Sports and Racing games

Pinnacle*

I've had an uneducated guess at the following. Am I off base with any of them?

Yes

Archery
Artistic Gymnastics
Artistic Swimming
Athletics
Badminton
Beach Volleyball
Breaking
Canoe Slalom
Canoe Sprint
Cycling Track
Diving
Equestrian
Fencing
Handball
Hockey
Judo
Marathon Swimming
Modern Pentathlon
Rhythmic Gymnastics
Rowing
Shooting
Swimming
Table Tennis
Taekwondo
Trampoline
Triathlon
Volleyball
Water polo
Weightlifting
Wrestling

No

Basketball
Basketball 3x3
Boxing
Cycling BMX Freestyle
Cycling BMX Racing
Cycling Mountain Bike
Cycling Road
Football
Golf
Rugby Sevens
Sailing
Skateboarding
Sport Climbing
Surfing
Tennis

As a tenis fan, I will say that I wouldn't mind tennis not being an olympic sport, because the spots in the olympic tournament are allocated with a quota per country. It means that a player X ranked below player Y could qualify to the olympic draw, because Player Y is the 5th best player of his country. I know other sports have quotas per country, but those sports are usually team-based, whereas tennis, even doubles, is essentially, individual-based. Doubles rankings are individual on the tennis tour. If a doubles team wins a tournament, the points are split between the 2.

I feel like the IOC is adding more and more sports so it can get young people interested. I feel like it's a terrible strategy because it loses the prestige.

, along with another similar incident 17 years later, inspired Bernard Malamud's 1952 book, The Natural, later a movie starring Robert Redford released in 1984!

Billy Jurges was a 23-year-old rookie infielder with the Cubs in 1931 when he met a 21-year-old aspiring actress at a party, . Violet, described as "a five-foot, nine-inch 'stunning beauty' with an olive complexion and gray eyes," said she was smitten with Billy instantly. "Such a man!" she later said. "I love Bill Jurges for himself -- and not for his place in the public eye or his popularity."

The following spring, Violet left Chicago for New York City hoping to be an actress, but could only find work as a model for magazine photographers. She would speak to Billy frequently on the phone, and whenever the Cubs were in New York to play the Giants or the Dodgers, Violet would try to go to games and cheer for him from the stands. Jurges grew up in Brooklyn, and when he was in the city, he would stay with his parents. According to Violet, she would see him -- she wrote to her brother that she calmed him down after he got into a brawl on June 10 -- and she often called Billy when he stayed at his parents' Brooklyn home, but, his father recalled:

“Bill talked to her but didn’t seem at all anxious about her. He never was a so-called ladies’ man. Since he was a little boy his only love has been baseball.”

And Jurges did need to focus on baseball. After hitting just .206 as a rookie, Jurges in 1932 got off to a similar start, hitting .204/.264/.347 through April. But then in May -- around the time Violet left Chicago to go to New York -- he started to pick it up. He hit .257/.306/.356 in May, raising his batting average 36 points.

Billy and Violet had some sort of fight in the middle of June, and apparently broke up. Jurges hit .274/.286/.452 that month, then July started with a bang as he was 7-for-19 with two doubles and five RBIs in five games!

On July 4th, the Cubs played a doubleheader in Pittsburgh, losing both games. July 5th was an off-day as the Cubs traveled back to Chicago to play a three-game series against the Philadelphia Phillies.

The next morning, July 6th, Billy woke up in his room in the Hotel Carlos, at 3834 Sheffield Avenue. It was just a couple blocks north of Wrigley Field, and Jurges and several other players had rooms there during the season.

Violet, meanwhile, had traveled back from New York City. She arrived in Chicago three days ahead of Billy and had checked into her own room at the Hotel Carlos.

That morning, she went to Billy's fifth floor room. He let her in and they argued about the break-up. At some point, she pulled out a .25 caliber pistol, and fired three shots. Two hit Billy and one hit Violet.

One bullet hit Billy on the pinky of his left (non-throwing) hand; the other went into his right side and came out his right shoulder. The third shot hit Violet's left hand and traveled up her arm.

Billy ran out of the room, calling for help; Violet ran back to her own room. The team physician, Dr. John Davis, treated Billy, then found Violet and treated her as well.

The initial reports for Jurges were grim, but doctors later determined the bullet had deflected off a rib, shielding his liver and sparing his life.

Police found in Violet's room a would-be suicide note, addressed to her brother. She had written:

“To me life without Billy isn’t worth living, but why should I leave this earth alone? I’m going to take Billy with me.”

Arrested by police, Violet said she'd only wanted to shoot herself in front of Jurges, "to make Bill sorry," but he had grabbed the gun and in the struggle it went off three times. As for the note, she said she'd written it while drunk, and didn't mean it. Police did find several empty bottles of liquor in her room.

“I had been drinking before I wrote that note, and when I went to Billy’s room I only meant to kill myself. He knows that. I got a note from him today, after I wrote him one. He said he’d do anything he could to help me.”

Indeed, Jurges later said that's what happened:

"I have no doubt that she shot me accidentally, she only wanted to kill herself and I tried to stop her."

Not only that, but Jurges refused to press charges against Violet, and even said he wouldn't testify.

But the evidence against Violet was sufficient that prosecutors went ahead with the case even without the victim's cooperation.

Naturally, the story was a sensation, and covered breathlessly by the reporters of the day. The Cubs hated the bad publicity, as did Jurges, who just wanted it all to go away.

Violet's colorful past was brought to light as reporters interviewed anyone they could find who knew her... and Violet herself, who happily spoke to them from her hospital bed. The Chicago Evening American introduced one such interview as: “the raven-tressed beauty tossed in her bed as she tore the curtain of secrecy from her troubled romance with Bill Jurges.”

Some revelations:

• Violet said she was "unhappily married" at 18, "one of those puppy love affairs with a schoolboy." She said they never lived together and were divorced six months later. is of Violet from around that age.

• Her career as an actress began around the same time, at age 18, after she was "discovered" taking dancing lessons. She performed for a couple years in , which featured "dance revues, burlesque performances, comedy routines, and risqué sketches." Her stage name was "Violet Valli."

• A few months before she met Billy, she dated another, even more famous ballplayer -- the 32-year-old Hazen "Kiki" Cuyler, a future Hall of Famer. (A stutterer, Cuyler's nickname came from how he introduced himself -- "Kai-Kai-Kai-ler.") She said she was quite taken with Cuyler, but then discovered he was married. After that, “I had nothing more to do with him.”

In addition, newspapers reported in follow-up stories that the morning of the shooting, Violet had received a telegram that hinted Billy was dating other women. There also was a report that when Violet went to the fifth floor of the hotel to go to Billy's room, she was accompanied by a woman. A hotel guest told police he overheard Violet say to the woman, "a mysterious blonde companion":

"If he denies this I'll forgive him. Otherwise I'll give him the works."

A reference to whatever had been written in the telegram, perhaps?

The blonde ran away when Violet "began pounding for admittance" on Billy's door. No one knew who the mysterious blonde was, but a reporter who interviewed Violet's mother got the name "Betty." She was never tracked down, however, and so her version of the events that morning were never revealed.

Violet said her relationship with Billy had been “perfect for many months,” but it was ruined by "gossips" who “cast aspersions on my character.”

One of those "gossips," it seemed, was Cuyler. Though he denied he'd ever dated Violet, he said Jurges had asked him for advice about her, and the outfielder had replied that Jurges was "too young to think of love." Violet also suspected Kiki told Billy that she had dated several other ballplayers... and apparently she had.

Indeed, Billy said years later that he believed Violet was still having an affair with Kiki and that her intention had been to kill him. Billy said Violet had a key to Cuyler's hotel room and had let herself in, only he wasn't there. She waited for him, but when he didn't arrive, she left a note on the mirror reading: "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" Only then did she leave and go to the room of her second-choice victim... Billy.

At least, according to Billy. Of course, his account flies in the face of the letter Violet had written to her brother that she was going to kill Billy and then herself.

The trial began on July 15, the same day the Cubs were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers at Wrigley Field. (The Cubs won, 8-3, with Cuyler going 2-for-5; Woody English, playing shortstop in place of Jurges, was 0-for-3 with a walk and a run scored, and turned two double plays.) Jurges, subpoenaed by the judge to appear as a witness, was in the courtroom, hiding his face from photographers behind a handkerchief.

All eyes were on Violet Popovich as she arrived with her attorneys, (:

"The former chorus girl made her entrance, wearing a white crêpe dress, trimmed in red, white hat and purse, and red shoes.”

Once again, Jurges appealed to the court to drop the charges. Judge John A. Sbarbaro -- about as honest a judge you could expect to find in Chicago in the early 1930s, a man who also owned a mortuary favored by mobsters and a garage where they stored bootleg liquor -- promptly did what Jurges, and the Chicago Cubs, wanted.

“Then the case is dismissed for want of prosecution, and I hope no more Cubs get shot.”

On July 22, a week after the case was dismissed, Billy was back on the field for a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, playing third base. The Cubs lost, 3-1, but Billy singled in his first at-bat. He was back at his usual shortstop spot two days later, with English back to third base.

Prior to the shooting, Jurges was hitting .260/.299/.390; after, .242/.273/.291. However, the following year he hit .269/.313/.359, and for his career, .258/.325/.335. He was an All-Star in 1937, 1939, and 1940, and played in three World Series, hitting .275/.370/.325 in 47 plate appearances.

Jurges -- cheekily nicknamed "Bullet Bill" by the press -- married Mary Huyette in 1933. After his baseball playing days were over, he was a manager, a scout, and an instructor. He died in 1997 at the age of 88. He and Mary had one child, a daughter named Suzanne. Interviewed years later, Suzanne said she was aware of the shooting from press reports but "it was never mentioned in our house."

As for Violet, the day after Jurges made his return to the baseball field, she made her return to the stage. All around Wrigley Field, handbills went up that "The Girl Who Shot For Love" would be performing with the "Bare Cub Girls" at the State-Congress Theatre.

The show ran for a few weeks before Violet's career was once again derailed by legal trouble. This time, she was in court of her own volition. She had demanded the return of 25 letters from Jurges -- and possibly some from Cuyler -- that she had entrusted with her bail bondsman, Lucius Barnett, while she was in the hospital. Perhaps she had thought the letters could be used in her defense if the trial went forward, or maybe she was hiding evidence. In any event, now that the charges had been dropped, she wanted the letters back... but Barnett wouldn't return them. He said he was going to publish them as a book called The Love Letters of a Shortstop. Violet was suing to stop him.

"I wouldn't let him do that. I think too much of Bill."

The case, perhaps not surprisingly, wound up in the courtroom of that same Judge Sbarbaro, who openly admitted his intention: "I'm a Cubs fan myself. Publication of letters that would hurt Jurges or the Cubs must be prevented."

Prosecutors alleged that Barnett had obtained the letters illegally and his intention was to blackmail Jurges and Cuyler. On top of that, when police arrived to arrest him, they said he kicked one in the stomach. Added to the charges of extortion and theft was resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and assault.

Barnett returned the letters, the extortion and theft charges were dropped, and the other charges resolved with fines. The fate of the letters is unknown, the threatened book never published.

The story then faded from the public consciousness until 1949, when another ballplayer was shot in a Chicago hotel room. This time it was Eddie Waitkus, a first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. Waitkus had played for the Chicago Cubs between 1941 and 1948, with four years off for World War II; he was then traded to the Phillies. A 20-year-old baseball fan from Chicago named Ruth Ann Steinhagen had become obsessed with Waitkus while he was playing for the Cubs. On June 14, 1949, she checked into a room at the hotel the Cubs players were staying in and left a note at the front desk asking Waitkus to come to her room to discuss an urgent matter. When Waitkus entered her room, Steinhagen shot him with a .22 caliber bolt-action Remington model 510. She then called the front desk. When police arrived, they found her cradling his head in her lap. In addition to it also happening in a Chicago hotel, there were other parallels to the Jurges shooting: the bullet narrowly missed Waitkus's heart, or it would have been fatal; he returned to play baseball, though not until the following year; and he refused to press charges against Steinhagen, and she was not convicted of the shooting, though she was ordered to be detained in a mental institution for three years.

The two shootings were said to be the influence for Bernard Malamud's 1952 book, The Natural, and in fact Waitkus was nicknamed "the Natural" because of his smooth, natural swing.

Postscript

After the initial reports and trial coverage, the Jurges shooting was largely forgotten by the press aside from being a footnote after the Waitkus shooting. But in 2016, baseball historian Jack Bales about Violet's often tragic life.

Five years after the shooting, Violet was performing as a "torch singer" in the Kitty Davis Cocktail Lounge in Chicago. Her boyfriend picked her up one night, and they argued in the car as he sped through red lights and stop signs. Frightened, Violet asked him to let her out of the car. "He said, 'O.K., I'll let you out.' He opened the door and pushed me out," Violet told police. She suffered scrapes and bruises, but she refused to press charges. Seven months later, they applied for a marriage license, but public records show they never actually married.

The story received little notice because Violet -- no doubt hoping to avoid dredging up the shooting incident again -- told police her last name was Heidl, which had been her mother's maiden name.

Bales also discovered that was born Viola Popovic, and that she was the daughter of Austrian immigrants. Her father, Mirko Popovic, later Americanized his name as Michael Popovich, and Viola became Violet. Her father frequently beat her mother, beginning when Violet was just 10 days old. In 1920, her mother filed for divorce, and 8-year-old Violet took the stand.

Her single mother unable to support the children, Violet and her three brothers were sent to the Uhlich Children's Home. At age 11 she deliberately set fire to a bathroom in order to be sent back home; she was, but was soon returned as her mother still could not support her. Four years later, she told administrators she was about to turn 18 -- she was in fact about to turn 15 -- and wanted to be released. Either fooled or happy to be rid of her, they let her go. A year later, police were called after Violet ran away from home after her mother whipped her for "going to a movie with a boy and staying out late."

As for the mystery blonde, "Betty," who reportedly accompanied Violet that morning, it was Violet's stepsister, Betty Subject, whose original last name was Sopcak. Violet's father, Michael, remarried two years after divorcing her mother, and Betty was the daughter of his new wife from her previous marriage. Betty was 15 years older than Violet and was an accomplished stage and film actress, no doubt the inspiration for Violet's own career. Bales wrote that Violet looked up to Betty as "a true 'big sister,'" and when Violet went to New York City in 1932 to pursue her acting dreams, Betty went with her, and then back to Chicago on July 3rd when she checked into the Hotel Carlos. Violet's nephew, Mark Prescott, told Bales that Betty was with Violet the morning of the shooting, and that she had told Betty she was going to kill Jurges; no wonder Betty ran away when Violet pounded on his door!

By 1940, Violet had moved to Los Angeles, where her mother had been living for a few years. In 1947, she married a former heavyweight prizefighter named Charley Retzlaff, "The Duluth Dynamiter," who in 1936 was knocked out by Joe Louis. According to Prescott, Violet and Charley only lived together briefly -- he lived on a farm in North Dakota, and she in Los Angeles, where she worked in the color department for a film studio. The nephew said they remained on friendly terms and never divorced.

He also said Violet continued to date ballplayers, or at least former ones -- including managers Leo Durocher and Al Lopez. Prescott told Bales that in 1959, his aunt took him to a Chicago White Sox game, and Lopez went into the stands, chatted with his aunt, and gave the 9-year-old boy an autographed baseball.

After her retirement, Violet struggled financially and agreed to sell her home to a couple on the condition she be allowed to live the rest of her days there. The couple agreed, moved in, and changed the locks. The agreement about her living in the home was not in writing, the nephew said, and Violet had no legal recourse. She spent her final years in a nursing home and died at age 88 on February 25, 2000, living under the name Violet Heidl and forgotten by the press.

Post-Postscript

It is possible that Violet Popovich's shooting of Billy Jurges inadvertently set the stage for one of the most memorable moments in World Series history.

Chicago Cubs historian Ed Hartig wrote that in the aftermath of the Jurges shooting, the Cubs realized they needed another backup infielder. The Cubs had opened the season with rookie Stan Hack as the backup, but when Woody English broke his finger in spring training, Hack became the starting third baseman. He hit just .205/.333/.329 with six errors in his first 19 games, and the Cubs happily welcomed back English on May 6, with Hack back to the bench.

During the two weeks Jurges was out of action, English was moved to shortstop, and Hack went back to third base, but he hit .205/.225/.256 with three more errors in 13 games. Manager Rogers Hornsby then gave up on Hack and made himself the third baseman. The 36-year-old "Rajah" was an impressive 6-for-20 with five RBIs in six starts at third base, but the Cubs players hated him, and so did the Cubs front office. Hornsby was fired as manager on August 2, 1932, and the Cubs needed a new backup infielder.

They found one in the minor leagues -- the 27-year-old Mark Koenig, who had been shortstop for the New York Yankees from 1925 to 1930. Koenig, hitting .335 in 322 at-bats with the Mission Reds in the Pacific Coast League, was signed on August 5, and over the rest of the season hit a blistering .353/.377/.510 for the Cubs, eventually taking the starting shortstop job away from Jurges. The Cubs were 60-50 before Koenig joined the team, and 30-14 after, winning the N.L. pennant by four games.

After clinching the pennant, the Cubs voted to determine how much World Series money to give those players who had joined the team mid-season. They voted to give Koenig only a half-share. In truth Koenig had played only two months with the team, but his contributions were obviously far beyond that.

That October, the Cubs were playing the Yankees in the World Series, and Babe Ruth razzed the Cubs players about how they'd cheated his former teammate, calling them cheapskates for only giving Koenig a half-share. The Cubs, in return, called the 37-year-old Ruth "Grandpa", "Big Belly", and "Balloon Head".

In Game 3, with the score tied 4-4 in the top of the fifth inning, Ruth came up to the plate in Wrigley Field. Fans were throwing lemons at him from the stands, and the Cubs players continued to heckle him, though they should have known better than to poke the bear -- the Babe had hit a three-run home run in the first inning, and flew out to deep right in the second.

Cubs pitcher Charlie Root got to a 2-2 count on Ruth, and the next pitch... well, you probably know what happened. , Ruth either pointed at the Chicago bench, pointed at the pitcher, held up two fingers to indicate there were only two strikes, or... pointed to dead center field.

But we do know that on the next pitch, he hit it out!

If Jurges hadn't been shot, and Hack hadn't struggled as his replacement, and Koenig hadn't been signed as a backup infielder... who knows if it happens!

This English team keeps cheating certain death, even if they’re the Leafs of football even the Leafs don’t know how to come back like that.

High end talent the team prevails to the Semi Finals, will they make consecutive euro final appearances?