Amy Applegren, American baseball player (All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) died she was , 83.

Amy Irene "Lefty" Applegren  was a pitcher and infielder who played from 1944 through 1953 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5'4, 125 lb., she batted and threw left-handed died she was , 83..

(November 16, 1926 – April 3, 2011)

Early life

Born in Peoria, Illinois, Amy Applegren was one of five siblings in the family of Roy and Amy [nee Gardiner] Applegren. She started playing softball at the age of eleven for the Farrow Chicks, a team based in her hometown. In the early 1940s she joined the Caterpillar Dieselettes, where she came to the attention of a scout of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The league had been founded the year before by Philip K. Wrigley, a chewing-gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball club. Wrigley feared that major leaguers would be drafted into the military during World War II, while minor leaguers were already being called up. Teams of girls (never called women) seemed like a way to fill ballparks, according to an article in Smithsonian magazine in 1989. Applegren showed up at Peru, Illinois for a tryout and was offered a contract to play. The league lasted for 12 seasons from 1943 to 1954, and she played in all but the first and last seasons.^[2][3][4][5]

AAGPBL career

Applegren joined the AAGPBL in 1944 with the Rockford Peaches, playing for them two years. A hard-thrower underhand lefty, Applegren posted a 16-15 record for Rockford in her season debut and went 13-11 the next year, as part of a pitching rotation that included Carolyn Morris and Jean Cione. In the interim, she graduated from Peoria Manual High School.^[6]
The Peaches, with Bill Allington at the helm, clinched the league title in 1945 with a 67-43 record and later defeated the Fort Wayne Daisies in the best-of-seven series, four to one games, behind a strong pitching effort from Morris (3-0) and the opportune hitting of Dorothy Kamenshek (6-for-21, .285).^[2][7][8][9]
Applegren opened 1946 with the expansion Muskegon Lassies, managed by Buzz Boyle, as the league usually switched players as needed to help new teams to be competitive. Nevertheless, the Lassies went 46-66 their first year, good enough for a modest sixth place in the now eight-team league. Applegren struggled to an 8-18 record, even though she hurled a no-hitter against the Grand Rapids Chicks on July 31.^[2][10][11]
The first AAGPBL spring training outside the United States was held in 1947 in Havana, Cuba, as part of a plan to create an International League of Girls Baseball. All the teams stayed at the Seville Biltmore Hotel and were filmed for Fox Movietone News going down the steps at the University of Havana. On the other hand, the Brooklyn Dodgers trained in the Cuban capital because Jackie Robinson, who would be the first Afro-American to play in the Major Leagues, was training with the Dodgers for the first time. By then, city ordinances in Vero Beach, Florida, where the Dodgers normally trained, prevented blacks and whites players from competing on the same field against each other. Notably, newspaper stories from Havana indicate that the All-American girls drew larger crowds for their exhibition games at Estadio Latinoamericano than did the Dodgers. That season the league made the transition from underhand to full side-arm pitching.^[5][12]
Muskegon, now managed by legendary Bill Wambsganss, saw a vast improvement in 1947. Besides Applegren, the revamped Lassies included top notch players as Jo Lenard (OF), Dorothy Maguire (C), Charlene Pryer (IF), Doris Sams (OF/P), Dorothy Stolze (IF), Nancy Warren (P) and Evelyn Wawryshyn (IF), among others. Muskegon (69-43) won a close pennant race with the Grand Rapids Chicks (65-47), having three of the top four leaders in earned run average with Sams (0.98), Applegren (1.06) and Warren (1.13), but failed in the first round of the playoffs dropping 3 of 4 games to the Racine Belles.^[10][13]
In 1948 Applegren moved to first base as the league shifted strictly to overhand pitching. She then turned in a competent defensive player and a solid hitter. She spent part of two seasons with Muskegon, and was dealt back to Rockford during the 1949 midseason.^[14][15]
Applegren played for the Peaches through 1952, being part of the champion teams in 1949 and 1950, and joined the South Bend Blue Sox in 1953 for her last AAGPBL season.^[16][17]
With their fourth Championship Title the Rockford team set an all-time record in the league. Interestingly, Applegren was a member of three Peaches champion teams (including her 1945 season), being glorified for the same feat by Eleanor Callow, Lois Florreich and Ruth Richard (all of them did it from 1948 through 1950). Nevertheless, the four girls were surpassed by the eternal Rose Gacioch, who did it in 1945 and from 1948 to 1950, to set an all-time record for the most championship titles for a player while playing in the same team.^[10]

Life after baseball

Following her baseball days, Applegren returned to Peoria and worked for Caterpillar Tractor Company as a data entry clerk for insurance benefits. She retired in 1985, after 19 years of work. Applegren, who never married, lived with her mother and took care of her. After retiring from Caterpillar she enjoyed playing golf and bowling.^[2][18][19]
In the early 1980s, a group of former members of the league led by June Peppas created the AAGPBL Players Association and lobbied to have the circuit recognized in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, New York. Yet it was not really a well know fact until 1992, when filmmaker Penny Marshall premiered her film A League of Their Own, which was a fictionalized account of activities during the league's first season. This film brought a rejuvenated interest to the extinct league, while many of the real players began to earn a rebirth of celebrity over the years for coming.^[5][20]
Commenting about the event, Applegren said, When you concede both the pioneer nature of the AAGPBL and the league’s high caliber of play, it seems only fitting the AAGPBL be accorded such a place of honor in the history of our national pastime. In 1993, she received word she had been selected for membership in the Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Fame.^[2][6][18]
Amy Applegren died in Washington, Illinois on April 3, 2011 at the age of 83.^[21]

Career statistics

Pitching

GP	W	L	W-L%	ERA	IP	H	RA	ER	BB	SO	WHIP
206	86	98	.467	2.52	1451	905	586	407	880	501	1.23

Batting

GP	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA
234	1007	102	237	15	3	1	73	61	72	66	.235

Fielding

PO	A	E	TC	DP	FA
2435	535	90	3060	86	.971

 

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Ulli Beier, German writer died he was , 88.

 Horst Ulrich (Ulli) Beier was a German editor, writer and scholar, who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and poetry in Papua New Guinea died he was , 88.. His wife Georgina Beier had an instrumental role in simultaneously stimulating the visual arts in both Nigeria and Papua New Guinea.

(30 July 1922 – 3 April 2011) 

Beier was born in Glowitz, Germany, in July 1922. His father was a medical doctor and an appreciator of art and raised his son to embrace the arts. After the Nazi party' rise to power, the Beiers, who are non-practicing Jews, left for Palestine. In Palestine, while his family were briefly detained as enemy aliens by the British authorities, Ulli Beier was able to earn a BA as an external student from the University of London. However, he later moved to London to earn a degree in Phonetics. A few years later, after his first marriage to the Austrian artist Susanne Wenger, he was given a faculty position at the University of Ibadan to teach Phonetics.

Career

While at the University, Beier transferred from the Phonetics department to the Mural Studies department. It was at the Mural Studies department he became interested in Yoruba culture and arts. Though, he was a teacher at Ibadan, he ventured outside the city and lived in nearby cities, of Ede, Ilobu and Osogbo, this gave him an avenue to see the spatial environment of different Yoruba communities. In 1956, after visiting the First Congress of Negro Artists and Writers organized by Presence Africaine at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France Ulli Beier returned to Ibadan and founded the magazine Black Orpheus, the name was inspired by Jean Paul Sartre's essay "Orphée Noir". The journal quickly became the leading space for Nigerian authors to write and publish their work. The journal became known for its innovative works and literary excellence and was widely acclaimed. Later in 1961, Beier, co-founded the Mbari Artists and Writers Club, Ibadan, a place for new writers, dramatist and artists, to meet and perform their work. In 1962, he co-founded (with the dramatist Duro Ladipo) Mbari-Mbayo, Osogbo. In the early 1980s he founded and directed the Iwalewa Haus, an art centre at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.
Ulli Beier was known for his efforts in translating African literary works. He emerged as one of the scholars who introduced African writers to a large international audience for his works in translating plays of dramatists such as Duro Ladipo and publishing Modern Poetry (1963) an anthology of African poems.
After Beier left Nigeria in 1968, he worked in Papua New Guinea and intermittently returned to Nigeria for brief periods. While in Papua New Guinea, he co-organised with Georgina Beier the country's first art exhibition, at the University of Papua New Guinea’s Centre for New Guinea Cultures, featuring artwork by Timothy Akis. Ulli Beier created the literary periodical Kovave: A Journal of New Guinea literature, which reproduced works by Papua New Guinean artists including Timothy Akis and Mathias Kauage.^[2] His efforts have been described as significant in facilitating the emergence of Papua New Guinean literature.^[3]
While in Papua New Guinea, he encouraged Albert Maori Kiki to record his autobiography, which Beier transcribed and edited. The book, Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime was published in 1968.^[4]
He lived in Sydney, Australia with his wife and artist Georgina Beier. Beier died aged 88 on 3 April 2011 at his home in Annandale.

Published works

• Voices of Independence: New Black Writing from Papua New Guinea, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. 251 pp.s
• Editor: The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, 1999.
• Black Orpheus: An Anthology of New African and Afro-American Stories, 1965.
• Thirty Years of Oshogbo Art, Iwalewa House, Bayreuth, 1991.
• Neue Kunst in Afrika: das Buch zur Austellung, Reimer, Berlin, 1980 (Contemporary Art in Africa, Pall Mall Press, London, 1968).
• A Year of Sacred Festivals in One Yoruba Town, Nigeria Magazine, Marina, Lagos, Nigeria, 1959.

 

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Martin Horton, English cricketer, died after a long illness he was , 76.

Martin John Horton  was an English cricketer, who played in two Tests in 1959 died after a long illness he was , 76. He was born in Worcester, England, and played the bulk of his first-class cricket for his native county.
Cricket writer, Colin Bateman, noted that Horton was, "a versatile all-rounder who could bat anywhere in the top six and who twice took more than 100 wickets in a season with his off-spin..."

(21 April 1934 – 3 April 2011)

Life and career

Horton made his debut for Worcestershire in 1952, and was an integral part of the side which won the County Championship in 1964 (for the first time in the county's history) and 1965.^[1] He passed 1,000 runs in a season on 11 occasions, scoring 2,468 runs in 1959, the year he won his two Test caps. He scored a half century against India in his first Test and took 2 for 24 in his second. He was dropped from the side, never to return. He achieved the double in 1955 and 1961, and he took 9 for 56 against the 1955 South Africans. In nearly two decades of cricket, he took 825 first-class wickets in all and scored 23 centuries with the bat.
In 1966, Horton moved to New Zealand and played four seasons of cricket with Northern Districts before becoming the national team's coach, a position he maintained for seventeen seasons. He remained there until 1983, when he returned to Worcester to become cricket coach at the Royal Grammar School, a post he held until 1996. He also became chairman of Worcestershire County Cricket Club.
Horton died following a long illness in April 2011.^[2]

 

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Kevin Jarre American screenwriter (Tombstone, Glory, The Mummy), died from heart failure he was , 56,.

Kevin Jarre was an American screenwriter, actor, and film producer died from heart failure he was , 56.

(August 6, 1954 – April 3, 2011) 

Jarre was born in Detroit, Michigan, to actress Laura Devon who subsequently married Maurice Jarre in the mid-1960s, and hence was the adoptive half-brother to French composer Jean-Michel Jarre. Of his more well-known film scripts include Rambo: First Blood Part II, Glory, and Tombstone. Jarre wrote the screenplays for The Mummy and The Devil's Own as well, while also producing The Jackal. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay and a WGA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing Glory.
Jarre died in Santa Monica, California of heart failure, age 56.^[1]

 

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Calvin Russell, American protest singer-songwriter and guitarist died he was , 62.

Calvin Russell  was an American roots rock singer-songwriter and guitarist died he was , 62..
Born Calvert Russell Kosler, at the age of twelve he started to learn guitar and at thirteen joined a band called 'The Cavemen'. In 1989 he met Patrick Mathe of the French record label New Rose. After his first album was released, Russell started touring in Europe in 1990, and became quite popular there while remaining fairly unknown at home.^[1]
Russell died on April 3, 2011 in Garfield, Texas of cancer at the age of 62.^[2]

(November 1, 1948 – April 3, 2011)

Discography

• A Crack in Time (1990)
• Sounds from the Fourth World (1991)
• Soldier (1992)
• Le Voyageur - Live (1993)
• Dream of the Dog (1995)
• Calvin Russell (1997)
• The Story of Calvin Russell - This Is My life (1998)
• Sam (1999)
• Crossroad (2000)
• Rebel Radio (2002)
• A Man in Full (2004)
• In Spite of It All (2005)
• Unrepentant (2007)
• Dawg Eat Dawg (2009)
• Contrabendo (2011)

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Mandi Schwartz, Canadian college ice hockey player, died from acute myeloid leukemia she was , 23.

Mandi Jocelyn Schwartz  was a Canadian player with the Yale Bulldogs women's ice hockey team  died from acute myeloid leukemia she was , 23.. In December 2008 — her junior year at Yale University — Schwartz was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Her diagnosis and search for a bone marrow or stem cell transplant resulted in bone marrow drives being held at Yale and in Canada. While bone marrow drives held at Yale University did not result in a match for Schwartz, they did result in six matches for other patients on the registry who were waiting for a transplant. She underwent a stem cell transplant from donated umbilical cord blood in September 2010. In December 2010, she learned that the cancer had returned and discontinued most forms of treatment. Schwartz died in Regina, Saskatchewan, at the age of 23.

(February 3, 1988 – April 3, 2011)

Hockey career

Schwartz played minor hockey at Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox, Saskatchewan.^[1] She joined the Yale Bulldogs after graduating high school in 2006.^[1] Schwartz attended evaluation camps for Canadian national women's ice hockey team hosted by Hockey Canada.^[1]

Illness and death

Schwartz was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in December 2008, during her junior year at Yale.^[1] She had been sick for much of the fall semester, but attributed it to stress and an initial diagnosis of anemia. She was diagnosed on December 8, 2008.^[2] She started treatment for her cancer in December 2008 and was able to briefly return to school and began practicing with the hockey team again in January 2010. In April 2010, she received word that her cancer had returned and was forced to leave school.^[2]
Doctors had decided that Schwartz's best option for treatment would be either a cord blood or bone marrow transplant. In the hopes of finding a match, bone marrow drives were organized at Yale University and at several locations throughout Canada. Drives held at Yale resulted in more than 1,600 people volunteering as potential donors.^[3] Bone marrow drives did not result in a match for Schwartz, but doctors found a suitable donor from umbilical cord blood. In September 2010, Schwartz underwent the transplant in Seattle.^[4] Her cancer went into remission after the transplant, but returned again in December 2010. Shortly after this, Schwartz decided to discontinue most forms of treatment.^[4] Rather than hoping for a cure, Schwartz continued with palliative chemotherapy designed to minimize her symptoms.^[5] On April 2, 2011, she entered a Regina hospital and died the following day.^[1][2][4]

Personal life

Schwartz was the daughter of Rick and Carol Schwartz. Her brothers, Jaden and Rylan, both play for the Colorado College men's ice hockey team. Jaden was a first round draft pick of the St. Louis Blues in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft.^[4] She was engaged to Kaylem Prefontaine, whom she had met in high school. They had planned to marry in 2012.^[6]

Legacy

Yale University has made bone marrow drives an annual event on campus. The first two drives signed up over 1,600 potential donors. The 2011 drive was held in April, shortly after Schwartz's death. Shortly after the event, it was announced that the drive had unofficially signed up another 869 potential donors.^[7] Although the school's drives did not find a match for Schwartz, they have generated six other matches for patients who required a bone marrow transplant.^[8] The success of Yale's bone marrow drives is statistically unlikely, according to Sam Rubin who works in Yale's sports publicity department. Rubin stated, "Usually, it takes tens of thousands of people to get one match. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack."^[6]

 

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Gustavo Sondermann, Brazilian racing driver, died from a race crash he was , 29.

 Gustavo Sondermann was a Brazilian racing driver died from a race crash he was , 29..

(February 17, 1982 – April 3, 2011)

Career

Sondermann began racing karts at the age of sixteen and soon moved up to the Brazilian Formula Renault championship for 2002, in which he competed for two years with mixed results. In 2004 he moved to Europe to compete in the equivalent British series, and also made a guest appearance in the Formula Renault Eurocup the following year, but subsequently returned to Brazil in 2006 to compete in the national stock car championship.
He competed in the second tier of the series, known variously as Stock Car Light, Stock Car Copa Vicar and latterly as the Copa Chevrolet Montana from 2006 until 2011, winning four races in total and with a best finish of third place in the championship in 2007, a year soured by the death of his team-mate, Rafael Sperafico, in the season finale. In 2010, he competed in seven races of the premier Stock Car Brasil division, scoring six points and finishing in 31st place in the championship. He also competed in the third-tier Mini Challenge series, the GT4 Brasil Championship and the Pick Up Racing Brasil series, winning the last of these in 2008.

Death

During the first race of the 2011 Copa Chevrolet Montana season, held in heavy rain at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace, Sondermann was hit by several cars and ultimately by Pedro Boesel at the fast Curva do Café before the start-finish straight. He was extricated from his car and transferred to hospital in a coma after having had cardiac arrest, where he later was diagnosed braindead. His organs were donated.

References

• "The racing career of Gustavo Sondermann — in detail". driverdb.com. Retrieved 2011-04-04.
• Honorio, Rafael (2011-04-03). "Após acidente, Gustavo Sondermann tem morte cerebral confirmada" (in Portuguese). globoesporte.globo.com (Organizações Globo). Retrieved 2011-04-04.

 

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