To Absent Friends - Butkus, Wakefield, Christopher, and Garry

A week's vacation followed by a week's illness has resulted in a huge back-up in the Departure Lounge, so let's get to wishing some sad farewells to some noteworthy individuals.

Dick Butkus

Tributes to the Chicago Bears Hall of Fame linebacker have been abundant, so just let me add my own specific memory of Dick Butkus.

In Week 8 of the 1969 NFL season, the 1-6 Steelers traveled to Chicago to play 0-7 Bears.  Surely, this would be an opportunity for the awful Steelers to end a six game losing streak against an equally awful Chicago Bears team.  Per Wikipedia: "Sacked 8 times, twice for safeties, Dick Shiner and Terry Hanratty were terrorized by Dick Butkus and his defense, giving the Bears their only win in 1969."

I remember that game, and I remember Butkus being an almost super-human performer in it.  The Steelers lost 38-7, and I can remember that midway through the game, Chuck Noll pulled rookie QB Hanratty and replaced him with the veteran Shiner for fear that Butkus would totally crush the rookie both physically and mentally.

From that day forward, no one ever had to convince me of just how great and how dominant Dick Butkus was.

Historical footnotes from that game.....It was the last game that the Steelers would ever play at Wrigley Field.....Both Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo scored TD's for the Bears.....it was Piccolo's last home game for the Bears. He was diagnosed with cancer later that month, and died in June, seven months later....That was the Bears only win of he season.  Both Chicago and Pittsburgh finished at 1-13. A coin flip was held to see who got the first pick in the draft.  The Steelers won the flip, and selected Terry Bradshaw and we all know how that played out.  So, perhaps if Butkus HADN'T been so great against the Steelers that day, and if the Steelers had won that game, and there was no coin flip, and if the Bears had taken Bradshaw....

Dick Butkus was 80 years old.

Tim Wakefield

Tim Wakefield's death due to cancer is especially sad because it came at the way-too-young age of 57.   He is remembered mainly as a Boston Red Sox pitcher, but his career began with the Pirates.  He was a failed minor league first baseman and was about to be released by the Pirates when the team gave him a one-last-chance shot as a knuckleball pitcher.   He made it to the Pirates in 1992, and what a debut!

In eighteen games, he went 8-1 with a 2.15 ERA, four complete games, and one shutout.  More importantly, he went 2-0, both complete games, against the Braves in the NLCS.  He was set to be named the MVP of that Series until the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 and Francisco Cabrera and Sid Bream and the game we don't ever want to talk about here in Pittsburgh.

In 1993, he backslid and went 6-11, 5.61.  He was sent back to the minors, and was eventually released by the Pirates.  Nobody was clamoring for him, and it was thought that he would be just another one hit wonder.  Baseball history is full of them.  However, in 1995 the Red Sox took a flyer on him and there he stayed for seventeen seasons.  He won 186 games (a total of 200 for his career) for Boston and played on two World Series Championship teams.

Were you as surprised as I was when you heard after his death that in all of Red Sox history, only Cy Young and Roger Clemens won more games than Tim Wakefield?  That is some list to be on.

Joe Christopher

The headline on the wire service obituary said "Joe Christopher, An Original Met, Dies at 88."  Being an Original Met is a distinction to be sure, but it also must be remembered that Christopher was also a part of the 25 man World Series roster of the 1960 Pirates, still Pittsburgh's most revered sports teams.  Christopher was the fifth outfielder on that team, and used often as a pinch runner by Danny  Murtaugh.

With his death, only five players remain from that 1960 team....Roy Face, Vernon Law, Bill Mazeroski, Bob Oldis, and Bob Skinner.  Maz, at 87 years of age, is the youngest of the five.

John Garry Lindemulder

John Garry

1931-2023

John Garry, as he was known professionally, died earlier this month at the age of 91.  He and partner Larry O'Brien ruled the Pittsburgh morning drive airwaves for over twenty years from 1975 to 1997 on WTAE 1250 and on 96.1 FM.  I spent my entire working career, it seems, waking, showering, dressing, and driving to work listening to O'Brien and Garry.  To me at least, they were the team that finally filled the void in  Pittsburgh radio left when Rege Cordic and Cordic & Company left in 1965 for Los Angeles.

I can still remember many of the bits that these guys performed over the years.  It is radio and television personalities like John Garry that become such a rich part of the communities in which they worked.

John Garry was 91 years old.

RIP Dick Butkus, Tim Wakefield, Joe Christopher, John Garry