By Edwin Cooney
As
I prepare for each week’s column, almost the first thing I do is to see what
might be significant about that date in history. Most of the time I don’t feature an event
based on the date, but occasionally I do – as I am doing today.
Perhaps
first and foremost, July 13th’s greatest significance is that on that historic
day, a Tuesday in 1568, Dr. Alexander Nowell, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral
in London, discovered that bottled beer was actually drinkable. He apparently poured beer into a bottle
before going on a fishing trip but lost it in the grass. Some days after the pouring, it must have
been on July 13th, he discovered the bottle and found that the beer was very
drinkable. Ah! July 13th, what an
outstanding day in the history of humankind!
On
Friday, July 13th, 1787, while Ben Franklin, James Madison and
others were writing the Constitution, the Congress meeting in New York adopted
the Northwest Territory Ordinance. In
addition to creating the territories of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and
Michigan, the ordinance banned the extension of slavery into those
territories. Accepted as this was by
both North and South, it could be interpreted as recognition by a significant
number of Americans that slavery was wrong and shouldn’t be allowed beyond
where it existed.
On
Monday, July 13th, 1863, anti-Civil War draft riots broke out in New York City and
almost a thousand blacks were killed.
Sadly, some Americans were determined not to fight to end slavery in the
wake of President Abraham Lincoln’s recently issued Emancipation Proclamation!
On
Thursday, July 13th, 1865 from his editorial desk at the New York Tribune, Horace
Greeley urged Americans to “Go West young man and grow up with the country!”
On
Friday, July 13th, 1898 Guglielmo Marconi patented the radio. Ah! What a lucky Friday the 13th for Marconi
and surely an unrecognized lucky break for millions yet unborn who would use
Marconi’s invention to listen to American baseball broadcasts and make heroes
of baseball broadcasters. Ironically, on
another Friday, July 13th, exactly 36 years later in 1934, Babe Ruth would hit
his 700th career home run.
July
13th marked two fascinating dates in the history of major league baseball’s
All-Star Game. On Tuesday, July 13th,
1943, the first night All-Star Game was played at Shibe Park in
Philadelphia. Of course, that was during
World War II when few night games were played.
It had been generally feared that the lights required for night baseball
could conceivably assist enemy bombers bent upon attacking major American
cities. Hence, night games were few and far between throughout the war. The game, which resulted in a 5 to 3 American
League victory, featured two especially interesting performances. First, left-hander Johnny Vander Meer of the
Cincinnati Reds, who had pitched two consecutive no-hit games back in 1938,
fanned six A.L. batters in 2 and 2/3 innings.
Then, a man named DiMaggio hit a single, a triple and a home run. However, it wasn’t “Joltin’ Joe” but his
older brother Vince, an outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who wielded the
big bat that historic night!
The
July 13th, 1954 All-Star Game saw the first All-Star home run ever hit by an
African American, Cleveland Indians’ outfielder Larry Doby. However, the amazing winner of that 11 to 9
American League victory was Dean Stone of the Washington Senators. The amazing part of Stone’s success was that
he had never pitched to a National League batter. A lefthander who naturally pitched with his
back to third base, Stone caused Red Schoendienst, a swift and daring St. Louis
Cardinal base runner for the National League who was camped on third, to think
he could steal home. Schoendienst tried
and Dean Stone threw him out at home plate.
The inning was over and Stone would benefit as the American league tied
and then went ahead to win the game in the last of the ninth inning. What made it all special for Dean Stone was
the fact that that game was the highlight of his eight-season big league
career. He finished his career with a 29
and 39 win/loss record with 12 saves. He
had begun with the lowly Washington Senators just ten months before his big
All-Star Game performance. With all the
mediocrity of his time in “the bigs,” Dean Stone can claim a distinct
uniqueness in the annals of baseball history. He can also assert, with some
plausibility, that for at least one day he was the star of all the stars in professional
baseball!
Wednesday,
July 13th, 1960 was the day Massachusetts Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy won
the Democratic presidential nomination offering to open a “New Frontier” of
opportunity to the American people.
I
chose to write about this date, however, when I looked through the births and
deaths of July 13th past and I saw the headline “July 13th, 1955 Ruth Ellis
hung.” Who, I wondered, was Ruth Ellis? What did she do to be hanged? It turns out that she was the last woman to
be executed in Britain. She died 94 days
after her Easter Sunday April 10th murder of her racecar driving boyfriend
David Blakely. Blakely and Ellis were
entangled in an extremely tawdry love affair that was bedeviled by violence and
betrayal. The murder, which was clearly
an act of passion, was the last act in a relationship that was mutually
poisonous. While public opinion
throughout Britain showed little sympathy for Ruth Ellis, Britons nevertheless clearly
realized how inappropriate legal murder was to British society. Despite her
murderous misdeed, Ruth Ellis was no future threat to the British people. Ruth was the last woman to die at the end of
a British rope and less than ten years later the British hangman was history.
Yes
indeed, July 13th is historically a day of days --
a
day of delight, of beer in 1568, of baseball
in 1934, 1943 and 1954;
a
day of moral recognition and advancement in 1787;
a
day of tragic human malfeasance in 1863 and 1955; and
a
day of promise in the years 1865, 1898,
and 1960.
Every
day a story is told, a lesson is learned, and for millions a path to the
beckoning future is blazed!
Ah,
lucky July 13ths — you’ve got to love them — I know I do!
RESPECTFULLY
SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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