Sports stars we lost in 2018 so far.

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Athletes: Perhaps they are our greatest natural resource. Perfect specimens of humanity, physicality, and athletic prowess, we are entertained, amazed, and bewildered by sports stars’ superhuman feats of strength, speed, and agility regardless of the sports-ball field, track, court, diamond, rink, or gridiron upon which they choose to impress.
While they seem immortal when flying through the air to slam dunk a basketball held aloft with a single hand, or hurling a ball 300 feet while giants try to tackle them, or somehow hitting a ball traveling 100 mph with a small wooden stick to make it soar hundreds of feet away, the sad truth is that athletes actually are, at their core, regular human beings subject to the same laws and principles of the universe as the rest of us. That means they die. Athletes are people, often wonderful, remarkable people, but people nonetheless. Here are the sports stars both young and old that left us in 2018.
Dan Gurney
There are several sports that involve racing cars very fast, but they’re all actually very different and there isn’t a lot of overlap between these different types, even if they look basically the same to the non-fan. To start with, there’s the NASCAR circuit, IndyCar, and Formula One. Drivers by and large train for just one of them, and stay loyal to the brand. And yet there are historical curiosities like Dan Gurney. Not only is he one of the few drivers who was good enough to race at the top circles (or ovals) of NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula One, but he’s the first person to ever win a race in all three, creating a previously nonexistent Triple Crown for himself. And for good measure, he won the insane Le Mans 24 Hours endurance race in 1967 with team member A.J. Foyt — which is where he started the now common trend of celebrating a big win with a spray of champagne. Gurney died from complications of pneumonia at age 86 in January 2018.
Oscar Gamble
The 1970s were one of the wildest eras ever in Major League Baseball, perhaps a little because of the hair. Sure, you had Rollie Fingers’ silly mustache that made him look like he was going to tie a woman to train tracks in a silent movie, and Pete Rose’s assortment of little-boy Supercuts classics, but Yankees power hitter Oscar Gamble had the best hair of all, hands down. Cam Martin of ESPN said the outfielder/designated hitter “looked like he’d been dropped off by the mothership of Parliament-Funkadelic,” which is to say that the man rocked one of the best afros this side of Billy Preston. That huge dome of hair spilling out of a cap, along with his actual hitting statistics, made Gamble one of the most iconic baseball players of the ’70s. Gamble’s career stretched from 1969 to 1985, and he racked up a devilish 666 RBIs, nearly 1,200 hits, a respectable .265 batting average, and exactly 200 home runs while playing for a number of teams, including the Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies, Cleveland Indians, and the New York Yankees. Complications from a rare jaw tumor ended the 68-year-old Gamble’s life in January 2018.
Tyler Hilinksi
In the 2017 college football regular season, Washington State finished with an 8-4 record, good enough for third place in the highly competitive Pac-12 North and a spot in a Holiday Bowl (where the team lost to Michigan State). Star quarterback Luke Falk lead the way, with some impressive play from backup Tyler Hilinski. He threw more than 200 passes as a freshman and sophomore and started in the Holiday Bowl, as Falk was injured. He was a virtual lock to become the Cougars’ first-string QB after Falk’s impending graduation. That’s a future that will never come. Just a few weeks after the Holiday Bowl, on January 16, 2018, Hilinski missed a team practice , prompting police to stop by his Pullman, Washington, apartment to see if anything was amiss. That’s when the body of Hilinksi, only 21, was discovered. He’d apparently administered a self-inflected gunshot wound to the head. A note was found nearby, leading the coroner’s office to rule the death a suicide, but the reason for the suicide is unclear.
Chameka Scott
Scott did what no one else did before 2005: won a women’s basketball national title with Baylor University. Scott, a native of the Houston area, played at the school from 2002 to 2006, and averaged about 8 points and 4 rebounds during her junior year (2005) for the Lady Bears, when the team won the championship. (The next year, she got even better, with 9 points and 6 rebounds or so per game.) She parlayed that success into a pro career, both in the WNBA and internationally. Unfortunately, she had to retire from sports early, as the rigorous work of a professional athlete just couldn’t be sustained after she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Scott then became a performance coach, which is a great job for a retired athlete. Then sickness reared its ugly, nasty head again for Scott — in 2015, doctors discovered a cancerous blockage in her colon. Everything malignant was removed, but the cancer came back, as it often does. The disease took Scott’s life in January 2018.
Jo Jo White
Jo Jo White accomplished just about everything a world-class basketball player can accomplish. He was a standout at perennial college ball powerhouse Kansas, where he was a two-time All-American and three-time team MVP. He was selected for the 1968 men’s Olympic team and won a gold medal. Then the Boston Celtics drafted him with a high first-round pick in 1969, and White delivered on that promise, leading the dynastic team to NBA championships in 1974 and 1976; in the latter, White was named NBA Finals MVP. The Celtics traded him in 1979 after 10 seasons, and he wrapped up his career with stints with the Golden State Warriors and Kansas City Kings … but returned to Boston to have his jersey number (10) retired in 1982. White’s career stats — 17.2 points, 4.9 assists, and 4 rebounds per game — were good enough to get him into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. White died at age 71 in January 2018. According to White’s daughter, Meka White Morris, the death was due to pneumonia and dementia, complications from the removal of a benign brain tumor in 2010.
Rasual Butler
Sports star Rasual Butler was a journeyman player in the NBA, posting a lengthy 13-season career that included stops with the Miami Heat, New Orleans Hornets, Chicago Bulls, and San Antonio Spurs. His best season came in 2009-2010, when the small forward/shooting guard averaged 11.9 points per game for the Los Angeles Clippers. Butler retired at the conclusion of the 2015-16 season and resided in Los Angeles with his wife, R&B singer Leah LaBelle, best known as a finalist during American Idol ‘s third season back in 2004. Shockingly, both Butler, 38, and LaBelle, 31, died in a single-vehicle crash. At about 2:30 a.m. on January 31, 2018, Butler lost control of his Range Rover, and it plowed into parking meters and a wall at a very
high speed before finally rolling to a stop in a parking lot. Butler’s former boss, Heat president Pat Riley, released a statement in which he called Butler “one of the greatest people we have ever had play for us; a great player, teammate, and better person.”
Edwin Jackson
Edwin Jackson was only just getting started in the NFL.
A two-sport star as a young ‘un — he lettered in football three times and was a state wrestling champion finalist for Westlake High School in Atlanta — Jackson played linebacker at Georgia Southern. But he went undrafted, eventually singing with the Indianapolis Colts and playing in eight games in 2016 , where he recorded 42 tackles. The Colts placed Jackson on their injured reserve list for 2017, which set him up to make a big splash in 2018 … which sadly won’t happen because he was killed in a horrific roadside accident. Police believe that around 4 a.m. on February 4, 2018, Jackson’s Uber driver, 54-year-old Jeffrey Monroe, pulled over on Interstate 70 in Indianapolis because Jackson was feeling sick. While standing on the side of the road, both men were struck and killed by a pickup truck. Previously convicted drunk driver Manuel Orrego-Savala faces 20 years in prison on charges of causing death while driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident. His blood alcohol level: 0.19, twice Indiana’s legal limit. Edwin Jackson was just 26.
Zeke Upshaw
It’s obviously sad when an older, beloved, and groundbreaking athlete dies, triggering a time for sentimental reflection on their accomplishments. But when a young athlete dies basically before their life can even get started, it’s downright tragic, just because it’s awful when anyone dies before their time, and because it leaves us wondering what could have been. Zeke Upshaw played college basketball for Illinois State and Hofstra before turning pro for leagues in Slovenia and Luxembourg. In 2016, he got very close to the NBA, signing with the Grand Rapids Drive of the NBA Development League (later known as the NBA G League). In his second season with the team, Upshaw contributed 8.5 points per game, helping the team score a 29-21 record and a playoff spot. Tragically, during the team’s final game of the regular season, against the Long Island Nets in March 2018, Upshaw collapsed on the court. The 26-year-old was hospitalized locally and died two days later. (A specific cause of death was not released.)
Rusty Staub
The Montreal Expos don’t have as storied a history as most other Major League Baseball teams. They never went to a World Series, their best season was shortened by a strike, and they struggled to exist until a move and name change made the team the Washington Nationals.
Rusty Staub, however, was the team’s very first star and still one of its most beloved people. He landed with the Expos in 1969 , the team’s first season in the majors, and thus the birth of the MLB in Canada. Staub hit .302 with 29 home runs that year while also serving as a de facto ambassador for Canadian baseball — the man even learned French to endear himself to Quebecois francophone fans, who affectionately nicknamed the redhead “Le Grand Orange.” Staub was a six-time All-Star (including all three years he played for Montreal), and he later played for a few more teams, notably the New York Mets. He died of a heart attack at age 73 on April 1, 2018. That just so happened to be baseball’s Opening Day, and the Mets paid tribute to him with a moment of silence.
Hal Greer
Hal Greer was a sports star in the NBA just when it was starting to get popular — in part because of Greer’s on-court heroics. He played his entire, 15-year career (1958–1973) with the same team, the Philadelphia 76ers (including when they were the Syracuse Nationals). Despite some major stars on the team through the years, such as Julius Erving, Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson, and Manute Bol , after all this time Greer is still the all-time franchise leader in points scored, games played, and field goals. The league recognized Greer, too, naming him to 10 All-Star teams and including him on its 1996 list of the 50 greatest players of all time. The first Sixer to have his number (17) retired, he led the team to the 1967 NBA championship and was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982. Greer passed away in April 2018 at the age of 81.