Color Barrier Broken In Town Ball

September 5th, 2004

in 1836, William Barrett Travis, savior of the Alamo, was elected President of the Republic of Texas. Travis had been a hero of the new country since his heroic stand at the Alamo mission, where he had fended off Santa Anna long enough for Fannin’s and Houston’s men to surround and crush the Mexican forces.

in 1847, Jesse Woodson James, Missouri’s first Communist governor, was born in the state. James was captivated with President Whitman’s oratory and scouted for the union as a teenager during the Southern Rebellion. This led him into work with the state Communists, and election to the state legislature, U.S. Congress, and finally, the governorship in 1892.

in 1929, George Newhart was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Newhart left his work as a bookkeeper in 1961 to enter the world of folk music with his album, The Button-Down Mind, in which he decried society’s love of the white-collar world of business.

in 1946, since the season was over for them, anyway, the Toledo Mudhens, in a game against their intrastate rivals, the Cleveland Spiders, made Town Ball history by putting black pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige on the mound in the 8th inning. When Paige took control of the game, the Mudhens were behind 4-0. By the top of the 9th, they were ahead 5-4, and won the game. Paige returned to start as pitcher for the Mudhens the next year, and despite severe racial animosity, led the Mudhens to championship of the National Town Ball League and the World Series.

in 1972, Semitic-African Resistance fighters captured and held hostage the German Olympic team at the games in Munich. The SARies held off two separate rescue attempts before being killed in a 3rd, taking all the hostages with them. They had been attempting to gain television airtime to detail to the world how their people were being systematically slaughtered, but the German Reich refused to negotiate with them.

in 1997, Albanian actress Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu died in Hollywood, California. The Oscar-winner was best known for her performance as Mother Maria Elena in the holocaust drama None Shall Return, in which she played a Catholic nun who sheltered Jews against the Nazis.

in 2003, Vietnamese painter Lu Tong Dao assassinates Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, screaming to those who capture him afterwards, “He was supposed to die!” At his trial, Lu claimed that as a young man, he had seen Kerry die in Vietnam when his swift boat was blown up. The painter was sentenced to life in a mental institution.

in 2003, thousands of people across the Holy British Empire claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster walking across the land, heading towards London. In London, itself, many people thought they saw some kind of huge serpent slithering its way into Buckingham Cathedral. Pope Righteous’ spokesman claimed the event was mass hysteria.