Monday, October 2, 2006

(Written on Sunday, Oct. 1, 2006)...

11 wins or you go home...

One of these teams will win 11 games in the postseason and will win the World Series: the Yankees, Twins, Tigers, A's, Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers or Padres. You could win as many as 10 and go home without the championship. The 2006 major league baseball playoffs are here...

There have been several one-game playoffs over the years and at the top of that last is "the shot heard 'round the world" when the Giants Bobby Thomson put a stake in the heart of the Brooklyn Dodgers to get his team into the 1951 World Series. What happened on October 2nd, 1978 has to be a close second...

Were you happy that day 28 years ago ? It depends which side of the fence you're on. If you're a Yankee fan it was a game that goes down in the annals of Yankee history. If you're a proud member of Red Sox Nation you had a new name to add to your hate vocabulary: Bucky "Bleepin'" Dent. Dent's 7th inning home run put the Yankees ahead to stay, on the road to their 1978 world championship. Mike Torrez who served up the pitch to Dent would go down as one of the all-time Red Sox goats...

Mike Torrez, now 59, finally got over the game and when last seen had a corporate logo business. Bucky Dent, 55, runs a baseball school in Delray Beach (FL)...

Ten Timeline Memories...

1. [1946] With a cast of unknowns, "Faraway Hill" on the Dumont Network becomes the 1st TV soap opera...
2. [1967] Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first black Supreme Court justice...
3. [1968] Bob Gibson strikes out a World Series record 17 batters as the Cardinals beat the Tigers in game one of the series...
4. [1970] A plane carrying 30 members of the Wichita State football team crashes. All 30 players are killed...
5. [1980] 30-year old heavyweight champ Larry Holmes defends his title with an 11th round TKO of 38-year old Muhammad Ali...
6. [1983] Future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski goes 1 for 4 in his final game for the Red Sox (Yaz, elected to the Hall of Fame in 1989 would finish with a .285 batting average, 3,419 hits and 452 home runs)...
7. [1985] Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." tour ends in Los Angeles (CA)...
8. [1994] For the 1st time in NFL history, father and son coaches face each other with Don Shula's Miami Dolphins beating his son's Cincinnati Bengals...
9. [1996] Mark Fuhrman is given 3 years' probation and fined $200 after pleading no contest to perjury for denying at O.J. Simpson's criminal trail that he had used a racial slur...
10. [2002] A man is shot and killed in a grocery store parking lot in Wheaton (MD), the 1st victim in a series of sniper attacks in the Washington (DC) area that will leave 10 dead...

Debuted on this date: 1950] Charles M. Schulz' "Peanuts" comic strip...1962] Johnny Carson as host of "The Tonight Show"...1965] The Who debuts on "Shindig"...

"Happy Trails": 1985] Rock Hudson dies from AIDS at 59...1998] Gene Autry, Hollywood's "Singing Cowboy" at 91 from lymphoma...

Premiered on this date: 1953] Edward R. Murrow's "Person to Person" starts an 8-year run...1955] "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (it will run sporadically on and off until 1986)...1959] "The Twilight Zone" (will run for 5 years)...1961] "Ben Casey" (for 5 years)...

"Happy Birthday...happy birthday...

Kelly Ripa (36), Lorraine Bracco (52), Sting (55), Donna Karan (58), Don McLean (61) and Rex Reed (68)...

Timeline Countdown: 19 days until the World Series, 90 days left until 2007 and 95 days until the NFL playoffs.

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