1936 | Sports
Sports
English cricket player Denis C. S. (Charles Scott) Compton, 18, takes the field for Middlesex to begin a long career as batsman in which he will score 38,942 runs and 123 centuries. "Compo" will be selected next year for his first Test Match appearance and score a 65 against New Zealand.
Fred Perry wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Helen Jacobs in women's singles; Perry wins in U.S. men's singles, Alice Marble, 22, in women's singles.
The Olympic Games at Berlin attract 4,069 contestants from 51 countries. The Nazis have built huge stadia and created a mammoth spectacle that begins with the lighting of a flame ignited by a torch that relays of runners have carried from Olympia, Greece (future games will continue the practice). Alabama-born track star Jesse Owens, 22, wins four gold medals, setting new Olympic and world records for the 200-meter sprint and the running broad jump (26 feet, 5 5/16 inches). He runs anchor on the 400-meter relay team that breaks the world record, and ties the Olympic record for the 100-meter sprint. Embarrassed at the defeat by a black person of Germany's "master race" "Aryan" athletes, Chancellor Hitler leaves the stadium and lets someone else present Owens with his medals. Missouri-born runner Helen Stephens, 18, wins gold medals in the 100-meter dash and as a member of the 4 x 100-meter relay team. Sonja Henie has won her third gold medal in figure skating at the winter games in Garnisch-Partenkirchen.
Bob Feller signs with the Cleveland Indians at age 17; strikes out seven St. Louis Cardinal batters, including Leo Durocher, 29, in an exhibition game; makes his major league debut in August; and within a few weeks has tied the major league record of 17 strikeouts in one game. Robert W. A. Feller will pitch for the Indians for 20 years.
Joe DiMaggio signs with the New York Yankees and begins a 13-year career in which his batting average of .325 will peak at .381 in 1938 and never fall below .300. San Francisco-born Joseph Paul DiMaggio Jr., 21, will play until 1952, with a 3-year hiatus from 1943 to 1945.
The New York Yankees win the World Series, defeating the New York Giants 4 games to 2.
Kentucky's Keeneland Race Course opens October 15 for a 9-day fall meeting that draws a total attendance of 25,337 and produces a net loss of $3.47. The Keeneland Association incorporated in mid-April of last year paid Fayette County sportsman J. O. "Jack" Keene $130,000 in cash for 147½ acres of land on the Versailles Pike plus $10,000 in preferred stock in an enterprise that has installed the state's first totalizator October 11 and will grow to be a major racing venue.
Madison Square Garden draws a crowd of 17,623 the evening of December 30 to watch Long Island University's top-ranking basketball team play a Stanford team that ends LIU's winning streak 45 to 31. Star of the Pacific Coast Conference champions is six-foot-two 185-pound sophomore Angelo Enrico "Hank" Luisetti, 20, who scores 13 points; his running one-handed shots change the game.