January 3rd in NYC History:
Babe Ruth and George Steinbrenner joined the Yankees.
Eli Manning born.
Posted: Jan 3, 2013 | 12:19 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1841: Herman Melville set sail for the South Seas.
1870: Ground breaks for the Brooklyn Bridge, which will open in 1883.
1887: Rabbi Dr. Sabato Morais opened the Jewish Theological Seminary on 19th Street. In 1902 it moved to its present location above Columbia University on 123rd St.
1899: The New York Times adopts the French mot 'automobile' in America.
1920: The Yankees purchased Babe Ruth from Boston for $125,000, the largest cash sum for a player.
Boston felt that they were becoming a one-man team. Ruth had belted 29 home runs in 1919 with Boston, a league record.
In 1920 with the Yankees, Ruth broke that record with 54, then 59 in 1921. Ruth's performance helped baseball recover from the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal.
1970: "Mame," the Broadway musical, closed after 1508 performances.
1973: George Steinbrenner and several 'prominent business executives and sportsmen' buy the NY Yankees from CBS for $10 million, $3.2 million less than CBS paid in 1964, the last pennant year for the Yankees. CBS doesn't seem to have been successful with the Yankees. Steinbrenner, a Cleveland ship-building magnate, pledged "absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned." He turned out to be wrong about that, but the Yankees were much more successful in his era.
1981: New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning born.