Your favorite stories of people becoming famous in one day

Wasn't Sarah Palin like a governor or something before being chosen as McCain's running mate?
Maybe my memory is bad.

 

Leon Czolgosz. Kidding!

 

Then I'll nominate...

 

And Brett Favre's worst.

 

Yeah, she was, but how many people outside Alaska would have been able to pick her out of a lineup?

 

v v v v v

 

I wouldn't have known her, but she seems a bit outside the parameters.

I wouldn't have known who Mike Piazza was before his rookie year, but he was known enough to get scouted and drafted and become a top prospect in the Dodger farm system.

 

Wasn’t Piazza drafted because his father was good friends with Lasorda?

 

I thought the only reason he got drafted was because his father was Lasorda's buddy (or something like that).

 

Beat me by THAT much.

 

According to the story I heard, Lasorda had the team draft Piazza as a favor to Piazza's dad, hoping to help him land a college scholarship. Then Piazza surprised them by wanting to go to the Dodgers organization.

Supposedly Piazza was a first baseman as a prospect and the Dodgers weren't interested. Lasorda asked the scouts if they'd be interested if he were a catcher. They told him they would be. "Then he's a catcher!", he said... and Piazza learned to play catcher.

 

Very, very few knew who Tina Fey was until she hosted Weekend Update.