Baseball history unpacked, October 6

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue is pleased to present a light-hearted, Cubs-centric look at baseball’s colorful past, with plenty of the lore and various narratives to follow as they unfold over the course of time. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow along.

Today in baseball history:

• 1919 - After a Sunday rainout, Hod Eller blanks the White Sox on three hits, fanning six in a row in the second and third innings. Once again a big inning and some sloppy play give the Reds a 5-0 victory and a four-games-to-one lead in the best-of-nine World Series. (1)
• 1945 - A goat and its owner make an appearance at Wrigley Field for Game 4 of the World Series. The pair is told to leave before the game ends, angering the owner. The Chicago Cubs lose to the Detroit Tigers, 4-1. Detroit will go on to win the Series in seven games and the Cubs won’t win another National League championship for the rest of the 20th century. A belief that the Cubs were cursed by the goat will eventually develop.
• 1966 - Jim Palmer, at age 20, becomes the youngest pitcher with a World Series shutout as the Baltimore Orioles beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-0. Sandy Koufax is the loser in his last appearance in the major leagues. Dodgers outfielder Willie Davis commits three errors on successive plays in the 5th inning. (1,2)
• 1984 - Steve Garvey’s two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Four gives San Diego a 7-5 win over Chicago and evens the NLCS. (1)
• 2007 - The Arizona Diamondbacks complete a three-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs in the NLDS with a 5 - 1 victory in Wrigley Field. Chris Young hits the first pitch of the game for a home run and Livan Hernandez picks up the win. (2)
• 2017 - The NLDS game between the Cubs and the Nationals is a true pitchers’ duel between Kyle Hendricks* and Stephen Strasburg. Chicago does not get its first hit until two are out in the top of the sixth, by Kris Bryant, but it scores Javier Baez who had reached on an error by 3B Anthony Rendon. Bryant takes second on the throw from the outfield and scores on Anthony Rizzo’s single, and those two unearned runs are all Chicago needs, as they go on to win 3-0 and Washington only manages two hits. (2)

Cubs birthdays: Gene Clines, George Riley, Jay Baller, Bill Johnson.

Today in history:

• 1683 - 13 Mennonite families from Germany found Germantown, Philadelphia.
• 1783 - Benjamin Hanks patents self-winding clock.
• 1889 - First known ascent of the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak, by German climber Hans Meyer and Austrian Ludwig Purtscheller.
• 1948 - Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and humans on Rusinga Island, Kenya.
• 1966 - LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is first declared illegal in state of California, other states follow.

Common sources:

• (1) — Today in Baseball History.
• (2) — Baseball Reference.
• (3) — Society for American Baseball Research.
• (4) — Baseball Hall of Fame.
• (5) — This Day in Chicago Cubs history.
• For world history.

*pictured.

Some of these items spread from site to site without being verified. That is exactly why we ask for reputable sources if you have differences with a posted factoid, so that we can address that to the originators and provide clarity if not ‘truth’. Nothing is posted here without at least one instance of corroboration (this also includes the history bullets). Thanks for reading, and thanks also for your cooperation.