Cleaning out the Inbox: Passings

The cleaning of the inbox never stops with tributes to those that have recently passed.

As I am posting this, I have learned of the passing of Gale Sayers.

I'll be writing about Sayers tonight, if possible...

Goodbye to Diana Rigg at the age of  82.

Rigg is known by recent fans from her work on Game of Thrones, which earned her two Outstanding Guest Actress Emmy nominations, but to almost everyone else in America over 50, she will always be remembered for her role as Emma Peel in The Avengers.

"Emma Peel" arrived in the middle of the show's run (the show ran from 1961-69) for four seasons from 1965-68 and despite the show having a track record before her arrival, it is the four seasons with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel that most people think of when The Avengers is remembered.

Rigg had never watched the show when she tried for the role "on a whim", and often was said to have felt mistreated by the producers of the show and uncomfortable with her role as a sex symbol as well.

While Rigg would go on to do many roles on stage, film, and television, she will more than likely be remembered as Emma Peel by the American audience.

Goodbye to Larry Wilson at the age of 82.

The football hall of famer was legendary for his toughness in a thirteen-year career spent all with the St.Louis Cardinals as their free safety

Wilson was inducted into the hall in 1978 in his first year of eligibility after a career that saw Wilson make eight Pro Bowls for the Cardinals and named first-team All-Pro six times and second-team All-Pro once.

Wilson was the player that popularized the safety blitz, intercepted passes in seven straight games in 1966, and not only played games with two broken hands, Wilson actually intercepted a pass with casts on each hand!

Larry Wilson would also serve as the interim coach for the Cardinals in 1979 and was the team's front office leader (among a few different titles) from 1977 to 1993.

Goodbye to Alan Minter at the age of 69.

The 1972 Olympic bronze medalist at junior middleweight, Minter won the unified middleweight title in March 1980 (In 1980, there were only two titles- WBA and WBC) with an upset split decision victory over Vito Antuofermo in Las Vegas in a title fight with two of the largest "bleeders" of their day with both fighters with a long history of cutting easily.

The controversy with the decision wasn't as much giving the win to Minter (It was a close fight) as the British judge scoring the fight for Minter 13-2 in rounds.

Minter would defend the title in a rematch against Antuofermo in London three months later, winning on cuts in the eighth round.

Three months after the Antuofermo rematch, Minter would defend against the mandatory challenger in Marvin Hagler, who had drawn with Antuofermo in 1979 in a fight that most thought Hagler clearly won.

In a fight that was racially charged after a pre-fight incident, Hagler ripped through Minter in three rounds when the fight was stopped due to cuts on Minter's face and the British crowd rioted, pelting the ring with bottles and anything else that they could throw, and sending Hagler and his cornermen racing to the dressing room surrounded by police to escape the crowd.

Minter never received a rematch against Hagler as he would lose a split decision to Mustafa Hamsho in a fight that the winner would become the new mandatory challenger.

Minter then was stopped in three rounds by countryman Tony Sibson (who would eventually also challenge Hagler) and would retire.

Goodbye to Ian Mitchell at the age of 62.

Mitchell joined the Bay City Rollers at the top of their success as a seventeen-year-old bass player in 1976, but despite Mitchell's instant popularity with the group's fans and their high charting cover of Dusty Springfield's "I only want to be with you", Mitchell left the band after nine months.

What made Mitchell unusual was that after he left the band, Mitchell remained all over the teen magazines for the next year or so despite his new band (Rosetta Stone) never scoring with a hit record.

Mitchell was quite a bit younger than the other band members and that could have been why he connected with the group's fans despite such a short tenure.

Long time readers might remember a long-ago piece that briefly mentioned the Rollers that gained many MANY more hits than an average post at that time and made me wonder if Rollermania ever really moved away from their fans.

Cleaning out the Inbox-Non-Sports Edition

Time to clean the inbox again and this time,I've piled up enough to do a non-sports edition....

Lots of old school television and to a lesser extent films were thought to be lost,but as we've seen often in the age of YouTube,it only takes one person to uncover what was presumed lost.

A case of this happening was the release of two episodes of Mister Rogers Neighborhood not seen since their original showing in 1983.
The Cold War episodes storyline had the neighboring towns in the land of make believe going through a military buildup and was used to teach children about how to avoid conflict.
Those episodes never hit syndication because they were dated,but the Daily Beast article wonders if there was more behind the release than just rare old television tapes.
Their take offers an explanation that someone perhaps wanted to make people think about the current situation between the United States and Russia.
No matter the answer,the videos (they were on the page of the articles) have apparently been taken down....

More news as the Bay City Rollers have apparently ended their reunion with a near fistfight during a live television interview.
The group will finish their remaining tour dates and then they appear to be finished.
Long time readers might remember me writing a small post that Rollers fans moved to one of the higher hit articles that we had to that point....

13th Dimension.com writes about the end of the Batman 66 comic book series.
The series (which if I was buying new comics,I would have been all over) told stories with the art of the Batman TV series with the goofy villains,many of which were never in the comics before or after the show.
The run lasted thirty issues with some other mini-series with other shows from the 1960's.
As campy as it could have been,a Wild Wild West-Batman 66 would have been a mini-run that I would have been very interested in and I still wouldn't mind getting the issue with the first ever comic appearance of "Shame",who was played by Cliff Robertson in the TV show.

Ever try to duplicate sauces that are served in restaurants at home?
Some attempts are better than others and more and more chains are getting their sauces into stores.
Doug Hopkins helps me get Quaker Steak and Lube's Golden Garlic and Arizona Ranch as one example of these,but McDonald's had yet to try to get their sauces to the masses.
Until now as the fast food king is selling their Big Mac,McChicken and Fish sauces currently in stores-the kicker is that it is not here in the United States!
McDonald's is selling them in Canada as the Comeback writes .
No word on an eventual turnout in the States,but if they sell-bet on it...

A group called PTScientists are planning on landing on the moon in 2018.
It won't be them landing,but the plan is for the team to land two rovers on the moon and hit the surface roughly two miles away from the rover used for Apollo 17,which never left the lunar surface.
There are groups that are working towards next year as well as the race to be the first private entity to land on the moon continues.

We wrap with the Washingtonian's look at CNN"s conservative commentator,Mary Katherine Ham.
The article looks at Ham's rise through the last decade as pundit,but also discusses her life as a single mother with two children after the death of her husband in 2015 in a bicycle accident.
It's an honest and open look at Ham and was pretty non-partisan in its writing.

Most of you know that I'm pretty moderate politically and I'm not afraid to side with either party depending on the issue.
I like people of both sides that are able to accept mistakes by their party and are honest about shortcomings-we don't have enough of those types of media members right now.
CNN has a few shining stars that are able to do that in Ham,Margaret Hoover,John Avlon and John Berman,but all too often,those reasonable people are overshadowed by the agenda-driven folks such
Chris Cuomo (who's really bad because he's supposed to be a host,not an analyst) and Bakari Sellers on the left with Kayleigh McEnany (By FAR the worst offender of this) and Jeffrey Lord on the right.
Cherie and I have always wished that C-SPAN would jump into the news business with a nightly newscast-of a Joe Fridayesque "Just the Facts,Ma'am"...

The sports inbox is filling up,so I'll dump that soon-assuming Verizon allows that.
Listen to me on Fightheads,if you are interested-I have plenty to say..

Sometimes I just don't get it

Sometimes I just don't understand what I do here.
I do this because I enjoy it, it's fun getting my thoughts and ideas on the various teams that I root for on "paper" and have those down for perpetuity for whatever version of the web exists after my time.
But last night/this morning is one of those things that makes me laugh, chuckle, and shake my head in wonder.

Readership goes up and down and as much as I wish I could make readership explode, I've come to terms with having a core bunch and extras here and there, but somethings I write for me, some I write for you, and yet others just happen.
So last night, when it was a slow night in the sports world and for the teams we cover, I took about 15 minutes to toss together a fun little post (located below) on 1970's teen idols and didn't think much of it.
Until last night at the road office.
When I discovered that yesterday for a post that took a short time to do and not a ton of thought finished in the top five posts for hits in a day in the history of the blog!

As I told my friend Tricia-let me get this straight-I can write a nuanced opinion on America's role in space and get crickets but mention the damn Bay City Rollers (yes, that is Witchiepoo with them) and I get a top five day EVER?
Frankly, I'm confused.
Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, I'll take whatever I can get in readership, and maybe with luck, I might keep a few of them around, but it makes me wonder about things.
I am not ending or anything or even rethinking things, but I just laugh and wonder.

I've been told before that I'd better served to settle on one team and cover them or even one sport.
Baseball and the Browns seem to do the best, but I like what I do and if readership never hits it big-I'm Ok with that, it just makes me wonder what people like and how I can better get it to them.
It might be writing more about the Bay City Rollers!!!!