Lawrence sent over an obit for Joe McKinney. He was a San Antonio based horror writer who won two Bram Stoker awards.
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He was 52.
Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category
Obit watch: July 23, 2021.
Friday, July 23rd, 2021Obit watch: July 21, 2021.
Wednesday, July 21st, 2021Rick Laird, noted musician.
The guitarist John McLaughlin called Mr. Laird in 1971 with an invitation to join a group he was forming with the goal of uniting the jazz-rock aesthetic — which Mr. McLaughlin had helped establish as a member of Miles Davis and Tony Williams’s earliest electric bands — with Indian classical music and European experimentalism.
The new ensemble, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which also featured the drummer Billy Cobham, the keyboardist Jan Hammer and the violinist Jerry Goodman, became one of the most popular instrumental bands of its time. It released a pair of studio albums now regarded as classics for Columbia Records, “The Inner Mounting Flame” (1971) and “Birds of Fire” (1973), and one live album, “Between Nothingness & Eternity” (1973).
After leaving Mahavishnu, he went on to tour with other artists and did one solo album. But he decided in 1982 that he needed a backup career path. So he became a professional photographer. (The NYT says that he did continue to write and perform music, but none of it has been “officially released”.)
My feelings about baseball are well known, but I did want to highlight the passing of Marjorie Adams. She spent a lot of time researching and lobbying for her great-grandfather’s (Daniel Adams) place as a founding father of baseball.
Making the case for her great-grandfather, who was known as Doc (he came by his nickname legitimately, having received a medical degree from Harvard in 1838), became Ms. Adams’s consuming passion. She advocated for him on a website, at conferences, at meetings of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and at vintage baseball festivals, where fans play and celebrate the sport, as if it were the 19th century. She nicknamed herself Cranky, for “cranks,” a period term for fans.
“Baseball is the national pastime,” she said in an interview in 2014 with SABR’s Smoky Joe Wood chapter. “It’s important that the historical record is correct.”
That record was a lie for a long time, according to John Thorn, baseball’s official historian. Abner Doubleday was for many years falsely cited as baseball’s inventor. And Alexander Cartwright, who played a role in the sport’s evolution, was credited on his plaque at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., with some of the innovations that, it turned out, were actually conceived by Adams.
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Doc Adams began playing for the pioneering New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club in 1845. While with the team, he created the shortstop position — as a relay man from the outfield, not a fielder of ground balls and pop flies. He made his most critical contributions to the game in 1857 at a rule-making convention of which he was chairman.
There he codified some of the fundamentals of the modern game, setting the distance between bases at 90 feet, the length of a game at nine innings and the number of men per side at nine.
Obit watch: July 17, 2021.
Saturday, July 17th, 2021Quick roundup, in some haste:
Biz Markie. 57. Damn.
Dennis Murphy, founder of the American Basketball Association. Also the World Hockey Association, the International Women’s Professional Softball League, and Roller Hockey International.
“He was fun and creative,” Mr. O’Brien said, “and he was always hustling somebody.”
History repeats itself.
Friday, July 16th, 2021The first time as farce. Also the second time:
A literal ‘Malice in the Palace’ style brawl between players and fans in the stands of the NJ Jackals game just broke out while @NjTank99 was judging a hotdog contest on the other side of the stadium.
Dollar Beer night in independent baseball hits different pic.twitter.com/yBT4qthRAL
— TJ (RUTGERS) (@TJHitchings) July 16, 2021
As a side note, 10 cents in 1974 dollars works out to 55 cents in 2021 dollars, so I think those fans were getting rooked.
Obit watch: July 9, 2021.
Friday, July 9th, 2021Maegle was an all-American as a senior in the 1954 season, when he ran for 905 yards and 11 touchdowns and finished sixth in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy, presented annually to college football’s most outstanding player. The trophy was won that year by the Wisconsin back Alan Ameche (who went on to fame with the Baltimore Colts for scoring the winning touchdown in overtime in the storied 1958 N.F.L. championship game against the New York Giants).
The San Francisco 49ers drafted Maegle in the first round of the January 1955 N.F.L. draft. He was a 49er for five seasons, playing mostly at right safety and occasionally as a running back, then concluded his pro career with the 1960 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 1961 Dallas Cowboys. He intercepted 28 passes, running one of them back for a touchdown.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979.
But he’s best remembered for something that happened in 1954 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas:
Taking a handoff at Rice’s 5-yard line in the second quarter of its matchup with Alabama, Maegle cut to the right and raced down the sideline. When he passed the Alabama bench while crossing midfield, on his way to a virtually certain touchdown, the Crimson Tide fullback Tommy Lewis interrupted his rest period and, sans helmet, sprang onto the field and leveled Maegle with a blindside block at Alabama’s 42-yard line.
The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run. Rice, ranked No. 6 in the nation by The Associated Press, went on to a 28-6 victory over 13th-ranked Alabama.
Chick Vennera, one of those knock-around actors. Credits include “Thank God It’s Friday”, “The Milagro Beanfield War”, and a lot of TV, including “The Golden Girls” and voice work on “Animaniacs”.
James Kallstrom, FBI guy.
In his 27 years with the F.B.I., Mr. Kallstrom helped convict the bosses of New York City’s five Mafia families with cleverly concealed wiretaps and spiked meatballs. And he investigated the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, expanded the bureau’s surveillance purview to include cellular phones, and recovered a half-million dollars in diamond jewelry that had been stolen by a baggage handler at Kennedy International Airport in 1995 and that had belonged to Sarah, the duchess of York.
In the investigation of the crash of Flight 800, he became the face of the F.B.I. in daily briefings as he and other authorities sought to understand what caused the explosion that sent the jetliner plummeting into the waves off Long Island on July 17, 1996 — one of the deadliest aviation incidents in American history.
He may also be known to some folks as the guy who introduced episodes of “The F.B.I. Files”.
Deep philosophical question.
Thursday, July 8th, 2021Fans were barred from the pandemic-postponed Tokyo Olympics that will open in two weeks, following a state of emergency issued on Thursday.
The ban was announced by the International Olympic Committee and Japanese organizers, reducing the games to a made-for-TV event.
Why are we still doing this?
(Yes, Lawrence, I know what your answer is: “M-O-N-E-Y!”)
Obit watch: June 22, 2021.
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021Joanne Linville, actress.
84 credits in IMDB. She did a few 70s cop shows (“The Streets of San Francisco”, “The Blue Knight”, “Barnaby Jones”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “Columbo” and “Mrs. Columbo”, etc.). She also did a “Twilight Zone” (“The Passerby”), “The Invaders”, and an episode of a minor 1960s SF series.
Sang Ho Baek. He played baseball for George Mason University as a freshman this past season. After the season, he decided to have Tommy John surgery. He had the surgery on June 8th, and passed away on June 12th from complications.
He was 20 years old.
Out of magic.
Wednesday, June 16th, 2021Scott Brooks out as head coach of the Washington Wizards, though this is being presented as an inability to negotiate a new contract instead of a firing.
He was 183-207 over five years. The Wizards actually made the playoffs this year:
They lost in the first round to Philadelphia.
I’m Gundy, dammit!
Wednesday, June 16th, 2021Stan Van Gundy out as coach of the New Orleans Pelicans after a single season.
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New Orleans’ inability to close games was another of its other defining features. It lost an NBA-most 14 games when it had a double-digit lead.
Perhaps the most frustrating late-game meltdown came in April against the New York Knicks. The Pelicans led by three points with 7.8 seconds remaining. Van Gundy instructed his team in a timeout to intentionally foul, but veteran guard Eric Bledsoe failed to. Knicks forward Reggie Bullock tied the game with a corner 3, and the Knicks won in overtime.
Obit watch: June 14, 2021.
Monday, June 14th, 2021Ned Beatty. THR. Variety.
Damn. 165 acting credits in IMDB. The man worked. And as far as I’m concerned, he classed up everything he was in.
I apologize, but this is the best Big Man scene I can find on the ‘Tube.
John Gabriel, long time actor on “Ryan’s Hope”. He did a decent amount of other stuff, including several appearances on “77 Sunset Strip”. Interestingly, he was also one of the (uncredited) newsreaders in “Network”.
Lawrence forwarded me an obit for Douglas S. Cramer, TV producer. I wasn’t really planning on noting this, but Lawrence pointed out that his credits do include “Mannix”…
Mudcat Grant, pitcher for the Twins and the Indians.
Grant led the American League in victories, winning percentage and shutouts in 1965 and pitched for 14 major league seasons.
He was remembered as a leading right-hander of his time, but also for his intriguing nickname, his second career singing and dancing at nightspots, and his book profiling outstanding Black pitchers.
Grant, a two-time All-Star, was a mainstay in the starting rotation for the Indians and the Twins for much of his career, then became a reliever, most notably with the Oakland A’s and Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Indians traded Grant to the Twins in June 1964. His best season came the following year, when he went 21-7, turned in a winning percentage of .750 and threw six shutouts. He pitched two complete-game victories against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, losing once, and hit a three-run homer as the Dodgers went on to win the series in seven games.
Cited by Sporting News as the A.L. pitcher of the year, Grant headed a staff that included Jim Kaat, Jim Perry and Camilo Pascual, backed by a lineup featuring Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Bob Allison and shortstop Zoilo Versalles, the league’s most valuable player.
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As a youth Grant performed in a choir. Following the 1965 World Series, he founded Mudcat and the Kittens, a song and dance group that played at nightclubs and hotels during the off-seasons and that also gained international bookings.
“First his musicians — up to seven of them — begin, playing dance music and jazzier stuff, and then the Kittens, some very sexy girls in spare feline outfits, take over the stage to sing and dance and purr,” Frank Deford wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1968. “Then Mudcat comes on. He sings — everything from show tunes to rock ‘n’ roll — and tells jokes and dances.”
“I made way more money in music than I did in baseball,” Grant once said.
Obit watch: June 9, 2021.
Wednesday, June 9th, 2021Erin O’Brien, actress. She appeared on several Western series, and in the pilot of “77 Sunset Strip” (among other credits).
NYT obit for Jim Fassel, which did not go up until late in the day yesterday.
Obit watch: June 8, 2021.
Tuesday, June 8th, 2021Jim Fassel, former coach of the New York Football Giants. ESPN.