The Walk-Off For Bangladesh
We Can Pod It Out looks back at George Harrison and Friends... what happened in sports on August 1, 1971?
We’re not going to re-live 1970 or 1973 at Madison Square Garden this spring, but the new We Can Pod It Out takes you back to MSG in 1971, when George Harrison and Friends played The Concert for Bangladesh on August 1.
That day in Detroit, the Angels and Tigers played a marathon after Aurelio Rodriguez scored the tying run on an Eddie Fisher wild pitch in the bottom of the eighth inning. The game remained 3-3 all the way until the sixth inning, when Jim Northrup - who had been at the plate when Rodriguez scored the tying run - hit a one-out home run off Lloyd Allen to lift the Tigers to a 4-3 win.
That was the latest in a game that the Tigers ever got a walk-off home run, surpassing the 15th-inning dinger that Al Kaline hit off of Eli Grba, in another Tigers-Angels game, on April 24, 1963.
In 1978, Northrup was passed for the latest Tigers walk-off homer by Lance Parrish, who went deep with two outs in the 16th against the Mariners, beating Shane Rawley with a two-run shot.
Parrish and Kirk Gibson are tied as the Tigers’ all-time leaders in walk-off home runs in extra innings, with four apiece.
Also on August 1, 1971, Niklas Andersson, the father of former Rangers first-round pick Lias Andersson, and brother of 15-year NHL veteran Mikael Andersson was born. Niklas Andersson played parts of six NHL seasons mostly with the Islanders, also appearing with the Nordiques, Sharks, Predators, and Flames. In 138 games on the Island, Andersson scored 29 goals with 50 assists, including a hat trick against the Stars in 1996.
Andersson returned to Sweden in 2001 and played an entire decade with Frolunda HC Goteborg, the first four of which he skated in front of a young goalie who racked up 21 shutouts in 140 appearances, a kid named Henrik Lundqvist, who wound up taking a starring role himself at the Garden.