{"id":22456,"date":"2021-03-21T10:29:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T15:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=22456"},"modified":"2021-03-21T10:32:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-21T15:32:35","slug":"obit-watch-march-21-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=22456","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: March 21, 2021."},"content":{"rendered":"

George Bass<\/a>. I think he may have been an obscure figure to most folks: Dr. Bass (a professor at Texas A&M) was one of the pioneers of underwater archeology.<\/p>\n

After being honorably discharged in the late 1950s, he pursued a Ph.D. in classical archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, an American photojournalist named Peter Throckmorton was researching Turkish sponge divers and learned that they knew of ancient artifacts on the ocean floor. Mr. Throckmorton wrote to the renowned archaeologist Rodney Young seeking sponsorship for a proper excavation. Professor Young turned to one of his graduate students who specialized in the Bronze Age and had enthusiastically read accounts of deep sea dives \u2014 George Bass.<\/a>
\nMr. Bass was less than fully prepared. He had time for only six weeks of a 10-week diving course at a Philadelphia Y.M.C.A. And before joining the expedition and diving 100 feet into the Mediterranean, he had tried on a tank just once and gone no deeper than 10 feet \u2014 in a pool. Yet that first trip became the foundation for the rest of his career.<\/a>
\n\u201cYou have to be young and ignorant and na\u00efve to get anywhere,\u201d he reflected in a 2010 interview with the Penn Museum.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…<\/p>\n

Early on, archaeologists who sought to take advantage of the aqualung remained aboveground, relying on reports from hired divers, who lacked archaeological expertise. Professor Bass took a more hands-on approach. He became the first archaeologist to do his own diving while supervising other divers. And he organized on-site training in underwater excavation methods for fellow archaeologists and students.<\/a>
\nWith help from scientists he recruited for his teams, he engineered new methods for removing artifacts from the seabed and for spending long periods underwater. One crucial early insight was that objects that look like rocks may actually be the corroded remnants of metal goods. Professor Bass X-rayed what he found interesting. If a rocklike object contained an inner cavity where a metal artifact used to be, he would pour epoxy inside and cast a replacement.<\/a>
\nHis excavations produced illuminating material about ancient shipbuilding. His first expedition, off Cape Gelidonya in Turkey, solved a puzzle about why Homer refers to brushwood on Odysseus\u2019s ship. The remains of a sunken ship there revealed that brushwood had been used as a cushion for heavy cargo to protect the hull.<\/a>
\nDeborah Carlson, the president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, which Professor Bass helped create and then ran for much of his life, ultimately in Texas, said he deserved to be considered the founder of the field.<\/a>
\n\u201cUnder his direction, ancient shipwrecks were excavated underwater for the first time,\u201d she said in a phone interview. \u201cHe did it by taking his archaeological training and putting on scuba gear and taking the excavation to a new dimension.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Roger Baldwin<\/a>. He and three of his Army buddies – Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel and James McDermott, collectively known as the “Four Horsemen of Aberdeen” – were early pioneers of basic blackjack strategy.<\/p>\n

It led Edward O. Thorp, a mathematics professor and blackjack expert, to validate their calculations on an IBM 704 computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to write the best-selling 1962 book, \u201cBeat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One,\u201d which helped bring the Army group to public renown.<\/a>
\nMr. Thorp recalled the influence of the men\u2019s strategy in his 2017 memoir, \u201cA Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market.\u201d \u201cThe Baldwin group,\u201d he wrote, showed that the advice of the reigning experts was poor, unnecessarily giving the casinos an extra two percent advantage.\u201d<\/a>
\nArnold Snyder, a renowned author of blackjack books, said by phone: \u201cNo one actually knew what the right strategy was because it hadn\u2019t been calculated. They figured out what to do if your hand totals 15 and the dealer has an 8 up: do you hit or do you stand?\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dick Hoyt<\/a>, marathon runner. He ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 1992 and finished in 2:40:47.<\/p>\n

Oh, I forgot to mention, it should be “they”, not “he”. Dick Hoyt was was pushing his disabled son, Rick Hoyt, in a wheelchair the whole way.<\/p>\n

Rick Hoyt was born in 1962, a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, unable to control his limbs or speak. \u201cWe had long since learned how to interpret our son\u2019s smiles and nods,\u201d Dick Hoyt wrote in his 2010 book, \u201cDevoted: The Story of a Father\u2019s Love for His Son.\u201d \u201cBut as good as everyone in the family was about figuring out what Rick needed, we were still only making educated guesses.\u201d<\/a>
\nBut in 1972, engineers at Tufts University built a computer that allowed Rick to communicate by choosing letters with a tap of his head. His first words were \u201cGo Bruins,\u201d revealing a passionate love for sports.<\/a>
\nIn 1977, Rick asked to be involved in a five-mile benefit run. Though his father was not a competitive runner, he pushed Rick in his wheelchair the entire distance, finishing next to last.<\/a>
\n\u201cWhen my dad and I are out there on a run, a special bond forms between us,\u201d Rick Hoyt told The New York Times in 2009 with the help of his computer voice program. \u201cAnd it feels like there is nothing Dad and I cannot do.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You might remember this from one of Rick Reilly’s SI<\/strong> essays<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Bass. I think he may have been an obscure figure to most folks: Dr. Bass (a professor at Texas A&M) was one of the pioneers of underwater archeology. After being honorably discharged in the late 1950s, he pursued a Ph.D. in classical archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, an American photojournalist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","category-obits","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22456"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22459,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22456\/revisions\/22459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}