On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue is pleased to present a Cubs-centric look at baseball’s colorful past. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow the various narrative paths.
“Maybe I called it wrong, but it’s official.” — Tom Connolly, HoF Umpire.
Today in baseball history:
1968 – The MLB Rules Committee adopts a series of changes designed to increase the amount of offensive run production in both leagues. In the most significant alterations, the committee agrees to decrease the size of the strike zone and lower the height of the pitcher’s mound from 15 inches to 10 inches. The rules changes will result in increased run-scoring in 1969. (2)
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Cubs Birthdays: Bennie Tate, Mike Martin, Damon Berryhill, Manny Corpas, Mike Tauchman.
Today in History:
1586 – Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England from Colombia.
1689 – The first recorded successful separation of conjoined twins Elisabet and Catherina Meijerin is carried out by Swiss surgeon Johannes Fatio in Basel.
1736 – Astronomer Anders Celsius takes measurements that confirm Newton’s theory that the earth was an ellipsoid rather than the previously accepted sphere.
1967 – South African surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard performs the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant, on Louis Washkansky, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town; he survives for 18 days.
1968 – MLB Rules Committee adopts a series of changes designed to increase amount of offensive run production. This decreases the strike zone size and lowers the height of pitcher’s mound from 15″ to 10″; changes are successful.
Common sources:
*pictured.
Some of these items spread from site to site without being fact-checked, and that is why we ask for verifiable sources, to help correct the record/