Sports involve physical exertion and skill, performed by
individuals who compete against each other for entertainment. We view sportsmen
as being healthy and in great physical shape but some sportsmen have had the
very bodies responsible for their rise to fame turn around and betray them. It
is now slowly becoming obvious to us that being in great physical shape does
not necessarily guarantee a long life.
10. Lou Gehrig
Henry Louis Gehrig was born on June 19, 1903. He was an
American baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons in major league baseball
from 1923 to 1929 for the New York Yankees. He was also one of only 7 major
league players who had more than 100 extra base hits in one season, a feat
which he achieved twice. The only other person to achieve this was Chuck Klein.
In 1938, Gehrig began to have
difficulty with simple tasks like tying his shoe laces. He was also finding it
difficult to maintain his winning streak. The following year he was diagnosed
with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a progressive
neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. He retired that
same year with a ground breaking emotional speech that left fans and reporters
teary eyed .
Gehrig passed away in his sleep nearly 2 years later, on June 2, 1941. He was
37.
The ALS association website has a
powerful quote that states “Someday we’ll be able to name a cure after Lou
Gehrig instead of a disease”.
9. Brian Piccolo
Louis Brian Piccolo was born on
October 31, 1943. He was a professional football player who played for the Chicago
bears as a running back.
On November 16, 1969, Piccolo
removed himself from a game in Atlanta because he was disturbed by chest pains
and persistent cough. 2 days later, a chest x-ray revealed the presence of a
tumor and Piccolo was sent to New York’s memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer
center, where he underwent surgery to remove the malignant tumor. His doctor
found out that the cancer had spread.
Piccolo was diagnosed with
embryonal cell carcinoma which is a form of cancer that occurs most commonly in
the male testes. Brian Piccolo died on June 16 1970. He was only 26 years old.
In 1980, Wake Forest University students created the Brian Piccolo cancer fund
drive.
Today, testicular cancer is
highly treatable even when the cancer spreads beyond the testicle.
8. Darryl Kile
Darryl Andrew Kile was born on
December 2, 1968. He was an American major league Baseball starting pitcher who
pitched from 1991 t0 2002. He was found dead in his hotel room by hotel staff
who forced their way in when worried teammates called to find out why Kile had
not shown up for a game he was having that day.
He was said to have complained of shoulder pain and weakness the night before
he died.
An autopsy on the sports star
revealed a narrowing of 2 out of his 3 coronary arteries by 80-90% and a heart
which was almost 25% larger than normal. The medical examiner believed Kile’s
condition, diagnosed as coronary artherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries
caused him to have an erratic heart beat that resulted in his death.
Kile was only 33 at the time of
his death on June 22, 2002. The Darryl Kile award is presented annually to the St.
Louis Cardinals and Houston Astros player who best exemplifies Kile’s trait of
“a good teammate, great friend, a fine father and a humble man”.
7. Hank Gathers
Eric “Hank” Gathers was born on
February 11, 1967. He was an American college basketball star, a student of
Loyola Marymount University, who in March 1989 was named the most valuable
player in the west coast athletic conference to lead the 10-man team.
Gathers had fainted previously on
the court and was placed on a heart medication after being found to suffer from
exercise induced ventricular tachycardia. He felt that the medication adversely
affected his performance and his dosage was cut back. On March 4, 1990, the
basketball star collapsed on the court in Los Angeles at the West Coast
Conference semifinal game against the Portland Pilots, shortly after scoring
his trademark tomahawk dunk. He died thereafter at a nearby hospital at the age
of 23.
An autopsy conducted revealed the
cause of death as cardiomyopathy, a heart muscle disorder. The autopsy also
revealed he had not been taking his medication.
Almost 3 years later, in 1993,
Gathers cousin, Joseph Marable collapsed and died on the court in an eerily
similar manner.
6. Chuck Hughes
Charles Frederick “Chuck” Hughes
was born on March 2, 1943. He was an American football player who started his
football career at Texas Western College. He played for the Philadelphia Eagles
and Detroit Lions before his untimely death. On October 24, 1971, Hughes
collapsed in the middle of a game. All efforts by the team doctor to
resuscitate him proved unsuccessful.
An autopsy performed on the
player revealed that one of his arteries was severely clogged and that a blood
clot had broken loose and become trapped in the artery, cutting off blood
supply to the heart muscle. He remains to this day, the only NFL player to die on the field.
5. Reggie Lewis
Reggie Lewis was born on November
21, 1965. He was an American professional basketball player who played for the
NBA’s Boston Celtics from 1987 to 1993. Lewis attended Northeastern University
in Boston, where he set an all-time record of 2,708 points which is yet to be
broken. By his death, he was one of only 6 players who posted at least 7500
points, 1500 rebounds, 1000 assists and 500 steals from 1988-1993 .
The Celtics player had collapsed
previously before his eventual death on July 27 1993 after collapsing during a
light workout. He was only 27 and the father of a 1 year old son. Ironically,
after a collapse in April, 1993, he told a Boston reporter “I was scared. I
started having flashbacks to that Hank Gathers thing”. He was referring to the
death of Hank Gathers, a Loyola Marymount star after a game in Los Angeles on
March 4, 1990.
Lewis was reportedly born with a
heart murmur and came from a family with a history of cardiac diseases. Autopsy
results at the time of his death revealed a large extensive scarred heart. The
cause of scar tissue was not determined.
4. Joe Roth
Joe Roth was born on May 29 1955.
He was an all American quarterback at the University of California, Berkeley.
Roth was diagnosed a few weeks into the season in the fall of 1976 with a
recurrence of melanoma, a condition he had been treated for as a teenager in El
Cajon.
Says his former coach Mike White
in an interview “He never complained, never took a day off, no matter how bad
he felt. I’ve learned more about life from him than any other player I’ve been
around. After he passed away, his teammates wore a patch on their uniforms with
his number- No. 12- and the words ‘faith, humility, courage’. That was Joe” .
Joe Roth participated in 3
college football all-star games shortly before his death. He also continued
actively in his academics, submitting a paper 10 days before he died. He died
on February 19 1977 in the presence of family and friends. Roth was only 21.
3. Jason Collier
Jason Jeffery Collier was born on
September 8, 1977. He was an American professional basketball player who played
in the NBA. Collier was a part time starting center before his death, after
playing mostly as a backup for 3 years at Houston. Collier turned down various
lucrative offers to play in Europe so that he could be closer to his wife who
was pregnant with their daughter.
He died in an ambulance on his
way to the hospital on October 15, 2005. He was only 28. An autopsy revealed the player died from a sudden heart rhythm
disturbance caused by an abnormally enlarged heart. He was
28 years old.
2. Ernie Davis
Ernie Davis was born on December
14, 1939. He was an American football halfback who was the first African
American athlete to win the Heisman Trophy in 1961 and was the No. 1 pick in
the NFL draft. Davis never realized his dream of playing in the NFL.
His family and friends began to notice a change in his demeanor following the
draft, testifying that he appeared sluggish and tired. The player also revealed
his gums had been bleeding and was admitted to Evanston Hospital, where tests
revealed that he had acute monocytic leukemia with less than a year to live.
Ernie Davis died on May 18, 1963.
He was only 23. “The express” is a film which chronicles Davis’ brief but
impactful life.
1. Antonio
Puerta
Antonio José Puerta
Pérez was born on 26 November 1984. He was a Spanish footballer who played for
Sevilla FC. On August 25, 2007, Puerta collapsed during a Primera Liga Match.
He collapsed again in the changing rooms and was resuscitated before being
transported to hospital where he later died.
Puerta’s cause
of death was revealed to be multiple organ failure caused by prolonged cardiac
arrest.
