Word of the day: game-changer

The WGBH station manager is nearly hyperventilating. From the Julia episode “Petit Fours” (HBO):

“Selling The French Chef to other stations — the possibilities — I mean, this could be a game-changer for us.”

Did people say game-changer in 1963?

Merriam-Webster first has the word (no citation) in 1993. But the Oxford English Dictionary has a first citation from January 13, 1962, from the Brainerd Daily Dispatch, a Minnesota newspaper:

They reckoned without game-changer Bob Sheflo and his cohorts.

That same article is also is the source for the dictionary’s first citation for game-changing:

Davidson drew his fourth foul and that brought in Sheflo for his game-changing antics.

One would like to know more about those antics.

Robert Sheflo Jr. (1943–2016) played basketball for Brainerd Junior College. From a 1962 Dispatch article:

Bob Sheflo came off the bench to score 26 for Brainerd, but the Ely big men dominated the boards.

The Dispatch is still going, now online.

I wonder: did the Julia writers check the OED for game-changer? Or did they luck out?

*

December 31: As Pete points out in a comment, the show’s writers may not have lucked out, not really. The 1962 citations are sports-specific. It’s not clear when the extended meanings of game-changer (OED : “an event, idea, or procedure that produces a significant shift in the current way of thinking about or doing something”) and game-changing (“that produces,” &c.) came into play. I’ve had no luck trying to figure it out via English-Corpora.org and Google Books. But it’s still the case that the Brainerd Daily Dispatch has the first citations for the two words.

[About Julia: Our household is five episodes in. One half of the household likes this series much more than the other does. The other half is thinking about French onion soup. Both halves have great esteem for the real Julia Child.]