Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on March 9, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Front page flashback: March 10, 2011
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn abolishes the death penalty in the state on March 9, 2011. (Chicago Tribune)
2011: Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law a bill banning the death penalty in Illinois.
“It is impossible to create a perfect system, free of all mistakes,” Quinn said moments after signing the death penalty ban into law. “I think it’s the right and just thing to abolish the death penalty and punish those who commit heinous crimes — evil people — with life in prison without parole or any chance of release.”
The move came a decade after former Gov. George Ryan established a moratorium on death sentences after a string of men were let off death row after DNA evidence called their guilt into question.
Following a Tribune investigation that exposed the death penalty system’s flaws, Illinois Gov. George Ryan blocks the execution of any death row inmate in Illinois. (Chicago Tribune)
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
High temperature: 69 degrees (2021)
Low temperature: 5 degrees (1984)
Precipitation: 1.6 inches (1998)
Snowfall: 5 inches (1999)
Carlton Fisk is all smiles as he answers questions at a press conference on March 9, 1981, after agreeing to a White Sox contract. Fisk, a catcher, has spent his entire major league career with the Boston Red Sox. (Ovie Carter/Chicago Tribune)
1981: The Chicago White Sox signed Carlton Fisk, the first superstar acquisition of the new ownership group headed by Eddie Einhorn and Jerry Reinsdorf. Yet no contract was signed until nine days later.
Fisk, a 33-year-old All-Star with the Boston Red Sox, was declared a free agent on Feb. 12 that year because of a technicality after Red Sox management failed to mail him his contract by the mandated Dec. 20 deadline.
April 14, 1981: New White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk greets Chicago fans with a resounding grand slam
But not only did the Sox pursue Fisk, they reeled him in with a five-year, $2.9 million deal, shocking Red Sox nation and the entire baseball world. Einhorn, a successful TV executive before buying the White Sox, later told Sports Illustrated that stealing Fisk from Boston was like “stealing Acapulco cliff diving from ABC.”
Fisk wound up playing until age 45, when the White Sox released him in Cleveland in 1993 shortly after he broke the major-league record for most games caught. When the White Sox refused to let him enter the clubhouse to wish his former teammates good luck in the ’93 playoffs, his relationship with the organization became strained. Despite the feud, Reinsdorf agreed to retire Fisk’s No. 72 in a ceremony in 1997.
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