Cleaning out the Inbox: Passings

     Two very big names lead off this edition of tributes to stars that have recently left us.

Goodbye to Walter Davis at the age of 69.

The silky-smooth scorer from North Carolina, Davis starred for the Tar Heels from 1973-77 for Dean Smith and won an Olympic Gold for Smith in 1976 in the Montreal Games.

Davis was taken fifth overall by Phoenix in the 1977 NBA Draft and averaged twenty-four points a game as a rookie, good enough to win him the Rookie of the Year award.

Davis averaged 18.9 points per game for his career and is still the career leader in points scored for the Suns franchise.

Davis made the All-Star game on six occasions in his eighteen seasons and still holds an NBA record that will be difficult to break.

In 1983, Davis made his first fifteen shots and hit all four of his free throws before missing a shot with under a minute to play, scoring thirty-four points before missing his first shot.

Goodbye to Frank Howard at the age of 87.

The 6'7 man mountain was an All-American in both baseball and basketball at Ohio State and was good enough at hoops to have been drafted in the third round by the Philadelphia Warriors.

Howard won the National League Rookie of the Year for the Dodgers in 1960 and won a World Series ring for them in 1963 but his career didn't truly flourish until his trade to the Washington Senators after the 1964 season.

Known as "the Washington Monument" and "Capital Punishment", Howard's power feats were just about the only positive points to watching the expansion version of the Senators (only one winning season in their existence from 1961-71).

Howard clubbed 235 homers in his seven years in Washington, hit forty or more homers in three of those years, and led the American League twice in homers, although his career high of forty-eight in 1969 did not lead the AL.

In a twenty-game span in 1968, Howard smashed ten homers and set a still-standing record for home runs in one week.

After his playing career ended in 1974 with an injury with the Seibu Lions in the first and only game that Howard would play in Japan, Howard would spend several years as a coach as well as brief stints managing the Mets and Padres.

Goodbye to Dick Drago at the age of 78.

Drago was the best starter for the expansion Kansas City Royals, winning eleven games or more in four of the Royals' first five seasons, peaking with a 17-11 record with a 2.98 ERA in 1971.

Boston acquired Drago before the 1974 season and converted him to a reliever with Drago leading the 1975 American League champions in saves with fifteen before being traded to the Angels after the season.

Drago returned to Boston in 1978, collecting twenty-three more saves over three seasons before retiring after spending 1981 with the Mariners.

In 1976, Drago allowed the final home run of Hank Aaron's career, ending with 755 homers.

Goodbye to Bobby Ussery at the age of 88.

A Hall of Fame jockey, Ussery won the Kentucky Derby in consecutive years but would only receive credit for one victory.

Usseery crossed the finish line first with Proud Clarion in 1967 and aboard Dancer's Image in 1968 but Dancer's Image was later disqualified for having the now-legal but then banned drug Bute in his system and moved to last place.

Usserry won 3,611 races in his career before his retirement in 1974 and was an inductee into the Hall of Fame in 1980.

Goodbye to Ken Squire at the age of 88.

The long-time voice of NASCAR, it was Ken Squire who pushed for CBS to attempt to broadcast a live NASCAR race in its entirety.

NASCAR was fortunate enough for that race to be the famous 1979 Daytona 500, which introduced the country to racing with the East Coast stuck inside with a heavy snowstorm, and that resulted in the final lap crash with the Allison brothers and Cale Yarborough slugging it out in the infield around their wrecked vehicles with Richard Petty holding off Darrell Waltrip for the win.

That race was the match that lit the NASCAR fire in the country and it was Ken Squire at the microphone calling all the resulting craziness.

Squire called CBS's NASCAR races from 1979 to 1997 and worked for the Turner Networks from 1983 to 1999 with a colorful flair that combined descriptive language with a love for the product.

Squire also appeared in both films in the 1980s that featured racing of some sort- Cannonball Run, which was about a cross-country illegal race, and Stroker Ace, a film that featured NASCAR races.

Cleaning out the inbox

My intent was for tonight was to do the latest road trip stop with the Carolina Mudcats,but I forgot to transfer the pictures to the computer from that stop,so look for that soon,maybe Tuesday after game five of Cavaliers-Warriors...
SO,since I dropped the ball on that,I can get the lysol out and start cleaning the inbox a bit instead.

Let's get started with a SABR baseball cards blog entry on a long time favorite of mine and maybe the most polarizing figure in baseball broadcasting-Ken "The Hawk" Harrelson.
Hawk,who whether you like him or not, is definitely the
biggest homer in the booth anywhere and certainly is a memorable person from the first time that you hear a game that he does.
The SABR article though looks at Hawk's playing career through his various Topps cards and it's neat to see the evolution through a career and hear some stories about why and how some cards look the way they do.
The 1970 Topps set isn't my favorite set,but it is my favorite Hawk card-it is one of two cards of him as an Indian,he wears a hat that I own (one of my two favorite non-Wahoo Indians hats) and I love the stadium (Yankee Stadium in this case) shots in the background!

More Hawk as the White Sox saluted Harrelson with a stadium giveaway that I want in the Hawk talking alarm clock!
The clock can wake you with one of various Hawk sayings and stuff like that are home runs to me!
Kudos to the White Sox for the clock,which was based on the Milwaukee Brewers doing a Bob Uecker clock of the same style last year...

The Hardball Times writes of a seven day offensive run by Frank Howard of the Washington Senators in 1968.
The article discusses Howard's career as a Dodger,but mainly looks at his time in Washington with the Senators,in which with the exception a surprising 1969,Howard was about the only thing to get excited about for a bad franchise that was nearing the end of its time in Washington.
It also writes of the powerful long balls that Howard hit and the three white seats that remain in RFK stadium to this day that were commemorated for Howard's blasts into the upper deck.

I've written before about my fondness for mid-major basketball and with Xavier moving up to the Big East a few years and arguably passing metro rival Cincinnati on the food chain,my main mid-major school was gone.
Wichita State under Gregg Marshall was their replacement,but with the Shockers move to the American Athletic Conference,which in basketball is not quite top notch,but above the mid-major level and leaving the Missouri Valley conference,the MVC needed a replacement and found it in Valparaiso.
Valpo had been the best program in the Horizon League (especially since Butler had left) for years and like Wichita State climbing the conference ladder up a notch with the AAC,Valpo is doing the same with its move to the MVC.
It's part of the business of college sports today-understandable.but sometimes at the cost of some of what makes college sports so great.
Mid-Major Madness writes about the Crusaders move here and the Wichita Eagle discusses it here in what will likely be one of the final articles for that paper on the MVC with the Wichita State departure of the league effective in the fall.

Meanwhile,the AAC is beginning to tout itself as the conference attempting to push its way into prominence and turn the "Power 5"conferences into the "Power 6" and this ESPN article talks about the AAC churning out coaches for the higher level in football.
The point is made when you look at Tom Herman (leaving Houston for Texas),Justin Fuente (Memphis for Virginia Tech) and Willie Taggart (South Florida for Oregon) that the AAC truly is a
a league that prepares coaches for the power five jobs and even if I'm not sure that the AAC should make the five a six,the league has some really good programs and makes for many fun fall evenings watching their teams go at it...

Steve Kim at UCNLive writes about the lack of buzz over Andre Ward-Sergey Kovalev II and the frustrations by Main Events (promoter of Kovalev) with the promotion of Roc Nation (promoter of Ward) and their questionable promoting of the rematch.
Ward's questionable decision win in November meant the contracted rematch would be promoted by Roc Nation-a "promotion" that has been a disaster in their time in the boxing business.
Roc Nation hasn't pushing the fight,there is next to no excitement for a fight that should have it amid rumors that this will be the final event before Roc Nation boxing folds its tent and goes away as the latest "money mark" to think that promoting boxing is easy and leaves after losing lots of money to come to the realization that boxing isn't like any other business venture.

We wrap with the Cleveland Plain Dealer looking at two players with plenty in common-Robert Griffin and Johnny Manziel.
Two stars at Texas colleges,Heisman winners,first round draft picks,spread offense runners and disappointments with the Cleveland Browns,both players say they want to play in the NFL again,but no one has come calling as of this writing.
Should either of the two decide to try Canada and the CFL-their home would be in Hamilton as a Tiger-Cat as Hamilton holds the rights to both Griffin and Manziel.
I'd be interested to see how they would play in the CFL,which does require some mobility from their QB's,but needs a bigger arm than most American fans would think as the throws to the sideline are longer with the wider field.
When you look at Vince Young,who has much in common with the above two ( minus the Heisman,but adding a national title) and his attempt to come back to football with the CFL (Young is with the Saskatchewan Roughriders),it's not so far fetched to some day see either or even both of those players giving Canadian Football a shot...