Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Cleaning out the Inbox: Passings

 The tributes are sometimes slow but they never stop as we note some recent passings.

Goodbye to Antonio Inoki at the age of  79.

Inoki is best remembered by Westerners for his mixed sport event vs Muhammad Ali in 1976, which while laughed off at the time, turned out to be monumental for two sports.

Many believe that the Ali-Inoki fight is the actual start of the mixed martial arts era in fighting, and boxing observers believe that Inoki's strategy of laying on the mat and kicking Ali's legs throughout the fifteen rounds, damaged Ali's legs and slowing his movement significantly in his fights thereafter and taking much more punishment in those fights than he had taken before the Inoki event.

Inoki's work in the ring and outside of it as the star of New Japan Pro Wrestling (which Inoki owned) made him one of the three biggest stars in Japanese wrestling history (with Rikidozan and Giant Baba) and one that was more than a wrestling star, in Japan, Inoki was a cultural hero that dwarfed any comparison in North American wrestling even Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin.

Inoki would also serve in the Japanese House of Councilors and in what was likely his biggest American appearance would appear in the final of the Bad News Bears film series "The Bad News Bears go to Japan", wrestling the character played by Tony Curtis in the film.

Goodbye to Tommy Boggs at the age of 66.

The second overall pick by Texas in the 1974 draft, Boggs made his big league debut in 1976 and threw complete games in both his fourth and fifth starts but lost both games.

In his seventh start, Boggs would start against Baltimore with an eight-year-old R.S in the stands rooting for his Rangers and Boggs would leave the game after six and a third innings with the league before Baltimore would take the lead against the Texas bullpen and win.

Boggs would throw two more complete games in September, winning his first game in his next start following the Baltimore start and Kansas City, and pitching ten innings in a loss to the Angels, and would be part of baseball's first four-team trade in the off-season following the 1977 season, going to the Braves.

Boggs would win 12 games in 1980 for the Braves, the only season that he would win double-digit games in a career that would finish with a 20-44 record.

Goodbye to Hector Lopez at the age of 93.

Lopez is noted as the first-ever black manager in AAA baseball when he skippered the Buffalo Bisons in 1969 but was a fine hitter in a twelve-year career with the Kansas City Athletics and the Yankees.

Lopez was the runner-up to Herb Score for the American League Rookie of the Year with Kansas City in 1955 and was one of only seven players to have spanned the entire Mickey Mantle/Roger Maris era with the Yankees after being traded to New York early in the 1959 season.

Goodbye to Marvin Powell at the age of 67.

Powell was selected by the Jets with the fourth overall pick in the 1977 NFL Draft from USC and was rewarded with five Pro Bowls and three appearances on either the first or second All-Pro team.

Powell started 130 of a possible 133 games for the Jets at left tackle before finishing his career with Tampa Bay in 1986 and 87.

Powell was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in 1994.

Goodbye to Gavin Escobar at the age of 31.

Escobar was the second-rounder of the Dallas Cowboys in 2013 and was thought to be another athletic type of tight end that could stretch the field but struggled with blocking and couldn't find the field consistently for the Cowboys behind Jason Witten.

Escobar would catch 30 passes in his four seasons with Dallas and despite signing with several teams, would never catch another pass in the league before finishing his career with the AAF San Diego Fleet where he caught fourteen passes before the league went out of business late in its only season. 

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