Goodbye to Peter Tork at the age of 77.
Tork was part of the Monkees television show/band and was generally regarded as the most legitimate musician of the quartet.
Tork played keyboards and bass when the band went on live tours and was the only band member that actually played on their first two albums.
Tork was also mentioned by the late Davy Jones as being the only one of the four Monkees that didn't basically "play themselves on the series" and regarding Tork as a "serious guy that thinks about deeper things in the world".
The Monkees tended to re-emerge every ten years or so as someone would put them on TV or release a DVD set etc and Tork was usually a part of that, but when you watched such things, one could wonder just how much joy he received from the show and what it brought along for the ride.
I was too young for "MonkeeMania", but I was among the first to catch their act in re-runs and I'd say was a fan, although not a top-notch fanatic about the show.
Tork passed from Adenoid cystic carcinoma, which is a rare cancer of the neck and head.
The Monkees now have only two surviving members in Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz.
The next two passings were brought to me by Lefty Koch, who is always looking out for things like this for TRS and we thank him as always.
Goodbye to Gene Littler at the age of 88.
Littler was best known for one of the smoothest swings in golf and that won him 29 events and a spot in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Littler won one major tournament in his career as he won the 1961 U.S.Open as he came from behind on the final day of tournament play to catch Doug Sanders for the victory.
Littler signed some cards for me a few years back and sent a very nice note thanking me for remembering him and his career.
Goodbye to Don Newcombe at the age of 92.
Newcombe spent most of his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers, coming to the majors in 1949 as just the third African-American pitcher (Dan Bankhead, also with Brooklyn and Satchel Paige preceded Newcombe) in the big leagues.
Newcombe won 20 games three times with the Dodgers with his peak season in 1956 with a record of 27-7 and 268 innings pitched.
Newcombe may have been overworked in that season as he won only eleven games in 1957, was traded to the Reds in 1958 where he won 13 games in 1959 and was out of baseball following the 1960 season.
Newcombe was known in the game as a tremendous drinker and noted in Danny Peary's book "We played the game" that could have cost him a spot in Cooperstown.
Newcombe may have been right as another fifty wins and under the circumstances that Newcombe played under, it's not out of the question that he may have made the Hall.
Working against a Newcombe case might have been a career ERA of 3.56, which while respectable was not otherworldly for the time that he played, he never notched an ERA under three in a season and his strikeouts per nine innings for a pitcher often remembered as a fireballer was a low 4.7 for his career.
Newcombe straightened his life out in the late 1970s and started the Dodger drug and alcohol awareness program with conjunction with the team in 1980.
Doing a little research on Newcombe for this note, I knew that Newcombe had played in Japan after leaving the majors in 1962 with the Chunichi Dragons, but I found out one thing that I didn't know.
Newcombe didn't pitch in Japan other than one game but played 81 games as a first baseman and outfielder finishing with a .262 average with 23 doubles and 12 home runs for the third place Dragons.
And we finish with a goodbye to Morgan Woodward at the age of 93.
The versatile character actor might be remembered by different people for different roles as he was heavy in Steve McQueen's "Cool Hand Luke", Jock Ewing's best friend "Punk" Anderson on "Dallas" and made the most guest appearances in the entire run of "Gunsmoke" with 19, but I'll remember him more for two roles.
To me, Woodward will be best remembered for his two appearances on "Star Trek" in two different roles- "Dr.Simon Van Gelder" as a director of the criminally insane and as "Captain Ron Tracey" a Starfleet captain that was traumatized from the loss of his ship and became a power-mad dictator on a distant planet that plays into the mindset during the Cold War.
Woodward also brings to mind his role as "Shotgun" Gibbs, the deputy sidekick to Hugh O'Brien's Wyatt Earp on the show of the same name.
That show was way-way before my time and it never reached my circle through the years on the syndicated circuit-until a few years ago when the series hit the STARZ Western channel.
That's where it hit my radar as every time it seemed that I visited my parents, that show was on.
Allow me to say this- as a person that loves a few westerns (Wild Wild West, Have Gun Will Travel, Alias Smith and Jones, and Rawhide) and has many many more in the take or leave category-this show ranks with the worst.
Complete with an actor that carries quite an argument for one of the worst of the time, if not all-time, Earp just comes off as corny as any stereotypical program of the genre' that you can think of- and it seems like I've seen them all!!!
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