A May(s) Day To Remember...
Willie Mays returned to New York the place he called home before being transplanted to San Francisco 14 years earlier in 1958. On May 11th, 1972 the "Say Hey Kid" was traded to the Mets for righthanded pitcher Charlie Williams and $50,000 in cash. This was a pit stop for Willie on his way to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame and being traded for a .500 pitcher and cash was an insult to one of baseball's greatest players. That didn't stop Met fans from being ecstatic with the reality of seeing #24 playing for their team and they came out in droves to see him at Shea...
Mays didn't disappoint the fans in his first game as a Met as he homered to help the Mets beat, who else, the Giants, 5-4. Mays led off that game playing first base, went 1 for 2, drove in a run and scored 2. Willie would play less than half a season in each of his two seasons with the Amazin's and his diminshed skills would produce a meager .238 average and 14 home runs. The end was near for the future Hall of Famer but he made it to another world series in 1973 and his final at-bat was a hitless appearance as a pinch hitter in Game 3 against Oakland, a series the Mets would lose...
Having seen Willie Mays come up to the Giants as a rookie in 1951 and witness his greatness over the years, it was painful watching him mis-judge routine fly balls in his final year with the Mets. Sadly Mays joined the ranks of Rickey Henderson, Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Thomas "Hitman" Hearns in staying too long...
More May 11 Memories...
1647] Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam (which will become New York) to become governor (he picks out a plot of land in Manhattan and declares it "Peter Stuyvesant Town". That's for the New Yorkers in the audience)...
1812] The Waltz is introduced into English ballrooms and most observers consider it "disgusting" (wait till they see the Hucklebuck)...
1947] B.F. Goodrich Company introduces the tubeless tire (creating a whole new sport for kids at the ole fishing hole)...
1949] Think "King and I"....Siam changes its name to Thailand...
1949] The 1st Polaroid camera sells for $89.95 in New York City ("but for you, $75")...
1957] Buddy Holly and the Crickets audition for "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" but are rejected (Arthur is heard mumbling backstage: "they just don't have any humility" and somewhere Julius La Rosa had a big smile on his face)...
1964] Mary Wells is #1 with the Smokey Robinson song, "My Guy"...
1965] The Byrds make their TV debut with "Mr. Tambourine Man" on NBC-TV's "Hullabaloo"...
1968] "MacArthur Park" replaces Sominex when Richard Harris releases the single...
1969] The British comedy troupe Monty Python is formed...
1972] Making an appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show", John Lennon says his phone is being tapped by the FBI (whose phone wasn't ?)...
1972] Willie Mays is traded to the Mets (feature story)...
1972] The Boston Bruins beat the Rangers to win their second Stanley Cup in 3 years. No surprise here - Bobby Orr is the MVP...
1974] Steely Dan's "Rikki, Don't Lose That Number" is released...
1976] The long-running TV medical drama Marcus Welby, M.D. ends after 8 years (Robert Young played Dr. Welby. The show also starred James Brolin, Elena Verdugo, Anne Baxter and Sharon Gless)...
1977] Braves owner Ted Turner puts on a uniform and manages his team for one game in an attempt to stop Atlanta's 16-game losing streak and guess what ? After the game they had a 17-game losing streak (nice work Ted)...
1981] Reggae musician Bob Marley dies of cancer in a Miami hospital at 36...
1981] Kim Carnes has "Bette Davis Eyes". She also has a #1 hit...
1984] Sparky Anderson's Detroit Tigers beat the California Angels to lift their record to 26-4, the best start in major league history before or since (the Tigers breeze to the AL title and a world series win over San Diego)...
1985] Madonna's "Crazy For You". She's also #1...
1988] A star-studded concert is held at Carnegie Hall in celebration of Irving Berlin's 100th birthday. Performers include: Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Marilyn Horne and others. Irving did not attend but watched it on TV...
1989] The Yankees trade future Hall of Famer Dave Winfield to the Angels for pitcher Mike Witt who will make Yankee fans add an "sh" to his name and remove the "w"...
1989] The final episode of "Dynasty" is aired (the show started on January 12, 1981)...
1991] "Hey Joey"...After a heckler calls him "Joey", a name he dislikes and then makes references to his problems with alcohol, Albert Belle goes off and throws a ball, hitting the offender in the chest from about 15 feet away (the outfielder gets fined and suspended for one week, the fan who was sitting at field level winds up in the upper deck)...
1996] An Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 catches fire shortly after take off from Miami and crashes into the Everglades killing all 110 aboard (I can't think of a worse place to crash)...
1997] The Deep Blue IBM computer defeats Garry Kasparov to win a 6-game chess match between man and machine in New York (lacking good sportsmanship, Kasparov takes a sledge hammer to Deep Blue)...
1999] For the 1st time in the 20th century 2 starting pitchers share the same name as Bobby (M) Jones faces the Mets' Bobby (J) Jones and they both wind up on the Mets at the same time...
2004] A video on an al-Qaida linked website shows the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg, kidnapped earlier in Iraq...
2004] The Lakers Kobe Bryant pleads not guilty in a Colorado court to rape (prosecutors later drop the case but Mrs. Kobe winds up with a nice multi-million dollar ring)...
2004] "I'm a Yankee, uh...Red Sox doodle dandy..." Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez misses a game to become a U.S. citizen but leads his team out in the next game waving an American flag with Neil Diamond's "America" playing on the P.A. system...
[To ensure accuracy of dates and content, multiple reference sources are used in the dateline]...
"E-mails, we get e-mails...we get lots and lots of e-mails"...
Nice to hear from Jay Clark about the memory of "The Day The Music" died at WABC. Jay was the operations manager when that format change happened on May 10, 1982. Yes Jay, the 24 years have really flown by...
Paul Power asked who the 3-6 PM jock was in the original WABC lineup. It was Jack Carney. I put Jack in the lineup earlier and omitted Farrell Smith who was on from 1-3 PM. Thanks for spotting that Paul...
Harvey Mednick's goose-bumps had baby goose-bumps when he read about the WABC anniversary but that was probably from the globally-cooled California air. Harvey mentioned Rick Sklar's trip to KABC to get the birds-eye view of a how a good talk radio station should sound and no doubt applied some of that knowledge at WABC...
Happy Birthday To...
1927] Mort Sahl (still cranky after all these years)...
1941] Eric Burdon (the Animals, War, solo)...
1959] Former MTV VJ Diva Martha Quinn...
1963] Natasha Richardson...
[Today is the 131st day of 2006 with 234 days remaining in the year and 18 days until Memorial Day]
