Today’s highlights in sports history:
In 1942, Red Sox star Ted Williams enlisted as a U.S. Navy aviator.
On this date:
1896 – Hastings, ridden by H. Griffin, wins the Belmont Stakes by a neck over Handspring.
1908 – Royal Tourist, ridden by Eddie Duggan, wins the Preakness Stakes by four lengths over Livewire.
1909 – Joe Madden, ridden by Eddie Dugan, wins the Belmont Stakes by eight lengths over Wise Mason.
1935 – Babe Ruth, 40 years old, announces his retirement from playing.
1935 – French Championships Men’s Tennis: Britain’s Fred Perry beats Germany’s Gottfried von Cramm 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 to win his only French title.
1947 — After a six-year hiatus, 13-year-old Honey Cloud wins the second race at Aqueduct for jockey Clarence Minnaar’s first ride in 10 years.
1962 – French Championships Women’s Tennis: Margaret Smith defeats doubles partner Lesley Turner 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 in an all-Australian final.
1971 — European Cup Final, Wembley Stadium, London: Ajax beat Panathinaikos 2-0. The Dutch champions begin a three-year period of dominance.
1985 – Nancy Lopez wins the LPGA Championship, defeating Alice Miller by eight strokes.
1991 – The Andretti brothers take first through third places in the Miller 200 at Wisconsin State Fair Park Speedway in Milwaukee. Mario Andretti takes third place, his son Michael wins and his nephew John takes second.
1996 – Annika Sorenstam wins her second consecutive U.S. Women’s Open with a final round of 4-under 66. Sorenstam’s 8-under 272 is the best score in Open history.
2002 – Annika Sorenstam wins the inaugural Kellogg Keebler Classic, tying the LPGA record for margin of victory in a 54-hole tournament. Sorenstam finished at 21-under 195 to win by 11 strokes.
2005 – Jockey Russell Bayes rode Queen of the Hunt to his 9,000th career win in the eighth race at Golden Gate Fields.
2007 – Daniel Gibson scores a career-high 31 points and Cleveland beat Detroit 98-82 to advance to the NBA Finals. The Cavaliers become just the third team to come back from a 2-0 deficit in a conference finals, joining the 1971 Baltimore Bullets and the 1993 Chicago Bulls.
2008 – Pittsburgh defeats Detroit, 4-3, in triple overtime in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Petr Sikora scores at 9 minutes, 57 seconds into the third overtime, ending the fifth-longest Finals game in NHL history.
2010 — The Detroit Tigers’ Armando Galarraga missed recording a perfect game with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, a call that first base umpire Jim Joyce later admitted was incorrect. First baseman Miguel Cabrera made a clean catch of Jason Donald’s grounder to right and threw accurately to Galarraga, who was covering the bases. The ball got there in time, and the entire Comerica Park crowd was ready to celebrate a 3-0 victory over Cleveland, when Joyce emphatically signaled for the safe.
2011 – Dirk Nowitzki hit a game-tying layup with 3.6 seconds left and the Dallas Mavericks rallied from a 15-point fourth quarter deficit to beat the Miami Heat 95-93 and tie the NBA Finals at 1-1. The Mavericks went on to outscore the Heat 22-5 in the final minutes to record the biggest comeback victory in the NBA Finals since 1992.
2019 — U.S. Open Women’s Golf, Charleston CC: South Korea’s Lee Jeong Eun wins her first major title, beating runners-up Lexi Thompson, Ajelle In and Ryu So Yeon by two strokes.
