Today’s Sports Highlight in History:
1998 — Mark McGwire gives baseball a new magic number, hitting two homers to reach No. 70 in the St. Louis Cardinals’ season finale against Montreal. It’s McGwire’s fifth homer in the season-ending, three-game series. McGwire’s 70th and final home run of the season was a line shot over the left-field wall on a first-pitch fastball from Carl Pavano in the seventh.
On this date:
1894 — Aqueduct Race Track opens its doors. The building is torn down in 1955 and the new Aqueduct reopens on Sept. 14, 1959.
1947 — Armed, then the world’s leading money-winning thoroughbred, meets 1946 Kentucky Derby winner Assault in the first $100,000 winner-take-all match race, held at Belmont Park. Armed earns an easy victory over Assault, who was not in peak racing condition.
1950 — Ezzard Charles wins a unanimous 15-round decision over Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium in New York to retain the world heavyweight title.
1973 — Nolan Ryan strikes out 16 in 11 innings, for record 383 of season.
1975 — Kansas quarterback Nolan Cromwell rushes for an NCAA record 294 yards in a 20-0 victory over Oregon State.
1987 — NFL players’ strike begins in the U.S.
1988 — American diver Greg Louganis wins the 10m platform gold medal at the Seoul Olympics; wraps up diving double after also taking out the 3m springboard gold.
1988 — Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson is disqualified from the Seoul Olympics 100m after his urine sample found to contain steroid stanozolol; American Carl Lewis awarded gold medal and world record 9.92.
1992 — World champion Nigel Mansell sets a single-season victory record, leading from start to finish in the Portuguese Grand Prix for his ninth win of the Formula One season.
2000 — The Women’s British Open is elevated to major championship status on the LPGA Tour, replacing the du Maurier Classic. The other majors are the Nabisco Championship, the LPGA Championship and the U.S. Open.
2000 — United States baseball team, managed by Tommy Lasorda, wins Olympic Gold Medal in Sydney, Australia.
2003 — B.J. Symons of Texas Tech throws for 661 yards — a school and Big 12 record — and six touchdowns, in the Red Raiders’ 49-45 win over Mississippi.
2009 — Japan’s Kimiko Date Krumm becomes the oldest winner of a WTA Tour tournament since Billie Jean King in 1983. Date Krumm, who turns 39 on Sept. 28, beats second-seeded Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-3, 6-3 for the Korea Open title. King was 39 years, 7 months, 23 days when she won at Birmingham, England.
2009 — With rookie quarterback Matthew Stafford leading the way, Detroit ends a 19-game losing streak with a 19-14 victory over the Washington Redskins. The Lions had not won since Dec. 23, 2007, and their skid matched the second longest in NFL history.
2009 — New England beats Atlanta 26-10 for the 16th straight regular-season victory of the NFC. It’s the longest steak any team has posted against the opposite conference since the 1970 merger.
2014 — Watson Brown becomes the first head coach in NCAA history to lose 200 games when Tennessee Tech dropped a 50-7 decision to Northern Iowa. Amos Alonzo Stagg had held the record since 1946, going 314-199-35 in 57 seasons. Brown is 128-200-1 in 30 seasons as head coach.
2018 — Jared Goff passes for career highs of 465 yards and five touchdowns, winning a scintillating duel with his Minnesota counterpart Kirk Cousins and leading the unbeaten Los Angeles Rams to a 38-31 victory over the Vikings. Cousins passes for 422 yards and three touchdowns.