Two Absent Friends - Mickey Lolich and Sonny Jurgensen

Two rather significant members of the sports world left us this past week and deserve to be remembered.

Mickey Lolich

Mickey Lolich

1940 - 2026

Mickey Lolich was 85 years old when he died this past week.  He was a solid-to-very good Major League pitcher and a genuine World Series hero.  I have a memory of first hearing about Mickey Lolich in an article in SPORT Magazine sometime in the mid-1960's that concentrated on Lolich being (a) a left-hander, (b) a bit of a flake, and (c) his somewhat, ahem, portly build.  (I have been unable to find that article in a cursory search of the inter webs.)  I then mostly forgot about him as he pitched in the American League in the days before interleague play and before every baseball game under the sun was available to watch on some television platform or another.

Then came 1968.

That was the season that has come to be known as "The Year of the Pitcher".  Bob Gibson led all of MLB with a 1.12 ERA, and the Tigers Denny McLain won 31 games. In a wonder of perfect serendipity, Gibson's Cardinals and McLain's Tigers met in the World Series that year.  This was the last season before leagues were split into divisions and the baseball post-season began to feature multiple levels of playoffs.  Because of this, some people, like my buddy Jim Haller, refer to 1968 as the last "pure" season, but that is a discussion for another time.  The Cardinals were defending World Series champs and had won two of the previous four World Series.  The stage was set for a Gibson-McLain Showdown, but then something completely unexpected happened: Mickey Lolich.

While McLain stumbled a bit in the Series, he went 1-2, Lolich picked up the slack.  He started and completed three games in that Series.  He won all three games and had an ERA of 1.67.  Lolich's third win in that Series came in Game 7 on two days rest when the opposing pitcher was none other than BOB F. GIBSON, who had won three World Series games himself in one Series the year before.  And how's this for a cherry atop the sundae?  Lolich also hit a home run in Game 2 of that Series. It was the only home run in his entire career.

History lesson, kids.  Pitchers have won three games in a single World Series only thirteen times in history. It has been done only five times in the so-called Live Ball Era, i.e., after 1920.  After Lolich did it in 1968, it wasn't accomplished again until Randy Johnson of the Diamondbacks did it in 2001, and if memory serves, Johnson's third win in that Series came in a relief role.

Lolich had a solid, but not a spectacular career.  He pitched for 16 seasons, 13 of them with Tigers. He had a career record of 217-191 with a 3.44 ERA.  He won twenty games twice.  He had nine seasons with double digit wins totals.  In 1971 he led the American League with 45 starts and 29 complete games.  He had 195 complete games in his career.  He made three All-Star teams and never won a Cy Young Award, although he finished in the Top Five of the voting twice.

Like I said, a really good pitcher, and a Genuine World Series Hero.  I hope that he never had to pick up a  restaurant check in Detroit right up until the day he died.

Sonny Jurgensen

Sonny Jurgensen

1934-2026

Hall of Fame quarterback Sonny Jorgensen died thais past week at the age of 91.  He had a career that spanned 18 NFL seasons, seven with the Eagles and eleven with Washington.  As I remember Jurgensen, and my first hand memories of him are few, I admit, he was a swaggering figure on the field, a tough guy who could take the hard hits and dish them out as well.  I remember getting his football cards and thinking that "Sonny Jurgensen" was a pretty cool name. I heard a story after his death that Vince Lombardi, who coached Sonny for that one season in Washington in 1969, called Jorgensen "the best".  I'll take Lombardi's word for that.

In his career he threw for 255 touchdowns and for over 32,000 yards.  He led the NFL in passing yards five times and in TD passes twice.  He was a backup QB on the Eagles 1960 NFL Championship team (he threw for 486 yards and five TD's that season), He made the Pro Bowl five tines, made the NFL's All-1960's Team, and he went into the Hall of Fame in 1983.

I know that he did a stint as an analyst on the Networks, but he fashioned a career as an analyst on the Washington Football Team's radio broadcast team for over thirty years.  It was in that role that be became beloved by generations of Redskins/Commanders fans that had never even seen him play.  

You just gotta love guy like that!

RIP Mickey Lolich and Sonny Jurgensen

Oh, and by the way, how many of you know what Sonny Jorgensen's baptismal name was.  I'll bet you a dollar that you don't.  

I'll save you from looking it up: Adolph Christian Jurgensen.  He was born in 1934, and I guess that it was okay to give your kid a name like that that, but I can see why went by "Sonny".

To Absent Friends - Catherine O'Hara and Bob Weir

 

Catherine O'Hara

1954-2026

The deaths of some celebrities make you feel sad for personal reasons that often times cannot be explained, and that was how I felt a few days ago when I heard the news that actress Catherine O'Hara died at the age of 71.

O'Hara first came to the attention of many of us when she was a part of the Canadian SCTV troup.  This was a company that introduced us to other comic masters that included, among others, John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Martin Short.  O'Hara then began making movies and guest appearances on TV shows, a lot of them.  She has 340 acting credits in IMDB.  Her notable featured roles came in films such as "Heartburn" (1986), "Beetlejuice" (1988), and "Home Alone" (1990). She also starred in four absolutely terrific movies that were made by Christopher Guest: "Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show", "A Might Wind", and "For Your Consideration".  Each of these four movies are comic gems, and O'Hara was a big part of all of them.  In "Best In Show" she and Levy played a married couple  traveling from Florida to Philadelphia to show their Norwich Terrier in a dog show. Throughout the trip they kept running into men who had been ex-lovers of hers. It may have been O'Hara and Levy at their best.  I will also throw in a little known mockumentary called "The Last Polka" from 1985.

 "Home Alone"

"Best in Show"

O'Hara went on to win an Emmy for her role in the award winning streaming series "Schitt's Creek", and I most recently saw her in the Emmy winning series "The Studio" where she played a deposed studio head who takes on a producer's position under the new studio head played by Seth Rogan.  She was, as you would expect, wonderful in the role.

She will be missed.

********

Bob Weir

1947-2026

Bob Weir passed away three weeks ago at the age of 78.  In 1965, at the age of 17,  Weir teamed up with San Francisco area musician Jerry Garcia to form a bad that eventually became the Grateful Dead. No, I am not a "Dead Head", and am not even all that familiar with the band's work, but when a founding member of a band that has had the profound cultural influence that the Grateful Dead has had for over sixty years passes away, it deserves to be noted.

I can remember once, somewhere in the 1990's when the Grateful Dead was playing a two or three day gig at Three Rivers Stadium.  I was out and about on business one day and on my way back to the office, I took a detour around Three Rivers Stadium just to get a glimpse of the caravans of fans, Dead Heads, who had followed the Band and camped out in the stadium parking lots in order to follow the Band on their "long strange trip".  It was an interesting experience.  I also know a guy, about my age, who has seen the Dead perform well over 100 times.

Since Weir's death, I have sought out some of the music of the Grateful Dead, and have enjoyed listening to it.  I probably should have started paying attention much sooner, like maybe fifty or sixty years ago.

A Heavenly Reunion

The long strange trip continues

RIP Catherine O'Hara and Bob Weir

"The Gales of November"

 

We are not even one full month into this new year, but I think that I already know what will be the best non-fiction book of the year for me.  It is John U. Bacon's "The Gales of November, The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald".

This past November marked the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of the this remarkable Great Lakes freighter ship, and while there have been other books, articles, and investigations into the events of November 10, 1974, author Bacon offers a different take on it.  In this book, he studies the lives of the 29 crewmen who lost their lives in this tragic event.  He also looks at the families, "the wives and the sons and the daughters", of these men.

Beyond all of that, though, I learned a lot in reading this book.  I learned just how vital the Great Lakes have been and continue to be to the economic engine of the United States.   The shipping of iron, ion ore, and taconite from the mines in the iron range of Minnesota via the Great Lakes to the industrial cities of Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, was vital to the wartime efforts during World War II, creating the "Arsenal of Democracy" that defeated the Axis.  That same industrial complex also contributed to the remarkable post-war economic boom in the United States.  Shipping tens of thousands of tons at a time in these ore carriers was infinitely more efficient than shipping overland via truck or rail. The Great Lakes were the very heart of the American economy.

I also learned of the incredible risks and dangers inherent in shipping along the Lakes.  Did you you know that it is much more dangerous sailing in fresh water than in ocean water when the weather turns bad?  I didn't, and I won't go into detail here as to why that is, but trust me, sailing upon these boats (and the people on the Lakes call them "boats", not "ships") is not for the faint of heart.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was built by the Northwest Mutual Life Insurance Company, and was named for the company's chairman.  It was christened in 1959, and was regarded as the finest boat ever built for service upon the Great Lakes. Throughout it's history, it set records in terms of tonnage of freight carried and delivered and for its speed in doing so.  Great Lakes sailors aspired to sail on it, and its crews were the best on the Lakes.  It was also easily the most luxurious of the ore boats.  It was standard that the Fitzgerald hosted VIP's from the mining, steel, and automotive companies on its various 2-3 day trips - in the summer months, when the weather was calm - along the Lakes in plush staterooms and treating them to gourmet meals along the way.  The food served on the Fitz was the best on the Great Lakes.

And it is those crewmen who are the focus of this book.  What does it take to be a sailor on these boats?  What are the duties of each person on board, from the lowly "wipers" in the engine room right on up to the Captain?  Bacon tells us all of this and also of the specifics of the 29 men who went down in Lake Superior that night.

Of course, there are no live witnesses to what happened during that storm on Lake Superior in 1975, but Bacon gives us a pretty good idea, based on radio exchanges between Captain Ernest McSorley on the Fitzgerald and Captain Bernie Cooper of the Arthur Anderson, a boat that was sailing about ten miles behind the Fitzgerald that night.  McSorley, by the way, was a 44 year veteran sailor on the Great Lakes and was regarded as the best Captain on the Lakes.  The trip that the Edmund Fitzgerald took that November was scheduled to be the last trip of the season and McSorley's last as captain before he was to retire.

It was fascinating to read about how crew members came to be on the Fitzgerald that night, and how some who were supposed to be on it were not.  "Survivor's guilt" was real thing among some of those sailors.  Here are the stories of the families of those men.  Most of them didn't know each other, but in the fifty year aftermath, they became a tight knit community who relied upon each other to get through life after the tragedy.  Bacon interviewed family members of fourteen of the twenty-nine crewmen.  Their stories are remarkable.

Then there is the story of Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot and his ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".  You all know the song.  How Lightfoot came to write and record it, and how it was received by the families of the victims, and how Lightfoot himself became an integral part of the community of the Family of those who were lost on the Fitzgerald.   It is this song that, more than anything, kept the tragedy alive in the minds of the public.  As John Bacon himself has said, "Without the song, there would be no book."

There were, of course, investigations and studies into what exactly happened that November night in 1975.   There were and are no live witnesses, of course, so we'll probably never really know.  As one of the family members put it, "Only thirty people know, God and the twenty-nine men who died that night."

The Edmund Fitzgerald leaves one remarkable legacy.  Its loss led to the institution of new safety measures in both ship construction, and in safety regarding weather reporting, and in the scheduling of the the trips across the Lakes between the iron range and the industrial delivery points.  In one hundred years covering 1875 to 1975, approximately 6,000 boats were lost on the Great Lakes and over 30,000 lives were lost.   Since 1975, there has been not a single ship or life has been lost.  The  Edmund Fitzgerald  was the last of the Great Lakes shipwrecks.

Four Stars from The Gradstander.

"All that remains are the faces and the names

of the wives and the sons and the daughters"

What About Al Oliver?

 

When I made THIS POST last week commenting on the newest members of Baseball's Hall of Fame,  Carlos Beltran, Andrew Jones, and Jeff Kent, it prompted a response from Big Brother Bill Sproule similar to the question posed in the headline above.

Ask and you shall receive.....

	Carlos Beltran	Andruw Jones	Jeff                Kent	Al                     Oliver	Dave    Parker
Seasons	20	17	17	18	19
Games	2,586	2,192	2,298	2,368	2,466
Hits	2,725	1,933	2,461	2,743	2,712
Runs	1,582	1,204	1,320	1,189	1,272
HR	435	434	377	219	339
RBI	1,587	1,289	1,518	1,326	1,493
BA	0.279	0.254	0.290	0.303	0.290
OPS	0.837	0.823	0.855	0.795	0.810
per 162 games
Hits	171	143	173	188	178
Runs	99	95	93	81	84
HR	27	32	27	15	22
RBI	99	95	107	91	98
“Similarity Scores”	7 of 10 Hall of Famers	2 of 10 Hall of Famers	4 of 10 Hall of Famers	5 of 10 Hall of Famers	4 of 10 Hall of Famers

I also threw in the numbers for Pirates HOF'er and Al Oliver Bucco contemporary Dave Parker.  While Scoops had more hits and a better average than these four, he lags behind all of them in terms of home run power and OPS.  A case can certainly be made for putting Al in the Hall of Very, Very Good, and that seems to be what it takes to get into Cooperstown these days.

Interestingly enough, one of the five Hall of Famers that baseball-reference rates as "similar to" Al Oliver is Roberto Clemente.

The Championship Games

 

One of my favorite sports days of the year did not let me down as the AFC and NFC Championship Games produced a lot of drama in determining the upcoming Super Bowl matchup indicated in the photo above.

New England 10 - Denver 7

This one started out to be a very MEH kind of a game.  Denver, playing with a backup QB Jared Stidham, scored early and took a 7-0 lead.  New England's QB Drake Maye played not so well, but The Patriots recovered a fumble inside the Broncos 15 yard line and were able to tie the game 7-7 at the half.  Oh, and each team suffered failed field goal attempts during the first half.

The Pats took the opening second half kick-off and drove over 80 yards and consumed close to eight minutes of game time that led to a field goal and a 10-7 lead.  As that drive was unfolding, though, a curious thing happened. A day that started sunny and clear turned into a blizzard-y snow game.

My friend Vic says that the snow ruined what should have been a good game.  I say that the snow turned what had been a plodding affair into a fascinating game both visually and strategically.  I especially enjoyed hearing Tony Romo on the telecast stressing how the conditions were so varied depending on which direction of the field you were going.  After New England was able to kick a FG at the end of that opening second half drive to take a 10-7 lead, Romo  made a point of mentioning that conditions were such that he didn't think that either team would be able to score for the rest of the game, and he turned out to be correct.

Seattle 31 - LA Rams 27

Whatever the Pats-Broncos game lacked in excitement, this one more than made up for it.  Lots of scoring, spectacular scoring plays, great quarterback play from Sam Arnold and Matthew Stafford, and gift touchdowns for each team (a muffed punt by LA that resulted in a Seahawks TD; an unsportsmanlike conduct on a knucklehead Seattle DB on a fourth down play that gave the Rams a first down, which Stafford immediately converted into a long TD pass against the same knucklehead DB).  It also featured plays by WR's Puka Nacua, Cooper Kupp, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba that were utterly amazing to watch.

Just one terrific football game, to go along with two other terrific games between these two teams during the regular season.  If the NFL doesn't match these two against each other for the Thursday Night opening game next year, they're crazy.

Oh, and speaking of drama, I mentioned in my post yesterday that back on December 8, I made a $2.50 sucker bet parlay bet that both New England and Seattle would win their respective Conference Championships.  As neither game was in the bag until the final gun sounded, that wager certainly added a bit of spice for me as the games unfolded.  It turned out to be well worth it:

Shortly after the NFC game ended last night, FanDuel posted a line of Seattle -4.5 points with an O/U of 46.5 points for the Super Bowl.  Lots of time to reflect and slice and dice all aspects of the coming game, but based on what I saw yesterday, Seattle certainly deserves the role of favorite in this one.

Steelers New Coach and Other Football Stuff

Today is perhaps my favorite day on the Sports Year Calendar - Championship Sunday, the two penultimate games of the NFL season that will determine who will meet in the Super Bowl. (Question:  Can two separate items, football games in this case, be considered "penultimate"? I will leave that for the grammarians among you.) However, consideration of those games has been moved to the back burner because of the news from Steelers headquarters that came down yesterday afternoon.

Yes, the Steelers have named the successor for for Mike Tomlin, and he is former Packers (Steelers fans will painfully recall that he won a Super Bowl in Green Bay) and Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy.  Is McCarthy a good football coach?  His record and his history prove that he absolutely is, but is he the right choice for the Steelers in 2026?  That is a much more difficult question to answer.  

For whatever my opinion is worth, which isn't much, I admit, the move does not excite me.  I was hoping that the team would do what they did the last three times that they hired a coach (Noll, Cowher, and Tomlin) and that is hire a young up and coming guy who would grow into the job and eventually achieve long term success with the team. The two names that intrigued me were Rams assistants Chris Shula and Nate Scheelhaas.  McCarthy is 62 years old and has been around the block many times.   This does not figure to be a long term position for him.  When Dan Rooney took over the running of the team from his father and hired Noll, it signified a change in the way the Steelers did business and it changed the fortunes of the franchise forever.  The McCarthy hire is the first one by Dan's son, Art Rooney II, and it smacks of the way Art Sr. did business:  hire a local pal, some guy off of the "Old Boys' Network" and hope it works out.  Rinse, lather, and repeat three years later.

Oh, I mentioned a "local guy".  Yep, Mike McCarthy is a local guy from the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Greenfield, right next the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where I grew up. This was the first thing mentioned when the news of the hiring was made, and, in fact, this was the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports section today:

I can only hope that THIS was not Rooney's and GM Omar Kahn's main consideration in hiring McCarthy for the job.   Where the guy is from and where he grew up should be just about the last consideration for such a job.

Final thought for today on this topic.  McCarthy is an offensively oriented coach.  I hope that this means that he will invest time and energies into developing a quarterback, hopefully for the long term, and I hope that such energies are invested in Will Howard as the team moves into 2026.  From what you hear and read, the team will not be in a position to draft a franchise QB this year, so why not go with Howard and see where it leads you?  The other option is another six month will-he-or-won't-he dance with now 42 year old Aaron Rodgers.  I am on record for loving seeing Rodgers here this past season, but the team needs to move on.

********

Before moving on to the NFL games today, I can't go on without saluting what the University of Indiana did this past college football season and, more recently, winning the CFP Championship game this past Monday night.  The Hoosiers, you may have heard, have lost more games than any other college team in history, but this year that went 16-0 and won the National Championship.  It was a remarkable season and accomplishment and perhaps the best sports story of the year in America.

Fernando Mendoza score the game winner 

Indiana 27 - Miami 24

********

That brings us to New England vs Denver in the AFC and Los Angeles Rams vs. Seattle in the NFC.   I admit to having strong rooting interests in both of these games due to two small parlay wagers that I made back on December 8:

		BET	PAYOUT
12/8	Parlay:Broncos/Rams Conf Champs	2.50	38.59
	Parlay: Patriots/Seahawks Conf Champs	2.50	54.83

I like my chances for a nice payout today, one way or another, but especially on the Pats/Seahawks combo.

Enjoy the games.

To Absent Friends - Wilbur Wood

 

Wilbur Wood

1941-2026

Former major league pitcher Wilbur Wood passed away earleir this month at the age of 84.  At first, I wasn't going to note his passing here, but have since had second thoughts because Wood was something that we may never see again in baseball: a true work-horse of a pitcher.

His career spanned 17 seasons, primarily with the White Sox (12 seasons), and he did pitch in 37 games for the Pirates in 1964-65 before being traded to the White Sox for pitcher Juan Pizarro in 1966.  In retrospect, perhaps not one of Joe L. Brown's most astute deals.  

Wood was a knuckleball specialist, which enabled him to avoid the usual stresses and strains suffered by baseball pitchers.  He appeared in 651 games over the course of his career, 297 starts, 198 complete games, and 354 relief appearances. HIs career record was 164-156 with a 3.24 ERA.  All of this leads me to highlight some extraordinary statistics from a five year stretch of Wood's career.

	Starts	Innings Pitched	W-L
1971	42	334.0	22-13
1972	49*	376.2*	24*-17	3rd in Cy Young vote
1973	48*	359.1*	24*-20	2nd in Cy Young vote
1974	42*	320.1	20-19	5th in Cy Young vote
1975	43*	290.1	16-20*
* Led MLB in category

Just focus on those Innings Pitched totals.  To put it into some sort of perspective, compare them to....

• Most IP 2025 - Garrett Crochet, Boston 205.1
• Most IP last ten seasons (2016-25) - David Price, Boston 230.0
• Most IP, 21st century (2001-25) - Roy Halladay, Toronto 266.0

To be sure, Wilbur Wood was no Hall of Famer, but he was an incredibly solid major league pitcher, and we will probably never see an innings eating pitcher like him ever again.

RIP Wilbur Wood.