Pete Newell, coach and innovator, died he was 93

Peter Francis Newell was an American college men's basketball coach and basketball instructional coach. He coached for 15 years at the University of San Francisco, Michigan State University and the University of California, Berkeley, compiling an overall record of 234 wins and 123 losses. He led the University of California to the 1959 NCAA men's basketball championship, and a year later coached the gold medal-winning U.S. team at the 1960 Summer Olympics. After his coaching career ended he ran a world-famous instructional basketball camp and served as a consultant and scout for several National Basketball Association (NBA) teams. He is often considered to be one of the most influential figures in the history of basketball.

(August 3, 1915 – November 17, 2008)

He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and grew up in Los Angeles, California. Encouraged by his mother, he had small roles in several movies before he turned ten. Newell attended both high school and college in Los Angeles, California, and was a classmate of Phil Woolpert at Loyola Marymount University (then called Loyola University). He played on the basketball team.


After serving in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1946, Newell was appointed head men's basketball coach at the University of San Francisco in 1946. During his four-year tenure at USF, Newell compiled a 70-37 record and coached the Dons to the 1949 National Invitation Tournament championship, beating his alma mater, Loyola.In 1950 he accepted an appointment as head coach at Michigan State University, where he stayed until 1954.

Newell returned to the West Coast in 1954 when he was hired as head coach at the University of California, Berkeley. Newell was very successful at Cal, compiling a 119-44 record, winning four consecutive Pac-8 titles from 1957 to 1960, and leading the Golden Bears to two straight appearances in the NCAA tournament championship game—which they won in 1959. Newell himself earned national Coach of the Year honors in 1960. At Berkeley, he became a faculty initiate of the Nu Chapter of Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity where player Darrall Imhoff was a member.

Newell also coached the U.S. men's Olympic basketball team to a gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics, leading a talented squad that featured future National Basketball Association (NBA) stars Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, and Jerry Lucas. His win in the Olympics made him one of only three coaches to win the "Triple Crown" of NCAA, NIT and Olympic championships. Newell is also known to have introduced the reverse-action offense in the late nineteen fifties.

After being advised by doctors to give up coaching because of stress, he served as the Athletic Director at Cal from 1960 to 1968.


Newell's wife Florence died in 1984. His four sons have all been involved with basketball. His grandson, Pete Newell Jr., led the Santa Cruz High School boys' basketball team to the California state championship in 2005.




In 1979, Newell was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. An annual college basketball tournament is held in his honor in Oakland, California, and frequent participants in the Pete Newell Challenge include USF and Cal—the very schools where Newell coached. In addition in 1987 Cal dedicated the court in Harmon Gym as "Pete Newell Court".

Since 2000, the National Association of Basketball Coaches has annually presented the Pete Newell Big Man Award to the top frontcourt player in the nation.

In an interview with Mike Greenberg on ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning on January 2, 2007, Bob Knight singled Newell out as one of the greatest coaches in college basketball history. Knight stated that although he had not won as many championships as some other coaches he felt "he was as good as anybody who's ever coached this game." Newell's influence on basketball is often stated in what would seem to be almost exaggerated terms by many Hall of Fame coaches and players. However, his contributions to the game of basketball have been so great that according to many Newell has perhaps had as much or more influence on the game of basketball as any person in the modern era.

In 1999, author Bruce Jenkins published a biography of Newell entitled A Good Man.

Newell died at Rancho Santa Fe, California on November 17, 2008, at age 93.

Dick Enderle was found dead at his home he was 60

Richard Allyn Enderle was an American guard who played eight seasons in the National Football League. Enderle attended the University of Minnesota.

(November 6, 1947 in Breckenridge, Minnesota-September 4, 2008)

Enderle was found dead at his home in Manhattan, New York on September 4, 2008.

Harry Skip Caray Jr died he was 69

Harry Christopher "Skip" Caray, Jr. died he was 69. Caray was an American sportscaster, best known for his long career as a radio and television play-by-play announcer for the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball. He was the son of baseball announcer Harry Caray, and the father of fellow Braves broadcaster Chip Caray; another son, Josh Caray, is an announcer for the Rome Braves.
(August 12, 1939 - August 3, 2008)

Skip Caray grew up in baseball as the son of Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry Caray, who would routinely refer to his son at 8:30pm during every broadcast by saying, "Good night, Skippy," a phrase for which Skip was teased throughout his adolescence.

He studied television and radio at the University of Missouri where he received a degree in journalism. He began his career in St. Louis calling Saint Louis University and St. Louis Hawks basketball. In 1968, Caray moved with the Hawks to Atlanta, where he also called Atlanta Flames hockey games.




Skip Caray's broadcasts were characterized by his witty and sarcastic sense of humor, a personality trait that endeared him to most fans, but alienated him from some.For example, during a particularly long losing streak in the 1980s, Skip declared at the start of a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, "And, like lambs to the slaughter, the Braves take the field". More recently, in a game against the Florida Marlins, the Braves had loaded the bases, to which Caray quipped, "The bases are loaded, just like (Marlins manager) Jack McKeon probably wishes he was." During the 2004 season, Caray frequently made fun of Braves relief pitcher, Jung Bong, declaring every time the opposing team got a hit against him, "that's another hit off of Bong". In 2008, a player popped a fly ball so high that Skip said "That wouldnt've been a home run in a phone booth." Other frequent targets of Skip's jokes included the Montreal Expos' mascot Youppi, New York Mets fans, professional wrestling, TBS baseball broadcast producer Glenn Diamond, and the post game B-movie frequently shown on TBS during the 1980s. In one celebrated instance, in order to get back at Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Ron Hudspeth for a critical column, Caray paid to have an airplane tow a banner above Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium during a Braves game which read, "For a good time, call Rona Hudspeth," and included Ron's actual phone number.

Among other memorable lines, Caray said of Braves pitcher Charlie Kerfeld, who was 6'4" and 245 lbs., "Boy, he is big enough to go to work." And during a losing streak, after talking about a promotion in which Braves fans could come on the field and meet the players, Caray commented, "The way things are going, we may make the fans go through a metal detector on the way to the field."

Skip was also known for his tendency to identify the hometowns of fans who catch foul balls during Braves games in jest. Fans who reside in the metro Atlanta area were identified by a random suburb, though there was no legitimacy behind these references. Similarly, when daytime home games went long, Caray would routinely give a "traffic report" at exactly 5 o'clock on radio broadcasts. It consisted of him rattling off a random list of major Atlanta arteries, and describing each one as hopelessly backed up.

In addition to his play-by-play duties, Caray also hosted a pre-game call in show, until 2004, during which he was notorious for insulting on-air fans with curt and sarcastic responses, particularly when asked baseball questions of the simplest order, such as "how do you calculate E.R.A.?" or "could you please explain the infield fly rule?"

Judging from his words over the air, Caray had a distaste for the sports entertainment empires ESPN and FOX.

Skip Caray's rather distinctive nasal voice has been parodied by former SportsCenter anchor Rich Eisen during highlights for Atlanta Braves games.



On August 3, 2008, the Atlanta Braves announced that Caray had died. His wife, Paula, reported to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that on Sunday afternoon when she thought her husband was napping, she looked out the window and saw a bird feeder not hanging where it should be and thought it had been blown down by the wind. When she stood up, she noticed her husband lying on the ground next to the bird feeder. He had been suffering from failing health for nearly a year prior, but returned to work for the 2008 season, calling a game on radio as recently as 3 days before his death. Tributes to Caray were given on all of the Atlanta television stations that evening and on WGST-AM the next morning.

Shortly after Caray's death, the Atlanta Braves began wearing a memorial patch on their uniforms that read "SKIP", which appeared on the sleeve opposite the "BEACH" patch honoring Jim Beauchamp that they had been wearing since the beginning of the 2008 season.

Chris “Flash” Richardson of the famous Harlem Globetrotters died he was 28

Chris “Flash” Richardson, a member of the famous Harlem Globetrotters has died in his sleep while on tour in Japan.
The cause of death was not yet confirmed, although a Harlem Globetrotters spokesman said he likely died of natural causes, which is interesting given he was 28 at the time of his death.
The Harlem Globetrotters were at a U.S. military base in Sasebo, Japan, as part of an annual tour.
Chris “Flash” Richardson previously played for University of Nevada Las Vegas and joined the Globetrotters shortly after his college career ended. He was best known for his dunking skills.

Carlos Manuel Santiago died he was 82

Carlos was born March 2, 1926 in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.

(March 2, 1926 - December 21, 2008)

Santiago was selected in 1944 to play for the Puerto Rico All-Star team in the Caribbean World Series, played that season in Caracas, Venezuela. When he returned from Caracas, he signed a professional contract with the Mayaguez Indians for the 1944-45 season. Following the 1945 season, Santiago traveled to New York on a barnstorming trip with other Puerto Rican All-Stars. He was scouted by Negro League veteran John Beckwith who signed him to play for the Atlanta Black Crackers. Midway through the 1945 season, Santiago left the Black Crackers and signed with the New York Cubans of the Negro National League. He played second base and shortstop for the Cubans in 1945 and 1946.


In 1947, Santiago signed with the Stamford Bombers of the Class B Colonial League. This was the same season that Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers; Santiago was the first Afro-Caribbean Puerto Rican to break the color line in "organized" baseball. The Colonial League started in 1947 and folded on July 16, 1950. Santiago hit .341 during the abbreviated 1950 season.

In 1951 Bill Veeck and Lou Boudreau invited Santiago to Cleveland's spring training camp. However, Santiago was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Korea. Santiago served for 25 months and was honorably discharged as a sergeant. Santiago returned from Korea and continued playing professionally until 1960.


After his retirement as a player, Santiago held many positions in professional baseball. He was general manager of Mayaguez for three years. He served as National Instructor of Baseball in Columbia for four years. He scouted for the California Angels for three years.

Santiago was elected to the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993. Until his passing, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Negro League Baseball Players Association.

John Costelloe's (Johnny Cakes ) died he was 47

The Brooklyn actor who played Johnny Cakes - the gay-fireman lover of a mob capo on "The Sopranos" - killed himself in a holiday tragedy that has stunned family and friends.
The front door to John Costelloe's Sunset Park home was still sealed with police stickers yesterday, more than a week after the rugged 47-year-old actor committed suicide.
Costelloe, a former FDNY firefighter, shot himself in the head in his basement bedroom on Dec. 16, cops and pals said.
"It's beyond me. This is too much for me to handle right now," the actor's dad, Michael Costelloe, 77, said yesterday.
Firefighter and former colleague Matt Dwyer couldn't believe his friend was gone. more

Harold Pinter ( playwright/director)died he was 78

Harold Pinter died he was 78. Pinter was a world-renowned English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, political activist, and president of the Central School of Speech and Drama. After publishing poetry as a teenager and acting in school plays, Pinter began his theatrical career in the mid-1950s as a rep actor using the stage name David Baron. During a writing career spanning over half a century, beginning with his first play, The Room (1957), Pinter wrote 29 stage plays; 26 screenplays; many dramatic sketches, radio and TV plays; poetry; some short fiction; a novel; and essays, speeches, and letters.


(10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008),

He is best known as a playwright and screenwriter, especially for The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), all of which he adapted to film, and for his screenplay adaptations of others' works, such as The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He also directed almost 50 stage, TV, and film productions of his own and others' works. Despite frail health since 2001, he continued to act on stage and screen, the last being the critically-acclaimed October 2006 production of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, during the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court. In addition to continuing to write (mostly poetry), give interviews, speak about political issues, and attend theatrical and cinematic premieres of his own and others' works, he accepted the presidency of the Central School of Speech and Drama in October 2008.

Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters fighting for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own remembered versions of the past; stylistically, they are marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, provocative imagery, witty dialogue, ambiguity, irony, and menace ("Biobibliographical Notes"). Thematically ambiguous, they raise complex issues of individual human identity oppressed by social forces, the power of language, and vicissitudes of memory. Like his work, Pinter has been considered complex and contradictory (Billington, Harold Pinter 388). Although Pinter publicly eschewed applying the term "political theatre" to his own work in 1981, he began writing overtly political plays in the mid-1980s, reflecting his own heightening political interests and changes in his personal life. This "new direction" in his work and his "Leftist" political activism stimulated additional critical debate about Pinter's politics. Pinter, his work, and his politics have been the subject of voluminous critical commentary .

Pinter was the recipient of nineteen honorary degrees and numerous other honors and awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the French Légion d'honneur. Academic institutions and performing arts organizations have devoted symposia, festivals, and celebrations to honouring him and his work, in recognition of his cultural influence and achievements across genres and media. In awarding Pinter the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, instigating some public controversy and criticism, the Swedish Academy cited him for being "generally regarded as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century." He received his nineteenth honorary degree from the Central School of Speech and Drama in absentia due to illness on 10 December 2008. On 25 December, his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, announced that he had died, from cancer, on 24 December 2008.


Pinter was born on 10 October 1930, in the London Borough of Hackney, to "very respectable, Jewish, lower middle class," native English parents of Eastern-European ancestry; his father, Jack Pinter (1902–1997), was a "ladies' tailor" and his mother, Frances (née Moskowitz; 1904–1992), "kept what is called an immaculate house" and was "a wonderful cook".

Although he was a "solitary" only child, he "discovered his true potential" as a student at Hackney Downs School, the London grammar school "where Pinter spent the formative years from 1944 to 1948. … Partly through the school and partly through the social life of Hackney Boys' Club … he formed an almost sacerdotal belief in the power of male friendship. The friends he made in those days—most particularly Henry Woolf, Michael (Mick) Goldstein and Morris (Moishe) Wernick—have always been a vital part of the emotional texture of his life" (Billington, Harold Pinter 11; cf. Woolf). Significantly "inspired" by his English teacher, mentor, and friend Joseph Brearley, "Pinter shone at English, wrote for the school magazine and discovered a gift for acting" (Billington, Harold Pinter 10–11). He wrote poetry frequently and published some of it as a teenager, as he has continued to do throughout his career. He played Romeo and Macbeth in 1947 and 1948, in productions directed by Brearley (Billington, Harold Pinter 13–14). He especially enjoyed running and broke the Hackney Downs School sprinting record.



From 1956 until 1980, Pinter was married to Vivien Merchant, a rep actress whom he met on tour, probably best known for her performance in the original film Alfie (1966); their son, Daniel, was born in 1958 (Billington, Harold Pinter 54, 75). Through the early '70s, Merchant appeared in many of Pinter's works, most notably The Homecoming on stage (1965) and screen (1973), but the marriage was turbulent and began disintegrating in the mid-1960s (252–56). For seven years, from 1962 to 1969, Pinter was engaged in a clandestine affair with Joan Bakewell, which informed his play Betrayal (1978) (264–66). Between 1975 and 1980, he lived with historian Lady Antonia Fraser, wife of Sir Hugh Fraser (272–76), and, in 1975, Merchant filed for divorce ("People").

After the Frasers' divorce became final in 1977 and the Pinters' in 1980, in the third week of October 1980, Pinter married Antonia Fraser. Due to a two-week delay in Merchant's signing the divorce papers, however, the reception had to precede the actual ceremony, originally scheduled "to coincide with Pinter's fiftieth birthday" on 10 October 1980 (271–72).

Unable to overcome her bitterness and grief at the loss of her husband, Vivien Merchant died of acute alcoholism in the first week of October 1982 at the age of 53 (Billington, Harold Pinter 276). According to Billington, who cites Merchant's close friends and Pinter's associates, Pinter "did everything possible to support" her until her death and regrets that he became estranged from their son, Daniel, after their separation and Pinter's remarriage (276, 345). A reclusive gifted musician and writer (345), Daniel no longer uses the surname Pinter, having adopted instead "his maternal grandmother's maiden name,"

Pinter stated publicly in interviews that he was "very happy" in his second marriage and enjoyed family life with his six adult stepchildren and 17 step-grandchildren (Billington, Harold Pinter 388, 429–30; Dougary), and, after battling cancer for a long period, considered himself "a very lucky man in every respect" . According to Lyall, who interviewed him in London for her Sunday New York Times preview of Sleuth, Pinter's "latest work, a slim pamphlet called 'Six Poems for A.,' comprises poems written over 32 years, with 'A' being Lady Antonia. The first of the poems was written in Paris, where she and Mr. Pinter traveled soon after they met. More than three decades later the two are rarely apart, and Mr. Pinter turns soft, even cozy, when he talks about his wife" ("Still Pinteresque" 16). In his interview with Lyall, Pinter "acknowledged that his plays––full of infidelity, cruelty, inhumanity, the lot––seem at odds with his domestic contentment. 'How can you write a happy play?' he said. 'Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation, disarray. I've never been able to write a happy play, but I've been able to enjoy a happy life' ".

Pinter died, from cancer, on 24 December 2008.more