RIP 2019
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Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, 27, found dead in hotel room
Skaggs, 27, was found unresponsive Monday afternoon at a Hilton hotel in Southlake, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, police said in a statement.
He was pronounced dead at the scene. No foul play is suspected at this point, police said. [...]
Skaggs pitched Saturday for the Angels, completing 4 1/3 innings in the team's game against the Oakland A's at Angel Stadium, according to MLB.com. [...]
He had a 7-7 record this year. He was 28-38 for his Major League career, with a 4.41 ERA
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First MLB game I ever saw was Angels Stadium in 1978, it was the first home game a day after Lyman Bostock, a young star on the team, was shot & killed by a shotgun while he was seated in a car. I’d arrived from Auckland earlier in the day and had no idea what happened, then they did the minutes-of-silence that was eerily long and you could hear crying all through the stadium. It was heart-breaking, and I didn’t even know who Bostock was, ‘tho later learned he was an excellent ball player (lifetime batting-average .311 is all-star quality). (I think Don Aase started and they defeated the Orioles.)
According to the wikipedia entry, ‘His shooter was sentenced to a psychiatric hospital and released after seven months.“
It’s a crazy stupid story.
Shooting death
Following the game at Comiskey Park, as he regularly did when in Chicago, Bostock visited his uncle Thomas Turner in nearby Gary, Indiana.[1] After eating a meal with a group of relatives at Turner's home, Bostock and his uncle went to visit Joan Hawkins, a woman whom Bostock had tutored as a teenager, but had not seen for several years.[14] After the visit, Turner agreed to give Hawkins and her sister, Barbara Smith, a ride to their cousin's house. Turner drove his vehicle, with Hawkins seated in the front passenger's seat. Bostock and Barbara Smith rode in the vehicle's back seat.
Barbara Smith had been living with Hawkins while estranged from her husband, Leonard Smith. Unbeknownst to the group, Leonard Smith was outside Hawkins' home in his car, and observed the group's departure in Turner's car. According to Leonard Smith, his wife was frequently unfaithful to him, and though he did not know Bostock, he later said that upon seeing Bostock get into the back seat of Turner's vehicle with his wife, he concluded that the two were having an affair. In fact, however, Bostock had only met the woman 20 minutes previously, when he and his uncle arrived at Hawkins' home.
At 10:40 p.m. as Turner's vehicle was stopped at a traffic signal at the intersection of 5th and Jackson Streets, Leonard Smith's car pulled up alongside them.[18] Leonard Smith leaned out of his vehicle and fired one blast of a .410 caliber shotgun into the back seat of Turner's car, where Bostock and Barbara Smith were seated.[14] Leonard Smith said that his lethal wrath was intended for his estranged wife; however, Bostock was seated between Barbara Smith and the position from which Leonard Smith was firing. Instead of striking her, the blast caught Bostock squarely in the right temple.[14] At age 27, he died two hours later at a Gary hospital.[14] Barbara Smith was hospitalized in fair condition with pellet wounds to her face.[18]
Aftermath: trial
Smith was tried twice for murder, with his lawyers arguing that Barbara Smith's alleged infidelity had driven him insane. The first trial resulted in a hung jury. In the second trial, Smith was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed for psychiatric treatment. Within seven months, he was deemed no longer mentally ill by his psychiatrists and released. Including his time in jail awaiting and during trial, Smith's time in custody amounted to 21 months. In the aftermath of Smith's case, the legislature in Indiana changed the state's insanity laws. After the change, a person found to be insane at the time of the commission of a crime could still be found legally guilty, and thus could be sent to prison if and when he or she was released from psychiatric treatment.
Leonard Smith returned to Gary, Indiana, where he resided for the remainder of his life, moving in his later years in a high-rise apartment building for senior citizens. After his 1980 release from custody, he never again ran afoul of the law and he declined all requests to comment publicly about the killing of Bostock. In 2010, Smith died of natural causes at the age of 64.[19]
Bostock is interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. "There were never enough hours in the day for Lyman," said Angels teammate Bobby Grich. "We called him 'Gibber-Jabber' because he was always talking. Everyone was crazy about him because he was so outgoing and friendly, always up, always looking on the bright side."[20]
Said Twins teammate Rod Carew: “Lyman Bostock was my teammate on the Twins for three years. I knew he was very close to an uncle who lived in Gary, Indiana. Lyman often visited him after games against the White Sox. How senseless. How horrible. I still can’t believe it happened. Everyone really liked Lyman. When we played the Angels [in 1978], he sent the batboy over to me with a newspaper photograph of himself wearing sunglasses with dollar signs on the lenses. Above the picture Lyman had written, Rod, I need help. His average was around .200. So I watched him in the game. I noticed he was lunging at pitches. He was too anxious. His swing wasn’t smooth, as it normally is. I told him I thought he was trying to hit the ball into “holes” between fielders instead of swinging with the pitch. No one can manipulate a bat so well that he can consistently hit the ball into holes. I don’t know if I helped or not, but Lyman picked up and was batting .296 when he died.[21]
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Glyn Houston
Check his bio
The very definition of a jobbing actor
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Rip Torn has died at 88 years old.
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Oh, man, that “Giant Sucking Sound.” Three days late, but I just heard Ross Perot died.
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One of my favourite boxers of the 1980s and 1990s.
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One of my favourite boxers of the 1980s and 1990s.
"a cat with boxing gloves"
That's certainly some tribute from George Foreman.
RIP.
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@antipodean Yeah, I read that twice in the article and it still didn't make sense. Wait for the online edit.
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One of my favourite boxers of the 1980s and 1990s.
Wow, that is a shock. Was a huge follower of boxing in the 1980s and 90s. Was one of the best fighters I've ever seen (never in real life and he's one of the few I would have given a left nut to see in real life, the other being Sugar Ray leonard).
The fact he was only a few years older than me always helps you to relate in many ways.
Followed him through the olympics and then watched most of his pro fights when they were on pay-per-view or televised on free-to-air back in the day.
One of my Brothers and I were such big fans of Boxing during the heyday that was the 80s and 90s, that we subscribed to two different boxing magazines. "Sweet Pea" was a one of the megastars of te sport at the time and his career was well covered.
Shocked and shaken by this.