S&H Farm Supply "On This Day in History", presented by Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf at Big Cedar Lodge, Rib Crib and Hiland Dairy

            

IN 44 BC Julius Caessar is Stabbed:

“Beware the Ides of March,” the soothsayer urges Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Julius Caesar (act I, scene ii). Despite the forewarning, Caesar is stabbed in the back by his friend Marcus Brutus. Caesar falls and utters his famous last words, “Et tu, Brute?” (And you, Brutus?)

Shakespeare’s source for the play was Thomas North’s Lives of the Nobel Grecians and Romans, which detailed the murder of Caesar in 44 B.C. Caesar’s friends and associates feared his growing power and his recent self-comparison to Alexander the Great and felt he must die for the good of Rome. North’s work translated a French version of Plutarch, which itself had been translated from Latin. Shakespeare’s version was written about 1599 and performed at the newly built Globe Theater.

1972: Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" opens


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlLRmK9RiNo

• 1869 - Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team.
• 1869 - Cincinnati Red Stockings beat Antioch 41-7 in baseball.
• 1877 - Commencement of first Test Cricket, Australia versus England at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
• 1897 - First indoor fly casting tournament opens, at Madison Square Garden, New York.
• 1912 - Pitcher Cy Young retires from baseball with 511 wins.
• 1945 - Bert Shepard (one legged WWII veteran) tries out as a pitcher for Washington Senators.

Bert Shepard:

Born in Dana, Indiana, the 5"11", 185 lb. left-hander taught himself to walk and then to pitch with an artificial leg while confined in the German POW camp Stalag IX C(b) in city Meiningen.^[2] The Canadian doctor and prisoner Doug Errey produced the prosthesis for Bert. Shepard had been gunned down east of Hamburg on his 34th mission as a P-38 fighter pilot, his life was saved by the doctor Lieutenant Ladislaus Loidl of the German Army.^[1]

In February 21, 1945, Shepard was back in the United States and hoping to resume his pitching career. Prior to the war, he had pitched for minor leagues all across the country.^[1] During spring training in 1945, he impressed Senators owner Clark Griffith enough to be hired as a pitching coach. He pitched exhibition games and batting practice, and one regulation game, making him the first man with an artificial leg to pitch in a major league baseball game.^[1]

On August 4, 1945 Shepard got the call to enter in the fourth inning of a home game in which the Senators were well behind the Boston Red Sox. It was Game Two of the fourth consecutive doubleheader in which Washington was playing, with a fifth scheduled the next day as well. Shepard made headlines, not only for being in the game itself, but also with 5⅓ innings of impressive relief, allowing only three hitsand one run. He struck out his first batter.^[1] The final score was Red Sox 15, Senators 4.^[3]

In between games of a doubleheader on August 31, Shepard received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal for his service in World War II.

He later went on to be a player/manager in the minor leagues until 1954.

He was a key participant on the National Amps baseball teams of former servicemen with amputations secondary to war injuries. After retiring from baseball, Shepard worked for IBM and Hughes Aircraft as a safety engineer.

Shepard won the U.S. amputee golf championship in 1968 and 1971.

Shepard died at age 87 in Highland, California. He was buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.^[4]

The game of August 4, 1945 was notable for two other events as well. Shepard came in to relieve teammate Joe Cleary, whose surrender of seven runs on five hits and three walks in one-third of an inning in his only big-league appearance earned him the highest lifetime ERA — 189.00 — of any pitcher in Major League Baseball history to have recorded at least one out, and who would be the last native of Ireland to pitch in a major league game. Also, outfielder Tom McBride tied a major league record with 6 runs batted in in the fourth inning, which was pitched by Cleary.

• 1945 - Brooklyn Dodgers open spring training at Bear Mountain, New York.
• 1953 - Patty Berg wins LPGA Titleholders Golf Championship.
• 1958 - Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati scores a NCAA midwest region-record 56 points.
• 1958 - Cincinnati Royals' basketball star Maurice Stokes collapses during a playoff game with encephalitis; he goes into a coma and is permanently disabled.
• 1988 - NFL's Saint Louis Cardinals officially move to Phoenix, Arizona
• 2007 - Death of Bowie Kuhn, Major League Baseball Commissioner (born 1926).

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