R.I.P. Nick Charles

Before ESPN's ......Sports Center.......

There was a maverick.....Nick Charles.

There was CNN's.........Sports Tonight.

Sports Tonight......was way better than  any ....ESPN's Sports Centers...

For it was just sports.....without all the .....self promoting ESPN  bullshit.

Mr. Charles.....we will miss you...Our prayers are with your family.

From the Washington Post:

Nick Charles dies; first CNN sports anchor

Saturday, June 25, 8:15 PM

Nick Charles, a onetime Washington sportscaster who became CNN’s first sports anchor in 1980, died June 18 of bladder cancer at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 64.
Mr. Charles began broadcasting at CNN on the news network’s first day, June 1, 1980.

(CNN) - Nick Charles anchored “Sports Tonight” 17 years, then had his own show, “Page One with Nick Charles,” before leaving CNN in 2001.

“In those early days, when I came back to work each Monday,” Mr. Charles told The Washington Post in 1986, “I wasn’t sure if the station would still be there or if it would be a dry cleaning store.”

For years, he was teamed with Fred Hickman on “Sports Tonight,” a nightly roundup that challenged and often topped ESPN in the ratings.

“Our biggest problem in the beginning was finding credibility,” Mr. Charles told The Post in 2000. “I’d call people and say ‘this is Nick Charles from CNN’ and they’d hang up on me. They thought we were a lending institution or were trying to sell them something.”

Mr. Charles anchored “Sports Tonight” 17 years, then had his own show, “Page One with Nick Charles,” before leaving CNN in 2001.

Mr. Charles anchored Winter Olympic coverage for the TNT network in 1992 and 1994 and was co-host of the network’s Goodwill Games in the 1980s and 1990s. He covered most of the leading sports events around the world, including Super Bowls, the Kentucky Derby and the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

He was probably best known, however, for his analysis and commentary of boxing. He interviewed former heavyweight champions Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson and, after leaving CNN, was a boxing commentator on the Showtime network until 2009.

Nicholas Charles Nickeas was born June 30, 1946, in Chicago and was a graduate of Columbia College Chicago. He was a taxi driver before beginning his broadcast career in 1970 in Springfield, Ill.

In the early 1970s, he worked at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV before becoming a sports anchor for WRC-TV (Channel 4) in Washington, where he shared anchor duties with Glenn Brenner.
“What too few people realize is that [Mr. Charles] works as hard as any local sportscaster in the country,” The Post’s Ken Denlinger wrote in 1979. “Brenner and Charles gave the area its best mix of entertainment and information in recent memory.”

After WRC fired him in 1979, Mr. Charles moved to Atlanta, where CNN was being launched.
“We did our shows on a shoestring,” he told The Post in 2000. “But we always got it done, and we had a great sense of adventure doing it. “

Mr. Charles, who was half-Sicilian and half-Greek, became almost as famous for his good looks as for his polished broadcast delivery. People magazine once named him one of the most handsome men in America.

Mr. Charles had three children from his first two marriages, which ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 13 years, Cory Azumbrado Charles, a onetime international producer for CNN; and a 5-year-old daughter from his third marriage.

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R.I.P. Manute Bol

Virginia hospital: Former NBA star Manute Bol dead at 47

June 19, 2010 5:56 p.m. EDT

Manute Bol, a native of Sudan who was listed at 7 feet, 7 inches tall, played 12 years in the NBA.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• At 7-feet-7, Manute Bol was one of the tallest players in NBA history
• He was known as a shot blocker in his 10-year professional career
• Bol, a native of war-torn Sudan, reportedly donated his NBA earnings to charities
• The Virginia hospital where he died did not disclose the cause of death

(CNN) -- Manute Bol, one of the tallest players in NBA history, died Saturday at the age of 47, a spokeswoman with the University of Virginia Medical Center confirmed to CNN.
The hospital did not disclose the cause of death.
Bol, who was listed at 7-feet-7 inches tall and 225 pounds, played for the Washington Bullets, Golden State Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat in his 10-year career.
The native of war-torn Sudan was known during and after his career for his charity work for his home country. In 2004 after he was nearly killed in an auto accident, Bol told Sports Illustrated, "God guided me to America and gave me a good job. But he also gave me a heart, so I would look back."
Bol donated his NBA earnings to charity, according to the article.
Bol, so tall and so lanky, was somewhat the oddity when he came to national attention as a player for the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1984. He was a dominant shot blocker and rebounder at the Division II school, where often the tallest player on the other team would be a foot shorter than him. He played one year at Bridgeport then went pro.
Known as the Dinka Dunker for the Sudanese tribe he was from, Bol was drafted in 1985 by the Bullets and twice led the NBA in blocked shots.
Fans also loved when he would stand behind the 3-point line and push up a long-distance jumper.
He had more blocked shots than points scored in his career, the only NBA player to ever to have that distinction.
He also drew attention after his career ended when he fought a former NFL player, William Perry, in made-for-TV boxing match. Bol won the fight over the man known as the "The Refrigerator" with a third-round decision.
Bol is survived by four children, two sons and two daughters, he had with his ex-wife, Atong.

Former NBA player Gheorghe Muresan, who starred with Billy Crystal in the 1998 movie "My Giant," was also listed at 7-feet-7.

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