial burden on the recipient - and only the monarch and the very rich could afford them. According to one story, white elephants were sometimes given as a present to some enemy (often a lesser noble with whom the king was displeased). The unfortunate recipient, unable to make any profit from it, and obliged to take care of it, would suffer bankruptcy and ruin. Because of this, the term "white elephant" came, in English, to mean a thing which is more trouble than it is worth, or has outlived its usefulness to the person who has it. While the item may be useful to others, its current owner would usually be glad to be rid of it. By reason of this, commercially, a "white elephant" might be available to purchase at a very favorable price. An example of such an item might be a mansion whose maintenance costs exceed the capacity of its owners. The term is often used to refer to an extremely tacky gift, or one that does not fit the tastes of the recipient, that is given by a friend or close relative (such as a mother-in-law) and therefore cannot be exchanged or thrown away. White elephants are also used as a metaphor for an unborn child in Ernest Hemingway's short story, "Hills Like White Elephants".

Other

The NSA maintained two secure document destruction facilities, known as White Elephant 1 and 2. Since the Giants' John McGraw called the Athletics a "White Elephant," the Athletics have won 9 world series compared to the total of 5 by the Giants. The Athletics have won 4 while in Oakland (the last in 1989 against the Giants). The Giants however have won 0 since 1954 and 0 while in San Francisco.

A list of white elephants

The term was coined after New York Giants manager John McGraw told the press that Philadelphia businessman Benjamin Shibe had "bought himself a white elephant" by acquiring the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team in 1901, A's manager Connie Mack selected the elephant as the team symbol and mascot. The team is occasionally referred to as the White Elephants. Other examples include:
- Aircraft:
- Concorde, a supersonic transport built by Aérospatiale and BAC, intended to allow high-speed intercontinental travel. Only fourteen examples saw service, though development costs were to be amortized over hundreds of units.
- Bristol Brabazon, an airliner built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1949 to fly a large number of passengers on transatlantic routes from England to the United States.
- The U.S. Space Shuttle, whose continued existence is debated versus other forms of space transportation, which are thought by some to be more reliable and affordable.
- Hughes H-4 Hercules, or "Spruce Goose," often called Howard Hughes's white elephant before and during Senate War Investigating Committee
- Railway:
- The fully automated North East Line and Bukit Panjang LRT Line of the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit
- Structures and engineering projects:
- Kansai International Airport, located on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, south of Osaka, Japan, is considered an example of a white elephant, as it was constructed largely as a matter of pride, and though at a fraction of nominal capacity, is being doubled in size.
- Montréal-Mirabel International Airport, a large airport located in Mirabel, Quebec, near Montréal.
- Superconducting Super Collider (or SSC), a large particle accelerator which was being constructed in Texas. Billions of dollars had been spent on the project by the time of cancellation, and the project termination itself cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Three Gorges Dam, a monumental project to bring hydroelectric power to the Yangtze River basin in China, beset with construction, environmental, and societal issues.
- World Trade Center México, a building complex located in Mexico City, Mexico, which never really performed its intended functions and was known as a white elephant which eventually bankrupted their owners without ever being finished.
- Nautical:
- SS Great Eastern, a ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. She was the largest ship ever built at the time of her launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the world without refuelling.
- Other examples:
- Waterloo Vase, a great urn, 15 ft (5 m) high and weighing 20 tons, fashioned from a single piece of Carrara marble.

Reference

- [http://www.mahidol.ac.th/thailand/elephant.html Mahidol University: The Royal White Elephants] Category:Elephants Category:Metaphors ja:白象 (動物)

Lefty Grove

Robert Moses (Lefty) Grove (March 6, 1900 - May 22, 1975) was one of the greatest pitchers in Major League Baseball history. Born in Lonaconing, Maryland, Grove was a sandlot star in the Baltimore area during the 1910s. His performance naturally caught the eye of Jack Dunn, the owner of the minor league Baltimore Orioles, who also discovered Babe Ruth. Grove joined the Orioles in 1920 and embarked on a epic minor league career which saw him regarded by some as one of the best pitchers in the game before he ever threw a pitch in the majors. Breaking into the team's pitching rotation at midseason, he posted a 12-2 record. Over the next four seasons, he posted marks of 25-10, 18-8, 27-10 and 27-6, leading the International League in strikeouts every season. Grove remained in the minor leagues through 1924 because Dunn, who ran an independent operation with no major-league affiliation, refused several offers from the majors to acquire him. Finally, early in 1925, Dunn agreed to sell Grove's rights to the Philadelphia Athletics for $106,000, the highest amount ever paid for a player at the time. He battled injuries as a rookie and posted only a 10-13 record despite leading the league in strikeouts, then settled down in 1926 and won the first of a record nine earned run average (ERA) titles with a mark of 2.51. In 1927, he won 20 games for the first time, and a year later he led the league in wins, with 24. From 1929 to 1931, the Athletics won the pennant all three seasons, and the World Series for the first two, and Grove led the way as the league's top pitcher. He posted records of 20-6, 28-5 and 31-4 in those years, the last of which was his greatest season. He led the league in wins, ERA (2.06), strikeouts (175), winning percentage, complete games and shutouts. He was chosen as league MVP in 1931, making him one of the few pitchers to achieve this. His MVP Award is the only one not housed in Coopertown as it is housed at the Georges Creek Library in Lonaconing, Maryland. The Athletics continued to contend for the next two seasons, but finished second to the New York Yankees both years. Following the 1933 season, team owner Connie Mack suffered severe financial problems and was forced to sell Grove to the rival Boston Red Sox. At the time, the Red Sox were a bad team, and Grove didn't help much his first year, when an arm injury held him to an 8-8 record. But in 1935, he returned to form with a 20-12 record and a league-leading 2.70 ERA. He won his eighth ERA title a year later, and also led the league in that category and winning percentage in 1938. He didn't win as many games in Boston, as managers protected his arm as he aged, but he continued to post outstanding records, such as 14-4 in 1938 and 15-4 a year later. Grove retired in 1941 with a career record of 300-141. His .680 lifetime winning percentage is eighth all-time, but none of the seven men ahead of him won more than 218 games. His lifetime ERA of 3.06, when adjusted for the hitters' parks he played his entire career in and the era in which he played, is the best of any pitcher in history (except the still-active Pedro Martínez) at 48 percent above average. Grove was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947. He died in Norwalk, Ohio and was interred in the Frostburg Memorial Cemetery, in Frostburg, Maryland. In 1999, he ranked number 23 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, the highest-ranking left-handed pitcher. That same year, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Fact

- Grove is one of ten Red Sox pitchers with 100 or more wins (105). Cy Young (192), Roger Clemens (192), Tim Wakefield (130), Mel Parnell (123), Luis Tiant (122), Pedro Martínez (117), Smokey Joe Wood (116), Bob Stanley (115) and Joe Dobson (106), are the others.
See also

- Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame
External links

- [http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/grove_lefty.htm Baseball Hall of Fame]
-
- [http://www.whilbr.org/Lefty/index.aspx Lefty Grove on Whilbr, Western Maryland History Online]
- [http://home.alleganycountylibrary.info/locations/georges.htm Georges Creek Public Library] Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Grove, Lefty Category:Allegany County, Maryland Category:Georges Creek Valley

July 10

July 10 is the 191st day (192nd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 174 days remaining.

Events

- 48 BC - Battle of Dyrrhachium, Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat to Pompey in Macedonia.
- 1584 - William I of Orange was assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland by Balthasar Gérard.
- 1778 - American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.
- 1789 - Alexander Mackenzie reaches Mackenzie River Delta.
- 1821 - The United States takes possession of its newly-bought territory of Florida from Spain.
- 1832 - President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States.
- 1850 - Millard Fillmore is inaugurated as the 13th President of the United States.
- 1890 - Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.
- 1913 - Death Valley, California hits 134 °F (~56.7 °C), which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States (as of 2003).
- 1925 - The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), the official news agency of the Soviet Union , is established.
- 1925 - Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.
- 1938 - Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world.
- 1940 - World War II: Vichy France government established.
- 1940 - World War II: Battle of Britain - The German Luftwaffe begin to hit British convoys in the English Channel thus starting the battle (this start date is contested, though).
- 1943 - World War II: The launching of Operation Husky begins the Italian Campaign.
- 1951 - Korean War: At Kaesong, armistice negotiations begin.
- 1951 - Randy Turpin becomes the middleweight boxing champion after defeating Sugar Ray Robinson.
- 1962 - Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit.
- 1967 - Uruguay becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
- 1968 - Maurice Couve de Murville becomes Prime Minister of France
- 1973 - The Bahamas gain full independence within the British Commonwealth.
- 1978 - ABC News World News Tonight premieres.
- 1985 - Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland, New Zealand Harbor by French DGSE agents.
- 1985 - In response to market demand, Coca-Cola re-introduces it's old formula cola as "Coca-Cola Classic" (see New Coke).
- 1991 - Boris Yeltsin begins his 5-year term as the first elected President of Russia.
- 1992 - In Miami, Florida, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations.
- 1997 - London, scientists report their DNA analysis findings from a Neandertal skeleton which support the out of Africa theory of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
- 1998 - The remains of United States Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie are returned to his family in St. Louis, Missouri from the Tomb of the Unknowns upon identification through DNA analysis. The remains had been in the first tomb since 1984.
- 1998 - Catholic priests' sex abuse scandal: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by former priest Rudolph Kos.
- 2000 - A leaking southern Nigerian petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers scavenging gasoline.
- 2000 - EADS, the world's second largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA.
- 2002 - At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting "The Massacre of the Innocents" is sold for £49.5million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Kenneth Thomson.
- 2003 - A Neoplan bus, owned by Kowloon Motor Bus, collides with a truck, falls off a bridge on Tuen Mun Road, Hong Kong, and plunges into the underlying valley, killing 21 people. This is the deadliest bus accident to date in Hong Kong.

Births

- 1419 - Emperor Go-Hanazono of Japan (d. 1471)
- 1452 - King James III of Scotland (d. 1488)
- 1509 - John Calvin, French religious reformer (d. 1564)
- 1592 - Pierre d'Hozier, French historian (d. 1660)
- 1614 - Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey, English royalist statesman (d. 1686)
- 1625 - Jean Herauld Gourville, French adventurer (d. 1703)
- 1638 - David Teniers III, Flemish painter (d. 1685)
- 1666 - John Ernest Grabe, German-born Anglican theologian (d. 1711)
- 1682 - Roger Cotes, English mathematician (d. 1716)
- 1723 - William Blackstone, English jurist (d. 1780)
- 1830 - Camille Pissarro, French painter (d. 1903)
- 1832 - Alvan Graham Clark, American telescope maker and astronomer (d. 1897)
- 1834 - James McNeil Whistler, American painter (d. 1903)
- 1835 - Henryk Wieniawski, Polish composer (d. 1880)
- 1842 - Adolphus Busch, German-born brewer (d. 1913)
- 1856 - Nikola Tesla, Croatian physicist (d. 1943)
- 1871 - Marcel Proust, French writer (d. 1922)
- 1888 - Giorgio de Chirico, Italian painter (d. 1978)
- 1895 - Carl Orff, German composer (d. 1982)
- 1899 - John Gilbert, American actor (d. 1936)
- 1902 - Kurt Alder, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
- 1903 - John Wyndham, British author (d. 1969)
- 1914 - Joe Shuster, Canadian-born cartoonist
- 1920 - David Brinkley, American television reporter (d. 2003)
- 1920 - Owen Chamberlain, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1921 - Harvey Ball, American inventor (d. 2001)
- 1921 - Jake LaMotta, American boxer
- 1921 - Eunice Kennedy Shriver, American activist
- 1923 - Earl Hamner Jr., American author and television producer
- 1923 - Jean Kerr, American author (d. 2003)
- 1925 - Mahathir bin Mohamad, Malaysian fourth Prime Minister
- 1926 - Fred Gwynne, American actor (d. 1993)
- 1928 - Moshe Greenberg, American-Israeli Bible scholar
- 1931 - Nick Adams, American actor (d. 1968)
- 1931 - Alice Munro, Canadian writer
- 1934 - Olga Sebenik, Slovenian economist
- 1938 - Paul Andreu, French architect
- 1939 - Ahmet Taner Kışlalı, Turkish politician, journalist, and educator (d. 1999)
- 1940 - Helen Donath, American soprano
- 1942 - Ronnie James Dio, American musician
- 1942 - Pyotr Klimuk, cosmonaut
- 1943 - Arthur Ashe, American tennis player (d. 1993)
- 1945 - Virginia Wade, British tennis player
- 1946 - Sue Lyon, American actress
- 1947 - Arlo Guthrie, American musician
- 1951 - Cheryl Wheeler, American singer and songwriter
- 1954 - Neil Tennant, British musician
- 1959 - Janet Julian, American actress
- 1968 - Hassiba Boulmerka, Algerian athlete
- 1969 - Gale Harold, American actor
- 1980 - Thomas Ian Nicholas, American actor
- 1980 - Adam Petty, American race car driver (d. 2000)
- 1980 - Jessica Simpson, American singer
- 1982 - Alex Arrowsmith, American musician

Deaths

- 138 - Hadrian, Roman Emperor (b. 76)
- 1099 - El Cid, of Castile (b. 1044)
- 1103 - King Eric I of Denmark
- 1298 - King Ladislaus IV of Hungary (b. 1262)
- 1460 - Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, English military leader (b. 1402)
- 1480 - King René I of Naples (b. 1410)
- 1559 - King Henry II of France (b. 1519)
- 1584 - William I of Orange (b. 1533)
- 1590 - Archduke Charles II of Austria (b. 1540)
- 1594 - Paolo Bellasio, Italian composer (b. 1554)
- 1621 - Karel Bonaventura Buquoy, French soldier (b. 1571)
- 1653 - Gabriel Naudé, French librarian and scholar (b. 1600)
- 1680 - Louis Moréri, French encyclopedist (b. 1643)
- 1683 - François-Eudes de Mézeray, French historian (b. 1610)
- 1686 - John Fell, English churchman (b. 1625)
- 1776 - Richard Peters, English-born clergyman (b. 1704)
- 1806 - George Stubbs, British painter (b. 1724)
- 1884 - Paul Morphy, American chess player (b. 1837)
- 1908 - Phoebe Knapp, American hymn writer (b. 1839)
- 1920 - Jackie Fisher, British admiral (b. 1841)
- 1941 - Jelly Roll Morton, American musician (b. 1890)
- 1978 - John D Rockefeller III, American businessman (b. 1906)
- 1978 - Joe Davis, English snooker player (b. 1901)
- 1979 - Arthur Fiedler, American conductor (b. 1894)
- 1987 - John Hammond, American record producer (b. 1910)
- 1989 - Mel Blanc, American voice actor (b. 1908)
- 2003 - Winston Graham, English writer (b. 1908)
- 2003 - Hartley Shawcross, British prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials (b. 1902)
- 2005 - A.J. Quinnell, English writer (b. 1940)
- 2005 - Freda Wright-Sorce, American radio performer (b. 1955)
- 2005 - Freddy Soto, American comedian and actor (b. 1970)

Holidays and observances

- Bahamas - Independence Day
- Silence Day - celebrated by followers of Meher Baba
- Mauritania - Armed Forces Day
- Ancient Latvia - Septinu Bralu Diena observed
- New Zealand - Rainbow Warrior Commemmoration

External links

- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/10 BBC: On This Day] ---- July 9 - July 11 - June 10 - August 10 -- listing of all days ko:7월 10일 ms:10 Julai ja:7月10日 simple:July 10 th:10 กรกฎาคม

Cleveland Indians

The Cleveland Indians are a Major League Baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They currently are in the Central Division of the American League.

Franchise history

1901-1959: Early to middle history of the franchise

Contrary to popular belief, the team was not named for Louis Sockalexis when it assumed its current name in 1915. Rather, when the Naps needed a new name after Napoleon Lajoie was given to the Philadelphia Athletics after the end of the 1914 season Charles Somers, the team owner, asked the local newspapers to come up with a new name for the team. The name, "Indians," was reversion to a name of an earlier National League club of the same name; the change was meant to be temporary. They chose "Indians" as a play on the name of the 1914 Boston Braves, who were known as the "Miracle Boston Braves" after going from last place on July 4 to a sweep in the World Series. 34 years later, the Indians went on to defeat these same Braves, 4 games to 2, in the 1948 World Series -- after winning a one game playoff against Boston's other team, the Red Sox. The victory over the Braves was the franchises second of two world titles; the Tribe had also won the 1920 World Series, defeating the Brooklyn Robins 5 games to 2.(Pluto, 1999) The Tribe, as the Indians are affectionately referred to by Clevelanders, fielded a competitive team through the late 1940s and early 1950s, featuring pitching stars Bob Feller, Early Wynn, Bob Lemon, and Mike Garcia (also known as the Big Four). They broke the color barrier in the American League by signing Larry Doby in 1947, eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers. They appeared in the World Series in 1948 and 1954 (when they won 111 games in a 154-game season), and were in regular contention for the pennant with the dominant New York Yankees.

1960s thru the early 1990s: The curse of Rocky Colavito

New York Yankees A 30+ year slump began for the Indians with the club's most infamous trade; which involved slugging right fielder, and huge fan favorite, Rocky Colavito. Just before opening day in 1960 Colavito was traded to the Detroit Tigers for Harvey Kuenn. The Akron Beacon Journal's beat reporter for the Tribe, Terry Pluto, has documented the decades of woe that seemed to follow the trade, in his book The Curse of Rocky Colavito. Pluto takes an indepth look at this particular era, in which the franchise perenially played an almost comically bad brand of baseball. Pluto has written other books on the Indians, most notably, Our Tribe : A Baseball Memoir. Frank 'Trader' Lane was the main culprit in the construction of what became a running joke in baseball for three decades. His poor trades left the team with little in assets, and the legacy snowballed. Without any strength in their farm system to nurture, the team fell deeper and deeper into a slump, which discounting a few moments of false hope, continued until the Tribe's inaugural season at Jacobs Field in 1994.

1994 and beyond: A new beginning

Jacobs Field] Indians General Manager John Hart and team owner Dick Jacobs finally found the light at the end of the tunnel. In what seems to have been a case of life imitating art, the 1994 Cleveland Indians re-discovered their winning ways of the 1940s and 1950s; The 1989 motion picture Major League featured the Indians as a worst-to-first story: the 1993 Indians ended their era at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, 76-86, which was last in the American League East Division. The team opened the 1994 season with a new stadium, Jacobs Field, and with it came the success and the spirits of their movie counterparts. The 1994 MLB Season ended prematurely, with a Players Union strike; on the day the strike began, the Indians were one game behind the Chicago White Sox -- their newly-formed AL Central rivals-- with 49 left to be played. The strike, which extended into the 1995 season, hardly dampened the teams newly found success. Without losing a step, the 1995 Indians went 100-44 in a shortened season. The team went on to defeat the Boston Red Sox in the Divisonal Series; and the Seattle Mariners in the ALCS, reaching the World Series for their first time since 1954. Although the Tribe went on to lose to the World Series four games to two against the Atlanta Braves, 1995 was still a remarkable year for the Indians; besides winning 100 games, they also led Major League Baseball in batting average and led the American League in team ERA. The Tribe took the AL Central Crown again in 1996, but lost to the Baltimore Orioles (three games to one) in the Divisonal Series. In 1997 the Tribe started lukewarm, but finished the regular season hot. Taking their third consecutive AL Central title, the Tribe shocked the baseball world by beating the heavily-favored New York Yankees in the Divisional Series (3-2). After getting payback for 1996 against the Baltimore Orioles in the ALCS, the Tribe went on to finish a bittersweet season against the Florida Marlins. In a dramatic series, which featured (among other oddities) one of the coldest games in World Series history, Indians fans were reminded that the Curse of Rocky Colavito was not, in fact, dead: with the Indians in the lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning of game seven, the Marlins managed to tie the game. Relief Pitcher Jose Mesa, who is largely blamed by Tribe fans for the loss, gave up the run. The Marlins went on to clinch the title in the bottom of the eleventh, with Edgar Renteria driving the game winning RBI just past the glove of leaping Indians second baseman Tony Fernandez. In his 2002 autobiography, Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel directly blamed Mesa for the loss. In 1998, the Indians fell short of returning to the World Series for a third time in four seasons, being beaten by the New York Yankees in the ALCS. In 1999, the Divisional Series was the stage for one of the biggest collapses in MLB postseason history; the Indians, who were in command with a two games to none lead going into game three, gave up three consecutive games to the Boston Red Sox. The debacle cost Indians manager Mike Hargrove his job. In 2000, the Indians got off to a mediocre start, going 44-42 at the break. They soon caught fire and went 46-30 the rest of the way to finish 90-72. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough as they ended up five games behind the Chicago White Sox in the Central division and missed the wild card by one game to the Seattle Mariners. In 2000, Larry Dolan bought the Indians for $323 million from Richard Jacobs, who, along with his late brother David, had paid $35 million for the club in 1986. 2001 saw a return to prominence for the Indians. After losing Manny Ramirez and Sandy Alomar Jr. to free agency, the Tribe signed former-MVP Juan Gonzalez, who arguably had one his best years in 2001, and reclaimed the Central division with a 91-71 record. One of the highlights of the season was a game televised nationally on ESPN on August 8th, where the Indians erased a 12-run deficit to the Mariners and won the game in extra innings. The playoff run was short lived, however, as they were eliminated in the first round by the juggernaut Mariners. In the 2001 offseason, GM John Hart resigned and his assistant Mark Shapiro took the reins. Shapiro decided that the Indians team was aging, and needed to be rebuilt with young minor-league talent. This sent Cleveland fans in an uproar, as Shapiro traded fan favorite pitching ace Bartolo Colon for then-unknowns Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee, and Grady Sizemore, and the Indians struggled through 2002 and 2003, posting losing records both years. In 2004, the young talent finally started to hit its stride, and the Indians were a terrific offensive team. Unfortunately, the bullpen was a major Achilles heel. They blew more than 20 saves that year, and the Indians finished with an 80-82 record. In early 2005, the offense was anemic, and couldn't score runs like the year before. However, the offense soon picked up, and the Indians began a 9-game winning streak in mid-June, going over .500 for good. After a brief July slump, the Indians caught fire in August, and they cut a 15.5 game deficit in the Central Division to the White Sox down to 1.5 games. However, the season came to a heartbreaking end as the Indians went on to lose six of their last seven games, five of them by one run, and missed the playoffs by only two games.

Trivia

- The Indians' non-competitiveness during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s became a subject for humor. A standard joke of the time had a judge asking a child in a parental custody battle which parent he preferred to live with. The child says neither one, they both beat me — the judge then asks who does he want to live with and the answer is "the Cleveland Indians, they don't beat anybody."
- On June 4, 1974 the Indians hosted "Ten Cent Beer Night", but had to forfeit the game to the Texas Rangers due to drunken and unruly fans.
- In 1981, Lon Simmons, then broadcasting for the Oakland Athletics, told his listeners, "The A's leave after this game for Cleveland. It was only by a 13 to 12 vote that they decided to go." The suggestion was that, despite being in a pennant race that would eventually see them win their division, the A's would rather forfeit all the games in the series than actually go to Cleveland; not that they were afraid of the Indians, then having a typically terrible season, but that the city would be terribly unpleasant.
- The Indians were the subject of a 1989 movie, Major League, which starred Charlie Sheen and Tom Berenger. Sequels followed in 1994 and 1998.
- The team's most notable fan, comedian Drew Carey, poked fun at the rest of baseball while he promoted his new sitcom The Drew Carey Show in 1995. In the promos, he often uttered the now-famous line: :Finally, it's your team that sucks!

Quick facts

:Founded: 1893, as the Grand Rapids, Michigan, franchise in the minor Western League. Moved to Cleveland in 1900 after the National League had vacated the city following the 1899 season, and when the Western League was renamed the American League. The American became a major league in 1901. Cleveland is thus a charter member of the American League. :Formerly known as: the Cleveland Blues (1901), Broncos/Bronchos (1902) and Naps (1903-1914). They were called the Blues because they wore blue uniforms. When reporters referred to them as the "Bluebirds", which the players hated, the players chose the name Broncos or Bronchos. The name was changed to the Naps when Napoleon Lajoie was the team's star player. :Uniform colors: Navy blue and red with silver trim :Logo design: "Chief Wahoo" (a smiling Indian caricature) and a cursive capital "I" :Mascot: Slider :Playoff appearances (9): 1920, 1948, 1954, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001

Baseball Hall of Famers

Baseball Hall of Fame]]

Retired Numbers

- 3 Earl Averill, OF, 1929-39
- 5 Lou Boudreau, SS, 1938-50; manager, 1942-50
- 14 Larry Doby, OF, 1947-55 & 1958
- 18 Mel Harder, P, 1928-47
- 19 Bob Feller, P, 1936-56
- 21 Bob Lemon, P, 1946-58
- 455 Cleveland Fans, for number of consecutive sellouts at Jacobs Field, 1994-2001

Current roster

Minor league affiliations

- AAA: Buffalo Bisons, International League
- AA: Akron Aeros, Eastern League
- Advanced A: Kinston Indians, Carolina League
- A: Lake County Captains, South Atlantic League
- Short A: Mahoning Valley Scrappers, New York-Penn League
- Rookie: Burlington Indians, Appalachian League
- Rookie: VSL Indians, Venezuelan Summer League

External links

- [http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/cle/homepage/cle_homepage.jsp Cleveland Indians official web site]
- [http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/features/topteams/1954indians.stm 1954 Cleveland Indians]

References

- Pluto, Terry (1999). Our Tribe: A Baseball Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84505-9
- Cleveland Indians. Indians History Overview: The early years. http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/cle/history/cle_history_overview.jsp. Retrieved Sep 2, 2004. Category:MLB teams Category:Cleveland sports ja:クリーブランド・インディアンス

Eddie Rommel

Edwin Americus Rommel (September 13, 1897 - August 26, 1970) was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1920 to 1932 who went on to have a successful second career as a major league umpire. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he won twenty games twice, in 1922 and 1925. Towards the end of his career, he relied mostly on the knuckleball. After retiring as a player, Rommel returned to the American League as an umpire in 1938, remaining on the league staff through the 1959 season. He worked in the World Series in 1943 and 1947, serving as crew chief the first time, and becoming the third person to appear in the Series both as a player and as an umpire. He also umpired in the All-Star Game six times: 1939, 1943, 1946, 1950, 1954 and 1958; he called balls and strikes in the 1943, '54 and '58 contests. Rommel was the second base umpire for the one-game playoff to decide the 1948 AL pennant. Rommel died in Baltimore at age 72.

External link

- Rommel, Eddie Rommel, Eddie Rommel, Eddie Rommel, Eddie Rommel, Eddie Rommel, Eddie

Chief Bender

Charles Albert "Chief" Bender (May 5, 1884 - May 22, 1954) was one of the great pitchers in Major League Baseball in the first two decades of the 20th century, and is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Bender was born in Crow Wing County, Minnesota as a member of the Ojibwa tribe - he faced discrimination throughout his career, not least of which was the derisive nickname ("Chief") by which he is almost exclusively known today. After graduating from Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Bender went on to a stellar career as a starting pitcher from 1903 to 1917, primarily with Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics (though with stints at the end of his career with the Baltimore Terrapins of the short-lived Federal League, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Chicago White Sox). Over his career, his win-loss record was 212-127, for a .625 winning percentage (a category in which he would lead the American League in three seasons). His talent was even more noticeable in the high-pressure environment of the World Series: in five trips to the championship series, he managed six wins and a 2.44 ERA. In the 1911 Series, he pitched three complete games, which set the record for most complete games pitched in a six-game series. He also threw a no-hitter in 1910. Bender was well-liked by his fellow players. Longtime roommate and fellow pitcher Rube Bressler called him "One of the kindest and finest men who ever lived." He was greatly respected for his quiet demeanor was well known for handling racial taunts gracefully. When fans heckled him or greeted him with war whoops on the field, he would answer them by cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting, "Foreigners! Foreigners!" He left baseball in 1918 to work in the shipyards during World War I. He came back to coach for the Chicago White Sox and even made a cameo appearance in his final major league game in 1925. But his heart remained tied to Philadelphia. Owner-Manager Connie Mack kept him on the payroll of the Athletics as a baseball scout, minor league manager or coach off and on from the time Bender retired as an active player until Mack retired at the end of the 1950 season. Bender was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1953, less than one year before his death in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of 70.

External links

- [http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/bender_chief.htm Baseball Hall of Fame]
- [http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_003500_benderchief.htm Encyclopedia of North American Indians]
- Bender, Chief Bender, Chief Bender, Chief Bender, Chief Bender, Chief Category:Ojibwa tribe

1950

1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January

- January 5 - U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver introduces a resolution calling for examination of organized crime in the U.S.
- January 6 - The United Kingdom recognizes the People's Republic of China. The Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with Britain in response.
- January 9 - The Israeli government recognizes the People's Republic of China.
- January 11 - Huk guerillas attack the town of Hermosa in Bataan, Philippines.
- January 12 - Huk guerillas attack the town of Tuyn, kill two and torch the city of Staingnacan.
- January 12 - British submarine Truculent collides with a Swedish oil tanker in River Thames - 64 dead.
- January 13 - Finland forms diplomatic relations to People's Republic of China
- January 15 - Volcanic cloud kills 5000 in Mount Lamington, New Guinea
- January 17 - The Great Brinks Robbery - 11 thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car in Boston, Massachusetts
- January 21 - Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury
- January 23 - The Knesset passes a resolution that states Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
- January 24 - Cold War: Klaus Fuchs confesses his wartime espionage at Los Alamos to British interrogators - formally charged February 2
- January 26 - India promulgates its constitution forming a republic and Rajendra Prasad is sworn in as its first president.
- January 28 - Somaliland is put under Italian mandate
- January 29 - Lord Balfour criticizes the fact that rationing is still in force in Britain
- January 31 - President Harry S. Truman announces a program to develop the hydrogen bomb
- January 31 - Last Kuomintang troops surrender in continental China

February

- February 1 - Chiang Kai-shek re-elected as a president of the Republic of China
- February 4 - Ingrid Bergman's illegitimate child arouses ire in USA
- February 9 - Red scare: In his speech to the Republican Women's Club at the McClure Hotel in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy accuses the United States Department of State of being filled with 205 Communists.
- February 11 - Two Vietcong battalions attack a French base in Indochina
- February 11 - Finland recognizes Indonesia
- February 12 - Pro-communist riots in Paris
- February 12 - European Broadcasting Union founded
- February 13 - In USA army begins to deploy anti-aircraft cannons to protect nuclear stations and military targets
- February 14 - The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China sign a mutual defense treaty
- February 15 - Juho Kusti Paasikivi re-elected president of Finland
- February 19 - Konrad Adenauer tries unsuccessfully to negotiate with East Germany to begin unification.
- February 12 - Albert Einstein warns that nuclear war could lead to mutual destruction
- February - British Labour Party forms a new government.

March-April

- March 1 - 7.25 PM West South Baptist Church(negro) in Bestridge, Nebraska blows up - all the choir is late for rehearsals
- March 1 - Klaus Fuchs is convicted of spying for the Soviet Union by giving them top secret atomic bomb data.
- March 1 - Acting Chinese President Li Tsung-jen ends his term in office
- March 1 - Chiang Kai-shek resumes his duties as Chinese president after moving his government to Taipei, Taiwan
- March 3 - Poland states that it intends to exile all Germans.
- March 8 - The Soviet Union claims to have an atomic bomb.
- March 12-March 13 - In Belgium, the referendum over the monarchy shows 57.7% support the return of king Léopold III, 42.3% against.
- March 14 - Ship Cygnet hits mine off the Dutch coast.
- March 17 - University of California, Berkeley researchers announce the creation of element 98 which they have named "californium".
- March 20 - Government of Poland decides to confiscate the property of Polish church
- March 22 - Egypt demands that Britain remove all its troops in Suez Canal
- April 15 - King Léopold III of Belgium announces that he is ready to abdicate in favor of his son Baudouin
- April 24 - Jordan formally annexes West Bank
- April 27 - Apartheid: In South Africa, the Group Areas Act is passed formally segregating races.
- April 27 - Britain formally recognizes Israel

May-June

- May 6 - Tollund Man found
- May 9 - Robert Schuman presents his proposal on the creation of an organized Europe, indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the "Schuman declaration", is considered to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union.
- May 11 - Kefauver Committee hearings about US organized crime begin
- May 25 - Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is formally opened to traffic
- May 29 - St. Roch, first ship to circumnavigate North America arrives in Halifax Nova Scotia.
- June 3 - First ascent of Annapurna I, 10th highest mountain in the world.
- June 6 - Turkey: The Adhan in Arabic is legalized
- June 8 - Sir Thomas Blamey becomes the only Field Marshal in Australian history.
- June 10 - French police capture escaped murderer Emile Buisson in Paris restaurant
- June 24 - 58 persons were killed when a commercial airliner crashed into Lake Michigan. The reason for the disaster is unknown. Only fragments of the plane and the bodies of passengers were ever found.
- June 25 - Beginning of Korean War. In the USA, people began to hoard supplies in case of rationing and shortages.
- June 25 - NSC-68 enacted by President Truman, setting US foreign policy for the next twenty years.
- June 28 - Korean War - North Korean forces capture Seoul
- June 29 - United States defeats England 1-0 in the . For more details, see England v United States (1950).

July

- July 5 - Sicilian bandit leader Salvatore Giuliano killed in a shootout with carabinieri
- July 5 - Korean War: Task Force Smith - First clash between American and North Korean forces.
- July 5 - Zionism: The Knesset passes the Law of Return which grants all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel.
- July 6 - East Germany agrees with Poland on the Oder-Neisse line - West Germany does not at this time
- July 16 - Uruguay beat Brazil 2-1 to win 1950 World Cup
- July 17 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg arrested
- July 19 - 15 SS-men sentenced to death in East Germany
- July 20 - Tydings committee report to US senate denounces Joe McCarthy - he begins a public attack on members of the committee standing for election in 1950
- July 20 - In Belgium, the United Chambers adopt a decree which reinstates King Léopold III in his royal dignity.
- July 23 - King Léopold III of Belgium returns to Brussels
- July 24 - Hoax by J. Bam Morrison begins the tradition of "Sucker Day" in Wetumka, Oklahoma
- July 25 - Walter Ulbricht elected the general secretary of the communist party of East Germany
- July 28 - In Belgium, demonstrations and strikes break out as a result of King Léopold III's return. In Liège, three labourers are shot.

August-September

- August 5 - Florence Chadwick swims over English Channel in 13 hours, 22 minutes
- August 5 - A bomb-laden B-29 Superfortress crashes into a residential area in California. 17 dead, 68 injured.
- August 6 - Riot in Brussels in monarchist demonstrations
- August 8 - Winston Churchill supports idea of pan-European army allied with Canada and USA
- August 15 - Earthquake and floods in Assam, India - 574 deaths, 5,000,000 believed homeless
- September 1 - Hungarian major general Laszlo Viragen defects to Austria and applies for political asylum
- September 4 - Beetle Bailey comic strip started.
- September 7 - Coal mine collapses in New Cumnock, Scotland - 13 miners dead. 116 rescued.
- September 7 - The gameshow Truth or Consequences debuts on television.
- September 12 - Communist riots in Berlin
- September 13 - First main-line diesel-electric locomtives run in Australia
- September 15 - Allied troops land in Inchon, occupied by North Korea, to begin the Battle of Inchon.
- September 19 - West Germany decides to fire all its communist officials
- September 26 - Indonesia admitted to the United Nations

October

- October 1 - The comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz is first published in seven US newspapers.
- October 3 - Getúlio Dornelles Vargas, elected president of Brazil, for a five-year term.
- October 5 - Indonesian government quells riots in the Moluccas
- October 11 - The Federal Communications Commission issues the first license to broadcast television in color, to CBS (RCA will successfully dispute and block the license from taking effect, however).
- October 15 - In East Germany, communists win 99.7% of the vote
- October 20 - Australia passes the Communist Party Dissolution Act, later struck down by the High Court.
- October - Sister Mary Teresa begins her charity work in Calcutta and becomes known as Mother Teresa

November

- November 1 - Pope Pius XII defines a new dogma of Roman Catholicism: that God assumed Mary's body into Heaven after her death.
- November 1 - Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman, who is staying at the Blair-Lee House in Washington, D.C. during White House repairs.
- November 4 - United Nations ends the diplomatic isolation of Spain
- November 8 - Korean War: While in an F-80, United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown intercepts two North Korean MiG-15s near the Yalu River and shots them down in the first jet-to-jet dogfight in history.
- November 11 - The Mattachine Society founded in Los Angeles as the first Gay liberation organization
- November 13 - Colonel Carlos Delgado Chalbaud is kidnapped and murdered in Caracas.
- November 18 - United Nations accepts the formation of Libyan national council
- November 20 - T. S. Eliot speaks against television in the UK
- November 22 - Anti-British riots in Egypt
- November 22 - Shirley Temple announces her retirement from show business
- November 23 - George Robb was born in Aylth, Scotland
- November 26 - Korean War: Troops from the People's Republic of China move into North Korea and launch a massive counterattack against South Korean and American forces, ending any thought of a quick end to the conflict.
- November 28 - Greece and Yugoslavia reform diplomatic relations
- November 29 - Korean War: North Korean and Chinese troops force a desperate retreat of United Nations forces from North Korea.
- November 30 - Truman threatens to use nuclear weapons in Korea

December

- December 3 - Etna volcano erupts in Sicily
- December 12 - Paula Ackerman becomes the first woman in the United States to serve a congregation as a Rabbi, a few weeks after the death of her husband.
- December 24-December 25 - Scottish nationalists take the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey
- December 28 - The Peak District becomes Britain's first National Park.

Unknown date

- Ralph Schneider founds Diners Club - it initially only works in 27 restaurants in New York City.
- United Nations building finished.
- First pagers developed.
- Antihistamine discovered.
- First TV remote control, Zenith Radio's Lazy Bones is marketed.
- IBM Israel begins operating in Tel Aviv
- Japanese soldier Yuichi Akitsu surrenders in the Philippines
- President Harry Truman sends United States military personnel to Vietnam to aid French forces.
- National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA founded.

Births

January-February

- January 12 - Sheila Jackson Lee, American politician
- January 16 - Debbie Allen, American actress, dancer, and choreographer
- January 18 - Gilles Villeneuve, Canadian race car driver
- January 21 - Billy Ocean, West Indian-born musician
- January 23 - Richard Dean Anderson, American actor
- January 24 - Benjamin Urrutia, Ecuadoran author and scholar
- January 29 - Jody Scheckter, South African race car driver
- February 3 - Morgan Fairchild, American actress
- February 4 - Pamela Franklin, British actress
- February 6 - Natalie Cole, American singer
- February 10 - Mark Spitz, American swimmer
- February 12 - Michael Ironside, American actor
- February 13 - Peter Gabriel, British musician
- February 16 - Peter Hain, British politician
- February 18 - John Hughes, American film director, producer, and writer
- February 20 - Ken Shimura, Japanese television performer and actor
- February 22 - Julius Erving, American basketball player
- February 22 - Julie Walters, English actress
- February 22 - Miou-Miou, French actress
- February 22 - Ellen Greene, American actress
- February 25 - Neil Jordan, Irish film director, writer, and producer
- February 25 - Néstor Kirchner, President of Argentina
- February 26 - Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand

March-April

- March 2 - Karen Carpenter, American singer and drummer (d. 1983)
- March 4 - Rick Perry, Governor of Texas
- March 9 - Doug Ault, baseball player (d. 2004)
- March 9 - Danny Sullivan, American race car driver
- March 11 - Bobby McFerrin, American singer
- March 11 - Jerry Zucker, American film producer, director, and writer
- March 13 - William H. Macy, American actor
- March 18 - Brad Dourif, American actor
- March 20 - William Hurt, American actor
- March 26 - Teddy Pendergrass, American singer
- March 29 - Bud Cort, American actor
- March 30 - Robbie Coltrane, British actor and comedian
- April 3 - Sally Thomsett, British actress
- April 4 - Christine Lahti, American actress
- April 5 - Agnetha Fältskog, Swedish singer and songwriter (ABBA)
- April 10 - Ken Griffey, Sr., baseball player
- April 12 - Kari Palaste, Finnish architect
- April 22 - Peter Frampton, English musician
- April 25 - Lenora Branch Fulani, American Presidential candidate
- April 28 - Jay Leno, American comedian and talk show host
- April 29 - Paul Holmes , a radio and television broadcaster in New Zealand

May-September

- May 1 - Danny McGrain, Scottish footballer
- May 1 - Dann Florek, American actor
- May 3 - Howard Ashman, American lyricist (d. 1991)
- May 7 - Randall 'Tex' Cobb, American boxer and actor
- May 12 - Bruce Boxleitner, American actor
- May 12 - Gabriel Byrne, Irish actor
- May 13 - Stevie Wonder, American singer and musician
- May 16 - Johannes Georg Bednorz, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- May 17 - Janez Drnovšek, Slovene politician
- May 17 - Valeria Novodvorskaya, Russian politician and dissident
- May 18 - Thomas Gottschalk, German television host
- May 18 - Rodney Milburn, American athlete (d. 1997)
- May 18 - Mark Mothersbaugh, American composer and musician (Devo)
- May 22 - Bernie Taupin, English songwriter
- May 22 - Mary Tamm, British actress
- June 1 - Tom Robinson, English singer and musician
- June 3 - Suzi Quatro, American singer and actress
- June 6 - John Byrne, American comic book creator
- July 18 - Sir Richard Branson, British entrepreneur
- July 18 - Glenn Hughes, American vocalist (d. 2001)
- July 19 - Per-Kristian Foss, Norwegian Minister of Finance
- August 11 - Gennidy Nikonov, Russian weapon designer
- August 14 - Bob Backlund, American professional wrestler
- August 15 - Anne, Princess Royal of England
- August 16 - Hasely Crawford, West Indian athlete
- August 27 - Charles Fleischer, American actor
- September 2 - Rosanna DeSoto, American actress
- September 14 - Paul Kossoff, British guitarist (Free) (d. 1976)
- September 17 - Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat
- September 21 - Charles Clarke, British politician
- September 21 - Bill Murray, American actor and comedian
- September 28 - John Sayles director and screenwriter

October-December

- October 1 - Randy Quaid, American actor
- October 5 - Jeff Conaway, American actor
- October 9 - Jody Williams, American teacher and aid worker, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
- October 12 - Kaga Takeshi, Japanese actor
- October 22 - Bill Owens, Governor of Colorado
- October 28 - Sihem Bensedrine, Tunisian human rights activist
- October 31 - John Candy, American comedian and actor
- October 31 - Jane Pauley, American television broadcaster and journalist
- November 1 - Robert B. Laughlin, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- November 21 - Alberto Juantorena, Cuban athlete
- November 22 - Lyman Bostock, baseball player (d. 1978)
- November 28 - Russell Alan Hulse, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- December 1 - Keith Thibodeaux, American actor and musician
- December 5 - Camarón de la Isla, Spanish singer (d. 1992)
- December 18 - Leonard Maltin, American film critic
- December 23 - Michael C. Burgess, American politician
- December 25 - Manny Trillo, baseball player

Unknown date

- Charles Lee Ray, American serial killer (d. 1988)

Deaths

- January 21 - George Orwell, English author (b. 1903)
- February 6 - Georges Imbert, Alsatian chemist (b. 1884)
- February 25 - George Minot, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1885)
- March 5 - Sid Grauman, American restaurateur (b. 1895)
- March 9 - Danny Sullivan, American race car driver
- March 19 - Walter Haworth, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1883)
- March 19 - Edgar Rice Burroughs, American author (b. 1875)
- March 24 - James Rudolph Garfield, U.S. politician (b. 1865)
- March 30 - Joe Yule, Scottish-born comedian (b. 1894)
- April 19 - Ernst Robert Curtius, Alsatian philologist (b. 1886)
- May 1 - Lothrop Stoddard, American eugenicist (b. 1883)
- May 9 - Esteban Terradas i Illa, Catalan mathematician, scientist, and engineer (b. 1883)
- May 10 - Belle da Costa Greene, American librarian, bibliographer, and archivist (b. 1883)
- July 22 - William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canadian politician (b. 1874)
- September 10 - Raymond Sommer, American race car driver (b. 1906)
- September 11 - Jan Christian Smuts, Prime Minister of South Africa (b. 1870)
- September 21 - Arthur Milne, British space physicist (b. 1896)
- October 23 - Al Jolson, American musician (b. 1886)
- October 29 - King Gustav V of Sweden (b. 1858)
- November 2 - George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856)
- November 3 - Koiso Kuniaki, Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1880)
- November 25 - Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Danish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1873)
- December 2 - Dinu Lipatti, Romanian pianist (b. 1917)
- December 5 - Shri Aurobindo, Indian guru (b. 1872)
- December 11 - Leslie Comrie, New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer (b. 1893)
- December 27 - Max Beckmann, German painter (b. 1884)

Date unknown

- Ernest Cherrington, American temperance movement leader (b. 1877)
- William E. Johnson, American Anti-Saloon League leader (b. 1862)

Nobel Prizes

- Physics - Cecil Frank Powell
- Chemistry - Otto Paul Hermann Diels, Kurt Alder
- Medicine - Edward Calvin Kendall, Tadeus Reichstein, Philip Showalter Hench
- Literature - Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell
- Peace - Ralph Bunche

Fields Medalists

- Laurent Schwartz, Atle Selberg Category:1950 ko:1950년 ms:1950 ja:1950年 simple:1950 th:พ.ศ. 2493

1927

1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar).

Events

January-March

- January 1 - Cristero War erupts in Mexico when pro-Church rebels attack secular-minded government
- January 7 - First transatlantic telephone call - New York City to London
- January 9 - Military rebellion crushed in Lisbon
- January 14 - Paul Doumer elected president of France
- January 19 - Britain sends troops to China
- January 30 - Right-wing veterans and the Republican Schutzbund clash in Schattendorf, Burgenland, Austria. One man and a child are killed by gunshots. See July 15.
- February 12 - First British troops land in Shanghai
- February 14 - Earthquake in Yugoslavia - 700 dead
- February 19 - General strike in Shanghai in protest of the presence of the British troops
- February 23 - The Federal Radio Commission (later renamed the Federal Communications Commission) begins to regulate the use of radio frequencies.
- March 4 - A diamond rush in South Africa includes trained athletes that have been hired by major companies to stake claims
- March 6 - In Britain, a 1000 people a week die from influenza epidemic
- March 10 - Albania mobilizes in case of an attack of Yugoslavia
- March 11 - In New York City, the Roxy Theatre is opened by Samuel Roxy Rothafel.

April-June

- April 1 - First female police officers in Dresden
- April 5 - In Britain, Trade Disputes Act forbids strikes of support
- April 7 - Bell Telephone Co. transmits an image of Commerce Secretary Hoover which becomes the first successful long distance demonstration of television.
- April 12 - The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 renames the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The change acknowledges that the Irish Free State is no longer part of the Kingdom.
- April 12 - Kuomintang troops kill number of communist-supporting workers in Shanghai
- April 18 - Nanking government of China, Kuomintang
- April 21 - Banking crisis in Japan
- April 22 - May 5 - The Great Mississippi Flood affects 700,000 people in the greatest national disaster in US history.
- May - Philo Farnsworth transmits first experimental electronic television pictures
- May 7 - Civil war ends in Nicaragua
- May 9 - The Australian Parliament first convenes in Canberra.
- May 11 - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the "Academy" in "Academy Awards," is founded.
- May 12 - British police raids the office of Soviet trade delegation
- May 13 - George V proclaims the change of his style from King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to King of Great Britain and Ireland.
- May 14 - Cap Arcona's launching, Blohm & Voss shipyard, in Hamburg.
- May 20 - Saudi Arabia becomes independent of the United Kingdom (Treaty of Jedda).
- May 20-21 first solo non-stop Trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris by Charles Lindbergh.
- May 22 - 8.6 richter scale earthquake in Xining, China kills 200,000
- May 23 - The first demonstration of television before a live audience. Nearly 600 members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers view the demonstration at the Bell Telephone Building in New York.
- May 24 - Britain severs diplomatic relations with Soviet Union because of revelations of espionage and underground agitation
- May 27 - Ford Motor Company ceases manufacturing Ford Model Ts and begins to retool plants to make Ford Model As.
- June 4 - Yugoslavia severs diplomatic relations to Albania
- June 7 - Peter Voikov, Soviet ambassador to Warsaw, assassinated
- June 9 - Soviet Union executes 20 British for alleged espionage
- June 13 - Leon Daudet, leader of French monarchists, is arrested in France
- June 13 - A ticker-tape parade is held for aviator Charles Lindbergh down 5th Avenue in New York City.

July-September

- July 10 - Kevin O'Higgins, vice president of the Irish Free State, assassinated in Dublin
- July 15 - 85 protesters and 5 policemen are dead after left-wing protesters and the Austrian police clash in Vienna. More than 600 people are injured. See Massacre of July 15, 1927.
- July 24 - The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres.
- August 1 - Formation of the People's Liberation Army during the Nanchang Uprising
- August 7 - Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
- August 22 - In Hyde Park, London, 200 people demonstrate against the sentence of Sacco and Vanzetti
- August 23 - Sacco and Vanzetti executed.
- August 24-25 - Hurricane hits Atlantic shore of Canada causing massive damage - at least 56 dead
- September 7 - The University of Minas Gerais is founded in Brazil.
- September 14 - underwater earthquake in Japan - over 100 dead

October-December

- October 6 - The Jazz Singer opens and becomes a huge success, marking the end of the silent film era.
- October 7 - Mercedes Gleitze is the first Englishwoman to swim the English Channel
- October 9 - Mexican government crushes a rebellion in Vera Cruz
- October 27 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands opens Meuse-Waal Canal in Nijmegen
- October 28 - Pan American Airways first flight took off from Key West to Havana.
- November 10 - Unexplained explosions in Canton, Ohio
- November 12 - Mahatma Gandhi made his first and last visit to Ceylon.
- November 12 - Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with undisputed control of the Soviet Union
- November 12 - The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicular tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.
- November 24 - Total solar eclipse over Northern England and Wales
- December 2 - Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile.
- December 12 - 1600 people hospitalized in London when they had hurt themselves on the icy streets
- December 30 - Japan's first subway line, the Ginza Line in Tokyo, opens.

Unknown dates

- The British Broadcasting Corporation is granted a Royal Charter of Incorporation.
- The Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System (later known as CBS) is formed.
- Harold Stephen Black invents the feedback amplifier.
- Voluntary Committee of Lawyers founded to bring about repeal of prohibition of alcohol in United States.

Births

January

- January 1 - Vernon L. Smith, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- January 1 - Doak Walker, American Footballer (d.1998)
- January 10 - Gisele MacKenzie, Canadian-born singer (d. 2003)
- January 10 - Johnnie Ray, American singer (d. 1990)
- January 13 - Brock Adams, American politician (d. 2004)
- January 13 - Sydney Brenner, British biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- January 17 - Eartha Kitt, American actress and singer
- January 26 - José Azcona del Hoyo, President of Honduras (d. 2005)
- January 28 - Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japanese director
- January 29 - Edward Abbey, American environmentalist (d. 1989)
- January 29 - Lewis Urry, Canadian inventor (d. 2004)
- January 30 - Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden (d. 1986)

February

- February 2 - Stan Getz, American musician (d. 1991)
- February 3 - Val Doonican, Irish singer and entertainer
- February 7 - Juliette Greco, French singer and actor
- February 7 - Vladimir Kuts, Russian runner (d. 1975)
- February 10 - Leontyne Price, American soprano
- February 15 - Harvey Korman, American actor and comedian
- February 16 - June Brown, British actor
- February 16 - Tom Kennedy, American game show host
- February 20 - Roy Cohn, American lawyer and anti-Communist (d. 1986)
- February 20 - Sidney Poitier, American actor
- February 21 - Erma Bombeck, American writer and humorist (d. 1996)
- February 21 - Hubert de Givenchy, French fashion designer
- February 27 - Lynn Cartwright, American actress (d. 2004)

March

- March 1 - Harry Belafonte, American musician and actor
- March 1 - Robert Bork, American law professor
- March 6 - Gordon Cooper, astronaut (d. 2004)
- March 6 - Wes Montgomery, American musician (d. 1968)
- March 11 - Ron Todd, TGWU General Secretary (1985-1992) (d. 2005)
- March 13 - Robert Denning, American interior designer (d. 2005

Philadelphia Athletics

: Philadelphia Athletics redirects to this article, about the baseball team currently active in the American League. For the team that played in the National Association 1871-1875 and in the National League in 1876, see Athletic of Philadelphia. For the team that played in the American Association 1882-1891, see Philadelphia Athletics (American Association). The Oakland Athletics are a Major League Baseball team based in Oakland, California. They are in the Western Division of the American League. The team is often called the A's.

Origins: The Name, the Emblem, the Elephant Mascot

Origin of the Team Name

American League The name "Athletic" for Philadelphia's baseball team dates back to 1860 when an amateur team, the Athletic of Philadelphia, was formed. (A famous image from that era, at left, published in Harper's Weekly in 1866, shows the Athletic players dressed in uniforms displaying the familiar Old English "A" on the front.) The team later turned professional and joined the National Association in 1871, winning the first-ever major league pennant that year. The Athletic played in the National Association through 1875, becoming a charter member of the National League in 1876, but were expelled from the N.L. after one season. A later version of the Athletics played in the American Association from 1882-1891. The team name is typically pronounced "Ath-LET-ics", but their long-time team owner/manager Connie Mack called them by the old-fashioned colloquial pronunciation "Ath-uh-LET-ics". Newspaper writers also often referred to the team as the Mackmen during their Philadelphia days, in honor of their patriarch.

Old English “A” Uniform Emblem

Over the seasons, Athletic uniforms have usually paid homage to their amateur forebears to one extent or another. Until 1954, when the uniforms had "Athletics" spelled out in script across the front, the team's name never appeared on either home or road uniforms. Furthermore, not once did "Philadelphia" appear on the uniform, nor did the letter "P" appear on the cap or the uniform. The typical Philadelphia uniform had only an Old-English "A" on the left front, and likewise the cap usually had the same "A" on it. Though for a time as a Kansas City team, the A’s wore “Kansas City” on their road jerseys and an interlocking “KC” on the cap, upon moving to Oakland the “A” cap emblem was restored, although in 1970 an “apostrophe-s” was added to the cap and uniform emblem. Currently, though the team wears home uniforms (and alternate home and road uniforms) with "Athletics" spelled out in script writing and road uniforms with "Oakland" spelled out in script writing, the cap and team logo consists of the traditional Old English “A” with “apostrophe-s.”

The A’s Elephant Mascot

After New York Giants manager John McGraw told reporters that Philadelphia manufacturer Benjamin Shibe, who owned the controlling interest in the new team, had a “white elephant on his hands," Mack defiantly adopted the white elephant as the team mascot, though over the years the elephant has appeared in several different colors (currently forest green). The A’s are sometimes, though infrequently, referred to as the Elephants or White Elephants. The elephant was retired as team mascot in 1963 by then-owner Charles O. Finley in favor of a Missouri mule. In 1986, the elephant was restored as the symbol of the Athletics and currently adorns the left sleeve of home and road uniforms.

Franchise History

The Philadelphia Years (1901-1954)

The Beginning

The franchise that would become the modern Athletic team originated as the Indianapolis Indians of the Western League in 1893, a minor league with teams concentrated in the Great Lakes states. The Western league was renamed the American League in 1900 by league president Bancroft (Ban) Johnson, in anticipation of becoming the second major league in 1901. When the American League became a Major League in 1901, Johnson shifted the Indianapolis franchise to Philadelphia to compete with the National League’s Philadelphia Phillies, and recruited former player Connie Mack to run the club. Mack in turn persuaded Ben Shibe as well as others to invest in the team, which would again be called the Philadelphia Athletics, one of eight charter members of the American League. The other teams included the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Americans, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Blues, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, and Washington Senators. The team’s inaugural year saw second baseman Nap Lajoie [la-ZHWAY] lead the league in hitting with a .426 batting average, still a modern Major League record. The new league recruited many of its players---including Lajoie---from the existing National League, persuading them to “jump” to the A.L. in defiance of their N.L. contracts. The Athletics as well as the 7 other A.L. teams received a jolt when, on April 21, 1902, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court invalidated Nap Lajoie's contract with the Athletics, and ordered him returned to his former team, the N.L. Philadelphia Phillies. This order, though, was only enforceable in the state of Pennsylvania. Lajoie was traded to the Cleveland Broncos (now the Cleveland Indians) and did not set foot on Pennsylvania soil until the National Agreement was signed between the two leagues in 1903.

The First Dynasty and Aftermath

In the early years, the A’s quickly established themselves as one of the dominant teams in the new American League, winning the A.L. pennant six times (1902, 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913 and 1914), winning the World Series in 1910, 1911 and 1913. They won over 100 games in 1911 and 1912, and 99 games in 1914. The team was known for its “$100,000 Infield,” consisting of John "Stuffy" McInnis (1b), Eddie Collins (2b), Frank "Home Run" Baker (3b) and Jack Barry (ss), as well as pitchers Eddie Plank and Charles "Chief" Bender. Plank holds the club record for career victories, with 284. After the heavily favored A’s lost the 1914 World Series to the underdog Boston Braves in a 4-game sweep, Connie Mack traded, sold or released most of the team’s star players. In his book To Every Thing a Season, Bruce Kuklick points out that there were suspicions that the A's had thrown the Series, or at least "laid down", perhaps in protest of Mack's notorious thriftiness. Mack himself alluded to that rumor years later, but also debunked it, asserting that factions within the team along with the allure of the Federal League had distracted the team. A third major league, the Federal League, had been formed to begin play in 1914. As the A.L. had done 13 years before, the new league raided existing A.L. and N.L. teams for players. Mack refused to match the offers of the F.L. teams, preferring to let the "prima donnas" go and rebuild with younger (and less expensive) players. As a result, the Athletics went from a 99-53 (.651) won-loss record and 1st place finish in 1914, to a record of 43-109 (.283) and 8th (last) place in 1915, and then to a modern major league low winning percentange of 36-117 (.235) in 1916. The team would finish in last place every year after that until 1922, when it finished 7th.

The Second Dynasty, 1927-1933

Federal League After that, Mack began to build another winner. In 1927 and 1928, the Athletics finished second to the New York Yankees, then won pennants in 1929, 1930 and 1931, winning the World Series in 1929 and 1930. In each of the three years, the A's won over 100 games. There are those who feel the 1929 A’s were the best team in baseball history, even surpassing the 1927 Yankees. After a second-place finish in 1932 and 3rd in 1933, Mack again sold or traded his best players in order to reduce expenses. The Great Depression was well under way, and declining attendance had drastically reduced the team’s revenues. The construction of the "spite fence" at Shibe Park, blocking the view from nearby buildings, only served to irritate potential paying fans.

The Meager Years

The Athletics finished fifth in 1934, then last in 1935. Though he intended to rebuild once more, Mack was already 68 years old when the A’s last won the pennant in 1931, and many felt the game was passing him by. Save for a 5th place finish in 1944, the A’s finished in last or next-to-last place every year from 1935-1946. By now Mack and his immediate family were the team’s controlling stockholders, and he had no intention of firing himself. The 1950 season would be 88-year-old Mack’s 50th and last as A’s manager, a Major League record that will surely never be broken. During that year the team wore uniforms trimmed in blue and gold, in honor of the Golden Jubilee of "The Grand Old Man of Baseball."

The Last Years in Philadelphia

In late 1950, the controlling interest in the A's was purchased by Mack's eldest sons, Roy and Earle Mack, who bought out their stepmother, stepbrother Connie Mack, Jr., and other minority stockholders. In order to do this, the Mack brothers mortgaged the team to Connecticut General Life Insurance Company. It soon became obvious that the cashflow was insufficient to service the new debt. Roy and Earle Mack began feuding with each other. The team continued to slide, attendance plummeted, and revenues continued to dwindle. The only bright spot during the last seasons in Philadelphia were the A.L. batting championships won by Ferris Fain in 1951 (.344) and 1952 (.327). The latter would be the last year in which an Athletic has led the American League in hitting. Though last minute offers were put on the table to buy the Athletics to keep them in Philadelphia (including one made by a group which included Chicago insurance executive Charles O. Finley), the American League owners were determined to "solve the Philadelphia problem" by moving the team elsewhere. On October 12, 1954, the owners voted to approve the sale of the Athletics to another Chicago businessman, Arnold Johnson, so that he could move the team to Kansas City for the 1955 season. Connie Mack once said, “You can’t win them all.” The Philadelphia A’s didn’t come close. Though they won 5 World Series and 9 A.L. pennants, their overall record from 1901-1954 was 3,886 games won and 4,239 games lost, for an overall winning percentage of but .478.

The Kansas City Years (1955-1967)

The Johnson Era: A New Venue, but for How Long?

From the start, it was clear that Johnson was motivated solely by profit, not because of any regard for the baseball fans of Kansas City. He had long been a business associate of Yankee owners Dan Topping and Del Webb. He was the owner of Yankee Stadium, though the American league owners forced Johnson to sell the property before acquiring the Athletics. The lease he signed with Municipal Stadium gave Johnson a three-year escape clause if the team failed to draw one million or more customers per season. The subsequent lease signed in 1960 also contained an escape clause if the team failed to draw 850,000 per season. Rumors abounded that Johnson's real motive was to operate the Athletics in Kansas City for a few years, then move the team to Los Angeles. Whatever Johnson's motives were, the issue soon became moot. The Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, thereby precluding any move there by the Athletics. Moreover, on March 10, 1960, Arnold Johnson died at the age of 53. Whatever the concern about the move to Kansas City, fans turned out in record numbers for the era. In 1955, the new Kansas City Athletics drew 1,393,054 to newly renovated and newly renamed Municipal Stadium, a club record easily surpassing the previous record of 945,076 in 1948. (To put this figure in perspective, in 1955 only the New York Yankees and Milwaukee Braves had higher home attendance than did the A's.) What no one realized at the time was that number would remain the club record for attendance until 1982 -- the Athletics’ 15th season in Oakland!

The “Special Relationship” with the Yankees

During the Johnson ownership, any good young players on the Athletics were invariably traded by general manager Parke Carroll to the Yankees for aging veterans and cash. The cash was used to pay the bills, with the veterans perhaps having star appeal that could improve attendance. Though Johnson promised the fans that the trades would soon bring a World Series championship to Kansas City, it didn’t work that way. The team remained mired in the second division. Attendance declined, with fans and even other clubs charging that the A’s were little more than a minor league farm team for the Yankees, as the Kansas City Blues had been before them, citing Johnson's pre-existing cozy relationship with the Yankees' front office, an obvious conflict of interest that was winked at by the rulers of the game at that time. Johnson once gushed to The Sporting News, "I'd pay a million dollars for Mickey Mantle!" Assuming he had a million to give, that was a safe offer, as there was no chance the Yanks were going to trade their superstar to Kansas City. The trade no one ever forgot was the one made after the 1959 season, when the A’s sent young right fielder Roger Maris to New York for his aging counterpart, Hank Bauer, in a seven-player deal. However, there were others. The Yankees brought up a promising young pitcher, Ralph Terry, in 1956, but were reluctant to use him in critical situations. So, in June, 1957 they traded him to the A's in an eight-player deal. After getting nearly two years of experience facing A.L. batters, Terry apparently was ready to return. In May, 1959 the Yankees sent Jerry Lumpe and two washed-up pitchers to the Athletics for Terry. Once "home," Terry became a 20-game winner for New York. (It is perhaps not a coincidence that the "Old" Yankees became less competitive after new owner Charles O. Finley bought the A's and stopped providing talent to the Yankees.)

The Finley Era Commences: The Savior of Kansas City Baseball?

On December 19, 1960, Chicago insurance executive Charles O. Finley purchased a controlling interest in the team from Johnson's estate. He bought out the minority owners a year later. Finley promised the fans a new day. In a highly publicized move, he purchased a bus, pointed it in the direction of New York City, and had it burned, to symbolize the end of the “special relationship” with the Yankees. He called another press conference to burn the existing lease at Municipal Stadium which included the despised "escape clause." He spent over $400,000 of his own money in stadium improvements (though in 1962 the city reimbursed $300,000 of this). He introduced new uniforms which---significantly---had "Kansas City" on the road uniforms and an interlocking "KC" on the cap. He told the fans, "My intentions are to keep the A's permanently in Kansas City and build a winning ballclub. I have no intention of ever moving the franchise." The fans, in turn, regarded Finley as the savior of Major League Baseball in Kansas City. Finley immediately hired Frank Lane, a man with a reputation as a prolific trader, as general manager. Lane began engineering trades with several other teams, including the Yankees, the bus-burning stunt notwithstanding. Lane lasted less than one year, being fired during the 1961 season. He was replaced by Pat Friday, whose sole qualification for the job was that he managed one of Finley's insurance offices. On paper, Friday remained general manager until 1965, when he was replaced by Hank Peters, who held the post for less than a year, after which the team had no formal general manager. In fact, Friday and Peters were mere figureheads. With the firing of Lane in 1961, Finley became his own general manager (in fact if not in name), and would remain so for the duration of his ownership. Finley made further changes to the team’s uniforms. In 1963, he changed the team’s colors to “Kelly Green, Fort Knox Gold and Wedding Gown White” and replaced the traditional elephant mascot with a Missouri mule --- not just a cartoon logo, but a real mule, which he named after himself: “Charlie O, the Mule.” In 1967, he replaced the team’s traditional black cleats with white ones. In 1970 (after the move to Oakland) he added an "apostrophe-s" to the traditional Old English "A" logo, and began phasing out the team name "Athletics" in favor of, simply, "A's." Finley poured resources into the minor league system for the first time in the history of the franchise. He was assisted in this endeavor by the creation of the baseball draft in 1965, which forced young prospects to sign with the team that drafted them – at the price offered by the team – if they wanted to play professional baseball. Thus, Finley was spared from having to compete with wealthier teams for top talent. The Athletics, owners of the worst record in the American League in 1964, had the first pick in the first draft, selecting Rick Monday on June 8, 1965. Under the Mack and Johnson ownerships, the A's minor league system was almost non-existent. By 1966, it was one of the best.

Finley Looks for a Way Out

But, while laying the groundwork for a future championship team, Finley began shopping the Athletics to other cities, despite his promises that the A’s would remain in Kansas City. Soon after the lease-burning stunt, it was discovered that what actually burned was a blank boilerplate commercial lease available at any stationery store. The actual lease was still in force---including the escape clause. Finley later admitted he had no intention of re-writing the lease, that the whole thing was a publicity stunt. On September 18, 1962, after less than two full years of ownership, Finley asked the A.L. owners for permission to move the Athletics to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. His request was denied by a 9-1 vote. In January, 1964, he signed an agreement to move the A’s to Louisville, Kentucky (and hinted the team's name would change to "Louisville Sluggers"). By another 9-1 vote his request was denied. Six weeks later, by the same 9-1 margin, the A.L. owners denied Finley's request to move the team to Oakland. These requests came as no surprise, as rumors of impending moves to these cities, as well as to Atlanta, Milwaukee, New Orleans, San Diego and Seattle---all of which Finley had considered as new homes for the Athletics---had long been afloat. He also threatened to move the A's to a "cow pasture" outside of town, complete with temporary grandstands. Finally, American League President Joe Cronin persuaded Finley to sign a four-year lease with Municipal Stadium. According to some reports, he promised Finley that he could move the team after the 1967 season as an incentive to sign the lease. Finally, on October 18, 1967, A.L. owners gave Finley permission to move the Athletics to Oakland for the 1968 season. Then-U.S. Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri blasted Finley on the floor of the Senate, calling him "one of the most disreputable characters ever to enter the American sports scene,” and said Oakland was “the luckiest city since Hiroshima.” In 1969, Kansas City was awarded an American League expansion team, the Kansas City Royals. During the Johnson years, the Athletics' home attendance averaged just under one million per season, respectable numbers for the era, especially in light of the team's won-loss record. In contrast, during the years of Finley's ownership, the team averaged under 680,000 per year in Kansas City. During their 13-year existence, the Kansas City Athletics were arguably one of the worst teams ever in baseball, finishing in last or next to last place in 10 of those years. Their overall record was 829-1,224, for a winning percentage of .404.

The Oakland Years (1968 to present)

The Third Dynasty, 1972-1975

The Athletics arrived in Oakland just as the team was beginning to gel. Managed by Bob Kennedy, the Oakland Athletics finished the 1968 season with an 82-80 record – their best record since 1952. With expansion to 12 teams in 1969, the American League was divided into two 6-team divisions. During that year, the Athletics finished second in the A.L. West Division behind the Minnesota Twins – their highest finish in 37 years! After another second-place finish in 1970, the A’s won the A.L. West title in 1971, only to lose to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship Series. Finley had built himself a winner. The Athletics won World Series championships in 1972, 1973 and 1974. Unlike earlier Athletic championship teams, which thoroughly dominated their opposition, the A’s teams of the 1970s played well enough to win their division, then defeated teams that had won more games during the regular season, with good pitching, good defense, and clutch hitting. Finley termed this team the “Swingin’ A’s.” The players, in turn, often said they played so well as a team due to their universal dislike for their employer. Players such as Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue formed the nucleus of these teams. Vida Blue The A’s teams of the 1970s were also known for their sartorial and tonsorial appearance. Beginning in 1972, the Athletics began wearing jerseys of solid green or solid gold color, with contrasting white pants, at a time when most other teams wore all-white uniforms at home and all-grey ones on the road. Furthermore, in conjunction with a Moustache Day promotion, Finley offered $500 to any player who grew a moustache by Father's Day, at a time when every other team forbade facial hair. When Father's Day arrived, every member of the team collected a bonus. The 1972 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds was termed “The Hairs vs. the Squares,” as Cincinnati wore traditional uniforms and forbade facial hair on its players. A contemporaneous book about the team was called Moustache Gang. The A's seven-game victory over the heavily-favored Reds gave the team its first World Series Championship since 1930. The Athletics' victory over the New York Mets in the 1973 World Series was marred by owner Finley's antics. Finley forced player Mike Andrews to sign a false affadavit saying he was injured after the reserve infielder committed two consecutive errors in the 12th inning of the A's Game Two loss to the Mets. When other team members, manager Dick Williams, and virtually the entire sports-viewing public rallied to Andrews' defense, Finley was forced to back down, and Andrews was reinstated. As it was, the incident allowed the Mets, a team that went but 82-79 during the regular season, to go seven games before losing to a superior team. After the Athletics' victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1974 World Series, pitcher Catfish Hunter filed a grievance, claiming that the team had violated its contract with Hunter by failing to make timely payment on an insurance policy during the 1974 season as called for. On December 13, 1974, arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled in Hunter’s favor. As a result, Hunter became a free agent, and signed a contract with the New York Yankees for the 1975 season. Despite the loss of Hunter, the A’s repeated as West Division champions in 1975, but lost the ALCS to Boston in a 3-game sweep.

Free Agency, the Dismantling of the A’s, and the End of the Finley Years

As the 1976 season got underway, the basic rules of player contracts were changing. Arbitrator Seitz had ruled that baseball’s reserve clause only bound players for one season after their contract expired. Thus, all players not signed to multi-year contracts would be eligible for free agency at the end of the 1976 season. The balance of power had shifted from the owners to the players for the first time since the days of the Federal League. Like his predecessor Connie Mack had done twice before, Charles Finley reacted by trading star players and attempting to sell others. On June 15, 1976, Finley sold left fielder Rudi and relief pitcher Fingers to Boston for $1 million apiece, and pitcher Blue to the New York Yankees for $1.5 million. Three days later, Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the transactions in the “best interests of baseball.” After 1976 the season, most of the Athletics’ veteran players did become eligible for free agency, and predictably almost all left. Three thousand miles and several decades later, one of baseball’s most storied franchises suffered yet another dismemberment of a dynasty team. The 1977 version of the A’s finished in last place, behind even the expansion Seattle Mariners, who entered the American League that year. In 1979, only 306,763 paying customers showed up to watch the A's, the team's worst attendance since leaving Philadelphia. After three dismal seasons on the field and at the gate, the team started to gel again. In a masterstroke, Finley hired Billy Martin to manage the young team. Martin made believers of his young charges, “Billyball” was used to market the team, and the Athletics finished second in 1980. But, the Finley era was coming to a close. The man who brought American League baseball to the San Francisco Bay Area was being sued for a divorce. As his estranged wife would not accept part of a baseball team in a property settlement, the team had to be sold. Though Finley found a buyer who would have moved the Athletics to Denver, the tentative deal was voided when the Oakland Coliseum refused to let the team out of its lease. He then looked to local buyers, selling the Athletics to San Francisco clothing manufacturer Walter A. Haas, Jr. (then president of Levi Strauss & Co.) prior to the 1981 season.

Local Ownership for the Athletics: the Haas Era

Despite winning three World Series Championships and two other A.L. West Division titles, the A's on-field success did not translate into success at the box office during the Finley Era in Oakland. Average home attendance from 1968-1980 was 777,000 per season, with 1,075,518 in 1975 being the highest attendance for a Finley-owned team. In marked contrast, during the first year of Haas ownership, the Athletics drew 1,304,052---in a season shortened by a player strike. Were it not for the strike, the A's were on a pace to draw over 2.2 million in 1981! During the 15 years of Haas ownership, the Athletics became one of baseball’s most successful teams at the gate, drawing 2,900,217 in 1990, still the club record for single season attendance, as well as on the field. Average annual home attendance during those years (excluding the strike years of 1981 and 1994) was over 1.9 million. Haas restored the team’s official name of “Athletics” in 1981. While the team colors remained green, gold, and white, the garish Kelly green was replaced with a more subdued forest green. And, after a 23-year hiatus, the elephant was restored as the club mascot in 1986. Under the Haas ownership, the minor league system was rebuilt, which bore fruition later that decade as Athletics José Canseco (1986), Mark McGwire (1987) and Walt Weiss (1988) were chosen as A.L. Rookies of the Year. During the 1986 season, Tony La Russa was hired as the Athletics’ manager, a post he held until the end of 1995. In 1987, La Russa’s first full year as manager, the team finished at 81-81, its best record in 7 seasons. Beginning in 1988, the Athletics won the A.L. pennant three years in a row. Reminiscent of their Philadelphia predecessors, this A’s team finished with the best record of any team in the major leagues during all 3 years, winning 104 (1988), 99 (1989), and 103 (1990) games, featuring such stars as McGwire, Canseco, Weiss, Carney Lansford, Dave Stewart, and Dennis Eckersley. Regular season dominance did not translate into post-season success, however. The Athletics lost the World Series in 1988 and 1990, losing the latter to the underdog Cincinnati Reds in a shocking 4-game sweep reminiscent of the A’s loss to the Braves 76 years earlier. The A’s lone victory was a 4-game sweep of their cross-bay rivals, the San Francisco Giants, in the 1989 World Series. The team began a steady decline, winning the A.L. West championship in 1992 (but losing to Toronto in the ALCS), then finishing last in 1993.

The Schott-Hofmann Years: Continuous Rebuilding and Playoff Frustration

Walter Haas died in 1995, and the team was sold to San Francisco Bay Area real estate developers Stephen Schott (no relation to one-time Cincinnati Reds’ owner Marge Schott) and Kenneth Hofmann, prior to the 1996 season. Once again, the Athletics’ star players were traded or sold, as the new owners’ goal was to cut payroll drastically. Many landed with the St. Louis Cardinals, including McGwire, Eckersley, and manager La Russa. In a turn of events eerily reminiscent of the A’s Roger Maris trade 28 years before, Mark McGwire celebrated his first full season with the Cardinals by setting a new major league home run record! In fact, McGwire came close to the record in 1997, when he split 58 homers between the A's and the Cards. The Schott-Hofmann ownership allocated resources to building and maintaining a strong minor league system while almost always refusing to pay the going rate to keep star players on the team once they become free agents. Perhaps as a result, the A’s at the turn of the 21st century were a team that usually finished at or near the top of the A.L. West Division, but could not advance beyond the first round of playoffs. The Athletics made the post season playoffs for four straight years, 2000-2003, but lost the first round (best 3-out-of-5) in each case, 3 games to 2. In two of those years (2001 against New York and 2003 against Boston), the Athletics won the first two games of the series, only to lose the next three straight and hence the playoffs. In 2004, the A's missed the playoffs altogether, losing the final series of the season—and the divisional title—to the Anaheim Angels. In recent years, the Athletics were best known for starting pitchers Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito, collectively referred to as “The Big Three,” as well as infielders Eric Chavez, Jason Giambi, and Miguel Tejada. After becoming free agents, Giambi left for the New York Yankees after the 2001 season, while Tejada departed for the Baltimore Orioles after the 2003 season. The general manager of the Athletics, Billy Beane, has become notable in recent years for his novel approach to business decisions and scouting. The Athletics organization began redefining the way that major league baseball teams evaluate player talent. They began filling their system with players who did not possess typical baseball "tools" - throwing, fielding, hitting, hitting for power and running. Instead, they drafted for unconventional statistical prowess - on base percentage for hitters (rather than power) and strikeout/walk ratios for pitchers (rather than velocity). These undervalued stats came cheap. With the the sixth lowest payroll in baseball in 2002, the Oakland Athletics won an American League best 103 games. They spent $41M that season, while the Yankees, who also won 103 games, spent $132M. The Athletics have continually succeeded winning, and defying market economics, keeping their payroll near the bottom of the league. For example, after the 2004 season, in which the A's placed second in their division, Beane shocked many by breaking up the Big Three, trading Tim Hudson to the Atlanta Braves and Mark Mulder to the St. Louis Cardinals. To many, the trades appeared bizarre, in that the two pitchers were seen to be at or near the top of their game; however, the decision was perfectly in line with Beane's business model as outlined in Moneyball.

The Wolff Era Begins

On March 30, 2005, the Athletics were sold to a group headed by Los Angeles real estate developer Lewis Wolff. Rumors speculate that he wishes to move the team to San Jose, but those plans are complicated by the claims of the cross-bay San Francisco Giants that they own the territorial rights to San Jose and Santa Clara County. While not ruling out relocating the A's elsewhere in the Bay Area, Wolff has stated his primary focus is finding a site in Oakland for a new baseball-only stadium. In 2005, many pundits picked the Athletics to finish last as a result of Beane's dismanting of the Big Three. At first, the experts appeared vindicated, as the A's were mired in last place on May 31st with a 19-32 (.373) won-loss record. After that, the team began to gel, playing at a .622 clip for the remainder of the season, eventually finishing 88-74 (.543), seven games behind the newly-renamed Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and for many weeks seriously contending for the AL West crown. Pitcher Huston Street was voted the A.L. Rookie of the Year in 2005, the second year in a row an Athletic won that award, shortstop Bobby Crosby having won in 2004. For the fifth straight season, third baseman Eric Chavez won the A.L. Gold Glove Award at that position.

The Stadium Issue

Team owners have been faced for several years with a problematic venue issue. The Oakland Coliseum, though built as a multi-purpose facility, was initially considered by many to be one of the better ballparks in the major leagues. After the Oakland Raiders football team moved to Los Angeles in 1982, many improvements were made to what was suddenly a baseball-only facility. Then, in 1994, a deal was struck whereby the Los Angeles Raiders would move back to Oakland for the 1995 season. The agreement called for the expansion of the Coliseum to more than 63,000 seats. The bucolic view of the Oakland foothills that baseball spectators enjoyed was replaced with a jarring view of an outfield grandstand contemptuously referred to as "Mount Davis" after Raiders' owner Al Davis. The final insult was that construction was not finished by the start of the 1996 season. The Athletics were forced to play their first six–game homestand at 9,300-seat Cashman Field in Las Vegas. Since that debacle, ownership has stated that a new baseball-only facility is necessary to ensure the economic viability of the Athletics. In 2005, new owner Wolff made public his plans to build a 35,000-seat baseball-only stadium not far from the present facility, as part of a larger commercial and residential development. Currently, these plans are at a nascent stage as politicians and business interests mull their options (and perhaps await the next mayoral election). However Wolffe has stated he wants and answer from the city by opening day of the 2006 season which may force the issue along.

Rivals

:See also: Bay Bridge Series (Athletics-Giants rivalry), City Series (former Athletics-Phillies rivalry) The Athletics are without a rivalry on the order of Yankees-Red Sox, Dodgers-Giants, or Cubs-Cardinals. This is partly due to the team having been a cellar-dweller (or close to it) for their last two decades in Philadelphia and their entire time in Kansas City, and partly due to the two moves over the years. While the A's have been a member of the American League since 1901, their divisional rivals are of a more recent vintage. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim date from 1961, as do the Texas Rangers (but only since 1972 as a Dallas-Fort Worth team). The Seattle Mariners were organized in 1977. During the 1970s, the A's established a strong rivalry with the Kansas City Royals (then an A.L. West team), fueled by the Kansas City fans' resentment of the A's move to Oakland in 1968, and by the rivalry of the Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs football teams. Arguably, the Athletics' biggest American League rivals in recent years have been the teams that were their old traditional rivals from decades ago in Philadelphia---the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox---if only because of the hard-fought playoff games between the teams. The A's have also established a strong geographic rivalry with the San Francisco Giants. The teams faced each other in the 1989 World Series (won by the Athletics in a four-game sweep). But also, with both teams having long and storied histories, they have faced each other three times in the World Series prior to their respective moves west, with the Athletics winning two and the Giants one of those Series.

Events and Records of Note

- 20-Game Win Streak: The Oakland Athletics won an American League record 20 games in a row, from August 13 to September 4, 2002. The last three games were won in dramatic fashion, each victory coming in the bottom of the ninth inning. The streak was finally snapped in Minnesota. The Major League record for consecutive wins is 26, set by the NL's New York Giants in 1916. There was a tied game embedded in that winning streak (ties were not uncommon in the days before stadium lights) and the record for consecutive wins with no ties is 21, held by the Chicago Cubs on their way to the NL pennant in 1935.
- City Series Renewed: The Athletics played their former co-occupants of Shibe Park, the Philadelphia Phillies, for the first time in a championship season in June of 2003. Previously they had only played each other in exhibition games, dubbed "The City Series", which was played annually. However, since the teams never faced each other in the World Series, they never played each other in games that counted; interleague play made the recent matchup possible. Ceremonies were held for the first game of the 3 game series at Veterans Stadium, as former Philadelphia A's players were honored on the field. The Phillies took the series against the A's, 2-1. They played each other again in June of 2005 in Oakland, this time the White Elephants defeating their former rivals two games to one.

Quick facts

:Founded: 1893, as the Indianapolis franchise in the minor Western League, which became the American League in 1900. Moved to Philadelphia in 1901 when the A.L. became a Major League. Moved to Kansas City in 1955 and to Oakland in 1968. :Current Uniform colors: Green, Gold and White: 1963-Present :Previous Uniform colors: Blue and White: 1901-04, 1909-49, 1951-53, 1961; Blue, Red and White: 1905-08, 1954-60, 1962; Blue, Gold and White: 1950, :Logo design: An Old English "A's". The team also uses an elephant logo. :Playoff appearances (22): 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003

Current roster

Baseball Hall of Famers

New York Yankees

:"Yankees" redirects here. For other uses, see Yankee (disambiguation). ---- The New York Yankees are a Major League Baseball team based in The Bronx, New York City, New York. They are in the Eastern Division of the American League and are widely considered the most successful baseball franchise. One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Yankees have been among the most storied teams in American sports over their 100+ year history; along with franchises like the Boston Celtics, Dallas Cowboys, and Montreal Canadiens, the Yankees have helped exemplify the phrase "dynasty" in professional athletics. They are one of two major league franchises which operate in New York City, the other being the New York Mets of the National League. The Yankees have won 26 World Series in 39 appearances; the St. Louis Cardinals and the Athletics franchise are tied for second with 9 World Series victories each, and the Dodgers franchise is second in World Series appearances with 18. Among the North American major sports, the Yankees' success is only approached by the 24 Stanley Cup championships of the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League. The Yankees are also the only team that is represented at every position in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Origins

At the end of the 1900 season, the American League re-organized and, with its president Ban Johnson as the driving force, decided to assert itself as a new major league. Previously a minor league (known as the Western League until 1899), the American League carried over five of its previous locations and added three more on the East Coast, including one in Baltimore, Maryland, which had lost its National League team when that league contracted the year before. The intention of Johnson and the American League had been to place a team in New York City, but their efforts had been stymied by the political connections that owners of the National League New York Giants had with Tammany Hall. When the team began play as the Baltimore Orioles in 1901, they were managed by John McGraw. As a result of a feud with league president Ban Johnson, who rigidly enforced rules about rowdyism on the field of play, McGraw jumped leagues to manage the New York Giants in the middle of the 1902 season. A week later the owner of the Giants also gained controlling interest of the Orioles and raided the team for players, after which the league declared the team forfeit and took control, still intending to move the franchise to New York when and if possible. In January 1903, the American and National Leagues held a "peace conference" to settle conflicts over player contract disputes and to agree on future cooperation. The NL also agreed that the "junior circuit" could establish a franchise in New York. The AL's Baltimore franchise became the New York franchise when its new owners, Frank Farrell and William Devery, were able to find a ballpark location not blocked by the Giants. Farrell and Devery both had deep ties into city politics and gambling. Farrell owned a casino and several pool halls, while Devery had served as a blatantly corrupt chief of the New York City police and had only been forced out of the department at the start of 1902.

The Highlanders

The franchise's first park in New York was located at 165th St. and Broadway in Manhattan, near the highest point on the island. Consequently the field was known as Hilltop Park and the team quickly became known as the New York Highlanders. The name was also a reference to the noted British military unit The Gordon Highlanders, as the team president from 1903 to 1906 was named Joseph Gordon. Today the site of the original Hilltop Park is occupied by buildings of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. As the Highlanders, the team enjoyed success only twice, finishing in second place in 1904 and 1910; but otherwise, much of their first fifteen years in New York was spent in the cellar. Their somewhat tainted ownership, along with the questionable activities of some players, notably first baseman Hal Chase, raised suspicions of game-fixing, but little of that was ever proven. Their best chance came on the last day of the 1904 season, at the Hilltop. New York pitcher Jack Chesbro threw a wild pitch in the ninth inning which allowed the eventual pennant-winning run to score for the Boston Americans. This event had historical significance in several ways. First, the presence of the Highlanders in the race had led the Giants to announce they would not participate in the World Series against a "minor league" team. Although Boston had won the pennant, the Giants still refused to participate. The resulting tongue-lashing of the Giants by the media stung their owner, John T. Brush, who then led a committee that formalized the rules governing the World Series. 1904 was the last year a Series was not played, until the strike-truncated year of 1994. For fans of the team formally named the Red Sox in 1908, the 1904 season-ender would prove to be the last time Boston would defeat the Yankees in a pennant-deciding game for literally a century. From 1913 to 1922 the team would play in the Polo Grounds, a park owned by their National League rivals, the Giants. Relations between the clubs had warmed when the Giants were allowed to lease Hilltop Park while the Polo Grounds was being rebuilt in 1911 following a disastrous fire. During the early 1900s, the nickname "Yankees" was occasionally applied to the club, as a variant on "Americans", verifiably as early as June 21, 1904, when Patsy Dougherty was traded from Boston to New York, and the Boston Herald's report was headlined "Dougherty as a Yankee". That matter-of-fact wording suggests the nickname was already well-known. The New York Herald, on April 15, 1906, reported "Yankees win opening game from Boston, 2-1". The name grew in popularity over the team's first decade. With the change of parks in 1913, the "Highlanders" reference became obsolete, and the de facto team nickname became exclusively "Yankees". Before very long, New York Yankees had become the official nickname of the club. By the mid 1910s, owners Farrell and Devery had become estranged and both were in need of money. At the start of 1915, they sold the team to Colonel Jacob Ruppert and Captain Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston. Ruppert was heir to the Ruppert brewery fortune and had also been tied to the Tammany Hall machine, serving as a U.S. Congressman for eight years. Ruppert later said, "For $450,000 we got an orphan ball club, without a home of its own, without players of outstanding ability, without prestige." But now with an owner possessing deep pockets, and a willingness to dig into them to produce a winning team.

The Ruth and Gehrig era

Over the next few years the new owners would begin to enlarge the payroll. Many of the newly acquired players who would later contribute to their success came from the Boston Red Sox, whose owner, theater impresario Harry Frazee, had bought his team on credit and was hard-pressed to pay off his loans and also produce Broadway shows. From 1919 to 1922, the Yankees acquired from the Red Sox pitchers Waite Hoyt, Carl Mays and Herb Pennock; catcher Wally Schang; shortstop Everett Scott; and third baseman Joe Dugan. However, pitcher-turned-outfielder Babe Ruth was the biggest of them all. Frazee traded Ruth in January of 1920, citing Ruth's demand for a raise after being paid the highest salary in baseball, and slumping bat as reasons for the trade. He was also regarded as a problem, a carouser. That would continue during his Yankees years, but the ownership was more tolerant, provided he brought fans and championships to the ballpark. Two of the four Boston newspapers agreed with the deal at the time. The Red Sox did not win a World Series from 1919 until 2004 (see Curse of the Bambino), often finding themselves out of the World Series hunt as a result of the success of the Yankees. Harry Frazee finally found success on Broadway in 1927 with the musical comedy No No Nanette, which included the song "Tea For Two". No No Nanette Other critical newcomers in this period were manager Miller Huggins and general manager Ed Barrow. Huggins was hired in 1919 by Ruppert while Huston was serving in Europe with the army (this would lead to a break between the two owners, with Ruppert eventually buying Huston out in 1923). Barrow came on board after the 1920 season, and like many of the new Yankee players had previously been a part of the Red Sox organization, having managed the team since 1918. Barrow would act as general manager or president of the Yankees for the next 25 years and may deserve the bulk of the credit for the team's success during that period. He was especially noted for development of the Yankees' farm system. The home run hitting exploits of Ruth proved popular with the public, to the extent that the Yankees were soon outdrawing their landlords, the Giants. In 1921 the Yankees were told to move out of the Polo Grounds after the 1922 season. At that time, John McGraw was said to have commented that the Yankees should "move to some out-of-the-way place, like Queens". Instead, to McGraw's chagrin, they broke ground for a new ballpark just across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds. The construction crew moved with remarkable speed and finished the big new ballpark in less than a year. In 1923 the Yankees moved into Yankee Stadium at 161st St. and River Avenue in the Bronx. The site for the stadium was chosen because the IRT Jerome Avenue subway line, now the MTA's #4 train, went right by there, practically on top of Yankee Stadium's right-field wall. The Stadium was the first triple-deck venue in baseball and seated an astounding 58,000. It was truly "the House that Ruth Built", From 1921 to 1928, the Yankees went through their first period of great success, winning six American League pennants and three World Series. In 1921 through 1923 they faced the Giants in the World Series, losing the first two match-ups but turning the tables in 1923 after the Big Stadium opened. Giants outfielder Casey Stengel, who even then was being called "Old Case", hit two homers to win the two games the Giants came away with. Stengel would later become a "giant" for the Yankees as a manager. The 1927 team was so potent that it became known as "Murderers' Row" and is sometimes considered to have been the best team in the history of baseball (though similar claims have been made for other Yankee squads, notably those of 1939, 1961 and 1998). Ruth's home run total of 60 in 1927 set a single-season record which would stand for 34 years, and first baseman Lou Gehrig had his first big season with 47 round-trippers. The Yankees would repeat as American League champions in 1928, fighting off the resurgent Philadelphia Athletics, and sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Babe Ruth hit .625 with 3 home runs in that series, while Lou Gehrig hit .545 and belted 4 round-trippers. After three also-ran seasons, the Yankees returned to the American League top perch under new manager Joe McCarthy in 1932 and swept the Chicago Cubs in the World Series, running their streak of consecutive World Series game wins to 12, a mark which would stand until the 2000 Yankees bested it in the World Series that year. Babe Ruth hit his famous "Called Shot" home run in Wrigley Field in Game 3 of that Series, a fitting "Swan Song" to his illustrious post-season career.

The DiMaggio era

The Yankees run during the 1930s could also be facetiously called the "McCarthy era", as manager Joe McCarthy (no relation to the infamous Senator of the same name) would guide the Yankees to new heights. Just as Gehrig stepped out of Ruth's considerable shadow, a new titan appeared on the horizon, in the person of Joe DiMaggio. The young center fielder from San Francisco was an immediate impact player, batting .323, hitting 29 homers and driving in 125 runs in his rookie season of 1936. Behind the thundering Yankees bats of DiMaggio, Gehrig and Frank Crosetti, and a superb pitching staff led by Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez and anchored by catcher Bill Dickey, the Yankees reeled off an unprecedented four consecutive World Series wins during 1936-1939. They did it without Gehrig for most of 1939, as the superstar's retirement due to ALS saddened the baseball world. The strongest competition for the Yankees during that stretch was the Detroit Tigers, who won two pennants before that Yankees four-year stretch, and one after. When the Yankees did get into the Series, they had little trouble. During Game 2 of the 1936 Series, they pounded the Giants 18-4, still the World Series record (through 2005) for most runs by a team in one game. They took the Giants 4 games to 2 in that Series, and 4 games to 1 the next year. They also swept the Chicago Cubs in 1938, and the Cincinnati Reds in 1939. After an off season came the Summer of 1941, a much-celebrated year, often described by sportswriters as the last great year of the "Golden Era", before World War II and other realities intervened. Ted Williams of the Red Sox was in the hunt for the elusive .400 batting average, which he achieved on the last day of the season. Meanwhile, DiMaggio, who had once hit in 61 straight games as a minor leaguer with the San Francisco Seals, began a hitting streak on May 15 which stretched to an astonishing 56 games. A popular song by Les Brown celebrated this event, as Betty Bonney and the band members sang it: "He tied the mark at 44 / July the First, you know / Since then he's hit a good 12 more / Joltin' Joe DiMaggio / Joe, Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side." The last game of the streak came on July 16 at Cleveland's League Park. The streak was finally snapped in a game at Cleveland Stadium the next night before a huge crowd at the lakefront. Modern baseball historians regard it as unlikely that anyone will ever hit .400 again, barring a change to the way the game is played; and as virtually impossible that anyone will approach DiMaggio's 56-game streak, which is so far beyond second place (44) as to be almost a statistical anomaly. The Yankees made short work of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1941 Series. Two months and one day after the final game of the Yanks' 4 to 1 win, the Pearl Harbor attacks occurred, and many of the best ballplayers went off to World War II. The war-thinned ranks of the major leagues nonetheless found the Yanks in the post-season again, as they traded World Series wins with the St. Louis Cardinals during 1942 and 1943. The Yanks then went into a bit of a slump, and manager McCarthy was let go early in the 1946 season. After a couple of interim managers had come and gone, Bucky Harris was brought in and the Yankees righted the ship again, winning the 1947 pennant and facing a much-tougher Dodgers team than their 1941 counterparts, in a Series that went seven games and was a harbinger of things to come for much of the next decade. Despite finishing only 3 games back of the pennant-winning Cleveland Indians in 1948, Harris was released, and the Yankees brought in Casey Stengel as their manager. Casey had a reputation for being somewhat of a clown and had been associated with managing excruciatingly bad teams such as the mid-1930s Boston Braves, so his selection was met with no little skepticism. His tenure would prove to the most successful in the Yankees' history up to that point. The 1949 season is another that has been written about poetically, as a Yankees team that was seen as "underdogs" came from behind to catch and surpass the powerful Red Sox on the last two days of the season, in a faceoff that could be said to be the real beginning of the modern intense rivalry between these teams. The post-season proved to be a bit easier, as the Yankees knocked off their cross-town Flatbush rivals 4 games to 1. By this time, the Great DiMaggio's career was winding down. It has often been reported that he said he wanted to retire before he became an "ordinary" player. He was also hampered by bone spurs in his heel, which hastened the final docking of the "Yankee Clipper". As if on cue, new superstars began arriving, including the "Oklahoma Kid", Mickey Mantle, whose first year (1951) was DiMaggio's curtain call.

The 1950s and 1960s

Bettering the McCarthy-era clubs, Stengel's squad won the World Series in his first five years as manager, 1949 through 1953. The five consecutive championships won by the Yankees during this period remains the major league record. Led by players like center fielder Mickey Mantle, pitcher Whitey Ford, and catcher Yogi Berra, Stengel's teams won 10 pennants and seven World Series titles in his twelve seasons as Yankee manager. The 1950s were also a decade of significant individual achievement for Yankee players. In 1956, Mantle won the major league triple crown, leading both leagues in batting average (.353), home runs (52), and RBIs (130). On October 8, 1956, in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Dodgers, pitcher Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history. Not only was it the only perfect game to be pitched in World Series play, it remains the only no-hitter of any kind to be pitched in postseason play. The Yankees went on to win yet another World Series that season, and Larsen earned World Series MVP honors. Yankee players also dominated the American League MVP award, with a Yankee claiming ownership six times in the decade (1950 Rizzuto, 1951 Berra, 1954 Berra, 1955 Berra, 1956 Mantle, 1957 Mantle). Pitcher Bob Turley also won the Cy Young Award in 1958, the award's third year of existence. For the decade, the Yankees won six World Series championships ('50, 51, '52, '53, '56, '58) and eight American League pennants. Led by Mantle, Ford, Berra, Elston Howard, and the newly acquired Roger Maris, the Yankees burst into the new decade seeking to replicate the remarkable success of the 1950s. However, the Yankees lost the 1960 World Series in heartbreaking fashion when Bill Mazeroski hit a game-winning, series-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 off Ralph Terry. It remains the only Game 7, walk-off home run in World Series history. Stengel was blamed for the World Series loss for failing to start his ace, Ford, three times in the Series, and was replaced as manager with Ralph Houk prior to the 1961 season. Stengel himself, who had reached his seventh decade in July of that year, clearly thought the issue was age discrimination, remarking, "I'll never make the mistake of turning 70 again." Yogi Berra's assessment of the loss was the equally famous comment, "We made too many wrong mistakes." During the 1960-61 offseason, a seemingly innocuous development may have marked the beginning of the end for this Yankees dynasty. In December of 1960, Chicago insurance executive Charlie Finley purchased the Kansas City Athletics from the estate of Arnold Johnson, who had died that March. Johnson had acquired the then-Philadelphia Athletics from the family of Connie Mack in 1954. He was the owner of Yankee Stadium at the time, but was forced to sell the stadium by American League owners as a condition of purchasing the Athletics. Johnson was also a longtime business associate of then-Yankees owners Del Webb and Dan Topping. During Johnson's ownership, the Athletics traded many young players to the Yankees for cash and aging veterans. Maris had been acquired by the Yankees in one such trade. Many fans, and even other teams, frequently accused the Athletics of being operated as an effective farm team for the Yankees. Once Finley purchased the Athletics, he immediately terminated the team's "special relationship" with the Yankees. In the meantime, 1961 was one of the greatest years in Yankee history. Throughout the summer, Mantle and reigning-MVP Roger Maris hit home runs at a record pace as both chased Babe Ruth's single season home run record of 60. The duo's home run prowess led the media and fans to christen them 'The M & M Boys.' Ultimately, Mantle was forced to bow out in mid-September with 54 home runs when a severe hip infection forced him from the lineup. On October 1, 1961, on the final day of the season, Maris broke the record when he sent a pitch from Boston's Tracy Stallard into the right field stands at Yankee Stadium for his 61st home run. However, by decree of Commissioner Ford Frick, separate single-season home run records were maintained to reflect the fact that Ruth hit his 60 home runs during a 154-game season, while Maris hit his 61 in the first year of the new 162-game season. Some 30 years later, on September 4, 1991, an 8-member Committee for Historical Accuracy appointed by Major League Baseball did away with the dual records, giving Maris sole possession of the single-season home run record until it was broken by Mark McGwire on September 8, 1998. (McGwire's record was later broken by Barry Bonds, whose 73 home runs in 2001 remain the major league record. Maris still holds the American League record.) The Yankees won the pennant with a 109-53 record and went on to defeat the Cincinnati Reds in five games to win the 1961 World Series. The 109 regular season wins posted by the '61 club remain the third highest single-season total in franchise history, behind only the 1998 team's 114 regular season wins and 1927 team's 110 wins. The 1961 Yankees also clubbed a then-major league record for most home runs by a team with 240, a total not surpassed until the 1996 Baltimore Orioles hit 257 with the aid of the designated hitter. Maris won his second consecutive MVP Award while Whitey Ford captured the Cy Young. Because of the excellence of Maris, Mantle, and World Series-MVP Ford, a fine pitching staff, stellar team defense, the team's amazing depth and power, and their overall dominance, the 1961 Yankees are universally considered to be one of the greatest teams in the history of baseball, compared often to their pinstriped-brethren, the 1927 Yankees, the 1939 Yankees, and the 1998 Yankees. In 1962, the Yankees won their second consecutive World Series, defeating the San Francisco Giants in seven games. The Yanks would again reach the Fall Classic in 1963, but were swept in four games by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Behind World Series-MVP Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Johnny Podres, the Dodgers starting pitchers threw four complete games and combined to give up just four runs all Series. This was the first time the Yankees were swept in a World Series. Feeling burnt out after the season, Houk left the manager's chair to become the team's general manager and Berra, who himself had just retired from playing, was named the new manager of the Yankees. The aging Yankees returned to the World Series in 1964 to face the St. Louis Cardinals in a Series immortalized by David Halberstam's book, October 1964. Despite a valiant performance by Mantle, including a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth of Game 3 off Cardinals' reliever Barney Schultz, the Yankees fell to the Cardinals in seven games. It was to be the last World Series appearance by the Yankees for 12 years. After the 1964 season, CBS purchased the Yankees from Topping and Webb for $11.2 million. Jokesters at the time wondered if Walter Cronkite would become the manager, perhaps with Yogi Berra doing the newscasts. Topping and Webb had owned the Yankees for 20 years, missing the World Series only 5 times, and going 10-5 in the World Series. By contrast, the CBS-owned teams never went to the World Series, and in the first year of the new ownership - 1965 - the Yankees finished in the second division for the first time in 40 years; the introduction of the major league amateur draft in 1965 also meant that the Yankees could no longer sign any player they wanted. In 1966 the team finished last in the AL for the first time since 1912, and next-to-last the following year. After that the team's fortunes improved somewhat, but they would not become serious contenders again until 1974.

Return to glory

George Steinbrenner purchased the club for $10 million on January 3, 1973 from CBS, renovated Yankee Stadium, hired and fired Billy Martin a number of times, feuded with star outfielder Reggie Jackson, and presided over the resurgence of the Yankees in the late '70s. Jackson's three home runs in the sixth and final game of the 1977 World Series against three different Dodger pitchers (earning him the nickname "Mr. October") defined the period as much as Martin and Steinbrenner. The race for the pennant often came to a close competition between the Yankees and the Red Sox, and for fans of both clubs, a game between the two teams (whether in the regular season or post-season championship games) was cause for a rivalry that was often bitter and ruthless, with brawls frequently erupting between both players and fans from the two clubs. The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry came to a head in the 1978 season, when the two clubs finished the regular season in a tie for first place in the AL East. A playoff game between the two teams was held to decide who would go on to the pennant, with the game being held at Boston's Fenway Park (because the Red Sox had won more head-to-head games between the two teams that season). The Yankees won the day, driving a stake through the hearts of their rivals' fans when Bucky Dent drove a game-winning home run over the "Green Monster," one of several emotional moments in the team's history that had Red Sox fans wondering if their team was under some kind of a curse.

A new dynasty

The Yankees entered the 1990s as a last-place team, having spent well but not always wisely on free-agent players since their last appearance in the World Series in 1981. During the 1980s the Yankees had the most total wins out of any major league team, but failed to win a World Series (the first such decade since the 1910s). In 1990, Yankee pitcher Andy Hawkins became the first Yankees pitcher ever to lose a no-hitter, when the third baseman committed an error, followed by 2 walks and an error by the left fielder (Deion Sanders, later of NFL fame) with the bases loaded, scoring all 3 runners as well as the batter. The 4-0 loss was the largest margin of any no-hitter loss in the 20th century. The bad judgment and bad luck of the '80s and early '90s started to change when, while owner Steinbrenner was under suspension, management was able to implement a coherent program without interference from above. Under general managers Gene Michael and Bob Watson and manager Buck Showalter, the club shifted its emphasis from buying talent to developing talent through its farm system and then holding onto it. The first significant sign of success came in 1994, when the Yankees had the best record in the AL when the season was cut short by the players' strike. A year later, the team reached the playoffs as the wild card and was eliminated only after a memorable series against the Seattle Mariners. Showalter left after the 1995 season due to personality clashes with Steinbrenner and his staff and was replaced by Joe Torre. Initially derided as a retread choice ("Clueless Joe" ran the headline on one of the city's tabloid newspapers), Torre's smooth manner proved out as he led the Yankees to a World Series victory in 1996, defeating the Atlanta Braves in six games. General manager Bob Watson was dismissed when the Yankees failed to repeat in 1997 and was replaced by Brian Cashman, a former Yankees intern. However, the foundation laid by Michael and Watson of players like Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams was a significant factor in the Yankees' return to prominence. Other prominent members of the late 1990s championships teams acquired through trades included Paul O'Neill, David Cone, Tino Martinez, John Wetteland, Chuck Knoblauch, and Roger Clemens, while Jimmy Key, Wade Boggs, David Wells, Mike Stanton, and Orlando "El Duque" Hernández were signed as free agents. The 1998-2000 Yankees were the first team to "three-peat" with World Series victories since the Oakland Athletics of the early 1970s. In 1998 and 1999, they swept the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves, respectively. In 2000, the Yankees met up with cross-town New York Mets for the first Subway Series since 1956 and won four games to one. In these four World Series victories, the Yankees won fourteen straight games. The Yankees are the most recent major league team to repeat as World Series champions. The 1998 Yankees are widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest teams in baseball history, having compiled a then-AL record of 114 regular season wins against just 48 losses (the record was later broken by the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won 116 games) en route to a World Series sweep of the Padres. The '98 Yankees went 11-2 during the playoffs and finished with a combined record of 125-50, a major league record.
- Won 1998 World Series (4-0) over San Diego Padres
- Won ALCS (4-2) over Cleveland Indians
- Won ALDS (3-0) over Texas Rangers

The 21st century

In the emotional October 2001, following the September 11 attack on New York City's World Trade Center, the Yankees defeated the Oakland Athletics 3 games to 2 in the Division Series, and then the Seattle Mariners in the ALCS, 4 games to 1. But, the usually unhittable Mariano Rivera shockingly blew the lead - and World Series - to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 7. Arizona manager Bob Brenly used his pitching staff, which included Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, very effectively. In addition, the usually potent Yankee attack turned ice-cold. In 2003, the Yankees defeated their long-time rival the Boston Red Sox in a tough seven-game ALCS, which featured a near-brawl in Game 3 and a series-ending walk-off home run by Aaron Boone in the 11th inning of the final game, only to be defeated by the Florida Marlins - a team with a payroll a quarter of the size of the Yankees' - in the World Series, 4 games to 2. The loss in the 2001 World Series effectively marked the end of the 1990s Yankee dynasty, as lynchpin players began to retire, not be re-signed, or traded. The Yankees' quick ejection from the 2002 playoffs at the hands of the Anaheim Angels accelerated the changes, as ownership and management began to look increasingly on free agent acquisitions and major trades. The trend continued after the 2003 World Series, culminating when the Yankees traded for the nominal "best player in baseball", Alex Rodriguez, in February 2004. Other significant acquisitions during 2002 to 2004 included Jason Giambi, Hideki Matsui, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, and Javier Vázquez. In the 2004 American League Championship Series against the Red Sox, the Yankees became the first team in professional baseball history, and only the third team in North American pro sports history (it happened in the NHL twice), to lose a best-of-7 series after taking a 3-0 series lead. After the 2004 World Series, the Yankees needed to improve their pitching, which suffered in the huge collapse to the Red Sox. They signed pitchers Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright. The Yankees also acquired dominant lefty Randy Johnson from the Arizona Diamondbacks. The 2005 season didn't start as it expected to be, once they were in last place in the American League East division. Pavano and Wright struggled, so did Johnson. As the season went on, the Yankees got better and slugger Jason Giambi started to hit again. Most of the season, the Yankees were chasing the Boston Red Sox for the division title. The Yankees seemed destined to win the division, and they did. In the 2005 Division Series, the Angels defeated the Yankees in five games in the first round of the postseason, winning the final game by a score of 5-3. After the 2005 season, the Yankees needed to get younger and more athletic. In the 2005-2006 offseason, general manager Brian Cashman took control of the Yankees, because owner George Steinbrenner and his advisors signed older talented players after the 2001 season. From the end of the 2005 World Series to December 2005, the baseball world noticed that the Yankees were patient with signing free agents. Many explanations have been given for the lack of Yankee World Series titles since 2000. These include depletion of the Yankee farm system because of trades and free agent acquisitions, the aging or departure of the players who had formed the core of the Yankees during the late 1990s, and allegedly poor coaching. Buster Olney, in his book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, argues that George Steinbrenner's management style resulted in the players burning out psychologically. Several sabermetricians have argued that success in the playoffs is largely the result of luck. This argument is bolstered by the fact that the production of the Yankees' core players has decreased steadily since their 1996 World Series title. One particularly creative explanation jokingly proposed by blogger Larry Mahnken is the "Curse of Clay Bellinger". By analogy with the Curse of the Bambino, Mahnken points to the departure of utility player Clay Bellinger from the Yankee roster following the 2001 season and asserts that the Yankees will never again win the World Series until either they make amends to Bellinger or they win the championship anyway. The tautology is part of the joke. Despite their most recent drought in World Series championships, the Yankees have continued to perform well in the regular season, recently winning their eighth straight AL East division title. In September 2005, the club set a new American League home attendance record of 4,090,696. The Yankees are only the third franchise in sports history to draw over 4 million in regular season attendance at their own ballpark (the others being the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays with 4,057,947 and the 1993 Colorado Rockies with 4,483,350).

Controversy

The Yankees are a notable team not only for their impressive history on the field, but also for their financial situation. The current ownership spends more on player salaries than any other franchise in baseball. As of 2005, the team payroll is more than $208 million, which is $85 million more than the second-highest team, the Red Sox, and more than the five lowest-payroll teams combined [http://www.onestopbaseball.com/TeamPayroll.asp]. Frustrated after being outbid for pitcher Jose Contreras prior to the 2003 season, Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino even went so far as to dub the Yankees the "Evil Empire," a characterization that is primarily popular among Red Sox fans. It is a heated debate whether the Yankees' free-spending is positive or negative for baseball, and whether a strict salary cap would make the sport fairer and increase parity among the large-market and small-market teams. The following are arguments for and against these spending practices: For:
- The Yankees are "America's Team." They give the casual, or "bandwagon," baseball fan someone to root for when he/she does not have a local favorite.
- As "America's Team" the Yankees give other baseball fans a team to "hate" or root against, thereby further generating interest in baseball games involving the Yankees and baseball in general.
- New York, as the largest market with the highest revenues, should spend in accordance with their vast resources. It has also been argued that the New York Mets, because they share the same market, could spend at a higher level if their owner was inclined to do so, and therefore the Yankees spending reflects Steinbrenner's greater commitment to winning rather than a singular advantage over all other teams.[http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0421,essay,53773,1.html]
- The Yankees drive attendance, merchandise sales and TV revenues, helping to subsidize less-profitable teams.
- In a free-market society, an owner who wishes to spend as much as he/she wants should not be restricted from doing so. Against:
- Allowing one team to bid highly for the best talent makes it more difficult for lower-spending teams (primarily in smaller metropolitan areas) to compete.
- The willingness of the Yankees to pay premium prices for top talent encourages players and their agents to demand unreasonably high prices, further diluting talent throughout the rest of the league. This phenomenon even causes the Yankees to announce their intentions not to pursue certain free agents (e.g. Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez), who might otherwise freely use the potentiality as a bargaining chip.
- American football's example of balanced salaries, correlated with its now-massive parity and mainstream impact, demonstrates that keeping athletic salaries fair is good for the sport and therefore everyone - TV outlets, owners, fans. It may be argued that the most recent splurge in spending corresponds neatly with the bargained rules governing MLB ownership that entitled other teams to begin revenue sharing with the Yankees. George Steinbrenner has ignored the increasing penalty of a Luxury Tax. In 2003, the Office of Foreign Assets Control reported that the Yankees engaged in illegal trade with Cuba and had to settle with the United States government for US$75,000 [http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/04/14/enemy.trading/index.html].

Quick facts

:Founded: As the Indianapolis, Indiana franchise of the Western League, originally a farm team of the Cincinnati Reds. In 1901, became the Baltimore, Maryland franchise in the newly created American League. Moved to New York City before the 1903 season. :Formerly known as: Baltimore Orioles, 1901-1902. New York Highlanders, 1903-1910, "Yankees" as early as 1904, used more and more interchangeably with "Highlanders" as their first decade in New York progressed. :Nicknames: Yanks, Bronx Bombers, Men in Pinstripes :Home ballpark: Yankee Stadium, at 161st Street and River Avenue in the Bronx, New York City, from 1923 to the present, excluding two years in the 1970s during renovation. Also played at the original Oriole Park in Baltimore, 1901-1902; Hilltop Park in Manhattan, New York City, 1903-1912; the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, 1913-1922; and Shea Stadium in Queens, New York City, 1974-1975. They are slated to move into a newer Yankee Stadium modeled after the old one in time for the 2009 season. :Uniform design: Home uniform is white with distinctive pinstripes and a navy blue interlocking "NY" at the chest. Away uniform is gray with "New York" written in capitals across the chest. The player number is on the back of the uniform jersey and is not accompanied by the player name. (The interlocking NY was used by the New York Knicks on their warmup jackets, and later shorts from the 1960s to the early 1990s.) :Logo design: An interlocking "NY" (based on an element of the original Tiffany design of the New York Police Department's Medal of Honor). Another team logo is "Yankees" written in red script across the seams of a baseball, which is outlined in red. A baseball bat forms the straight edge of the "k" in "Yankees" and an "Uncle Sam" style top hat covers the barrel of the bat. The inside lip of the top hat, originally blue, has mostly been reproduced in white since the mid-1970s. :Team theme song: "Here Come the Yankees" (1967), composed by Bob Bundin and Lou Stallman. "New York, New York" is played at the end of each home game (Frank Sinatra's version is usually played following victories; Liza Minnelli's original version following losses). :Cable Television Network: YES Network :All-time regular season record (1901-2005): 9192 won - 7029 lost - 87 tied - 3 no-decision :
- Baltimore record (1901-02): 118-153-2 :
- New York record (1903- ): 9074-6876-85-3

Baseball Hall of Famers

Monument Park

The following personalities are honored with monuments or plaques in Monument Park, located behind the left-center field fence at Yankee Stadium, between the bullpens. Monuments, rather than plaques, are generally awarded only to the greatest of the great, and then only after their deaths. Many of these figures also had their uniform numbers retired. Such ceremonies often take place either at home openers or on Old-Timers' Day. Figures are listed in the order in which their plaques were dedicated:
- Miller Huggins, manager 1918-29, monument dedicated May 30, 1932. This monument was originally placed on the field of play, in front of the center-field flagpole. Huggins never wore a number on his uniform, and so no number is retired for him.
- Jacob Ruppert, owner 1915-39, plaque dedicated April 19, 1940. This plaque was placed on the outfield wall, to the right of the flagpole.
- Lou Gehrig, first baseman 1923-39, number 4 retired July 4, 1939, monument dedicated July 6, 1941. This monument was placed to the left of the Huggins monument. Gehrig was the first Major League Baseball player to have his uniform number retired.
- Babe Ruth, right fielder 1920-34, number 3 retired June 13, 1948, monument dedicated April 19, 1949. This monument was placed to the right of the Huggins monument. The three monuments together were about 450 feet from home plate, but a ball would occasionally get back there, leading Casey Stengel, on one occasion, to yell from the dugout, "Ruth! Gehrig! Huggins! Somebody throw that ball back here!"
- Ed Barrow, general manager 1921-46, plaque dedicated April 15, 1954. The plaque was placed on the wall, to the left of the flagpole.
- Joe DiMaggio, center fielder 1936-51, number 5 retired April 18, 1952, plaque dedicated June 8, 1969, replaced by a monument April 25, 1999.
- Mickey Mantle, center fielder 1951-68, number 7 retired and plaque dedicated June 8, 1969, replaced by a monument August 25, 1996. Mantle was awarded his plaque on Mickey Mantle Day, handed to him by DiMaggio. Mantle then handed DiMaggio his plaque, saying, "His oughta be just a little bit higher than mine." Instead, they were placed side-by-side on the wall. These were the last plaques to be placed in play. Following the 1974-75 renovation of Yankee Stadium, the monuments and plaques were moved to the new Monument Park.
- Joe McCarthy, manager 1931-46, plaque dedicated April 29, 1976. Although the Yankees adopted uniform numbers in 1929, McCarthy never wore a number as Yankee manager, and so no number has been retired for him.
- Casey Stengel, manager 1949-60, number 37 retired August 8, 1970, plaque dedicated July 30, 1976.
- Thurman Munson, catcher 1969-79, number 15 retired August 2, 1979, plaque dedicated September 20, 1980.
- Elston Howard, outfielder and catcher 1955-67, coach 1969-80, number 32 retired and plaque dedicated July 21, 1984.
- Roger Maris, outfielder 1960-66, number 9 retired and plaque dedicated July 21, 1984, in the same ceremony as Howard's.
- Phil Rizzuto, shortstop 1941-56 and broadcaster 1957-96, number 10 retired and plaque dedicated Aug

Hall of Fame

.]] A hall of fame is a type of museum established for any a field of endeavour to honour individuals of noteworthy achievement in that field. In most cases, these halls of fame consist of actual halls or museums which enshrine the honourees with sculptures, plaques, and displays of memorabilia. In other cases, the hall of fame is more figurative, and simply consists of a list of names of noteworthy individuals maintained by an organization. The opposite can be called a hall of shame. The first hall of fame created was the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, established by New York University in 1900. Arguably the most famous Hall of Fame is the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, often simply referred to as the Hall of Fame, or Cooperstown.

Ty Cobb

Tyrus Raymond "Ty" Cobb (December 18, 1886 – July 17, 1961), nicknamed "the Georgia Peach", was an American baseball player generally considered to be the greatest player of the "dead ball era" (1900 – 1920). Cobb is also famous for being a vitriolic racist (even supposedly shunning Babe Ruth for his allegedly black facial characteristics). For many years arguments raged as to whether he or Babe Ruth, diametrically opposite types of players, was the greatest player of all time. With the introduction of sabermetrics in the 1980s as a general method of examining players' worth, however, Cobb's star has dimmed somewhat. While he is still generally considered one of the dozen or so greatest players, few arguments are advanced that he was the single greatest player. He was certainly a great drawing card. Writers about the Tigers have noted that the team often acquiesced to Cobb's salary demands, possibly to the detriment of the rest of the team, because he brought people into the ballparks. When he retired in 1928 he was the holder of 90 major league records and he received the most votes of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1936. Later in life, Cobb said of himself that "in legend, I am a sadistic, slashing, swashbuckling despot who waged war in the guise of sport."

Pre-professional career

Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born in Narrows, Georgia, the first of three children. His mother Amanda (Chitwood), who had married William Herschel Cobb when she was twelve, was fifteen when she gave birth to Ty. In 1893, W.H. Cobb, a teacher by profession, bought a one hundred acre (400,000 m²) farm in Royston, Georgia to supplement his teaching income. It was on this farm that Ty's father taught him the values of hard work and perseverance. It was also in those fields that Ty grew strong and developed his relationship with his father. When W.H. saw that Ty displayed a knack for farming and its economics, the two grew closer. Cobb once said, "It was the sweetest thing in the world to be fully accepted by my father. All at once, he was willing to hear my ideas, discuss them, and even exchange opinions." W.H. Cobb became a very well respected man in the community, getting elected to the Georgia State Senate. When Ty was not working the farm for his father, he was honing his baseball skills by playing for the Royston Rompers and the semi-pro Royston Reds during his early and mid-teens. W.H. greatly disapproved of Ty playing baseball, fearing that his firstborn would become a drunken womanizer like the stereotypical big league ballplayers of the day. However, when Ty, at seventeen, approached his father to ask for his blessing to try out for the South Atlantic League (Sally League) team in Augusta, W.H. reluctantly acquiesced. He figured that it would be best for his son to get the baseball out of his system and return home to pursue a career as a doctor, lawyer, or military man.

Professional career

Augusta]

Minor leagues

In 1904, Cobb successfully tried out for the Augusta Tourists, a minor league club in the newly formed South Atlantic League, but was cut two days into the season. Cobb asked his father for permission to try out for a semi-pro team in Anniston, Georgia. In Cobb's account of the conversation he said that his father gave him permission to go, but warned him, "Don't come home a failure." Cobb tried out for the Anniston Steelers of the Tennessee-Alabama League. He easily made the team due to his previous professional experience. Cobb was hoping that his success would be noted in a major paper in Georgia, but to no avail. He took matters into his own hands by sending postcards to Grantland Rice, the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal, under several different aliases. Eventually, Rice wrote a small note in the Journal that a "young fellow named Cobb seems to be showing an unusual lot of talent." W.H. kept this press clipping in his wallet until his death, showing it to all as if it were a baby picture. Cobb continued to tear up the league, and after about three months, he received a telegram from Augusta asking him to return. Con Strouthers, Cobb's previous manager with the Tourists, had been released, and the team missed his aggressive style. His return to Augusta proved unfruitful, as he finished the season hitting a meager .237 in 35 games. Andy Roth, manager of Augusta, wanted Cobb back for 1905, but Cobb demanded a raise to $125 per month. It was the first of many salary disputes in his career. Despite the fact that he was asking a lot for a teenager with less than a season's experience, Roth consented and he rejoined the team in the spring of 1905. By August 1905, Cobb, under the tutelage of his new manager, George Leidy, was leading the league in hitting. The Tourists' management sold the left-handed hitting and right-handed fielding Cobb to the American League's Detroit Tigers for $750. Cobb was given a $50 gold watch as a gift in his final appearance with the Augusta Tourists. Shortly before Cobb's debut in the major leagues, his father was shot to death in a freak accident. On August 8, 1905, his father, suspecting his wife of infidelity, told her that he was going out of town. He returned later that evening to check up on her. He climbed onto the roof outside their bedroom. When Amanda Cobb saw a man in the window, she got a shotgun and fired twice, killing Cobb's father. She was arrested and charged with voluntary manslaughter, but was acquitted when she testified that she had mistaken her husband for an intruder.

Major leagues

The early years

voluntary manslaughter Three weeks after his mother killed his father, Cobb was playing center field for the Detroit Tigers. On August 30, 1905, in his first major league at-bat, Cobb doubled off the New York Highlanders's Jack Chesbro. The rest of the season didn't go as well. Cobb managed to only bat .240 in 41 games. Cobb showed enough promise as a rookie for the Tigers give him a lucrative (for the time) $1,500 contract for 1906. Although rookie hazing was customary, Cobb could not endure it in good humor, and he soon became alienated from his teammates. He later attributed his hostile temperament to this experience: "These old-timers turned me into a snarling wildcat." The following year he became centerfielder for the Tigers and hit .320 in 97 games. He would never hit below that mark again. In spring training in 1907, Cobb, considered a racist by many, fought a black groundskeeper over the condition of the Tigers' spring training field in Augusta, Georgia, and ended up choking the man's wife when she intervened. In one regular season game Cobb reached first, stole second, third and home. He would do it again five more times in his career to set the record. Cobb's Tigers were engaged in an incredibly close 4-way race for the American League pennant with the Philadelphia A's, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox. Both the White Sox and Indians ran into trouble late in the season. The final series that year pitted the Tigers against Connie Mack's Athletics. Cobb belted a ninth inning out of the park home run to send the game into extra innings. In his next at bat (11th inning), Cobb struck a ground rule double, driving in the go-ahead run. Unfortunately, the A's recovered. When the game was called a tie in the 17th, the Tigers won the pennant anyway. That season, his first as a regular, Cobb hit .350 to win the first of nine consecutive batting titles. He also led the league with 212 hits, 49 steals and 116 RBI. In the 1907 World Series the Tigers faced the Chicago Cubs. Cobb got a triple in Game 4, but the Tigers lost the series 4-0-1. Cobb struggled to hit .200 in the postseason. Cobb was almost traded in 1907 to the Cleveland Indians for Elmer Flick. He was put on the block by his manager, Hughie Jennings, who was exasperated by Cobb's antics. The trade never materialized because Cleveland felt that Cobb was too divisive and that Flick was a better player. In September of 1907 Cobb began a relationship with Coca-Cola that would last his entire life and make him a very rich man. In 1918 Cobb took a loan out against his future baseball earnings to buy his first 1000 shares of Coke stock. By the time he died, he owned 3 bottling plants, in Santa Maria, California, Twin Falls, Idaho and Bend, Oregon and owned over 20,000 shares of stock. The following season the American League Pennant Race came down to the Tigers and another team, this time it was the White Sox. The Tigers ended up winning it on October 6, 1908, their last game of the year, defeating the White Sox 7-0. Cobb again won the batting title, although he "only" hit .324 that year. In their first rematch with the World Series champion Cubs, the Tigers once again lost the series 4-1, but Cobb had a much better postseason, leading the Tiger regulars with a .368 batting average. In August 1908 Cobb married Charlotte "Charlie" Marion Lombard, the daughter of prominent Augustan Roswell Lombard. In a 1909 game, Cobb spiked Frank "Home Run" Baker. After the incident, Connie Mack called Cobb "...the dirtiest player around." Ban Johnson, AL President, initially condemned him for his slide, but later said that Cobb was merely playing hard within the rules. A photo of the incident also supported Cobb, as it was clear that Cobb was sliding to the inside of the base and Baker was reaching across the base to try to tag him. There was no obvious malevolent intent. The Tigers won the American League pennant, and it looked as if they might beat Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. Babe Adams, a rookie pitcher and the 4th starter in Pittsburgh’s rotation, was chosen by Fred Clarke to pitch the first game in place of Howie Camnitz, the Pirates ailing ace. He finessed the Tigers, becoming the first pitcher to win three games in a World Series. During the Series Cobb stole home in the second game, igniting a three-run rally, but that was the high point for Cobb. He ended batting a lowly .231 in his last World Series. Cobb won the Triple Crown in hitting .377 with 107 RBI and 9 home runs, all of which were inside-the-park home runs.

The Conlon photo

inside-the-park home run] One day in New York, in 1909, Charles M. Conlon was fortunate enough to snap a terrific action photo of Cobb sliding into third base, an image that has been reprinted countless times. In the book Baseball's Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon, by the brother-and-sister team of Neal and Constance McCabe, the story of that famous photo is presented, along with a print of the full photo, the way it actually looked. For publication, the original photo was cropped on the right, taking away almost half of it, in order to focus on the action. That is the version everyone saw until the book was published in 1993. The excised portion merely shows more of the right-side bleachers, as well as the left arm of the third base coach. Conlon was actually on the field with his big camera, a common practice of the day. He was positioned to the outfield side of the third base coach's box. Cobb was on second. New York third baseman Jimmy Austin was playing in for a possible sacrifice bunt. Cobb took off for third, but the batter did not get the bunt down. Austin backpedaled to take the throw from the catcher. Cobb spilled Austin and the catcher's throw sailed into left field. Presumably Cobb could have got up and scored, but the book does not elaborate. Instead, the issue was whether Conlon got the shot or not. He changed plates, just to be safe, because he did not remember if he had squeezed the shutter bulb or not, and he knew it had potential to be a great shot. It turned out that he did, it was, and baseball had one of its iconic images.

1910 Chalmers Award controversy

Jimmy Austin] In 1910, Cobb and Napoleon Lajoie, manager and star of the Cleveland Naps, were neck-and-neck for the American League batting title, with Cobb ahead by a slight margin going into the last day of the season. The prize was a Chalmers Automobile. Cobb sat out the game to preserve his average. Lajoie, whose team was playing the St. Louis Browns, notched seven hits in a doubleheader to pass Cobb. Six of those hits were bunt singles that fell in front of the third baseman. It turned out that Browns manager, Jack O' Conner, had ordered third baseman Red Corriden to play deep, on the outfield grass, so as to allow the popular Lajoie to win the title. AL president Ban Johnson declared Cobb the official batting average winner after some wrangling. The Chalmers people, however, decided to award an automobile to both Cobb and Lajoie. The next year, the Chalmers Award was given to the player "most valuable" to his team, and the modern Most Valuable Player Award was born, with Cobb winning the American League version unanimously.

The 1911 Season

Most Valuable Player Award One of Cobb's most devastating approaches to baseball and perhaps the one that left the most lasting impression was his psychological intimidation. Cobb was having an incredible year in 1911, including a 40-game hitting streak. But by the end of the season, ”Shoeless” Joe Jackson had a 9 point lead on him in batting average. Very near the end of the season, Cobb’s Tigers had a long series (6 games in 4 days) in Cleveland with Jackson’s Indians. Cobb and Jackson were friendly both on and off the field, both being Southerners. Cobb used that friendliness for his gain. As he discussed in his autobiography, Cobb would ignore Jackson whenever Jackson said anything to him. Then Cobb would snap angrily at Jackson making him wonder what he could have done to so anger Cobb. Meanwhile, Cobb says, "My mind was centered on just one thing: getting all the base hits I could muster. Joe Jackson's mind was on many other things. He went hitless in the first three games of the series, while I fattened up. By the sixth game, I'd passed him in the averages." Then, just for good measure, Cobb completed his ploy by giving Jackson a hearty good-bye just as the Tigers were leaving town. Cobb felt that it was those mind games of his that caused Jackson to "fall off" to a final average of .408, while Cobb himself sailed home with a .420 average, 248 hits, 147 runs scored, 144 RBI, 83 stolen bases, and the league lead in doubles, triples, and slugging average. The only major offensive category which Cobb did not lead in was home runs, where Frank Baker surpassed him 11-8. Cobb's dominance at the plate is suggested by this statistic: he struck out swinging twice during the entire 1911 season. He was awarded another Chalmers, this time for being voted the AL MVP by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The game that may best illustrate Cobb's unique combination of attributes occurred on May 12, 1911. Playing against the New York Yankees, Cobb scored a run from first base on a single to right field, then scored another run from second base on a wild pitch. In the 7th inning, he tied the game with a 2-run double. The Yankee catcher began vociferously arguing the call with the umpire, going on at such length that the other Yankee infielders gathered nearby to watch. Realizing that no one on the Yankees had called time, Cobb strolled unobserved to third base, and then casually walked towards home plate as if to get a better view of the argument. He then suddenly slid into home plate for the game's winning run. More controversy followed Cobb during an exhibition series in Cuba. Following the series against Negro League players, Cobb vowed never to play against a black team again. His detractors have suggested that Cobb was irritated at finishing second to Negro Leagues star Pop Lloyd in batting average, .370 to .500, as well as by the attention paid to "Home Run" Grant Johnson. Cobb was also thrown out stealing several times by Bruce Petway. However, Cobb's supporters point to the fact that the second base bag was misplaced by 3 extra inches, and that even when Cobb noticed this and complained, the Negro team refused to move it to its correct position. On May 15, 1912, Cobb assaulted Claude Lueker, a heckler, in the stands in New York. The league suspended him; and his teammates, though not fond of Cobb, went on strike to protest the suspension prior to the May 18th game in Philadelphia. For that one game, Detroit fielded a replacement team made up of college and sandlot ballplayers, plus two Detroit coaches, and lost, 24-2. Some of major league baseball's all-time negative records were established in this game, notably the 26 hits allowed by Allan Travers, who pitched the sport's most unlikely complete game. The strike ended when Cobb urged his teammates to return to the field. In 1914, Red Sox pitcher Dutch Leonard hit Cobb in the ribs with a fastball. In the next at bat, Cobb bunted the ball down the right side line. First baseman Clyde Engle covered the play, turning to toss the ball to Leonard just as Cobb spiked him. Cobb became the first professional athlete to appear in a motion picture when he starred in "Somewhere in Georgia". Based on a story by sports columnist Grantland Rice, the film casts Cobb as "himself", a small-town Georgian bank clerk with a talent for baseball. When he's signed to play with the Detroit Tigers, Cobb is forced to leave his sweetheart (Elsie McLeod) behind, whereupon a crooked bank cashier sets his sights on the girl. Upon learning that Cobb has briefly returned home to play an exhibition game with his old team, the cashier arranges for Our Hero to be kidnapped. Breaking loose from his bonds, Cobb beats up all of his captors and shows up at the ball field just in time to win the game for the home team.

Baseball starts to change

Elsie McLeod] Cobb kept dominating the league winning batting titles in every year till 1915. Also in 1915 Cobb set the single season steals record with 96 which stood until Maury Wills broke it in 1962. Cobb’s streak of batting titles ended the following year when he finished second with .371 to Tris Speaker’s .386. In 1919, a young pitcher from the Boston Red Sox named Babe Ruth began to come on strong as a home run hitter by shattering the 40-year old home run record by hitting 29 round-trippers. Cobb abhorred Ruth's power game, and when he saw fans becoming enamored with the Babe, he was afraid that the "inside style" of bunting, taking the extra base and hitting the ball to gaps that he had perfected would fall by the wayside. Ruth started the 1920 season on a pace to destroy his own record. Therefore, when Cobb and the Tigers showed up in New York to play the Yankees for the first time that season, writers billed it as a showdown between two stars of competing styles of play. Ruth easily won this mini-battle, with two homers and a triple, while Cobb got only one single in the entire series. But the people who really knew baseball still favored Cobb, according even to Ruth's own manager, Miller Huggins. The venerable Tris Speaker once said, "Babe was a great ballplayer, but Cobb was even greater. Ruth could knock your brains out, but Cobb would drive you crazy." Most of the fans, however, even in Cobb's own home city of Detroit, now came to watch Ruth instead of Cobb. The fans began to prefer the excitement of the home run rather than the strategy and cunning moves of the hit and run and double steal. As Ruth's popularity grew, Cobb became increasingly hateful of him. Cobb saw Ruth not only as a threat to his style of play, but also to his style of life. While Cobb preached ascetic self-denial, Ruth gorged on hot dogs, beer, and women. Perhaps what angered him the most about Ruth was that despite Ruth's total disregard for his physical condition and traditional baseball, he was still an overwhelming success and brought fans to the ballparks in record numbers to see him set his own records. After enduring several years of seeing his fame and notoriety usurped by Ruth, Cobb decided that he was going to show that anybody could hit home runs if he chose to. On May 5, 1925, Cobb began a two-game hitting spree better than any even Ruth had unleashed. He was sitting in the dugout talking to a reporter and told him that, for the first time in his career, he was going to swing for the fences. That day, Cobb went 6 for 6, with two singles, a double, and three home runs. His 16 total bases set a new AL record. The next day he had three more hits, two of which were home runs. His single his first time up gave him 9 consecutive hits over three games. His five homers in two games tied the record set by Cap Anson of the old Chicago NL team in 1884. Cobb wanted to show that he could hit home runs when he wanted, but simply chose not to do so. At the end of the series, 38-year-old Cobb had gone 12 for 19 with 29 total bases, and then went happily back to bunting and hitting-and-running. For his part, Ruth's attitude was that "I could have had a lifetime .600 average, but I would have had to hit them singles. The people were paying to see me hit home runs." On August 19, 1921, in the second game of a double header against Elmer Myers of the Boston Red Sox Cobb collected his 3,000th hit.

Cobb as player/manager

Frank Navin, the Detroit Tigers owner, signed Cobb to take over for Hughie Jennings as manager for the 1921 season. Cobb signed the deal on his 34th birthday for $32,500. To say the least, the signing caught the baseball world off-guard. Universally disliked (even by the members of his own team) but a legendary player, Cobb's management style left a lot to be desired. He expected as much from his players as he gave, and most of the men did not meet his standard. The closest he came to winning the pennant race was in 1922, when the Tigers finished in second place. Cobb blamed his lackluster managerial record (479 wins-444 losses) on Navin, who was an even bigger skinflint than Cobb. Navin passed up a number of quality players that Cobb wanted to add to the team. In fact, Navin had saved money by hiring Cobb to manage the team. At the end of 1925 Cobb was once again embroiled in a batting title race, this time with one of his teammates and players, Harry Heilmann. In a doubleheader against the St. Louis Browns on October 4, Heilmann got six hits, leading the Tigers to a sweep of the doubleheader and beating Cobb for the batting crown, .393 to .389. Cobb and Browns manager George Sisler each pitched in the final game. Cobb pitched a perfect inning.

Cobb moves to Philadelphia

Cobb finally called it quits from a 22-year career as a Tiger in November 1926. He announced his retirement and headed home to Augusta, Georgia. Shortly thereafter, Tris Speaker also retired as player-manager of the Cleveland team. The retirement of two great players at the same time sparked some interest, and it turned out that the two were coerced into retirement because of allegations of game-fixing brought about by Dutch Leonard, a former pitcher of Cobb's. It seemed that Leonard was bitter about being let go from organized baseball in what he felt was a conspiracy by Cobb and Speaker. He used the game-fixing charges as a way to retaliate against the two men so that they would know what it would be like to be run out of the league. His plan failed as he was unable to convince either Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis or the public that the two had done anything for which they deserved to be kicked out of baseball. Landis allowed both Cobb and Speaker to return to their original teams, but each team let them know that they were free agents and could sign with whomever they wished. Speaker signed with the Washington Senators for 1927, Cobb with the Philadelphia Athletics. Speaker then joined Cobb in Philadelphia for the 1928 season. Cobb says he came back only to seek vindication and so that he could say he left baseball on his own terms. Cobb played regularly in 1927 for a young and talented team that finished second to one of the greatest teams of all time, the 1927 Yankees, which won 110 games. He returned to Detroit to quite a welcome on May 11, 1927. Cobb doubled in his first at bat, to the cheers of Tiger fans. On July 18, 1927, Cobb became the first player to get 4,000 career hits when he doubled off former teammate Sam Gibson of the Detroit Tigers at Navin Field. Cobb returned again in 1928, for no real reason other than he had nothing else to do with his life. He played less frequently due to his age and the blossoming abilities of the young A's, who were again in a pennant race with the Yankees. It was against those Yankees in September that Cobb had his last at bat, a weak pop-up behind third base. He then announced his retirement, effective at the end of the season. Ironically, had he stuck with the A's in some capacity for one more year, he might have finally got his elusive World Series ring. But it was not to be. In 1928, in a game against the New York Yankees, the combined line-up included 13 future Hall of Fame players. In addition to Cobb, Tris Speaker, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, Eddie Collins, Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Waite Hoyt, Earle Combs, Herb Pennock and Tony Lazzeri participated in the game.

Post professional career

Tony Lazzeri] Cobb retired a very rich and successful, but very lonely man. He spent his retirement pursuing his off-season activities of hunting, golfing and fishing, full-time. He also traveled extensively, both with and without his family. His other pastime was trading stocks and bonds, increasing his immense personal wealth. In the winter of 1930/31, Cobb moved into a Spanish ranch estate on Spencer Lane in the millionaire's community of Atherton outside San Francisco. At that same time, his wife Charlie filed the first of several divorce suits. Cobb had never had an easy time being a father and husband. His children had found him to be demanding, yet also capable of kindness and extreme warmth. "He always wanted us to work as hard as we could at anything we did," Cobb's son James told sportswriter Ira Berkow in 1969. "Just as he did." Cobb had expected his boys to be exceptional athletes, especially baseball players. Ty, Jr. flunked out of Princeton and would have rather played tennis than baseball, and in general was a disappointment to his father. Despite his shortcomings as a father, Cobb had only wanted his children to work hard and succeed, though it seems that it was hard for him to accept that they would succeed in anything except baseball. Charlie finally divorced Cobb in 1947, after 39 years of marriage, the last few of which she lived in nearby Menlo Park. A tremendous thrill came in February, 1936, when the first Hall of Fame election results were announced. Cobb had been named on 222 of 226 ballots, outdistancing Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson, the only others to earn the necessary 75% of votes to be elected in that first year. His 98.2 percentage stood as the record until Tom Seaver received 98.8% of the vote in 1992 (Nolan Ryan also surpassed Cobb, being named on 98.79% of the ballots in 1999). Those incredible results show that although many people disliked him personally, they respected the way he played and what he accomplished. There was little else for Cobb to be happy about, now a bachelor in the twilight of his life. He drank and smoked heavily, and spent a great deal of time complaining about the collapse of baseball since the arrival of Ruth. Cobb was known to help out young players. He was instrumental in helping Joe DiMaggio negotiate his rookie contract with the New York Yankees, but ended his friendship with Ted Williams when the latter suggested to him that Rogers Hornsby was a greater hitter than Cobb. Another bittersweet moment in Cobb's life reportedly came in the late 1940s when he and sportswriter Grantland Rice were returning from the Masters golf tournament. Stopping at a South Carolina liquor store, Cobb noticed that the man behind the counter was Shoeless Joe Jackson, who had been banned from baseball almost 30 years earlier following the Black Sox scandal. But Jackson did not appear to recognize Cobb, and finally Cobb asked, "Don't you know me, Joe?" “Sure I know you, Ty,” replied Jackson, “but I wasn’t sure you wanted to speak to me. A lot of them don’t.” At 62, Cobb remarried. The bride was 40-year-old Frances Cass. This marriage also failed, and she later filed for divorce. She felt that he was simply too difficult to get along with when he was drunk. However, Cobb counter filed and won the suit. When two of his three sons died young, Cobb was alone, with few friends left. He therefore began to be generous with his wealth, donating $100,000 in his parents' name for his hometown of Royston to build a modern 24 bed hospital now called the Cobb Memorial Hospital. He also established the Cobb Educational Fund, which awarded scholarships to needy Georgia students bound for college, by endowing it with a $100,000 donation in 1953. Cobb knew that another way he could share his wealth was by having biographies written that would set the record straight and teach young players how to play. John McCallum spent some time with Cobb to write a combination how-to and biography. He, like everyone else, found Cobb difficult at best, and impossible at worst. McCallum's book came out in 1956 and was filled with half-truths and misinformation that McCallum had never checked out. After McCallum left, Cobb was again alone and had a longing to return to Georgia. It was on a hunting trip near his Lake Tahoe home that Cobb's long-range plans were going to be cut short, as he collapsed in pain and was diagnosed with prostate cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and Bright's disease, a degenerative kidney disorder. He returned to his Lake Tahoe lodge with painkillers and bourbon to try to ease his constant pain. He did not trust his initial diagnosis, however, so he went to Georgia to seek advice from doctors he knew, and they found his prostate to be cancerous. They removed it at Emory Hospital, but that did little to help Cobb. From this point until the end of his life, Cobb criss-crossed the country, going from his lodge in Tahoe to the hospital in Georgia. Al Stump, one of the most celebrated sports writers in the country at the time, was asked by Doubleday to ghostwrite Cobb's autobiography. Like John McCallum, Stump found Cobb rather difficult to work with most of the time and totally impossible when drunk. Stump's time with Cobb was "interesting," but not necessarily in a good sense. Despite the troubles, Stump stuck it out mostly because he feared Cobb's reaction if he tried to leave. From the time the two spent together we now have two books and a movie, each of which offers a slightly different point of view of Cobb's life. A powerful moment in Stump's experience was the visit to the Cobb family mausoleum in December 1960. Cobb had used the mausoleum as an attempt to reunite his family members in death, disinterring some of them to do so. It was here that Cobb told Stump about the murder of his father, and pointed the finger at his mother. He had never spoken much about the incident, and most people at the time probably didn't even know that W.H. had been shot. Cobb also spent much of his last few years making visits to places important to him, like the Hall of Fame. He traveled to Cooperstown in June 1960, and lingered after-hours in the Hall, gazing at the plaques on the wall, including his own, with tears in his eyes. By the spring of 1961, Cobb was spending most of his time at Emory Hospital for cobalt treatments to slow the spread of his cancer, which had now moved into his spine and skull. He did feel good enough to make it to spring training of the new LA Angels in 1961, and then to his last ball game on their opening day, 1961. In his last days Cobb spent some time with the old movie comedian Joe E. Brown, talking about the choices Cobb had made in his life. He told Brown that he felt that he had made mistakes, and that he would do things differently if he could. He had played hard and lived hard all his life, and had no friends to show for it at the end, and he regretted it. Publicly, however, Cobb claimed not to have any regrets: "I've been lucky. I have no right to be regretful of what I did" (Newsweek, July 31, 1961, 54). He checked into Emory Hospital for the last time in June 1961, bringing with him a paper bag with a million or so dollars in securities and his Luger pistol. This time his first wife, Charlie, his son Jimmy and other family members came to be with him for his final days. His final day came a month later, July 17, 1961. His funeral was perhaps the saddest event associated with Cobb. From all of baseball, the sport that he had dominated for over 20 years, baseball's only representatives were three old players, Ray Schalk, Mickey Cochrane, Nap Rucker, along with Sid Keener from the Hall of Fame. Also there were his first wife, Charlie, his two daughters, his surviving son, Jimmy, his two sons-in-law, his daughter-in-law, Mary Dunn Cobb, and her two children. He had outlived many of his contemporaries, had alienated most of the others, and a lot of them were glad that he was finally dead. The sparse attendance was in great contrast to the hundreds of thousands of mourners who had turned out at Yankee Stadium and St. Patrick's Cathedral to bid farewell to Cobb's great rival, Babe Ruth, in 1948. In his will, Cobb left a quarter of his estate to the Cobb Educational Fund, and the rest of his reputed $11 million he distributed among his children and grandchildren. Cobb is interred in the Royston, Georgia town cemetery. The Stump autobiography came out a few months later to take advantage of the publicity surrounding his death, and sold well for the four years that it was in print. Despite Cobb's unpleasantness, the book (Cobb: A Biography) painted Ty in a sympathetic light. Thirty years later, however, Stump extensively revised the book, including his own experience with Cobb and capturing the man who was so disliked by so many of his contemporaries. In 1994 the writing of the book was used as the basis for a film starring Tommy Lee Jones as Cobb. Efforts to create a Ty Cobb Memorial in Royston failed, primarily because most of the artifacts from his life were in Cooperstown, and the Georgia town was too remote to make a memorial worthwhile. The building erected is now Royston City Hall. However, on July 17, 1998, on the 37th anniversary of his death, the Ty Cobb Museum opened its doors in Royston. The time had become right to honor the man in his own hometown.

Records and achievements

- Highest lifetime major-league batting average (.366)
- Most career batting titles (12)
- Most career steals of home (54)
- Second in career hits (4,189 – first in AL and first when retired)
- Second in career runs scored (2,246 – first in AL and first when retired)
- Third in career steals (892 – first when retired)
- Stole second, third, and home after reaching base on 6 separate occasions
- Led the American League in hits 8 times
- Led the American League in runs scored 5 times
- Scored 100 runs 11 times in his career
- Reached 1,000 hit level by the age of 24 -- the youngest of any major league player
- Batted under .320 only once in his career -- his first season
- Batted over .400 three times (1911, 1912 & 1922)
- Batted over .320 for 23 straight seasons
- Had two consecutive game hitting streaks of 35 games or more (35 in 1917 and 40 in 1911), the only player to do so; his two streaks rank 6th and 11th on the all-time list; (George Sisler had streaks of 41 and 34 games)
- Five hitting streaks of 20+ games: 40, 35, 25, 21, and 21.
- One of only two people to hit a home run before his 20th birthday and after his 40th birthday (the other is Rusty Staub)
- After subtracting home runs, Cobb drove in more of his teammates for RBI, 1,843, than any other player.
- Won the prestigious Triple Crown in 1909
- First player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame
- In 1999, he ranked number 3 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Regular season stats

Miscellaneous

- The grunge band Soundgarden has a song called "Ty Cobb".
- In the movie Field of Dreams, the character of Shoeless Joe (Ray Liotta) remarked that Ty Cobb wanted to play at the field. Joe further remarked that, "...none of us could stand the son of a bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!" Revenge for 1911, coincidental or otherwise.
- Homer Simpson consoles his son Bart upon the death of Krusty the Clown by saying, "Don't worry, son. I'm sure he's up in heaven right now, laughing it up with all the other celebrities: John Dillinger, Ty Cobb, Joseph Stalin... (sigh) I wish I were dead."
- ESPN's "Page 2" selected Cobb as the "ultimate sports villain."
- Cobb once broke up a Rube Waddell no-hitter with a bunt single.
- The Detroit Tigers have retired five of their players' numbers -- 2 (Charlie Gehringer, 5 (Hank Greenberg), 6 (Al Kaline), 16 (Hal Newhouser), and 23 (Willie Horton). These numbers hang on the wall of Comerica Park, along with Cobb's name, a way of "retiring his number" even though he played before uniform numbers were worn.
- Ty Cobb faced pitcher Walter Johnson more times than any other batter-pitcher matchup in baseball history. Cobb also got the first hit allowed in Johnson's career. After Johnson hit Detroit's Ossie Vitt with a pitch in August 1915, seriously injuring him, Cobb realized that Johnson was fearful of hitting opponents. He used this knowledge to his advantage, by standing closer to the plate.
- On the flip side of the above, Cobb's teammate Sam Crawford stated in the book The Glory of Their Times that he and Johnson were friendly, and sometimes in an out-of-reach game Johnson would let up on Crawford, who would smack the ball, and bear down all the harder on Cobb, and that his relatively good success against Johnson mystified and irked the highly competitive Cobb.
- In that same article, Crawford stated that his choice for "best ever" player was Honus Wagner, not Cobb. His assessment of Cobb on a personal level seemed tinged not with resentment, but with sadness, at the way Cobb isolated himself and distrusted most everyone, especially northerners.
- Ty Cobb has several Georgia hospitals named after him, along with the Ty Cobb Healthcare System.
- The movie Cobb is based on him, specifically on an article that his co-biographer Al Stump wrote posthumously, about a perilous weekend he spent with Cobb during a blizzard at Cobb's Lake Tahoe residence.
- Shortly after his death, Cobb's body was on display in Georgia. But due to vandalism, it was closed.
- Cobb was dressed in his baseball suit at his funeral.
See also

- List of major league players with 2,000 hits
References

- Charles Alexander, Ty Cobb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
- Richard Bak, Ty Cobb: His Tumultuous Life and Times (Dallas, Tex.: Taylor, 1994).
- Al Stump, Cobb: A Biography (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin, 1994).
-
External links

- [http://ngeorgia.com/people/cobbt.html Ty Cobb, the Georgia Peach] Biography of the baseball great from [http://ngeorgia.com About North Georgia]
-
- [http://www.thebaseballpage.com/past/pp/cobbty/default.htm The Baseball Page]
- [http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/cobb_ty.htm Cobb's page at the Baseball Hall of Fame]
- [http://www.tycobb.org TyCobb.org]- The Unofficial Home of Ty Cobb
- [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=210 Find-A-Grave profile for Ty Cobb] Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty Cobb, Ty ja:タイ・カッブ

Zack Wheat

Zachary Davis Wheat (May 23, 1888 - March 11, 1972) was a left-handed Major League Baseball outfielder. A consistent hitter through his career, he still holds many Dodger franchise records. Born in Hamilton, Missouri, Wheat made his major league debut in 1909 with the Brooklyn Superbas (later renamed the Dodgers and Robins) and played his first full season in 1910. Over the following decade, he established himself as a steady hitter, regularly batting .300 and placing in the league's top ten in doubles, triples, home runs and RBI. In 1918 Wheat won the National League batting champion, with an average of .335, although, amazingly, he hit no home runs. Wheat's career took off in the 1920s, however. From 1920 to 1925, Wheat hit .320 or higher every season, hit 14 or more home runs four times, drove in 100 runs twice and posted an on base percentage of .400 or more three times. Wheat moved to the Philadelphia Athletics in 1927 and retired after the season. He finished with 2884 hits, 132 home runs, 1289 runs, 1248 RBI, 205 stolen bases and a .317 batting average. He also holds the Dodger franchise records for hits, doubles, triples and total bases. Wheat was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1959.

External links

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- [http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/wheat_zack.htm Baseball Hall of Fame] Wheat, Zack Wheat, Zack Wheat, Zack Wheat, Zack Wheat, Zack Wheat, Zack

Jimmie Foxx

James Emory Foxx (October 22 1907 – July 21 1967) was an American first baseman in Major League Baseball who was, up until Mark McGwire's glory days in the late 1990s, the most prolific right-handed power hitter to ever play the sport. Foxx was the second major league player to hit 500 career home runs, and at age 32 years, 11 months, and two days, is still the youngest ever to reach that mark. Although Foxx's name appears both as Jimmy Foxx and Jimmie Foxx in newspaper accounts, box scores, baseball cards, and other records, Foxx generally signed his name "Jimmie." Born in Sudlersville, Maryland, Foxx (nicknamed "Double X" and "The Beast") played baseball in high school and dropped out to join a minor league team managed by former Philadelphia Athletics great "Home Run" Baker. Foxx had hoped to pitch or play third base, but since the team was short on catchers, Foxx moved behind the plate. He immediately drew interest from the Athletics and New York Yankees. Foxx signed with the A's and made his major league debut in 1925 at age 17. The A's catching duties were already capably filled by future Hall of Famer Mickey Cochrane, so by 1927, Foxx was splitting time between catching, first base, and the outfield. In 1929, installed as the A's regular first baseman, Foxx had his breakthrough year, batting .354 and hitting 33 home runs. In 1932, Foxx hit 58 home runs, which stood as the single-season record for a right-handed batter for 56 years until Mark McGwire hit 70 in 1998. He followed up in 1933 by winning the Triple Crown with a batting average of .356, 163 RBIs, and 48 home runs. He won back-to-back MVP honors in 1932 and 1933. When the Great Depression hit, A's owner Connie Mack softened the blow to his pocketbook by selling off some of his star players. In 1936, Mack sold Foxx's contract to the Boston Red Sox for $150,000 following a contract dispute. Foxx played six years in Boston, including a spectacular 1938 season in which he hit 50 home runs, drove in 175 runs, batted .349, won his third MVP award, and narrowly missed winning the Triple Crown. In 1939 he hit .360, his 2nd all-time best annual batting average. Foxx's skills diminished significantly after 1941. Some sources attribute this to a drinking problem, while others attribute it to a sinus condition. He split the 1942 season between the Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, playing mostly a reserve role. He sat out the 1943 season and appeared only in 15 games in 1944, mostly as a pinch hitter. He wound up his career with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1945 as a jack of all trades, filling in at first and third, pinch hitting, and even pitching 9 games, compiling a surprising 1-0 record and 1.59 ERA over 22 2/3 innings. Interestingly, the man who was so often called the right-handed Babe Ruth throughout his career was the opposite of Ruth in this regard as well. Ruth began his big-league career as a pitcher; Foxx ended his big-league career as one. Jimmie Foxx finished his 20-year, 2317-game career with 534 home runs, 1922 runs batted in, and a .325 batting average. He won a total of three MVP awards. His 12 consecutive seasons with 30 or more home runs was a major league record broken by Barry Bonds in 2004. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951. At the end of his career, his 534 home runs placed him second only to Ruth on the all-time list, and first among right-handed hitters, positions he retained for some 26 years. Foxx was one of the most feared sluggers of his era. Lefty Gomez once said, "He (Jimmie Foxx) has muscles in his hair." In 1937, Foxx hit a ball into the upper deck at Yankee Stadium in New York, a very difficult feat due to the distance and to the angle of the stands. Gomez was the pitcher who gave it up, and when asked how far it went, he said, "I don't know, but I do know it took somebody 45 minutes to go up there and get it back." A series of bad investments left Foxx broke by 1958. He worked as a minor league manager and coach after his playing days ended, including managing the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Tom Hanks' character Jimmy Dugan in the movie A League of Their Own was largely based on Foxx, but the producers took a number of liberties in creating the role. Foxx died at age 59 in Miami, Florida, apparently by choking to death on a bone. He is buried at Flagler Memorial Park in Miami, Florida. A statue of Foxx was erected in his hometown on October 25, 1997. In 1999, he ranked number 15 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was a nominee for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
See also

- Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame
- Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie Foxx, Jimmie

Mansencôme

Mansencôme est une commune française, située dans le département du Gers et la région Midi-Pyrénées.

Géographie

Histoire

Administration

Démographie

Lieux et monuments

Personnalités liées à la commune

Voir aussi

- Communes du Gers

Liens externes

- [http://www.ign.fr/affiche_rubrique.asp?rbr_id=1087&CommuneId=33681 Mansencôme sur le site de l'Institut Géographique National]
- [http://www.recensement.insee.fr/RP99/rp99/co_navigation.co_page?nivgeo=C&codgeo=32230&theme=ALL&typeprod=ALL&lang=FR&quelcas=LISTE Mansencôme sur le site de l'Insee]
- [http://www.quid.fr/communes.html?mode=query&req=Mansencôme Mansencôme sur le site du Quid]
- [http://www.lion1906.com/Pages/ResultatProximiteCoord.php?RadLat1=0.765714727985594&RadLong1=0.00594381573072267 Communes les plus proches de Mansencôme]
- [http://www.lion1906.com/Pages/ResultatLocalisation.php?InseeVille=320230 Localisation de Mansencôme sur une carte de France]
- [http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&latitude=43.8722222222222&longitude=.340555555555556&zoom=8 Plan de Mansencôme sur Mapquest] Mansencome

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