Wow, what a week in sports. USC defeats Michigan, a Dodger pitches a complete game for the first time in the postseason since 2004 and they sweep the Brewers to go to the World Series for the second consecutive year after being 0-6 against Milwaukee during the regular season. Perhaps Michael Conforto will be added to the roster and win MVP in the World Series.
Jeff Hershow Woodland Hills
While basically sleepwalking through the first three games of the NLCS, Shohei Ohtani saves his best for last. He goes “Hollywood” and produces the single greatest performance in MLB history as the final curtain comes down on the Milwaukee Brewers and extends the Dodgers’ magical journey to repeat as World Series champions.
Stay tuned for the sequel!
Rick Solomon Lake Balboa
It’s a bird, it’s a plane … no, it’s superhuman Shohei! He pitches a shutout, strikes out 10, and hits three tape-measure home runs. Wow!
Marty Zweben Palos Verdes Estates
In the history of Major League Baseball, has there ever been a player like Shohei Ohtani? I don’t think so. Shohei is the best ever. Enough said.
Chris Sorce Fountain Valley
Now that the Dodgers have effortlessly powered their way back into the World Series, it’s quite obvious that $400 million actually does buy what it used to!
Jack Wolf Westwood
At last, the second coming of the Dodgers has happened. We’ve been waiting for it and hoping for it, and now it’s here. Great offense, great defense and superb pitching. Our new chant should be “all the way L.A., all the way.”
Cheryl Creek Anaheim
Statistically speaking, there is a case to be made in comparing the postseason accomplishments of Sandy Koufax and Blake Snell. From a historical perspective, there is no comparison.
Koufax is a legendary lifetime Dodger who pitched until he physically was no longer able to do so. Snell famously refused to take the ball in his last Giants start to save himself for a free agency money windfall.
Bill Waxman Simi Valley
Stop the presses! The world is still spinning on its axis! Holy Toledo, Dave Roberts finally figured out a starting pitcher’s arm doesn’t fall off after 100 pitches. Too bad he didn’t come to that revelation during Blake Snell’s Game 1 performance, but better late than never as the saying goes.
Oct. 15 (UPI) — Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday that one of the four bodies returned from Gaza in this week’s cease-fire deal did not belong to any of the hostages taken by Hamas.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it has completed the identification process and informed that the families of Uriel Baruch, Tamir Nimrodi and Eitan Levy that their remains have been returned to Israel.
“The government of Israel shares in the deep sorrow of the Baruch, Nimrodi and Levy families, and the families of the fallen hostages,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
The IDF said the fourth body has yet to be identified.
“Following the completion of examinations at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, the fourth body handed over to Israel by Hamas does not match any of the hostages,” the IDF said, according to NBC News. Hamas has returned the bodies of seven hostages out of the 28 bodies believed to be held in Gaza.
Israel’s far-right security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, called for a halt on humanitarian aid into Gaza, accusing Hamas of not putting enough effort into recovering the remaining dead hostages, The Guardian reported. Hamas negotiators said nine of the bodies weren’t able to be recovered amid rubbling from bombing.
“Enough with the disgrace,” Ben Gvir said.
“Moments after opening the crossings to hundreds of trucks, Hamas very quickly returned to its known methods — to lie, to cheat, and to abuse families and the bodies. This Nazi terror understands only force, and the only way to deal with it is to erase it from the face of the earth.”
The Israel Defense Forces said Nimrodi, a member of the IDF, was taken alive at the age of 18 from the Coordination and Liaison Headquarters base in the Gaza Division, and is believed to have been killed at the beginning of the war.
Baruch, 35, a husband and father of two, was killed on Oct. 7, 2023. The IDF said he was fleeing the Nova music festival and his body was taken back into Gaza. The military had confirmed on March 26, 2024, that he had died.
Levy, 53, was also killed on Oct. 7, 2023, and his body was taken back into Gaza, the IDF said, adding that officials confirmed on Dec. 8, 2023, that he was dead. He leaves behind a son and a sister.
“The IDF shares in the families’ grief, continues to invest all efforts in returning the bodies of the fallen hostages and is preparing to continue implementing the agreement,” the military said.
Israel said Tuesday night that it had received the remains of four deceased hostages that Hamas had kidnapped during its surprise attack on Israel Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the two-year-long war. A total 251 hostages were taken that day.
The bodies were returned as part of the first phase of a 20-point peace plan that began to be implemented Monday when Hamas released 20 living hostages to Israel and Israel released nearly 2,000 detainees into Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
No living hostages remain in Gaza following Monday’s exchange, though it is believed that the bodies of 20 deceased hostages remain in Gaza.
Israel had said Tuesday that the bodies of the four deceased hostages were transferred to the IDF via the Red Cross inside the Palestinian enclave and were transported into Israel where they were received in a military ceremony.
Howe has rotated his team while fighting on multiple fronts in the opening weeks of the season.
But it was rather telling that the Newcastle head coach only made two changes for this game – and one was enforced after Tino Livramento suffered a knee injury.
The Premier League’s joint-lowest goalscorers needed to catch fire.
“There has been a lack of good football in general,” Gordon told TNT Sports. “We have defended really well, been organised, but have lacked that spark and creativity. We really wanted to put emphasis on getting that back tonight.”
There was certainly no chance of Newcastle underestimating Union as the visitors looked to bounce back from the weekend’s painful defeat against Arsenal.
The Belgian champions may be newcomers in this competition, but they beat PSV in their first ever Champions League game last month and had not lost any of their opening nine top-flight fixtures.
Such has been Union’s progress in European competitions in recent years, they actually have a significantly higher coefficient than Newcastle.
It was hardly a surprise, then, that the visitors left no stone unturned before facing a side who had an extra day to recover and prepare.
As well as personally reviewing his opponent, as always, Howe familiarised his side with their new surroundings by training at Lotto Park on the eve of the game.
That did not go unnoticed by Union manager Sebastien Pocognoli.
“Maybe the opponent sometimes can be condescending, to look down on you,” he said. “They didn’t. They paid us full respect. They played a big match with their skills and qualities.
“They played top level, all the Newcastle players played top level, so it shows that they had great respect for us.”
Bill Anderson was close to 70 when he first spotted the clock.
It looked like a ship’s wheel, a kitschy bit of decor you might see at a nautically themed bar. But he was drawn to it because of its maker.
Timepieces from Chelsea Clock Co. were renowned for their design and precision. The company’s clocks could once be found on Navy battleships during World War II, and adorned mantels, walls and desks at the White House for presidents ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.
Anderson, a retired watchmaker and collector, was particularly interested in the base of the Chelsea Comet, which was engraved with the initials “J.F.K.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Although watch collectors obsess over celebrity ownership, and a Camelot connection counts for a lot, the prospect of a payday was only part of the allure for Anderson.
Retired watchmaker Bill Anderson owns more than 200 timepieces, including a Chelsea Comet with a plaque featuring a “J.F.K.” engraving.
(Courtesy of Bill Anderson)
The mystery of the clock’s provenance — could it possibly be the real deal? — has animated his life for years. This, Anderson said, “is a nice game that I’ve got going here.”
He’d purchased the clock in 1999 from a seller on EBay, a New Hampshire dealer who’d picked it up at an estate sale in Wellesley, Mass., for $280.
In the intervening years, Anderson, who is 95, has plumbed the cloistered world of clock collectors. His hunt would take him to the online message boards of watch and clock aficionados, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It would eventually lead to a refrigerated vault 200 feet below ground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania.
Anderson, who lives in Eugene, Ore., may not use the word “obsession” to describe his interest in his J.F.K. clock, but others do. All those decades he’s spent trying to uncover its backstory are evidence of its almost gravitational pull.
Anderson, whose parents ran a grocery store, grew up in Roseburg, Ore., south of Eugene. In the late 1940s, he left the University of Oregon after just one quarter and enrolled in a watchmaking school run by the Elgin National Watch Co.
Anderson’s maternal grandfather had been in the trade. “I leaned over his watchmaker’s bench and watched him as a little boy,” he explained. “He let me have the insides of an alarm clock … that was the beginning of it.”
In time, Anderson became a retail liquidator, helping to close jewelry and watch stores and sell their remaining inventories. Along the way, Anderson married and started a family. He gained a reputation as an honest broker — and for being able to spot the value in merchandise that others couldn’t sell.
“Bill is like the George Washington of people — you know, ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ that type of thing,” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who has known Anderson for about 40 years.
In 1974, Anderson paid $15,000 for the inventory of a jeweler in Baker City, Ore., selling what he could and bringing the leftovers home. Forty years later, he came across them while cleaning out his attic; among the wares was an old football helmet.
It turned out to be a rare Spalding head harness from the early 1900s. No more than 10 are believed to still be in existence, and Anderson sold it for about $14,000.
He has retained more than 200 timepieces for his collection, including several from Chelsea, and has watched the prices for celebrity-owned timepieces surge in the last few decades.
“With Kennedy you get the highest multiplication factor for any political figure,” said Paul Boutros, who heads the U.S. watch business for Phillips, a London-based auction house.
Anderson knew if he could confirm the ownership, it would be a boon — perhaps a capstone to his legacy as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was get in touch with Chelsea to request the clock’s certificate of origin.
When it arrived, the spot for the original buyer’s name was marked “no record.” Could that have been a courtesy extended to a VIP customer? JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., had visited the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts — home to the Kennedy clan — where he purchased several items.
Chelsea had published a feature on its website about in-house master clockmaker Jean Yeo that touched on that celebrity connection. She said that she began working at Chelsea in 1951, a time when “all of the Kennedys came in here” and had special praise for the family’s patriarch, calling him a “nice guy” who talked to her about her work.
But Anderson wasn’t sure what to think. The growing allure of watches with A-list history was enticing people to peddle dubious timepieces.
In 2005, a Rolex that was said to be a gift from Marilyn Monroe to JFK was auctioned for $120,000. The gold Day-Date, reportedly given by the actress to the president in 1962 on the occasion of his 45th birthday, featured an inscription that reads, “Jack / With love as always / from / Marilyn.” But collectors and watch scholars have noted that the timepiece in question featured a serial number that dated it to 1965.
At one point in his search, Anderson had a breakthrough when he discovered an online photograph of the future president and his wife at home in 1954. A clock was positioned on a desk, and it looked just like Anderson’s Comet, but the low-resolution picture was so blurry that any engraving it may have had was impossible to discern.
Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at their home in Washington, D.C., in 1954. A Chelsea Comet clock sits on the desk.
(Bettmann Archive)
James Archer Abbott, co-author of “Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and Its Legacy,” said there was no record of the Comet having been displayed at the White House, and cautioned that if it were important to the family, it probably would have been earmarked for JFK’s presidential library. A representative of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said that it has no record of or information on the Comet clock.
But Tony LaChapelle, president of Chelsea, was open to the possibility that it had once been owned by JFK.
“Could somebody who had nothing better to do in their life take that photo of JFK, Jackie and that clock, and get a Comet clock and try to capitalize on that? I suppose they could,” he said. “We look at [Anderson’s ] clock and we look at that photo of [JFK’s clock] sitting out on the table, and in our opinion it is highly probable” they were one and the same.
Anderson tried to find the original high-resolution image for years but couldn’t turn anything up. No one seemed to know the source of the photo. There were tens of thousands of pictures of JFK to comb through online. Or more.
But eventually, after a serpentine, multiyear effort, the whereabouts of the original negative were finally uncovered. It was in a photo archive stored inside a Boyers, Pa., facility known as the Iron Mountain, a formidable place that securely maintains records of all types, including for the federal government.
The Bettmann Archive, which comprises millions of photos and is managed by Getty Images, is housed in a section of the Mountain that’s more than 10 stories underground.
Last year, an archivist located the negative and brought it to one of Bettmann’s labs, where she placed it on a flatbed scanner. Soon, a new, ultra-high-resolution version of the 1954 image glowed on her computer screen. The clarity was remarkable.
The Comet could be clearly seen in the photo, including the clock’s wooden base.
It was blank.
When he heard the news — relayed via telephone — Anderson grew quiet.
But he offered no lamentations and later he said he wasn’t disappointed: “Not a bit.” He’d come to realize how important the hunt had been for him, especially after his wife, Sallie, died in July 2023. She was 93.
“She understood that I loved that kind of stuff,” he said.
The research made a dark time just a little easier.
During a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining room table, where there was an array of photos of his wife. The Comet was there too. He explained that over the last year or so, he has asked each of his five children to select clocks from his collection that they will inherit when he dies.
Marilyn Monroe, seen in a 1962 photograph, is said to have gifted President Kennedy a Rolex that was later auctioned for $120,000.
(Cecil Stoughton / White House Photographs / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Associated Press)
“I don’t know how many more miles down the road I’ve got,” he said.
But Anderson has yet to offer the Comet. “Why that hasn’t happened yet, I don’t know,” he said.
One of his sons, Mike Anderson, a watchmaker who owns Anderson Jewelers in Corvallis, Ore., has an idea. “There’s no doubt in my mind he wants to link [the clock] to JFK — he wants to believe that that was on his desk,” the younger Anderson said. “That’s what drives him.”
After all these years, Anderson still loves the chase.
