Goodbye to Tony Esposito at the age of 78.
Esposito spent the majority of his career with the Chicago Blackhawks after playing a little as a backup with the Montreal Canadiens in his first NHL action.
Esposito was claimed by the Blackhawks in the 1969 waiver draft and would win the league's top rookie award for the 1969-70 season.
Esposito would win the Vezina Trophy for the league's top goaltender on three occasions, was named to the league's first or second All-Star team five games, and was one of the two goaltenders on Team Canada in their historic series against the Soviet Union.
Esposito entered the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1988 and served as the general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins in the early 90s.
Goodbye to Bobby Bowden at the age of 91.
Bowden won 389 games which were good for tops all-time until the NCAA took twelve wins away for recruiting violations and dropped him behind Joe Paterno.
Bowden is the person that built Florida State into a powerhouse and if you grew up in the late 70s and early 80s, you may remember Florida State rolling up undefeated records as an independent and for a while was thought of as very similar to today's powerhouse teams in the Group of Five conferences.
Building up big records against other independents and whatever big-name teams would give them a shot outside of in-state rivals Florida and Miami, Bowden turned Florida State into a school that likely would have never been invited into the ACC in 1992 into a school that could write its own ticket all due to football.
For all of the good things that Bowden did at Florida State, it was what he did at West Virginia that I think of first and it would have little to do with the Mountaineers on the field.
After the 1970 plane crash that killed the Marshall football team and staff,, Bowden wanted to send the Mountaineers (on a bye week) to Athens, Ohio to play Marshall's final game on their schedule against the Ohio Bobcats but was denied by the NCAA.
As depicted in the film "We Are Marshall", Bowden did help the new staff at Marshall learn the veer offense, which Bowden used in Morgantown and his teams wore cross stickers and MU on their helmets, but I didn't know and Bowden himself stated during the film's release that it was Bowden in the fall of 1969 when he was still the offensive coordinator at West Virginia, that was Marshall's top choice for their head coaching position.
However, Bowden knew that then-WVU head coach Jim Carlen was likely moving to Texas Tech and Bowden had an excellent chance of getting the West Virginia job, which he did with Marshall then tapping their interim coach Rick Tolley as the permanent head coach, which meant it was Tolley not Bowden aboard the ill-fated plane crash.
Goodbye to Dick Schafrath at the age of 84.
A seven-time Pro Bowler at tackle and guard for the Cleveland Browns, Schafrath won a national championship with Ohio State in 1957, was drafted in the second round in 1959, and would win an NFL title with the Browns in 1964.
An offensive lineman that had his Hall of Fame candidacy fall by the wayside. Schafrath turned to a new game in 1986, winning a seat in the Ohio state senate and would keep until 2000 when he decided to step away from the office.
Goodbye to Bill Freehan at the age of 79.
An eleven-time all-star for the Detroit Tigers, Freehan's Hall of Fame candidacy is hurt most by what appear to be average numbers on the surface but a deeper look shows numbers that for a catcher are better than average for the era.
Freehan won the Gold Glove five times, was the American League's best defensive catcher of Freehan's age in setting many defensive catching records that were not broken until years after his retirement.
Freehan hit over twenty homers three times and in my opinion severely underrated.
Goodbye to Lehlo Ledwaba at the age of 49.
Ledwaba won the IBF junior featherweight title in 1999 and defended successfully five times in very impressive fashion.
For his sixth title defense, Ledwaba (from South Africa) was brought to the United States for an HBO fight intended to showcase him to the American audience for the first time as a rising star against Enrique Sanchez.
Sanchez would pull out two weeks before the fight and an unknown underdog named Manny Pacquiao stepped in and stopped Ledwabs in six impressive rounds for the first title of Pacquiao's career.
Ledwaba would go only 3-4 in the final seven fights of his career after the defeat to Pacquiao.
Goodbye to Brian London at the age of 87.
The veteran British heavyweight of the 50s and 60s fought many of the world's best heavyweights of his age and challenged for the heavyweight title twice in losing to Floyd Patterson in 1959 and Muhammad Ali in 1966.
London lost more than he won against the top of the division but he did win a few with wins over future light heavyweight champion Willie Pastrano, Olympic gold medalist Pete Rademacher, and former title challenger Zora Folley.
London was stopped by Floyd Patterson in eleven rounds and by Muhammad Ali in three rounds in two of the eleven stoppage losses in his career.
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