Problem: Henry Hill, Jr. was born on June 11, 1943 in Manhattan, New York, to Henry Hill, Sr., an Irish immigrant and electrician, and Carmela Costa Hill, a Sicilian. The working-class family consisted of Henry and his eight siblings who grew up in Brownsville, a poorer area of the East New York section of Brooklyn. From an early age, Hill admired the local mobsters who socialized across the street from his home, including Paul Vario, a capo in the Lucchese crime family. In 1955, when Hill was 11 years old, he wandered into the cabstand across the street looking for a part-time after-school job.

Hill testified against his former associates to avoid a possible execution by his crew or going to prison for his crimes. His testimony led to 50 convictions.  Jimmy Burke was given 20 years in prison for the 1978-79 Boston College point shaving scandal, involving fixing Boston College basketball games. Burke was also later sentenced to life in prison for the murder of scam artist Richard Eaton. Burke died of lung cancer while serving his life sentence, on April 13, 1996, at the age of 64.  Paul Vario received four years for helping Henry Hill obtain a no-show job to get him paroled from prison. Vario was also later sentenced to ten years in prison for the extortion of air freight companies at JFK Airport. He died of respiratory failure on November 22, 1988, at age 73 while incarcerated in the FCI Federal Prison in Fort Worth.  Hill, his wife Karen, and their two children (Gregg and Gina) entered the U.S. Marshals' Witness Protection Program in 1980, changed their names, and moved to undisclosed locations in Omaha, Nebraska; Independence, Kentucky; Redmond, Washington; and Seattle, Washington. In Seattle, Hill hosted backyard cookouts for his neighbors, and on one occasion, while under the influence of a combination of liquor and drugs, he revealed his true identity to his guests. To the ire of the federal marshals, they were forced to relocate him one final time to Sarasota, Florida. There, a few months had passed, and Hill repeated the same breach of security, causing the government to finally expel him from the Federal Witness Protection Program.

When did he go into witness protection?

Answer with quotes: 1980,


Problem: Albert Benjamin Chandler was born in the farming community of Corydon, Kentucky in 1898. He was the eldest child of Joseph Sephus and Callie (Saunders) Chandler. Chandler's father allegedly rescued his mother from an orphanage and married her when she was 15, but no record of their marriage has ever been found. In 1899, Chandler's brother Robert was born.

Days prior to Chandler's assumption of the commissionership, Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager, Branch Rickey, had announced the signing of Jackie Robinson to a minor league contract with the Montreal Royals, making him the first black to play for a Major League Baseball affiliate. The following year, Rickey transferred Robinson's contract from Montreal to Brooklyn, effectively breaking baseball's color line. In a speech at Wilberforce University in February 1948, Rickey recounted a secret meeting that had allegedly been held by baseball officials at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago on August 28, 1946. At the meeting, Rickey claimed that Ford Frick disseminated a report that stated, "However well-intentioned, the use of Negro players would hazard all physical properties of baseball." According to Rickey, all 15 team owners except for him voted to endorse the report. Rickey claimed Frick meticulously collected all copies of the report at the end of the meeting to prevent them from being disseminated. Baseball historian Bill Marshall later wrote that the document and subsequent vote to which Rickey was referring was the advisory committee's initial draft of recommended reforms. Marshall further recorded that Rickey identified the meeting and the report shortly after his speech at Wilberforce and retracted his claim of 15-1 opposition to Robinson's entry into Major League Baseball.  Chandler, who was also allegedly at the meeting, made no public mention of it until a 1972 interview. In the interview, Chandler then corroborated the essentials of Rickey's story, but he placed the meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in January 1947. He also recounted that later in 1947, Rickey came to his home in Kentucky to discuss the matter further. According to Chandler, Rickey professed that he would not move forward with Robinson's transfer unless he had Chandler's full support, which Chandler later pledged. Aside from Chandler's anecdote, which he frequently repeated after the 1972 interview, there is no evidence that his meeting with Rickey ever took place. Nevertheless, future baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn and Washington Post sportswriter Bob Addie maintained that Robinson would not have played without Chandler's intervention.  That Chandler supported Robinson and the integration of baseball is evidenced by his actions during the 1947 season. First and foremost, as commissioner, Chandler had the power to void Robinson's contract, but he chose to approve it. Further, after extreme, race-based jeering at Robinson by the Philadelphia Phillies and their manager, Ben Chapman, Chandler threatened both the team and Chapman personally with disciplinary action for any future incidents of race-based taunting. Later that season, he decisively supported Ford Frick's decision to suspend indefinitely any members of the St. Louis Cardinals who followed through on a threat to strike in protest of integration.

what position did Jackie play?

Answer with quotes: