The 1960s Sports: Chronology

1960:     October 14 Bill Mazeroski hits a ninth-inning home run to break a 9 to 9 tie, leading the Pittsburgh Pirates to a Game 7 World Series victory over the New York Yankees.

1960:     October 16 The National League (NL) adds two new franchises, the New York Mets and Houston Colt .45s, which begin play in 1962.

1960:     October 27 The American League (AL) adds two new franchises, the Los Angeles Angels and Washington Senators, which begin play in 1961; the Senators become the present-day Minnesota Twins.

1961:     January 2 Seventeen-year-old Bobby Fischer wins his fourth consecutive U.S. chess championship.

1961:     February 15 The entire U.S. figure-skating team is killed in a plane crash while traveling to the world championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

1961:     October 1 Roger Maris hits his sixty-first home run, breaking the record held by Babe Ruth since 1927.

1962:     February 10 Jim Beatty becomes the first person to run the mile indoors in under four minutes.

1962:     July 31 The National League rebuffs a bid by baseball commissioner Ford Frick to begin interleague play in 1963.

1963:     April 13 Cincinnati Reds rookie Pete Rose smacks his first major league hit.

1964:     February 25 Cassius Clay, who would change his name to Muhammed Ali a month later, wins the heavyweight boxing crown from Sonny Liston.

1964:     July 12 The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), America's first effective sports union, is formed.

1964:     September 1 The San Francisco Giants' Masanori Murakami becomes the first Japanese player to appear in the major leagues.

1965:     September 25 Fifty-nine-year-old baseball legend Satchel Paige pitches three scoreless innings for the Kansas City Athletic's.

1966:     February 27 Seventeen-year-old Peggy Fleming, three-time U.S. champion, wins the world figure-skating championship.

1966:     March 12 Bobby Hull becomes the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to score fifty goals in a season.

1966:     March 19 Highly favored all-white Kentucky is upset in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball finals by all-black Texas Western.

1966:     April 11 Emmett Ashford becomes major league baseball's first black umpire.

1966:     April 11 Jack Nicklaus becomes the first golfer to win two straight Masters titles.

1966:     June 8 A merger between the established National Football League (NFL) and the upstart American Football League (AFL) is announced. It will go into effect in 1970.

1966:     July 17 Nineteen-year-old Jim Ryun sets a world record of 3:51.3 in the mile.

1966:     November 19 In what might be the decade's greatest college football game, Notre Dame and the University of Michigan play to a 10 to 10 tie.

1967:     January 15 The Green Bay Packers wallop the Kansas City Chiefs, 35 to 10, in the first AFL-NFL championship game.

1967:     May 2 The Toronto Maple Leafs win their fourth Stanley Cup of the 1960s.

1967:     June 20 Muhammad Ali is stripped of his title as heavyweight boxing champion for refusing military service, both on religious grounds and to protest continued military action in Vietnam.

1967:     July–August The United States wins 225 of the 537 medals awarded to twenty-seven nations in the Pan-American games.

1968:     May 4 Dancer's Image is disqualified as winner of the Kentucky Derby after a urine test shows signs of a painkiller.

1968:     September 9 Arthur Ashe becomes the first African American to win the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament.

1969:     January 12 The New York Jets stun the Baltimore Colts, 16 to 7, in Super Bowl III.

1969:     May 4 The Montreal Canadiens win their fifth Stanley Cup of the 1960s.

1969:     May 5 The Boston Celtics win the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship for the eleventh time in thirteen years.

1969:     October 16 The "Miracle Mets" win the World Series.