Deaths (Obituaries)

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      in Soccer

      Jimmy Greaves, English Soccer Star, Is Dead at 81

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      He was the first player to lead scoring in England’s top league for three straight seasons, but he may be best known for one game he missed: the 1966 World Cup final.Jimmy Greaves, one of the greatest goal scorers in English soccer, has died. He was 81.Tottenham Hotspur, where he played for nine years, announced his death on Sunday but did not say where he died or cite the cause.Greaves suffered a minor stroke in 2012. His family thought he had made a full recovery, but he had a more severe stroke in 2015.An all-around striker as adept with his head as he was with either foot, Greaves scored 44 goals in just 57 matches for England.But even though he was the first player to lead scoring in England’s top league for three straight seasons, he may be best known for one game he missed: the World Cup final.Greaves was England’s star striker going into the 1966 tournament on home soil. But he was injured in a first-round match against France and surrendered his place in the lineup to Geoff Hurst.Hurst scored the only goal in England’s quarterfinal win over Argentina and kept his place on the team at the expense of Greaves. Hurst earned lasting fame by scoring the first hat trick in a World Cup final; Greaves famously sat impassively on the bench as England celebrated their 4-2 win over West Germany at the final whistle.Substitutions were not permitted at the time and squad members didn’t receive medals, as they have at World Cups since 1974. A campaign by fans led to the presentation of medals to Greaves and 10 other members of the squad, known as the “forgotten heroes,” in 2009. Greaves sold his 18-carat medal at auction in 2014 for £44,000 (about $60,000).“It was devastating for me that I didn’t play in the final,” Greaves said in 2009. “I always believed that we would win the World Cup and I’d be part of it, but I wasn’t.”Greaves in 2013. After his soccer career ended, he moved into television.Action Images/Action ImagesJames Peter Greaves was born on Feb. 20, 1940, in East London. He began playing for Chelsea when he was 17.At 20 years and 290 days, he became the youngest player to tally 100 league goals in English soccer. He scored 41 times, a club record, in the 1960-61 season to secure a lucrative move to A.C. Milan.He scored nine goals in 12 games with Milan but did not settle in Italy, instead ending his brief stay to return to London with Tottenham, where he would spend the next nine years and score 266 goals in 380 games, a club record.Tottenham’s manager, Bill Nicholson, paid £99,999 for Greaves — to spare him the pressure, he said, of being England’s first 100,000-pound player.The move apparently worked: Greaves scored a hat trick in his opening match, a 5-2 win over Blackpool, and helped Tottenham retain the Football Association Cup.In 1963, he scored twice in a 5-1 win over Atletico Madrid in the European Cup Winners Cup, a victory that made Tottenham the first British side to win a European trophy. He was the first division’s leading scorer — a feat he would repeat in 1964, 1965 and 1969.Greaves switched to West Ham in 1970, traded for his former England teammate Martin Peters. He retired at the end of the season with a record total of 357 goals in 516 league matches.He made a brief comeback for the nonleague club Barnet in 1978, but soon quit again and moved into television. He was a presenter of the long-running Saturday show “Saint and Greavsie” in Britain with the former Liverpool player Ian St. John.Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      in Football

      Mick Tingelhoff, Vikings Hall of Fame Center, Dies at 81

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      He started in 240 consecutive games and played in four Super Bowls, providing pass protection for quarterback Fran Tarkenton.Mick Tingelhoff, the Hall of Fame center who started in 240 consecutive games in his 17 seasons with the Minnesota Vikings and who played in four Super Bowls, died on Saturday at an assisted living facility in Lakeville, Minn. He was 81.The cause was Parkinson’s disease with dementia, his wife, Phyllis, said.Tingelhoff, who played at center and linebacker for three seasons at the University of Nebraska, wasn’t selected in the N.F.L.’s 1962 draft. But the Vikings signed him, envisioning him as a linebacker.They shifted him to center in their second preseason game, and he became an anchor of their offensive line. He was selected for the Pro Bowl in six consecutive seasons and named a first-team All-Pro five times in the 1960s. Listed at 6 feet 2 inches and 237 pounds, he was quick on his feet and tough enough to block burly defensive linemen.When Tingelhoff retired after the 1978 season, he ranked No. 2 in N.F.L. history for starting in consecutive games, behind his teammate Jim Marshall’s 270 straight starts at defensive end. The current record is held by quarterback Brett Favre, who started in 297 consecutive games. Tingelhoff and quarterback Philip Rivers, who retired after the 2020 season, are tied for No. 3.“Mick and Jim were our two leaders,” Bud Grant, who coached the Vikings of Tingelhoff’s time, told The Star Tribune of Minneapolis when Tingelhoff was selected for the Hall in 2015 in the senior category, for players who had been retired for many years.“It’s hard for me to talk about Mick without Marshall, and Marshall without Mick. Mick was an introvert. Jim was an extrovert. They were different personalities, but really respected and our best players. If I said, ‘Jump,’ they would be the first ones to jump and everybody else would have to jump with them.”Tingelhoff (53) protecting quarterback Fran Tarkenton (10) during Super Bowl IX in New Orleans in 1975.Harry Hall/Associated PressTingelhoff played on an offensive line that helped the Vikings claim 10 divisional titles from 1968 to 1978. He provided pass protection for Fran Tarkenton, the scrambling quarterback, and he opened holes for running back Chuck Foreman, who had three consecutive 1,000-yard rushing seasons (1975-1977). He took on opponents’ middle linebackers, most notably Joe Schmidt of the Detroit Lions, Ray Nitschke of the Green Bay Packers and Dick Butkus of the Chicago Bears.He played on teams that lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the January 1970 Super Bowl, the Miami Dolphins in 1974, the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1975 and the Oakland Raiders in 1977.Tarkenton, a Hall of Famer, spoke on Tingelhoff’s behalf at his 2015 Hall of Fame induction in light of his cognitive problems. “Mick’s a man of little words but a lot of action,” said Tarkenton, who choked up and shed tears. The emotional ceremony was attended by many of Tingelhoff’s former teammates, his wife and other family members and friends.While it’s not clear why Tingelhoff had to endure a lengthy wait to gain entrance to the Hall, in Canton, Ohio, the center position is not a glamour spot and he never won a Super Bowl championship ring.Henry Michael Tingelhoff was born on May 22, 1940, in Lexington, Neb., the youngest of six children of Henry and Clara (Ortmeier) Tingelhoff. He grew up on a family farm and played at center and linebacker for Lexington High School, but his parents never attended his games.“Dad thought football was a waste of time,” Tingelhoff recalled in 2015. “They weren’t real happy that I got a scholarship to Nebraska. They wanted me to stay on the farm.”In addition to his wife, Phyllis (Kent) Tingelhoff, he is survived by their sons Michael and Patrick, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.After leaving pro football, Tingelhoff worked in commercial real estate.Bud Grant called him “one of the greatest Vikings of all time.” More

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      Sam Cunningham Dies at 71; Fostered Integration on the Football Field

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      As one of three Black players in the U.S.C. backfield, he led the team to a stunning win in 1970 over Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama. He would go on to star for the New England Patriots.Sam Cunningham, a fullback for the integrated University of Southern California football team that in 1970 trounced Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama squad, died on Tuesday at his home in Inglewood, Calif. He was 71.His wife, Cine (Ivery) Cunningham, confirmed his death but did not cite a cause.Cunningham, a sophomore, was playing his first game for U.S.C. on Sept. 12, 1970, at Legion Field in Birmingham. For the Trojans it was a journey into the Deep South to a state that had been governed, and would be again, by the fiery segregationist George C. Wallace.Cunningham, whose nickname was Bam, formed an all-Black backfield with the quarterback Jimmy Jones and the tailback Clarence Davis. Cunningham, a backup player, was the game’s unexpected star, running for 135 yards on 12 carries and scoring two touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-21 victory.For Alabama, it was a humiliating loss on the way to a 6-5-1 record — but it was also a lesson to Bryant that his Crimson Tide would falter in the future without Black players. He knew that already, having recruited Wilbur Jackson, a running back. But as a freshman, Jackson was not allowed to play for the varsity and watched the game at the stadium.Cunningham called the game a “tipping point” in the struggle for civil rights in sports. He told the U.S.C. athletics website in 2016 that it showed “that things should be equal on the football field as they should be in all other parts of life, but that’s not always the case.”The next year, Jackson and John Mitchell, a defensive end, integrated the Alabama team, which went 11-1 (including a win over U.S.C.). The team’s only loss was to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.Richard Lapchick, a human-rights activist and the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said Bryant knew he needed to recruit Black players to stay competitive.In a phone interview, Lapchick said that Bryant had confided in Eddie Robinson, the longtime coach of the historically Black Grambling State University in Louisiana, about the impact of his team’s loss to U.S.C.“Eddie told me how often Bear talked to him about what the game meant,” Lapchick said, “and what Sam meant to his ability to integrate.”By 1977, Alabama had 17 Black football players on scholarship.Samuel Lewis Cunningham Jr. was born on Aug. 15, 1950, in Santa Barbara, Calif. His father was a railroad worker. His mother, Zoe (Ivory) Cunningham, died when he was young; he was raised by his father and stepmother, Mabel (Crook) Cunningham, a nurse.Sam and his brothers, Anthony, Bruce and Randall, a future quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles and three other N.F.L. teams, were all athletic. Sam was introduced to organized sports in elementary school, where he played basketball, baseball, volleyball and flag football.He was recruited by Coach John McKay to U.S.C. and, in his three seasons on the team, gained 1,579 yards on 337 carries. He scored four short-yardage touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-17 victory over Ohio State in the 1973 Rose Bowl, which wrapped up a 12-0 season. That year’s team was ranked No. 1 in college football.Cunningham was selected by the New England Patriots with the 11th overall pick in the 1973 N.F.L. draft. In his nine seasons with the team, he accumulated 5,453 rushing yards, including 516 in his first season, a Patriots rookie record, and 1,015 in 1977, making him the second Patriot to exceed 1,000 yards in a season. He sat out the 1980 season in a contract dispute, which prompted the Patriots to trade him to the Miami Dolphins. But he failed the team’s physical and returned to the Patriots shortly before the 1981 season.“Sam ‘Bam’ Cunningham was one of my favorite players throughout the ’70s, and my sons all loved him,” the Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, said in a statement. “After I bought the team in 1994, it was my honor to welcome him back to the team on multiple occasions, recognizing him as a 50th-anniversary team member and again for his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame.”Cunningham became a landscape contractor after his playing career ended.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughter, Samahndi Cunningham; and his brothers.Cunningham joined Jones and Davis in the backfield early in the first quarter of that historic 1970 game against Alabama.“I didn’t go into any game looking to change history, even though history has a tendency to be changed by things of that nature,” he told The Santa Barbara Independent this year. “I always tried to play to the best of my ability, and that’s what I did that evening. I was put in the right spot and got touched by the hand of God.” More

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      Keith McCants, Football Star Laid Low by Drugs, Dies at 53

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      At one time the N.F.L.’s highest-paid defensive player, he left the league after six seasons and fell into a spiral of addiction, homelessness and desolation.In N.F.L. parlance, Keith McCants was a “can’t miss.” A relentless and powerful athlete, he was a first-team all-American linebacker at Alabama and was drafted fourth overall in 1990 by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His success seemingly guaranteed, the team made him the highest-paid defensive player in the league.But McCants soon became known by a less flattering N.F.L. moniker: “draft bust.” Days after being chosen by the Buccaneers, he had knee surgery. A year later, he had to learn a new position when he was moved from linebacker to defensive end. The injuries and frustrations mounted as he tried to meet people’s outsized expectations.His promise unfulfilled, the Buccaneers released McCants after three years. He spent three more seasons with the Houston Oilers and Arizona Cardinals before he left the league, his money and celebrity diminished. What remained was an overpowering addiction to painkillers, and eventually to other drugs, that consumed the rest of McCants’s life and turned him into a cautionary tale.After decades of drug abuse, numerous arrests, dozens of surgeries and years living on the street — all punctuated by brief stretches of sobriety — McCants was found dead early Thursday morning at his home in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was 53.The cause appeared to be a drug overdose, but Amanda Sinni, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, said the department was awaiting a report from the medical examiner’s office.In and out of rehabilitation and eager to share his story to warn others away from drugs, McCants all but predicted his demise in 2015, when he was interviewed by The New York Times.During six seasons in the N.F.L., Keith McCants became addicted to painkillers, and later went to jail, lived on the street and battled depression. He was interviewed by The New York Times in this 2015 video.Josh Ritchie for The New York Times“I live one day at a time; I’m a recovering addict,” he said. “Tomorrow’s not promising. If I die today or tomorrow, I’m all right with that because I’m comfortable with me. My goal is to help people who can’t help themselves, to turn their negatives to positives, to give them hope. That’s what I sell.”McCants did not just talk about his struggles with substance abuse. He pointed the finger squarely at the N.F.L. Coaches, he said, pushed players to perform without regard to their long-term health. Team doctors handed out painkillers like candy to mask injuries and get players on the field. And when players were unable to perform, he said, the league turned its back and focused on younger replacements.“I will continue to tell the truth, how they got me hooked on drugs,” he said. “I feel it’s my duty as a retired player to explain the difference between being hurt and being injured.”McCants in a game against the Indianapolis Colts in 1992, when he was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was with Tampa Bay for three seasons before being released, his promise unfulfilled.Scott Halleran/Allsport, via Getty ImagesAlvin Keith McCants was born on April 19, 1968, in Mobile, Ala. His father abandoned him when he was young; he was raised by his stepfather, James Turner, who worked for the city, and his mother, Cinderella Turner, a cook. He is survived by two sons, Keith Jr. and David; two daughters, Aysha and Kera; two brothers, Robert and Anthony; and two sisters, Angie and Denise. He was married and divorced twice.Widely scouted while at Murphy High School in Mobile, McCants enrolled at Alabama, home to one of the country’s premier football programs. He left for the pros after his junior year, a bold but contentious step at the time. He said he opted out of his senior year because he did not want to risk further injuries that might shorten his career, and because he needed to provide for his family while he could.Some experts predicted that McCants could have been chosen first overall in the draft; he was ultimately picked fourth, one slot ahead of Junior Seau, a linebacker from the University of Southern California who played for 20 years and was elected posthumously to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2015. Seau killed himself in 2012 and was later found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head.The Buccaneers had losing records each of McCants’ three years in Tampa, which heightened the scrutiny of his performance and his paychecks. (He received a record $2.5 million signing bonus as part of a five-year $7.4 million deal.) McCants lived the life of a celebrity player, spending freely. He said that he was preyed upon by financial advisers and others and lost $17 million.He played in 88 games in his career and recorded 13.5 quarterback sacks and one interception.After he left the N.F.L., McCants, who studied criminal law in college, became the first Black marine police officer in Alabama when he joined the state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. He joked that he found it hard to arrest people because they often recognized him from his playing days and said they were fans of his.Yet the power of his addiction proved strong. He lived on the street in Tampa for two years in the early 2000s, worked as a pimp and drug dealer, and spent time in jail, where he once tried to hang himself. He spent stretches in numerous rehabilitation facilities, only to succumb to drugs again once he got out, as he recounted in his 2018 memoir, “My Dark Side of the N.F.L.”In recent years, seemingly at peace with his fate, he tried to warn others by talking about his financial troubles, his run-ins with the law and the pain — emotional as well as physical — that he buried with drugs.“I’m not too much worried about Keith McCants,” he said. “I’m more worried about the people that’s coming after Keith McCants.” More

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      Gerd Müller, Soccer Star Known for His Scoring Prowess, Dies at 75

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      He scored 566 goals for Bayern Munich, helping the club to four German titles, four German Cup wins and three European Cup victories in 15 years.Gerd Müller, the German soccer scar who became known as “Der Bomber” for his scoring prowess, died on Aug. 15 in Wolfratshausen, Germany. He was 75.Bayern Munich, the club for which he played from 1964 to 1979, announced his death. Bayern did not specify the cause, but it had announced in October 2015 that Müller had had Alzheimer’s disease for “a long time” and had been receiving professional care since that February.Müller scored 566 goals for Bayern, helping it to four German titles, four German Cup wins and three European Cup victories in 15 years. He still holds the record for the most goals scored in the Bundesliga, Germany’s primary football league: 365 goals, scored in 427 league games.“Gerd Müller was the greatest striker there’s ever been,” Bayern’s president, Herbert Hainer, said in a statement.Müller made 607 competitive appearances for Bayern and was the league’s top scorer on seven occasions. He played as important a role in making Bayern Germany’s powerhouse team as his former teammates Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeness.Müller’s record of 40 goals scored in the 1971-72 Bundesliga season was beaten only last season, when the current Bayern forward Robert Lewandowski scored his 41st goal in the last minute of the last game.Müller became a youth coach after his playing days ended.Andreas Rentz/Getty ImagesMüller also helped West Germany (now Germany) win the European championship in 1972 and then the World Cup two years later, when he scored the winning goal in the final against the Netherlands. Altogether he scored 68 goals in 62 appearances for West Germany, a national record not surpassed until 2014 — and Miroslav Klose, who broke Müller’s record, needed 129 appearances to match him.Müller became a youth coach at Bayern after his playing days ended.“His achievements are unrivaled to this day and will forever be a part of the great history of FC Bayern and all of German football,” Bayern’s chairman, Oliver Kahn, said.Müller was born on Nov. 3, 1945, in Nördlingen, Germany. His survivors include his wife, Uschi, and a daughter, Nicole. More

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      in Tennis

      Shirley Fry Irvin, Tennis Star of the ’40s and ’50s, Is Dead at 94

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      The fastest player of her day, she played down her own ability but admitted, “Billie Jean King said I was her idol.”Shirley Fry Irvin, a tennis player who in the pre-Open era swept the singles and doubles titles in the four Grand Slam tournaments, died on Tuesday in Naples, Fla. She was 94. Her death was announced by the International Tennis Hall of Fame, where she was inducted in 1970.At a time when the players were amateurs, the rackets were made of wood and the championship surfaces were mostly grass, Irvin (who was known in her playing days as Shirley Fry) won the French title (on clay) in 1951, the Wimbledon and United States titles in 1956 and the Australian title in 1957. She then retired from tennis to raise a family.She was one of only 10 women to win the singles titles at all four of those championships.She also won 12 women’s doubles championships in those four tournaments, the first 11 partnered with Doris Hart and the 12th with Althea Gibson. In the annual Wightman Cup competition between the United States and Britain, she played six years, winning 10 of her 12 matches. At 5-foot-5 and 125 pounds, she was the fastest player of her day. But she apparently did not think much of her talents.“Billie Jean King said I was her idol,” she told The Orlando Sentinel in 2000. “That flatters me, because I really wasn’t that good of a player. I wasn’t a natural. I had athletic ability, I could run and I could concentrate. I excelled in running and concentration. I had no serve.”Hart, her frequent doubles partner, admired Irvin’s tenacity. “Shirley was one of the best runners I ever saw play,” she said in 2000. “She ran everything down.”Shirley June Fry was born on June 30, 1927, in Akron, Ohio. She was an athletic child, trying hockey, badminton, baseball, archery, ice skating, swimming and running as well as tennis. In 1999, she told The Akron Beacon Journal, “I wanted to play football, but once we got into junior high school it became the boys and the girls.”Irvin waves her hat in 2004 as 50 Hall of Famers are introduced during ceremonies celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. She was inducted in 1970.Victoria Arocho/Associated PressTennis won out. At a Hall of Fame event in Newport, R.I., in 2004, she told the broadcaster and columnist Bud Collins that she had begun traveling alone to tournaments all over the nation when she was 10.“My parents would put me on a bus in Akron and off I’d go,” she said. “Usually, someone met me at the other end, but I would go to Travelers Aid if there was a problem. It built self-reliance, and it was fun.”When she was 11, she told The New York Times, “I traveled by train to a tournament in Philadelphia, and then, at my father’s suggestion, went on to New York. I took a train to Penn Station and then the subway to Forest Hills, where he had made a reservation for me at the Forest Hills Inn. Then I walked all the way to the New York World’s Fair.”In 1941, at 14, she played in the United States amateur championship, the youngest person to compete there until Kathy Horvath (who was a month younger) in 1979. In 1942, she became the youngest United States amateur quarterfinalist. For 13 consecutive years (1944-56), she ranked in the United States Top 10. She was No. 1 in 1956.She found time to earn a degree in human relations from Rollins College in Florida in 1949. After the 1954 season, she retired from tennis because of a nagging elbow injury and got a job as a clerk at The St. Petersburg Times in Florida, where she made about 75 cents an hour. As that newspaper recalled in 1989, “One of her first duties as copy girl was sending the story of her own retirement down to the composing room.”After a few months of recreational tennis, she entered two Florida tournaments in 1955 and won both, in one of which she beat Hart in the final. That summer, she quit her job and returned to full-time tennis.The next year provided her crowning glory at Wimbledon, where she beat Gibson in the quarterfinals, Louise Brough in the semifinals and Angela Buxton of England in a 50-minute final.“I play better when it doesn’t matter if I win or lose,” she told The New York Times about her victory at Wimbledon, which came on her ninth try. “After eight attempts at Wimbledon, I didn’t think I was going to win.” Her subsequent United States championship was her first at Forest Hills in 16 tries.Shirley Fry in 1951 in a semifinal match against Louise Brough at Wimbledon. She won, but lost in the finals to Doris Hart.Central Press/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesShe won the Australian title in 1957 and then retired again. That year she married Karl Irvin, an American advertising executive whom she had met when he was working in Australia and served as an umpire for some of her matches there.“During one match,” she told The Times, “I became furious over several of his calls and asked that he be removed and that he not work any more of my matches. Shortly after that, we were married and had four children within the space of five years.”Her husband died in 1976. She is survived by their children, Mark, Scott, Lori and Karen, and 12 grandchildren.Irvin lived in West Hartford, Conn., for 35 years before moving to Florida. She taught tennis for three decades, played in senior tournaments and, at 58, won the United States clay-court championship for women 55 and older. When her knees gave out at 62, she stopped playing tennis in favor of golf, which had become her favorite sport.She loved golf, but she was not that good at it, generally shooting higher than 100.“It’s a little embarrassing,” she said in 2000. “You say, ‘She won the Wimbledon tennis tournament?’ Then you see me playing golf and say, ‘How could she?’”Frank Litsky, a longtime sportswriter for The Times, died in 2018. Peter Keepnews contributed reporting. More

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      Dennis Murphy, Impresario of Alternative Leagues, Dies at 94

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      He founded the American Basketball Association, which revolutionized the game, and participated in other imaginative, sometimes zany sports ventures.Dennis Murphy, the impresario of alternative athletic leagues, including the American Basketball Association, who also shook up tennis and ice hockey and launched imaginative, sometimes quixotic ventures in other sports, among them indoor roller hockey, died on Thursday at an assistant living facility in Placentia, Calif. He was 94.His son, Dennis Jr., said the cause was congestive heart failure.Mr. Murphy’s most lasting achievement was the A.B.A., which he conceived, and which he started in 1967 as a cheeky competitor to the National Basketball Association. The league was known for its wide-open offenses; its red, white and blue ball; and the salary war it ignited against the N.B.A. to bring stars like Rick Barry and Zelmo Beaty into the upstart league.Mr. Murphy’s rationale for starting the A.B.A. was simple, as was his research into its viability: There were only 12 teams in the N.B.A.“There’s only one basketball league and one hockey league, so why not have another?” he was quoted as saying in Terry Pluto’s oral history “Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association” (1990). “Since I knew nothing about hockey, but basketball was my favorite sport, I figured I’d pursue the idea of a basketball league.”The A.B.A. thrived as a freewheeling hoops spectacle. It nurtured stars of its own, like Julius Erving and David Thompson, and generated excitement with the three-point shot and the All- Star Game slam-dunk contest, which eventually became staples in the N.B.A.“He wasn’t responsible for them, but he recognized their value and he went with it,” said Jim O’Brien, a reporter for The Sporting News who covered the Miami Floridians when Mr. Murphy was the team’s general manager. In an interview, he recalled Mr. Murphy’s promotional prowess and his willingness to make players accessible to the media.“He was fun and creative,” Mr. O’Brien said, “and he was always hustling somebody.”Mr. Murphy, center, at an A.B.A. meeting in Miami 1971. He was the general manager of the league’s Miami Floridians at the time.Arthur Hundhausen CollectionMr. Murphy had left the A.B.A. by 1972, four years before the league shut down and four of its teams — the New York Nets (who now play in Brooklyn), San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers — were absorbed into the N.B.A.Soon he was in the midst of itinerant league creation.He and Gary Davidson, another sports entrepreneur, in 1972 started the World Hockey Association, which challenged the dominance of the National Hockey League; in 1974, he and a group of partners, including the lawyer Larry King, who was then married to the tennis superstar Billie Jean King, formed World Team Tennis; and in 1976, he and Ms. King were among the founders of the International Women’s Professional Softball League.“He was a great cheerleader, a good manager and a skillful orchestrator at getting big egos to agree on things,” Mr. King said by phone.Of those three leagues, the W.H.A. probably had the greatest impact: It brought the Detroit Red Wings legend Gordie Howe out of a brief retirement to join the Houston Aeros, persuaded Bobby Hull to leave the Chicago Blackhawks for the Winnipeg Jets and signed the 17-year-old Wayne Gretzky to the Indianapolis Racers.Its level of play challenged the N.H.L.’s, just as the A.B.A.’s had challenged the N.B.A.’s. But its teams had financial difficulties, and the W.H.A. died in 1979. Four of its teams — the Edmonton Oilers, the New England Whalers, the Quebec Nordiques and the Jets — joined the N.H.L.“Murphy had a couple of things going for him,” the hockey writer Stan Fischler wrote recently in his column on Substack. “One was that N.H.L. president Clarence Campbell never took the W.H.A. seriously — until too late.”Another, Mr. Fischler said, was chutzpah. Before the W.H.A. started, Mr. Murphy showed up at a minor-league hockey meeting in the Bahamas, posing as a reporter, and started asking Emile Francis, the general manager of the New York Rangers, about the N.H.L.’s plans for expansion.Soon after, Mr. Francis was watching television and saw Mr. Murphy being interviewed by another reporter about the league he planned to start.Dennis Arthur Murphy was born on Sept. 4, 1926, in Shanghai, where his father, Arthur, was an engineer for Standard Oil. His mother, Adele (Gurevitz) Murphy, was a homemaker. The family moved to Brentwood, Calif., in 1940.After serving in the Army in the Philippines, Mr. Murphy attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics.For most of the 1950s and the early ’60s, Mr. Murphy worked at an engineering firm. For two years during that period, he was the part-time mayor of Buena Park, in Orange County.His fascination with sports leagues continued with the creation in 1981 of Team Tennis, also with Mr. King, after World Team Tennis failed in 1978. Team Tennis would later adopt the name of its predecessor and rechristen itself World Team Tennis. And in the early 1990s, Mr. Murphy, Mr. King and Ralph Backstrom, a former N.H.L. player, formed Roller Hockey International, an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of in-line skating.“We believe we can be the No. 1 hockey sport,” Mr. Murphy told The New York Times in 1994.But the league played its last season in 1999, when the champion St. Louis Vipers won the Murphy Cup. One of his mistakes, Mr. Murphy told The Hockey News in 2019, had been expanding to 24 teams in the league’s second season.“We should have kept it smaller and then expanded,” he said. “But we did it for money. I had a lot of contacts through my other leagues. Everybody wanted to get in because of our success in the other leagues. So they put pressure on me, and I fell for it.”Besides his son, Mr. Murphy is survived by his daughters, Dawn Mee and Doreen Haarlamert; eight grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.The A.B.A. did not have a national television contract and struggled for attention. The Floridians, for example, had bikini-clad cheerleaders, an idea that came from a publicist.“The idea was that we needed to get attendance at the games,” Mr. Murphy told The Reno Dispatch, a blog, in 2013. The cheerleaders, he added, were always on the visitors’ side of the court “so the visiting players would look at girls rather than pay attention to the game.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      Dicky Maegle Dies at 86; Football Star Remembered for a Bizarre Tackle

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      He’s in the College Football Hall of Fame, but he’s probably best known for the Cotton Bowl game in which an opposing player left the bench to take him down.Dicky Maegle was an all-American running back at Rice University. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. And he was a Pro Bowl defensive back in his first N.F.L. season.But when Rice announced that Maegle had died on Sunday at 86, he was remembered mostly for a single moment: one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of college football, witnessed by some 75,000 fans at the 1954 Cotton Bowl in Dallas and a national television audience.Taking a handoff at Rice’s 5-yard line in the second quarter of its matchup with Alabama, Maegle cut to the right and raced down the sideline. When he passed the Alabama bench while crossing midfield, on his way to a virtually certain touchdown, the Crimson Tide fullback Tommy Lewis interrupted his rest period and, sans helmet, sprang onto the field and leveled Maegle with a blindside block at Alabama’s 42-yard line.The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run. Rice, ranked No. 6 in the nation by The Associated Press, went on to a 28-6 victory over 13th-ranked Alabama.Maegle, a junior that season, also scored on runs of 34 and 79 yards in that Cotton Bowl game and gained 265 yards on 11 carries.Lewis apologized to Maegle at halftime.“I’m too emotional,” he said when the game ended. “When I had him tackled, I jumped up and got back on the bench. I kept telling myself, ‘I didn’t do it.’ But I knew I did.”The following Sunday, Maegle and Lewis were reunited, so to speak, as guests on Ed Sullivan’s popular CBS variety show.“I saw him when he was about a step and a half away from me,” Maegle told The Dallas Morning News in 1995. “I veered to the left, and that helped cushion the blow. If I hadn’t veered away from him, I really think he would have broken both my legs.”Maegle was an all-American as a senior in the 1954 season, when he ran for 905 yards and 11 touchdowns and finished sixth in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy, presented annually to college football’s most outstanding player. The trophy was won that year by the Wisconsin back Alan Ameche (who went on to fame with the Baltimore Colts for scoring the winning touchdown in overtime in the storied 1958 N.F.L. championship game against the New York Giants).The San Francisco 49ers drafted Maegle in the first round of the January 1955 N.F.L. draft. He was a 49er for five seasons, playing mostly at right safety and occasionally as a running back, then concluded his pro career with the 1960 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 1961 Dallas Cowboys. He intercepted 28 passes, running one of them back for a touchdown.He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979.Maegle (who spelled his surname Moegle at the time), Lewis and other players immediately after one of the strangest plays in college football history. The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run.Rice UniversityRichard Lee Moegle (he later legally changed his surname to reflect its correct pronunciation) was born on Sept. 14, 1934, in Taylor, Texas, about 30 miles northeast of Austin. He played high school football, then received an athletic scholarship to Rice.After leaving football, he pursued real estate interests and managed hotels in Houston.Maegle’s wife, Carol, told The Houston Chronicle that he died at their home in Houston, and that he been in declining health since a fall several months ago. (Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.)Tommy Lewis, who played in the Canadian Football League, coached high school football and worked in insurance in Alabama, died in 2014 at 83.Roy Riegels, the center for the University of California who ran 69 yards the wrong way after picking up a fumble by Georgia Tech in the 1929 Rose Bowl game, leading to Cal’s 8-7 loss and earning the moniker Wrong Way Riegels, watched the Maegle-Lewis drama unfold from his California home.He had advice for Lewis the next day:“Laugh with ’em, that’s all you’ve got to do. What the heck difference does it make? It’s just a football game.”Maegle wasn’t laughing about that Cotton Bowl game as time passed; he believed that the Lewis episode overshadowed his considerable football achievements.“People still just don’t get it,” he remarked some 40 years later. “I led the nation in punt returns. I led the nation in yards per carry. I led the conference in rushing and in scoring. But when people introduce me, all they ever mention is what happened in that game.” More