The Day in Sports : COUNTDOWN TO 2000 / A day-by-day recap of some of the most important sports moments of the 20th Century: SEPT. 23, 1978 : Life of Bright Star Snuffed Out at 27

It was late at night when Angel manager Jim Fregosi returned from dinner to his team’s Chicago hotel.

Entering the lobby, he noticed two of his rookies, Ken Landreaux and Danny Goodwin, sitting, heads down.

“I was about to ask them where they were headed at that hour, and when they looked up at me I saw the tears on their faces,” Fregosi said at the time.

The two players told Fregosi the team’s best hitter, Lyman Bostock, had been murdered that evening in nearby Gary, Ind. Fregosi burst into tears.

With one pull of a shotgun’s trigger, the life of one of the game’s bright young stars was over. Bostock, 27, was in his fourth major league season, the first three with Minnesota. He had hit well over .300 the previous two seasons and was batting .296 as he wrapped up his first Angel season.

Police said it was a classic case of wrong place, wrong time.

Bostock had been riding in the back seat of his uncle’s car with a Gary woman, who later said her estranged husband had been following her that day. The woman’s ex-husband pulled up next to Bostock’s car at a stoplight, then the woman ordered the driver to run the light.

The vehicle ran two red lights, and two blocks later, had to stop at a light. The other car again pulled up alongside Bostock’s car. The driver came out of the car with a shotgun, fired one shot--apparently aimed at his ex-wife--and instead hit Bostock in the side of the head.

In delivering a eulogy at the funeral, pitcher Ken Brett said:

“There’s only one consolation: We’re all better persons for having him touch our lives.”

The shooter, Leonard Smith, was charged with first-degree murder, but the first trial ended in a hung jury. The second resulted in a verdict of “not responsible by reason of insanity.”

He served seven months in an Indiana mental hospital and was released.

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Also on this date: In 1952, 29-year-old Rocky Marciano, behind on points, knocked out 38-year-old Joe Walcott with one right hand in the 13th round to win boxing’s heavyweight championship in Philadelphia. . . . In 1957, welterweight champion Carmen Basilio decisioned Sugar Ray Robinson to win the middleweight title at Yankee Stadium.