These Things Come In Threes, You Know

One of my hobbies of late has been jumping on Yahoo! Sports and perusing the recent news category for unique stuff to write about. There are always some interesting stories buried in there - it's where I originally found the one about the doctor who injected race horses with vodka to calm their nerves, the one about the grand plan to have the Olympic torch climb Mount Everest later this year, and the one about the growth of senior women's basketball in the United States. Bottom line, I enjoy finding things that others might not have heard about and bringing it to their attention.

While looking around tonight, I stumbled upon this little tidbit: Hall of Fame goalie Worsley dies. Worsley, a Calder Trophy winner in the early 1950s who went by the nickname Gump "because his hair stuck up like Andy Gump, the comic strip character", had suffered a heart attack on Monday and held on for five days before passing away at the age of 77. I learned three things of note from his obituary: one, he holds the NHL's career record for losses. Two, he is in the Hall of Fame despite losing more games than he won (335-352-150). And three, he played most of his career without a mask. WITHOUT A MASK. He was a GOALIE!

The news of Worsley's death caught my eye because of another story I had seen earlier this week: Hall of Fame baseball writer Lang dies. Jack Lang was the secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America for 22 years from 1966 to 1988 and the recipient of the 1986 J.G. Taylor Spink Award. The latter honor put him in the company of writers such as Grantland Rice, Damon Runyan and Peter Gammons; the former allowed him the enviable task of counting Hall of Fame votes and calling the winners to notify them of their election, a job that earned him the nickname "The Good News Man". He was 85 or 86 at the time of his death, depending on the day, and did perhaps the coolest thing ever upon realizing the hour of his passing was near: "he called a colleague to be sure all the biographical information for his obituary was correct." Talk about being accepting of your impending demise.

Now I was on to something. My wife always likes to say that these things happens in threes; if two celebrities die, you know a third can't be far behind. At first, I thought it was Bing Devine, the St. Louis Cardinals general manager who was most famous for engineering the deal that brought Lou Brock to the Redbirds and for being replaced as GM by Branch Rickey in the middle of a season that ended with a World Series victory for the Cardinals. Devine died Saturday at the age of 90, making him a logical "third" in this equation.

But hold on a minute: Gump Worsley was a Hall of Famer. Jack Lang was a Hall of Famer (sort of - I don't think the writers should be referred to as "Hall of Famers", per se - the more correct term would be that they have been "honored by" the Hall of Fame. Maybe I'm just bitter over the fact that when Gammons received his award, every ESPN program he appeared on began referring to him as "The Hall of Famer" Peter Gammons, and it got old after awhile. But I digress). Bing Devine, though a commendable general manager during his time with the Cardinals, was not a Hall of Famer. He didn't quite fit in.

Then, suddenly, there it was: Longtime Giants coach, scout Kavanaugh dead at 90. Ken Kavanaugh played for the Chicago Bears in the 1940s before becoming an assistant coach and scout for the New York Giants from 1955-1999. He was also the third piece of the puzzle, a Louisiana State product who was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1963.

So there you have it. It took some finagling, but the rule of three still applies in the matter of Worsley, Lang and Kavanaugh. Of course, Devine is another well known sports personality who passed away recently, so who knows what the future will hold.

Wasn't Barbaro in the hospital on Saturday?