Cleaning out the Inbox: Passings

     Two very big names lead off this edition of tributes to stars that have recently left us.

Goodbye to Walter Davis at the age of 69.

The silky-smooth scorer from North Carolina, Davis starred for the Tar Heels from 1973-77 for Dean Smith and won an Olympic Gold for Smith in 1976 in the Montreal Games.

Davis was taken fifth overall by Phoenix in the 1977 NBA Draft and averaged twenty-four points a game as a rookie, good enough to win him the Rookie of the Year award.

Davis averaged 18.9 points per game for his career and is still the career leader in points scored for the Suns franchise.

Davis made the All-Star game on six occasions in his eighteen seasons and still holds an NBA record that will be difficult to break.

In 1983, Davis made his first fifteen shots and hit all four of his free throws before missing a shot with under a minute to play, scoring thirty-four points before missing his first shot.

Goodbye to Frank Howard at the age of 87.

The 6'7 man mountain was an All-American in both baseball and basketball at Ohio State and was good enough at hoops to have been drafted in the third round by the Philadelphia Warriors.

Howard won the National League Rookie of the Year for the Dodgers in 1960 and won a World Series ring for them in 1963 but his career didn't truly flourish until his trade to the Washington Senators after the 1964 season.

Known as "the Washington Monument" and "Capital Punishment", Howard's power feats were just about the only positive points to watching the expansion version of the Senators (only one winning season in their existence from 1961-71).

Howard clubbed 235 homers in his seven years in Washington, hit forty or more homers in three of those years, and led the American League twice in homers, although his career high of forty-eight in 1969 did not lead the AL.

In a twenty-game span in 1968, Howard smashed ten homers and set a still-standing record for home runs in one week.

After his playing career ended in 1974 with an injury with the Seibu Lions in the first and only game that Howard would play in Japan, Howard would spend several years as a coach as well as brief stints managing the Mets and Padres.

Goodbye to Dick Drago at the age of 78.

Drago was the best starter for the expansion Kansas City Royals, winning eleven games or more in four of the Royals' first five seasons, peaking with a 17-11 record with a 2.98 ERA in 1971.

Boston acquired Drago before the 1974 season and converted him to a reliever with Drago leading the 1975 American League champions in saves with fifteen before being traded to the Angels after the season.

Drago returned to Boston in 1978, collecting twenty-three more saves over three seasons before retiring after spending 1981 with the Mariners.

In 1976, Drago allowed the final home run of Hank Aaron's career, ending with 755 homers.

Goodbye to Bobby Ussery at the age of 88.

A Hall of Fame jockey, Ussery won the Kentucky Derby in consecutive years but would only receive credit for one victory.

Usseery crossed the finish line first with Proud Clarion in 1967 and aboard Dancer's Image in 1968 but Dancer's Image was later disqualified for having the now-legal but then banned drug Bute in his system and moved to last place.

Usserry won 3,611 races in his career before his retirement in 1974 and was an inductee into the Hall of Fame in 1980.

Goodbye to Ken Squire at the age of 88.

The long-time voice of NASCAR, it was Ken Squire who pushed for CBS to attempt to broadcast a live NASCAR race in its entirety.

NASCAR was fortunate enough for that race to be the famous 1979 Daytona 500, which introduced the country to racing with the East Coast stuck inside with a heavy snowstorm, and that resulted in the final lap crash with the Allison brothers and Cale Yarborough slugging it out in the infield around their wrecked vehicles with Richard Petty holding off Darrell Waltrip for the win.

That race was the match that lit the NASCAR fire in the country and it was Ken Squire at the microphone calling all the resulting craziness.

Squire called CBS's NASCAR races from 1979 to 1997 and worked for the Turner Networks from 1983 to 1999 with a colorful flair that combined descriptive language with a love for the product.

Squire also appeared in both films in the 1980s that featured racing of some sort- Cannonball Run, which was about a cross-country illegal race, and Stroker Ace, a film that featured NASCAR races.