RIP Steve Bechler, Gary Carter, and other stories.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue is pleased to present a Cubs-centric look at baseball’s colorful past. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow the various narrative paths.
“Maybe I called it wrong, but it’s official.” — Tom Connolly, HoF Umpire.
Today in Baseball History:
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1952 – Hall of Famer Honus Wagner, 77, retires after 40 years as a major league player and coach. He receives a pension from the Pirates and the number 33 he wore as a coach will be the first to be retired in Pittsburgh. (1,2)
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1956 – Major League owners announce that the players’ pension fund will receive 60 percent of World Series and All-Star Game radio and TV revenues. (2)
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1980 – While taping separate interviews at KNBC-TV studios in Burbank, CA, Giants coach Jim Lefebvre and Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda trade punches after a brief argument, leaving Lasorda with a bloody lip. Lefebvre had been a Dodger coach in 1979 until he was fired by Lasorda. (2)
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2003 – His body temperature having soared to 108 degrees, Orioles 23-year-old pitching prospect Steve Bechler dies of multi-organ failure after a spring training workout. Early speculation is the expectant father’s death may have been caused by ephedrine, a dietary supplement linked to heat stroke and heart attacks. (1) Malcolm Allen of SABR wrote this up.
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2015 – U.S. District Court Judge Darrin Gayles sentences Anthony Bosch, the man behind the Biogenesis PED scandal, to four years in jail for masterminding the operation that led to a dozen major league players receiving suspensions of 50 games or more. Ironically, the poster boy for the guilty players, Alex Rodriguez, issues a handwritten apology to fans today as he is about to head to spring training with the Yankees following the end of his suspension, but the text does not go into any detail besides expressing general regret for his trespasses. (1) More about this here.
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2022 – After a short deliberation, the jury in the trial of former Angels employee Eric Kay, accused of supplying the drugs that led to the overdose death of P Tyler Skaggs in 2019, returns a guilty verdict. Kay now faces a minimum jail sentence of 20 years. (1) The straight dope from the DoJ.
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Cubs birthdays: Carl Lundgren*, Ray Harrell, Don Eaddy, Don Landrum, Bobby Darwin, Barry Foote, Mike Hubbard, Eduardo Sánchez.
Today in history:
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374 – Ninth recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet
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600 – Pope Gregory the Great decrees saying “God bless You” is the correct response to a sneeze.
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1568 – Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II agrees to pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire for peace.
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1776 – First volume of Edward Gibbon’s seminal work “The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire” published.
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1815 – Treaty of Ghent ratified by the US Senate and signed by President James Madison ending War of 1812, over a month after it was signed in Europe.
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1840 – American Charles Wilkes discovers Shackleton Ice Shelf, Antarctica.
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1876 – Sardines first canned by Julius Wolff in Eastport, Maine.
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1896 – First US newspaper comic strip, Richard Felton Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid,” is published in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal.
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1923 – Howard Carter opens the inner burial chamber of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb and finds the sarcophagus.
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1933 – US Senate accepts Blaine Act: ending prohibition.
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1969 – Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash record an album; it is never released****Yes it has been, at least in part. Here, enjoy a track:
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1978 – First Computer Bulletin Board System (Ward & Randy’s CBBS, Chicago).
Common sources:
*pictured.
Some of these items spread from site to site without being fact-checked, and that is why we ask for verifiable sources, in order to help correct the record.
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