ON THIS DATE
1921: Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Landis gives lifetime bans to eight players accused in the Black Sox scandal despite their acquittal by a Chicago jury. (Say it ain’t so.)
1923: MLB cancels all games following the death of President Warren G. Harding in San Francisco on Aug. 2. (Heart attack, age 57.)
1936: Jesse Owens wins the 100 meters — the first of his four gold medals — in Adolf Hitler’s face.
1944: Tommy Brown, 16 years and 8 months old, plays shortstop for his hometown Brooklyn Dodgers. It’s war time, but he plays until 1953. Best stat: He’s still alive at 92.
1948: Satchel Paige finally gets his chance — at 42, the Negro Leagues legend makes his first MLB start — and goes seven innings to win for Cleveland.
1960: For the only time in MLB history, teams exchange managers as Detroit trades Jimmy Dykes (44-52) for Cleveland’s Joe Gordon (49-46). (Usually they just exchange lineup cards.)
1968: Rod Beck, born in Burbank, would have been 52 today.
1977: Am I the only one here who’s going to wish San Mateo-born Tom Brady a happy 43rd? Thought so.
1979: Sam Snead, at 67 years, 2 months and 7 days, becomes the oldest player to make the cut in a major, shooting 71 in the second round of the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills.
1986: Willie McCovey is inducted into the Hall Fame along with Bobby Doerr and Ernie Lombardi.
1987: Pitcher Joe Niekro is ejected in the fourth inning after being caught with a nail file on the mound. His story — he was filing his nails on the bench and absentmindedly put the file in his back pocket
— does not stick with league president Bobby Brown and Niekro is suspended for 10 games.
1990: The PGA Tour announces it will not hold tournaments at golf clubs that have all-white memberships or show any other signs of discrimination. (This qualifies as progress in 1990!)
2003: Annika Sorenstam completes a career Grand Slam at the Women’s British Open, beating Se Ri Pak by a stroke in a thrilling head-to-head showdown.
2012: American swimmer Michael Phelps rallies to win the 100-meter butterfly for his third gold of the London Games and No. 17 of his career.
2015: Adrian Beltre hits for the cycle for the third time in his career, the first player to do so since Babe Herman in the 1930s and only the fourth in MLB history.