Untimely Player Deaths
Several players on San Diego teams have had untimely deaths.
- Former Padre Alan Wiggins died from AIDS in 1991, former Padre Eric Show died of a heart attack in 1994, Mike Sharperson was killed in a car accident on his way to join the Padres from AAA Las Vegas in 1996, and Mike Darr was killed in a car accident at the age of 25 in 2002.
- Ken Caminiti died from a drug overdose in 2004, three years after his retirement from MLB. He won the National League's MVP award as a Padre in 1996.
- The 1994 Chargers defeated the heavily-favored Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1994 AFC Championship game. Within 18 months, Chargers running back Rodney Culver was killed in a plane crash in Florida and Chargers linebacker David Griggs died in a car accident. Linebacker Doug Miller was fatally struck by two bolts of lightning in July 1998 in Colorado. Center Curtis Whitley and defensive lineman Chris Mims both died in 2008, at age 39 and 38, respectively. Defensive lineman Shawn Lee and linebacker Lew Bush both died in 2011 of cardiac arrest. Star linebacker Junior Seau committed suicide by gunshot in his Oceanside home on May 2, 2012. In total, 8 members of the Chargers' only Super Bowl team have died.
Read more about this topic: San Diego Sports Curse
Famous quotes containing the words untimely, player and/or deaths:
“In the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less than your own.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation.... It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are also practiced in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death—that is, they attempt suicide—twice as often as men, though men are more “successful” because they use surer weapons, like guns.”
—Roger Rosenblatt (b. 1940)