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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: Pat Summerall got the name “Pat” from, of all things, his position as a kicker.

Pat Summerall is one of the all-time great broadcasters in National Football League history. After already being one of the best-known television personalities for CBS’ football coverage (first as an analyst and then, beginning in 1974, as a play-by-play man) for almost twenty years, most notably with Tom Brookshier, Summerrall was paired up with former Oakland Raider head coach John Madden. The pair soon became one of the most famous television broadcasting duos of all-time, working together from 1981 until 2001, when Summerrall retired from broadcasting (he has since been lured out of retirement a number of times). They stayed together even when CBS lost their coverage to Fox in 1991.

Here they are together (Summerall is one the right)…

Anyhow, Pat Summerall is one of the most recognizable names (and certainly he has one of the most recognizable voices) in sports, and yet, Pat is not his real name. In fact, PATRICK is not even his real name. No, Pat Summerall was born George Allen Summerall in Florida in 1930. How did he gain the name Pat?
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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: Dan O’Brien missed out on competing in the 1992 Olympics due to an act of pride.

Dan O’Brien is one of the greatest decathlete of all time.

His single season points record of 8,891 (set IN 1992, of all years!) was the world record for seven years, and still remains the United States record.

His drive to win is world renowned.

However, that very same drive to win might have led to his downfall in 1992.

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This is the latest in a series of examinations of urban legends related to golf and whether they are true or false.

SPORTS LEGEND: Sam Snead made a hole in one with every club in his bag (except for his putter).

It just sounds absurd, doesn’t it?

Like the sort of thing you just tell a guy for the heck of it. “Oh yeah, Sam Snead? He totally hit a hole in one with every club in his bag!” Then, just for authenticity’s sake, “Oh, except for the putter, of course!”

However, remarkably enough, it’s true.
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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 football urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Major League Baseball used to allow injured players to have another player run for them and still allow the injured player to return later.

A common occurrence in baseball is for an injured player on the basepaths to be replaced by a pinch-runner. If a player tweaks an ankle or pulls a hamstring or any number of reasons, the ballplayer is pulled from the game and a pinch-runner is put in their place.

Interestingly enough, in a few occasions, when an injury takes place during a scoring play (like if a runner on first base gets injured during a home run by the following batter, like this game between the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox in 2005, when baserunner Gabe Kapler blew out his knee while running from first on a home run by the following batter), managers are allowed an injury pinch-runner (normally, pinch-runners are only allowed to be substituted during a stoppage in play).

This was the case in the past, as well, but oddly enough, prior to 1950, Major League Baseball had a very interesting rule about injured players.

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about bull riding and whether they are true or false.

BULL RIDING URBAN LEGEND: Bull riders get bulls to buck by pulling on straps attached to the bull’s testicles.

I’m not here to convince you that riding bulls is not an uncomfortable experience for the bulls.

It almost certainly is.

However, there is a definite misconception as to one particular piece of bull riding equipment, and that is the flank strap.

The flank strap is a rope that is tied around the bull’s flank (the lower torso of a bull, near its hind legs). The strap is there to encourage the bull to use its hind legs more in a bucking motion. One half of a bull rider’s score is determined by how much the bull bucked while the rider is on the bull, so therefore there is a major incentive to get the bull to buck as much as possible (the other half of the score involves how well the bull rider controls the bull, and that can also include the rider’s ability to MAKE the bull buck more).

Due to the fact that it makes the bulls buck, plus its close proximity to the genitals of the bull, many people believe that the flank strap is attached in some manner to the testicles of the bull (or designed in some way to irritate the bull’s testicles).
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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: Kurt Warner refused to appear on the cover of an issue of Sports Illustrated about the supposed “Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx.”

The Sports Illustrated “Jinx” supposedly began in 1954, with the very first cover of Sports Illustrated, which featured the Milwaukee Braves’ Eddie Mathews on the cover

The Braves were on a nine-game winning streak at the time this August 16, 1954 cover went up. The Braves lost their next game on August 17 and then a week later, Mathews was hit by a pitch on his hand and missed seven games.

Some other random “examples” of the Jinx include…

Wilbur Wood, on the cover after going 13-3, proceeded to lose 8 of his next 9.

Carin Cone, unbeaten in the 100-meter backstroke leading up to the 1960 Olympic trials, failed to even qualify for the Olympics!

So back in 2002, Alexander Wolff did a feature story on the topic of the Jinx, and he basically showed that while obviously it did not seriously exist, he did at least note that a sports psychologist named Jim Loehr does think that there is something to the theory that athletes DO deal with “a failure to efficiently metabolize heightened expectations,” and that appears to PERHAPS bear out in noting that the Jinx seems to apply to solo athletes like golfers more than athletes on teams.

But yeah, come on, jinxes don’t exist.

That said, Wolff and Sports Illustrated had a funny reaction when they had Kurt Warner agree to appear on the cover about the jinx. The idea was that he would appear with a black cat. I believe the notion was that Warner wore #13, and that did not keep him from winning a Super Bowl and two MVPs (plus one of the more dramatic career turnarounds, going from stocking shelves in Cedar Falls to winning a Super Bowl within five year’s time).

So what 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: In back-to-back years, two separate Canadian football teams drafted dead players.

In 1993, the Canadian Football League tried out something that had been relatively successful for Major League Baseball in the past, expanding past their own country. In 1993, the CFL added an expansion team from the United States, the Sacramento Gold Miners. The next year, the CFL added the Las Vegas Posse, the Shreveport Pirates, and the Baltimore Colts (later Baltimore Stallions).

However, after just one disappointing season, the Las Vegas Posse folded.

Their players were then entered into a dispersal draft in April 1995.

The Ottawa Rough Riders (a team founded in 1876) drafted Posse defensive end Derrell Robertson.

There was just one (fairly notable) problem…
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about yachting and whether they are true or false.

YACHTING URBAN LEGEND: Two-time America’s Cup winner Peter Blake was killed by pirates

The America’s Cup is a challenge that first began when the New York Yachting Club entered a yacht that defeated fourteen other yachts in a race sponsored by the Royal Yacht Squadron in 1851.

Now that they were the “defenders” they began sponsoring a challenge in 1871 that varied in time between races, but usually around 3-4 years (with large gaps for World War I and World War II).

The Americans defended the cup for a stunning 23 times over 109 years!! And this was not one of those things where only the Americans really cared about winning – other countries (particularly Britain) really wanted to win this thing, but the Americans keep winning, which is basically how it became known as America’s Cup.

In 1983, an Australian yacht called Australia II (funny that) broke the streak. America promptly re-took the Cup in 1988 and kept it until 1995.

In 1992, with little time before the race was to begin, New Zealand enlisted Yachtsman Peter Blake to sail for New Zealand. He led the New Zealand team to a surprising close loss to Italy, who ultimately challenged (and lost) the Americans. Blake was already notable for winning the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race.

In 1994, Blake set the record for the fastest time around the world, with a time of 74 days 22 hours 17 minutes 22 seconds on the catamaran Enza.

In 1995, Blake was back representing New Zealand in the America’s Cup, and he helped shock the world by winning the 1995 Cup.

The victory was so important to the world that Blake was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1995!! (Blake was also inducted into the America’s Cup Hall of Fame in 1996)

Blake then shocked the world once more by becoming the first non-American team to DEFEND the America’s Cup by leading New Zealand to a victory in 2000.

Now one of the most famous yachtsman in the world, Blake retired from Cup racing and devoted himself to the environmental studies that he began in 1997 when he was named the Cousteau Society’s head of expeditions.

Tragically, in December of 2001, while on a trip to South America to monitor global warming and pollution for the United Nations, the 53-year-old Blake’s ship was besieged by pirates nearby Macapá, Brazil.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about polo and whether they are true or false.

POLO URBAN LEGEND: A female polo player pretended to be a man for twenty years so as to play professional polo.

Polo originated in Persia/Iran, some time between 600 BC and 1 AD, and soon became more or less the national sport of Iran. It was a much different game back then (as are most sports when you look back at the beginning), with groups sometimes as large as 100 per side competing! You can imagine how that might have looked!

The game eventually passed from Persia to India, and it was in Manipur (now a state in India) that the British picked the game up (British officers in India brought the game to England around 1860).

England spread the game across the globe in the late 19th Century/early 20th Century.

The first United States polo match took place at Dickel’s Riding Academy at 39th Street and Fifth Avenue. American polo was played at a much faster pace than British polo (Indian polo tended to be pretty fast-paced, as well – the British actually slowed the game down some).

It soon became a popular game with the upper crust of America.

It was also very much a male sport.

That did not stop Sue Sally Hale (nee Jones), who was born in 1938 in Southern California to Grover Jones (a popular Hollywood screenwriter – he wrote The Virginian and Abe Lincoln in Illinois) and Susan Avery (a former ballerina).
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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 football urban legends featured so far.

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: The very first grand slam hit in the major leagues was a two-out, bottom of the ninth, trailing by three, game-winner.

First off, we have to define a term (well, two if you don’t know that a grand slam is the highest scoring play in baseball, resulting in four runs being scored) – “major league.”

The National Association was perhaps the first professional baseball league, but Major League Baseball does not count it as a “major league,” even though the National Association (which was founded in 1871 and folded four years later) was the precursor to the National League (two of the teams from the National Association play today – the Braves and the Cubs, although both went by different names back then). The formation of the National League is considered the formation of a “major league” according to Major League Baseball’s official records.

So yes, Charley Gould DID hit a grand slam for Boston of the National Association on September 8, 1871 (the first year of the National Association). It was the first grand slam ever hit in professional baseball. The pitcher who Gould hit it off of, George Zettlein, previously (on May 8th) gave up the first home run PERIOD hit in the National Association. But if we go with “major leagues” (and I think we should, because it makes the story cooler), then Gould’s grand slam does not count.

So who does that leave? Find out!

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