Three obits today for people who aren’t as notable as usual, but who I find interesting for one reason or another.<\/p>\n
Stephen Downing<\/a>. He was a police officer with the LAPD. One day he picked up the phone at the precinct.<\/p>\n Jack Webb was on the other end of the line. He was looking for a technical advisor for “Adam-12”.<\/p>\n Mr. Downing \u2014 who had studied creative writing in the 1960s at what is now California State University, Los Angeles \u2014 got the job and quickly surmised that he could offer more than guidance on police policy and tactics. He wanted to write a script.<\/a> He continued to write scripts (under pen names) while still working for the LAPD.<\/p>\n As Michael Donovan, he wrote 21 episodes of \u201cAdam-12,\u201d 11 of a \u201cDragnet\u201d reboot in the late 1960s that starred Mr. Webb and Harry Morgan, and 13 of \u201cEmergency!,\u201d a show Mr. Webb produced in the 1970s about Los Angeles paramedics. Under the name Sean Baine, Mr. Downing\u2019s writing credits included \u201cPolice Woman,\u201d \u201cThe Streets of San Francisco,\u201d \u201cKojak\u201d and \u201cPolice Story.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n …<\/p>\n After retiring from the L.A.P.D. in 1980, he produced and wrote, under his own name, action series like \u201cT.J. Hooker,\u201d a police procedural set in Los Angeles that ran on ABC and then CBS from 1982 to 1986 and starred William Shatner, and for ABC\u2019s \u201cMacGyver,\u201d with Richard Dean Anderson as an agent whose only weapon is a Swiss Army knife.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n IMDB<\/a>.<\/p>\n Donald McIntyre<\/a>, opera singer.<\/p>\n The booming voice of Mr. McIntyre, a giant of a man who once seemed destined for a rugby career in his native New Zealand, rang out for more than five decades in the world\u2019s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he had 16 major roles from 1975 to 1996.<\/a> I don’t get to use my “Wagner” tag enough. But anyway:<\/p>\n By presenting the operas, based on Germanic mythology, as a neo-Marxist allegory of capitalist exploitation in the 19th century, Mr. Ch\u00e9reau\u2019s production \u2014 the so-called centenary \u201cRing,\u201d marking the 100th anniversary of the tetralogy\u2019s premiere at Bayreuth \u2014 shattered norms and set the stage for decades of updatings of canonical operas.<\/a> There’s something to be said for that.<\/p>\n George Altman<\/a>, baseball player. He was one of only three people who played in the Negro Leagues, MLB, and in Japan. (Don Newcombe and Larry Doby are the other two.)<\/p>\n At Tennessee A&I State University (now Tennessee State University), he played basketball and baseball. After graduating in 1955 with a degree in physical education, he landed a tryout with the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro Leagues team managed by Buck O\u2019Neil.<\/a> …<\/p>\n After three months with the Monarchs, he signed with the Cubs and was assigned to the Burlington Bees, in Iowa, in the minor leagues. He was drafted into the Army in 1956, and then rejoined the Cubs organization in 1958. He was promoted to the major leagues the next year.<\/a>
\n\u201cWebb said, \u2018It\u2019s harder than it looks,\u2019\u201d Michael Downing said in an interview, recalling what his father told him. \u201cMy father went home, wrote the script over the weekend and sold it.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nBut \u201cthe highlight of my career,\u201d as he put it in his 2019 autobiography, was his performance at Bayreuth as Wotan, the king of the gods, in \u201cDas Rheingold,\u201d \u201cDie Walk\u00fcre\u201d and \u201cSiegfried\u201d in a groundbreaking 1976 production of Wagner\u2019s four-opera \u201cDer Ring des Nibelungen,\u201d directed by Patrice Ch\u00e9reau.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nAudiences around the world were used to seeing Wagner gods and heroes holding spears and wearing pseudo-Norse winged helmets. While some postwar Bayreuth productions had emptied out the stage for radically spare visions of the classic works, putting Mr. McIntyre\u2019s Wotan in an Edwardian frock coat and dressing the Rhinemaidens as cancan girls caused a near riot at the tradition-encrusted summer festival.<\/a>
\nAs Mr. McIntyre recalled in his memoir, an enraged older lady beat another spectator over the head with an umbrella; \u201chowls of fury\u201d greeted his entrance onstage in the frock coat; and the composer\u2019s daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner, a onetime confidant of Hitler\u2019s, told Mr. McIntyre that if she came across Mr. Ch\u00e9reau, she would \u201cshoot him\u201d for politicizing the \u201cRing.\u201d<\/a>
\nOver four years, however, with the production revived, revised and refined each summer, many holdouts eventually warmed to it, and at the final performances, in 1980, there was a 45-minute standing ovation. When Winifred Wagner and Mr. Ch\u00e9reau finally met, she admitted that \u201cmany times I wanted to kill you,\u201d but added, \u201cAfter all, isn\u2019t it better to be furious than bored?\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nAltman took batting practice with the Monarchs before one of their games.<\/a>
\n\u201cEvidently I must have impressed them a little bit because as I was getting comfortable on the bench, sitting back to just enjoy the game, Buck came up to me and said, \u2018Boy, you\u2019re in there,\u2019\u201d Altman wrote. \u201cIt almost scared me to death.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\u201cThe thing I like about Altman is the fact that he knows where the strike zone is,\u201d [Ernie] Banks told The Sporting News in 1959. \u201cThat\u2019s one thing most young ballplayers don\u2019t know about. They swing at anything they can reach with the bat. Altman waits for his pitch.\u201d<\/a>
\nIn need of pitching, the Cubs traded Altman to the Cardinals in 1962. St. Louis traded him to the Mets the next year, and the Mets traded him back to the Cubs before the 1965 season. By then, he was struggling with injuries, once joking that he played for Blue Cross.<\/a>
\nAfter Altman hit just .111 in 15 games in 1967, his career in the majors was over. Unwilling to quit playing, he joined the Tokyo Orions in Japan. During seven seasons with the team, he hit 193 home runs, becoming a popular player for his slugging and willingness to learn Japanese phrases.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n