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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 19, 2021 17:26:11 GMT -5
Don Sutton, 75, Hall of Fame baseball pitcher, died Monday, January 18. No cause of death was announced.
Along with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdake, Sutton helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win the National League pennant in 1966 and went on to spend 15 seasons with them, before moving on to several other teams and eventually returning to the Dodgers to end his career in 1988. He won at least 11 games in 21 seasons and struck out over 3500 batters. But he never won a Cy Young award and he never won a World Series, despite playing in three of them with the Dodgers.
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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 19, 2021 17:38:03 GMT -5
Joe Scheidler, 93, pro-life activist, also died Monday. Scheidler, a pioneer in pro-life activism, was embroiled in legal battles for years with the pro-abortion National Organization for Women, who got him convicted of racketeering under the RICO statute, which was eventually overturned. His legal battles, criminal and civil, took him to the Supreme Court 3 times.
Schedler's son stated his motivation begin with marching with Dr Martin Luther King in 1965, which makes his passing on Martin Luther King Day, fitting.
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Post by SUVFan on Jan 19, 2021 17:48:26 GMT -5
SUVFan, your post reminds me of another talented celebrity who is now and always will be remembered for the murder of his wife and her lover -- the very much alive and never convicted (at least of those murders) OJ Simpson. His crime eclipses the many accomplishments of his previous life, including his college and NFL football career. Great example! Unlike Spector, Orenthal got away with it due to some exceptionally poor lawyering and his own great acting. ([Struggles to put then dried blood soaked shrunken leather glove on his hand] "It doesn't fit!") Testimony from a racist cop at the preliminary hearing also didn't help. |
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Post by SUVFan on Jan 20, 2021 12:24:43 GMT -5
Links to videos of several of his popular songs are interspersed throughout the article quoted above.
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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 20, 2021 12:46:29 GMT -5
SUVFan, your post reminds me of another talented celebrity who is now and always will be remembered for the murder of his wife and her lover -- the very much alive and never convicted (at least of those murders) OJ Simpson. His crime eclipses the many accomplishments of his previous life, including his college and NFL football career. Great example! Unlike Spector, Orenthal got away with it due to some exceptionally poor lawyering and his own great acting. ([Struggles to put then dried blood soaked shrunken leather glove on his hand] "It doesn't fit!") Testimony from a racist cop at the preliminary hearing also didn't help. |
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Post by SUVFan on Jan 20, 2021 14:27:50 GMT -5
Testimony from a racist cop at the preliminary hearing also didn't help. Those appeals were very well grounded in the evidence that was presented at trial. This article, which looks back on the Simpson trial 20 years later due to similarities in another case in another city, lays it out succinctly: Coming practically on the heels of the Rodney King situation, once Furman supplied direct evidence that the LAPD could have been motivated by racism, that jury was going to acquit. I'd guess most if not all jurors believed he probably committed the murders but the possibility that race was a factor prevented them from being able to reach the elevated "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. |
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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 22, 2021 15:16:16 GMT -5
Turning away from a disgraced living sports celebrity, we turn to:
Henry "Hank" Aaron, 86, baseball's "home run king" passed away in his sleep this morning (January 22).
Born in Mobile Alabama in 1934, Aaron started his baseball career with the Negro leagues in 1951 then joined the Milwaukee Braves organization, making his major leagye debut in 1954. From 1957 through 1973 (during which the Braves moved to Atlanta), "Hammering Hank" hit at least 25 home runs each season.
By 1974, Aaron was closing in on the all-time home run record of 714 home runs set by Babe Ruth. On April 8, in a game at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, he faced LA Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. Vin Scully calls the action:
After hitting number 715 on that day, Aaron played with the Braves until the end of the 1976 season, racking up 755 career home runs, then staying with the Braves organization in front office roles for several decades. (Interestingly, Aaron's Wikipedia page claims he was a covert Cleveland Browns fan, attending games incognito in the "Dawg Pound" section).
In the official record books of Major League baseball, you will find a different name for the holder of most career major league home runs, the name of a certain player notorious for using steroids during that sad chapter of baseball history. But as far as I'm concerned, the record belongs to Hank Aaron.
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Post by SUVFan on Jan 23, 2021 9:10:24 GMT -5
Talk show icon Larry King has passed away at the age of 87. According to CNN, King's death was announced this morning by his son, Chance, on social media (I won't publicize the specific web provider), who posted: Though the statement did not specify a cause of death, CNN's report indicates that: Before the 2020 election, CNN would have reported that King's death resulted from 'apparent complications of COVID-19', with no mention of the other contributing co-morbidity factors. |
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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 23, 2021 15:32:48 GMT -5
CNN went downhill from when Larry King appeared on it regularly, SUVFan. Most recently, they became an "antimatter twin" of Fox News, jumping well Left, even as Fox News jumped on the Trump Train and lurched to the Right.
CNN used to be the go-to news network. At the start of Operation Desert storm in 1991, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney publicly commended their news coverage.
Speaking of talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh has said he has terminal cancer. He may well end up with his own post here, sometime in 2021.
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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 27, 2021 22:35:58 GMT -5
Actress Cloris Leachman, 94, on Tuesday (January 25) in Encitas California, of natural causes.
Leachman was best known for her role on the Mary Tyler Moore Show as Phyllis Lindstrom, the landlady and neighbor of Moore's character. In that role, she won two Emmys. In her television career, she won a grand total of six Emmys. She also starred in her own spinoff, "Phyllis". In the movies, she won an Oscar in her supporting role in "The Last Picture Show".
In 2008, at age 82, she was a contestant in "Dancing with the Stars," the oldest contestant on that show.
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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 29, 2021 18:13:47 GMT -5
Actress Cicely Tyson, 96, passed away Thursday (January 28). Lauded by many as a trailblazer, the African-American actress starred in memorable TV specials depicting the history of racism: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1974 and the mini-series Roots in 1977.
In Pittman, Tyson played a freed slave who lived into the 1960s as a 101 year old black woman witnessing the early civil rights movement. In that role she portrayed Jane Pittman over a 9 decade span. Her real life acting career on stage, screen and TV spanned seven decades, including more recent performances like How to Get Away With Murder.
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Post by SUVFan on Jan 30, 2021 13:56:13 GMT -5
Leachman was best known for her role on the Mary Tyler Moore Show *** I remembered her name but didn't watch that show much and have no memory of her character. She also had a role in Young Frankenstein but I don't remember much from that either besides the door knocker scene that involved the Dr. and Madeleine Kahn. After reading the full linked obit, I realized that I remembered her from her fairly frequent appearances on the Hollywood Squares game show. I did not know and never would have guessed that she represented Chicago in the 1946 Miss America Beauty Pageant and was among the 16 finalists in that competition. |
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Post by SUVFan on Jan 30, 2021 14:05:52 GMT -5
John Chaney, 1932-2021I remember Coach Chaney's teams quite well -- they busted many of my March Madness brackets.
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Post by gth (Columbus OH) on Jan 30, 2021 21:43:23 GMT -5
SUVFan , you didn't watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show regularly? It was one of the best shows on TV in the '70s. Besides Phyllis, that show had 2 other spinoffs:
- Rhoda, starring Valerie Harper who played Rhoda Morgenstern, the upstairs neighbor of Mary's character, Mary Richards.
- Lou Grant, starring Ed Asner, as the producer of the TV news show where Mary worked. In his spinoff, Grant moves to Los Angeles to take over editing a daily newspaper. Unlike the other shows, this was a dramatic series, not a sitcom.
There were many talented actors on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. With Cloris Leachman's passing, there are 3 left with us: Asner, Gavin MacLeod, and the irrepressible and seemingly immortal Betty White.
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Post by SUVFan on Jan 31, 2021 16:49:37 GMT -5
I'd watch the MTM show occasionally but couldn't get into it. I lived in a one TV house, too, so I didn't have control. I think there was always something on another channel I liked better maybe. I never liked the Rhoda show at all. "Dumb" is all I'm getting as a memory.
I don't remember watching Lou Grant or Phyllis, either. Which kind of makes sense given that I didn't watch the main MTM show much. Plus, Phyllis ran from the fall of '75 to '77 and LG from '77 to '82 -- I didn't watch much TV at all then other than various sports and Cheers (whenever that started, might have been later?) during those years.
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