Nate Thurmond

popular name: Curt Gowdy

date_of_death: February 20, 2006

age: 86

cause_of_death: Leukemia

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: In the history of sports broadcasting, few figures have had the power to legitimize an event simply by attending it. For 40 years, Curt Gowdy was that figure. Over the course of a career that spanned five decades and all three broadcast networks, the “Cowboy at the Mic” called hundreds of football, basketball, baseball, Olympic, and outdoorsman events on his way to becoming one of the most heralded sportscasters of all time.

popular name: Bill Monbouquette

date_of_death: January 25, 2015

age: 78

cause_of_death: Acute myelogenous leukemia

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: Bill Monbouquette was an American professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a right-handed pitcher and was a four-time All-Star player. Monbouquette was a stalwart right-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox during one of the leaner periods in the history of the franchise. Born and raised in the Boston area, he played eight of his 11 major league seasons with the Red Sox, from 1958 to 1965, and for much of that time he was the best pitcher on a bad team. During his time with them, the Sox never finished higher than third in the American League. Monbouquette was notable for pitching a no-hitter in 1962 as a member of the Red Sox, and was inducted into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2000.

popular name: Catfish Hunter

date_of_death: September 9, 1999

age: 53

cause_of_death: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease)

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: Jim "Catfish" Hunter, whose pitching prowess earned him five World Series rings, 224 victories, a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame and made him the game's first big-money free agent. Recruited right out of high school at age 18, Hunter won his first major-league game, and a year after that, at 20, he made the American League All-Star team in a season in which he finished 9-11. He reached 20 wins for the first time in 1971 with a 21-11 record and won at least 20 games the next four seasons. In 1974, he was 25-12 and won the Cy Young Award. In 1968, he pitched a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins, the seventh perfect game in modern baseball history at the time. And the Athletics, by then in Oakland, dominated baseball in the early '70s with the likes of Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Gene Tenace, Rollie Fingers and a group that played hard, on and off the field. "We were the long-haired, mustached gang from Oakland," Hunter said. "We were lucky just to be there, was what they said." After the Oakland A's, Hunter signed with the New York Yankees not because they offered the most money, but rather it was close to his home in North Carolina. Hunter's first season with the Yankees was his last of five consecutive 20-win years. He was 23-14 for the 1975 Yankees and pitched for them until 1979, when he retired at 33, with a 224-166 record and a 3.26 ERA. He was on World Series-winning teams with Oakland in 1972-74 and New York in 1977-78. At age 52 he was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and passed away the following year. He was laid to rest at Cedarwood Cemetery in Hertford, North Carolina.