You should probably know the name of Gerry James, the way we naturally know the names of Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson.
Way back when, before Sanders and Jackson starred in both baseball and football, defining two-sport athletes forever, James played for the Maple Leafs for five winters and rushed for more than 1,000 yards with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers twice in his 11-year Canadian Football League career.
He was a two-sport star before anybody paid much attention to what two-sport stars were. James was 90 when he passed away this past February.
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It always is an exercise in sadness and memories — so much of it personal and emotional — to look back at those we lost in a given year.
In 2024, we lost the Gaudreau brothers, Johnny Hockey and Matthew, under tragic circumstances. The mourning hasn’t stopped. The mourning may never stop.
These were young men struck down way too soon, fathers and soon-to-be fathers, hockey players and former hockey players, staples of a close family and from a sport that holds on tightly to all it has.
Ron Ellis passed away in 2024. He was one of those straight lines on the Maple Leafs teams of the 1960s and 70s He was good for 20 to 30 goals in almost every one of his 15 seasons.
If you ever came across Ellis, consider yourself lucky. If there have been better people, nicer people, friendlier people, more respectful people who played for the Leafs, I haven’t come across them.
Nobody played baseball better than Willie Mays. If you combine hitting and power and speed and defence and an unbridled joy to play, well, nobody played it the way Mays did.
Others hit more home runs. Others stole more bases. Others hit for higher averages. Only Roberto Clemente won as many outfield Gold Gloves. But the total package was unlike anyone who played before or after. Mays passed away at the age of 93 in June.
How great a player and significant a basketball figure was Jerry West? Put it this way: The logo the NBA has used for most of its history is a likeness of West, who starred for the Los Angeles Lakers as a player, then starred in the front office, building championship teams in Los Angeles.
He played with Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor with the Lakers and had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson on the championship teams he managed, eight of them to be exact.
Not unlike Ellis, West chronicled his battles with depression and self esteem in a rather surprising autobiography late in his career. We can know our athletes from the outside, rarely from the inside. Both West and Ellis educated us in a necessary way.
Not all stars in sports are the greatest people. O.J. Simpson died in 2024 and probably should have spent his adult life in prison. Before he was up on murder charges — and should have been found guilty — he was a running back that few can forget.
In this football season in which the Buffalo Bills are getting notice all over America, it is reminiscent in another way of the march to 2,003 yards with Simpson in 1973, MVP of the NFL that year.
The football player was special. The human being was not.
It’s different with Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame, who died at 83 in September. Rose played baseball with an edge and with the kind of joy Mays brought to the game.
He ran out every ball. He had more hits than anyone who ever played. He slid hard into every base. He was a textbook tough guy playing the game. But gambling got him, soiled his reputation, made him an annual subject of debate.
There were others stars from other sports lost in 2024: Larry Allen, the mammoth offensive lineman from the Dallas Cowboys, died at 52; The running backs who passed away, Mercury Morris and Duane Thomas, would have flourished running behind Allen.
Raptors media day was stunned silent in late September when Masai Ujiri’s close friend, Dikembe Mutumbo passed away. His death came after those of West and Bill Walton and, later, coach Lou Carnesecca.
I grew up watching Joe Kapp play quarterback in Minnesota after leaving the CFL and watching Whit Tucker catch pass after pass in Ottawa. Both passed away in 2024, as did other legends like Kenny Ploen and Dave Ritchie and the longtime voice of the Argos, Peter Martin, and the Bombers all-star beat writer, Teddy Wyman.
Hockey said goodbye to Bill Hay and Murray Costello, who helped build the game in this country, and goodbye to the genius that was Bob Cole.
Toronto boxing lost the referee and judge, Harry Davis. Wrestling lost Roman Reigns’ father, Sika Anou’i, along with Sid Vicious and the tag team specialist Ole Anderson.
Football lost Jim Otto and Rich Caster, Roman Gabriel and Chris Mortenson while golf lost the WKRP legend, Chi Chi Rodriguez. From the Blue Jays family, Rico Carty and Raul Mondesi passed.
And, in my head, I can still hear Sergei Berezin, the Leafs winger who played on a line with Garry Valk and Yanic Perreault one playoff season. I asked him a rather pointed question one day.
“Why don’t you pass?”
His answer still makes me laugh. He looked over at Valk and said: “To who?”
A funny man, Berezin died at the young age of 52. The memory of him and so many others gone remains.
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