1928 | Sports
Sports
René LaCoste wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Helen Wills in women's singles; Henri Cochet wins in U.S. men's singles, Wills in women's.
Trinidadian cricketer Learie (Nicholas) Constantine, 26, so impresses the crowd at Lord's Cricket Ground, London, in June that spectators become aware for the first time of West Indian cricket's high standards. Constantine goes on to become the first West Indian player in England to achieve the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a single season.
The Olympic Games at Amsterdam attract 3,905 contestants from 46 countries. Uruguay wins the gold medal in football (soccer), repeating its 1924 triumph, and Finland's Paavo Nurmi wins his 10th, 11th, and 12th Olympic medals, but U.S. athletes again win the most medals in the first games to have track-and-field events for women and to use the symbolic torch. Oakland, Calif.-born swimmer Clarence Lindon "Buster" Crabbe, 18, wins the gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle and signs a Hollywood film contract; Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie, 16, has won her first Olympic gold medal in the winter games at St. Moritz.
U.S. Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller, 25, retires after having set 67 world records and won three Olympic gold medals for the U.S. swimming team. Weissmuller will have a Hollywood screen test in 1930 and make 19 films in 18 years portraying Tarzan, the jungle man created by novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1914.
Spanish picadors and their horses get some protection from a law requiring that horses wear a mattress-like armor strapped over one side and under the belly and that picadors wear steel armor over their right legs.
Portugal outlaws the killing of bulls in the ring but permits bullfighting to continue without killing.
Jimmy Foxx joins Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics to begin a career in which he will break Babe Ruth's home run average (see 1920). The Athletics will trade James Emory Foxx, 20, to the Boston Red Sox in 1935; he will move to the Chicago Cubs in 1942 and will play his final season for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1945.
The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 4 games to 0.
The Boston Garden opens November 17 in Causeway Street, having been lighted 3 nights earlier by President Coolidge from the White House with a ceremonial key made from nuggets of Yukon gold. Created by Tex Rickard of Madison Square Garden fame and built at a cost of $4 million, the new 14,890-seat arena will host boxing matches, basketball and hockey games, track meets, the circus, firemen's balls, and other events until September 29, 1995 (see FleetCenter, 1995).