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.
Happy birthday to Jon Lester* and many other Cubs stalwarts, Landis cuts pay, and other stories.
Today in baseball history:
1882 – The National League will continue the practice of using different color patterns on uniforms for the different positions. Third basemen will wear gray and white uniforms, as the blue and white uniforms originally sought were “impossible to obtain.” (2)
1933 – Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis announces that he is cutting his salary by 40 percent. Landis’s action is a sign of the times during the Great Depression; most players will have their salaries reduced for the coming season. (2)
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Cubs Birthdays: Dad Clarke, Kitty Bransfield, Al Todd, Alvin Dark, Dick Calmus, Doug Capilla, Alfonso Soriano, Jon Lester*, Tucker Barnhart. Also notable: Johnny Mize HOF.
Today in History:
49 BC – Roman Senate declares Julius Caesar an enemy of the Roman Republic.
1610 – Galileo Galilei discovers the first three moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa and Ganymede.
1611 – Trial of Hungarian aristocrat Elizabeth Báthory for killing and torturing hundreds of young women, later sentenced to house arrest for the rest of her life.
1790 – French Revolution: A major riot breaks out in Versailles as people demand lower bread prices.
2018 – Snow falls in the Sahara Desert, with 15 inches reported in Aïn Séfra, northwestern Algeria.
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, in order to help correct the record.