ON THIS DATE
1892: Alexander Cartwright, recognized as the inventor of modern baseball — moreso than Abner Doubleday — dies at 72. (Doubleday died six months later, but the game lived on. Til now.)
1901: Cy Young of the Boston Red Sox wins his 300th game. (He will win only 211 more.)
1938: Ron Fairly, a good ballplayer whose great misfortune as a broadcaster was being the first guy after Hank Greenwald, is born in Macon, Ga. (died 2019)
1945: Tommy Holmes of the Boston Braves goes hitless, ending his hitting streak at 37 games, an NL record until Pete Rose broke it in 1978.
1949: Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Larry Doby become the first Black players to appear in the MLB All-star Game.
1951: Yankees pitcher Allie Reynolds holds Cleveland hitless, beating Bob Feller 1-0.
1955: Stan Musial hits the first pitch of the 12th inning for a home run to end the Allstar Game. (At that hour of night, everyone agrees he’s The Man.)
1970: Jack Nicklaus wins his second British Open, beating Doug Sanders by one stroke in an 18-hole playoff at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland.
1971: Kristi Yamaguchi is born in Hayward,
Calif.
1979: In the most ill-fated promotion in baseball history, thousands of fans overrun the Comiskey Park field during “Disco Demolition Night” and cause the Chicago White Sox to forfeit the second game of a doubleheader after losing the first. (Tony La Russa hasn’t yet become White Sox manager — he will in three weeks — or he’d have blown a gasket.)
1990: Melido Perez of the White Sox pitches a six-inning no-hitter, one inning longer than his brother Pascual pitched two years earlier. (If the next brother goes seven innings, the family will have two complete no-hitters!)
2005: Miguel Tejada of the Baltimore Orioles — it’s his first season after leaving the cheap A’s — homers off John Smoltz to open the scoring for the American League and win MVP of the All-star Game.
2008: Bobby Murcer, the man for whom the Giants traded Bobby Bonds, dies of brain cancer at 62
2008: Greg Maddux becomes the oldest pitcher in big league history to steal a base at 42 years and 89 days. (Pitcher was slow to the plate; catcher was slower behind it.)
2012: Every country competing at the London Games includes female athletes for the first time in Olympic history after Saudi Arabia agrees to send two women to compete in judo and track and field.