“So the Dodgers brought in Debbie Gibson, now if only they had Kirk Gibson.”

So said Bob Costas after pop-star Debbie Gibson sang the National Anthem before game one of the World Series in 1988. The injured Gibson, of course, came off the bench to pinch hit in the bottom of the 9th and hit one of the most dramatic home runs in baseball history. (And Jose Canseco wants me to remind you that he hit a Grand Slam in his first World Series at bat earlier in the game.)

A year later on October 15, another Los Angeles athlete made history, when Wayne Gretzky, now with the L.A. Kings was in Edmonton to play the Oilers. With the Kings down a goal late in the third period and their goalie pulled, the great one scored a goal to surpass Gordie Howe as the NHL’s all-time leading point scorer. Gretzky, as he was wont to do, then scored the game winner in overtime after a lengthy celebration of his milestone. Almost unimaginably, Gretzky was only 28 years old at the time.

Just two years before Gibson’s dramatics the New York Mets beat the Houston Astros 7-6 in 16 innings in one of the best League Championship Series games ever played.

It was today in 1764 that English writer Edward Gibbon saw a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome and it inspired him to write, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Proving how far the American Empire had come, it was today in 1951 that CBS debuted the “I Love Lucy” show.

In what might have been an episode of, “I Love Lucy,” it was today in 1917 that Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan, was executed by a French firing squad outside of Paris after being found guilty of spying for Germany in World War I. She was 41 years old.

It was today in 1999 that 20th Century Fox released, “Fight Club.” I’d tell you more about it, but, well….

Today in 1996 saw the last gasp of one of the great “alternative” bands of the 1990’s. The Lemonheads dropped, “Car Button Cloth,” before disappearing for years. The album was the third straight excellent outing for Evan Dando since he’d signed with a major label, but he never got the fame predicted for him when they first broke. Listen to this song to get a sense of how good Dando was, and listen to this one to hear how damn funny he could be. (My favorite Lemonheads verse starts at 1:50)

The Refreshments were far too good of a band to just go away after their two albums in the 90’s and thank god for us they didn’t. Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers bowed today in 1999 with, “Honky Tonk Union.” HTU has a lot of great songs, but my favorites are, “Beautiful Disaster,” which sounds like if a Bruce Springsteen song had a baby with a Tom Petty song, the title track, and this one, one of the better ballads of the last 20 years.

Roger Clyne and his band of Peacemakers started today in 1999

Happy birthday to the sixth and last of Charlie’s Angels, Tanya Roberts, who replaced Shelley Hack in the fifth and final season of the show.

“What do you mean, why wouldn’t a private eye be wearing this top?”

— Bill Hubbell