Cleaning out the inbox: Passings

Once again, it's time for a few notes of recent passings from the sports world.

Goodbye to Mike Thomas at the age of 66.
Thomas was the 1975 rookie of the year under George Allen, who was notorious for not wanting to play rookies.
Thomas rushed for 919 yards, caught 40 balls for another 483 yards and finished with seven total touchdowns as the Redskins first pick in the 1975 draft in the fifth round from UNLV.
Thomas would rush for over 1.000 yards in 1976 and would finish his time in Washington with over 3,300 yards on the ground, over two thousand in receiving and thirty total touchdowns before being traded to the Chargers in 1979, where he would finish his career after a training camp release in 1981.


Goodbye to Cedric Benson at the age of 36.

Benson, who passed away in a traffic accident, was the fourth overall pick by the Bears from Texas in 2005 but didn't hit his stride until his arrival in Cincinnati in 2009 where he rushed for over a thousand yards in each of his three seasons as a Bengal.
Benson finished up his career the following year with five games with Green Bay.
Benson was a dominant back for the Texas Longhorns, where he rushed for over 5,500 yards in his Austin tenure and won the Doak Walker award for the nation's top running back in 2004.


Goodbye to Jack Whitaker at the age of 95 from natural causes.
Whitaker in the 60s and 70s was the CBS version of Jim McKay as the host of the CBS Sports Spectacular and his coverage of golf and horse racing.
Whitaker did other sports as well including the NFL, where he worked on Super Bowl I and other playoffs games before transitioning to the NFL Today.
Whitaker was the play by play voice for the Philadelphia Eagles when each team negotiated their own television contract before the league consolidated those contracts into one league deal and can be heard on several Eagles highlight films in the 60s and early 70s.
Whitaker moved to ABC in the early '80s and was a very visible presence with the aforementioned Jim McKay on their Triple Crown and other racing coverage.


Goodbye to Donnie Green at the age of 71.
Green was the right tackle for the Buffalo Bills offensive line that was known as the "Electric Company" that blocked for O.J. Simpson during Simpson's prime in Buffalo.
Green was the Bills fifth-round pick in 1971 from Purdue and would spend the first six years in Buffalo before splitting the final two years of his career between Philadelphia and Detroit.
Green had his struggles after football and lived for a time here in Hagerstown, although I'm not sure if he was still living here at the time of his passing


Goodbye to Al Jackson at the age of 83.
Jackson pitched for four teams but is best remembered for being the best pitcher for the awful expansion New York Mets during their early years.
Jackson lost 20 games twice in four seasons with the Mets (the others losing 16 and 17) games before being traded to the Cardinals for third baseman Ken Boyer, just one season after Boyer won the MVP award in 1964.
Jackson would later serve as pitching coach for the Red Sox, Orioles, and Mets.

Goodbye to Randy Romero at the age of 61 from stomach cancer.
Romero, who was part of the family that the 1978 film Casey's Shadow was based on, entered the racing hall of fame in 2010.
Romero was also a featured subject in the HBO documentary Jockey in which Romero shows just how difficult making weight can be for a jockey and the physical toll that it takes on the body.
Romero is most remembered in racing for his riding of the great filly Go For Wand, who won the 1989 Breeders Cup Juvenile Fillies before breaking down in the stretch of a nose to nose battle with Bayakoa, who was another tremendous female horse in the 1990 Breeders Cup Distaff.
Romero's biggest win came in the 1988 Distaff with Personal Ensign, who won all thirteen races in her career, defeated males in the Whitney Handicap and was a huge success as a broodmare.
The 1988 Distaff might be the greatest stretch in racing history as Personal Ensign needed to win that race to retire undefeated and complete the longest undefeated streak in 80 years.
On a sloppy Churchill Downs track, which Personal Ensign hated, she seemed to be well beaten and far behind Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors, who had set the pace and looked to be winning going away before arguably the guttiest effort by a horse that you'll ever with Romero aboard to nip Winning Colors at the wire.


Goodbye to Tom Nissalke at the age of 87.
Nissalke, who coached four teams in the NBA with stops in Seattle, Houston, Utah, and Cleveland along with three in the ABA as the leader of Dallas, Utah, and San Antonio, never reached the finals with any team, although he did coach Houston to the 1977 Central Division title and reached the Eastern Conference finals before losing to Philadelphia in six games.
Nissalke was named coach of the year for his job with the Rockets, but never again won a playoff series.
Nissalke was also the final coach of the Utah Stars, who folded halfway through the ABA's final season and according to the ABA history site Remember The ABA. Nissalke possessed the final game ball from the Stars.
Nissalke's Cavaliers tenure was during the insane Ted Stepien ownership (as you can see in his introductory press conference below) and in his two years in Richfield, was able to win only 51 games.