Three prominent people's deaths of note

I'm not usually one to get all woeful and reminiscent when a celebrity or other prominent person dies. Even if I was a fan of their work or their career, I realize that they are humans just like all the rest of us, and we're all going to die at some point.

But three deaths over the last couple of weeks got me to thinking about just how some people impact our lives without us ever meeting them. I'll discuss them in reverse order of their deaths, starting with the most recent.

Jim Bouton. Bouton achieved fame as a baseball player with the New York Yankees in 1961 and 1962, the year of my birth and the year afterwards. He was known for his blazing fastball. But arm problems derailed his young career, and he was picked up in the expansion draft by the Seattle Pilots for the 1969 season, and then traded to the Houston Astros later that year.

Bouton's chronicle of that season, along with memoirs from his glory days with the Yankees, became one of the most influential sports memoirs, Ball Four.

I came across a copy of that paperback book sometime during my early teen years. I think I found it at my grandmother's house. I don't know who it had belonged to, but I read it. Back then, I was still young enough to snicker every time I heard a swear word in a movie or on TV. Ball Four had me snickering nonstop, especially at the swearing of Pilots manager Joe Schultz. Schultz, Bouton recounted, had a habit of combining the s-word and the f-word into a single word, alternating the beginning word of his manufactured compound curse. "F---s---" and "s---f---" were said to be Schultz's two favorite epithets.

But it wasn't Bouton's recounting of his manager's cussing that was controversial. He noted that Yankees superstar Mickey Mantle sometimes took the field hung over, and commented on the use of speed by many players. The baseball commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, declared that he'd done the game a disservice, and he was shunned by many in the game after the book came out.

As I got older, and read and re-read Ball Four, I began to understand more of the context and adult themes the book discussed. I was a die-hard Cincinnati Reds fan, so I appreciated the insight into the world of Major League Baseball in the years before the Big Red Machine captivated the world.

I wore that paperback version out, and several years later when an updated version with a new chapter came out, I picked it up and turned it into a dog-eared collection of pages as well.

Even today, I can still remember some passages from Ball Four and had just recalled something from it the day before Bouton died. I'm not a MLB fan anymore -- the 1994 strike ended my fandom -- but the book still remains an important sports tome.

H. Ross Perot. Perot's claim to fame was not his status as a rich businessman, but for his two independent runs for the presidency.

Most people get all sentimental when someone dies, and I read many eulogies praising Perot after the news broke. But I don't look upon him with favor. I will always regard him as the man who caused Bill Clinton to be elected president.

Perot's entry into the 1992 race, in my view, siphoned votes away from incumbent President George H. W. Bush and allowed Clinton to with with a plurality of the electorate. Instead of going through the party system, Perot challenged Bush as an independent. It's been widely thought that voters who weren't totally satisfied with Bush, but wouldn't have voted for Clinton, went with Perot.

Had Clinton not won, we'd also never have been plagued with his wife. Hillary Clinton would have never been in the political conversation had not she been married to a charismatic president.

Perot tried again in 1996, but was basically a non-factor in that race when Clinton defeated Bob Dole.

In retrospect, perhaps Perot was Donald Trump 24 years too early, but at least Trump worked the system and didn't buck it. Both Perot and Trump decried various trade pacts -- Perot famously described NAFTA as causing a "giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving America for Mexico -- and it turns out that Perot donated to Trump's re-election campaign shortly before his death.

At any rate, it's hard for me to mourn Perot's passing. I remember hearing him described as "a gratuitous interloper" in the 1992 presidential race, and I can't help but wonder what might have happened had he stayed out of that contest.

Jared Lorenzen. This one probably hit me hardest of the three mentioned here, even though I'd never met him. As a lifelong University of Kentucky fan, I was very familiar with Lorenzen's life and career.

A two-sport star from northern Kentucky, who could have played college basketball had he so chosen, Lorenzen came to UK on a football scholarship as a quarterback despite being built more like a lineman. The guy was big. Being a big fellow myself, I could identify with him. Many years prior, when I was a sportswriter, I'd written a column about my sports heroes wearing size XXL uniforms. I specifically noted Charles Barkley and William "Refrigerator" Perry. Had Lorenzen been on the scene then, he'd have gotten a prime mention.

Despite his size, Lorenzen became a record-setting quarterback for the Wildcats. He bridged the gap between the fools-gold Hal Mumme era and the rebuilding efforts of Rich Brooks, which were the bookends of a couple of seasons when Guy Morriss served as interim coach before bolting for what appeared to be greener pastures at Baylor in light of the Mumme-caused NCAA sanctions against the UK football program.

And despite all odds, Lorenzen became an NFL quarterback, serving as Eli Manning's backup on a Super Bowl team.

His size gave him a number of nicknames. "The Round Mound of Touchdown" was a play on Barkley's "Round Mound of Rebound" monicker. "Pillsbury Throwboy" was another common nickname, as was "Hefty Lefty."

After Lorenzen left the NFL, his weight began to increase, and he undertook a very public journey to chronicle his efforts to drop the excess poundage. He even made a football comeback, playing in an arena league until a broken leg sidelined him for good.

His uncanny and unexpected athletic ability notwithstanding, I probably admired him for from afar for his business acumen. The dude was a creative and marketing genius. He founded a sports apparel company, Throwboy Tees, that centered on Kentucky- and UK-centric sports themes. Not a moment passed in the Kentucky sports world that Lorenzen didn't immediately rush to market with a T-shirt. Last year, when then-UK basketball player Tyler Herro uttered his famous "I'm a bucket" line during a tight ballgame, there was a shirt on the Web site the next day. When the NCAA stripped the University of Louisville of its 2013 basketball championship, Throwboy Tees sold a shirt with a replica of a championship banner with a big red "X" through it and an image of a dead cardinal. My favorite, though, and the only shirt I ever actually bought, came out during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. "Make Kentucky Great Again, Build A Wall," it said, depicting the state of Kentucky with a box drawn around the city of Louisville.

Lorenzen died much too young at 38, succumbing to what no doubt were complications from his weight issues. He was eulogized as much for his huge heart, bigger-than-life personality, and his impact on so many people across Kentucky and the football world as he was his on-field accomplishments. Even former Louisville rivals contributed to pay for his funeral. His T-shirt company is donating all proceeds from sales this month to his family (he was divorced with two young children).

RIP Jared Lorenzen, a man whose unlikely athletic accomplishments thrilled a state, and to me, a man whose creative streak was something I envied.

Kentucky press misses the boat on presidential candidate's Bluegrass connection

As a former journalist, I still maintain a keen interest in the profession. I spent too many years in the business to just walk away from caring about the reporting of the news.

As a conservative, I've seen just how poor of a job today's journalists do. The agenda is unmistakable. There's a definite bias in what's covered and how it's covered.

Not a day goes by that I don't look at some media report and think how much better I could do it, and how so many newspapers and broadcast outlets are failing their audiences.

That's why it came as no surprise when I found some low-hanging fruit that would be easy pickings for an enterprising Kentucky news outlet. If five minutes of my spare time could yield what could be an intriguing human interest story highlighting Kentucky's connection to the 2020 presidential race, then why isn't someone who gets paid to do such things all over the story?

Tulsi Gabbard is a U.S. representative from Hawaii who's one of the pretenders in the crowded clown car that is the Democratic field of presidential candidates. She's a native Samoan whose family moved to Hawaii when she was young.

The surname Gabbard certainly isn't a common Hawaiian or Samoan name, that's for certain. But it is a familiar name to many people in east-central Kentucky. There are quite a few Gabbards in the Lee-Owsley-Breathitt county area that's my home. A few months ago, one of my friends jokingly posted on Facebook something about her and possible Kentucky roots.

After the recent circus -- I mean, the recent presidential debate -- a couple of folks with whom I was taking a training class in Frankfort were discussing her. They were National Guard members and were commenting about her because she had been a guard member. At the same time, another friend noted on Facebook commented that she was probably the best-looking presidential candidate ever, and posted a link to her Wikipedia page.

So that got me to thinking. I clicked on that Wikipedia page and saw that her father's name is Mike Gabbard, and he serves as a Hawaii state senator. The information on that page indicates that he's a Samoa native and his father was named Benjamin Harrison Gabbard, Jr.

So, off to Google I went. A search for "Benjamin Harrison Gabbard" yielded some information on someone named Benjamin Harrison Gabbard, Sr., and that's where the local connection comes into play.

Tulsi Gabbard's great-grandfather was a native of Jackson County who went to American Samoa as a naval seaman. He married a Samoan woman and stayed there until his death in 1932. He's buried in Pago Pago, having been disinterred and reburied with Tulsi's grandfather after his death in 1986.

It seems to me that there's a great news story to be had here before Tulsi Gabbard joins Eric Swalwell's ranks and gives up her impossible task. Reporters could go to Jackson County and see if they can find anyone who knows Tulsi or Mike. They could interview her and inquire if she's ever been to her family's ancestral homeland of eastern Kentucky, or if she or her father are ever in contact with anyone there.

But so far, not a peep. I'm guessing that this is probably the first you've ever heard of her Kentucky connection. If I was still a reporter, I'd definitely pursue this story I learned about just by chasing my own curiosity and by executing a couple of Internet searches.

Unfortunately, our press is asleep at the wheel. A story right under their noses, and they don't see it. Is it any wonder that bloggers and other citizen journalists are as popular as they are? I've seen quite a few stories on political blogs that never saw the light of day in the mainstream media. For this former journalist, it's frustrating. I share many of my conservative brethren's concerns about the state of the Fourth Estate, but I realize how vital a free and fair press is to this country's well-being.

In the meantime, enjoy this scoop that you didn't read in the Herald-Leader, the Courier-Journal, or even the Jackson County Sun or Jackson County Times.