Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

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Obit watch: October 23, 2023.

Monday, October 23rd, 2023

Bobby Charlton, English soccer player. He was 86.

Charlton was famed for his bullet shot and his relentless goal scoring, even though he did not play as a traditional striker. He was England’s top scorer, with 49 goals, for 45 years until Wayne Rooney beat the mark in September 2015. Charlton was also Manchester United’s top scorer for decades, with 249 goals in 758 appearances over 17 years, until Rooney surpassed that figure, too, in January 2017.

Worthy of note: he was also a survivor of the 1958 Manchester United plane crash.

Elaine Devry, actress. Other credits include “Project U.F.O.”, “The Boy Who Cried Werewolf”, “Cannon”, and three appearances on the 1960s “Dragnet”.

Vincent Asaro, mobster. Readers of this blog with an excellent memory may recall that he was charged in the 1978 Lufthansa robbery…and was acquitted in 2015. However, he was convicted in 2017 of having a guy’s car set on fire. He got eight years for that, but was released in 2020 for “health reasons”.

Posted in Law, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Firing or not?

Friday, October 20th, 2023

I say “not a firing”. Yet. But the winds are blowing in a direction that makes me think a whole bunch of people are going to get fired.

Connor Stalions, a “football analyst” with the University of Michigan, has been suspended indefinitely with pay.

There’s an ongoing investigation into Michigan by the NCAA. The university is accused of using “an ‘elaborate’ scouting system to steal signals from future opponents since at least 2021“.

Athletic director Warde Manuel announced Stalions’ suspension with pay on Friday, one day after the analyst was identified as a person of interest in the investigation into whether No. 2-ranked Michigan violated an NCAA rule by scouting future opponents in person at games, sources told ESPN. The NCAA prohibited such scouting in 1994.

I can understand the issue with “stealing signs”, though I really don’t know what that means in college football. But the NCAA has a rule against attending your opponents games in person? Seriously? I guess, maybe, they are afraid larger schools with more resources will have an advantage over smaller schools that can’t afford to travel as much? Or is this just more of “we’re the NCAA. Nothing we do has to make sense”?

Harbaugh served a three-game suspension to start this season related to NCAA charges of failure to cooperate and head-coach responsibility over alleged recruiting violations during the COVID-19 dead period. A violation by a member of his coaching staff could trigger another charge of head-coach responsibility, potentially a Level I violation.
Sources said the NCAA enforcement staff’s level of interest in Stalions was so significant that it sought access to his computer as part of its investigation.

So they were already looking at Harbaugh for recruiting violations, and he basically pled guilty to that. This would be the second rules violation in less than a year. What would be the implications in terms of NCAA penalties if this is substantiated?

Could we see…dare I say it…the “death penalty“?

I doubt it myself. But it’d be fun to see. Realistically, if this is substantiated, I suspect major loss of scholarships, a ban on post-season play, and possibly for Harbaugh to get a “show-cause penalty“.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 2 Comments »

Your loser update: weeks 6 and 7, 2023.

Sunday, October 15th, 2023

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Carolina

Next week, Carolina and Houston (along with a few other teams) have a bye week.

I call out Carolina and Houston specifically because they play each other in week 8 (on October 29th): it will be a home game for Carolina. As I write this (and with the understanding that this is two weeks out) Houston is favored.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 12, 2023.

Thursday, October 12th, 2023

Walt Garrison, legendary Dallas Cowboy, rodeo competetor, and Skoal endorser.

His best season was 1971, where he scored 10 touchdowns and had 1,174 total yards, and it was capped off by a 24-3 Super Bowl victory over Miami. He was named to the Pro Bowl that season.
A knee injury Garrison suffered while steer wrestling in 1975 ultimately ended his NFL career. He retired from Dallas as the third-leading rusher and fourth-leading receiver in team history.

Phyllis Coates, actress. Other credits include three appearances on “Perry Mason”, “Midnight Caller”, “The Untouchables”, and “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”.

Jeff Burr, director. IMDB. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Michael Chiarello, celebrity chef.

Rudolph Isley, of the Isley Brothers.

Rudolph left the Isley Brothers in 1989 to pursue becoming a Christian minister. However, he has often reunited with his brothers over the years, including when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, an honor that was presented to them by Little Richard.

Posted in Food, Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Thursday, October 12th, 2023

Running a little behind here, but: the Red Sox fired Dave Bush (pitching coach) and Carlos Febles (third-base coach) on Monday.

This is an…interesting…story. John Roth, “chief operating officer” of both the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres, has been fired. Also fired: Kathryn D’Angelo, “general counsel and senior vice president of business administration” for the Bills.

The alleged reason? Roth and D’Angelo were allegedly involved in a “romantic relationship”. Which, once again, consenting adults, etc.

But: D’Angelo apparently was one of Roth’s direct reports. It seems like dating one of your subordinates is generally frowned upon in this establishment. As a matter of fact, I think it’s generally frowned upon in most ethical workplaces.

Things between Roth and D’Angelo “got too brazen” in London, where the Bills suffered a 25-20 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday, and it “became an issue that had to be addressed.”

(I apologize for not linking to “The Athletic”. While I apparently have “limited” access to the site as a NYT subscriber, it wants me to “customize my feed” before I do anything. To heck with that.)

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Your loser update: week 5, 2023.

Sunday, October 8th, 2023

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Carolina

Not much more to say, really.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 6, 2023.

Friday, October 6th, 2023

Dick Butkus, one of the greats. ESPN.

At 6 feet 3 inches and 245 pounds, good size for his era, Butkus stuffed running plays up the middle. He was also speedy and mobile enough to drop back and foil opponents’ pass plays. He was cited as a first-team All-Pro five times and was chosen for the Pro Bowl game eight times. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility.
Sacks did not become an official statistic until 1982, so the number of times Butkus smothered opposing quarterbacks remains unrecorded. But he was considered to have intercepted 22 passes and recovered 27 fumbles while playing for the Bears from 1965 to 1973.

…

Butkus was chosen by the Bears in the first round, third overall, in the 1965 N.F.L. draft and by the Denver Broncos of the American Football League in its second round. He went with his hometown team, a storied N.F.L. franchise owned and coached by the future Hall of Famer George Halas. In his rookie season, he intercepted five passes and recovered seven fumbles.
But the Bears fell on hard times during Butkus’s years. They won 49 games, lost 74, tied four and never reached the playoffs. In his last few seasons, Butkus played on with a badly injured right knee despite having undergone surgery. In May 1974, having retired, he sued the Bears for $1.6 million, contending that the team had not provided him with the medical and hospital care it had promised in a five-year contract he signed in July 1973. The case was settled out of court.

He also did some acting.

IMDB.

Joe Christopher, one of the original 1962 Mets.

He was a part-time player in 1962 — the perfectly awful “Amazin’ Mets,” as their manager, Casey Stengel, called them, had a 40-120-1 record that season — when he got batting tips from a Mets coach, the renowned Rogers Hornsby, who hit over .400 three times in the 1920s.
“He was sitting in hotel lobbies,” Christopher recalled in an unpublished interview in 2010 with George Vecsey, a sports columnist for The New York Times. Christopher recalled Hornsby telling him that the secret of hitting was “don’t let the pitcher jam home plate” and “it’s not about contact, it’s impact.”

…

In June, when he was hitting .307, he talked about getting a chance to play full time.
“I always knew I could hit, but nobody up here believed me,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I always hit well in the minors, but when I got to the majors nobody had any confidence in me.” He added, “They just wouldn’t give me a chance to play regularly. There was always that worry that if I went 0 for 4 I’d be on the bench the next day.”
He finished the season at .300, 16th best in the National League and only the third time a Met had reached that level. (The Mets’ Ron Hunt hit .303 that season.) He also led the Mets with 76 runs batted in and was second in home runs with 16.

…

He had a career batting average of .260, with 29 home runs and 173 R.B.I.

Keith Jefferson, actor. IMDB.

Russell Sherman, pianist.

Mr. Sherman, who gave his last recital at 88, made his name performing virtuoso works such as Franz Liszt’s daunting “Transcendental Études.” Referring to the composer’s reputation as a showman, Mr. Sherman told The New York Times in 1989 that he was engaged in a “lifelong battle to reconstitute Liszt as a serious composer.”

…

Mr. Sherman was in many ways an anti-virtuoso; he devoted much of his time to other interests, like poetry, philosophy and photography. In the late 1950s, instead of becoming a touring concert pianist, he left New York to teach piano at Pomona College in California and the University of Arizona in Tucson.
In 1967, he began a long tenure at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, hired by its president at the time, the composer Gunther Schuller. Mr. Schuller, who founded GM Recordings in 1981, produced a Beethoven album by Mr. Sherman, who became the first American pianist to record the complete Beethoven sonatas and piano concertos.
On a GM Recording album, “Russell Sherman: Premieres and Commissions,” Mr. Sherman performed works composed for him in the 1990s by Mr. Schuller, Robert Helps, George Perle and Ralph Shapey. His recordings also include works by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Chopin Mazurkas, the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas and Bach’s English Suites.

…

Some two decades later, Allan Kozinn wrote in The Times that Mr. Sherman’s “interpretive style, it should be said, is an acquired taste,” but that his “performances are usually illuminating alternatives to the standard view.”
Mr. Sherman resented these accusations of eccentricity. “I think of myself as a compassionate conservative” who responded “radically to the score and nothing but the score,” he told The Times in 2000. He suggested that listeners who disliked his interpretations lacked imagination.

…

Mr. Sherman married Wha Kyung Byun, a Korean-born former student of his, in 1974; she began teaching at the New England conservatory in 1979. They sometimes celebrated their anniversaries by performing together.

Posted in Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 3, 2023.

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023

Jim Caple, sportswriter.

I sort of remember the name: I was probably reading him back in the good old “Page 2” days. My feelings about lyrical happy horsepucky baseball writers are well known, but it seems like he wasn’t one of those guys:

He was also one of the most popular columnists for ESPN.com’s Page 2, where he took a lighter look at sports and rarely missed a chance to poke fun at the New York Yankees. He turned that into a book, “The Devil Wears Pinstripes.” He also co-wrote the book “Best Boston Sports Arguments” with fellow sportswriter Steve Buckley and penned a novel, “The Navigator,” which was based in part on his father, who was a B-24 navigator in World War II.

…

Former colleague and fellow baseball writer Jerry Crasnick recalled Caple as “one of the most brilliant, creative and thoughtful people I’ve ever met” in a poignant social media post. He also recalled Caple’s offbeat side, including stories of getting a pedicure with figure skater Johnny Weir and participating in the International Wife Carrying championships with Vicki.

Posted in Media, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Blood in the streets!

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

Phil Nevin out as manager of the Los Angeles Angels.

ESPN calls this a firing, while other sources say they “declined the option on his contract”. That to me is functionally indistinguishable from a firing, but maybe it makes some sort of difference to someone.

The Angels finished 73-89 and fourth in the AL West. Nevin’s first managerial position concluded with a 119-149 career record.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 2, 2023.

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

Lucy Morgan, Florida journalist. She wasn’t someone I had heard of before, but the obit (which I encourage you to read) makes her sound fascinating.

She specialized in uncovering political corruption. In 1973, she went to jail because she refused to reveal her source for grand jury proceedings.

In 1976, the Florida Supreme Court overturned previous rulings against Ms. Morgan and expanded press privileges in Florida, setting a precedent that local reporters still cite.

She shared a Pulitzer (with Jack Reed) for exposing the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.

Ms. Morgan’s reporting showed, among other things, that one in eight officers in Pasco County had criminal arrest records, and that more than half had lied about their pasts to get certified. One officer had an outstanding grand theft arrest warrant for stealing a police dog in another Florida county. Another had been the wheel man in several armed robberies.

She also exposed the sheriff of Gulf County, who got sent to prison for extorting oral sex from female inmates.

After the sheriff was found guilty of seven counts of violating the civil rights of female prisoners, Ms. Morgan returned to her office and found a dozen roses with a note: “From the women you believed.”

…

When she was about 60, she shattered her right ankle in the Florida House press gallery. But she continued limping around the Capitol building, bringing a fog of Trésor Eau de Parfum with her wherever she went. She greeted the legislators, lobbyists and maintenance people she knew not by asking, “How are you?” but instead calling out, “You doin’ somethin’ bad?”

…

Her investigations exposed widespread misreporting of gifts to state politicians, indicating that many of them should be charged with criminal misdemeanors. They also exposed what Ms. Morgan herself nicknamed the “Taj Mahal” scandal, which involved slipping an appropriation of more than $30 million for a luxurious courthouse into unrelated transportation legislation at the last minute.

Russ Francis, former tight end for the Patriots and 49ers, was killed in a plane crash on Sunday. Also killed was Richard McSpadden, a vice-president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).

It appears they were taking off from Lake Placid Airport and there was some sort of problem. Reports say they tried to make it back to the airport but couldn’t.

Mr. Francis, in additional to a successful NFL career (first round NFL draft pick, three time Pro Bowl player) was also an avid pilot. He’d recently bought an interest in Lake Placid Airways, a local charter and scenic flight service.

Mr. McSpadden, in addition to being an AOPA VP, was a former commander and flight leader for the Thunderbirds.

Tim Wakefield, former Boston Red Sox pitcher (and a past winner of the Roberto Clemente Award). Cancer got him at 57.

Chris Snow, of the Calgary Flames. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2019, and passed away after a “catastrophic brain injury”.

Posted in Media, NFL, Obits, Planes, Sports | 1 Comment »

Your loser update: special MLB 2023 edition.

Monday, October 2nd, 2023

How did our high hopes for the MLB season turn out?

Well, the Oakland Athletics finished at the bottom, 50-112, .309 winning percentage. That’s bad, but it isn’t quite historically bad: Wikipedia’s list cuts off at .300.

Kansas City finished slightly better: 56-106, .346.

Colorado: 59-103, .364.

And the White Sox: 61-101, .377 winning percentage.

Posted in Loser, Sports | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

Sunday, October 1st, 2023

Another one down, another one down, another one rides the bus bites the dust…

Buck Showalter out as manager of the Mets.

I was initially a little confused by this: was it a firing, or a retirement, but later articles make it clear it was a “forced resignation”.

ESPN:

Showalter took over in December 2021 and led the Mets to a 101-61 record last season, when he was voted NL Manager of the Year. New York lost to San Diego in their wild-card series, then added three-time Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander to its pitching staff during the offseason. The Mets boosted their payroll to a record $355 million on Opening Day but wound up dealing Verlander, Max Scherzer and several other veterans ahead of the Aug. 1 trade deadline.

Also ESPN:

New York is 74-87 and 29½ games behind National League East champion Atlanta.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

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