Celebrity Death Thread

[Tony G]

Hector 'Macho' Camacho dies at 50


Updated: November 24, 2012, 2:46 PM ET
Associated Press

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Hector Camacho Dies At 50

Hector "Macho" Camacho was removed from life support and declared dead on Saturday, four days after being shot in the face. He was 50 years old.Tags: Boxing, Jeremy Schaap, Hector Camacho


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Hector "Macho" Camacho was a brash fighter with a mean jab and an aggressive style, launching himself furiously against some of the biggest names in boxing. And his bad-boy persona was not entirely an act, with a history of legal scrapes that began in his teens and continued throughout his life.
The man who once starred at the pinnacle of boxing, winning several world titles, died Saturday after being ambushed in a parking lot back in the Puerto Rican town of Bayamon where he was born. Packets of cocaine were found were found in the car in which he was shot.
Camacho, 50, left behind a reputation for flamboyance -- leading fans in cheers of "It's Macho time!" before fights -- and for fearsome skills as one of the top fighters of his generation.
[+] EnlargeHolly Stein/Getty ImagesHector Camacho, trading blows with Eric Podolak in 1993, fought some of the biggest stars spanning two eras, including Sugar Ray Leonard, Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya and Roberto Duran.


"He excited boxing fans around the world with his inimitable style," promoter Don King told The Associated Press.
Camacho fought professionally for three decades, from his humble debut against David Brown at New York's Felt Forum in 1980 to an equally forgettable swansong against Saul Duran in Kissimmee, Florida, in 2010.
In between, he fought some of the biggest stars spanning two eras, including Sugar Ray Leonard, Felix Trinidad, Oscar De La Hoya and Roberto Duran.
"Hector was a fighter who brought a lot of excitement to boxing," said Ed Brophy, executive director of International the Boxing Hall of Fame. "He was a good champion. Roberto Duran is kind of in a class of his own, but Hector surely was an exciting fighter that gave his all to the sport."
Camacho's family moved to New York when he was young and he grew up in Spanish Harlem, which at the time was rife with crime. Camacho landed in jail as a teenager before turning to boxing, which for many kids in his neighborhood provided an outlet for their aggression.
"This is something I've done all my life, you know?" Camacho told The Associated Press after a workout in 2010. "A couple years back, when I was doing it, I was still enjoying it. The competition, to see myself perform. I know I'm at the age that some people can't do this no more."
Matthews: 'Macho' the Ultimate Survivor

The mouthy kid in the rhinestone loincloth, who withstood a rough upbringing in Spanish Harlem to become a boxing icon, was every bit as tough as his nickname, Wallace Matthews writes. Story
? NYFightBlog | ESPN New York


Former featherweight champion Juan Laporte, a friend since childhood, described Camacho as "like a little brother who was always getting into trouble," but otherwise combined a friendly nature with a powerful jab.
"He's a good human being, a good hearted person," Laporte said as he waited with other friends and members of the boxer's family outside the hospital in San Juan after the shooting. "A lot of people think of him as a cocky person but that was his motto ... Inside he was just a kid looking for something."
Laporte lamented that Camacho never found a mentor to guide him outside the boxing ring.
"The people around him didn't have the guts or strength to lead him in the right direction," Laporte said. "There was no one strong enough to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him how to do it."
George Lozada, a longtime friend from New York who flew to Puerto Rico on Saturday, recalled that just hours after he was released from prison after serving a murder sentence, he received a call from Camacho, who was waiting outside his apartment in a black Porsche.
"He said, 'Come down, I'm taking you shopping,' " Lozada said, wiping away tears.
"Because of him, man, I got what I got today," he said, pointing to pictures on his smartphone of his 6-year-old daughter. "Because of Hector, I stopped the drug scene ... He's helped so many people."

? Because of him, man, I got what I got today. Because of Hector, I stopped the drug scene ... He's helped so many people.
? -- Longtime friend George Lozada

Drug, alcohol and other problems trailed Camacho himself after the prime of his boxing career. He was sentenced in 2007 to seven years in prison for the burglary of a computer store in Mississippi. While arresting him on the burglary charge in January 2005, police also found the drug ecstasy.
A judge eventually suspended all but one year of the sentence and gave Camacho probation. He wound up serving two weeks in jail, though, after violating that probation.
Camacho's former wife, Amy, obtained a restraining order against him in 1998, alleging he threatened her and one of their children. The couple, who had two children at the time, later divorced.
He divided his time between Puerto Rico and Florida in recent years, appearing on Spanish-language television as well as on a reality show called "Es Macho Time!" on YouTube.
Inside the boxing ring, Camacho flourished. He won three Golden Gloves titles as an amateur, and after turning pro, he quickly became a contender with an all-action style reminiscent of other Puerto Rican fighters.
Long promoted by King, Camacho won his first world title by beating Rafael Limon in a super-featherweight bout in Puerto Rico on Aug. 7, 1983. He moved up in weight two years later to capture a lightweight title by defeating Jose Luis Ramirez, and successfully defended the belt against fellow countryman Edwin Rosario.
The Rosario fight, in which the victorious Camacho still took a savage beating, persuaded him to scale back his ultra-aggressive style in favor of a more cerebral, defensive approach.
The change in style was a big reason that Camacho, at the time 38-0, lost a close split decision to Greg Haugen at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas in 1991.
Camacho won the rematch to set up his signature fight against Mexico's Julio Cesar Chavez, this time at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Camacho was roundly criticized for his lack of action, and the Mexican champion won a lopsided unanimous decision to retain the lightweight title.
"Even though people say I beat him easily, it wasn't that way," Chavez told Mexico's ESPN-Radio Formula this week. "He was a very fast fighter, he faced everything and it was very hard for me."
"He revolutionized boxing," Chavez said. "It's a shame he got mixed up in so many problems."
After that loss, Camacho became the name opponent for other rising contenders, rather than the headliner fighting for his own glory.
He lost a unanimous decision to another young Puerto Rican fighter, Trinidad, and was soundly defeated by De La Hoya. In 1997, Camacho ended Leonard's final comeback with a fifth-round knockout. It was Camacho's last big victory even though he boxed for another decade.
The fighter's last title bout came in 1997 against welterweight champion Oscar De La Hoya, who won by unanimous decision. Camacho's last fight was his defeat by Saul Duran in May 2010. He had a career record of 79-6-3.
Doctors pronounced Camacho dead on Saturday after he was removed from life support at his family's direction. He never regained consciousness after at least at least one gunman crept up to the car in a darkened parking lot and opened fire.
No arrests have been made, and authorities have not revealed many details beyond the facts that police found cocaine in the car and that the boxer and his friend, who was killed at the scene, had no idea the attack was coming. "Apparently, this was a surprise," said Alex Diaz, a police spokesman.
Survivors include his mother; three sisters, Raquel, Estrella and Ester; a brother, Felix; and four sons, Hector Jr., Taylor, Christian and Justin.

Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press

[DanO]

RIP, Hector.

RIP, Larry.

[LionsFanInJapan]

Interesting story about Larry Hagman that I saw on the Japanese news site I visit. I wonder why it didn't get picked up by the U.S. media. Or it did and you guys have already seen this?

'Dallas' star Larry Hagman accepted bag of cash from Ceausescu, paper reports

Nov. 26, 2012 - 07:20AM JST

LONDON —

Larry Hagman, the “Dallas” star who died on Friday, accepted a bag full of cash from Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in return for allowing the regime to use his image, Britain’s Sunday Times reported Sunday.

Hagman, who won worldwide fame for his portrayal of villainous Texas oilman J.R. Ewing on the primetime soap opera, visited Bucharest in the 1980s with his wife, where they were feted by Romania’s Communist leaders, the newspaper said.

“Dallas” was hugely popular in Romania and Ceausescu apparently sought the actor’s permission to put a giant portrait of him on the side of a building.

“Hagman said he had no objection provided a bag filled with hard currency was left in the ladies’ lavatory of a government office for his wife to pick up the next day,” the newspaper reported, in an article it said Hagman had asked it to hold until his death.

“A brown paper bag stuffed with dollars was duly left to be collected, he (Hagman) recalled recently. ‘We spent it quickly like we did all the money in those days,’ he added.”

The newspaper said it had agreed to Hagman’s request to wait until he was dead before publishing the story. The 81-year-old died at a Dallas hospital on Friday from complications of throat cancer.

[FVD]

Marvin Miller, Union Leader Who Changed Baseball, Dies at 95



Marvin Miller, an economist and labor leader who became one of the most important figures in baseball history by building the major league players union into a force that revolutionized the game, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.

His death was announced by the Major League Baseball Players Association.

When Mr. Miller was named executive director of the association in 1966, club owners ruled much as they had since the 19th century. The reserve clause bound players to their teams for as long as the owners wanted them, leaving them with little bargaining power. Come contract time, a player could expect an ultimatum but not much more. The minimum salary was $6,000 and had barely budged for two decades. The average salary was $19,000. The pension plan was feeble, and player grievances could be heard only by the commissioner, who worked for the owners.

By the time Mr. Miller retired at the end of 1982, he had secured his place on baseball?s Mount Rushmore by forging one of the strongest unions in America, creating a model for those in basketball, football and hockey.

Never had the dugout been so professionalized. The average player salary had reached $241,000, the pension plan had become generous, and players had won free agency and were hiring agents to issue their own demands. If they had a grievance, they could turn to an arbitrator. Peter Seitz, the impartial arbitrator who invalidated the reserve clause and created free agency in 1975, called Mr. Miller ?the Moses who had led Baseball?s Children of Israel out of the land of bondage.?

But not only them. If Mr. Miller had one overarching achievement, it was to persuade professional athletes to cast aside the paternalism of the owners and to emerge as economic forces in their own right, armed with often immense bargaining power. The transformations he wrought in baseball rippled through all of professional sports, and it could be said that he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the professional athlete of today, a kind of pop culture star able to command astronomical salaries and move from one team of choice to another.

Still, though his contributions to baseball were compared to those of Babe Ruth, who made the home run an essential part of the game, and Branch Rickey, who broke the major leagues? color barrier when he signed Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Mr. Miller has not been recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

?There?s been a concerted attempt to downplay the union,? Mr. Miller told The New York Times, referring to the Hall, when he narrowly missed out on election in December 2010, the fifth time he had been on the ballot. ?It?s been about trying to rewrite history rather than record it. They decided a long time ago that they would downgrade any impact the union has had. And part of that plan was to keep me out of it.?

Mr. Miller, an economist by training, had bargained on behalf of the steelworkers? union but lacked the charisma of fiery old-style labor leaders like the mineworkers? John L. Lewis or the New York City transport workers? Mike Quill. A silver-haired man with a mustache he had cultivated since he was 17, he was typically described as calm, patient, even-keeled. Nonetheless, he got results.

?Miller?s goal was to get his ballplayers to think like steelworkers ? to persuade members of the professional class to learn from members of the working class,? Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker in 2010.

Everett M. Ehrlich, a business economist and an under secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, felt that Mr. Miller?s victories owed much to the changing structure of the game, particularly baseball?s expansion to the West Coast and the South, which led to greater television and attendance revenue. The new money allowed many ball clubs to spend heavily on players no longer tied to their teams.

?Luck is the residue of opportunity and design,? Mr. Ehrlich wrote on his blog in 2010, quoting Branch Rickey. ?Free agency,? he added, ?was an important accomplishment and it made baseball better, but it also happened at a propitious moment. It takes nothing away from Miller to note that.?

Though he never convinced the owners that they could prosper from an upheaval of baseball?s economic order ? they would discover that eventually ? Mr. Miller outmaneuvered them at every turn. ?I loved baseball, and I loved a good fight, and, in my mind, ballplayers were among the most exploited workers in America,? Mr. Miller wrote in his memoir, ?A Whole Different Ball Game? (1991), recalling his decision to take charge of the players association when it was in effect a company union.

He had his share of fights. The players went on strike for 13 days in 1972 (part of the exhibition season and nine regular-season days); they were locked out of spring training for almost a month in 1976; they struck for the final eight days of the 1980 exhibition season, then staged a 50-day strike that began in the middle of the 1981 regular season.

Mr. Miller was portrayed by many on the management side as a harbinger of economic ruin.

?There was about Miller a wariness one would find in an abused animal,? Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner during most of Mr. Miller?s tenure, wrote in his memoir, ?Hardball? (1987). ?It precluded trust or affection.?

But Mr. Miller did win the trust of the ballplayers.

?I don?t know of anyone who changed the game more than Marvin Miller,? said Robin Roberts, the Philadelphia Phillies? Hall of Fame pitcher, who played a key role in the hiring of Mr. Miller by the players? union. ?His legacy is that through his work, ballplayers for the first time attained dignity from owners.?

Marvin Julian Miller was born in the Bronx on April 14, 1917, and grew up in Flatbush rooting for the Brooklyn Dodgers. His father, Alexander, was a salesman for a women?s clothing company on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, and as a youngster Marvin walked a picket line in a union organizing drive. His mother, Gertrude Wald Miller, who taught elementary school, was an early member of the New York City teachers? union.

Mr. Miller graduated from New York University in 1938 with a degree in economics. He resolved labor-management disputes for the National War Labor Board in World War II and later worked for the International Association of Machinists and the United Auto Workers. He joined the staff of the United Steelworkers Union in 1950, became its principal economic adviser and assistant to its president, and took part in negotiating contracts.

Late in 1965, there were stirrings within the major league ballplayers? ranks about the need for improvements in a pension plan implemented by management in 1947. The players had a union of sorts, but their association, established in 1954, had no full-time employees, did not engage in collective bargaining, had never challenged the reserve clause and had $5,400 in the bank.

The baseball stars Jim Bunning (later a United States senator from Kentucky), Harvey Kuenn and Roberts sought a professional bargainer who would get ballplayers better pensions. Mr. Miller was recommended to them by George Taylor, who ran the War Labor Board when Mr. Miller worked for it.

Mr. Miller was uncertain about entering the world of professional sports, and many players were hesitant about creating a formal union. Most were relatively uneducated, had little experience with labor unions and had been told by the owners for years that they should be grateful simply to be paid for playing a boys? game.

In the spring of 1966, when Mr. Miller toured the training camps in Arizona and Florida to speak with the players before they voted on whether to hire him as executive director, he was often met with suspicion and sometimes with hostility.

Before Mr. Miller?s first meeting with the team, ?we were all expecting to see someone with a cigar out of the corner of his mouth, a real knuckle-dragging ?deze and doze? guy,? Jim Bouton, the former Yankees pitcher, was quoted as saying by John Helyar in the book ?The Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball? (1995). But the players were surprised, he said, when ?in walks this quiet, mild, exceedingly understated man.?

Working with his newly hired general counsel, Richard M. Moss, Mr. Miller educated the players to trade-union thinking. In 1968, the union negotiated the first collective bargaining agreement in professional sports. In 1970, players gained the right to have grievances heard by an impartial arbitrator. In 1973, they achieved a limited right to have salary demands subjected to arbitration.

On April 1, 1972, just as spring training camps neared their close, the players staged the first major strike in professional sports history in a dispute over the level of owner contributions to their pension plan.

Mr. Miller wrote in his memoir that when the strike was announced, Paul Richards, a longtime baseball man who was an executive with the Atlanta Braves at the time, remarked that ?Tojo and Hirohito couldn?t stop baseball, but Marvin Miller could.?

The strike caused the cancellation of 86 regular-season games before a compromise was reached.

Later in 1972, the outfielder Curt Flood, having refused to accept a trade from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies, was rebuffed by the Supreme Court when he challenged the reserve clause.

But in December 1975, Mr. Seitz, the baseball arbitrator, ruling in a case brought by the pitchers Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally and argued by the union, invalidated the reserve clause in the standard player contract. Mr. Seitz found that this clause, allowing all contracts to be extended for one year at management?s option upon their expiration, did not mean that contracts could be extended in perpetuity. Once a player refused to re-sign after the expiration of that one-year extension, Mr. Seitz ruled, he could sell his pitching prowess or hitting skills to the highest bidder.

The owners immediately fired Mr. Seitz, mounted a futile court challenge to his ruling and, in late February 1976, expressed their rage by putting off the opening of spring training camps. Mr. Kuhn, the commissioner, ordered the camps opened in mid-March.

In July 1976, the union and management agreed on limitations to free agency: a player would need six years of major league service before he could seek a deal with another club. That accord seemed like a concession Mr. Miller did not need to make. But he concluded that limiting the stream of free agents would fuel the ball clubs? bidding wars.

He was proved correct. In 1976, the average annual player salary was $51,000. Soon the checkbooks were open. George Steinbrenner signed a pair of future Hall of Famers for the Yankees: the power-hitting outfielder Reggie Jackson, who received a five-year, $2.9 million contract after the 1976 season, and the brilliant relief pitcher Rich Gossage, who got a six-year, $3.6 million deal after the 1977 season.

As salaries soared, revenue flowing to the players? pension fund swelled, a result of a major increase in network payments to baseball for rights to telecast the World Series, the All-Star Game and the Game of the Week. The pension fund received a third of baseball?s receipts from national TV rights, a share that went from $8.3 million a year to $15.5 million a year in a four-year contract agreement reached in May 1980.

The spending sprees eventually encompassed the entire major league landscape. But free agency remained a highly contentious issue. On June 12, 1981, the players began a 50-day strike over the owners? demands concerning compensation to teams that lost players who became free agents. Management ultimately obtained only minor concessions.

Kenneth Moffett, the federal mediator in the 1981 strike, became the union?s executive director in January 1983, when Mr. Miller retired, but was dismissed after 10 months and ultimately replaced by Donald Fehr, the union?s general counsel since 1977. Mr. Fehr guided the union through a host of battles with management, including a strike that canceled the 1994 World Series. He retired from his union post in 2009 and was replaced by Michael Weiner, the union?s general counsel at the time, who remains its chief.

Mr. Fehr is now the executive director of the National Hockey League players? union, which remains locked in a labor dispute with owners that has delayed the opening of the season.

Mr. Miller?s candidacy for the Baseball Hall of Fame fell short five times in balloting between 2003 and 2010 by committees voting on retired executives. In December 2007, when Mr. Miller was turned down for a third time, Mr. Kuhn, the baseball commissioner who had been his longtime adversary and had died the previous March, was elected to the Hall.

The management of the Hall does not vote on candidates for Cooperstown, but the committees that considered Mr. Miller have included baseball executives. The breakdown of the voting has not been known, since the Hall asks voters not to reveal whom they selected or turned down. Mr. Miller?s candidacy will not be up for a vote again until 2013.

Mr. Miller advised the union as a consultant through his 80s. He spoke out against contractual givebacks and changes in baseball?s economic structure that might weaken the union. While in his 90s, he criticized the union?s acceptance of mandatory drug testing, saying that it could hurt union solidarity and that ?it was clear that the government was going to get involved, and when the government gets involved they will pick out targets and the media just goes along with it.?

He is survived by his daughter, Susan Miller; his son, Peter; and a grandson. His wife, Terry, died in 2009.

As players grew richer, and the baseball figures from his union days faded from the scene, Mr. Miller worried that pioneering battles were being forgotten.

?I do feel a little irked and chagrined when I realize that the players have no idea that it was the union that changed everything,? he told The New York Times in 1999. ?What?s taken for granted are the salaries, the perks, free agency rights, salary arbitration rights, all of which were tremendous struggles.?

Still, Mr. Miller said, the owners tried hard to ?turn back the clock? during his tenure ? and, he added, ?I don?t believe they?ve ever given up.?

But baseball management and labor have been at peace since the 232-day strike that forced cancellation of the 1994 World Series. Today?s ballplayers in the union that Mr. Miller built nearly a half century ago earn an average of over $3 million a year.

[jaadam4]

Interesting story about Larry Hagman that I saw on the Japanese news site I visit. I wonder why it didn't get picked up by the U.S. media. Or it did and you guys have already seen this?

lol! is this serious?

[LionsFanInJapan]

Appears to be legit. I just thought it was interesting.

[Marko69]

Very interesting, as my first reaction was exactly the same as Jaadam,...., I lol'd! It is a weird story isn't it?

[bimmer84]

Interesting story about Larry Hagman that I saw on the Japanese news site I visit. I wonder why it didn't get picked up by the U.S. media. Or it did and you guys have already seen this?

Yes, it was reported on the radio in my area. Strange stuff.

[The Cat]

Interesting story about Larry Hagman that I saw on the Japanese news site I visit. I wonder why it didn't get picked up by the U.S. media. Or it did and you guys have already seen this?

ラリーハグマンは82歳の時に死んでいる

ah so

[FVD]

Every time I see there's a new post in my thread I open it and hope its Justin Bieber...

And like women leaving DanO's bedroom, I always feel disappointed.

[DanO]

I didn't realize you had another friend named DanO, Frank.

[FVD]

Makes 2 total friends

[DanO]

I have rental friends if you need a few.

[Tony G]

And like women leaving DanO's bedroom, I always feel disappointed.

Hmm I'd heard they hadn't felt a thing....

[LionsFanInJapan]

ラリーハグマンは82歳の時に死んでいる

ah so

Pretty close, Bill! You used the "ing" form of the verb though, so it'd translate as:

"Larry Hagman is dying at 82."