Departures: All-Star baseman dead at 80

Davey Lopes

A Los Angeles Dodgers mainstay and four-time All-Star whose baserunning helped his club win four National League pennants, Lopes died April 8 at the age of 80. The second baseman broke into major league baseball with the Dodgers in 1972 at age 27 and quickly became part of the sport’s most enduring infields. According to Elias Sports Bureau, Lopes as well as Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, and Bill Russell played 833 games as an infield quartet, more than any other group in baseball history. Lopes and the Dodgers won it all in 1981, defeating the Yankees in a six-game World Series. After his playing career, Lopes coached for seven clubs including a stint as manager for the Milwaukee Brewers from 2000 until 2002.

Dash Crofts

A musician whose partnership with Jim Seals helped define the contours of soft rock, Crofts died March 25. He was 87. As a high school student in rural Texas, Crofts, then a drummer, met the saxophonist Seals in a local band. The pair moved to California together in 1958 to join the Champs, an established group that had just recorded a massive hit instrumental titled “Tequila.” The pair toured and recorded with the group for years before forming their own duo, Seals & Crofts, in 1969. Their fourth album took off in 1972, and the group charted a Top 10 hit in “Summer Breeze.” The song became a soft rock classic, appearing for decades in television and film soundtracks.

Robert Mueller

A decorated Marine Corps officer in Vietnam who held two conspicuous roles at the Department of Justice, Mueller died March 20. He was 81. After earning a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in Vietnam, Mueller became a lawyer, filling Justice Department roles until becoming a U.S. attorney in 1986. Mueller became FBI director just a week prior to the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and helped turn the agency’s attention toward counterterrorism. In 2017, Mueller accepted an appointment as special counsel and oversaw the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Mueller’s investigation led to numerous indictments but produced no criminal charges for President Donald Trump.

Chuck Norris

An actor and six-time world karate champion who also held black belts in numerous other martial arts, Norris died March 19. He was 86 years old. After playing the role of a villain in Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon, Norris went on to star as a hero in over a dozen action films including Good Guys Wear Black and Lone Wolf McQuade. He also held the title role in the long-­running TV series Walker, Texas Ranger. Norris founded Kickstart Kids, a Texas physical education program focused on teaching karate and good character, in 1990 with the help of then-President George H.W. Bush. He became a Christian at an early age and rededicated his life to Christ as a young adult during a Billy Graham crusade.

Paul Ehrlich

A Stanford academic whose famous 1968 book, The Population Bomb, sparked needless concern over the Earth’s ability to sustain life, Ehrlich died March 13. He was 93. In his famous bestseller, Ehrlich predicted hundreds of millions would die of starvation in the 1970s because the planet couldn’t support more than its roughly 3.5 billion inhabitants. By 1970, Ehrlich took his pitch onto The Tonight Show and his Malthusian argument entered the mainstream. Ehrlich’s work has been cited as influencing China’s decision to implement its ruinous one-child policy in 1979. Revolutions in agriculture rendered Ehrlich’s work obsolete even in his lifetime, and the estimated world population at the time of his death was over 8 billion.