Today in Sports History: September 9th

9/09/1960 - Broncos win inaugural AFL game

The Denver Broncos defeat the Boston Patriots, 13-10, in the first ever game played in the American Football League. The Broncos had lost all five of their exhibition games and wouldn’t experience a winning season until 1973 -- after they had already merged into the NFL. But on this Friday afternoon, it was Denver who was victorious. Patriots kicker Gino Cappelletti scored the league’s first points with a 35-yard field goal to begin the game. The Houston Oilers, who later became the Tennessee Titans, would capture the first two AFL championships.

While the Broncos would remain in Denver, the Patriots eventually moved south to Foxborough. When they did, the team was temporarily renamed the “Bay State Patriots,” much to the chagrin of many sports writers. “When I came here in February of 1971, they were the Bay State Patriots,” Upton Bell, then the GM of the Patriots, told the Boston Globe in 2009. “The first newspaper headline I saw read, ‘BS Patriots.’ I said, ‘Oh, no. The ‘BS Patriots’? Like the ‘bull [expletive] Patriots’?

With a hit off Jose Mesa of the Cleveland Indians, Robin Yount of the Milwaukee Brewers records the 3,000th hit of his career. Yount, who at 36 was the third youngest player (behind Ty Cobb and Hank Aaron) to reach 3,000, went 1-5 with his lone hit coming in the seventh inning. “I really, really wanted it to happen at home, here today,” said Yount, who enjoyed a prolonged ovation from the Milwaukee fans. “Maybe a little too much so. I got caught up in the whole ordeal the first three at-bats and got pretty disgusted with myself after the third one.”
Yount would retire one year later with 3,142 career hits -- one more than Tony Gwynn, who like Yount would also spend his entire career with one team.