Free of charge for the discerning reader. Happy birthday to Mickey Morandini* and a mighty host of others, plus more baseball stories.
Today in baseball history:
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1985 – The Minnesota Twins collect 16 hits in a 9-5 victory over the Seattle Mariners. In the fourth inning, Kirby Puckett hits a three-run home run, his first homer in the majors, off Matt Young. After no homers last year, Puckett will hit four homers this season before blossoming into a power hitter with 31 next year.
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2008 – John Smoltz becomes the 16th major league pitcher to strike out 3,000 batters. The 40-year-old Braves hurler gets Felipe Lopez swinging on a 2-2 offering in the 3rd for his 3,000th K. He is the sixth-quickest to the mark in terms of innings pitched (3,386). Smoltz fans ten in seven innings in this win, showing that age has not yet caught up to him.
Cubs Birthdays: Mickey Morandini*, Terry Francona, Fabian Kowalik, Taylor Douthit, Bob Smith.
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Today in history:
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1692 – Edward Bishop is jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts
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1823 – British inventor Robert John Tyers patents an in-line roller skate he calls the “Volito” with a single row of five wooden wheels, a wooden sole, and a curved iron bar at the front as a rudimentary brake.
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1884 – Thomas Stevens leaves San Francisco on the first bicycle trip around the world, which takes him 2 years and 9 months
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1889 – A 1.9 million-acre tract of Indian Territory for white colonial settlement in Oklahoma officially starts at 12pm (The Oklahoma Land Run)
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1934 – US Division of Investigation (later the FBI) under Melvin Purvis botch an operation to capture the John Dillinger Gang at Little Bohemia Lodge, Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, with 2 dead and 4 injured
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1966 – The Troggs second single “Wild Thing” released; tops the charts in July
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1979 – The Rolling Stones play two benefit concerts for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, in Oshawa, Ontario; performance part of guitarist Keith Richards’ heroin conviction sentence
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1994 – World’s largest lollipop, weighing 3,011 pounds, made by BonBon, a candy factory in Home-Olstrup, Denmark; record later broken.
*pictured.
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