Free of charge for the discerning reader. Happy birthday to Lynn McGlothen and a host of others, plus more baseball stories.

Today in baseball history:

1978 – Oakland Athletics owner Charley Finley cancels the deal that would have sent the team to Denver, Colorado, under the sponsorship of oil magnate Marvin Davis. Objecting to some of the details, Finley decides to call off negotiations.

2011 – Cubs P Carlos Silva fails in his bid to become the team’s fifth starter, but says he will refuse an assignment to the minor leagues and makes disparaging remarks about pitching coach Mark Riggins. This pushes the Cubs to release him and swallow $8.5 million for the two years remaining on his contract, while the Seattle Mariners, who traded Silva to the Cubs before the 2010 season, are on the hook for another $5.5 million. Silva has a 10.90 ERA in spring training after a terrible second half last year, and made headlines earlier for getting into a fight in the dugout with 3B Aramis Ramirez.

2020: In the Season Opener for BCB’s The Show 2020 sim, we made our own history as the Brewers beat the Cubs. Yu Darvish walked his way into trouble and couldn’t get out of it, exiting in favor of Alec Mills in the fourth. Milwaukee starter Brandon Woodruff looked hittable but that turned out to be mostly theoretical as the Cubs rode solo home runs by Ian Happ and Javier Baez and an RBI single by Kris Bryant to defeat. The outcome was in doubt until the final strike, but in the end Josh Hader closed the door on any comeback hopes.

Cubs Birthdays: George Magoon, Bill Collins, Johnny Gill, Walter Stephenson, Newt Kimball, Wes Covington, Lynn McGlothen*, Vic Harris, Dick Ruthven, Drew Hall, Jaime Navarro, Junior Lake, Eric Stout. Also notable: Miller Huggins HOF.

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Today in History:

196 BC – Ptolemy V ascends to the throne of Egypt.

1513 – Spaniard Juan Ponce de León and his expedition first sight Florida.

1790 – The modern shoelace with an aglet patented in England by Harvey Kennedy.

1915 – Typhoid Mary [Mary Mallon] is arrested and returned to quarantine on North Brother Island, New York after spending five years evading health authorities and causing several further outbreaks of typhoid.

1964 – The Great Alaska Earthquake (9.2 magnitude) and resulting tsunami kill 139 people in the largest US earthquake and second largest ever recorded.

Thanks for reading.