Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category

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Obit watch: August 25, 2021.

Wednesday, August 25th, 2021

Charlie Watts. THR. THR 2. BBC.

I am slightly tempted to make “never call me your drummer again” a “leadership secret of a non-fictional character” – indeed, someone on Hacker News cited this as an example of managing a high-performing team – but I can’t condone punching a cow-orker. Even if they do suffer from “lead singer’s disease”.

Buckie Leach, coach of the US women’s foil team. Lee Kiefer, one of his team members, became the first US woman to win an individual gold at the most recent games.

Mr. Leach was killed in a motorcycle accident.

Leach was riding alone on a trip from Colorado Springs to New York City when his motorcycle struck a deer on a rural road in Pike Township, about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia, according to the Pennsylvania State Police. The police did not describe the nature of his injuries but said he was wearing a helmet at the time, about 6:35 p.m.

Lloyd Dobyns Jr., noted NBC news correspondent. He’s another one of those NBC news guys I remember from when I was young.

I intended to note this a few days ago, but it got past me: Igor Oleksandrovych Vovkovinskiy passed away at 38. Mr. Vovkovinskiy was the tallest man in the United States: 7 feet, 8 inches.

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

Obit watch: August 11, 2021.

Wednesday, August 11th, 2021

Alex Cord. He may have been best known as “Archangel” in “Airwolf”, but he had a significant body of work going back to the 1960s. No “Mannix”, but a lot of other cop shows, and multiple appearances on “Fantasy Island”, among other credits.

Patricia Hitchcock. Yes, Alfred’s daughter.

Born on July 7, 1928 in the UK to famed film director Alfred Hitchcock and his infamously loyal wife, Alma Reville, the legendary duo’s offspring would go on to appear in a string of her pop’s projects including “Stage Fright” (1950), “Strangers on a Train” (1951) and the aforementioned “Psycho” (1960). She also guest-starred in 10 episodes of the classic TV anthology series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” from 1955 to 1960.

She had a few other credits, but retired in the 1970s.

Tony Esposito, Hall of Fame goalie for the Chicago Blackhawks.

Walter Yetnikoff, legendary head of CBS Records.

In one of his first acts as president, Mr. Yetnikoff somewhat reluctantly let Ron Alexenburg, the head of CBS’s Epic label, sign the Jacksons. Epic had wrested the group from Motown Records (which retained the rights to the group’s original name, the Jackson 5), and though Mr. Yetnikoff wasn’t overly impressed with the Jacksons’ initial albums for Epic, he cultivated a relationship with the group’s key member, Michael, supporting the young singer’s interest in expanding into solo work.
In 1982, that encouragement resulted in “Thriller,” still one of the top-selling albums in history.

…

Other megahits released during Mr. Yetnikoff’s tenure included Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” in 1977, the ambitious Pink Floyd double album “The Wall” in 1979, Mr. Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” in 1984, Mr. Jackson’s “Bad” in 1987 and a series of hit albums by Mr. Joel, including “The Stranger” (1977) and “Glass Houses” (1980).

Unfortunately, he was one of those people who didn’t just have issues: he had a lifetime subscription and a complete run of bound volumes.

…his ascension was accompanied by numerous affairs, which he detailed, along with his substance abuse, in his autobiography. Other record executives from the period wrote their stories, too, but Mr. Yetnikoff’s was in a class by itself. It was, Forbes said, “a portrait of such out-of-control megalomania that any music executive today, no matter how egotistical or ruthless, has to look better by comparison.”

…

In 1990, Mr. Yetnikoff, having offended too many people with his outrageous behavior, was dismissed by Sony, the company that at his urging had bought CBS Records only three years earlier. He had gone into rehab in 1989 and kicked the booze and drugs that had been his more or less daily diet throughout his reign, but getting clean didn’t make him any more tolerable.

…

Tommy Mottola, once a friend and later, as Mr. Yetnikoff’s successor at CBS Records, viewed as an enemy, put it this way in his own autobiography, “Hitmaker: The Man and His Music” (2013): “The treatment center had removed the alcohol and drugs from Walter’s life — but not the underlying problems that Walter had been using them to anesthetize.”

Brian Mulheren. He was the man in the NYPD in the 1970s and 1980s. Specifically, and to quote the NYT, he was a “veteran detective who as an audacious, deft and indefatigable one-man emergency management liaison between City Hall and the New York Police and Fire Departments became known as ‘Mr. Disaster’ and the ‘Night Mayor’…”

Mr. Mulheren played an outsize role for a first-grade detective. He was armed with a gold shield, but his uniform, such as it was — it typically consisted of a rumpled beige trench coat and a crumpled Irish tweed hat — was devoid of the stars and bars that define status on the police force.
Yet by sheer force of personality and the connections he had cultivated, he was deferred to by city commissioners and by police supervisors who outranked him when he arrived, often first, at the scene of a crisis in his black Lincoln Town Car, which was crowned with a forest of antennas that linked him to every emergency radio frequency in the city.
In the 1970s and ’80s, he served as City Hall’s wake-up call when an officer was shot or a firefighter was felled. Before the city established a full-fledged emergency management department, he seamlessly and almost single-handedly coordinated interagency strategies.
“He was one of those rare people who kept the N.Y.P.D. and the Fire Department together,” John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said in an interview. “He basically created the organized response to chaos that we replicated and have used ever since.”

…

Mr. Mulheren was credited by Officer Steven McDonald’s family with saving his life when he was shot in Central Park by a teenage bicycle thief in 1986 and rushed in a patrol car to Metropolitan Hospital, where doctors said he was unlikely to survive.
In 2016, Mr. McDonald told Columbia, the Knights of Columbus magazine, that he vividly remembered Mr. Mulheren’s dauntless intervention.
“You might think he’s not going to make it, but we’re going to Bellevue,” Mr. Mulheren announced on his own initiative, according to “New York’s Finest,” a forthcoming book by Michael Daly.
“He had no rank or high station but stepped forward and said, ‘No, he’s not going to die; he just needs a second chance,’” Mr. McDonald recalled. “I believe that was the Holy Spirit speaking through Brian to everyone there. Just like that like they loaded me up on a special ambulance and flew down to Bellevue Hospital, where they saved my life by the grace of God.”

…

In another emergency, when a firefighter was overcome and no ambulance was immediately available, Mr. Mulheren was said to have commandeered a city bus, told the passengers to debark and ordered the driver to take the injured man to the hospital.
Serving mostly under Mayors John V. Lindsay, Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins, Mr. Mulheren, a police buff since childhood, insinuated himself into the department’s decisions to buy smaller patrol cars to economize on gas; change their color from green, black and white in the early 1970s to “grabber blue” with white accents to make them more visible and less intimidating; modernize lights and sirens; air-condition the cars; and improve radio communications. He also encouraged the Fire Department to requisition a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber to treat burn victims.

He was 73 years old, and passed away due to COPD. His family attributes his condition to inhalation of debris at the WTC site after the 2001 attacks.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, Law, Movies, Music, NYPD, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Bagatelle (#44)

Wednesday, August 11th, 2021

I did not give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about the Olympics. As a matter of fact, I believe they should have been cancelled this year, they should remain cancelled for all time, and cities should use the money to provide free guitar picks for the poor.

So I missed this story last week, but you know it is the kind of thing I can’t pass up, and I don’t think it got a lot of attention.

The coach of the German modern pentathlon team was disqualified on Saturday.

As it happens, “modern pentathlon” is one of the few Olympic sports I care much about: how can you not like a combination of swimming, fencing, running, horses, and shooting? (Plus: Patton. Minus: they are apparently using laser guns these days, instead of real pistols.)

But that’s not why the story is interesting. She was disqualified because…

…she punched a horse.

The footage “showed Ms Raisner appearing to strike the horse Saint Boy, ridden by Annika Schleu (GER), with her fist,” the group said in a statement. That violated UIPM competition rules, they said.

I believe we have video of the event.

Okay, I’m sorry, that was a cheap joke, but it never gets old. Here is the actual footage:

Posted in Bagatelle, Horses, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 9, 2021.

Monday, August 9th, 2021

It was a busy weekend, and I’ve got a backlog. I hope I don’t miss anybody.

Markie Post. THR. Variety.

Damn. Said it before, I’ll say it again: “Night Court” was a swell show, and she was part of what made it swell.

Trevor Moore, comedian (“The Whitest Kids U Know”).

Jane Withers, actress.

In her first major movie role, in 20th Century Fox’s “Bright Eyes” (1934), the 8-year-old Jane played a spoiled rich kid who wanted a machine gun for Christmas and took a ghoulish delight in sending her dolls to the hospital. She was the antidote to the movie’s star, Shirley Temple, the always cheerful, always obedient, always smiling orphan.

She did other movie and TV work, including “Giant”, and played “Josephine the Plumber” in the Comet commercials.

Bobby Bowden, football coach.

“When I was at Alabama the bumper stickers read ‘Beat Auburn,’ he recalled in “The Bowden Way” (2001), his book on leadership written with his son Steve. “When I was at West Virginia they read ‘Beat Pitt.’ When I came to F.S.U., the bumper stickers read ‘Beat Anybody.’”
Bowden’s Seminoles beat most everybody. He coached Florida State to national championships in 1993 and 1999 and his teams finished in the top five of the Associated Press rankings every season from 1987 to 2000. The Seminoles were unbeaten in bowl games from 1982 to 1995.

He was, for a period of time, the coach with the most wins in college football. I phrase it that way, though, because this was after the NCAA vacated 111 of Joe Paterno’s victories over the Penn State scandal:

But in January 2015, as part of a settlement in a lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania officials, the N.C.A.A. agreed to restore Paterno’s victories, returning him to the No. 1 spot.

Coach Bowden now ranks second, with 377 career wins.

Paul Cotton, of Poco.

Mr. Cotton joined Poco, replacing the founding member Jim Messina in 1970, just in time to appear on the group’s third studio album, “From the Inside” (1971). Produced by Steve Cropper, the guitarist with the Memphis R&B combo Booker T. & the MGs, the project signaled a new artistic direction for the band, maybe nowhere so much as on the three songs written by Mr. Cotton.
Rooted more in rock and soul than in the country and bluegrass that had hitherto been the group’s primary influences, Mr. Cotton’s sinewy, blues-inflected guitar work and brooding baritone vocals on songs like the ballad “Bad Weather” greatly expanded Poco’s emotional and stylistic palette.

Herbert Schlosser, TV executive. Among other accomplishments: “Saturday Night Live” and “Laugh-In”.

Jon Lindbergh. Yes, he was Charles Lindbergh’s son, but he led an interesting life of his own.

He didn’t go into aviation like his father: instead, he became a pioneer of undersea research.

After college, he did postgraduate work at the University of California San Diego and spent three years as a Navy frogman, working with the Underwater Demolition Team. He appeared as an extra in the television series “Sea Hunt” and had bit parts in a few movies, including “Underwater Warrior” (1958).
He also worked as a commercial deep-sea diver and participated in several diving experiments. They included a 1964 project in the Bahamas called “Man-in-Sea” in which a submersible decompression chamber devised by Edwin Link allowed divers to stay deeper under water for longer periods.
As part of that project, Mr. Lindbergh and Robert Sténuit, a Belgian engineer, set a record by staying in a submersible dwelling for 49 hours at a depth of 432 feet, breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen that allowed them to swim outside the dwelling without harm despite the enormous pressure of the water above. Mr. Sténuit wrote an account of the experiment in the April 1965 issue of National Geographic.
Mr. Lindbergh was also involved in the development and testing of the Navy’s Alvin deep-ocean submersible, which he used during the recovery of the hydrogen bomb in the Mediterranean. An American bomber had hit a refueling tanker in midair and dropped four hydrogen bombs, two of which released plutonium into the atmosphere, though no warheads detonated.
He later helped install Seattle’s water treatment system in icy waters as deep as 600 feet. Finding that he liked the area, he bought a secluded Georgian-style home on Bainbridge Island in the mid-1960s and raised his family there. He later farmed salmon in Puget Sound and in Chile as part of an emerging aquaculture industry and sold the fish to airlines and restaurants.

…

Charles Lindbergh lived long enough to see Jon flourish in his career and was relieved that his son had not followed him into aviation. “He removed any burden of his own career from his son’s shoulders,” Mr. Berg wrote in his biography, by telling Jon that much of what had first attracted him to aviation in the 1920s no longer existed.
“Thirty years ago, piloting an airplane was an art,” Charles Lindbergh told his son, but it no longer seemed like an adventure.
Rather than become a flyer, Charles Lindbergh added, “I think I would follow your footprints to the oceans, with confidence that chance and imagination would combine to justify the course I set.”

Nach Waxman. He founded Kitchen Arts and Letters, a Manhattan bookstore specializing in food related books.

In one instance, Mr. Waxman counseled Citibank on its banquet menu for the Venezuelan finance minister; in another, he found Indigenous recipes from New Guinea for the American Museum of Natural History’s dining room during an exhibition on rain forests.
“He could make helpful recommendations, obtain the very cookbook you needed, search for out-of-print editions and discuss the authors,” said Florence Fabricant, a food and wine writer for The New York Times.
Mr. Waxman once said that about two-thirds of his customers were culinary careerists purchasing professional tools. “Knives are one tool,” he told The Times in 1998. “Books are another.”

…

“It’s really the professional business that’s the gratifying business,” Mr. Waxman told The Times in 1995. “People who are expanding their skills and the scope of their work. I will tell you, when the lease was up a few years ago, I gave serious thought to moving the store to a second floor somewhere just to make it a place for motivated people, not casual drop-ins. The people who come here have a language in common.
“Just sitting and selling books is boring,” he said. “It’s making change and putting books in bags. What’s fun is helping people solve their problems.”

Posted in 1970s, Books, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 6, 2021.

Friday, August 6th, 2021

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president.

J.R. Richard, former pitcher for the Houston Astros. NYT. Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Richard, who was part of the Astros’ inaugural Hall of Fame class in 2020, pitched all 10 of his big league seasons with the Astros before his career was cut short when he suffered a stroke while playing catch inside the Astrodome on July 30, 1980.
“He was one of the greatest pitchers we ever had and probably would have been in the Hall of Fame if his career was not cut short,” Richard’s former Astros teammate Enos Cabell said in a statement released by the team. “On the mound, he was devastating and intimidating. Nobody wanted to face him. Guys on the other team would say that they were sick to avoid facing him. This is very sad news. He will be missed.”
Before the stroke, Richard was one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball, leading the league in strikeouts in back-to-back seasons in 1978 and 1979. In that 1979 season – when he set a franchise record with 313 strikeouts, which was broken by Gerrit Cole in 2019 – he also led the National League in ERA at 2.71.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 23, 2021.

Friday, July 23rd, 2021

Lawrence sent over an obit for Joe McKinney. He was a San Antonio based horror writer who won two Bram Stoker awards.

McKinney, who also worked as a San Antonio Police Department sergeant, frequently set his work in the Alamo City and incorporated elements of police procedural into his novels and short stories. He died in his sleep on Tuesday, according to multiple online posts by friends, and is survived by a wife and two daughters.

…

As an author, McKinney was known for brisk, action-oriented prose. His first novel, Dead City, came out in 2006, amid a wave of zombie pop culture, and it’s been cited in academic papers as a canonical work in modern zombie fiction. The book, which follows a San Antonio patrol cop as he tries to survive an undead apocalypse, spun into a four-novel series for Pinnacle Books.

He was 52.

The Cleveland Indians.

Posted in Books, Cops, Law, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 21, 2021.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2021

Rick 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.

…

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.

Posted in History, Music, Obits, Photography, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 17, 2021.

Saturday, July 17th, 2021

Quick 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.”

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

History repeats itself.

Friday, July 16th, 2021

The first time as farce. Also the second time:

NYPost.

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.

Posted in History, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 9, 2021.

Friday, July 9th, 2021

Dicky Maegle.

Maegle 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”.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Deep philosophical question.

Thursday, July 8th, 2021

Fans 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!”)

Posted in Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 22, 2021.

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021

Joanne 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.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Out of magic.

Wednesday, June 16th, 2021

Scott 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:

The short postseason run, which marked a return to the playoffs for the first time since the 2017-18 season, was viewed within the organization as a triumph. Nearly everyone around the NBA had counted out Washington after injuries and a coronavirus outbreak within the roster forced the team to pause its season for nearly two weeks in January. But behind Russell Westbrook’s late-season explosion, Bradley Beal’s consistently impressive scoring and improved team defense, the Wizards closed the regular season with a 17-6 record and came out of the league’s inaugural play-in tournament to clinch the eighth seed in the playoffs.

They lost in the first round to Philadelphia.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

I’m Gundy, dammit!

Wednesday, June 16th, 2021

Stan Van Gundy out as coach of the New Orleans Pelicans after a single season.

The decision came on the heels of a disappointing 31-41 season in which Van Gundy failed to turn around New Orleans’ defense and struggled to connect with a roster full of players who are in their early 20s.

…

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.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 14, 2021.

Monday, June 14th, 2021

Ned 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.

…

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.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

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