On this date
MAY 26
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.
1956: Althea Gibson beats Angela Mortimer, 6-0, 12-10, to win the French Open. Gibson is the first black women to win a major tennis championship. Lewis Hoad beats Sven Davidson 6-4, 8-6, 6-3 to win the men’s singles title.
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 pulls out an improbable 108-107 win over Detroit in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
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.
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.
2013: Tony Kanaan ends years of frustration by finally winning the Indianapolis 500. Kanaan drives past Ryan HunterReay 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. 2017: The World Boxing Association suspend two judges after their scoring of the Hassan N’Dam and Ryota Murata WBA middleweight title fight on May 20 in Japan. Gustavo Padilla from Panama and Hubert Earle from Canada are suspended for six months. The two judges saw N’Dam win the bout 116-112 and 115-113. The third had Murata up 117-110. After the bout, WBA President Gilberto Mendoza, who also says he scored it 117-110 in favor of Murata, calls for a rematch.