On THIS DATE
1925: In Detroit’s 8-1 win over the Chicago White Sox, Ty Cobb becomes the first to collect 1,000 career extra-base hits. He finished his career with 1,139.
1959: Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches 12 perfect innings before losing to the Milwaukee Braves, 1-0 in the 13th on an error, a sacrifice and Joe Adcock’s double.
1985: Danny Sullivan misses almost certain disaster and holds off Mario Andretti and the rest of the fastest field in auto racing to win the Indianapolis 500. On the 119th lap, Sullivan spins his racer 360 degrees, narrowly avoiding both the wall and Andretti.
1987: Boston’s Larry Bird steals an inbounds pass from Detroit’s Isiah Thomas and feeds over his shoulder to a cutting Dennis Johnson for the winning basket as the Celtics pull out an improbable 108-107 win over Detroit in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final.
1988: The Edmonton Oilers, with MVP Wayne Gretzky leading the way, beat the Boston Bruins 6-3 to complete a four-game sweep and win their fourth Stanley Cup in five years.
1991: Rick Mears passes Michael Andretti with 12 laps to go and wins his fourth Indianapolis 500, by 3.1 seconds. Mears joins A.J. Foyt and Al Unser as the only four-time winners.
1994: Haiti’s Ronald Agenor wins the longest match since the French Open adopted the tiebreaker. Agenor takes the 71st and final game of a second-round match with David Prinosil of Germany. His five-hour, 6-7 (4-7), 6-7 (2-7), 6-3, 6-4, 14-12 victory involves the most games in a French Open match since 1973.
2000: New Jersey finishes the greatest comeback in a conference final when the Devils win the last three games of the series, beating the Flyers 2-1 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final. Patrik Elias scores his second goal of the game with 2:32 to play for the win.
2004: Andy Roddick loses at the French Open — to Frenchman Olivier Mutis, who is ranked 125th. With the five-set loss, Roddick joins Andre Agassi and eight other compatriots on the way home, making it the first Grand Slam tournament in more than 30 years without a U.S. man in the third round.
2005: Americans Andy Roddick, James Blake and Vince Spadea fail to make it through the opening week at the French Open. For the second year in a row — and the second time at a Grand Slam event in more than 30 years — no American man makes it out of the second round. 2008: Syracuse wins its 10th NCAA men’s lacrosse championship, beating defending champion Johns Hopkins 13-10 behind three goals from Dan Hardy. The crowd of 48,970 at Foxborough, Mass., is the largest to see an NCAA championship outdoors in any sport — the BCS football championship game isn’t an NCAA event.
2012: Toronto FC ends its MLS record nine-game losing streak to open a season with a 1-0 win over the Philadelphia Union on a late goal by Danny Koevermans.
2013: Tony Kanaan ends years of frustration by finally winning the Indianapolis 500. Kanaan drives past Ryan Hunter-reay on a restart with three laps to go, then coasts across the finish line under yellow when defending race winner Dario Franchitti crashes far back in the field. The Brazilian finished second in 2004 and twice finished third.
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Norman Chad’s column will return next week.
Sports editor: Bill Douglas, 518-454-5578, bdouglas@timesunion.com
ewing at home after coronavirus diagnosis
Former Knicks great Patrick Ewing was released from the hospital after testing positive for coronavirus, his son said Monday.
“My father is now home and getting better,” Patrick Ewing Jr. tweeted.
Ewing Sr., who currently coaches the Georgetown University men’s basketball team, announced Friday that he had tested positive.
Georgetown said Ewing, 57, is the only person affiliated with the basketball team to test positive so far. More basketball: Europe’s top basketball league canceled the remainder of its season because of the coronavirus pandemic, saying health concerns had to be paramount despite numerous attempts to find ways to resume play. The Euroleague, which is composed of 18 teams across 10 European nations, had been suspended since March 12.
Golf: Turner Sports said the Sunday telecast of “The Match: Champions for Charity” attracted an average of 5.8 million viewers across four of its networks. Turner says it was the most-watched golf telecast in cable TV history. It said the previous record was 4.9 million viewers on ESPN at the 2010 Masters, the year tiger woods returned to golf for the first time following an infidelity scandal in his personal life.
Skiing: The Italian Winter Sports Federation made a formal request to postpone the 2021 alpine skiing world championships in Cortina d’ampezzo until March 2022. Considering the fallout in
Italy from the coronavirus pandemic, Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malago said “this is the best solution.” Soccer: The Women’s Super League, the top women’s soccer league in England, was canceled with immediate effect because of the coronavirus outbreak, with no decision reached on which teams have won the title and been relegated. obituary: oswaldo Alvarez, who coached Brazil at the past two Women’s World Cups, died in a Sao Paulo hospital on Monday. He was 63. Alvarez recently said he was getting treatment for liver cancer.