'Let's Play Football!', 'Ain't over 'til the Fat Lady Sings,' and Ted Williams turned down a huge contract

This day in Sports History Why there and welcome back to another

edition of this day in Sports History though I am going to try something a little bit different.

Loyal listeners may know I've been skipping some days here and there.

Life has been a bit all over the place recently and I've had to make some either this or

that choices.

But what I've noticed is my listener numbers for each episode are actually higher when

I do skip a day or two so I'm going to do something a little different for a few weeks

and take stories from the week put them in one episode so it will be more like this

week in Sports but I'm not rebranding it will see how this test works.

So this is day one of this test and let's get started on this episode.

We've got Jeff Brown declaring let's play football.

I've got the origin of one of the all time great sports races.

Ed Williams nearly went south of the border and we had another tragedy that took the

lives of Olympic caliber athletes.

I'll get started right after this.

And that's the end of the first half as the team said to the locker room the Spartans

lead the Bulldogs by a score.

You guys stink.

Geez coach we're only down a couple of points.

No I mean you guys really smell.

You need to hit the showers and here I got every one of you new bars of soap from the

sterling soap company.

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but coach we have another half to play.

I don't care I can't stand to be around you a few minutes later.

Alright bring it in tight you guys are still playing terrible but you're smelling great

out there.

Now listen you're going to need to stock up for the rest of the season.

We got a lot of tough games left so go to sterling soap dot com after the game that's

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You got that?

Yes coach great sterling soap dot com on three one two three sterling soap dot com.

So those of us who have been around for a while know that there have been several attempts

to compete with the national football league either directly or indirectly.

Now this is not a comprehensive list but there was the World Football League, the World

League of American Football, the USFL, currently there's the UFL and there have been a variety

of indoor leagues and in the early 2000s there was the XFL.

From the loins of world wrestling, federation, headhacho, Vince McMahon, sprang forth the

most entertaining and unhinged version of the game, there were rules to the game but

the way it was presented was kind of a breath of fresh air compared to the corporate feel

of the NFL.

And while most people remember Rod he ate me smart on March 10th 2001, Jeff Brahm achieved

legendary status.

Now Brahm had bounced around the NFL signing contracts with six NFL teams in his seven

years in the league but only ended up playing eight games.

He finally got his chance to shine in the XFL with the Orlando Rage.

Well on the 10th the Rage were at home taking on the Las Vegas outlaws.

Six days prior Brahm had taken a devastating hit in a game against the Memphis maniacs

that knocked him out.

After a visit to the hospital he came back to the sidelines with a neck brace, now for

a lot of guys the season would have been done.

Today's NFL with the concussion protocols he probably would have been out at least a

week or two but not Brahm.

Instead he suited up to play against Vegas on the 10th to the dismay of a lot of folks

but he clarified why he was playing right before kickoff.

Jeff Brahm how in the world are you starting this game tonight after taking that hit just

six days ago?

Well let me answer that question by asking you two questions.

One is this or is this not the XFL?

Yes it is.

Two, do I, do I not currently have a pulse?

Yes I do, let's play football.

Legend status achieved and Brahm led the Rage to the 2315 win.

Let's make another stop on March 10th going back to 1976 for this one.

Now one of the most familiar sports phrases was printed for the very first time on this

day and it soon found itself being used in conversations every day.

Okay let's start off with this.

By a show of hands who is an opera fan here?

Okay keep them up here I got a quick count that's zero nobody likes opera but you don't

have to be a patron of the arts to know this story and it's okay if your appreciation

of opera goes no further than you know that Bugs Bunny cartoon to understand the phrase.

It ain't over until the fat lady sings and that phrase morphed from a conversation that

then appeared in print on this day 50 years ago.

In the March 10th 1976 edition of the Dallas Morning News there was an article about the

game between Texas Tech and that phrase morphed from a conversation that then appeared in

print on this day 50 years ago.

In the March 10th 1976 edition of the Dallas Morning News there was an article about the

basketball game between Texas Tech and Texas A&M and the Southwest Conference Tournament

final that was played on March 6th.

The 19th ranked Aggies rallied to tie the game at 72.

Dallas Morning News sports writer Bill Morgan leaned over to Texas Tech Sports Information

Director Ralph Carpenter and said hey Ralph this is going to be a tight one huh?

To which Carpenter replied right the opera ain't over until the fat lady sings.

The Red Raiders went on to win the Southwest Conference Tournament 74-72 and advanced to

the NCAA Tournament but it was that phrase that caught on.

The phrase got picked up by the old Washington Bullets in 1978 when head coach Dick Mata

led the Bullets to an NBA championship as the three seed in the East.

They were only a couple of games over 500 heading into the playoffs with not many expecting

them to get past the second round but instead they advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals

and then knocked off the top seeded Philadelphia 76ers to move on to the NBA Finals against

Seattle.

The Bullets won that series in 7 and they were crowned NBA champs.

Celebrating the title later Mata had a t-shirt printed with the phrase the opera isn't

over till the fat lady sings and the phrase spread like a contagion becoming what we now

say it ain't over until the fat lady sings.

Mata had apparently heard the phrase from a San Antonio sports writer when Washington

played in Texas.

The Bullets even used a picture of a stylized Bruin Hilda character holding the championship

trophy with basketballs as the prominent features of the breastplate the character wears

printed on cards and programs distributed to fans prior to the 1979 season.

So it is in reference to opera sopranos who were typically or stereotypically played by

heavy women.

The fat lady is usually seen as the Valkyrie Bruin Hilda who is usually represented not

only as heavy but also well endowed and is from a Wagner opera where Bruin Hilda sings

the final 20 minutes signaling not only the end of the opera but the song is about the

world ending.

So on this day we can celebrate Red Raiders Sports Information Director Ralph Carpenter

who said it, Bill Morgan for writing it, the Dallas Morning News for printing it and

the opera for giving us the line, it ain't over until the fat lady sings.

On March 9, 1946, baseball's Ted Williams turned down a $500,000 contract to play in

Mexico.

So we've talked about Babe Ruth's record contract over the years, right?

Here we are now, 16 years after Babe Ruth signed a record contract in 1930 and still no

contract in the major leagues had surpassed that and it would not for another three.

A lot of that time was spent in the Great Depression that the country started to come

out of in 1939 and now here we are post World War II and contracts started getting bigger.

Well, in Mexico, a millionaire by the name of Jorge Pasquale wanted to build the Mexican

baseball league into a rival of Major League Baseball in the US and so he started rating

Major League teams attempting to lure away players with big money contracts and it ended

up being a threat to MLB's reserve clause 25 years before Kurt Flodd.

But we'll get to that in just a second.

The first player that Pasquale successfully lured South was New York Giants Outfielder

Danny Gardella.

Gardella had only played two years in the majors and was a pretty light hitting player.

He did have 19 home runs in 45 and he was offered $5,000 a year to stay with the club

for the next two years.

He wanted more and so he took an $8,000 a year offer and a $5,000 signing bonus to play

in Mexico.

It was the start of the so-called Mexican League War.

Now it wasn't long before four more players signed to play in Mexico, the most prominent

of that bunch being Giants pitcher Sal Magley.

But Magley was an unknown property at that point.

He would not make a name for himself until he returned to the states in the 50s.

And then Pasquale started going after the big names.

New York's Phil Rezudo was offered a $60,000 contract.

Cleveland's Bob Feller was offered a three-year contract for $120,000 per year and Boston's

head Williams was offered a five-year contract worth $500,000 when he was making $40,000

a season at that point.

All of those guys said no, Williams doing it on this day in 46.

But there were guys that did play south of the border.

The St. Louis Cardinals lost a trio of players and it forced Commissioner happy Chandler to

clamp down.

Chandler declared that any player who skipped out on his contract and went to play in

Mexico, they would be banned from baseball for at least five years.

He also said that anybody who played with or against those players or managed them or

against them would also be punished.

That had an effect on Cuban, Panamanian, Venezuelan, Puerto Rican and other Latin American players

that played in their own country's leagues and also played against the Mexican League

in the winter.

The Squirrels planned for the Mexican League did not last long.

Those big contracts he had signed with the 20 or so major leagueers who went south weighed

very heavily on the league and it shut down in 1948 with Pasquel resigning as president.

Now, the challenge to the reserve clause, Cardela sued Major League Baseball in 47, challenging

that reserve clause to other players also sued claiming MLB was a monopoly in violation

of anti-trust laws.

All three players were denied by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1949.

Chandler, hoping to quell any more challenges, reinstated all the players after just three

years instead of five and they were allowed to play in the 1950 season.

Interesting to think what happy Chandler would have considered if Ted Williams had been

part of that mix and taken that contract on this day in 1946.

On March 11, 1974, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball stepped in and told the Atlanta

Braves and Hank Aaron that he had to play.

The start of the 74 season was still about three weeks away at this point, but in spring

training the Braves and Aaron had been asked about the pursuit of Babe Ruth's all-time

home run record.

At this point, Hank had 713 career homers, one shy of tying and two from breaking the

mark.

The Braves were starting off the season on the road with a 3-game series against Cincinnati

and the Braves had said they were probably going to use Aaron as a pinch hitter in that series

in the hope that he would hit the record home runs in front of the hometown crowd in Atlanta.

But Commissioner Bowie Cune, who always liked to parrot the phrase in the best interest

of baseball, told the Braves that Aaron, barring injury, needed to be in the lineup in

at least two of the three games of that opening road series.

The reason for the two out of three demand is that Aaron had played two thirds of the

games in 1973.

As it turned out, Aaron hit a home run in the season opener in a 7-6 loss on April 4th.

And now for the kicker, when Aaron actually broke Ruth's record in Atlanta on the 8th,

Bowie Cune was not an attendance.

On March 14th, 1980, Tragedy struck as a plane carrying 14 US amateur boxers, along

with eight staff members crashed in Warsaw, Poland.

The USA boxing team was on the way to an international event in Poland in advance of the 1980 Olympic

games.

At this point, the US government had not yet made the decision to boycott the summer

games held in Moscow later that year.

This event was supposed to be a final tune-up for the US amateurs to get another look at

boxers that they may meet in the ring in a couple of months.

But the Polish IL-62 jetliner encountered problems on approach.

Sun streaming into the cockpit temporarily blinded the pilots, and they couldn't see

the light indicating the landing gear had been deployed.

Fearing the gear was not down, the pilots put the plane into a climb.

But the gear was down, and instead of climbing, the plane nose-dived, killing all 77 people

on board, including the 22 members of the USA boxing contention.

Of the 14 boxers who lost their lives, 24-year-old Lemnial Steeples was considered by boxing

experts as the best hope to win gold in Moscow, and projected to have a very promising professional

boxing future.

He was the reigning National Golden Gloves champ, beating future welterweight champ

Milt McCraury to win that title.

He also won the Light-Welterweight title at the 1979 Pan Am Games.

Boxing aficionato's point out that was the same weight class that Sugar Ray Leonard

won at the Pan Am Games in 1975, and then went on to win gold in the 76 Montreal Olympic Games.

Steeples' Gravestone reads, gold medal winner.

As a nod to what many thought was in store for him in the near future that was sadly

lost in 1980.

Just seven days later, President Jimmy Carter made the announcement that the U.S. would

boycott the Moscow Olympics due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

And time now for today's, that's got nothing to do with sports, fun fact.

It gets really hot in Australia.

The nectar in flowers turns to alcohol.

When bees come by to collect that nectar, they get a little drunk.

There are bees at the entrance at the hive, though, who act like balancers and keep the

drunk bees from entering until they sober up.

This has been an original, thrifesweet production.