Sunday, July 11, 2021

Cleaning out the Inbox-Sports Passings

   Due to my recent lack of writing, the inbox is stuffed, especially with recent passings.

Goodbye to Rene Robert at the age of  72.

While Robert is pictured with the defunct Colorado Rockies, Robert's career is most often thought of as a Buffalo Sabre as part of the French Connection line with Richard Martin and Gilbert Perreault.

That line led the Sabres to their first winning team and to the Stanley Cup finals in 1975, where they lost to Philadelphia and remain the most loved line in Sabres history.

Robert never scored fewer than 21 goals in his seven full seasons with the Sabres and scored 40 goals twice and finished with 284 goals for his career after spending two seasons each with Colorado and Toronto.

Goodbye to Mudcat Grant at the age of 85.

Grant pitched for seven teams but is remembered by most as a Cleveland Indian, where he spent the first seven seasons and made his first All-Star team.

Some may remember Grant more from his days with the Minnesota Twins where in his first season, 1965, after being traded from Cleveland, Grant won 21 games and two in the World Series with both wins via complete games.

Grant worked for the Indians radio and television networks in the seventies and would later write a book- "The Black Aces" which profiled the fifteen black pitchers that had won twenty games in a season up to that writing.

The book is how I was able to meet Mudcat with Rachel at the Ohio Book Fair in 2007, he was quite a gentleman and spent a few minutes talking about the book and his career.

Goodbye to Tom Kurvers at the age of 58.

Kurvers played for seven teams during his eleven-season career and was serving as the assistant general manager for the Minnesota Wild at the time of his passing.

Kurvers won a Stanley Cup with the 1986 Canadiens and at his peak was thought of as one of the league's better power play defensemen with excellent puck-moving skills.

The New Jersey Devils acquired Kurvers from Buffalo in 1987 and in his second season with the Devils, Kurvers looked to be moving into All-Star status after scoring 16 goals and 50 assists in 1988-89, but Devils GM Lou Lamoriello traded Kurvers when he believed his value was highest and traded him to Toronto for a future first-round draft choice which turned out to be third overall and the Devils would draft Scott Niedermayer with the selection.  

Goodbye to Terry Donohue at the age of 77.

One of the most underrated coaches of his era, Donohue was the head coach at UCLA from 1976 to 1995 and led the Bruins to their most sustained run of success in program history after replacing Dick Vermeil at only 32 after Vermeil left UCLA to take the head coaching position with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Donahue became the first coach ever to win seven bowl games in a row (in the era of more bowl games), and his 151 wins are the most ever at UCLA along with his 98 conference victories setting the standard in Pac-12 history including five league titles and three Rose Bowl victories.

Donahue left UCLA to broadcast college football games and would later serve as general manager for the 49ers from 2001-04, but almost returned to coaching with the Cowboys in 1998 as the replacement for Barry Switzer, but negotiations broke down with Dallas eventually hiring Chan Gailey.

Goodbye to Del Wilkes at the age of 59.

Wilkes was an All-American guard for South Carolina in 1984, but went undrafted in 1985 and failed in two training camp tries at the NFL before heading to the world of professional wrestling.

Wilkes would achieve his greatest success as the masked Patriot in the WWF in a brief stint against Bret Hart and with All Japan Pro Wrestling and held the WCW tag team titles twice with Marcus Bagwell in 1994.

The colorful mask and persona allowed the character to be better remembered than one would think for a wrestler with such a short body of work in American wrestling, but I think there is a reason for that.

When ESPN televised wrestling at four o'clock on weekday afternoons, Wilkes was a staple on both shows that the network programmed, first with the dying AWA and followed by Global wrestling based in Dallas.

With the AWA, Wilkes used a silly gimmick that saw him as "The Trooper" complete with hat, giving out plastic badges, and writing out tickets to defeated opponents as one of the top "babyfaces" of a territory that was alive only due to their meager contract with ESPN.

Silly as it was, the Trooper was memorable and might have been a bigger hit had the character been used as a "heel" similar to the WWF's use of the "Big Bossman".

Wilkes retired the Trooper gimmick when used as the top babyface with Global in favor of the Patriot where he spent much of his time feuding with the "Dark Patriot", who was Doug Gilbert in an all-black bodysuit.  

No comments: