Cleaning out the inbox: Passings

We have built up quite a few passings in the inbox of late, mainly because the passings haven't arrived in large numbers in a period and that's a good thing!
Still, that means notices will be piling up and the result is a larger post.

Goodbye to Harrison Dillard at the age of 96.
Dillard was the oldest living Olympic gold medalist before his passing with four gold medals in the 1948 (London) and 1952 (Helsinki) games.
Dillard won the 100-meter gold in London and then added the 110-meter hurdles in Helsinki to become the only man to this day to own gold medals in those two events.
Dillard was also part of two relay winning teams to account for his remaining golds.
Dillard worked for the Cleveland Indians in the scouting and public relations departments as well as the business manager for Cleveland city schools after his athletic career ended.

Goodbye to Ron Fairly at the age of 81.
Fairly spent twenty-one years in the majors, the first eleven with the Dodgers. where he was part of three world championship teams.
Fairly might be better remembered as the only player to play on both Canadian expansion teams (Montreal 1969 and Toronto 1977) and would make his only All-Star appearances with those teams, one for each team.
Fairly would also spend fourteen years in the booth as part of the Seattle Mariners broadcasting crew.

Goodbye to Jim Coates at the age of 87.
Coates pitched parts of nine seasons in the majors, mostly with the Yankees with a career year of 13-3 in 1960 for the Yankees.
Coates might be remembered by some as the subject of stories in Ball Four involving Coates and Jim Bouton during their shared time with the Yankees.
Coates was asked by Bouton if he was endorsing iodine "Because his picture was on the bottle".
At the time, skulls were used as the symbol for poisonous material and Coates was a tall, skinny person.
Coates was also mentioned as a pitcher in the book that enjoyed throwing at hitters, starting dust-ups and then "crawling out of the ensuing pile".

Goodbye to Charles Rogers at the age of 38.
Rogers was a star receiver at Michigan State and was selected by Matt Millen as part of the wide receiver three years first-round draft selection run for Rogers' home-state Detroit Lions.
While Rogers was tremendous for Sparty, he disappointed with the Lions and lasted only three seasons as he battled problems with both alcohol and drugs.
Rogers would play only fifteen games for Detroit, catching thirty-six passes on his career, but it was a different story for Rogers at Michigan State as he grabbed twenty-seven touchdown passes in a two-year career in East Lansing as he won the Fred Biletnikoff Award for the best wide receiver in the nation.

Goodbye to Zeke Bratkowski at the age of 88.
Bratkowski played for the Bears and Rams, but was best known as the caddy of Bart Starr in the 1960s for the Vince Lombardi Packers teams that dominated the era.
Bratkowski's biggest moment with Green Bay in 1965 was when Bratkowski relieved an injured Bart Starr in the Western Conference championship in the first half and led the Packers to a 13-10 overtime win over Baltimore.
Starr would return the following week in the 1965 league title game against Cleveland as the Packers would defeat the Browns to win the final NFL title before the beginnings of the Super Bowl.
Bratkowski would later become a quarterback guru and offensive coordinator for various teams through the middle of the nineties.

Goodbye to Jim LeClair at the age of 69.
LeClair played twelve years with the Cincinnati Bengals at linebacker, nine of those as a starter, making the Pro Bowl in 1976 and played for the 1981 AFC champion Bengals, which meant he played in the famous "Freezer Bowl" AFC Championship game against the Chargers.
LeClair also played the final two seasons for the New Jersey Generals in the USFL, a team owned by a certain person that you may have heard of.

Goodbye to Charlie Taafe at the age of 69.
Taafe was the head coach at the Citadel for a decade before his biggest success in Montreal with the CFL's Alouettes winning the league's coach of the year award in 1999 and 2000.
Taafe left Montreal to become the offensive coordinator for Ralph Friedgen at Maryland, where he was the OC for Maryland's miracle run to the Orange Bowl.
Taafe would only be a head coach for one more year, as he went 3-15 for Hamilton in 2007, but he was the offensive coordinator for Central Florida after that, where he developed Blake Bortles into a first-round draft pick by Jacksonville.