century

Next summer’s World Cup will be the largest, most complex and most lucrative sporting event in history, with 48 teams playing 104 games in three countries. The tournament is expected to draw a global TV audience of nearly 5 billion and FIFA, the event’s organizer, is hoping for revenues of between $10 billion-$14 billion — which is why lower-bowl tickets for Iran-New Zealand at SoFi Stadium cost nearly $700.

All that seemed unlikely after the first tournament in 1930, when the idea of a soccer World Cup was nearly killed in the cradle, the victim from lack of planning, lack of money and lack of interest. That the competition survived, much less thrived, is nothing short of a miracle, says English writer and podcaster Jonathan Wilson, author of the deeply researched “The Power and Glory: The History of the World Cup.”

“1930, it’s incredibly amateurish in many ways,” Wilson said. “It’s got that sort of almost like a school sports day feel to it.”

Only 13 countries took part in the first tournament; it was supposed to be 16 but the Egyptian team missed its boat to Uruguay while Japan and Siam (now Thailand) couldn’t afford the travel costs and pulled out. England, meanwhile, not only refused to play, but the British press ignored the event, as did much of Europe.

That seemed like a wise decision at the time since the first two matches of the inaugural tournament were affected by snow, with one of the opening games drawing just 4,444 fans. The smallest crowd in World Cup history, estimated at about 300, showed up for another first-round game between Romania and Peru and the TV audience … well, there was none since TV had yet to be invented.

The officiating was beyond suspect — Romania’s manager, Constantin Radulescu, also worked two games as a linesman — and the U.S. trainer, Jack Coll, had to be stretchered off the field during his team’s semifinal — yes, the U.S. made the semifinals! — with Argentina when he lost consciousness after inhaling the fumes from a bottle of chloroform that shattered in his pocket.

In another game, the penalty spots were mistakenly marked 16 yards from goal instead of the regulation 12 — and nobody noticed.

“Some of the details don’t make sense,” Wilson said. “The whole thing is so sort of low grade compared to today.”

When Argentine captain Nolo Ferreira left the tournament and returned home to take his law exams his replacement, Guillermo Stábile, scored a tournament-high eight goals in four games — then never played for the national team again (although he did coach it, leading the La Albiceleste to six South American titles and the 1958 World Cup).

Given the farcical nature of the 1930 World Cup, the tournament probably should have ended right there. Instead, 1930 has become the foundation on which next year’s competition was built.

The origins of the tournament, however, actually make sense. Before 1930, FIFA recognized the winner of the Olympic competition as the world champion. But that event was for amateurs, a point on which the International Olympic Committee would not budge.

With professional soccer growing in popularity, FIFA decided to stage its own breakaway event and play it in Uruguay, the country that had won the last two Olympic titles.

Argentina’s goalkeeper can’t stop a shot by Uruguay during the 1930 World Cup final against Argentina in Montevideo, Uruguay.

(Associated Press)

That quickly proved to be a big mistake. The growing effects of the Great Depression left many countries unable to afford the long, slow steamship trip to South America. The first tournament was open to any country that wanted to play, yet two months before the first game no European teams had agreed to come.

“It was taken very seriously by Uruguay and Argentina,” Wilson said, but not by many others.

That changed shortly after Romania’s King Carol II, who ascended to the throne in a coup that deposed his son, personally selected his country’s World Cup roster and sent it on its way. France quickly agreed to go too, entering a makeshift team under pressure from FIFA president Jules Rimet, a Frenchman. Belgium also buckled under FIFA pressure and all three teams boarded the same ship for the trip to Uruguay, working out together on the 15-day voyage aboard the SS Conte Verde, an Italian ocean liner.

“Even the four European nations who go it’s not entirely clear how seriously they took it,” Wilson said. “The French and Romanians, they kept diaries. They seem to have regarded this as a laugh. We’ll try to win but it doesn’t really matter.”

Things didn’t really get loony until the tournament began. The Bolivian team, for example, played in berets, as did an Argentine midfielder, while the 15 referees who worked the games, some of whom had traveled and socialized with the players on the long boat ride from Europe, dressed formally in knickers, long-sleeve shirts, blazers and ties.

The well-dressed officials spent much of the tournament working with police to break up fights; play was so violent at least two players sustained broken legs and the U.S.-Argentina semifinal descended into a full-out brawl, with one American having four teeth knocked out and another hospitalized with injuries to his stomach.

The tournament finally finished with the hosts beating Argentina 4-2, after which the Argentines broke off diplomatic relations with their neighbor and an angry mob in Buenos Aires stoned the Uruguayan embassy.

Uraguay’s team before the 1930 World Cup final against Argentina.

(Keystone / Getty Images)

Argentina’s soccer team before preparing for the 1930 World Cup final.

(Associated Press)

“It ended,” Wilson said of the tournament, “with everybody sort of fighting each other.”

Few disagreed with the Argentine magazine El Gráfico, which seemed to predict there was little future for the fledgling event. “The World Cup is over,” it wrote. “The development of this competition brought not only an unpleasant atmosphere, but also an ungrateful one.”

Yet nearly a century later, the World Cup is still here. And that, too, was foretold in 1930 in the story of Romanian midfielder Alfred Eisenbeisser (who was also known as Fredi Fieraru because, why not?).

On the journey home from the first World Cup, Eisenbeisser contracted pneumonia and a priest was called to administer the last rites. The ship eventually docked in Genoa and he was taken to a sanatorium while the rest of the team continued on to Romania.

Assuming her son had perished in Italy, Eisenbeisser’s mother arranged a wake — only to have her son stroll into the ceremony very much alive, causing the woman to faint. Eisenbeisser would play 12 more years of professional soccer and compete in figure skating in the 1936 Winter Olympics, where he finished 13th in the pairs competition.

Turns out the reports of Eisenbeisser’s demise, like those of the World Cup, were greatly exaggerated.

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England were pushed towards the precipice of the fastest Ashes series defeat in more than 100 years as a Travis Head century maintained Australia’s grip on the third Test in Adelaide.

Head was dropped on 99 by Harry Brook and spent eight balls one run short of a hundred before belting Joe Root down the ground for four to draw a deafening roar from his home-town crowd at the Adelaide Oval.

The left-hander moved Australia’s second innings to 271-4 and their overall lead to 356 at the end of the third day.

If England’s third loss in as many Tests is completed on Saturday, it would mean the Ashes have been decided in 10 days of cricket.

Not since 1921, when Australia needed only eight days of play to win in England, has the destination of the urn been settled so swiftly.

Head’s inevitable ton snuffed out brief England hope that was raised when captain Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer added 73 runs in the morning session.

Stokes made 83 and Archer 51 in a stand of 106, the highest by an England ninth-wicket pair in Australia since 1924.

By creeping to 286 all out, 85 behind on first innings, England could have left themselves an outside chance by dismissing Australia for a total below 240 in their second innings.

At 53-2 and 149-4, England clung on before being cut adrift by Head. At some point, England will be tasked with pulling off the highest successful chase on this ground in order to keep the Ashes alive.

Of further concern to the visitors is the fitness of all-rounder Stokes, who is yet to bowl in the 66 overs of Australia’s second innings.

Gil Gerard, the actor who became a childhood hero to many for his lead performances in the 1979 movie “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” and its subsequent TV incarnation, died early Tuesday, his wife announced on social media. He was 82.

“Early this morning Gil — my soulmate — lost his fight with a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” Janet Gerard wrote Tuesday evening on Facebook. “From the moment when we knew something was wrong to his death this morning was only days.”

She was by Gerard’s side when he died in hospice care, she added as she placed another post — a pre-written message from the actor to his family, friends and fans — on her husband’s Facebook page.

“If you are reading this, then Janet has posted it as I asked her to,” the actor wrote. “My life has been an amazing journey. The opportunities I’ve had, the people I’ve met and the love I have given and received have made my 82 years on the planet deeply satisfying.”

The post was followed by myriad comments in which fans spontaneously recalled Gerard’s work as Buck Rogers and shared the influence he had on their lives.

“Your time as Buck Rogers was way too short but it has stayed with me in my childhood memories for 45+ years,” one man wrote. “Your hero was brave, macho, but also kind, compassionate, and fair. I feel as if that was representative of the man you truly were. Thank you for being the kind of ‘make believe’ hero that we should all want to be in real life.”

Another fan replied, “[H]aving met him, I can say he was all that. On and off the screen.”

Wrote another, “Like many here, I grew up watching Gil as Buck Rogers. He was cool… and he was funny… and he was nice. I was happy to find him here after all these years… still cool… still funny… still nice. It was a highlight when he ‘liked’ one of my comments. We’ll keep an eye out for you… 500 years into the future!”

Gerard discussed the allure of “Buck Rogers” with The Times in 2010.

“With our show, the reason people liked it was the humor and the fact that it was colorful and upbeat and it had heroes in it,” he said, chatting at a comic convention in Anaheim. “It was family entertainment. I think it’s great to deal with more serious issues, but you can do it with humor — look at what ‘All in the Family’ dealt with. You can be serious without being relentlessly dark and heavy.”

He also had wishes for the future direction of sci-fi projects, which at the time he observed were “very dark, almost hopeless.” And, he said, “wet.”

“Have you noticed how much rain they get in the future now? Everything is rainy and muddy. I don’t understand, either, how come everybody is so dirty when there’s so much water around everywhere,” Gerard observed with what seemed to be a healthy sense of humor. “Look at ‘Waterworld’ — they live in a place with no land and everyone’s covered in dirt. I don’t get it. You think they’d fall overboard and get clean once in a while.”

Gilbert Cyril Gerard was born Jan. 23, 1943, in Little Rock, Ark., and trekked to New York City in 1969 to give acting a shot, studying at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

He drove a taxi to pay the bills and, according to his website, one day a fare told him to show up on the set of the movie “Love Story.” Ten weeks of work on the film followed and his career took off. At first Gerard appeared primarily in commercials, representing companies including Ford, Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble until he landed the role of former POW Dr. Alan Stewart on NBC’s “The Doctors.” He put on the white coat and stethoscope for more than 300 episodes of that daytime drama from 1973 to 1976.

Then an agent lured him to the West Coast, where auditions got him noticed by NBC. NBC’s interest led to his casting in the title role in Universal Pictures’ “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” starring alongside Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering and Pamela Hensley as Princess Ardala.

As William “Buck” Rogers, Gerard played a 20th century astronaut who had come out of suspended animation 500 years in the future, only to discover a planet in ruins. In 1979 dollars, the film earned more than $21 million worldwide, or about $100 million when adjusted for inflation.

His career outside of “Buck Rogers” included appearances on mainstream shows abundant in that era — “Baretta,” “Hawaii 5-0,” “CHiPs” and “Little House on the Prairie” among them — as well as more obscure TV movies with delightful titles: “Reptisaurus,” “Nuclear Hurricane” and “Bone Eater.” “Sidekicks” in the mid-1980s, a couple of years after the release of the Oscar-nominated 1984 movie “The Karate Kid,” saw him playing a cop who becomes the guardian of a pre-teen martial-arts expert. A stint on the short-lived 1990 series “E.A.R.T.H Force” earned him some light snark from The Times’ then-critic Howard Rosenberg.

But Gerard also appeared in successful mainstream films including “The Nice Guys” starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling and “The Big Easy” with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin.

Gerard was married and divorced four times before exchanging vows with Janet Gerard in the 2010s. Among his wives was model and actor Connie Sellecca, whom he was married to from 1979 until their divorce was finalized in 1987. They had one child, a son.

In addition to addictions to alcohol and drugs, the actor battled his weight starting in the 1980s, with the once-trim leading man eventually seeing his health suffer as he topped 300 pounds, according to a 1990 interview with People. He later chronicled his 2005 mini gastric-bypass surgery in the 2007 Discovery Health special “Action Hero Makeover.”

“Gil likely saved my life. I was badly in need of weightloss surgery. I was resistant…then i saw a documentary on Gils weight loss journey. It was the impetus I needed as Gil was a hero of mine growing up,” a fan wrote Tuesday on Gerard’s posthumous Facebook post. “I thanked him via email several years ago and he was gracious and kind. I will miss him.”

Gerard appeared to be quite grateful and gracious at the end of his life.

“It’s been a great ride, but inevitably one that comes to a close as mine has,” he wrote in that final prepared post. “Don’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t thrill you or bring you love. See you out somewhere in the cosmos.”

“No matter how many years I got to spend with him it would have never been enough,” Janet Gerard said in closing in her own message on Facebook. “Hold the ones you have tightly and love them fiercely.”

In addition to his wife, Gerard is survived by actor Gilbert Vincent “Gib” Gerard, 44, his son with Sellecca.