Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about football and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the football urban legends featured so far.

FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND: Jack Lambert was ejected from a game for “hitting a quarterback too hard.”

At the end of the classic John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there’s one of the most legendary lines in the history of cinema. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” I think of that when the legendary defense of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers is discussed, specifically the career of linebacker Jack Lambert.

In his book on the greatest linebackers in National Football League (NFL) history, Jonathan Rand described Lambert thusly:

It’s no knock on Jack Lambert to say the myth is bigger than the man. Lambert was, after all, on the light side for a middle linebacker. And the Lambert myth is so entertaining, so full of what both the bloodthirsty and romantics think pro football is all about, that only a killjoy would dare debunk it. And like many myths, those about Lambert contain some truth. So in the interest of truth – or should we say half truth? – the myth is a good place to start.

Very well-written by Rand, but at the risk of being a “killjoy,” I thought it would be fun to examine one of the many Lambert myths, specifically that he was ejected from a game once for “hitting a quarterback too hard.”
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: The Red Sox began playing “Sweet Caroline” in honor of a Red Sox employee who named her newborn daughter “Caroline” in 1998.

One of the coolest baseball musical traditions is the singing of the Neil Diamond hit “Sweet Caroline” during the 8th inning of Boston Red Sox games played at Fenway Park.

WHY the song is played during the 8th inning of Boston Red Sox games played at Fenway Park is a whole other story.

The song has nothing to do with Boston, so why the connection?
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about football and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the football urban legends featured so far.

FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND: The commissioner of the All-American Football Conference awarded Y.A. Tittle to the Baltimore Colts to promote balance in the league.

Y.A. Tittle was an outstanding quarterback prospect during his years at Louisiana State University.

In 1948, Tittle was drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft by the Detroit Lions with the sixth pick overall.

However, the Cleveland Browns of the All-American Football Conference (one of the more successful challengers to the National Football League) also selected him in the first round of the 1948 AAFC draft. In a great 2009 interview with Dennis Manoloff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Tittle explained why he decided to sign with the Cleveland Browns:

The first professional football game I ever saw, the Browns played in it. [Cleveland coach] Paul Brown had me flown in and the Browns treated me like a king. I watched the game from the sideline. I was overwhelmed. After it was over, coach Brown took me back to the hotel and I signed a contract. He told me the Browns thought Otto Graham would only play one more year, and that I could learn from him for one season. It wasn’t true about Otto, of course. He played for many years after that

Otto Graham, of course, was the legendary quarterback for the Browns, who at this point had already won the first three championships of the AAFC (and were on their way to winning their fourth).

Since Graham obviously DIDN’T retire, that led to an extraordinary measure by the commissioner of the AAFC, Jonas W. Ingram.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Eddie Stanky developed a unique way to score on a sacrifice fly that was later specifically banned by Major League Baseball.

Eddie Stanky is probably best known for the last team he played in the Majors, the St. Louis Cardinals, who he joined in 1952 as the player-manager (he became a full-time manager the next season).

He managed the team until 1955. He gained a good deal of press during that period, but he was already well known in the world of baseball, and not for his three All-Star appearances as a player. No, Stanky was well-known for being one of the most annoying baseball players ever.

And Stanky would not even deny it if asked about it – he knew that he was annoying, but he felt that doing so would be the best bet for his team to win. Occasionally his annoying actions went beyond annoying and entered into just flat out bad behavior (like when he tried to get his team at the time, the Brooklyn Dodgers, to refuse to let Jackie Robinson play for the team – perhaps non-coincidentally, 1947 was Stanky’s last year with the team), but for the most part they had a certain sort of charm to them.

For instance, the “Eddie Stanky Manuever” is what other players would call it when Stanky came up with the idea of “Hey, if I’m playing second base, why don’t I jump up and down to try to distract the batter?”

But what I wish to talk about here is another one of Stanky’s innovations, one that, while perhaps a little annoying to Major League Baseball (as they banned the practice) I think is actually pretty darn ingenious (and no wonder he was picked up as a manager – he had a good brain for baseball strategy).
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about basketball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the basketball urban legends featured so far.

BASKETBALL URBAN LEGEND: The Rochester Royals passed on Bill Russell in the 1956 NBA Draft because the Boston Celtics arranged for the Royals to get the Ice Capades.

On the day of the 1956 National Basketball Association (NBA) Draft, Boston Celtics general manager (and coach) Arnold “Red” Auerbach made one of the greatest trades in NBA history. He dealt All-Star Center Ed Macauley and rookie small forward Cliff Hagan (drafted by the Celtics in 1953 but never played for the team as he remained at the University of Kentucky for one more season and then spent two years in the military) to the St. Louis Hawks for University of San Francisco center Bill Russell, who had been selected with the second pick in the draft. Macauley and Hagan were both great players (they are both in the Basketball Hall of Fame), but Bill Russell was one of the greatest players of all-time and led the Celtics to a remarkable eleven championships in his thirteen seasons in the NBA (amusingly, one of the only years he failed to win the title was in 1958 when he and the Celtics were defeated in the NBA Finals by none other than Macauley and the Hawks, which still remains the only title in Hawks franchise history).

You might have noticed, though, that the trade was for Russell after he was taken with the second pick in the draft. The Rochester Royals had the first pick in the draft. Why didn’t they draft Russell? There is a legendary story explaining why they passed on Russell. Here is Auerbach telling the story to John Feinstein in Feinstein’s 2004 collection of Auerbach stories, Let Me Tell You a Story: A Lifetime in the Game:

‘So how’d you get them to not take Russell?’
Red smiled. I had set him up perfectly.
‘The Ice Capades,’ he said.
‘The Ice Capades?’
‘Sure. Walter Brown [the owner of the Celtics] was president of the Ice-Capades. I had him call Les Harrison, the owner in Rochester, and tell them he’d send the Ice Capades up there for a week if they didn’t draft Russell.’
‘So you got Bill Russell for the Ice-Capades?’
‘You got it.’

Auerbach told basically the same story to Terry Pluto for Pluto’s classic 1992 oral history of the early days of the NBA,
Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball

Listen, most people don’t know it, but we had assurances from Rochester that they would not take Russell. Lester Harrison was having trouble booking the Ice Capades. At one time, Walter Brown owned part of it. So Walter told Harrison, ‘If you pass on Russell, I’ll help you get the Ice Capades.’ That clinched the deal.

Bill Russell has told essentially the same story, as well, but he also specifically noted that it was Auerbach who told him the story much later on (as he was not privy to the details of the trade at the time).

The “Bill Russell was traded for the Ice Capades” story has now become an accepted part of basketball lore. But is it true?
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about football and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the football urban legends featured so far.

FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND: A future Hall of Famer was drafted in the last round of the 1934 NFL Draft based on the sound of his name!

The first germ of the idea that became the National Football League Draft (the first of the major sports leagues to have a draft) occurred in 1934 when Philadelphia Eagles owner Bert Bell contacted Stan Kostka, a graduating senior from the University of Minnesota who was an outstanding fullback and linebacker. Bell asked Kostka that if Bell personally came to see him and offer him more money than any other team was offering, would he sign with the Eagles? Kostka said yes. So Bell flew out to Minneapolis and met with Kostka. He offered him $4,000, $500 more than any other team had offered. Kotska hedged, and Bell gave him a deadline of an hour. In an hour, Kostka still could not commit. What Bell had figured out what was going on was that Kostka was trying to call the Brooklyn Dodgers (the NFL one, not the MLB one), the team that had offered him $3,500, to see if they would up their offer but had been unable to get through. So Bell finally said, “If you give me an answer right this second I will give you $6,000.” Kostka would not commit, so Bell left. Kostka ended up playing for the Dodgers in 1935.

Bell was convinced that this system of the teams bidding against each other was bad for the league but even more importantly to Bell, it was bad for his Eagles, who finished the 1934 season 4-7 due to what Bell felt was their inability to land the top players over the more solvent big market teams like the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears. After the end of the 1934 season, in early 1935, the other owners ratified Bell’s historic proposal for an NFL Draft after the 1935 season (where Bell’s Eagles fell to 2-9).

The first draft was held on February 8, 1936 in Philadelphia, where Bell’s Eagles held the first pick. The nine-round draft was a ramshackle affair, with the number one choice choosing never to play professional football and a grand total of four Hall of Famers being drafted – none stranger than the fellow drafted in the final round by the Chicago Bears, a player drafted because of the sound of his name!
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about basketball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the basketball urban legends featured so far.

BASKETBALL URBAN LEGEND: The Philadelphia Warriors drafted Wilt Chamberlain while he was still in high school.

In 1971, the United States Supreme Court heard the case of Haywood v. National Basketball Association, which involved NBA Star Spencer Haywood, who left college after his sophomore year at the University of Detroit and was eventually outright signed by the Seattle Supersonics. At the time, the NBA had a rule that stated that no player could join the NBA until four years after they graduated high school (they adopted this rule soon into the NBA’s existence). So, naturally, the NBA took issue with Haywood playing for the Sonics and the Sonics countered by backing Haywood in an anti-trust suit that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 7-2 that players should be allowed to be drafted sooner than four years after graduating high school, although the rule was predicated on the player in question being able to demonstrate economic hardship that required him to pursue a professional career right away. The 1971 NBA Draft saw the introduction of a special “hardship draft” for these players.

This was not the first time the NBA saw a player join the league before he finished college, though, as back in the 1962 Draft, the Detroit Pistons picked prep star Reggie Harding out of high school. The league disallowed Harding from playing for the Pistons, but eventually agreed that he could play in the NBA after waiting one year after his high school class graduated, provided that the Pistons spend another draft pick on him in the 1963 Draft. So Harding had to play in a minor basketball league for a year before finally entering the NBA in the 1963-64 season. Harding’s personal problems in his short NBA career (including a number of run-ins with the law) likely led to the NBA going back to a strict interpretation of the “no player can play in the NBA sooner than four years after graduating” rule that led to the Haywood lawsuit.

But even earlier, in the 1950a, the NBA saw a high school player effectively be drafted out of high school, as the Philadelphia Warriors basically drafted Wilt Chamberlain right out of high school with their territorial pick!
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about football and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the football urban legends featured so far.

FOOTBALL URBAN LEGEND: A $1 investment by a team manager eventually turned into 10% of the Minnesota vikings.

The early days of the National Football League (NFL) were so much different than the current NFL that they are barely even recognizable to modern fans. So many things needed to go just right for the league to make its way to where it is today. Had it not been for the actions of some early NFL pioneers, there is a very good chance that the NFL would have folded and perhaps we would be following some other league today (the American Football League, perhaps). One of these early pioneers was Ole Haugsrud. Haugsrud owned the NFL franchise in Duluth, Minnesota, a franchise Haugsrud purchased for $1 (I guess you could say 50 cents even, since Haugsrud purchased the team with a partner). That deal in 1926 eventually led to another deal in 1960, where Haugsrud became owner of 10% of the Minnesota Vikings. How, exactly, did those two deals become connected? Read on for a journey into the strange early years of the NFL.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about baseball and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the baseball urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Pedro Martinez lost the 1999 American League Most Valuable Player Award due to being left off the ballot of two voters completely, one of whom who had made some rather interesting votes the previous season.

The American League had quite a succession of pitching feats from 1997-2000, as Roger Clemens of the Toronto Blue Jays received back-to-back Cy Young Awards for his pitching performances in 1997 and 1998, when Clemens won the “Triple Crown” of pitching, leading the league in wins, strikeouts and Earned Run Average.

The following year, Pedro Martinez of the Boston Red Sox ALSO won the Cy Young by ALSO winning the “Triple Crown” of pitching. He followed THAT up by winning the Cy Young again in 2000 (no Triple Crown, though, although his 2000 season might have been even better than his 1999 season).

Martinez’s 1999 season was particular notable for what happened when the awards were handed out.

Naturally, he won the Cy Young Award easily. However, he came in a very close second in the voting for the Most Valuable Player, with 239 points compared to winner Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez’s 252 points. Martinez had received more first place votes, but as it turned out, he was left off of the ballot of two voters COMPLETELY, New York’s George King and Minneapolis’ LaVelle Neal!

In both cases, the voters determined that starting pitchers shouldn’t be eligible (in their mind) for the award, as they don’t play every day.

Now there’s naturally nothing in the award that SAYS that you shouldn’t include everyone, and the aforementioned Roger Clemens had already WON the MVP Award in 1986, but I suppose fair enough – people can make odd decisions, I guess.

However, in the case of King, it was weirder than that…
Read the rest of this entry »

Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about the Olympics and Olympians and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the Olympic urban legends featured so far.

OLYMPIC URBAN LEGEND: The current distance for the Olympic marathon was based on where Queen Alexandra was sitting at the 1908 Summer Olympics.

While over the years it has been passed in popularity by sports like gymnastics and basketball, the marathon used to be one of the marquee events of the Summer Olympics. Its past popularity gave rise to a tradition that is still done at the Summer Olympics to this day, which is to have the marathon as the last event of the games, with the finishing point of the marathon being in the main stadium for that year’s games. Sometimes the finish is even worked into the closing ceremonies! This tradition is what appears to have led (indirectly) to the current distance of the Olympic marathon, with a little help from the British Royal Family, as well.

The marathon race gets its name from the legend of the Greek messenger, Pheidippides, who, in 490 BC, ran from the city of Marathon all the way to Athens to deliver the message that the Greeks were victorious against the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. Whether it happened or not, the legend was cemented into popular folklore, especially in the late 19th Century when the famed poet Robert Browning wrote a poem about the journey (which ended with Pheidippides collapsing dead after delivering his message). Due to Mount Penteli standing between the two cities, there are two routes from Marathon to Athens, a shorter one with a very difficult climb that goes to the north of the mountain and a longer one that is, however, on flat land to the south of the mountain. The second route is typically what most folks presume that Pheidippides used on his journey, and that distance is roughly 26 miles.

So from the beginning of the Modern Olympics in 1896, 26 miles was the basic length of the marathon. A specific length, however, was not determined, mostly because the main object of the race is to force everyone to run a really long distance, and whether you run 25 miles, 25 and 1/2 miles or 26 miles, the end result is that you ran a really long distance, and so long as everyone is running the same distance, the goal of the race is achieved.

In fact, from the first Modern Olympics through 1920, a span of seven Olympics, a total of SIX different distances were used in the marathon! In 1896 and 1904, the distance was 24.85 miles, in 1900 25.02 miles, in 1906 26.01 miles, 1908 26.22 miles, 1912 24.98 miles and in 1920, 26.56 miles.

In 1921, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decided to settle on an official distance for the marathon, and ever since then, the 1908 distance of 26.22 miles (or more specifically, 26 miles and 385 yards) has been the official distance for the marathon in all competitions, including the Summer Olympics.

But why 26 miles and 385 yards?
Read the rest of this entry »