Welcome to the first edition of This Week in Sports History. I have decided to follow the calendar on my computer and have Monday be the first day of the week. The main three this week is a boxer dying during a fight, the lowest score in NBA history and the US Supreme Court deciding baseball is a sport.
South Korean boxer Kim Duk-Koo (Nov 18, 1982)
23 year old Kim Duk-Koo was fighting for the first time in America, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Before boxing rounds were a maximum of 12 round (Kim's fight was 14 rounds). He was fighting American Ray Mancini, aka "Boom Boom". Before the fight, most people, if not everyone, had already counted Kim Duk-Koo out, but Kim stuck with it the whole way. After the 13th round, Kim's trainer could tell Mancini was tired, so he told Kim he just needed one more push to knock him out. Mancini was thinking the same thing, apparently.
Early in the 14th round, Mancini connected with a straight right that caused Kim's head to snap back and he hit the ground. Kim got up before the count, but the referee stopped the fight. Duk-Koo collapsed once he reached his corner, and was carried to an ambulance on a stretcher. He went into a coma, and died four days later.
Baseball becomes a sport (Nov 19, 1953)
I don't understand a whole lot of this court case, called Toolson vs New York Yankees, but it pretty much made it so the MLB had to put in antitrust laws into the players' contracts. Antitrust laws are "statutes developed by the U.S. government to protect consumers from predatory business practices".
This made baseball less like a business and more fair for the actual players. This case eventually caused the players to form a union and an amateur draft for incoming players.
Lowest Score in NBA History (Nov 22, 1950)
Since this was about 70 years ago, there isn't much statistics for the game or anything of that sort. The Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18. It wasn't a common occurrence that teams scored less than 20, since both of these teams were averaging total point per game in the 60s. George Mikan scored 15 of the 18 points for the Lakers, and no Fort Wayne players scored over 5.
The main reason for this low score was there was no shot clock. Nowadays, NBA teams have 24 seconds to shoot the ball (it has to hit the rim for it to count), or it's a shot clock violation and the other team's ball. So back then, teams could just get up by 20 and hold the ball for the entirety of the game. The shot clock was put into the NBA 4 years later.
Honorable Mentions
November 18, 1949-Jackie Robinson wins NL MVP after batting .342.
November 19, 2018-LA Rams beat Kansas City Chiefs 54-51. That was the 3rd highest scoring game in NFL history and the first game where both team scored 50+ points.
November 20, 1997- AC Green sets NBA record for consecutive games played with 907.
November 21, 1992-Three world records for swimming: Jan Karlsson swims world record 50m butterfly (23.80 sec). Jani Sievinen swims world record 100m medley (53.78 sec). Louise Karlsson swims world record 50m freestyle (31.19 sec).
November 22, 1986-Mike Tyson, age 20, becomes the youngest heavyweight champion in history.
November 23, 1988-Wayne Gretzky scores his 600th career goal (NHL).
November 24, 1960-Wilt Chamberlain grabs an NBA record 55 rebounds in a game.