Howitzer @Howitzer62

On this day in 2020, Hockey Hall of Famer Dale Hawerchuk died. The first NHL player to reach 1,000 games before the age of 31, he won the Calder Trophy, was a five-time All-Star and had 1,409 points in 1,188 games. He also won two Canada Cups. 📸 NHL

TODAY IN SPORTS HISTORY: Every time you watch a game and an umpire tosses a scuffed baseball out of play for no obvious reason, there's a reason. It goes back to what happened 106 years ago today. August 16, 1920. The Polo Grounds in New York. Cleveland, the Yankees and the Chicago White Sox are in a three way race for the American League pennant. Cleveland is tied with Chicago and a half game up on New York. This series matters enormously. Fifth inning. Cleveland leads 3-0. Ray Chapman leads off. Chapman is 29 years old, a nine year veteran shortstop hitting .303, and one of the most well liked players in the sport. He is also, quietly, planning to walk away. He had recently married, and he'd indicated he intended to retire after the season to join his wife's family business and start a family. On the mound is Carl Mays, a submarine pitcher who released the ball from down near his shoetops, which made it uniquely hard to pick up out of his hand. Now understand the conditions, because they're the whole story. In 1920, baseballs stayed in play for a very long time. Innings and innings. Players deliberately scuffed them, rubbed them in dirt, applied tobacco juice. The spitball was legal. By the middle innings a baseball could be genuinely dark. It was late afternoon. Clouds over Manhattan. A darkened ball against a gray sky. Mays came in tight. Chapman, who always crowded the plate, didn't move at all. Witnesses who were there believed he simply never saw it. The ball struck him in the head, and the sound was so sharp that Carl Mays thought it had hit the bat. He fielded the rebound and threw to first base. Chapman got up. He took a few steps toward first. Then he collapsed. He underwent surgery that night at St. Lawrence Hospital, and he passed away at 4:40 the next morning. He was 29. In more than 150 years of professional baseball, Ray Chapman remains the only player to lose his life from an injury sustained in a Major League game. Thousands of mourners filled the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Cleveland for his funeral. And then baseball changed. Umpires were instructed to remove dirty baseballs from play and replace them with clean ones. That is the rule you still watch being enforced in every single game, over a hundred years later, usually without thinking about it. The spitball and other doctored pitches were banned after the 1920 season, and Chapman was part of the reason why. His death was also cited for decades as the clearest argument for batting helmets, though the sport took more than thirty years to require them. There's an ending to Cleveland's season, too. They called up a 21 year old named Joe Sewell to take Chapman's place at shortstop. Sewell played 14 years, struck out fewer times than almost anyone in the history of the game, and went into the Hall of Fame. And Cleveland won the 1920 World Series. The first championship in franchise history, won by a team that spent the whole second half playing for a teammate who wasn't there. Then there's Carl Mays. He was never charged with anything. It was universally ruled an accident. He went on to win over 200 games, including 27 in a single season, and played for four World Series champions. He is not in the Hall of Fame. A lot of people believe this is why. Mays maintained for the rest of his life that the pitch was a strike, and he lived with that afternoon for another fifty years. Two men's lives ended that day in different ways. And every clean white baseball you see thrown into a game is a small piece of what came out of it. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap

Eddie Murphy filmed his legendary comedy special “Delirious” on this date in 1983 at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. BITE-SIZED FACT: The 70-minute special premiered on HBO just 13 days later, on August 30, 1983. #80s

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Me trying to get off the toilet after spending 45 minutes looking at memes

LOL. 🤣😎

"18 and Life" began with a personal story. Guitarist Dave "Snake" Sabo originally wrote about his brother Rick, who returned from the Vietnam War a changed man. The song’s realistic narrative and darker subject matter helped distinguish it from many of the glam metal hits dominating the late 80s. Released in 1989 as the second single from Skid Row’s self-titled debut album, "18 and Life" became the band’s breakthrough hit, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 11 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Written by Rachel Bolan and Dave "Snake" Sabo, the power ballad combined a hard-hitting social message with Sebastian Bach’s powerful vocal performance, helping establish Skid Row as one of the leading hard rock bands of the era. Its memorable music video, which received heavy rotation on MTV, further expanded the song’s popularity and cemented its place as one of the defining rock songs of the late 80s.

Bob Love was a three time NBA All-Star and the second leading scorer in Chicago Bulls history. Seven years after he retired, he was washing dishes for $4.45 an hour. Because he stuttered, and nobody would hire him. Love spent eight seasons with the Bulls, led the team in scoring in seven of them, and made three All-Star teams and three All-Defensive teams. To this day only Michael Jordan has scored more points in a Bulls uniform. A back injury in 1976 started the end. He was traded, then landed with the Seattle SuperSonics, who cut him before the 1977-78 season. His playing career was over at 35. And then his real problem surfaced. Bob Love had stuttered severely since he was a child. It was so bad it affected him in huddles and made him unable to talk to reporters. Teammates called him Butterbean and he mostly stayed quiet. Now he needed a job. His own description of what happened: "After my retirement from the NBA, reaction by potential employers to my speaking difficulty turned the usually tough post-sports career adjustment into a living nightmare. I had a college degree, but personnel managers seldom call back someone who stutters on the telephone." He had a college degree from Southern University. It didn't matter. He worked as a bartender, a caterer, a construction worker. Anything that didn't require him to speak. His marriage ended. By the end of 1984, seven years after millions of people watched him play in the NBA, Bob Love took the only job anyone would offer him. Busboy and dishwasher in the basement restaurant of a Nordstrom in Seattle. $4.45 an hour. And this is where the story becomes what it is. Here's Love, in 1994, describing what it was like: "Every once in a while, former players, or even current ones in town to play Seattle, would come by for a cup of coffee or a sandwich. I'd be there in my apron and my little hat, pushing a cart and clearing tables for $4.45 an hour. 'Yeah, I used to be Bob Love.'" "I was embarrassed, and they were embarrassed for me. But there's only two ways you can go. You can take off the apron and the hat and give up. Or you can decide to be the best dishwasher in the world." "I kept on washing." Then his boss came to him with an offer. Nordstrom told him he'd been doing a great job and they wanted to promote him, but he'd have to do something about his stuttering. And then the company paid for it. In May 1986 he started working with a speech pathologist in Seattle named Susan Hamilton. Every day for six weeks. Then three times a week for six months. Then twice a week for four months. Then once a week. She later said his stuttering had been severe, with long blank spaces and no eye contact, and that the shame he carried from his playing days and from Nordstrom was at the top of the list of things he'd struggled with. She also said he was the most motivated person she'd worked with. In one of their first sessions, Bob Love told her: "I want to be a great public speaker." Within a while he was giving speeches all over Seattle. He became the corporate spokesman for Nordstrom's restaurants and ran health and sanitation for all of them. Then in 1992 the Chicago Bulls brought him home as Director of Community Affairs. On January 14, 1994, the Bulls retired his number 10. He was only the second player in franchise history to receive that honor. The man who couldn't get hired because he couldn't talk spent the last thirty years of his life making more than 300 speeches a year to schools and businesses, and picked up two honorary doctorates along the way. Bob Love died in November 2024 at 81. He decided to be the best dishwasher in the world. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap

🎬 Happy 83rd Birthday, Robert De Niro! 🎂 Celebrating a true Hollywood legend whose unforgettable performances have shaped cinema for over five decades. Here’s to 83 remarkable years and a legacy that will never be forgotten! ⭐ #RobertDeNiro #HappyBirthday #HollywoodLegends

81-year-old John Fogerty minutes after regaining all rights to his songs after many years of effort

Yes!

Woodstock booking fees:

Big Show's Hilarious Arnold Schwarzenegger Story @ChrisVanVliet

Bon Scott’s brother Derek gave only one interview about his famous sibling. His final resting place, shown at the start of the video, is at Fremantle Cemetery, just south of where I am in Perth. Some fantastic insights into Bon’s early life, the band & his passing, RIP, legend

Graham Nash once recalled that Jimi Hendrix loved playing the board game “Risk” while under the influence of LSD and that it was practically impossible to beat him. Nash, who played with Hendrix and later became a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash, shared this anecdote during a 2018 interview on SiriusXM. According to Nash, Hendrix’s mastery of “Risk” may have stemmed from his military background. Before becoming a music icon, Hendrix served as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division and was honorably discharged in 1962.

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