Tag Archives: Mysteries

Great Mysteries in Other Sports

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Yesterday, I gave some of the great mysteries in baseball. But there are plenty of mysteries beyond the diamond as well. For example:

  • Was, as some conspiracy theorists claim, the 1985 NBA Draft lottery fixed so that Patrick Ewing would go to the New York Knicks? (I doubt it, but it’s one of the most talked about sports conspiracy theories of all time, so…)
  • The original trophy for Soccer’s World Cup was awarded permanently to Brazil in 1970 after they won the tournament for the third time. In 1983, that trophy was stolen. What happened to it?
  • Does the IOC really have the silver medals for the 1972 Basketball Tournament in a vault, waiting for the cold day in hell when the screwed-over USA team accepts them?
  • Was Michael Jordan’s baseball stint really a cover story for a gambling suspension? (Again, I doubt it, but since so many people often discuss the possibility…)
  • Why doesn’t the NFL give the 1925 Pottsville Maroons their due? It can’t just be because it would injure the pride of the Cardinals, right?
  • Jim Robinson was the fourth man to fight to Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) professionally. He has not been contacted or seen since 1979. What happened to him?
  • Speaking of Ali, did Sonny Liston throw either of his fights with him to pay off debts he had with organized crime?
  • Did Wilt Chamberlain really sleep with 20,000 women? (This has been mathematically debunked, but…)
  • Is Jimmy Hoffa buried underneath what was once Giants Stadium (it is now a parking lot for the new stadium)?

 

Know any other good ones?

Great Mysteries in Baseball

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Baseball is a sport where there are a lot of thing that are unexplained or unknown. For example…

  • Where, exactly, does Lena Blackburne’s Rubbing Mud come from?
  • How and why did Big Ed Delahanty fall over Niagara Falls in 1903? Was it suicide? An accident? Murder?
  • What happened to the ball Bobby Thomson hit in the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”? I seem to remember reading somewhere that a nun caught it, and I think there might be a book out there about the quest for it, but I don’t think anybody really knows for sure.
  • Did John Smoltz really get injured while trying to iron his shirt while still wearing it?
  • Did Babe Ruth really have a piano of his fall into a pond in Massachusetts? And if so, is it still down there? (It’s a long story.)
  • Did Wade Boggs really drink over 50 (possibly as many as 64) cans of Miller Light during one cross-country flight?
  • Does, as the result of an agreement in the early 1880s, the National League (and, as the result of the merging of the AL and NL into one legal entity in the late 1990s, MLB) owe the cities of Troy, NY and Worcester, MA hundreds of exhibition games? (Essentially, the agreement was that Troy and Worcester would lose their NL teams, but as compensation would get at least two exhibition games against NL teams each year… I don’t think that’s happened anytime in at least a hundred years, and I have to figure it’s a lawsuit or publicity stunt waiting to happen.)
  • Was William White, and not Fleetwood Walker or Jackie Robinson, the first African-American ballplayer in the bigs?
  • Who put the obscenity on the bat in Bill Ripken’s infamous baseball card? Was it him trying to pull one on the card company? Was it a bat-boy? His brother Cal? Someone else?
  • Did Babe Ruth call his shot? It’s obvious from video and stills from that day that he was pointing at something, but we probably will never know what, exactly, he was pointing at.

And there are no doubt many more as well….