September 10 marks milestones From Cards' Pujols' 696th Homer To East-West All-Star Game Happened On This Date

This Day in Sports History: September 10

The date returned to St. Louis baseball history on September 10, 2022. Albert Pujols hit a two-run, 418-foot home run off Pittsburgh’s JT Brubaker in the sixth inning at PNC Park, tying Alex Rodriguez for fourth on Major League Baseball’s career home run list with No. 696. The blast also tied the game in a Cardinals victory. Pujols moved into sole possession of fourth place the next day and finished his final season with 703 homers. His September 10 swing was another moment in a career that connected a Cardinals legend to baseball’s most exclusive power-hitting company.

September 10 holds a special place in Chicago baseball history. On this date in 1933, the Negro Leagues staged their first East-West All-Star Game at Comiskey Park, creating an annual showcase that became one of the most important events in Black sports history. The West defeated the East 11-7 before 19,568 fans, with Chicago American Giants pitcher Bill Foster throwing a complete game. The game mattered far beyond its score: It gave Black fans, whose votes selected the players through ballots printed in Black newspapers, a national stage for the era’s finest talent while Major League Baseball remained segregated.

The inaugural game brought together stars from such clubs as the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Homestead Grays, Philadelphia Stars, Chicago American Giants, Kansas City Monarchs and Nashville Elite Giants. Turkey Stearnes drove in the first run, and Mule Suttles hit the event’s first home run. The East-West Game was soon known as the leading attraction on the Negro Leagues calendar, at times drawing crowds larger than Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. It continued through 1962, and its alumni included future Hall of Famers such as Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard, Cool Papa Bell and Jackie Robinson. For Chicago, the game established Comiskey Park as the site of a tradition that celebrated excellence, community and racial pride during an era of exclusion.

Twenty-seven years later, September 10 produced one of the Olympic movement’s defining images. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila won the marathon at the 1960 Rome Games while running barefoot, finishing in a world-record 2 hours, 15 minutes, 16.2 seconds. Bikila pulled away from Morocco’s Rhadi Ben Abdesselam near the end of the nighttime race and crossed the finish line beneath the Arch of Constantine. He became the first Black African athlete to win an Olympic gold medal, an achievement that carried immense meaning for Ethiopia and for athletes across a continent beginning to claim a larger place in international sport.

Bikila had tried shoes supplied for the Games but chose to run without them after they caused blisters. His decision became inseparable from the victory, but it should not overshadow his skill and preparation. His Rome performance announced a distance-running force that would shape future Olympic and major-marathon competition. Bikila reinforced the achievement four years later in Tokyo, when he again won Olympic marathon gold, this time wearing shoes. The 1960 victory, however, remains the breakthrough: a marathon triumph that changed how the sporting world viewed African athletes.

On September 10, 1970, the NFL gave its championship prize the name it still carries. The league renamed the Super Bowl trophy the Vince Lombardi Trophy, honoring the Green Bay Packers coach who had died of cancer one week earlier at age 57. Lombardi had guided Green Bay to five NFL championships in the 1960s, including victories in the first two Super Bowls. The timing made the decision both a memorial and a statement about the standard the league associated with its ultimate prize.

Every Super Bowl winner has received permanent possession of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, making Lombardi’s name a central part of the NFL’s annual championship tradition. The original trophy had simply been the AFL-NFL World Championship Game Trophy. By renaming it before Super Bowl V, the NFL tied the award to a coach remembered for demanding preparation, discipline and team-first play. The change also preserved the connection between the league’s modern title game and the Packers teams that defined its first years.

Four years later, St. Louis Cardinals speedster Lou Brock made a September 10 moment that remains one of the franchise’s most recognizable individual records. In an 8-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies at Busch Stadium on September 10, 1974, Brock stole his 104th and 105th bases of the season. The first tied Maury Wills’ modern major league single-season record; the second broke it. Brock singled in the first inning, stole second and later scored. He singled again in the seventh and promptly took second to claim the record.

Brock finished the 1974 season with 118 steals. Rickey Henderson later surpassed that total with 130 in 1982, but Brock’s accomplishment stood as a landmark for the Cardinals and demonstrated the value of speed, timing and pressure on the bases. He led the National League in steals eight times, totaled 938 in his career and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1985. For St. Louis fans, the record-breaking night remains a reminder that a player can change a game without swinging for the fences.

On September 10, 1988, 19-year-old Steffi Graf completed a season tennis had never seen. Graf defeated Argentina’s Gabriela Sabatini 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 in the U.S. Open final, completing the calendar-year Grand Slam after winning the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon. She had also won Olympic gold in Seoul earlier that year, giving her all four major singles titles and the Olympic title in one season, a feat widely known as the Golden Slam. Graf’s victory confirmed a year of dominance across the sport’s different surfaces and pressures.

September 10 also marked a newer kind of international sports milestone in 2014, when the first Invictus Games opened in London. More than 400 wounded, injured and sick service personnel and veterans from 13 nations competed in 10 adaptive sports over four days at venues in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The event placed sport at the center of recovery, rehabilitation and international connection. It launched a continuing multi-nation movement that has expanded opportunities for competitors and their families.