Martina Navratilova was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on October 18, 1956, as Martina Subertova.
When her mother later divorced and remarried, Martina took the name of her stepfather, Miroslav Navratil, adding the traditional feminine ending ova.
She moved to the United States in September 1975 during the U.S. Open.
The first publicly televised sporting event was a Japanese baseball game, broadcast on September 27, 1931. The Ushigome and Awazi Shichiku Higher Elementary Schools battled it out on the Tozuka Baseball Ground, watched by viewers on 8-by-5-inch screens.
The frontier sport of gouging, imported from England, flourished in the Ohio River Valley around 1800. The object was to gouge out the opponent’s eye with a thumbnail. To compete effectively, you would have needed to let your thumbnail grow extra-long.
The term, the Baltimore chop came into vogue in 1890. It refers to a batted ball that bounces so high that it cannot be fielded successfully before the batter reaches first base. It is said to have been named for two Baltimore players, John McGraw and Willie (“Wee Willie”) Keeler, who often reached base this…
It was not Yogi Berra who said, “The opera ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings”. Former Washington Bullets coach Dick Mona popularized the saying during the 1978 NBA playoffs. However, it was Dan Cook, a television sports announcer and writer for the San Antonio Express-News, who invented it.
The first group, inducted in the 1936 Baseball Hall of Fame, consisted of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner. Tyrus Raymond Cobb (1886-1961), “the Georgia Peach,” had played for the Detroit Tigers. Walter Perry Johnson (1887-1946) had pitched for the Washington Senators. Christopher Mathewson (1880-1925) had been a pitcher for…
Ty Cobb stole home 46 times during his 22-year career with the Detroit Tigers and holds the record for stealing home.