As the sports world remains at a virtual standstill due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, let’s take a look back to see what happened on April 2 in sports history.


1969 – Pat Quinn hits Bobby Orr – This may come as a shock to you, but at one time, the Toronto Maple Leafs were dominant over the Boston Bruins in the postseason. The Leafs simply had the Bruins’ number when it came time for the playoffs. By the end of the 1959 playoffs, the Leafs and Bruins had met 10 times in the postseason, with the Leafs winning eight of those meetings while accumulating a record of 35-14-1 (the rare postseason tie came during the 1951 league semi-finals series). The playoffs since 1959 paint a starkly different picture of the rivalry, with the pendulum swinging the other way. Boston has won all six playoff meetings between the Leafs and Bruins since the Leafs eliminated the B’s in seven games to advance to the 1959 Stanley Cup, with a record of 24-10, including sweeps in 1969 and 1974. If you want to pinpoint the moment things went south for the Leafs against the Bruins historically, you might actually be able to find it – it came in Game 1 of their 1969 quarter-finals matchup at the Boston Garden. Weeks earlier, Bruins superstar Bobby Orr and hulking Leafs rookie blueliner Pat Quinn became acquainted with each other when the latter viciously cross-checked the former into the Leafs net, leading to a brawl between the two. In Game 1, things got out of hand for the Leafs quickly and the game got…chippy. With six minutes left in the second period and the Leafs trailing 6-0, Orr gathered the puck behind his own net and brought it up the near boards to get it out of the zone. Quinn spotted Orr with his head down and crossed the blueline to deliver a crushing hit on No. 4. To this day, whether or not Quinn hit Orr with an elbow or shoulder remains up for debate. “That one caused quite a ruckus,” Quinn once told Sports Illustrated’s Allan Muir. “You were taking your life into your own hands when you hit Bobby. The fans didn't like it. The Bruins didn't like it. But that one felt good. It was a good hit.” What was for certain, though, is that Orr was knocked out cold and all hell broke loose in the Garden. Bruins players pounced on Quinn. Fans threw drinks. One even threw a shoe. Police became involved. It was madness. Orr was taken to a local hospital for evaluation. Quinn headed to the penalty box, where he was assailed by the fans and needed to use his stick to defend himself. He eventually received a police escort to the Leafs’ dressing room at the end of the period. By the end of the game, the two teams racked up 132 minutes of penalties, with Forbes Kennedy taking centre stage. Kennedy set an NHL record with eight penalties in the game, including one for hitting a linesman with a left jab in the aftermath of four fights with Bruins players. The lengthy suspension that followed for Kennedy ended his Leafs tenure and NHL career. The Bruins would win the game 10-0 in what ended up being a four-game sweep.

1972 – Gil Hodges dies suddenly – With Major League Baseball players going on strike the previous day, baseball was in a holding pattern on Apr. 2, 1972, with a number of teams and personnel still in Florida near their teams’ respective spring training camps. Among those still in the Sunshine State was New York Mets manager Gil Hodges. In his playing days, Hodges was one of the finest defensive first basemen of his generation with the Brooklyn (and then Los Angeles) Dodgers, with offence to spare. From 1949 to 1955, Hodges was named to seven straight All-Star Games, eclipsing the 30-home run mark on five occasions (including becoming the first Dodger to hit 40 in 1951) and reaching 100-plus runs batted in all seven seasons. With the Dodgers, Hodges won two World Series in 1955 – the team’s only title in Brooklyn – and 1959. Taken in the 1961 expansion draft by the Mets, Hodges returned to New York for the final two seasons of his career and made enough of an impression with the organization that he would take over as skipper of the club in 1968 after five years as manager of the Washington Senators. The Mets still fresh out of expansion were perpetually mediocre with Hodges’ first season mark of 73-89 a franchise high mark at that point. But 1969 brought with it the year of the Amazin’. With a rotation anchored by Cy Young winner Tom Seaver, Comeback Player of the Year Tommie Agee and Cleon Jones batting .340 to lead the offence, the Mets won 100 games to top the National League East by eight games over the Chicago Cubs. In the best-of-five National League Championship Series, the Mets swept the Atlanta Braves for the team’s first-ever pennant. Then in the World Series against Earl Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles who boasted the likes of Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Boog Powell, the Mets dropped Game 1 and then stormed back for four straight to become the first expansion team to win the Fall Classic. The Mets headed into 1972 off of back-to-back 83-win seasons and hoped to once again compete for a division crown. On Easter Sunday 1972, Hodges took in a round of golf with members of his coaching staff in West Palm Beach. Heading back to his hotel, Hodges had a massive heart attack, collapsing on the street and hitting his head on the pavement. He died in the arms of bullpen coach Joe Pignataro. He was 47.

1976 – Reggie Jackson heads to Baltimore – From 1972 to 1974, there was no better team in Major League Baseball than the back-to-back-to-back World Series-winning Oakland Athletics. With a pitching staff led by Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers and an offence featuring Gene Tenace, Bert Campaneris and Sal Bando, the A’s had talent to spare, but none greater than Reggie Jackson. The American League and World Series Most Valuable Player in 1973, Jackson was an All-Star in six of his eight years in the Bay Area. In 1975, Jackson hit .289 with a league-leading 36 home runs, 104 runs batted in and an OPS of .840 in one of his best offensive seasons over his nine-year career as the A’s won a fifth straight AL West crown. So, it took the baseball world by surprise when Jackson, pitcher Ken Holtzman and a minor-league prospect were sent to the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for Don Baylor, Paul Mitchell and Mike Torrez. But the logic in trading a 29-year-old Reggie Jackson in the middle of his prime as your team is in the midst of a period of great success was actually pretty sound. Free agency was coming in the wake of the Flood v. Kuhn decision and Jackson was heading into the final year of his contract. A’s owner Charlie Finley, a billionaire who made his money in insurance, felt that the team wouldn’t be able to hang onto Jackson on the open market, so he decided to get something for him while he still could. Among the people who were shocked by the trade was Jackson himself. Jackson would go on to hold out from reporting to the Orioles for four weeks, missing 16 games in a salary dispute. Joining an Orioles team that posted three straight 90-plus win seasons and AL East titles in 1973 and 1974, Jackson found himself on a club alongside the likes of Cy Young winner Jim Palmer and All-Star first baseman Lee May. Jackson’s season with the O’s was a fine one, but not up to his regular calibre. The 1976 season ended up being the lone year between 1971 and 1984 in which Jackson wasn’t named an All-Star. In 134 games with the Orioles, Jackson hit .277 with 27 HR, 91 RBI and an OPS of .853. Baltimore finished the season at 88-74, 10.5 games behind the New York Yankees in the AL East. The season would prove to be Jackson’s lone year in Charm City. That November, Jackson signed a five-year, $2.95 million deal with those same Yankees. The following year, the legend of Mr. October was born.

1980 – Lafleur and Gretzky both make history with No. 50 – During the 1979-80 NHL season, there was a three-way race for the scoring title. In the Norris Division, the high-flying Montreal Canadiens featured one of the most consistent snipers in the league in 29-year-old Guy Lafleur. “The Flower” was coming off of five-straight 50-goal seasons and had a sixth in sight. If Lafleur were to complete the feat, he would become the first ever player to post six-straight seasons with 50 goals. On Apr. 2, Lafleur came into a contest with the Detroit Red Wings with 48 markers on the year. Trailing 2-1 in the opening minutes of the second, the Habs would break the game open in the middle frame. After goals from Mark Napier and Steve Shutt to retake a 3-2 lead, Montreal headed to the power play midway through the period. On the man-advantage, Lafleur got No. 49, beating Rogie Vachon to make it 4-2 with assists from Napier and Larry Robinson. Rejean Houle added a fifth Habs goal before the end of the period to take a 5-2 lead into the intermission. In the third, Napier got his second of the game 90 seconds into the period before Lafleur would get his half-century marker with just under 15 minutes left in the game to make it an unprecedented sixth season in a row of 50 goals. A history-making 50th goal was also scored in Edmonton that night as the Oilers hosted the Minnesota North Stars. In his first NHL season (as well as the Oilers’ debut campaign in the league), 19-year-old Wayne Gretzky was proving that the scoring prowess he showed in the WHA would translate nicely to the NHL. Coming into the game at the Northlands Coliseum, Gretzky was sitting on 49 goals. The North Stars opened the scoring midway through the first on a goal by Bobby Smith. It was in the middle of the second when Gretzky would get his record-breaker. Taking a feed from Colin Campbell, Gretzky scored his 50th past Gary Edwards to tie the game at 1-1, the scoreline at which it would end. With the goal, Gretzky at 19 years and 66-days-old became the youngest player in NHL history to score 50 in a season. While both Lafleur and Gretzky broke records that night, neither man would win the Art Ross Trophy at season’s end. Lafleur missing six games cost him in the race, finishing at 125 points on the season. Gretzky would finish his first NHL season with 137 points, which tied Los Angeles Kings forward Marcel Dionne for the most in the league. But because Dionne had 53 goals to Gretzky’s 51, Dionne would take home the trophy on a tiebreaker.

1984 – John Thompson makes Georgetown champions – As a player, John Thompson’s NBA career was a short one. The 6-foot-10 forward/centre out of Providence appeared in 74 games over two seasons for the Boston Celtics in the mid-1960s. Used sparingly, Thompson’s career average was 10.4 minutes a night. Luckily for him, he played on teams featuring Bill Russell, John Havlicek and Tommy Heinsohn, and his only two years in the NBA both ended in championships. But Thompson would still go on to make a legacy in the game on the coaching side. Following the end of his playing days in 1966, Thompson took a job as the head coach of St. Anthony, a high school in his hometown of Washington, DC. Six years and a 122-28 record later, Thompson became the head coach of the Georgetown Hoyas in 1972, inheriting a middling program that went 3-23 the previous season under John Magee. After 12 and 13-win seasons in 1972 and 1973, Thompson led the Hoyas to their first NCAA tournament berth in decades in 1974. Under Thompson, the Hoyas became March Madness mainstay. In 1982, Thompson’s team – led by freshman big man Patrick Ewing – reached the tournament final, but ultimately fell to Dean Smith’s North Carolina Tar Heels. Two years later, Thompson’s charges would make history. The Hoyas headed into March Madness as the top seed in the West, but barely made it out of the first round, edging SMU 38-37 in one of the lowest-scoring games in tournament history. Georgetown went on to beat UNLV and Dayton to reach the Final Four. A defeat of Kentucky in the Final Four meant a return to the championship game and a date with the Houston Cougars at Seattle’s Kingdome. The game would mark a matchup of future Hall of Fame centres with Ewing taking on Hakeem Olajuwon. In the final, future 10-year NBA pro Reggie Williams scored 19 off the bench and Ewing added 10 points and nine boards, as the Hoyas topped the Cougars, 84-75, to give Georgetown its first-ever national title. With the victory, Thompson became the first-ever African-American to coach his team to an NCAA championship. Thompson would go on to coach the Hoyas for another 15 seasons, retiring midway through the 1998-1999 campaign. He ended his career with a 596-239 mark and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later that fall.