Ted Williams

popular name: Nate Thurmond

date_of_death: July 16, 2016

age: 74

cause_of_death: Leukemia

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: Nathaniel Thurmond was an American basketball player who spent the majority of his 14-year career in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Golden State Warriors franchise where he played the center and power forward positions. Thurmond was a seven-time All-Star and the first player in NBA history to record an official quadruple-double. In 1965, he grabbed 42 rebounds in a game; only Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell recorded more rebounds in an NBA game. Thurmond was named both a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History.

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.''

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.