Eddie Basinski has passed away at the age of 99. He was the second oldest former major league baseball player.
Interestingly, Mr. Basinski was also a trained classical violin player.
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Saousoalii Siavii Jr., former defensive tackle with the Kansas City Chiefs. This is an odd one: he died in custody at Leavenworth.
Well. Well well well. Well.
David Culley out as head coach of the Houston Texans after a single season. Battle Red Blog.
The Texans were 4-13 and, quite frankly, stank. But:
Also out: offensive coordinator Tim Kelly.
Battle Red also reports that, while Culley had a five-year contract, only the first two years were guaranteed. So he’ll get paid a mere $4 million instead of $12 million to $14 million if all five years had been guaranteed…
Sorry for the lack of a clever headline, but the NY Post cut me off at the pass on this one.
Joe Judge out as coach of the New York Football Giants. Two seasons, 10-23 overall.
While this would be an appropriate title for an after-action report on the training classes I went to over the weekend, this is not that report. I hope to be able to write that sometime this week.
This is your “Monday morning after the end of the NFL season” firings watch. So far, there’s a lot of “sources say”. I’m going to leave these unlinked for right now, and update when there’s better confirmation.
“Sources say” Mike Zimmer is out as head coach, and Rick Spielman is out as general manager of the Vikings.
Edited to add: Story from the Star Tribune, though it is still “according to a source familiar with the team’s decision-making”. I can’t find any evidence that there’s been a press release, press conference, or other official announcement.
Zimmer had led the team to the postseason in three of his first six years, earning a second contract extension from the Wilfs before the 2020 season. Shortly thereafter, the Vikings gave Spielman a three-year deal to match the length of Zimmer’s, rewarding the general manager who’d had full control of the roster since 2012 and hired Zimmer to replace Leslie Frazier in 2014.
Zimmer finished his eight years in Minnesota with a 72-56-1 mark, ranking third in team history in wins, games coached (129) and winning percentage (.559). He was the seventh-longest tenured head coach in the NFL; all six who’ve been in their jobs longer than Zimmer have won Super Bowls.
Edited to add: this is now official, with a statement from the team ownership.
“Sources say” Matt Nagy is out as head coach of da Bears.
Edited to add: Chicago Tribune, “according to league sources”, Sun Times.
More as events break.
Edited to add: going back a day, Denver Post coverage (by way of archive.is) of the Vic Fangio/Broncos firing.
Edited to add: Brian Flores out as head coach of the Dolphins. This appears to be an official team announcement, not “sources said”.
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Edited to add: Dave Gettleman out as general manager of hapless the New York Football Giants. It seems like the official spin on this is that he “retired”.
Very very quick, as I’m using downtime: Vic Fangio out as coach of the Denver Broncos.
Richard Leakey, paleoanthropologist.
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Dan Reeves, former Dallas Cowboys running back and later NFL coach.
Reeves played and coached with the Dallas Cowboys during a stellar period when they won two Super Bowls, one when he was a player-coach and one when he was an offensive coordinator, working for Coach Tom Landry. After several seasons as an assistant to Landry, he was hired as the Broncos’ head coach in 1981, replacing Red Miller.
Over 12 seasons in Denver, his teams had a record of 110-73-1 and were among the best in the American Football Conference. Led by quarterback John Elway, they lost the Super Bowl in 1987, 1988 and 1990 by wide margins to the New York Giants, the Washington Redskins and the San Francisco 49ers.
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Jeanine Ann Roose. She was the young “Violet” in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and…that’s it.
She went on to attend UCLA, becoming a psychologist and later a Jungian analyst, according to TMZ, which quoted her as once having made a comparison between her life and the movie’s story line.
“It’s a Wonderful Life was the only movie that I was in and it been an amazing lifetime experience to have been in such a collectively meaningful picture. … It became clear that my desire was specifically to help others who were struggling with finding meaning in their life — not unlike Clarence in the movie who helps George see the meaning of his life,” she said.
Max Julien. He was “Goldie” in “The Mack” (opposite Richard Pryor). Other credits include “Mod Squad”, “The Bold Ones: The Protectors”, and “The Name of the Game”.
Comment I made to Lawrence last night: “Sure,” the NYT reporter said, “I’ll cover the obituary desk between Christmas and New Year’s. Nothing ever happens between Christmas and New Year’s.”
I’m being kind of short with these first two because everyone is on them like a fat man on an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.
John Madden. ESPN. LAT.
“Rabelaisian emissary”. Gotta give that guy credit.
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I wouldn’t say I was ever a big Madden fan. I had nothing against him, it was more a matter of me not being a big football fan in general. But that seems like a good general leadership principle: be yourself, and treat your people like intelligent human beings.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Madden was offered the “Ernie Pantusso” role on “Cheers”, but turned it down.
Harry M. Reid. Las Vegas Review Journal.
Jeff Dickerson, ESPN reporter covering the Chicago Bears. He was only 44.
I wanted to note this, even though he wasn’t as famous as the other guys. The ESPN obit makes Mr. Dickerson sound like a really good guy who was taken too soon:
Even after being placed in hospice last week, he told colleagues he was there merely to humor his doctors. No one around him heard a word of self-pity, and he disarmed those who expressed concern by asking them about their own lives.
“JD always wants to know how you’re doing,” Waddle said. “I’d ask him how he’s doing and his first response is, ‘How are you doing? How are [Waddle’s daughters]?’ The dignity with which he has carried himself through some of the most difficult times any human being would be asked to go through, what his wife went through and the dignity and strength and grace that he showed at her side throughout all of this … I don’t know anybody I’ve met in my 54 years in life who has handled adversity over the last decade with more grace and strength and dignity than Jeff Dickerson. I know a lot of people go through [stuff]. I do. I’m sympathetic to all of it. But what Jeff Dickerson has had to go through the last decade is cruel.
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“He always carried a care for the subject that he was going to write about,” said Gould, who co-hosted an ESPN 1000 radio show with Dickerson during a portion of his Bears career. “As a player you can appreciate that the wisdom he put on paper was as neutral and correct as it ever was going to be. It was always going to be your words. It was always going to be what the story was. It was never going to be someone filling in the blanks …
“Players definitely noticed. He always wrote a true story. He always wrote what was happening at the moment. He didn’t try to back the bus up over somebody. He tried to get it exactly how the story was. … I think you saw a lot of guys give him a lot of credit because they knew he would write it right.”
Urban Meyer out as Jacksonville Jaguars coach after 13 regular season games.
His record was 2-11.
The final straw seems to have been yesterday’s report that Meyer kicked Josh Lambo, a former kicker with the Jaguars. I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say physically assaulting your employees is not a good idea.
Meyer couldn’t deliver as speculation persisted that he treated players like kids instead of grown men. He appeared to be too caught up in having control and power instead of having the right answers to win football games.
This past weekend NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reported, citing sources, that Meyer had multiple run-ins with players and coaches that had developed into an ongoing tension at the Jaguars facility for months.
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And Shad Khan is looking for tax money to upgrade the stadium and improve “the fan experience”.
To quote a comment at Field of Schemes:
You know what would “fundamentally change the fan experience” for Jags fans?
Not losing 10+ games each and every year.
Al Unser Sr., one of the greatest racing drivers ever.
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Al Unser first competed in the Indianapolis 500 in 1965, running the race 27 times, the third-most in history. He led for 644 laps over his career, which remains a record.
“His quiet and humble approach outside of the car, combined with his fierce competitive spirit and fearless talent behind the wheel, made Al a fan favorite,” J. Douglas Boles, president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, said in a statement.
Unser’s four wins at the Indianapolis 500 is a record shared by A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Helio Castroneves, who won this year’s race.
Demaryius Thomas, former wide receiver with the Denver Broncos. He retired earlier this year, though he did not play in 2020.
Noted here because he was only 33. I don’t want to speculate, but other reports I’ve seen quote his family as stating he was having medical issues.
So I had checked on the Detroit game earlier in the day while running some errands, saw that the Vikings were down (I think 20-6 at the time), sighed, and went on with my life…
…came home a bit after 3 PM, checked again to see if Detroit had actually won, saw that there were about eight seconds left and Minnesota was up 27-22, clicked over to the play-by-play…
…and watched in horror as Detroit scored a desperate last second touchdown to make it 29-27.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go without a win this year:
None.
Thus ends this feature for the NFL season this year. If we’re still here, we plan to return in 2022.
Alvin Lucier, “experimental composer”.
In “I Am Sitting in a Room,” Mr. Lucier began by quietly reading a short statement describing what he is doing. “I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now,” the text begins. “I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.”
The room’s acoustics, as well as audio distortions that occur when a tape is rerecorded over and over, yields a gradually changing sound in which, after 10 minutes, the spoken text is buried in reverberation and overtones, and unintelligible. During the final section, high-pitched overtones coalesce into eerie, slow-moving melodies.
I used to have a CD of “I Am Sitting in a Room”, back when I was in my “difficult listening” phase. It was not something I spent a lot of time listening to, though I was happy to have it.
(See also.)
Eddie Mekka. Most famous as Carmine Ragusa on “Laverne & Shirley”. Other credits include guest shots on “The Love Boat”, “Fantasy Island”, and one of the “Rockford Files” TV movies.
He was a Hall of Fame player, first with the Kansas City Chiefs (in both the AFL and NFL) then with the Houston Oilers (1974-1980) and finally with Detroit.
With all due respect to my friends and readers who are Lions fans, as I always say, “It’s just not Thanksgiving until Detroit loses.”
(Just kidding. I’m fond of all of you.)
(According to the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, Detroit’s Thanksgiving day record is 37-42-2, though that does not include yesterday’s game. That’s better than I would have thunk. For the record, Dallas is 31-21-1, again not including yesterday’s game.)
Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance to go without a win this year:
Detroit
Next week: Minnesota in Detroit on Sunday, December 5th. The Vikings are currently 5-5.
(Dallas and New Orleans, both of whom played yesterday, play on Thursday, December 2nd next week. Nothing wrong with that, I just find the scheduling interesting.)
Well, okay, just one Giant.
Jason Garrett, who you may remember for his time coaching the Dallas Cowboys, out as offensive coordinator of the New York Football Giants.
Sorry. I’m running a little behind, as I was tied up much of yesterday with various things, including going to see “Dune”.
(Random thought: it is refreshing to know that, thousands of years in the future, even on desert planets, there will be coffee.)
Anyway, NFL teams that still have a chance of going without a win this season:
Detroit.
The Lions play the semi-hapless (3-7) Bears on Thanksgiving Day. I’m thinking this is a toss-up, though ESPN seems to favor the Bears.
In firings news: Dan Mullen out at Florida. 34-15 in four seasons and they were in the national championship game last year, but (as Easterbrook often says) “what have you done for me lately?” (Answer: gone 5-6 this year and 2-6 in conference.)
Chip Lindsey out at Troy. 15-19 in three seasons, and 5-6 this one. Sensing a trend?