Ted Williams

popular name: Buck Baker

date_of_death: April 14, 2002

age: 83

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: Buck Baker was an American stock car racer who began his NASCAR career in 1949 and won his first race three years later at Columbia Speedway. During his NASCAR Cup Series career, Baker won two championships, 46 races and 45 pole positions, as well as recorded 372 top-tens. In 1957, he became the first driver to win two consecutive championships in the series. Between 1957 and 1959 Baker competed in the NASCAR Convertible Division. From 1972 to 1973, he competed in the Grand National East Series, where he recorded five top-tens in twelve races. Mr. Baker was a member of Six Racing Hall of Fames and voted one of the 50 greatest drivers in NASCAR history. After his retirement from active racing, Buck Baker opened and operated the "Buck Baker Racing School", where Jeff Gordon and Randy Newman among others, drove their first stock cars. He was inducted into the Motorsports Press Association's Hall of Fame in 1982 and in the International Motorsport's Hall of Fame in 1990. In February 2013 he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Upon his death he was interred at Magnolia Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Charlotte North Carolina.

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.

popular name: Judy Johnson

date_of_death: June 15, 1989

age: 89

cause_of_death: Stroke

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: William "Judy" Johnson was an American professional third baseman and manager whose career in Negro league baseball spanned 17 seasons, from 1921 to 1937. Slight of build, Johnson never developed as a power threat but achieved his greatest success as a contact hitter and an intuitive defenseman. As a third baseman, Johnson was often compared with Pie Traynor of the Pittsburgh Pirates, also a Hall of Famer. Johnson hit over .300 seven times in the Negro leagues, with a career high of .416 in 1929, in the days when black players were not permitted to play in the major leagues. Regarded as one of the greatest third basemen of the Negro leagues, in 1975 Johnson was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame after being nominated by the Negro Leagues Committee. Connie Mack, for 50 years the owner-manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, once said, ''If Judy were only white, he could name his own price.''