Cleaning Out the Inbox: Non-Sports Passings

 The non-sports passings start with an underrated actor and move on from there.

Goodbye to Burt Young at the age of 83.

The veteran actor is best known for his supporting role in the Rocky films as "Paulie" Adrian's (Rocky's wife) brother and Rocky's best friend.

Young was nominated for an Academy Award for the role for the first Rocky film and along with Sylvester Stallone, Tony Burton, and Stu Nahan are the only actors to appear in each of the first six films in the series.

Young also was an author and painter with several paintings in galleries worldwide.

Goodbye to Ken Mattingly at the age of 87.

Mattingly might be remembered by more people for the Apollo mission that he didn't fly than for the one that he did.

Mattingly was pulled from Apollo 13 days before launch when he tested positive for exposure to Rubella, which he would never develop and played a key role in the successful return of the crippled craft home.

Mattingly was portrayed by Gary Sinise in the film "Apollo 13" and the film established Mattingly for not being part of the mission more than his mission to the moon as the command module pilot on Apollo 16. 

Mattingly would later fly two Space Shuttle missions in 1982 and 1985 and was one of two people (John Young) to fly to the Moon and a Space Shuttle mission.

Goodbye to Frank Borman at the age of 95.

Borman was the commander of Apollo Eight, the first manned mission to the Moon in December of 1968.

Borman's mission is remembered for the reading from the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve as the craft orbited the Moon and the famous "Earthrise" photo taken by crewmate Bill Anders.

Borman also flew into space with Apollo crewmate Jim Lovell on the Gemini Seven mission and was the key NASA investigator on the Apollo One fire that cost the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

Borman testified in front of a Congressional committee on the fire. His testimony is credited as a key part of getting through the committee and continuing the program.

Goodbye to Shane MacGowan at the age of 65.

The lead singer of the Irish punk band The Pogues, MacGowan is perhaps most remembered for co-writing the Christmas tune "Fairytale of New York" which MacGowan performed with the late Kirsty MacColl and with various others through the years after MacColl's tragic passing in 2000.

MacGowan was dismissed from the band in 1991 for unprofessional behavior but returned in 2001 through 2014.

Goodbye to Marty Krofft at the age of 86.

Part of the brother duo that that brought so many bizarre memories to children in the 1970s, Marty Krofft was involved in other television projects as well including arguably the worst television idea ever in the 1976 Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

The Krofft brothers also once started an amusement park in Atlanta in an eight-story building that featured their characters but lasted less than a year before the building then called "The Omni" as part of the facility that housed the Atlanta Flames and Hawks was sold and stands today as CNN Center.

The brothers first hit success with their Saturday morning programs such as "H.R Pufnstuff" and "The Bugaloos" on NBC and moved to ABC with the "Krofft Supershow".

ABC also used the Krofft puppets and production team with the Brady Bunch Variety Hour and a much bigger hit in the variety genre' with Donny and Marie Osmond and a later hit with NBC with Barbara Mandrell and her sisters, Louise and Irlene.  

Cleaning out the inbox

    The inbox has been bulging with so much to take care of, so hopefully, we are making strides in getting close to normal as football season nears its start.

I've written before about why team handball hasn't become bigger in the United States (2012 with the pictured Pernille Larsen dominating the game I watched) and while the topic of team handball usually comes out around Olympic time, I do enjoy watching the occasional game from Europe when the Olympic Channel carries them on occasion.

Yahoo writes of why the sport isn't bigger here, why the assumption of American dominance should the best athletes begin to play, might be not quite as accurate as we think, and how the system that makes small European countries perform very well isn't all that different than the system that creates athletes in other sports in the USA.

The Smithsonian Magazine writes of a recent NOAA expedition to the Atlantic Ocean in the north and their remote-controlled robot on the ocean floor discovered this picture of a real-life Spongebob Squarepants and his friend Patrick Star.

The occurrence was unusual because sponges in the deep sea are usually orange or white to blend in better in the environment rather than Spongebob's yellow coloring.

It was also unusual as starfish are known to eat sponges as part of their carnivore diet.

The Toronto Star writes of the long-term future of the CFL's Toronto Argonauts.

The article discussed the Argonauts' options for the future and the problems of a league often struggling to make ends meet that missed an entire season.

The CFL is big business in the prairie provinces (Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, Edmonton, and Calgary) and struggling its three biggest cities (Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver) but is unusual as in the area of potential revenue sharing as it would be their smaller markets subsidizing larger ones which is the opposite of the problems in Major League Baseball.

MSN writes of a problem in lakes and ponds as people toss unwanted goldfish into those bodies of water.

Without predators, the non-mative fish are beginning to take over these areas and bulk up in sizes as big as a football!

The Goldfish certainly qualifies as an invasive species as it can eliminate native fish, mess with the quality of the water (as anyone that has ever cleaned an aquarium can tell you), live to be 25 years of age, and live in water that has frozen over!

SkyatNight Magazine brings us an article on the work being done of restoring many pictures of the Earth and Moon that were taken during the Apollo program.

It's amazing the amount of material from the Apollo program that is in the public domain, yet few seem to know about and even fewer are accessing to use or restore.

We wrap with Vice's article on the eccentric Bradley Koda, the owner/operator of Best Electronics, who appears to have the largest number of remaining parts for Atari computer/video game consoles dating back to the 80s.

These parts are pretty much what is available to fix Atari machines for their devotees so part of looking for obscure things will be dealing with the person that possesses these items and the fact that they hold all the power in the transaction.

The article deals with the Atari crash and the rare parts but also of the perils of dealing with Koda and how you can easily find yourself on his list of undesirables- a list that seems impossible to be removed from.    

Cleaning out the inbox

We start the inbox with another goodbye as former N.C.State center Charles Shackleford was found dead in his home in Kinston NC at the age of 50.
Shackleford was a well traveled center in the NBA,playing for several teams,but was better known for his days as the center for the Wolfpack in the mid 1980's.
Shackleford was an imposing rebounder and big body,but was never able to develop the type of scoring skills away from the basket to be anything more than a role player at the next level.
It was the off court antics of Shackleford and another talented yet disappointing big man Chris Washburn that drew attention to N.C. State basketball under Jim Valvano and the eventual dismissal of Valvano with the dreaded tag "Lack of Institutional Control" to the basketball program...

Recently,we observed the 50th anniversary of the Apollo One fire and two interesting notes found their way into the inbox.
Motherboard offers a look titled "Heat and Ashes" in which one of the men that tried to pry the hatch to the capsule off (Henry Rogers) is part of the story by his grandchild-the author of the piece,Kaleigh Rogers.

The other note is that NASA has finally put a piece of the capsule out for public display.
Not the entire capsule,which remains in storage in Virginia,but the hatch that couldn't be released in the fire has been placed for the public to see at their Cape Canaveral museum.
It had often been mentioned with NASA displaying pieces from the two Space Shuttle tragedies that the Apollo One mission had never been represented.
The hatch is something to share with the public and allow them to pay tribute to...

Mark Arbour writes on the SABR Baseball Card blog about a mid-1980's trip for work in the defense industry than saw him use his per diem (in travelers checks,remember those?) on baseball and two baseball cards bought in a shop near his hotel.
Going chintzy on food and expenses in order to buy something for the collection sounds exactly like something I would do (and have done!)!!!!

I've written before about my LPGA fandom and my favorite player in Jessica Korda,but this season brings an added twist to the tour with the arrival of Jessica's younger sister Nelly.
The 18 year Korda was one of the top 10 players on the Symmetra tour (the LPGA's farm system) and automatically moved up to the main circuit.
The article talks about the sisters and shows a video of a shootout between the pair on the course....

Rachel has begun to bowl occasionally lately and she was surprised to hear that the game of her choice,Duckpin Bowling is a regional game,not a national one.
As I looked this up for more information,this blog turned up with a post on not only Duckpin Bowling,but something called Candlepin Bowling as well.
I've never heard of this game,but apparently it too is a regional thing,mostly in the New England states.
The interesting part for me was that I always grew up with Duckpin Bowling with three lanes offering it just in this town,but there are now just 41 alleys left that offer this game compared to over 400 in 1963.
Bowling itself might be scuffling along,but duckpin appears to be a dying game....

That completes the inbox,I'm hoping to finally get the Mary Tyler Moore piece finished for the next post!!

Cleaning out the inbox

Time to clean the inbox.

We start with a blog that I found that does reviews of 1970's and 80's DC comics named Chris is on Infinite Earth's.
Chris is reviewing tons of great comics from that age,including my guy Floyd Lawton or Deadshot.
Well before the Suicide Squad,you might remember my post on Floyd from 2013 and how he was perhaps my favorite villain in the DC universe.
I need to break out my collection sometime and look back the way Chris is doing right now.,but it's fun reading his reviews and all the fun memories from long ago....

Richard Deitsch writes the Media Circus columns at SI.com and he put together a massive list of terrific articles written in 2016 from both sports and the outside world.
I spent most of a night looking them over and grabbed a few of interest for the inbox....

The read of the night comes from Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly entitled the Reckoning-the story of Claire Wilson.
The story of Wilson is what happened in her life fifty years after being wounded in the 1966 shooting from the tower at the University of Texas that killed 15 and injured 31 others.
Colloff had written about the shooting for Texas Monthly ten years earlier in a prize winning article "96 Minutes",but this article uses the shooting for background and focuses on the years following the shooting for Wilson.
I couldn't stop reading,just a tremendous piece of writing..

David Ng of the Los Angeles Times writes about O.J. Simpson,which seems to be a market all by itself,but Ng writes about something that hadn't previously been discussed as Ng writes about what Simpson's life is like behind prison walls.
It's an interesting look about the current life of Simpson,which often isn't discussed when dealing with the topic of O.J.Simpson...

Jordan Ritter of the Ringer writes about the talented former Jaguar receiver Justin Blackmon,who will likely never play in the NFL again after numerous suspensions.
Ritter goes deep into the background of Blackmon and goes to his hometown of Ardmore Oklahoma to see what the locals think of Blackmon.
Blackmon was such a talented receiver and really lost it all due to his battle with the bottle.
I really loved Blackmon's skills coming out of Oklahoma State and proves the one point that I (and many draft observers) make-the one thing that the franchises have over the rest is the ability to look beyond the film due to access to so many off the field items.,,

Stacey Gotsulias writes for the Hardball Times and her article on her late father was very touching.
Gotsulias reflects on her dad and her memories of spending time with the games and rooting for the Yankees.
It's the type of story that so many of us that are fans have with someone important in their life,but few can put it into the type of words that she does.

Justin Heckert of ESPN writes about the rarest game made by the original Nintendo-Stadium Events from 1987 and the value of what seems to be a pretty crummy game.
I never realized people actually collected video games,but it makes sense as everything has value to someone.
Stadium Events was rebranded as World Class Track and Field for those Nintendo mats that you "ran" on to move your avatar on screen.
Just like baseball cards,it's all about how few are made,not about how good the product is.....

We wrap with another loss from the Apollo years as the last man to walk on the moon passed away as Gene Cernan died at the age of 82.
Cernan,who was a Gemini veteran as well as Apollo,was one of the Apollo astronauts to somewhat stay in the public eye as he was an ABC News contributor for space and science.
Cernan was also noted for the difficulties that he had in his Gemini spacewalk that resulted in some training changes and doing things differently on spacewalks.
Cernan was very outspoken on issues that involved NASA and their decisions that ended manned space missions further than Earth orbit and could always be relied on for honesty when discussing issues involving our investment in space...

Cleaning out the inbox-Non-Sports Version

We return to the inbox for a non-sports cleaning out and we start with a article on one of my favorite films that never was a huge hit.

Bulletproof Action writes on Remo Williams-the Adventure begins.
The 1985 film is based on the Destroyer series of novels and stars Fred Ward,who as Remo Williams was attempting to break loose from character actor status into leading man roles.
After the film disappointed at the box office,Ward would never get another shot at carrying his own films,although he was still sought after for character positions.
The post is very detailed in covering the film with facts on the stars,locations and on the plot.
I always was a fan of this movie and I never understood why it wasn't a bigger hit.
It's currently playing on the Starz networks and if you haven't seen the 1985 film,see what you think....

Megyn Kelly is leaving Fox News for NBC and despite my long-time fandom for Kelly,I'm not sure that this is a great idea.
Kelly will receive a daily show in the afternoons,a Sunday night interview (not sure how that's going work for the network that has Sunday Night Football) and will be involved with political coverage in election years.
Several careers have been damaged by getting away from the genre' that made them successful and so many have failed with daytime talk shows-usually the audience watching network television isn't always interested in substantive topics and that makes it difficult to attract an core group.
Kelly turned down 20 million per year from Fox to stay with them (and they say athletes are overpaid),but Kelly claimed that the easier schedule with NBC was a major factor in her moving on.
It'll be interesting to see if she can succeed where so many have failed....

What has been rumored and thought to have occurred without concrete proof for almost 50 years finally has some teeth behind the claim as a new book about Richard Nixon by author John Farrell (not the manager of the Red Sox) has discovered notes from Nixon chief of staff Bob Haldeman that confirm that Nixon did know about a clandestine partnership to keep South Vietnam from going to the negotiating table faster with the Lyndon Johnson administration.
Had those talks started,they might have swung a hairline election in the direction of Johnson's Vice President and Nixon opponent in the race-Hubert Humphrey.
The New York Times article even shows the notes that Farrell was able to find at the Nixon library among other information about the dealings with South Vietnam and envoy Anna Chennault.
Assuming that these are legitimate and they certainly seem to be,working against your country is beyond my understanding of what a presidential candidate should be doing.
When it comes to politics,the old adage is true-the more things change,the more they stay the same.

We are getting closer and closer to various 50 year anniversary celebrations from the different Apollo missions over the next few years.
The first one to hit the big 5-0 comes in a few weeks with the 50 year mark for Apollo One,which is the mission that caught fire in a test mission and cost the lives of three astronauts.
Over the next five years,we'll have all the Apollo missions being over fifty years old and not a trip to the moon since....

Cleaning Out the inbox

Time to clean out the inbox before we hit a big football and boxing weekend!

We start with an interview with Mike Grell on his 1980's run with the DC Comics character Green Arrow.
Grell revamped GA with a gritty,urban feel that took away super-powered villains and the trick arrows that were such a huge part of the character previously.
The Longbow Hunters mini-series that Grell wrote and re-introduced the "new" Arrow was received well and I quite enjoyed it,despite missing the Arrow that I grew up with...

The first computer in space on the unmanned Apollo-Saturn mission in 1966 has not only been found in a scrap auction in Houston,but a self-described "perpetual hacker" from South Africa has verified and restored the computer.
Atlas Obscura has more here with the computer now being displayed on USS Hornet and its museum ship....

Now that Ohio State's game with Bowling Green is over and the Buckeyes will have no further games against MAC opponents on the schedule,Urban Meyer can go back to rooting for the Falcons,which was his first head coaching position in 2001.
Meyer turned the Falcons from 2-9 to 8-3 as he "changed the culture" (don't we hear that phrase a lot anymore?) and not only began his road to the top,but began the run that moved Bowling Green as a consistent MAC powerhouse.
Scout.com writes of Meyer's first season at Bowling Green and his attachment to the first team that he coached...

I stumbled upon a neat site at NFLUniforms that discusses the flamboyant uniforms of the World Football League.
It's a really interesting post on the league that must have taken a lot of work to have such detail...

We wrap with two local notes-the first of which is a thanks for the nice comments on the Danny Taylor post.
I wonder sometimes how much of "me" people really want to read and when I get words on those types of posts,I feel quite gratified...

The other is this SABR article on former big leaguer and Williamsport MD native Dave Cole,who pitched parts of six seasons in the 1950's.
Dave Cole was always a name that you heard locally when baseball came up and even though I never met him,playing (and announcing) in Williamsport,it was pretty tough to avoid the name of Dave Cole.
The article by Austin Gisriel is incredibly detailed and I highly recommend giving it a read...

Cleaning Out the Inbox-Non-Sports edition

I told you that there was a large amount of items in the inbox and here we are for part two with more of a non-sports slant.

Another Apollo astronaut has passed away with Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell being the latest.
Mitchell,who was best known for his personal experiment with ESP while on the mission,started the Institute of Noetic Sciences to better study the paranormal.
Mitchell was 85 and leaves the living Apollo astronauts numbering just seven,The Atlantic memorializes Mitchell here.

A man that was part of my life almost on a daily basis for years passed at the age of 88 as Sam Spence died on Saturday.
Who was Sam Spence?
Spence was the composer and the man behind all of the great scene setting music for NFL Films and their iconic soundtracks to football that made so many fans from the 1970's on.
Spence might not have been the name that came to mind when you were humming some of those sounds that meshed so perfectly with the highlights,but clearly he had a huge impact...


The Blood-Horse may be a magazine about horse racing and that may be a sport,but the article Taking Shergar is about more than the horse.
The great Irish racehorse Shergar was kidnapped in 1983 and was never seen or heard from again as the most famous cold case in Irish history.
The article discusses the various theories on how and why this happened (The IRA is a huge suspect) from an insider perspective with one of the main detectives on the case...

Some volunteers in Miami spent time restoring the Ferdinand Magellan,the famous railway car that was used by Presidents to get around before airplanes became commonplace.
The car was the main mode of transport for Presidents Roosevelt,Truman and Eisenhower before being retired in 1954.
The car has been in Miami since 1959 and didn't need a ton of structural work,but had a few dings taken out and some paint touchups to keep rust away!

Here is a list of great restaurants that didn't survive the 1980's.
I ate at all but three on the list,but four hit home for personal reasons.
Burger Chef was my first job,Gino's was a favorite stop of my dad's on the way home from Orioles or Bullets games,Howard Johnson's was a staple of the Pennsylvania and Ohio travel areas when we visited Ohio and Bob's Big Boy?
Well,that one was my favorite Aunt Becky's favorite and myself and Cherie went there with them when Cherie was carrying Ryan in one of the craziest days of our lives!

This is a sports story from Hardball Times,but it's more about how the Topps company got into selling baseball cards as a business and the decisions behind it.
Topps is celebrating its 65th year with baseball cards and it's a good read even if you don't collect cards...

That just about cleans things up for a while,so hopefully you found something interesting worth linking to!!!