Hank Aaron hit .393 for the victorious Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series, gas was 24 cents a gallon and a car with tailfins cost $2,750. The Russians launched Sputnik and the Detroit Lions were about to win the lone National Football League championship that would have to last them for the next 60 years.
The year was 1957 and a genius inventor, manufacturer and millionaire sportsman named Fred Zollner, totally uninvited and coolly received, moved his pride and joy Zollner Pistons pro basketball team to Detroit from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and renamed them after their new adopted city.