It’s the birthday
… of James Whitmore. The actor, twice nominated for an Oscar, is 86. He was the sole cast member of Give ’em Hell, Harry!
… of Jimmy Carter. The 39th President is 83 today.
… of Tom Bosley. Richie Cunningham’s father is 80.
… of Julie Andrews. Mary Poppins is 72. Ms. Andrews won the Best Actress Oscar for Mary Poppins; she was nominated for The Sound of Music and Victor/Victoria. Of course, her claim to fame really was as Eliza Doolittle in the stage version of My Fair Lady.
… of Rod Carew. The baseball hall of fame player is 62.
Rod Carew lined, chopped and bunted his way to 3,053 career hits. His seven batting titles are surpassed only by Ty Cobb, Tony Gwynn and Honus Wagner, and equaled only by Rogers Hornsby and Stan Musial. He used a variety of relaxed, crouched batting stances to hit over .300 in 15 consecutive seasons with the Twins and Angels, achieving a .328 lifetime average. He was honored as American League Rookie of the Year in 1967, won the league MVP 10 years later and was named to 18 straight All-Star teams. He remains a national hero in Panama.
… of Tim O’Brien. The novelist is 61. O’Brien is the author of Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1979 National Book Award in fiction, and The Things They Carried, which was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of 1990, received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction, and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In the Lake of the Woods was named by Time as the best novel of 1994. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times.
… of Mark McGwire, 44.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist would have been 83 today.
Vladimir Horowitz was born on this date in 1903.
Vladimir Horowitz, the eccentric virtuoso of the piano whose extraordinary personality and skill overwhelmed six decades of concert audiences, died suddenly early yesterday afternoon [November 5, 1989] at his home in Manhattan, apparently of a heart attack. Though standard biographies list his birth date as Oct. 1, 1904, Mr. Horowitz recently celebrated what he called his 86th birthday.
Held in awe by aficionados of the instrument, Mr. Horowitz virtually cornered the market on celebrity among 20th-century pianists. His presence hovered over several generations of pianists who followed him.
The first World Series game ever was played 104 years ago today. The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Pilgrims 7-3. Cy Young was the losing pitcher that day but went on to win two games as Boston won the best-of-nine series, five games to three.