1973: Ferguson Jenkins traded to Rangers for a young Bill Madlock

Who remember this?   On this day in 1973, the Cubs traded 6-time 20-game winner Ferguson Jenkins to the Rangers for third baseman Bill Madlock and utility man Vic Harris.     

Jenkins won 25 games for a very young Texas team that challenged Oakland for the AL West title in 1974.   

He won 284 with a 3.34 ERA and 267 complete games over 19 seasons.    Jenkins was selected to The Hall of Fame in 1991.

On the other hand, Madlock went on to have a great career: .305 average and 2,008 hits in 15 seasons.  He won 4 batting titles, 2 in Chicago and 2 in Pittsburgh.

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1973: What they called "The Saturday night massacre"

Back in October 1973, the A's and Mets were playing a very good World Series.  

By evening, it was all about the Nixon White House.   As I recall, the 3 networks went on "alert" to report on the firings at The White House.    

It started when President Nixon told Attorney General Richardson to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Fox. AG Richardson resigned in protest.   Deputy Attorney General Ruckelshaus resigned too.   

So President Nixon went down the chain of command and Solicitor General Robert Bork fired Mr. Cox.    (We would hear Bork's name again in 1987 when he was nominated by President Reagan to The Supreme Court.  We now use the word "Borking" when an opponent is attacked in every possible way)

It became "The Saturday Night Massacre".   However, no one got killed and President Nixon had the authority to fire the Watergate prosecutor.   

Archibald Cox was eventually replaced by Leon Jaworski.  He resumed the investigation and Nixon resigned the presidency on August 8, 1974.

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A man named Spiro

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Maybe it's another urban legend but I heard it many years ago.

On this day in 1973, The Supreme Court was hearing some oral arguments, the Reds were playing the Mets in the National League Championship Series and the game was interrupted with the flash that Vice President Agnew had resigned.  The legend is that a clerk passed a note to one of the justices that went sort of like this:  Pete Rose crashed into Buddy Harrelson at second and Agnew resigned.  We don't know if that actually happened but it makes for a great story.

Spiro Agnew was elected governor of Maryland in the mid-1960s.   In 1968, Richard Nixon shocked the world by selecting him as VP on the GOP ticket.  "Spiro who?" was the talk of the land.   A few months later  they won a very close election but Governor Agnew did not deliver Maryland that year.   

Back then, many of my school friends started playing games saying that Spiro rhymed with Silvio.  It doesn't but VP Agnew and I do have strange names.   After all, how many people do you know named Silvio or Spiro?   There weren't many where I was hanging around.

During Nixon's first term, VP Agnew spoke around the country against antiwar demonstrators and the media.   He became very popular with "the Silent Majority" as President Nixon referred to people who worked, paid taxes, and loved their country.

The Nixon-Agnew ticket was reelected in 1972.  Nevertheless, the Nixon-Agnew relationship was never close but that's not unusual for a president and vice-president.  Agnew did deliver Maryland in 1972 but 49 states voted for President Nixon that year.

In 1973, we began to read stories of corruption.  First, the Justice Department uncovered widespread evidence of political corruption during Agnew's tenure as governor.  Secondly, there were stories of bribes during his tenure as vice president.

It all happened very quickly.  Within days, he resigned and was eventually replaced by VP Gerald Ford in December.  Later, he wrote a book presenting his defense but I don't think that it sold well.

Mr. Agnew wrote another book about a vice president a few years later titled The Canfield Decision.  It probably paid a few of his legal bills.  It was one of those books that I wanted to read but something more interesting came up,

It’s amazing how quickly he rose and fell, from an unknown Governor of Maryland to VP to disgrace.  Agnew died in 1996.

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1967: Che is still burning in hell after all of these years

By 1965, Che Guevara had faded from public life. His disappearance created all kinds of speculation about Che’s relationship with Fidel and Raúl Castro. After all, some close to Castro in 1959 had been killed in accidents, like Camilo Cienfuegos, or stuck in political prisons, like Huber Matos. Cienfuegos’s plane was never found, and Matos was eventually released in some prisoner exchange.  Matos spent the rest of his life in exile.

Che reappeared in 1966 in Bolivia, where he hoped to bring about a revolution.  How did he get there?  Who paid his bills? Why did he suddenly leave Cuba?  Many believe that Fidel and Raúl wanted him out, and starting a revolution in Bolivia was the exit.  I think it’s fair to say that Che had worn out his welcome with the Castro brothers, specially after they saw how popular he was with the international left.  As we learned, there is only one “popular” person in Cuba, and that’s Fidel.

Fifty-five years ago this week, Che was captured and executed by Bolivian troops operating with the CIA.  It happened very fast.  As we learned in his diary, Che and his men lacked food and medicine and were barely surviving in the jungle.  It’s possible that Che would have died of bad health and no medical care.  He was battling asthma attacks constantly.  Also, they were not getting a lot of help from Cuba, either by design or because the supplies could not reach them.  My guess is that Che was happy to get captured and hoped for some prison time and then a return to Cuba.  He did not get his wish.

Che subsequently became “the image” on all those t-shirts.  He became the ultimate anti-U.S. symbol, the image that every left-wing group goes to when its members have a gripe against the U.S.

Ironically, he was captured because the campaign in Bolivia failed miserably.  It failed for two reasons, as Humberto Fontova explained in Exposing the Real Che.  Read the book for more details, but it went down like this:

1) Bolivia was not Cuba.

2) The natives in Bolivia never bought into the idea that a band led by a guy from Argentina and Cubans was there to save them.  In the end, it was the villagers he was trying to “liberate” who turned him in.  Again, the Bolivian campaign was a total failure.  The locals never read the memo about Cuban health care, I guess.

Che was a murderer and a man who said awful things about blacks, for example.  This is from Guillermina Sutter Schneider:

In his diary, he referred to black people as “those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing.” He also thought white Europeans were superior to people of African descent, and described Mexicans as “a band of illiterate Indians.”

Today, we would call him a racist and a homophobe!  We’d cancel him from universities.  Twitter would delete his account.

So I still remember my father saying in Spanish that they got him.  Indeed they did, and many champagne bottles popped in the Cuban exile community this week in 1967.

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We remember Al Martino (1927-2008)

Remember the opening wedding scene in "The Godfather"?  Remember Al Martino?   He was born in Philadelphia on this day in 1927 and passed away in October 2009.   He was 82.

We will always remember Al Martino because of "The Godfather" movies.

Al Martino had a great voice, as we can appreciate from listening to his many selections.

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