Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Cleaning out the inbox:-Passings-Sports Version

Lots of passings from the sports world since our last cleaning to roll out and there will be another one later this week from the non-sports world to clean up a bit as well.


Dave Garcia passed away in San Diego at the age of 97.
The longtime baseball man that served as a coach on many teams, as well as a scout, is best remembered as the manager of first the California Angels and then the Cleveland Indians in the late '70s and early '80s.
Garcia (and doesn't he look thrilled in the team-issued postcard set of the Indians?) wasn't the first manager of my Indians fandom, but he had the longest tenure of his youth as he replaced Jeff Torborg in the middle of 1979 (first year rooting for Cleveland for me) in the Cleveland dugout.
Cleveland won their first ten games after Garcia's promotion, won 38 of their 66 games with him as boss, and would eventually finish over .500, which for the Indians was quite an achievement.
Garcia was fired by the Indians after the 1982 season and wouldn't manage in the bigs again, although he spent many years with various teams as a coach.

Chuck Knox passed away at the age of 86 from complications from dementia.
Knox won division titles in Los Angeles, Buffalo, and Seattle and along with Marty Schottenheimer might be listed for the dubious title of best coach to never reach a Super Bowl.
Known for his less-than-wide-open offenses as "Ground Chuck", Knox's teams always featured running backs such as Lawrence McCutcheon in Los Angeles, Joe Cribbs in Buffalo, and maybe the best of all Curt Warner (the original with C) in Seattle.

Knox's Rams teams might (emphasis on might) have been the best team in the NFC in the mid-70s, but could never get by the Minnesota Vikings, and in the one year that the Vikings were upset early (On the famous Roger Staubach Hail Mary), the Rams blew home field in a blowout at the hands of Dallas 37-7 after being heavily favored.
The Rams always grumbled about having to play Minnesota in the icebox that was Metropolitan Stadium and finally in 1977, the Rams got the Vikings in the playoffs in sunny Los Angeles.
The result- arguably the muddiest game ever and another Rams loss to Minnesota.

Knox would win division titles in both Buffalo and Seattle and his Seahawks team pulled one of the biggest playoff upsets ever when they went into Miami against record-breaking rookie Dan Marino as a prohibitive underdog and dumped the Dolphins in 1983.

Former 49ers wide receiver Dwight Clark passed away at the age of 61 from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Clark was best known for "The Catch" of Joe Montana's high pass to win the 1981 NFC title for San Francisco over Dallas and begin the 49er dynasty.
Clark was the favorite target of the young Montana before the arrival of Jerry Rice and caught over 500 passes for his career, which included two Pro Bowls.
Fans of the Browns likely don't remember Clark's tenure as fondly in Cleveland as Clark was in charge of the "expansion" Browns and his decisions were the foundation of the awful football that we have seen in Cleveland ever since.

Former Pirates righthander Bruce Kison passed away at the age of 68 from Cancer.
Kison won 81 games for the Pirates from 1971-79 before signing with the California Angels as a free agent and was part of both world championship teams in Pittsburgh with a postseason record of 4-1 between the NLCS and World Series.
Kison spent his retirement years as a scout with the Orioles.

Former Alabama and Vanderbilt head basketball coach C.M. Newton passed away at the age of 88.
Newton also was known for his tenure at Kentucky as their athletic director, where he would hire Rick Pitino and move the Wildcats past a recruiting scandal.
Imagine that- hiring Rick Pitino to get PAST a scandal, not having him involved in one.
I'll remember Newton best as Alabama's coach in the 70's when his Crimson Tide won three SEC titles in a row, which is still the only time that an SEC team other than Kentucky has accomplished that feat, and his Tide team in 1976 with future NBA player Leon Douglas came the closest to defeating the undefeated Indiana team in the NCAA tournament.

Former Indiana football coach Bill Mallory passed away at the age of 82 following a fall.
Mallory was the head coach of the Hoosiers from 1984 to 1996 and his reign saw Indiana win 69 games, place Anthony Thompson as the runner-up for the 1989 Heisman and win two of the three all-time bowl victories in the program's history.
At most places, that resume' might be considered pretty good, but at Indiana, it's about as good as you can expect.
Mallory was also the head coach at Colorado and two MAC schools in Northern Illinois and Miami Ohio.

Wrapping up with the passing of 1959 Heisman Trophy winner LSU's Billy Cannon at the age of 80.
Cannon not only won the Heisman but was the first major player to sign with the American Football League, the subject of a pretty good rockabilly song, and the film "Everybody's All-American" starring Dennis Quaid was loosely based on Cannon.

BTW-If you haven't seen that film, give it a try, it's a good one as most Dennis Quaid films are.
Cannon turned his life around after a counterfeiting arrest in 1983 that saw him serve two and a half years in jail and became a dentist in correctional facilities.
Cannon's 1959 punt return for a touchdown that defeated Ole Miss is remembered as one of the greatest plays in college football history.
I'll be writing more about Billy Cannon in the Forgotten Superstars series.





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