How A Slide Changed the Fortunes of Two Historic Franchises

The 1st Baseman was born in Carlisle, smack in the middle of south central Pennsylvania, 190 miles east of Pittsburgh. As a sophomore at Carlisle High School, he got trucked stretching for a double play, tearing his ACL, but doctors opted not to repair it. After a successful stint at Liberty University, the Dodgers drafted Sidney Eugene Bream in the 2nd Round of the 1981 Amateur Draft. 

Bream motored through the minors with the Dodgers, posting a .327/.395/.423 slash line in his rookie season at Single-A Vero Beach that year. The following year saw Bream make it all the way to Triple-A, albeit for just three games. Still, Bream posted an .879 OPS in 1982, his first full professional season.

1983 saw Bream back at Triple-A, where he dazzled with a .307/.415/.569 slash line, hitting 23 doubles and 32 home runs in hitter-friendly Albuquerque, leading the Pacific Coast League with 118 RBIs on a team that included future Major Leaguers Orel Hershiser and John Franco. This was enough to earn him a September call-up for the Dodgers, where he went 2x11, though both hits drove in a run. 

Despite dominating the PCL in 1983, Bream opened 1984 back in Albuquerque. The Dodgers were cool with Greg Brock and his .722 OPS, I suppose. But this season Bream got two call-ups, 13 games in July where again he struggled to a .436 OPS, and again in September for 14 more games, but could only muster a .184/.263/.245 line across those 27 games. In between he hit .343/.426/.559 for Albuquerque.

1985 was make-or-break in LA for Bream, he broke camp with the Dodgers as the Opening Day 1B and immediately rewarded Tommy Lasorda with an RBI single off of Houston's Nolan Ryan at The Astrodome. That was the only run the Dodgers could muster in a 2-1 loss to the Astros. Three games later Bream went 2x4 and hit his first MLB home run off of Mike Krukow, though again it would be the only run the Dodgers scored in the game. The next 11 games saw Bream go 2x30 (though both hits were home runs), and he returned to Albuquerque.

Bream got sporadic playing time for about six weeks in Los Angeles following a subsequent call-up, and again he struggled to a .132/.230/.302 line when he was sent away from LA for good. He continued to rake in Albuquerque, this time hitting .370/.437/.647. 

On August 31, 1985, though seven games up, the Dodgers were in the process of getting swept at home by the Phillies. Looking for an offensive boost, the Dodgers traded for Pittsburgh's Bill Madlock, a four-time NL Batting Champion, who could play 1B/3B. On September 9, the Pirates got the return in that trade - Sid Bream and Cecil Espy. Madlock would go on to hit .360/.422/.447 for the Dodgers, who would eventually lose in six games to the eventual World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals. 

Given a fresh start in Pittsbrugh, whose Major League Baseball history begins in 1882, Bream hit .284/.355/.453 in 26 games down the 1985 stretch. Considering that the Pirates' 30-year old 1B, Jason Thompson, had posted a .759 OPS in three years since his third and final All-Star selection, Bream was on deck to take over at 1B in 1986. 

Now in his Age 25 season, Bream played 154 games for the Pirates and posted a respectable .791 OPS.  The Pirates went 64-98 that season, 44 games behind the New York Mets. But a foundation was being laid in Pittsburgh. Also playing in his first full season at Pittsburgh under first-year manager Jim Leyland was a 21-year old rookie from Arizona State named Barry Bonds, who was drafted 6th overall the previous year. The Pirates acquired Doug Drabek in a trade after the 1986 season. The Pirates' farm director was Branch Rickey III. 

The 1987 Pirates improved 16 games over 1986, finishing 80-82, 4th in the NL East. On April 1 of that year, Pittsburgh traded Tony Pena to St. Louis for outfielder Andy Van Slyke, pitcher Mike Dunne and catcher Mike LaValliere. Van Slyke led the Pirates with an .821 OPS while Bonds led the team with 25 home runs. 

1988 saw even more improvement as Pittsburgh enjoyed their first winning season in four years and their fourth since winning the 1979 World Series. The 1988 Pirates went 85-75, good enough for 2nd in the NL East, though still 15 games back of the Mets.

1989 was a step back, both for Bream and the Pirates. The Pirates went 74-88-2, 5th in the NL East, and Bream's knee problems limited him to 19 games. His OPS had declined in each year in Pittsburgh, and the Pirates were running out of patience. 

Bream rebounded in 1990 with a career season, an .804 OPS in 147 games as the Pirates went 95-67 and won the first of three straight division titles. Barry Bonds led the team with 32 home runs, a .970 OPS, and 52 stolen bases on his way to his first NL MVP title. Bonds, Van Slyke, and Bobby Bonilla combined to hit 82 home runs. Doug Drabek, who along with his wife were godparents to Bream's kids as were the Breams for the Drabeks', went 22-6 and won the NL Cy Young.

Bream went 4x8 with a homer in the 1990 NLCS, but a six-game series decided by a total of ten runs spelled Pittsburgh's defeat to the eventual World Series Champion Cincinnati Reds. Bream's time in Pittsburgh had run its course. The Pirates opted not to extend him in order to make way for Orlando Merced, and Bream was granted free agency after the 1990 season. Bream:

The very next day after we got beat, the management, executives for Pittsburgh, came out in the paper and said, 'Sid Bream is our priority to sign for the 1991 season.' So my wife and I were ecstatic...and through negotiations, they didn't even get close to market price on me, let alone anything more for being their priority. At that point in time, free agency opened up and the Braves gave me a great offer. They said, 'You need to make a decision, because if you don't come here, we've got to go find somebody else.' And so my wife and I decided that evening to go to the Atlanta Braves. We were torn up. We cried most of the night that night, thinking we were leaving the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The 1990 Atlanta Braves were absolutely miserable. Not only did they go 65-97, last in the NL West, and ten games behind the 5th place Astros and Padres, they were last in the National League in attendance, unable to draw a million fans to 81 home games. But there was some hope, despite trading franchise icon Dale Murphy in August to Philadelphia. 

Rookie David Justice hit .282/.373/.535 to win the 1990 NL Rookie of the Year. Ron Gant, in his second full season with the Braves, hit 32 home runs and stole 33 bases, getting a few down-ballot MVP votes for the first time in his career. A rookie acquired from Toronto named Francisco Cabrera had a .782 OPS in 63 games. The Braves drafted Larry Wayne "Chipper" Jones with the 1st overall pick in the Draft, and manager Bobby Cox left his role as Atlanta's General Manager to return to the dugout for his second managerial stint with the Braves. 

Elsewhere for the 1990 Braves, 23-year old John Smoltz led the NL in walks (90) and wild pitches (14), but posted double-digit wins for the second straight season. Lefty SP Tom Glavine threw over 200 Innings in his fourth season with Atlanta. A 20-year old named Steve Avery made his MLB debut that season, going 3-11 with an ERA over 5.00, but he only allowed seven home runs in 99IP. 1991 could be something special.

And it was. For both the Braves, and the Pirates. The Braves signed free agent Terry Pendleton in December and two days later signed Sid Bream. 

On July 7 the Braves went into the All-Star Break 39-40, 9.5 games back of the Dodgers in the NL West, and 9.0 back of the Pirates, who were leading the NL East. On August 21 the 64-54 Braves took on the Cincinnati Reds at Riverfront Stadium and found themselves down 9-5 to open the 7th Inning. Catcher Francisco Cabrera homered in the 7th to make it 9-6, and then hit a three-run homer in the 9th off of Rob Dibble to tie the game, one they would win in 13 innings. They would win 27 of their next 40 games.

The Braves went into the final series of the 1991 season tied with the Dodgers at 92-67. The Braves had gone 53-27 since the All-Star Break. Atlanta hosted the Astros and took the first two games of the series. Los Angeles went to 5th Place San Francisco and lost the first two games of the series. With one game left to play, the Braves had a two-game lead, clinching their first division title since 1982, and their 3rd since relocating from Milwaukee after the 1965 season.

Both teams won their respective divisions, the Pirates with 98 wins - their best win total since the 1979 World Series Championship - and the Braves with 94, the Braves completing a worst-to-first division turnaround. 

Back then, the League Championship Series was the first round of the playoffs. Over the course of the 1991 season the Braves took an astonishing nine of twelve from the Pirates, Pittsburgh's lowest win total against any one opponent since going 3-9 against the 1989 Padres. 

The 1991 NLCS started out evenly. Pittsburgh won Game 1, 5-1. Sid Bream went 2x4. The Braves scored one run in Game 2, but Steve Avery threw 8.1 innings of shutout baseball before Alejandro Pena needed six pitches to get the final two outs to tie the series up at 1-1. Sid Bream didn't play. 

With the series shifting back to Atlanta for Game 3, Pittsburgh's Orlando Merced hit a leadoff homer off of John Smoltz to give the Pirates a 1-0 lead, but Atlanta answered with four runs in the bottom half of the inning to give the Braves a 4-1 lead that they would never relinquish. It was 7-3 Atlanta when Sid Bream hit a 3-run pinch-hit homer to provide the 10-3 final margin of victory.

Games 4 & 5 were nail-biters, the Pirates overcoming a 2-0 1st inning deficit to win 3-2 in 10 innings in Game 4, and then holding the Braves scoreless in Game 5, winning 1-0 on the back of Zane Smith's 7.2 scoreless innings, outdueling Tom Glavine's 8IP of 1-run ball. Pittsburgh had a 3-2 series lead, one win away from their first Pennant and World Series appearance in 12 years. 

Game 6 was back in Pittsburgh with Steve Avery on the mound again for the Braves, and Doug Drabek for the Pirates. Drabek had an extra day of rest, having started Game 1, while Avery started (and dominated) Game 2. It 0-0 heading into the 9th Inning. With one out, Ron Gant walked. Sid Bream came to the plate and flied out to deep Left Field for the 2nd out to round out an 0x4 day. Gant stole 2nd base and scored on catcher Gregg Olson's double. The Pirates were down to their final three outs. Pinch-hitter Gary Varsho singled to lead off the inning, Orlando Merced sac bunted him over to 2nd (ahhh 1991). Jay Bell lined out to Right for the 2nd out. Closer Alejandro Pena's second pitch to Andy Van Slyke was wild, and Varsho sprinted to 3rd base. Six pitches later Van Slyke struck out looking to end the game. There would be a Game 7. Steve Avery's 1991 NLCS: 16.1IP, 9H/0ER, 17K:4BB.

Game 7 went quickly and quietly. The Braves staked John Smoltz to a 1st Inning 3-0 lead and coasted to a 4-0 win behind Brian Jordan's 3RBI game and Smoltz's complete game pennant-winning shutout. Barry Bonds hit .148/.207/.185 in the series. In his first two trips to the postseason, Bonds hit .156/.283/.178 with a lone double in 13 games. 

The 1991 World Series featured two "Worst-To-First" opponents, with the Twins completing the same feat the Braves did from 1990-1991. Five games were decided by one run. Four games ended on a walkoff hit. Game 7 was a 10-inning 1-0 game as future Hall of Famers Jack Morris and John Smoltz fired scoreless outings, Morris' just happened to throw ten shutout innings. As a result, the Minnesota Twins' seven-game victory made them the first team in baseball history to win the World Series a year after finishing in last place in their division. It was - 2017 aside - maybe the greatest World Series of all-time.

1992 saw the Pirates and Braves both run it back. There were no major additions by the Braves, aside from acquiring reliever Jeff Reardon from Boston on August 30. The Pirates underwent more nuanced transformation. They let Bobby Bonilla sign a free agent deal with the Mets, and then in March 1992 traded lefty All-Star starter John Smiley, who went 20-8 in 1991 and finished 3rd in the Cy Young voting, to Minnesota for Denny Neagle and Midre Cummings. Pirates pitcher Bob Walk:

Our clubhouse was pissed when Smiles got traded. It was not a happy bunch of guys. That was like somebody put a shot over our bow. It was like, 'They think Bonilla is gone, so now we can't win?' Maybe at that point, that's when the team got a little bit closer.

The Pirates, who had just won back-to-back division titles for the first time since 1974-75, knew that time was running out, with Drabek and Bonds destined to test free agency the following offseason. Jim Leyland:

We knew that group was not going to be together much longer, if at all.

Pittsburgh sportstalk host Mark Madden:

Everybody knew it was now or never, because the reality of keeping big-money players in Pittsburgh...it was so evident it wasn't going to happen.

The Pirates started the season hot, going 15-5, but scuffled a little bit, losing 11 of 12 from May 15-27. But by the All-Star Break they were 49-39, 4.5 games up in the NL East, and would go on to comfortably win the division by nine games. Barry Bonds won his 2nd NL MVP in three seasons after hitting 34 home runs to go with 39 stolen bases and a 1.078 OPS. But again they went 5-7 against Atlanta in the regular season.

On May 27, 1992 the Braves woke up with a 20-27 record, in last place, seven games behind the San Francisco Giants. Based solely on percentage points, the Braves were the worst team in the National League. Then: madness. They went 78-37 down the stretch, including a 35-15 record in June and July. The Giants finished from that point with a 47-72 record, ending the 1992 season 26 games behind the Braves. The Braves went 98-64, their highest win total in franchise history since 1898, when they were known as the Boston Beaneaters.

So, a Pirates/Braves NLCS rematch, then. Barry Bonds told his teammates in the Pirates clubhouse prior to the NLCS:

I told them, 'I'll get you to the playoffs. Now they've got to get me through [Atlanta] and I'll see we win the World Series.

Due to their superior record, Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 would be in Atlanta. Game 1 saw the Braves give John Smoltz a 5-0 lead before Pittsburgh got on the board. Atlanta opened with a 1-0 series lead after a 5-1 win. 

Atlanta opened Game 2 with a 4-0 lead and then an 8-0 lead after Ron Gant hit a 5th Inning grand slam. The Pirates finally got to their foe Steve Avery, lighting him up for 4ER in the 7th before the Braves answered with five runs in the bottom half of the inning. The Braves won 13-5, having scored 19 runs in seven total games in the 1991 NLCS. Behind the plate was umpire Randy Marsh, whose notoriously small strike zone resulted in eight walks issued by Pirates pitchers in the game.

Back in Pittsburgh for Games 3-5, Pirates pitcher Tim Wakefield threw a complete game as the Pirates held off the Braves for a 3-2 win in Game 3 to avoid going down 3-0. His opponent, Tom Glavine, was 0-3 against Pittsburgh in the postseason between 1991-1992. 

In Game 4 the Pirates had a 3-2 lead thanks to an RBI double from Orlando Merced, Sid Bream's Pirates replacement, in the 3rd inning. David Justice chased Doug Drabek in the 5th with a game-tying RBI single, and one batter later Brian Hunter - pinch-hitting for Bream - scored Jeff Blauser on a fielder's choice, giving the Braves the lead back. Two more Braves runs came, and the 9th Inning saw Jeff Reardon (acquired by Atlanta earlier in the season) strike Cecil Espy (who the Pirates acquired with Sid Bream back in 1985) out for the first out of the 9th inning. Reardon closed it out for the save, and a 3-1 series lead. Pittsburgh's Doug Drabek started nine games in his career in the postseason and failed to get a Quality Start in just two of them: Games 1 & 4 of the 1992 NLCS. 

Facing elimination, Game 5 saw the Pirates finally light up Steve Avery. After throwing 22.1 scoreless innings in three NLCS starts against the Pirates across 1991-1992, between the 7th Inning of Game 2 and the 1st Inning of Game 5, the Pirates got him for 9H/8ER. 30 pitches into Game 5 and Avery allowed a single and four doubles, allowing Bob Walk to comfortably throw a complete game and send it to Game 6.

...which was over almost before it began. The Pirates knocked Tom Glavine all over Fulton County Stadium, scoring eight runs in a 2nd Inning that finally brought Barry Bonds his first postseason homerun. Glavine's 2nd Inning went as such: homer, single, single, double, fielder's choice, fielder's choice, double, homer. 1IP, 6H/8R (7ER), 0K:0BB. It would be the first of four postseason outings in Glavine's career in which he allowed 7ER. The Pirates, down 3-1 in the series, answered in Games 5/6 with 26 hits and 20 runs to force Game 7 the following night. 

After failing to record 15 outs in both Games 1 & 4, again the Pirates turned to Doug Drabek in Game 7. The Braves sent John Smoltz to the mound. In the 1992 regular season, Smoltz had allowed 12 home runs at Fulton County Stadium in 15 games, and just seven in 20 road starts. Smoltz walked leadoff batter Alex Cole to open the game and an Andy Van Slyke double put runners on 2nd/3rd with one out for Barry Bonds. For the first time in a career that featured 21 of them, Bonds was intentionally walked. An Orlando Merced sac fly made it 1-0 Pirates, but Smoltz got Jeff King to pop up behind home plate and end the inning. 

Drabek needed 28 pitches to retire the first six Braves in order. A Damon Berryhill leadoff double amounted to nothing as Drabek retired the next nine batters. Drabek:

I threw my curveball a lot. Pitches were working. It wasn't like it was dominating, but defense helped out, and it was basically just trying to throw strikes and try to get outs.

Pittsburgh's Jay Bell doubled to open the 6th inning and Andy Van Slyke singled him home to extend Pittsburgh's lead to 2-0. In the bottom half of the 6th Mark Lemke, Jeff Treadway, and Otis Nixon singled to load the bases with nobody out. Jeff Blauser lined into a double play, and Terry Pendleton lined out to left to end the inning and waste a chance to break the game open.

Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium clubhouse attendant Mike Hill was in the visitors clubhouse. The Braves had 25 cases of champagne in Pittsburgh for Game 5, just in case they won the Pennant. When the series shifted back to Atlanta, they brought the champagne with them. The Braves and Pirates had an agreement that if Pittsburgh won the series, they'd just use that champagne and send a check to Atlanta. Hill:

The game was kind of boring, but it looked like we weren't going to win. We started putting up the plastic [around the Pirates locker room]. CBS is coming in, building their stage, slowly. 

Francisco Cabrera:

In the seventh inning, eighth inning, I was thinking, 'Wow, we are going to lose this game.' We don't have a chance because Drabek was throwing very good. He was untouchable.

With runners on 2nd and 3rd and two outs in the top of the 7th, Bobby Cox turned to Steve Avery to face Andy Van Slyke and keep the game at 2-0. He did, getting Van Slyke to fly out to center. The Braves were able to get two runners on in the bottom half, but again Drabek wriggled out of it with no damage. Barry Bonds singled to open the 8th inning but an Orlando Merced fielder's choice was the first out of the inning. When Jeff King doubled down the right field line, Merced was flying home when a David Justice rocket nailed him at the plate.

Jeff Reardon navigated a walk and a wild pitch to turn it over to Atlanta's final three outs. Pittsburgh's Cecil Espy had pinch-run for Lloyd McClendon, who had apparentely pulled a hamstring running the bases, and moved to Right Field for McClendon for the bottom of the 9th. Drabek was at 120 pitches, but still took the mound for the 9th. Leyland:

Dougie's one of the fiercest competitors you'll ever see. I felt like he could get the job done. I felt like he was the best choice at that particular time.

Terry Pendleton doubled down the right field line to leadoff the 9th, and it's up for debate whether Espy who, if you remember, was traded to Pittsburgh with Bream in 1985, froze or didn't get a good read on the ball. The tying run was at the plate. David Justice grounded to second baseman Jose Lind. Lind, who would win his only career Gold Glove in 1992 thanks to committing just six errors in 745 chances in the regular season, bobbled it, sending Pendleton to third and allowing Justice to reach first. Leyland:

Chico Lind was one of the greatest second basemen in the league, defensively. It was a ball he hadn't missed all year. Just, freaky things happen, and that's what happens when stuff unravels once in a while.

Lind:

It still haunts me now. If I catch that ball, we probably go to the World Series.

McClendon:

In our pregame workouts, Chico took his ground balls like he usually did. [First base coach] Tommy [Sandt] hit him one. He bobbled it. Almost the same play. Tommy said, 'One more.' And [Lind] said, 'No, I'm good.' It's just...you think about that.

The final batter Drabek would face as a Pirate was Sid Bream, and Drabek walked him on four pitches to load the bases.

In came Stan Belinda to face Ron Gant. Belinda appeared in 59 games for the 1992 Pirates, saving 18 games with a 3.15 ERA. But through career seven postseason appearances, Belinda threw 9.2IP, 4H/1ER, 10K:3BB. Gant sent Belinda's second pitch to deep left, it was caught by Bonds against the wall, deep enough to score Pendleton. 2-1 Pirates. Belinda then walked Damon Berryhill to re-load the bases, with Justice on third and Bream on second. It would have been easy for the Pirates to be upset at the walk, because Berryhill could have easily been rung up on strikes on the inside corner, called balls by home plate umpire Randy Marsh - who started the game as the 1B umpire and moved after John McSherry left the game due to illness. 

LaValliere, who hilariously screamed profanities at Marsh for his strike zone on October 14, 1992 before a Spring Training game...in 2001:

That pitch was on the inside corner and we didn't get the call. But this doesn't land on Randy Marsh. You miss a pitch here, you miss a pitch there. Umpires are human. Those things happen. 

McClendon:

Not a lot of good things happened to us when Randy was behind the plate.

Van Slyke:

The person who choked the most in that game was the umpire behind home plate. When the lights are shining, and it means that much, it just hurts that much more when an umpire can't pull the trigger when he is supposed to.

For his part, Sid Bream couldn't believe he was still standing on second base, expecting to be replaced by Brian Hunter. After all, by that point he'd had five knee surgeries and referred to himself as "the worst possible person to have on base in a situation where you desperately needed a run to score from second." Bream:

I would have been a decent runner without my knee surgeries; but at that point in time, I was slow.

But Cox wanted Hunter to pinch-hit for Rafael Belliard. Hunter:

That's the reason Sid was still running. Unless [Cox] would have went with a pitcher.

Hunter popped up for the second out. Out in the Braves bullpen, the last guy on the bench, was Francisco Cabrera, warming up relievers. Cabrera:

I was just waiting for them to call. I was just mentally preparing, trying to have a plan when I go to the plate.

Bream:

Cabrera was an easy choice there. That guy, honest to goodness, probably had more power than anybody on our team that year. He had some trouble finding a consistent position on defense, so he only got a handful of at bats that season, but that guy could flat-out hit the baseball.

He got the call. Cabrera played in 12 games for the Braves in the 1992 regular season, but two of his three hits were home runs, and Bobby Cox added him to the postseason roster for his versatility in the field (he could play 1B and also catch) and his ability to pinch-hit. He had pinch-hit in the 9th inning of Game 6, lining out to left fielder Barry Bonds. This was his third career postseason plate appearance. Again, Cabrera:

I was in a situation where I said to myself, 'If I get a hit here, I'm going to be a hero. And if I don't get a hit, it's okay, because nobody knows me. But if I get the hit, I'll be somebody.'

Long-time Pittsburgh sports anchor Bob Pompeani:

Leyland, I guess, thought: I worked this bench down to where I got this guy up. It's a perfect situation. He hasn't batted. He's just their last-ditch effort. 

Cabrera got out to a 2-0 count before hooking a fastball just foul of the left field line. Cabrera:

I thought he wouldn't throw me that pitch again. But then I thought, 'Hey, I'm still ahead with two balls and one strike. He's going to throw me the fastball again, and I'm going to be ready this time.'

Andy Van Slyke would tell MLB Network that he motioned for Bonds to move closer to the infield:

I just told him to move in. After Cabrera hit that 2-0 foul...as an outfielder, more balls are hit in front of you than behind you, especially on the ground. So my philosophy was, I'm going to give myself the best opportunity to throw the guy out at home plate, especially with two outs because the guy is going to be running on contact...He ignored me and gave me the 'international peace sign.'

The 4th pitch was lined into left-center field, scoring Justice. Barry Bonds made a circuitous route to the ball but fired the ball home to catcher Mike LaValliere. The throw pulled LaValliere up the first base line, giving the slow-footed Bream a path to the plate. David Justice:

I thought Sid was going to be safe easily. I mean easily. But when that ball was in the air and I saw him running, I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, it's like a piano is on his back.' It was like he was never going to get there.

Bream:

If it had been one out, I'd have had to freeze to see if the ball would go through or not. I was able to run at the crack of the bat...So I had every intention when the ball was hit to keep on going. I still don't know to this day whether [Braves 3B Coach] Jimy Williams was waving me.

LaValliere grabbed the ball on one hop, and dove back to his left, to the plate. Leyland:

I thought Bonds made a great throw. People can criticize that throw all they want, but it's totally uncalled for...I thought he made a great throw.

LaValliere:

It's a tough throw. He was going away from home plate, having to change his momentum. The throw was 6-8 feet off line. It wasn't like it was in the stands. I still was able to kind of capture it and dive. I still think I got him.

Reserve Infielder John Wehner:

Barry moved towards the line [after the foul ball]. He was so close to the foul line. If he is playing him more straight up, he is coming straight in to get that ball. If he is coming straight in, he has a direct path to throw. But he was coming to his left and in. So he is coming across his body, and that's when the ball sailed to the first base line. 

Van Slyke:

Barry gets an unfortunate rap. It was only off by two feet. Barry really made a great play. He charged the ball really hard. He had to go to his left, and as a left-handed thrower...it's kind of hard to throw across your body. So he made a terrific play.

Bream had beaten the tag for a walk-off Braves Pennant win. LaValliere:

The only way I can explain it is one of the scenes in the movie 'Saving Private Ryan.' Where there's Tom Hanks and there are these explosions and suddenly you can't hear anything. And it's numbing. That's what it felt like.

Van Slyke:

It was close but he was clearly safe. I'm not particularly sold on the fact that he actually touched the plate...But I think home plate is totally different because you have nothing to slide into. I get it on the bases. But home plate? I think if you break that perpendicular plane, I think you should be safe.

Bream:

Francisco Cabrera doesn't get enough credit. He did the hard part. He got the hit..in one of the most pressure-packed situations you could ever imagine. All I did was run home without tripping over my feet and make a lousy slide that was somehow just good enough.

Clubhouse attendant Mike Hill had to sprint the 50-60 yards pushing a flatbed dolly loaded with champagne to the home clubhouse:

The champagne that the Braves sprayed and celebrated with when Sid slid was sitting in the Pirates' clubhouse at that very second.

Andy Van Slyke sat in the outfield grass and watched the celebration around Bream at home plate. Van Slyke:

It wasn't just disappointing for me or for the team. I knew Pirates fans were going to suffer for a long time. The writing was on the wall...We all knew what was coming. 

And they were right. While the Braves at the beginning of a run of 14-straight postseason appearances that culminated in the 1995 World Series, the Pirates went in the opposite direction. Following the 1992 season, Barry Bonds went to San Francisco and Doug Drabek signed a four-year deal with the Houston Astros. Chico Lind was traded to Kansas City in November 1992. Sid Bream stayed in Atlanta through 1993 before ending his career hitting .344/.429/.426, joining his buddy Drabek in Houston for the strike-shortened season before calling it a career. 

The 1993 Pirates went 75-87, starting a string 20 consecutive losing seasons, before finally breaking through and making the playoffs in 2013, where they lost to the Cardinals in the NLDS. Up 2-1 in the Best-of-Five Series, the losing pitchers in Games 4 and 5 were Pittsburgh's Charlie Morton and Gerrit Cole, respectively. Losses in the one-off Wild Card games in 2014 and 2015 (despite a 98-win season in 2015) mean that the Pirates have not won a playoff series since 1979. 

Atlanta became synonymous with regular season success and playoff failure. They lost the 1992 World Series to Toronto. Then lost in the NLCS in 1993, despite winning 104 games in the regular season. But they won 90+ games in 13 of 14 seasons between 1991-2005. 

Francisco Cabrera played in 70 games for the 1993 Braves, hitting .241/.308/.422 and even hitting a game-tying pinch-hit single in 1993 NLCS Game 5. That was the final at-bat of his Major League career. Cabrera went to play in Japan in 1994 and most recently was the hitting coach for Cleveland's affiliate in the Dominican Summer League in 2014. 

Calamity At The Empire State Building, 1945-1947

The lot at West 34th Street in New York City had been owned by the renowned Astor family since the 1820s and by the mid-1890s John Jacob Astor's grandson - William Waldorf Astor - opened the Waldorf Hotel. His cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, opened a 16-story hotel on an adjacent lot. They did not care for each other. 

Prussian-born George Boldt emigrated to the United States in 1864 at the age of 13. Beginning as a kitchen worker in New York City, Boldt worked his way up to managing the dining room of The Philadelphia Club, hired by his future father-in-law. Located at 13th & Walnut in downtown Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Club was the most exclusive club in the city, counting Owen Wister (writer of The Virginian and considered "The Father of Western Fiction"), several members of the Du Pont family as well as members of the Biddle family. Nicholas Biddle is most notable as the president of the Second Bank of the United States who picked, and lost, a fight with Andrew Jackson in his second term in office. Legend has it (which is History Code for saying "I read this somewhere") General George Meade wasn't admitted to the Philadelphia Club until after he had won at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Boldt opened his own hotel in 1881, Philadelphia's Bellevue Hotel, on the northeast corner of Broad & Walnut Streets. And in a very Robber Barony move he soon bought his main competition, the Stratford, on the southeast corner. The Gilded Age was dotted with various Robber Barons from whom he acquired this strategy, and hooboy he catered to those self-same Robber Barons, charging exorbitant prices for the best rooms, and soon he became rich himself. Boldt would go on to merge the two hotels, becoming the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel - Philadelphia's largest hotel - that would eventually evolve into the Hyatt at the Bellevue.

In short, George Boldt was the perfect man to make a triumphant return to New York. Convinced to manage the Waldorf, Boldt mediated an agreement between William Waldorf Astor and John Jacob Astor IV to merge the two hotels under his management as the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where he popularized Thousand Island dressing.

Boldt died of a heart attack in late 1916 and the Waldorf-Astoria's lease was bought by Thomas Coleman Du Pont in 1918. Du Pont was the President of what we now know as...Dupont, and would go on to serve two terms as a senator from Delaware, resigning in 1928 as a result of "health problems" and also being implicated in Warren G. Harding's Teapot Dome Scandal. The Teapot Dome Scandal is worthy of a separate deep dive but, tl;dr: Harding's Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall would be the first cabinet member to be indicted over bribery charges related to government-owned, oil-laden land at Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

By the time Du Pont resigned, New York's elites were already moving north of 34th Street. The Waldorf-Astoria was sold for between $14-$16 million to the Bethlehem Engineering Company in 1928 and was shuttered in early 1929 with the promise of a newer, more elegant Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue. The Bethlehem Engineering Company's president, Floyd de L. Brown paid 10% of the $1 million down payment needed to begin construction on the new office building on the site of the former Waldorf-Astoria...and then never paid the remaining $900,000. The land was resold to a consortium of wealthy investors that included Coleman du Pont and his cousin Pierre S. du Pont. 

The consortium - known as Empire State, Incorporated - also included John Jakob Raskob, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1928 to 1932 and the campaign manager of New York Governor Alfred E. Smith's 1932 presidential run against Franklin D. Roosevelt. Raskob sold his stock in GM (The Dupont corporation had been extensively invested in General Motors) after a political disagreement with the Very Republican Alfred P. Sloan (who may be familiar to listeners like you), thus providing the money to buy the land at 20 West 34th Street. Raskob had formed the American Liberty League, an organization of wealthy elites opposed to FDR's New Deal that heaped burning coals on the heads of themselves and their families after FDR won the most lop-sided presidential election in history in 1936.

Nevertheless, tasked with building a new skyscraper on the site of the Waldorf-Astoria, Raskob hired architect William F. Lamb. Lamb had studied at the Columbia University College of Architecture and in Paris at the Atelier Deglane, graduating sixth in his class despite barely knowing French from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Lamb, who had one leg after a motorcycle accident in Europe, formed the architectural firm Shreve and Lamb with Richmond Shreve, which later became Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon in 1929 after Arthur Loomis Harmon joined - mainly as a result of his connections with Raskob.

Of course it was a competition. The current or, in Raskob's case, former GM-adjacent investors were heavily interested in outdoing Chrysler, whose Chrysler Building at 42nd Street & Lexington was dedicated in September 1928 as the tallest building in the world. Raskob called Lamb and (allegedly) stood one of his favorite jumbo pencils on its end and asked Lamb, "How high can you make it so that it won't fall down?"

Lamb used the pencil as his inspiration, designing the new structure from the tower down, which gave the proposed building a pencil shape. Lamb's 16th revision to the original design became the go-to for what would become the Empire State Building. Lamb, Shreve and Harmon had 18 months to build it, facing complications such as size, funding, and New York City's zoning requirements. Because Raskob was tight with former Governor Smith, height restrictions were placed on nearby construction, so that the Empire State Building would have unobstructed views of the city, featuring an observation deck on the 86th floor...15 floors higher than the Chrysler Building. Construction was set to begin in late 1929, after Raskob had secured the funding. Oh, and then the economy collapsed.

Raskob refused to cancel the project in the wake of the worst financial disaster in American history, citing already-made progress on the building. Raskob had gotten out of the stock market in 1928, and Governor Smith had no stock investments, so both were financially secure. In December 1929, Raskob was able to get a $27.5 million loan from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (now MetLife), one of whose directors was none other than Governor Smith himself. 

Despite the Great Depression's complete lack of demand for new office space, construction sped ahead, eventually being completed 45 days ahead of schedule on May 1, 1931 and $20 million under its $60 million budget. The Chrysler Building was the tallest building in the world for precisely eleven months. E.B. White would write that the Empire State Building "reached the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the Depression."

Thanks to said Depression, the two million square feet of office space was going severely underutilized (75% of the building was vacant), causing the public to refer to it as the "Empty State Building." Still, they kept every light on to project the image of bustling industry. Jack Brod started Empire Diamond and Gold Buying Service on the 7th floor in 1931, a business that remained in the Empire State Building until Brod's death in 2008.

World War II brought the economy back to life - the Empire State Building would be 98% occupied - World War II also almost brought the end of the Empire State Building itself. 

On Saturday, July 28, 1945 Lt. Col. William Franklin Smith, Jr of Watertown, Massachusetts was the pilot of a B-25 Mitchell bomber plane. An experienced pilot, the 1942 West Point graduate had flown over 40 missions in Europe and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. This was a ferry trip for Lt. Col. Smith, carrying a passenger from Bedford Army Field (now Hanscomb Air Force Base) outside of Boston to LaGuardia Metropolitan Airport, a flight that would ordinarily take about an hour. There were two pilots, and one passenger on board.

                                                                          Lt. Col. Smith

However, as Lt. Col Smith approached New York City, air traffic control, citing heavy fog, instructed the plane to carry on to Newark Metropolitan Airport (now Newark International Airport). This put the flight path directly over Manhattan. The fog was so thick that the Empire State Building wasn't visible and around 9:40am Lt. Col. Smith lowered his speed and altitude in an effort to navigate the poor visibility.

The Chrysler Building appeared as if from nowhere. Lt. Col. Smith swerved to avoid hitting the building, but in doing so put the plane directly in the path of the Empire State Building, less than a mile away. Lt. Col. Smith's B-25 Mitchell slammed into the north side of the Empire State Building on the 79th floor. The plane's fuel exploded, sending flames as far down as the 75th floor. Someone on the 56th floor said it felt like the building was collapsing. One of the engines shot through the Empire State Building before coming to rest in a penthouse across the street. It took two days to find Lt. Col. Smith's body, as it had fallen down an elevator shaft.

It was 20-year old elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver's last official day working at the Empire State Building. She was on the 80th floor when the plane hit, knocking her completely out of the elevator and breaking her back, pelvis, and neck to go along with the severe burns she had due to the plane's impact and explosion. However, when first responders arrived, she was going to survive. They placed her on an elevator to the ground floor so she could be transported to the hospital. 

But the elevator cables had been weakened on the 38th floor by the plane's entry into the elevator shaft . As soon as Oliver was loaded onto the elevator, the cables snapped, hurtling her 80 floors to the bottom of the Empire State Building. And yet she survived for three reasons: the emergency auto-brake had kinda sorta engaged, the 1000 feet of elevator cable had spooled at the bottom of the elevator shaft, creating a sort of spring. Add to that and the rapid compression of air cushioned her fall, earning her place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the Longest Fall Survived In An Elevator.

A surprisingly-alive Betty Lou Oliver

The same cannot be said for the two other people in the plane, who died on impact, or for the 11 people working for the War Relief Services of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, who were working directly on the floor into which the plane crashed. Since the crash occurred on a Saturday morning, the death toll - 14 - was far lower than it certainly could have been had it happened 48 hours later...which is when the Empire State Building re-opened for business, working around the 18' x 20' hole in the north side of the building.

Firefighters had extinguished the blaze within 40 minutes, making it the biggest fire ever brought under control at such a height (maybe a bigger one has happened in the last 78 years...I don't know.) The crash helped spur the passage of the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946. This compensates people who "suffered personal injury, death, or property loss or damage caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of an employee of the federal government," allowing people to sue the government for the crash. The Civil Aeronautics Administration also enacted restrictions in which planes can under no circumstance fly below 2500 feet in New York City. 

The story captivated the attention of the nation...for approximately nine days, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. After the 78th floor had been cleared of debris, Armand Hammer - yes, that Armand Hammer, "Lenin's Chosen Capitalist" and the chairman of Occidental Petroleum - bought the floor, refurbished it, and made it the headquarters of his United Distillers of America. 

The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world for 40 years, from its opening in 1931 until 1 World Trade Center opened in 1971. While the Sears Tower in Chicago took the World Trade Center's spot in 1973, on September 11, 2001 the Empire State Building regained its former designation as the tallest building in New York City. 

There is one more side story. Empire State Building chief architect William Lamb was concerned about people's ability to commit suicide from his building, and devised safety measures to try to prevent them from happening, but it wasn't enough on one May morning. On April 30, 1947 - just shy of two years after the plane crash - a 23-year old bookkeeper named Evelyn McHale took a train from New York to Easton, Pennsylvania to visit her fiance, a World War II veteran and college student named Barry Rhodes to celebrate his 24th birthday. Evelyn's mother allegedly suffered from undiagnosed depression, which was a contributing factor in her parents' divorce. The next morning she went back to Penn Station on the 7am train. They were to be married the following month.

Evelyn McHale went to the Empire State Building's observatory. Security guards were within ten feet of her at approximately 10:40am on May 1 when she jumped, clearing all of the safety devices Lamb had installed in the blueprints, and landed 86 stories below (1,050 feet), on top of a United Nations limousine. Police found a note which she left in her pocketbook on the Empire State Building's observation deck. It read:

I don't want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family - don't have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don't think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother's tendencies.

Photography student and part-time cab driver Robert C. Wiles was across the street when he heard Evelyn hit the car. Of course at this point nobody had read her note or her wish to not be seen. Four minutes later he took one of the most iconic photographs in history, published as the "Picture of the Week" in the May 12, 1947 issue of Life Magazine. 

The Johnson-Reed Act, Eugenics, the KKK, and a Fascist Plot to Overthrow FDR?

Senator David Reed (R-PA) was awfully pleased with himself. He had just joined forces with Rep. Albert Johnson (R-WA) to implement the strictest immigration laws in United States history - the Johnson-Reed Act, or the Immigration Act of 1924, significantly reduced immigration to the United States.

Or at least it reduced immigration to the United States from very specific areas, which was sort of the point. The Johnson-Reed Act finalized a long history of Congress trying to homogenize the United States. It started with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which, for the first time, blocked people of a specific ethnic background from coming to the United States "on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities." 

If you were coming to the United States from China after 1882, you had to get certified by the Chinese government that they were actually qualified to immigrate. That proved to be somewhat problematic - a feature, not a bug - as the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese workers both "skilled and unskilled...and Chinese employed in mining." That effectively shut out Chinese immigration. And what if you were from China and had already moved to the United States? If you went back to China for a visit, you had to obtain a new certificate from the Chinese government. If you stayed in the United States, you could not be granted citizenship but you could still be deported. It wasn't a great time, inclusion-wise!

Notable to the Johnson-Reed Act was that the Chinese Exclusion Act was set for a ten-year period, expiring in 1892. Keep an eye on that year. Congress then in 1892 passed the Geary Act, which extended the Chinese Exclusion Act another ten years, after which made it a permanent thing. 

Prior to World War 1, European immigration to the United States was increasing dramatically thanks to the conditions that would eventually lead to the Great War itself (Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism) to the tune of about one million people per year arriving to the United States through Ellis Island, 98% of whom were approved (the requirements for approval were essentially, "are you healthy?" "have you done crimes?" and "will you be a problem here?").

During and immediately after World War I, fear among white Americans rose, thinking about all of those immigrants who had come from Europe to the United States: was that German guy problematic? Is that Irishman supporting Germany, because Germany's victory would harm England? Is that Russian immigrant secretly a communist who wants to do Commie Things here? 

In 1917 Congress passed the Immigration Act, which said that immigrants to the United States at least had to be able to read and write in their native language, putting literacy tests on the Immigration Service's to-do list. In October of the following year Congress passed the Dillingham-Hardwick Act, or the Immigration Act of 1918, that allowed President Wilson to more easily deport anarchists, communists, labor organizers, or any other such undesirable activist. 

In April 1919, the wake of Russia's fall to communism, the first Red Scare surfaced in the United States. Senator Thomas Hardwick (D-GA), who put the Hardwick in the Dillingham-Hardwick Act, received a package wrapped in brown paper. Inside was a cardboard box wrapped in bright green paper stamped with the popular Gimbel Brothers Department Store logo. If you opened the box on the end marked "Open," then a spring would be released that allowed a vial of sulfuric acid to drip onto a blasting cap that would detonate a stick of dynamite. 

Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson - who had made headlines by opposing a general strike - received one of these packages, but one of his staff opened the wrong end and the vial of sulfuric acid dropped harmlessly on the table. He took the box to the police, who notified the post office. Back to Hardwick, on April 29, 1919 his housekeeper could actually follow instructions and opened the package on the right end, which resulted in her hands getting blown off and significant injuries to the face and neck of Hardwick's wife. (She would survive, Hardwick would go on to serve as Governor of Georgia from 1921-1923 and lose the next election because he opposed the Ku Klux Klan.) 

The news of the Hardwick bombing caught the attention of a savvy New York City postal worker who had removed 16 similarly-designed and -labeled packages for insufficient postage. These - and more discovered in June - were addressed to, among others, John D. Rockefeller, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Postmaster General, the governors of Mississippi and Pennsylvania, the mayor of New York City, U.S. District Judge and future Commissioner of Major League Baseball Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a senator from Utah, and Albert Johnson - a member of the House of Representatives from southwest Washington State who was also chairman of the Immigration and Naturalization Committee. He's the Johnson in Johnson-Reed Act. I'll come back to him in a minute.

Two of these bombs were earmarked for the new Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. One of which did actually detonate - too early, which was likely a surprise for Carlo Valdinoci, the anarchist who was in the process of placing the bomb at Palmer's house. The bomb blew out the front windows and front door, and scared the mess out of Palmer's across-the-street neighbors, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Palmer - who had his eye on the presidency in 1920 - responded to this wave of bombings with what is known as the Palmer Raids in late 1919 and early 1920. Palmer used previous legislation - mainly the Sedition Act of 1917 - as well as a small investigative team led by a young Justice Department lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover to try to root out this threat in the United States. As a result, the Constitutionally-questionable Palmer Raids rounded up thousands of suspected anarchists/communists (though 75% would later be released) and deporting many to the Soviet Union. As a result, the American Civil Liberties Union would be established and their first action was to challenge the Sedition Act of 1917.

The following year Congress passed Sen. Dillingham's Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which for the first time established a numerical restriction on immigrants coming to the United States. By the time it passed both the House and the Senate only 3% of the total number of people that had been accounted for on the 1910 census would be allowed into the United States annually, and 355,000 immigrants total. So, for example (just for math's sake) if 1,000 people originally from Serbia were listed on the 1910 census, the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 would only allow 30 people from Serbia each year. If you were the 31st person from Serbia that year, you would be turned around at Ellis Island and sent back.

After the bombing attempt on his own life, Rep. Johnson pushed for a moratorium on all immigration in 1919, which was subsequently and handily defeated in the House of Representatives. But by the time the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 had expired, President Calvin Coolidge (who came to national prominence in September 1919 when he, as Governor of Massachusetts, called out the militia to stop the Boston Police Strike) called on Congress to come up with a plan to limit immigration completely.

Congress obliged with H.R. 7995. The Johnson-Reed Act aka National Origins Act aka Immigration Act of 1924, was written and co-sponsored by Rep. Johnson, and Pennsylvania Senator David Aiken Reed. It limited immigration to the United States to just 2% of foreign-born residents listed on not the 1910 census, but the 1890 census - eight years into the term of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Immigration from China and Japan all but vanished, a popular sentiment in Johnson's home state of Washington. The Johnson-Reed Act capped total annual immigration to the United States at 165,000 - less than half of the total number in the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. 

Johnson was, and I'm sure you'll find this shocking, described as "an unusually energetic and vehement nativist and racist." He didn't even try to hide his anti-Semitism, referring to Jews as "abnormally twisted," and enthusiastically responded to a State Department report calling Jews "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits." 

Johnson was a noted supporter of Eugenics - a disgraced scientific movement designed to prove Social Darwinism. He served as president of the Eugenics Research Association, which campaigned against interracial marriage and advocated for forced sterilization of anyone who might be labeled mentally disabled, and Johnson was all-in on it. The KKK, in particular, was a big fan of Johnson's. Three years after its passage Johnson continued to defend the Johnson-Reed Act, noting that it protected the United States against "a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships of the governing power to the governed." It should tell you something that his immigration legislation passed so easily. The Eugenics movement was considered extremely cutting-edge and extremely beneficial for the country as a whole and, by the whole, of course I mean "white people."

Sen. Reed, son of prominent Pittsburgh judge James Hay Reed, who opened a law office with four-time presidential cabinet member Philander C. Knox known as Knox and Reed. They represented Andrew Carnegie as he formed US Steel - the world's first billion dollar company, and also represented Andrew Mellon, the Heinz company, Westinghouse, among other notable clients, and are today Reed Smith LLP, employing over 1500 lawyers in the USA, Europe, Middle East, and Asia. 

Anyhow, Reed was appointed to the Senate in August 1922 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Sen. William E. Crow, who himself was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Reed's father's former law partner Philander C. Knox. Crow died less than a year after his appointment. Reed was summarily re-elected for his own term later that autumn.

On April 27, 1924 - after the Johnson-Reed Act passed the House of Representatives 323-71, Reed penned an editorial in the New York Times regarding the purpose of the bill before the Senate, saying:

America was beginning also to smart under the irritation of her "foreign colonies" - those groups of aliens, either in city slums or in country districts, who speak a foreign language and live a foreign life, and who want neither to learn our common speech nor to share our common life. From all this has grown the conviction that it was best for America that our incoming immigrants should hereafter be of the same races as those of us who are already here, so that each year's immigration should so far as possible be a miniature America, resembling in national origins the persons who are already settled in our country...

...In my opinion, no law passed by Congress within the last half century compares with this one in its importance upon the future development of our nation. Its adoption means that America of our grandchildren will be a vastly better place to live in. It will mean a more homogenous nation, more self-reliant, more independent and more closely knit by common purpose and common ideas.

It passed in the Senate, 69-9. Eighteen Senators did not vote. Calvin Coolidge would sign the Johnson-Reed Act, draped in nativism and fake science, into law less than a month after. Less than 18 months later, tens of thousands of members of the Ku Klux Klan, in the midst of enjoying a resurgence, marched unmasked down Washington DC's Pennsylvania Avenue.

Sen. Reed would be re-elected for a second term of his own in 1928. On the floor of the Senate on July 1, 1932, as the Great Depression dragged into its third year, Reed gave a speech in which he lamented the lack of stronger leadership within the government, and mentioned a pointed preference. "I do not often envy other countries and their governments," Reed said, "But I say that if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now....Leave it to Congress, we will fiddle around here all summer trying to satisfy every lobbyist, and we will get nowhere. The country doesn't want that. The country wants stern action."

Because when you're looking towards someone to lead you out of a crisis you naturally turn to a fascist dictator. But maybe that's what Reed actually wanted. Towards the end of his second Senatorial term Reed joined the American Liberty League. Founded by John J. Raskob, former head of the Democratic National Committee and VP of Finance of Du Pont and General Motors (who would later sell his stock in GM after a political disagreement with the Extremely Republican Alfred P. Sloan and use the money to build the Empire State Building), Raskob came to resent FDR's New Deal and spent considerable money on former Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge, hoping he would run against FDR in the Democratic primary in 1936 as a Southern Anti-New Deal candidate. He didn't, choosing instead to unsuccessfully run for an open Senate seat. At one point, reports are that membership in the American Liberty League topped 125,000 people by the middle of 1936. 

When FDR set a record for the most lopsided presidential election in history, winning the Electoral College 523-8, the backlash against Raskob and the American Liberty League was pointed. Characterized as the privileged elites - their supporters were a lot of business executives and corporate lawyers (like Sen. Reed, who not long before had spoken glowingly of the need for a Mussolini in America) who were out of touch with what the average American was dealing with in the worst financial crisis in American history, Raskob took a step back from the spotlight but continued to support anything to reduce the size and scope of the federal government under FDR, and anything opposed to FDR himself. The American Liberty League, too, took a significant step back in terms of their membership following the 1934 elections.

It is possible that Sen. Reed's outpouring of support for fascism on the Senate floor was indicative of the American Liberty League itself. A New York Times article from November 21, 1934 - after the midterm elections in which Democrats went from a majority in Congress to a super-majority, possibly the most successful midterm election for a party already in power - dropped a Page One bombshell: 

Major General Smedley Butler (Ret.) told reporters - and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC, who would be much more prominent in the late 1940s and early 1950s) a group of Wall Street executives and bankers approached him about leading an army to overthrow FDR and install General Hugh Johnson as dictator, backed by J.P. Morgan & Co., as well as the stock exchange firm of Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. If Butler wouldn't do it, the Times reported, General Douglas MacArthur would serve as an acceptable alternate of the head of the fascist army to overthrow FDR. Of course the disavowals and denials of actively plotting the coup of a very popular president came quickly.

How likely this Business Plot is to have happened is under some debate, featuring questionable motives and intent. Nevertheless, a lot of people tend to agree with presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger, who said in 1958:

No doubt [there was] some wild scheme in mind, though the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable, and it can hardly be supposed that the Republic was in much danger.

David Reed continued practicing law in Pittsburgh until his death in 1953. The Washington home of the former co-author of the Immigration Act of 1924 is now the home of the Embassy of Laos. LOL. 

Albert Johnson was defeated in his bid for re-election in 1932, going out as FDR's New Deal Democrats swept the 1932 elections. He died in 1957. 

The Johnson-Reed Act outlived them both. While the law was revised and in some ways further restricted in 1952's McCarran-Walter Act, at the height of the 2nd Red Scare, it was done away with by the Immigration & Nationality Act of 1965 aka the Hart-Celler Act. Signed by Lyndon Johnson during the Civil Rights Movement, the Hart-Celler Act reversed the strict immigration laws passed in the height of anarchist/communist fear. Co-sponsor Rep. Emanuel Celler, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, (D-NY) said of the Johnson-Reed Act:

Forty years of testing have proven that the rigid pattern of discrimination has not only produced imbalances that have irritated many nations, but Congress itself, through a long series of enactments forced by the realities of a changing world saw fit to modify this unworkable formula so that today it remains on the books primarily as an expression of gratuitous condescension.

Say...What's That Putin Fella Up To?

Please note: I am not a European historian. This is not intended to predict what will happen in the next few hours, days, weeks, months, etc. This is just a "how we got here" type of thing.

Okay, so let's start at the beginning. And by "the beginning" I mean, "What happened today [February 21, 2022]." Vladimir Putin - who has been President of Russia since 1999 (save for a four-year stint from 2008 to 2012 when his dude Dmitri Medvedev was President...and Putin was Prime Minister. This is known as a "tandemocracy" and we're not really sure who was really in charge during those four years). 

Putin "stepped" "aside" from 2008 to 2012 thanks to a constitutional provision that prohibited a president from serving more than two consecutive terms. Putin led a referendum to change that rule, which was successful in July 2020 and allows Putin to serve as President until [squints] 2036. Apparently the public referendum - and not just a parliamentary procedure - would lend legitimacy to the change. A bunch of people say the vote was rigged. Also part of the public referendum was a ban on same-sex marriages and an official affirmation of the Russian peoples' belief in God. You can see how certain elements of the American media landscape are not terribly upset with Russia as, say, their parents and grandparents were in the 1970s and 1980s.

In a speech given Monday night (Russia time) Putin went all-in on Ukrainian independence...from Ukraine's pro-West government. Over the last few weeks Russia has amassed about 150,000 troops near the Donbas region of Ukraine which, before February 2022 I would have assumed used their socks to sponsor numerous podcasts. Donbas (an abbreviation of "Donetsk Coal Basin"), however, is of particular cultural, historical, and economic importance to Russia dating back to the 19th century, when their coal reserves were massive, up to the revolution that took Russia out of World War 1 and ended up with Vladimir Lenin at the head of a communist government. Oh, and Donbas borders Russia but also has more access to the Black Sea.

Today Donbas is the center of a big ol' separatist campaign (backed by Moscow) to return Ukraine to Russia. And this tactic of using "separatists" to drive division was how the Soviet Union got control over Ukraine after Red October, and how the Soviets maintained control over Eastern Europe in the Cold War. But let's quickly go back to the breakup of the Soviet Union. At the time that the USSR fell apart, Ukraine had the third-most nuclear weapons (behind the USA and former Soviet Union). A bunch of diplomatic agreements de-nuclearized Ukraine, giving those weapons back to Russia essentially in exchange for a pinky-promise that Russia wouldn't invade Ukraine. 

That promise lasted about 20 years, when in 2014 Russia invaded and then annexed the Crimean Peninsula and also happened to support a pro-Russia rebellion in eastern Donbas. A big part of that was a result of massive protests across Ukraine against their pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych. When US diplomats visited the protestors in solidarity, it just pissed Putin off more. 

President Obama didn't want to run the risk of escalating tensions with Russia, so he slow-walked both a diplomatic response and a military one. Putin is the center of this. The former KGB officer turned director of the FSB (the KGB's successor) hated seeing the end of the Soviet Union. Now, it seems, he's trying to restore it. Over the years that Putin has been in power in Russia - and especially considering he might run the country until 2036 - this has, and will continue, to make him the longest-serving leader of the country, eclipsing Joseph Stalin's 29 years in power. 

Putin has long been on record against Ukraine's existence as an independent nation saying alternately that Ukraine isn't a real country, or that it's a country but it was an accident, or that the sense that Ukrainians have of being a country isn't real. It's worth mentioning that the rising standards of living in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union led to at least a general indifference to who was running the country, a hallmark of authoritarianism reminiscent of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini - a willingness to overlook certain aspects of society with which one might be uncomfortable in exchange for a better economic situation. The "If I'm not wet, it's not raining" mindset, if you will.

In July 2021 Putin gave a speech saying that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people - a single whole" and would be if it weren't for those dastardly kids the meddling of the West. This puts the focus on regaining the former glory of Russia's past, and not that the economy in Russia has stagnated significantly in the last few years, or on Russia's almost non-existent response to COVID-19.

One thing that Putin absolutely does not want is Ukraine joining NATO, and President Biden has indicated that's not something that will happen any time soon. NATO was formed in 1949 - four years after the end of World War 2 - to provide collective security against the communist threat of the Soviet Union and its lackeys. 

The meat on the bones of NATO is Article 5, which says that an attack on a member nation is an attack on all member nations. The idea is that the Soviet Union is less willing to invade, say, Estonia if they know that the full weight of Western Europe and the United States is willing to respond with the full force of their militaries. (The Soviet Union responded with the Warsaw Pact - the same deal, but for communist countries). While Ukraine is not officially a NATO member, there is a long history of cooperation between NATO and Ukraine (not to mention President Bush's support for Ukraine and Georgia - but not, like, the ATLiens one - joining NATO back in 2008). But! if Ukraine isn't a part of NATO, then those member nations are not obligated by over 70 years of history to come to Ukraine's aid.

A message from NATO just this afternoon noted:

Moscow continues to fuel the conflict in eastern Ukraine by providing financial and military support to the separatists. It is also trying to stage a pretext to invade Ukraine once again...NATO supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. Allies urge Russia, in the strongest possible terms, to choose the path of diplomacy, and to immediately reverse its massive military build-up in and around Ukraine...

It's not likely to happen. Putin is planning on the rest of the world being too tired from the health/economic impacts of COVID to put up much of a fight for a country that was still a part of the Soviet Union in my lifetime. As Vox puts it:

All of this has put Ukraine in an impossible position: an applicant for an alliance that wasn't going to accept it, while irritating a political opponent next door, without having any degree of NATO protection.

On Ukraine's part, the 2019 election of former tv comedian Volodymyr Zelensky to Ukraine's presidency (some real Dave crap going on here) - one who openly lobbied for admission to both NATO and the European Union - is a threat to Ukraine willingly rejoining the former Soviet fold. If Putin doesn't act now, perhaps the window will close on Ukraine if those relationships and perceived benefits develop. 

Ultimately, the falling of the United States' worldwide estimation in the wake of the Trump Administration, combined with the botched nuclear agreement that pissed off France, combined with the fallout from Brexit, combined with everyone dealing with COVID, just may have provided an opening for Putin to capitalize on the chaos. 

What we do know is that, as of now, there are Russian troops in eastern Ukraine on what Putin/the Kremlin are calling a "peacekeeping mission." How much peace is kept is up to Putin.