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In 1987, just shy of her 85th birthday, Baltimore heroine, baseball enthusiast and volunteer “Aunt” Mary Dobkin passed away. Crippled by frostbite at a young age, Aunt Mary was a pioneer in working with children and developing baseball teams around the city to create safe havens for the children to stay out of trouble. Her activism was brought to national attention in 1979 when Jean Stapleton starred in the movie about her life entitled “Aunt Mary.” (Irving H. Phillips Jr., Baltimore Sun photo, 1979)
1762: Ann Franklin became the first female editor of an American newspaper, the Newport, R.I., Mercury.
1787: Inventor John Fitch demonstrated his steamboat on the Delaware River to delegates of the Continental Congress.
1902: President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile, in Hartford, Conn.
1911: It was announced in Paris that Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” had been stolen from the Louvre Museum the night before. (The painting turned up two years later, in Italy.)
Orioles’ Eddie Murray shown batting in 1988. (Sun file photo)
Aug. 25, 2007: As part of their annual rookie hazing at the end of training camp in Westminster, the Ravens single out quarterback Troy Smith. The Heisman Trophy winner from Ohio State is dragged from the field, bound with tape, covered with baby powder and dumped into a tub of ice water, with a traffic cone on his head.
Aug. 25, 2005: For the second time in seven months, Orioles pitcher Sidney Ponson is charged with drunken driving. An eight-year veteran, he’ll not pitch again for the club, which releases Ponson (7-11, 6.21 ERA) on Sept. 1.
Aug. 26, 1985: “It’s a night I’ll remember,” Orioles slugger Eddie Murray says after hitting three home runs, including a grand slam, in a 17-3 victory over the California Angels in Anaheim. All told, the Orioles hit seven homers, tying a team record.
Aug. 26, 1971: As bettors chant, “Come on, honey, how about a winner,” jockey Jennifer Rowland rides Maleeny to victory at Timonium Race Track. It’s the first win in her home state for Rowland, of Owings Mills. One of the first female jockeys in Maryland, she’ll go on to win 192 races in a seven-year career.
Aug. 26, 1962: The sixth-place Orioles complete a historic five-game sweep of New York with a 2-1 victory over the first-place Yankees at Memorial Stadium. Robin Roberts, 35, pitches a five-hitter, and Brooks Robinson and Jim Gentile homer.
Aug. 25, 1956: A couple of rookies lead the Colts past the Pittsburgh Steelers, 37-16, in a preseason game in Cincinnati. Johnny Unitas passes for 211 yards and a touchdown (65 yards to Buddy Young). Lenny Moore, the No. 1 draft pick from Penn State, rushes for two scores, one of 85 yards.
Aug. 26, 1940: Competing for the Talbot Country Club golf championship in Easton, Howard German hits a drive into the woods. He finds his ball — and two others — in a bird’s nest in a cedar tree.
Aug. 22, 1920: Walking to the clubhouse after the first-place Orioles’ 2-1 International League loss to the Bisons in Buffalo, pitcher Jim Sullivan is struck in the head by a soda bottle thrown from the stands. Though knocked unconscious, Sullivan recovers; his offender escapes.
Birthday
Aug. 25, 1962: Swimmer Theresa Andrews of Annapolis, who won two gold medals (100-meter backstroke and 400-medley relay) in the 1984 Olympics.
Each week, The Baltimore Sun will chronicle the Orioles’ march to their first world championship in 1966, along with an archived cartoon of the Orioles bird drawn by the late Jim Hartzell, artist for The Baltimore Sun.
A cartoon drawing of the Oriole bird by Baltimore Sun artist Jim Hartzell. (Baltimore Sun)
Injuries test the Orioles’ mettle. With eight players hurting, including nearly half of the pitching staff, the club struggles to win two of six games — both extra-inning walk-off victories.
In the first inning of a 9-4 loss to the Detroit Tigers, pitcher Moe Drabowsky is struck on the collarbone. Another pitcher in the same game, Steve Barber, retires one batter and leaves with a sore arm. Pitchers Wally Bunker, Eddie Watt and Dick Hall are bothered by elbow problems. Second baseman Davey Johnson nurses a fractured toe, while catcher Andy Etchebarren (pulled muscle) and first baseman Boog Powell (fractured finger) are day-to-day.
Still, the Orioles (82-46) cling to their double-digit lead in the American League. In a 4-3 victory over the Cleveland Indians, Curt Blefary homers in the ninth inning to tie the game, and in the 11th, Paul Blair’s bases-loaded single wins it. Ageless reliever Stu Miller pitches four hitless innings to boost his record to 8-2.
The next game, they rally again. Trailing the Boston Red Sox 2-0 in the ninth, the Orioles pull even on consecutive pinch-hit home runs by Vic Roznovsky and Powell, an AL record. Three innings later, it’s Russ Snyder who hits a bases-loaded single and Blair who scores the winning run.
Another day, another comeback. Down 3-0 to Boston in the ninth, the Orioles score twice. But Frank Robinson, whose 40 homers leads the AL, strikes out to end the game.
In 1977, Orioles third baseman Brooks Robinson officially retired as an active player. Robinson played for the Orioles for 23 seasons – his entire major league career – and 2,896 games. Above, Robinson rounds 3rd after hitting a home run against the A’s in 1971. (Carl D. Harris, Baltimore Sun photo)
1858: Senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held the first of their seven famous debates.
1944: The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China opened talks in Washington that helped pave the way for establishment of the United Nations.
1959: President Dwight Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state.
1994: On a vote of 235-195, the House approved a $30 billion crime bill that banned certain assault-style firearms.
In 1952, Baltimore’s infamous Grammer murder case began when a black Chrysler careened down Taylor Avenue toward Bel Air Road before flipping on its side. G. Edward Grammer was eventually convicted of first-degree murder for killing his wife and attempting to cover it up with the car accident. Above, Grammer is led out of Towson Court House before being taken to the scene of the crime. (Ellis Malashuk, Baltimore Sun file photo)
1866: The National Labor Union requested that Congress establish an eight-hour work day.
1964: President Lyndon Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.
1977: The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
2012: Phyllis Diller, a pioneering comic whose career spanned nearly 50 years, died; she was 95.
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. There will be a small prize each week for the first right answer. Put your best guess in the “comments” field. Here’s today’s trivia:
QUESTION: Students from what Maryland university are the subject of Augusta Tucker’s novels “Miss Susie Slagle’s” and “The Man Miss Susie Loved”?
In 1780, Baron de Kalb, a major general in the American Revolutionary War, died from wounds he sustained while leading the Maryland Line in the Battle of Camden in South Carolina. A statue of him, shown above, now sits in front of the Maryland State House.
1848: The New York Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.
1929: The comedy program “Amos ’n’ Andy,” starring Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, made its coast-to-coast radio debut on NBC.
1977: Comedian Groucho Marx died in Los Angeles; he was 86.
1994: President Bill Clinton abruptly halted the nation’s three-decade-long open-door policy for Cuban refugees.
Baltimore’s Francis X. Bushman was once the biggest screen actor in the country
Francis X. Bushman was once the biggest screen actor in the country, and he had ties to Baltimore. (Baltimore Sun files)
I like to tell visitors this: The guy who posed for the statue of Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, outside the the Mitchell Courthouse on St. Paul Street was a Baltimore-born actor who played the bad guy in the Hollywood epic “Ben-Hur” of 1925. His name was Francis X. Bushman, and 100 years ago, he was huge.
Bushman learned to drive a horse-powered chariot for that remarkable long-ago movie, and he somehow got through the filming of its famously brutal chariot race unscathed.
In fact, when Hollywood remade “Ben-Hur” in the late 1950s, the star of that production, Charlton Heston, was reported to have said, “The only man in Hollywood who can drive a chariot is Francis X. Bushman, and he's too old!”
Bushman died 50 years ago this month in California.
Francis X. Bushman, left, as Messala opposite Ramon Novarro's Ben-Hur in the 1925 film. (Chicago Tribune files)
Once upon a time, he was a matinee idol, the highest-paid screen actor of his era, known at the peak of his career as “the handsomest man in the world.” He built a mansion near Baltimore. His name was up in lights all over the country.
He took the role of Messala in MGM’s “Ben-Hur,” at $4 million the most expensive film of the silent age. It is an amazing work for its time. Bushman plays opposite another silent-movie beefcake, the Mexican-American actor Ramon Novarro, who had the title role.
I mention it because of the release Friday (Aug. 19) of a new “Ben-Hur,” starring Jim Huston as Judah Ben-Hur and Toby Kebbel as his former buddy, now arch-rival, the villainous Roman nobleman and commander, Messala.
In today’s episode of the Roughly Speaking podcast, film critics Linda DeLibero and Christopher Llewellyn Reed talk about the various productions of “Ben-Hur” over the years, and the long line of lavish movies rightfully called Hollywood epics. We trace that lineage back to “Ben-Hur” of 1925 and the buff Baltimore guy whose likeness jurors and judges pass whenever they enter the Mitchell Courthouse from the west.
To many, the statue is Calvert. To me, it’s Bushman.
THEN: An overgrown Northern Central Railroad line runs by Monkton Station in 1979. The line was converted to a rail trail in 1984. (William H. Mortimer, Baltimore Sun, 1979)
NOW: Monkton Station is seen in 2016 at mile 7.2 along the Torrey C. Brown Trail, the popular rails-to-trail that stretches 20 miles from Hunt Valley to the Pennsylvania state line on the former Northern Central Railroad line. (Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun, 2016)
Click here for a gallery of 100+ more now-and-then pictures from around Baltimore.
In 1930, Eastern Air Transport’s inaugural New York-to-Richmond, Va., air service touched down in Baltimore. The drop off was at Logan Field, shown above, which today is the location of a shopping center. The first day of service transported 21 passengers to stops that also included Philadelphia and Washington. (Robert Kniesche, Baltimore Sun photo, 1939)
1587: Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents to be born on American soil, on what is now Roanoke Island, N.C.
1920: Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed the right of American women to vote.
1958: The novel “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov was published.
1963: James Meredith became the first African-American to graduate from the University of Mississippi.
