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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: Bo Belinsky intentionally hit Hank Aaron after Aaron hit his 400th home run off of Belinsky, with Belinsky tipping his hat to the slugger both times.

In 1962, Bo Belinsky was 25 years old, a rookie in the Major Leagues and pitching for the second-year Los Angeles Angels.

Belinsky won his first five games of the season, setting an Angels rookie record that stood until Jered Weaver won his first nine games in 2006.

But no Belinsky victory was as famous as his fourth game of the 1962 season, when Belinsky threw a no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles – the very team that had left Belinsky available to be drafted away in the 1961 Rule V Draft!

So, as you might imagine, things were flying high for Belinsky – a young man with great fame and success, living in Los Angeles in the early 60s – what a life!

Belinsky dated a bevy of beauties, including Gilligan’s Island’s Tina Louise…

and was even engaged to blonde bombshell, Mamie Van Doran…

before ultimately marrying the 1965 Playmate of the Year, Jo Collins, in 1970…

But by then, Belinsky’s career was already in shambles, known more for his wasted talent than for anything else.

After his 5-0 start in 1962, Belinsky finished the season 10-11. In 1963, he pitched so poorly he was actually sent back to the minors for an extended stay before he rebounded with a strong 1964 on the field. Off the field, though, an altercation with veteran Los Angeles Times sportswriter Braven Dyer led to a suspension and later a trade to the Philadelphia Philles in the offseason.

After pitching nearly two seasons for the Phillies, Belinsky then pitched for the Houston Astros, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds before his career finished in 1970 at the age of 33.

The fun-loving and flamboyant Belinsky was still very interesting to the media (and to his credit, he became very good at handling the media), and in 1973, venerable baseball writer Maury Allen wrote a biography of Bo, Bo: Pitching and Wooing, which detailed all of Belinsky’s various exploits in great detail.

One story, in particular, stood out to me.

Here it is:

I’ll get in the Hall of Fame because I gave up some big home runs to some big guys. I think of that now with a guy like Hank Aaron. He’s driving on Babe Ruth’s 714 and I gave him number 400. He came around the bases and I tipped my hat to him and he smiled. The next time I faced him I drilled him in the ribs. I tipped my hat to him again.

That’s a great story, isn’t it?

It really captures the rapscallion nature of Belinsky to a tee.

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

HOCKEY URBAN LEGEND: The term “upset” to describe an underdog winning a sporting event was derived from a horse named Upset defeating the heavily favored Man o’ War in 1919.

There are certain sports stories that are just so good that you almost feel bad debunking them. This is one of those stories.

As you are all well aware, one of the meanings of the word “upset,” especially when applied to the world of sports (although politics, or really, anything involving competitions between people, has latched on to the word, as well), is to describe situations where a favored team/athlete/horse loses to an underdog opponent.

The origin of the term is thought to have derived from one of the biggest upsets in horse racing history. Man o’ War is one of the greatest Thoroughbred racehorses history (amusingly enough, with the 2015 Kentucky Derby just being run, Man o’ War never actually competed in the Kentucky Derby, so he never had the chance to win the Triple Crown), with a 20-1 record. Blood-Horse magazine named him the #1 Racehorse of the 20th Century. And yet, on August 12, 1919, Man o’ War lost its only race ever – to a horse that it had already defeated six times before!

There are plenty of places that tell how this story led to the term “upset,” so I’ll just pick literally the first result that came up for me when I did a web search. Here, from the official Secretariat website, in an article about how Secretariat also lost to a severe underdog in 1973 is a description of Man o’ War’s loss:

It was at Saratoga, in 1919, that the word “upset” entered the American sports lexicon. That’s when a horse named Upset beat the mighty Man o’ War. It was the original Big Red’s only defeat.

In those days, the word upset had a more literal meaning, along the lines of tip over, or capsize. But it had no particular connection with sports.

Then came Upset’s victory over the seemingly invincible Man o’ War. So shocking was Upset’s triumph over Man o’ War, that sports scribes began to describe unexpected outcomes in other sports like football and basketball by saying so-and-so “pulled off an Upset.” Eventually, the capitalized “U” in Upset became lower case as upset became a part of regular usage, and a word we know well today.

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

HOCKEY URBAN LEGEND: Bruce Gamble died during an Old Timer’s Game.

Bruce Gamble was a hockey goalie who was best known for his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs, for whom he played for from 1966-67 until the middle of the 1969-70 season.

During that season, he was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for Bernie Parent.

He would play until the 1972 season for the Flyers before retiring at the age of 34 because of heart problems. He actually had his first heart attack after a Flyers game (the onset of the heart attack occurred during the game!).

What happened next was quite sad but is also misreported…
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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: A song was re-named years after it first came out because it was used in a clip package for an Olympic athlete.

In an amusing coincidence, yesterday I had a sports legend that seemed like it could also work as an entertainment legend and an entertainment legend that could also work as a sports legend, so I figured I’d do them as bonus legends on each site.

In 1971, Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr. wrote a piece of incidental music for the movie, Bless the Beasts and Children.

It was called “Cotten’s Dream.”

A couple of years later, the pair adapted the song to serve as the theme song to a new soap opera called The Young and the Restless. The show became very popular, and remains today one of the most popular soap operas out there. The song also gained quite a bit of notoriety from being the theme to the program.

However, it was not until three years later, in 1976, that the song REALLY took off and in the process, amusingly enough gained a new NAME!
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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: An NFL team once drafted John Wayne when he was 63 years old.

Here’s the final in my series of football legends tied in to the NFL Draft ahead of tonight’s draft.

Marion Morrison, later known by his famed stagename John Wayne, was an accomplished football player who played football at USC under coach Howard Jones. Morrison’s football career was ruined by a collarbone injury suffered while he was surfing (a fact that he kept hidden from his coach).

The loss of his athletic scholarship forced him to leave school. He then became a bit player in films until he eventually became perhaps the most famous actor in the history of the movies.

Read on to learn how an NFL team decided to pay tribute to the acting great late in his career…
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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 team dropped two spots in the draft because they missed their initial pick.

Ahead of tonight’s NFL Draft, I’m continuing looking at some legends involving the draft.

This one involves the strange tale of the 2003 NFL Draft and how the Minnesota Vikings ended up getting the ninth pick in the draft instead of the seventh pick.
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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 team drafted the wrong player because two top prospects had similar sounding names.

Ahead of tonight’s NFL Draft, I’m continuing looking at some legends involving the draft. This one was actually sent in to me yesterday by reader Frank W., who asked if it was true that the Cleveland Browns drafted Tight End Jordan Cameron thinking that they were getting defensive end Cameron Jordan.

Simply put, Frank, no, but there WAS an amusing incident on draft night involving the two players.
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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 Steelers and the Rams both tried to get the final pick in the 1979 NFL Draft, forcing the commissioner to institute a new rule for the draft.

On January 20, 1980, the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Los Angeles Rams 31-19 in the Super Bowl for their (at the time) record fourth NFL Championship (after being passed by both the Cowboys and 49ers, the Steelers have since reclaimed the crown by winning two more titles in 2005 and 2008).

Four months later, the Rams were once again defeated by the Steelers, only in a rather bizarre squabble over who got to make the last pick in the 1980 NFL Draft!
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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 Tampa Bay Buccaneers accidentally drafted the wrong player in the first round of the 1982 NFL Draft.

With the NFL Draft this week, I figured it would be nice to do a few legends this week involving the draft.

In the 1982 NFL Draft, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected Guard Sean Farrell with the seventeenth pick in the first round.

However, amazingly enough that wasn’t the player that they meant to draft!

Read on to see how the mess happened.
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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: One of the most prominent “Mr. Irrelevant”s was still irrelevant enough that his team misspelled his name on his jersey when he became their starting quarterback!

When the NFL Draft takes place next week, we’ll see the continuation of one of the oddest traditions in the NFL, but also one of the coolest. I’m talking, of course, about “Mr. Irrelevant.”

Started by former NFL player Paul Salata (seen here in 2005)…

it is a ceremony “celebrating” the player chosen last in the NFL Draft.

The first Mr. Irrelevant was Kelvin Kirk, picked number 487 of the 1976 draft.

Mr. Irrelevant and his family is invited to Newport Beach for a weekend in the summer after the draft devoted to celebrating him, all for charity, with a golf tournament, a regatta, a roast where people give the player advice and, of course, the awarding of the Lowsman Trophy (a parody of the Heisman Trophy, with the trophy fumbling the ball)…

A “problem” with the ceremony as the years have gone by is that the NFL has greatly reduced the number of rounds in the draft. So while, sure, being the last person drafted today is still a spot where you’re not assured a future in the league, being the 255th player in the draft is a lot better than the 487th player!

So in recent years, Mr. Irrelevants have become more and more commonly parts of teams, including 2009’s Mr. Irrelevant, Placekicker Ryan Succop, who has been a starting kicker ever since he entered the league.

The reigning Mr. Irrelevant is Texans safety, Lonnie Ballentine (who missed his first season due to injury):

But even in the old days, when the odds of a Mr. Irrelevant becoming a major part of a team were slim, there were exceptions.

The most notable exception was 1978’s Mr. Irrelevant, Bill Kenney (technically, Kenney was chosen SECOND-to-last, but the player chosen last suffered a career-ending injury before training camp began, so Kenney became Mr. Irrelevant). His career took an interesting turn a few years into his tenure in the pros.
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