Ted Williams

popular name: Ralph Branca

date_of_death: November 23, 2016

age: 90

cause_of_death: Natural causes

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: Ralph Branca was an American professional baseball pitcher who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1944 through 1956. As a college student, Branca played for NYU in the NCAA basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden. After NYU lost the game, Branca left school and reported to spring training with the Dodgers. He made his major league debut that year at the age of 18. Branca played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (1944–1953, 1956), Detroit Tigers (1953–1954), and New York Yankees (1954) and was a three-time All-Star. However it was a single pitch by Branca that lives in infamy - the pitcher who had three consecutive All-Star seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers was never allowed to forget one pitch that crushed crushed the Brooklyn Dodgers. Branca’s unforgivable offense (at least to Dodger fans) came on the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1951, when, in a final game with the New York Giants to determine the National League championship, he served up Bobby Thomson’s electrifying (at least to Giants fans), pennant-winning home run — the “Shot Heard Round the World” — probably the one of the most memorable moments in baseball history. Upon his death, he was laid to rest at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

popular name: Babe Ruth

date_of_death: August 16, 1948

age: 53

cause_of_death: Cancer - an inoperable malignant tumor at the base of his skull and in his neck

claim_to_fame: Sports

best_know_for: Considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time, over the course of his career, Babe Ruth went on to break baseball's most important slugging records, including most years leading a league in home runs, most total bases in a season, and highest slugging percentage for a season. In all, Ruth hit 714 home runs—a mark that stood until 1974. The Bambino was among the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

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.