Unfortunate Events

On this day 49 years ago...

Top of the eighth at Metropolitan Stadium, June 20. Twins are in the field with two out, but White Sox have two on. Three-two count on Ron Santo. Pitch delivered. While two umpires try to determine whether Santo's swing went around, Dick Allen runs to third and Ken Henderson to second. Catcher Randy Hundley, forgetting about the full count, throws to the hot corner, which Eric Soderholm had left because in the third baseman's mind Santo had struck out as opposed to having walked. Ray Corbin, the pitcher, goes to argue with the home-plate umpire, and injures Hundley. Allen crosses the plate, but the run doesn't count; Santo struck out. The Twins win the game 3-2 but lose their catcher.

SOURCE: Nash, George, and Alan Zullo. The Sports Hall of Shame. New York: Pocket Books, 1987.

Learning More About '74

The Topps Heritage cards are out for this year, and as usual they're more or less in the style of the regular Topps cards from 49 years before. I looked at them on COMC, and some of the Baseball Flashbacks and News Flashbacks have a couple of things of which I wasn't aware regarding 1974. One of the News Flashbacks cards involves Daylight Saving Time being in place for pretty much the whole year, and another involves a low Dow Jones average.

The AP Sports Almanac for 1975 mentions a recession in its overview of the World Football League. This month, for much of which I haven't had my new laptop, I've been making time to write things down that I see in the almanac, though I hope I'm not damaging the book. In my usual haste, some of the things I've been writing for pretty much every sport are not completely legible and may have to be backed up by sources on the Internet. As of Thursday, I've gone through everything from angling and fishing to ice hockey. Jai alai is next, and maybe the name of a challenger on a 1973 episode of "To Tell the Truth" will be found there, a name that escapes me. All I know is the three who appeared on the program wore different uniforms.

It seems the Memphis Tams had a uniform scheme like that of the Oakland A's during the first Mausoleum era (the team's going through the second now), sporting seven color combinations for jersey and shorts, all except white jersey with yellow shorts and green jersey with white shorts. How do I know this? It's on bballjerseys.com. Basketball at long last has its own version of Dressed to the Nines, NHL Uniforms, and Gridiron Uniform Database. Click on the red Memphis icon, then "View Photos," then "Home and Road" or "Alternate" to see the Tams' uniforms.

Before They Were the Nuggets

The Denver Nuggets have become the second ABA team to win an NBA championship. They never won an ABA title, and neither did the five-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs.

Meanwhile, the Indiana Pacers and Brooklyn Nets have been the champs of the ABA (five times between them) but never the NBA.

The 1973-74 season was the franchise's last as the Denver Rockets, and it ended when they lost a tiebreaker for fourth place in the West and the playoff berth that came with it.

The score of the March 29 game at the Mile High City's small Auditorium was San Diego Conquistadors 131, Denver Rockets 111.

All-Star guard Ralph Simpson failed to average 20 points per game for the only time in a four-year span. He contributed 17 to the tiebreaker game.

Fellow guard Al Smith, in the middle of a five-year career in the ABA only, dished out 20 assists. He was also the league's assist leader with 619 in total and with 8.1 for each contest.

Center-forward Byron Beck, who had played at Denver University before joining the original Rockets, was entering an ebb in his career, and he was one of the two who scored 18.

The other, fellow center Dave Robisch, is determined by metrics developed much later to have had the best "offensive rating" in the entire league.

Rounding out the starting five was forward Julius Keye. Later in '74, he was traded to the Utah Stars, then to the Memphis Sounds, who waived him, and that was the end of his career.

Coming off the bench and spending the most time on the court was Steve Jones, a shooting guard who joined the team in mid-season. Less than a month after trading for Jones, the Rockets waived an All-Star at his position.

That was the controversial Warren Jabali (born Armstrong). Denver struggled in his absence, but he had apparently gone too far for the team's tastes by the time the All-Star Game was through.

Team ownership changed, head coach Alex Hannum was fired, Larry Brown replaced him, Jan van Breda Kolff was drafted, and the rechristened and re-energized Nuggets went 31-5 before the end of the year, 65-19 overall. Needless to say, the franchise became valuable enough to eventually bring into the NBA.