The names have come roaring at us in a furious blur, so many of them, too many to count, too many to keep up with.
Maybe there have been other years like 2016, but in the moment, every day, it seemed another icon left us, right from the start, in January, when pop legends David Bowie and Glenn Frey died, when even a beloved actor who had taken spry glee in lampooning his own dead-or-alive status for years — Abe Vigoda, forever Fish for some, eternally Tessio for others — finally wound up on the left side of those hyphens. And even in its final days, 2016 claimed both Faith and Force, first George Michael and then Carrie Fisher.
It felt like 2016 had it in for musicians and movie stars especially. But then you stand on the precipice of a new year and you look back, and you see just how profoundly the sports world was hit. Again: Maybe there have been other years like this one, and we just can’t remember them because the now always strikes louder and deeper than the then.
Still, it is impossible to believe another year could have included such duel shocks as the deaths of Muhammad Ali and Arnold Palmer, the Greatest and the King, who for most of their adult lives were two of the most famous athletes — if not two of the most recognizable [ital] citizens [ital]— on Planet Earth.
Both Ali and Palmer were born among the common folk, one from Louisville, Ky., and one from Latrobe, Pa. Both achieved greatness in their respective vocations, one because of iron fists and dancing feet, one for the swashbuckling way he maneuvered around golf courses and corporate board rooms. And both enjoyed fame well beyond the end of their competitive days. They died 97 days apart in 2016. Their absences will be felt for decades to come.
Yet they weren’t the only giants to leave us these past 12 months. Gordie Howe died a week after Ali, and if hockey never was in the same arena as prizefighting as a global attraction, Howe still was among the very best who ever played the game — if you believe Wayne Gretzky, THE very best.
And if we fail instantly to include Pat Summitt’s name among the very best ever to coach the sport of basketball, it is only because of the habit to list men first and foremost. But she won 1,098 games (more than Mike Krzyzewski) and eight championships (only two fewer than John Wooden), and when she succumbed to Alzheimer’s on June 28, the salutes and the tributes that poured in were profound and passionate.
New York felt the sting of 2016 in some eclectic ways. All-time great Ranger Andy Bathgate died Feb. 16. Pearl Washington, who electrified New York basketball courts from Boys High to Rucker Park to West Fourth Street to Madison Square Garden, lost his fight with a second brain tumor in April. And Monte Irvin — who might well have been remembered as one of the five or six greatest players ever had he not been forced by the color barrier to postpone his major league debut with the Giants until age 30 — died at 96 in January.
The Jets, mired in a terrible year on the field, were especially hard hit off, too: Winston Hill and Curley Johnson from the Super Bowl champs both died. So did Dennis Byrd, in a car crash, a quarter-century after defying his doctors and learning to walk again. And so, in a tragic hail of gunfire in his native New Orleans, did Joe McKnight, whose time with the Jets was brief but whose impact among his teammates was enormous.
Sports media was especially hard hit by 2016. Bud Collins — as responsible as anyone for the great tennis boom of the 1970s and ’80s – died March 4, and 24 days later, we lost Joe Garagiola, spinner of many Yogi Berra tales, ex-Yankees radio man, a regular on both the “Today” and “Tonight” shows. ESPN’s John Saunders and Turner’s Craig Sager, two familiar voices and faces, also passed far too young, and far too soon, after public lives filled with grace and good humor.
Yet of all these terrible losses, the one that may sting deepest and haunt the longest is Jose Fernandez, who died in a boat crash Sept. 25, a day before he was scheduled to pitch against the Mets in what would have been the final start of a breakout season, still at the start of what promised to be an unforgettable career. As was true when A.E. Housman first penned these words exactly 120 years earlier, it remains so:
