Losing 1960s touchstones

Mikita, Taylor, McCovey among legends gone.

They were touchstones of sports in the 1960s, and sports lost three of the best in 2018: big-hitting Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants; Jim Taylor, the punishing Green Bay Packers fullback; and Stan Mikita, the embodiment of powerful Chicago Blackhawks teams.

Mikita, the first to play in the NHL from what was then Czechoslovakia, spent all of his 22 seasons with Chicago. If fans need any reminder of what he meant to the team they can turn to his statue outside the arena.

Taylor may have been born in Louisiana and finished his career in the bayou with the Saints, but no one was better suited for the unforgiving demands of Green Bay winters and its mythologized “frozen tundra.”

McCovey, with the looping left-handed swing, has not just a statue in San Francisco but a body of water named for him — McCovey Cove, where home run balls to right field go to rest in the bay.

Each arrived just as the 1950s was going through its last paces and sports had yet to become a round-theclock corporate behemoth. They were inextricably tied to city and team, their legacies burnished as the decades passed.

Mikita gave hockey the curved stick blade — not that his shot needed a new layer of trickery — and gave Chicago a hockey team that would win its first championship in more than 20 years and become a perennial force. Mikita, who died at 78, combined with Bobby Hull and goalie Glenn Hall to send the Blackhawks to the 1961 Stanley Cup title. The team lost in the finals the next year. Mikita, a ninetime All-Star, led the league in points four times.

Taylor — straight out of central casting — owned the role of the punishing, unrelenting fullback, all blood and grit and guts. Vince Lombardi came to the Packers a year after Taylor, and the coach had his man to lead his ground forces — the vaunted Green Bay “Sweep,” with pulling guards making way for Taylor and Paul Hornung.

Taylor, a Hall of Famer who died at 83, helped the Packers win four championships, including the first Super Bowl in which he scored the first touchdown. He had five straight seasons in which he ran for 1,000 yards. In 1962, he was the MVP.

McCovey hit 521 home runs and batted .270 over 22 seasons, all but three with the Giants. The 6-foot-4 slugger known as “Stretch” was the NL’s Rookie of the Year in 1959 and its MVP in 1969. He was a six-time All-Star with bum knees who glided into the Hall of Fame.

Sports this year lost others who blazed paths:

■ Anne Donovan , a pioneer of women’s basketball, died at 56. She was 6-8 and a Hall of Famer who won championships as player or coach wherever she went: Old Dominion, the Olympics, the WNBA.

■ Broadcaster Keith Jackson , 89, was amiable company for so many years across all sports. But especially in front of a TV for a college football Saturday, with Jackson ready for a “Whoa, Nelly!” when the moment was right.

■ Roger Bannister, the British track great who died at 88, smashed one of the mightiest barriers in sports in 1954 — the four-minute mile.

Baseball also said goodbye to third baseman Ed Charles and his joyous leap after the Mets won the 1969 World Series; Tony Cloninger, the Braves pitcher who hit two grand slams in a game; Rusty Staub, with more than 2,700 hits; Red Schoendienst, a St. Louis baseball lifer who at 95 had been the oldest living Hall of Famer; Wally Moon, the 1954 NL Rookie of the Year who helped the Dodgers get to three World Series; Oscar Gamble, owner of 200 home runs and a resplendent afro; and Wayne Huizenga, whose Florida business empire included not only the Marlins but the NFL’s Dolphins and NHL’s Panthers.

Basketball is now without the Celtics’ Jo Jo White and 76ers’ Hal Greer, champion guards; Vic Bubas, the coach who set the foundation for Duke basketball; Frank Ramsey, sixth man for the mighty Celtics teams of the 1960s; Willie Naulls, among the NBA’s early black stars and winner of three titles with the Celtics; Jack McKinney, coach of the “Showtime” Lakers whose career was undercut by a bicycle accident that left him comatose; Paul Allen, the Portland Trail Blazers owner whose passion for basketball did not prevent him from owning the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks; and Tex Winter, 96, guru of the triangle offense.

Football mourned Dwight Clark, whose twisting TD sent the 49ers to their first trip to the Super Bowl and left the NFL with a peerless image of “The Catch”; Billy Cannon, the 1959 LSU Heisman Trophy winner; Tommy McDonald, the receiver who teamed with Norm Van Brocklin on the Eagles’ 1960 title team; coaches Chuck Knox, who led the L.A. Rams to three straight NFC championship games; and Earle Bruce, an Ohio State patriarch who succeeded Woody Hayes.

Gone from hockey are John Ziegler, the NHL president who gave the league an international look but presided over a 1992 players strike; Bill Torrey, GM of the 1980s New York Islander dynasty and first president of the Florida Panthers; Johnny McKenzie, the winger who led the Bruins to two Stanley Cups; and Ab McDonald, who played on Mikita’s line during the Blackhawks’ 1961 championship season.

Boxing’s losses included Karl Mildenberger, the German heavyweight who went 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali in 1966. In auto racing, it was do-it-all Dan Gurney, who won in NASCAR, Formula One and IndyCar. In golf, it was two-time major winner Hubert Green; and Bruce Lietzke, a winner who loved a good time and didn’t care much for practice.

Others who blazed paths: basketball’s Anne Donovan; broadcaster Keith Jackson ; British track star Roger Bannister.

HYOSUB SHIN / AJC FILE Hall of Famer Jim Taylor (attending an awards show in 2017) helped the Packers win four championships, including the first Super Bowl in which he scored the first touchdown. He had five straight seasons in which he ran for 1,000 yards.