ON THIS DATE

1919: Worldwide flu epidemic cancels deciding game of Stanley Cup Final with Montreal Canadiens (NHL) & Seattle Metropolitans (PCHA) tied at 2-2-1.

1930: golfer Bobby Jones starts his Grand Slam season by winning the Southeastern Open by 13strokes over Horton Smith at the Forest Hills-Ricker Golf Course in Atlanta, Georgia

1954: Gordie Howe scores nine seconds into a game, a Stanley Cup record, and adds another goal and an assist in a 4-3 double-overtime victory over Toronto in Game 5 of the semifinals.

1967: Rick Barry’s 47points help the San Francisco Warriors set a single-game franchise record for points in a 143-136 win over the St. Louis Hawks in Game 2 of the Western Division Finals.

1970: Car dealer Bud Selig buys Seattle Pilots for $10.8million and moves club to Milwaukee (Brewers)

1972: MLB players stage first ever collective strike.

1985: No. 8Villanova becomes lowestseeded team to win NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, beating heavily favored Georgetown, 84-75.

1989: A. Bartlett Giamatti replaces Peter Ueberroth as 7th commissioner of Major League Baseball. (Giamatti would die five months later of a heart attack.)

1990: The Stanford women’s basketball team captures its first national championship when Jennifer Azzi and Katy Steding led the Tara VanDerveer-coached Cardinal to an 88-81 win over Auburn.

1992: NHL players begin first strike in 75-year history. (A settlement came 10 days later.)

1993: Alan Kulwicki, the reigning NASCAR champ, dies in a plane crash while traveling to a race in Bristol, Conn.

1996: The A’s makeshift season opener is like no other — who else has an Elvis impersonator on hand to kick things off? The A’s “hosted” the first major league game at a minor league park in nearly 40 years — when the Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Phillies in Jersey City, New Jersey. in 1957. The Coliseum was undergoing repairs for the return of the Raiders.

1996: Umpire John McSherry, 51, suffers a fatal heart attack while working the plate on Opening Day in Cincinnati.

2016: The Golden State Warriors lost at home for the first time in 54games, a record-breaking streak that started in January 2015.

2018: It was “Sho Time” in Oakland as Japanese phenom Shohei Ohtani baffled the A’s in his major league pitching debut. Ohtani, a dual-threat player who was the Angels’ designated hitter in the first three games at the Coliseum, was touched by Matt Chapman’s three-run homer and not much else on his way to the 7-4 win.