Free of charge for the discerning reader. Sammy Sosa for George Bell, Kris Bryant heads to Iowa, and other stories. Happy birthday to Alex Bregman!
Today in baseball history:
1944 – Branch Rickey suggests the pooling of surplus players if major league 4F players are drafted for military service. Nothing comes of the suggestion.
2012 – Jamie Moyer becomes the oldest starting pitcher to make an Opening Day roster when the Rockies announce that the 49-year-old southpaw will face Houston in the second game of the season.
Cubs Birthdays: Tom Burns, George Van Haltren, Herman Bronkie, Ed Sicking, Ripper Collins, Jake Marisnick, Alex Bregman.
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Today in History:
240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.
988 – Boudouin IV with the Beard becomes earl of Flanders (some say ‘count of Flanders’).
1282 – The people of Sicily rebel against the Angevin king Charles I, in what becomes known as the Sicilian Vespers.
1858 – Pencil with attached eraser patented (Hyman L Lipman of Philadelphia).
1867 – Alaska Purchase: US buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 ($109 million in 2018), roughly 2 cents an acre.
1870 – 15th Amendment to the US constitution is adopted, guarantees right to vote regardless of race.
1950 – Bell Telephone Laboratories announces invention of the phototransistor in Murray Hill, New Jersey.
1981 – US President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded in an assassination attempt by John Hinckley, three others are also wounded.
Thanks for reading.