Florence Henderson passed at the age of 82.
Henderson,who along with Shirley Jones,was the mother of the nation's children in the 70's from her iconic role as Carol Brady on "the Brady Bunch" was known for being a Broadway star and comedian before landing the role for Carol Brady,which brought her lasting fame,if not a bit of typecasting.
Henderson was also known to people my age after the Brady Bunch with her long time association with Wesson Oil.
I mean those commercials were around for years and often featured Henderson singing the "Wessonality" jingle and floating around the kitchen.
Henderson never really left the spotlight in the 40+ years after the Brady Bunch's cancellation,as she was involved with every reincarnation of the show as well as more stage work,guest appearances on television and lots of game shows spot when game shows still ruled morning television.
I'm not sure anyone under 60 wasn't a little sad upon hearing of the loss of Florence Henderson.
The other entertainment loss was actor Ron Glass at the age of 71.
Glass was best known for his role of Harris on the 70's sitcom "Barney Miller",but gained cult fame over the last decade for the role of Shepherd Book on the cult sci-fi drama "Firefly".
I wasn't a massive Barney Miller fan,although in the three channel days,I watched my share of it,but I did enjoy the brief run of Firefly and its movie sequel Serenity.
Glass acted in various tv shows that didn't really catch on such as an 1980's version of the Odd Couple with Demond Wilson of Sanford and Son...
The sports loss was Ralph Branca at the age of 90.
Branca won 21 games in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers,but was better known for allowing "the shot heard round the world" home run to Bobby Thomson in 1951.
Branca never was the same pitcher after the home run as he would win just 20 games over the next (and final) five years of his career after a back injury the following spring..
Branca came off bitter and angry in my opinion on the HBO documentary on the 1951 pennant race between the Giants and Dodgers with an insistence that Thomson knew the pitch that was coming via a stolen sign in the famous game,but watching the program it was pretty easy to see that Branca and Thomson had become friends over the years and seemed to enjoy being linked together in baseball history...
The New York Times writes about the huge James Webb Telescope that will be launched in 2018 to see even further out into space than the Hubble telescope.
The Hubble was expected to be out of use by the time of the Webb's entry into space,but it looks like the two will be in service for at least a few years together.
The Webb's rotation will be around a million miles away from Earth and with its infrared equipment will be able to see things that even the Hubble would be unable to see.
Some of you that listen to the podcast might remember when we had Ricky Cobb of the Super 70's Sports show on the podcast.
Ricky gets some great guys and he recently landed my favorite ABA player of all time in Dan Issel to do his show.
It's a great hour and basketball fans of all ages should enjoy it.
I wrote a post on Issel back in 2008 as a member of our Forgotten Superstars universe and it can be found here.
SABR always has great articles from contributors that offer biographies of players that are forgotten by the regular fan.
This one was just listed on the site features 1970's righthander Lynn McGlothen,who would die in a fire in 1984.
McGlothen was an erratic pitcher that was once compared to Bob Gibson.
McGlothen never approached the level of Gibson,but did have his good days with an All-Star game appearance.
My favorite memory of McGlothen comes from his 1977 Topps baseball card as he is wearing the 1976 Bicentennial hat of the St.Louis Cardinals.
A few teams wore the "Cake Pan" hats in the 1976 season (The Pirates continued to wear theirs for years after) and the 1977 cards are the only cards to features those hats for teams other than the Pirates..
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