They Also Served
The world of sports lost a lot of luminaries in 2007 - Bill Walsh, Phil Rizzuto, Eddie Robinson, Evel Knievel and Barbaro just to name a few. Today here at No Mas we're going to take some time to remember a group of 25 lesser-known sports figures who died in the past year. Some of the people you'll read about below are more famous than others. Some were household names in their day and saw their fame quickly ebb with time. All but three essentially died of old age, and the three who didn't came to tragic ends indeed. Some were as great as great could be - 2007 saw the deaths of arguably the finest bridge player, rodeo rider and fencer that ever lived.
I was awestruck while compiling this list at what a window into the past these names provided. The entire No Mas enterprise is rooted in the idea that the history of sport is as varied, impassioned and bizarre as the history of man itself. For me, that concept is fundamental to just about everything I write, and yet never did I suspect that a group of disparate lives connected to sport, lives that all happened to end in a single calendar year, taken together would tell such a wild story of the 20th century, a story I'm quite sure I've never heard before.
Lou Palazzi was a stand-out linebacker as a walk-on at Penn State, and played two seasons with the New York Giants. He then went on to serve 30 years in the NFL as an umpire, working three Super Bowls (IV, VII and IX) and nine NFL championships, including the epic 1958 edition. Eighty-five years old, he died on January 7th in Dunsmore, PA.
Maureen Orcutt was a star women's golfer in the 20's who also wrote avidly about the game. She was only the second women's sports reporter in New York Times history. Orcutt golfed until she was 87 years old - she died on January 9th at the age of 99.
Max Lanier was 91 when he died on January 30th. He was a lefty pitcher who spent 14 seasons in the bigs, and 12 of those with the Cardinals. Max was the winning pitcher of game 6 of the 1944 World Series, the clinching victory for the Cards over their crosstown rivals, the St. Louis Browns. His son, Hal, also played in the majors.
Filippo Raciti was not an athlete, but sports indirectly and most horribly caused his death. A 30-year-old Italian policeman, he died of severe liver trauma on February 2nd from injuries suffered during a riot following a Serie A match between Catania and Palermo in Sicily. The tragedy spurred national outrage in Italy against football hooliganism and caused all Italian football matches to be suspended for a week.
Eddie Feigner, the clown prince of softball, died at the age of 81 on February 9th. Capable of hitting 100mph with his underhand heater, in 1967 he struck out Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Maury Wills, Harmon Killebrew and Roberto Clemente in succession, which must be considered among the greatest feats ever accomplished in the history of bats and balls.
Playing for Blackpool in 1942, footballer Jock Dodds set a record that still stands today, scoring a hat-trick against the Tranmere Rovers in just two and a half minutes. Dodds, however, is most famous for his efforts with Sheffield Wednesday, helping the franchise make the FA Cup Final in 1936, which they lost to Arsenal. He was the oldest surviving player to have played in a final at Wembley when he died at the age of 86 on February 23rd.
Maurice Flitcroft, God love him, is the type of sportsman you have to raise your glass to in this day and age. A duffer of the highest order whose day job was operating a crane at a shipyard, Maurice longed to play at the British Open, and eventually managed to pull it off by sneaking into the 1976 tournament under an alias. He did this despite the fact that he'd never played an 18-hole round of golf in his life. One glorious day he golfed at Royal Birkdale, carding a 49-over par 121, which remains the highest 18-hole score ever posted in Open history (it's not bad if you ask me, given the circumstances). Sadly, his score tipped off the authorities and he was given the royal hook. Maurice ascended to the big course in the sky on March 24th at the age of 77, and no doubt as I write he is pounding his way out of some celestial fescue with a mashie made of diamonds.
Lou Limmer was 82 when he died on April 1st in Boca Raton. A Jewish first baseman from the Bronx, Limmer saw limited playing time in two seasons with the Philadelphia A's. But that cup of coffee was enough to make him a part of baseball history. Batting for the A's in 1951 against the Tigers, he was part of the only all-Jewish pitcher/catcher/batter at-bat ever recorded in a major league game. Saul Rogovin was on the mound for the Tigers and Joe Ginsberg was behind the plate.
Frenchman Loïc Leferme was a pioneer in the sport of free diving, underwater diving without an oxygen tank. He twice set world records, most recently in October of 2004, when he submerged to 171 meters below the sea without breathing apparatus of any kind. Thirty-six years old, he drowned on April 11th while training for another shot at the world record.
Alvin Roth was the "Babe Ruth of bridge," quite possibly the best player of all time. Ninety-two when he died on April 18th, he had won 26 national championships with 11 different partners, although his best-known partner was another bridge legend, Tobias Stone. Together with Stone, Roth played a famous game of bridge with Dwight Eisenhower while serving in the Army in WWII.
Arthur Milton died on April 25 at the age of 79. Having played 6 test matches for the English cricket team in 1958-59, and a match with the English national football team against Austria in 1951, Milton was the last surviving man of twelve in history to have represented the Jolly Old at the highest level in both of those sports.
Simply put, Jim Shoulders was the greatest rodeo rider who ever lived. Over the course of two decades he won 16 world championships and five all-around Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association championships. In his prime in the 1950's, he was all but unbeatable. He's also the only professional cowboy honored in the Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame. He was 79 when he died on June 20th at his home in Henryetta, Oklahoma.
Pete Mead, who died on July 2nd at the age of 83, was a middleweight journeyman who fought several times at the old Garden in 50's. He faced such notables of the time as Fritzie Zivic and Randy Turpin, and in his last bout he was knocked out in the third by Rocky Graziano. His fight with Joey DeJohn at the Garden in 1949 was a Gatti-Ward bloodfest of its day - Ring magazine once called it one of the ten greatest fights ever. Mead wrote an autobiography in 1989 called Blood, Sweat and Cheers that is now out of print and highly sought after by collectors. If you have a copy, we'd love to hear about it.
Gato del Sol was one of the biggest longshots ever to win the Kentucky Derby, winning the Run for the Roses by two and a half lengths in 1982 at 21-1 odds. He was euthanized on August 7th at the age of 28.
A true renaissance man of the 20th century, Switzerland's Hans Ruesch first achieved fame as a race-car driver in the 1930's, winning 27 races in his career including the 1936 British Grand Prix. By the 1940's, he had moved to the U.S. and was writing popular fiction in English, including two best-selling novels, The Racer and Top of the World, the latter of which would be made into a film by Nicholas Ray. Amazingly, Ruesch's life had a third act, as he became one of the best-known animal rights activists in the world in the 1970's, founding The Center for Scientific Information on Vivisection and writing a very influential book, The Slaughter of the Innocents, in 1978. He died on August 27th at the age of 94 in Lugano, Switzerland.
Former Clemson basketball star Clarke Bynum succumbed to cancer on September 3rd at the age of 45. Bynum was a stalwart forward with the Tigers in his four years at Clemson, but he is most well known around the world for his heroics in December of 2000, when he helped subdue a Kenyan hijacker who attacked the pilot of a British Airways jet en route to Nairobi.
Enrique Torres was one of three Mexican-American brothers who were popular pro wrestlers in the 40's and 50's. Extremely agile and known for his drop-kicks, Enrique never took an alias, though he was known in the press as the "Latin Flash." He won the California world heavyweight championship in 1946, but lost the belt the following year to wrestling legend, Gorgeous George. Torres died in Calgary on September 10th at the age of 85.
The owner of six Olympic medals, four of them gold, Christian D'Oriola of France was named the Fencer of the Century by the international fencing federation in 2001, stating that "Christian d’Oriola was fencing perfection personified as no-one else has ever been…" He died at the age of 79 on October 29th.
Austrian Ellen Müller-Preis won three Olympic medals in fencing, including a gold in individual foil at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. She competed in every Olympics from 1932 to the 1956 Melbourne Games, when she was 44 years old. She was 95 when she died on November 18th.
A stalwart defenseman, Tom Johnson played 15 years for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1940's and 50's, winning six Stanley Cups and a Norris Trophy with the team during that span. He also coached the Bruins to their last Stanley Cup victory in 1972, two years after he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Johnson died at the age of 79 on November 21st.
Jockey Bill Hartack won an amazing eight Triple Crown races in his Hall of Fame career, and is one of only two jockeys (with Eddie Arcaro) to win the Kentucky Derby five times. Over the course of his 21 years in horse racing, he rode 4,272 winners, and graced the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time magazine. Seventy-five years old, he died of natural causes on November 26th while on a hunting trip.
At his death on November 29th, Congressman Henry Hyde had served as a representative from the 6th district of Illinois for nearly 32 years. Over that time, he came to be known as one of the most respected members of the House on both sides of the aisle. Back in his college days at Georgetown, Hyde also was respected on the basketball court as one of the leaders of the Hoyas in their 1943 run to the Final Four. Hyde was 83 years old when he died.
In his famous Green Monster jet-powered cars, Art Arfons held the land speed record three different times from 1960-62. He was eighty-one years old when he died on December 3rd in Springfield, Ohio, and three days after his death he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
But for Nat Fleischer, there probably was no man who ever lived who knew more about the sweet science than Hank Kaplan. Nicknamed "The Lord of the Ring", Kaplan was one of the sport's foremost journalists and historians, a stature that earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2006. His credits are too massive even to begin to list - basically, if a publication ever covered boxing anywhere on God's green earth, Kaplan wrote for it. He died of cancer on December 14th at the age of 88.
Ryan Gracie was Brazilian jiu-jitsu royalty, grandson of the great Carlos Gracie and brother of the famous Renzo Gracie. Known as the bad boy of the Gracie clan, Ryan more than lived up to his image, dying of a massive drug overdose in a Rio de Janeiro jail on December 14th. He was 33 years old.
I was awestruck while compiling this list at what a window into the past these names provided. The entire No Mas enterprise is rooted in the idea that the history of sport is as varied, impassioned and bizarre as the history of man itself. For me, that concept is fundamental to just about everything I write, and yet never did I suspect that a group of disparate lives connected to sport, lives that all happened to end in a single calendar year, taken together would tell such a wild story of the 20th century, a story I'm quite sure I've never heard before.
Lou Palazzi was a stand-out linebacker as a walk-on at Penn State, and played two seasons with the New York Giants. He then went on to serve 30 years in the NFL as an umpire, working three Super Bowls (IV, VII and IX) and nine NFL championships, including the epic 1958 edition. Eighty-five years old, he died on January 7th in Dunsmore, PA.
Maureen Orcutt was a star women's golfer in the 20's who also wrote avidly about the game. She was only the second women's sports reporter in New York Times history. Orcutt golfed until she was 87 years old - she died on January 9th at the age of 99.
Max Lanier was 91 when he died on January 30th. He was a lefty pitcher who spent 14 seasons in the bigs, and 12 of those with the Cardinals. Max was the winning pitcher of game 6 of the 1944 World Series, the clinching victory for the Cards over their crosstown rivals, the St. Louis Browns. His son, Hal, also played in the majors.
Filippo Raciti was not an athlete, but sports indirectly and most horribly caused his death. A 30-year-old Italian policeman, he died of severe liver trauma on February 2nd from injuries suffered during a riot following a Serie A match between Catania and Palermo in Sicily. The tragedy spurred national outrage in Italy against football hooliganism and caused all Italian football matches to be suspended for a week.
Eddie Feigner, the clown prince of softball, died at the age of 81 on February 9th. Capable of hitting 100mph with his underhand heater, in 1967 he struck out Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Maury Wills, Harmon Killebrew and Roberto Clemente in succession, which must be considered among the greatest feats ever accomplished in the history of bats and balls.
Playing for Blackpool in 1942, footballer Jock Dodds set a record that still stands today, scoring a hat-trick against the Tranmere Rovers in just two and a half minutes. Dodds, however, is most famous for his efforts with Sheffield Wednesday, helping the franchise make the FA Cup Final in 1936, which they lost to Arsenal. He was the oldest surviving player to have played in a final at Wembley when he died at the age of 86 on February 23rd.
Maurice Flitcroft, God love him, is the type of sportsman you have to raise your glass to in this day and age. A duffer of the highest order whose day job was operating a crane at a shipyard, Maurice longed to play at the British Open, and eventually managed to pull it off by sneaking into the 1976 tournament under an alias. He did this despite the fact that he'd never played an 18-hole round of golf in his life. One glorious day he golfed at Royal Birkdale, carding a 49-over par 121, which remains the highest 18-hole score ever posted in Open history (it's not bad if you ask me, given the circumstances). Sadly, his score tipped off the authorities and he was given the royal hook. Maurice ascended to the big course in the sky on March 24th at the age of 77, and no doubt as I write he is pounding his way out of some celestial fescue with a mashie made of diamonds.
Lou Limmer was 82 when he died on April 1st in Boca Raton. A Jewish first baseman from the Bronx, Limmer saw limited playing time in two seasons with the Philadelphia A's. But that cup of coffee was enough to make him a part of baseball history. Batting for the A's in 1951 against the Tigers, he was part of the only all-Jewish pitcher/catcher/batter at-bat ever recorded in a major league game. Saul Rogovin was on the mound for the Tigers and Joe Ginsberg was behind the plate.
Frenchman Loïc Leferme was a pioneer in the sport of free diving, underwater diving without an oxygen tank. He twice set world records, most recently in October of 2004, when he submerged to 171 meters below the sea without breathing apparatus of any kind. Thirty-six years old, he drowned on April 11th while training for another shot at the world record.
Alvin Roth was the "Babe Ruth of bridge," quite possibly the best player of all time. Ninety-two when he died on April 18th, he had won 26 national championships with 11 different partners, although his best-known partner was another bridge legend, Tobias Stone. Together with Stone, Roth played a famous game of bridge with Dwight Eisenhower while serving in the Army in WWII.
Arthur Milton died on April 25 at the age of 79. Having played 6 test matches for the English cricket team in 1958-59, and a match with the English national football team against Austria in 1951, Milton was the last surviving man of twelve in history to have represented the Jolly Old at the highest level in both of those sports.
Simply put, Jim Shoulders was the greatest rodeo rider who ever lived. Over the course of two decades he won 16 world championships and five all-around Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association championships. In his prime in the 1950's, he was all but unbeatable. He's also the only professional cowboy honored in the Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame. He was 79 when he died on June 20th at his home in Henryetta, Oklahoma.
Pete Mead, who died on July 2nd at the age of 83, was a middleweight journeyman who fought several times at the old Garden in 50's. He faced such notables of the time as Fritzie Zivic and Randy Turpin, and in his last bout he was knocked out in the third by Rocky Graziano. His fight with Joey DeJohn at the Garden in 1949 was a Gatti-Ward bloodfest of its day - Ring magazine once called it one of the ten greatest fights ever. Mead wrote an autobiography in 1989 called Blood, Sweat and Cheers that is now out of print and highly sought after by collectors. If you have a copy, we'd love to hear about it.
Gato del Sol was one of the biggest longshots ever to win the Kentucky Derby, winning the Run for the Roses by two and a half lengths in 1982 at 21-1 odds. He was euthanized on August 7th at the age of 28.
A true renaissance man of the 20th century, Switzerland's Hans Ruesch first achieved fame as a race-car driver in the 1930's, winning 27 races in his career including the 1936 British Grand Prix. By the 1940's, he had moved to the U.S. and was writing popular fiction in English, including two best-selling novels, The Racer and Top of the World, the latter of which would be made into a film by Nicholas Ray. Amazingly, Ruesch's life had a third act, as he became one of the best-known animal rights activists in the world in the 1970's, founding The Center for Scientific Information on Vivisection and writing a very influential book, The Slaughter of the Innocents, in 1978. He died on August 27th at the age of 94 in Lugano, Switzerland.
Former Clemson basketball star Clarke Bynum succumbed to cancer on September 3rd at the age of 45. Bynum was a stalwart forward with the Tigers in his four years at Clemson, but he is most well known around the world for his heroics in December of 2000, when he helped subdue a Kenyan hijacker who attacked the pilot of a British Airways jet en route to Nairobi.
Enrique Torres was one of three Mexican-American brothers who were popular pro wrestlers in the 40's and 50's. Extremely agile and known for his drop-kicks, Enrique never took an alias, though he was known in the press as the "Latin Flash." He won the California world heavyweight championship in 1946, but lost the belt the following year to wrestling legend, Gorgeous George. Torres died in Calgary on September 10th at the age of 85.
The owner of six Olympic medals, four of them gold, Christian D'Oriola of France was named the Fencer of the Century by the international fencing federation in 2001, stating that "Christian d’Oriola was fencing perfection personified as no-one else has ever been…" He died at the age of 79 on October 29th.
Austrian Ellen Müller-Preis won three Olympic medals in fencing, including a gold in individual foil at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. She competed in every Olympics from 1932 to the 1956 Melbourne Games, when she was 44 years old. She was 95 when she died on November 18th.
A stalwart defenseman, Tom Johnson played 15 years for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1940's and 50's, winning six Stanley Cups and a Norris Trophy with the team during that span. He also coached the Bruins to their last Stanley Cup victory in 1972, two years after he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Johnson died at the age of 79 on November 21st.
Jockey Bill Hartack won an amazing eight Triple Crown races in his Hall of Fame career, and is one of only two jockeys (with Eddie Arcaro) to win the Kentucky Derby five times. Over the course of his 21 years in horse racing, he rode 4,272 winners, and graced the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time magazine. Seventy-five years old, he died of natural causes on November 26th while on a hunting trip.
At his death on November 29th, Congressman Henry Hyde had served as a representative from the 6th district of Illinois for nearly 32 years. Over that time, he came to be known as one of the most respected members of the House on both sides of the aisle. Back in his college days at Georgetown, Hyde also was respected on the basketball court as one of the leaders of the Hoyas in their 1943 run to the Final Four. Hyde was 83 years old when he died.
In his famous Green Monster jet-powered cars, Art Arfons held the land speed record three different times from 1960-62. He was eighty-one years old when he died on December 3rd in Springfield, Ohio, and three days after his death he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
But for Nat Fleischer, there probably was no man who ever lived who knew more about the sweet science than Hank Kaplan. Nicknamed "The Lord of the Ring", Kaplan was one of the sport's foremost journalists and historians, a stature that earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2006. His credits are too massive even to begin to list - basically, if a publication ever covered boxing anywhere on God's green earth, Kaplan wrote for it. He died of cancer on December 14th at the age of 88.
Ryan Gracie was Brazilian jiu-jitsu royalty, grandson of the great Carlos Gracie and brother of the famous Renzo Gracie. Known as the bad boy of the Gracie clan, Ryan more than lived up to his image, dying of a massive drug overdose in a Rio de Janeiro jail on December 14th. He was 33 years old.
posted by Large at 1:43 PM
5 Comments:
Great stuff Large.
A worthy finish to a spectacular year of writing. From Money May to Marianne Moore, you did justice daily. Very, very well done.
Hope 2008 brings more of the recognition and reward you so richly deserve.
Much love my brother,
ci
hear hear. I had no idea about "Blood Sweat and Cheers by Pete Mead, and needless to say, I'll be looking for a copy cheaper than the $135 signed paperback I found on the web. Looking forward to daily reads in 2008. Good job Large (and CI).
my father always told me about the King and his court.
he said it was inconceivable that one man could be so dominating.
I like what you guys are doing over here...this site is my homepage.
Thanks for the love Rooster. You know we got mad love for the Rooster and The Rickey up in the No Mas crib. Happy new year yo.
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