By John Shea
When Gino Cimoli stepped in the batter's box at Seals Stadium on April 15,
1958, major-league baseball was born on the West Coast.
Cimoli was a Brooklyn Dodger but a San Franciscan at heart. He was inserted
atop the lineup by manager Walter Alston, who knew the significance of the
North Beach legend and kid from Galileo High School becoming the first
big-league batter following the Giants' and Dodgers' relocation from New
York.
Cimoli died Saturday morning of kidney and heart complications. He was 81.
"Gino was just an all-around nice guy," said friend Bob Tobener, who had
helped organize functions in recent years at which Cimoli spoke. "He was a
great athlete. Out of high school, people said he was a better basketball
player than baseball player. . . .
He was a really good hitter."
Cimoli struck out off Ruben Gomez to begin California's inaugural big-league
season, and the Dodgers lost 8-0 -- not quite as impactful for Cimoli as the
Dodgers' 1957 opener when he homered off Robin Roberts in the 12th to beat
Philadelphia.
In 1960, Cimoli contributed to the Pirates' stunning World Series triumph
over the Yankees, hitting a single to help trigger a decisive rally in Game
7. He hit .265 in 10 seasons and led the American League in triples in 1962.
He played for seven teams (including the Dodgers in both Brooklyn and L.A.),
and his daughter, Cherryl Keast, said, "Our life totally revolved around
baseball. Baseball was our life, not that that was a bad thing. We lived
where he played."
Keast called her father "just a very generous person."
With the Pirates down 7-4 in the final game of the '60 Series, Cimoli pinch
hit for Elroy Face and singled off Bobby Shantz to ignite a rally that put
the Pirates ahead 9-7. The Yanks tied it in the ninth, and, of course, Bill
Mazeroski won it for Pittsburgh with a Series-ending homer.
Cimoli played in one other World Series but never got an at-bat in 1956,
which featured Don Larsen's perfect game. "He said, 'If I was in that game,
I would've gotten a hit, " Tobener said. "That's the way Gino was. An
all-around nice guy."
Cimoli is survived by his companion of 39 years, Lorraine Vigli; two
daughters, Keast and Linda Close; three grandchildren and a great
grandaughter. His daughters' mother is Irene Cimoli.
Cimoli, born in 1929, had a long minor-league career before breaking into
the bigs with the '56 Dodgers. His final season came with the '65 Angels,
and he worked for UPS for many years while staying true to his North Beach
roots.
Two weeks ago, Cimoli and Vigli moved from San Francisco to Roseville.
"Just an all-around guy," Vigli said. "He loved to play cards, go to Reno,
enjoyed life in general. He followed the game. The Giants were still famous
to him, being a hometown boy."
The couple had planned to attend November's 50-year anniversary of the '60
Series -- including an NBC telecast of Game 7, shown on the MLB Network --
but the trip never materialized because of Cimoli's failing health.
Pamela Jean Bryant (born February 8, 1959, in Indianapolis, Indiana; died December 4, 2010) was an American model and actress. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for its April 1978 issue. Her centerfold was photographed by Richard Fegley.
Bryant first appeared in Playboy in the September 1977 pictorial "The Girls of the Big Ten". (She was attending Indiana University at the time). She went on to have an extensive acting career, appearing in films such as H.O.T.S. (1979), Don't Answer the Phone (1980) and Private Lessons (1981). Bryant also appeared on TV shows such as Magnum, P.I.; Fantasy Island; and The Love Boat.
She worked as an artist before her death.
Sir George Shearing, the ebullient jazz pianist who wrote the standard "Lullaby of Birdland" and had a string of hits both with and without his quintet, has died. He was 91.
Shearing, blind since birth, died early Monday morning in Manhattan of congestive heart failure, his longtime manager Dale Sheets said.
"He was a totally one-of-a-kind performer," said Sheets. "It was something wonderful to see, to watch him work."
Shearing had been a superstar of the jazz world since a couple of years after he arrived in the United States in 1947 from his native England, where he was already hugely popular. The George Shearing Quintet's first big hit came in 1949 with a version of songwriter Harry Warren's "September in the Rain."
He remained active well into his 80s, releasing a CD called "Lullabies of Birdland" as well as a memoir, "Lullaby of Birdland," in early 2004. In March of that year, though, he was hospitalized after suffering a fall at his home. It took him months to recover, and he largely retired from public appearances after that.
Sheets said that while Shearing ceased working, he never stop playing piano.
"He was getting better periodically and doing quite well up into about a month ago," said Sheets.
In a 1987 Associated Press interview, Shearing said the ingredients for a great performance were "a good audience, a good piano, and a good physical feeling, which is not available to every soul, every day of everyone's life.
"Your intent, then, is to speak to your audience in a language you know, to try to communicate in a way that will bring to them as good a feeling as you have yourself," he said.
In 2007, Shearing was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to music. When the honor was announced, he said it was "amazing to receive an honor for something I absolutely love doing."
Shearing's bebop-influenced sound became identified with a quintet _ piano, vibes, guitar, bass and drums _ which he put together in 1949. More recently, he played mostly solo or with only a bassist. He excelled in the "locked hands" technique, in which the pianist plays parallel melodies with the two hands, creating a distinctly full sound.
Among the luminaries with whom Shearing worked over the years: Tito Puente, Nancy Wilson, Nat "King" Cole, Mel Torme, Marian McPartland, the Boston Pops, Peggy Lee, Billy Taylor, Don Thompson, Stephane Grappelli and Sarah Vaughan, whom Shearing called "the best contralto in pop."
When Torme won Grammys two years in a row in 1983-84, for "An Evening With George Shearing and Mel Torme" and "Top Drawer," he blasted the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences for failing to nominate his partner, Shearing, either time.
"It's hard to image a more compatible musical partner," Shearing said after Torme died in 1999. "I humbly put forth that Mel and I had the best musical marriage in many a year. We literally breathed together during our countless performances." And he told Down Beat magazine: "Mel was one of the few people that I played with whom I felt I worked with and not for."
Shearing wrote "Lullaby of Birdland" in 1952; it's named for the famous New York jazz club. He acknowledged composing it in just 10 minutes. "But I always tell people, it took me 10 minutes and 35 years in the business," he told The Christian Science Monitor in 1980. "Just in case anybody thinks there are any totally free rides left, there are none!"
At an 80th birthday celebration at Carnegie Hall in 1999, Shearing introduced "Lullaby" by joking: "I have been credited with writing 300 songs. Two hundred ninety-nine enjoyed a bumpy ride from relative obscurity to total oblivion. Here is the other one."
Among other songs recorded by the George Shearing Quintet: "I'll Never Smile Again," "Mambo Inn," "Conception," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and "East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)."
The landmark albums he and the quintet made include "The Swingin's Mutual," backing up vocalist Wilson, and "Nat King Cole Sings/George Shearing Plays."
But Shearing laid the quintet to rest in 1978, except for occasional revivals.
"I needed a breath of fresh air and a chance to grow individually," he told the AP. "What I find as a soloist or working with a bassist, is that I can address myself more to the proposition of being a complete pianist; I find a lot more pianistic freedom."
He was already working at his memoir in 1987, saying he was using a Braille word processor. "I think there are a lot of things to be told from my view _ the world of sound and feel," he said. Years earlier, in a 1953 AP interview, he had said he referred to his blindness as little as possible because, "I want to get by as a human being, not as a blind person."
As he grew older, he spoke frankly of aging.
"I'm not sure that technique and improvisational abilities improve with age," the pianist said. "I think what improves is your sense of judgment, of maturity. I think you become a much better editor of your own material."
Shearing was born Aug. 13, 1919, to a working-class family and grew up in the Battersea district of London.
A prodigy despite his inability to see printed music, he studied classical music for several years before deciding to "test the water on my own" instead of pursuing additional studies at a university. Shearing began his career at a London pub when he was 16.
During World War II, the young pianist teamed with Grappelli, the French jazz violinist, who spent the war years in London. Grappelli recalled to writer Leonard Feather in 1976 that he and Shearing would "play during air raids. Was not very amusing."
Shearing had a daughter, Wendy, with his first wife, the former Trixie Bayes, whom he married in 1941. The marriage ended in divorce in 1973 and two years later he married singer Ellie Geffert.
The popularity of the Shearing quartet's records a half-century ago had some writers suggesting he didn't take his jazz seriously enough. In a 2002 New York Times piece, critic Terry Teachout said such talk was beside the point.
"The time has come," Teachout wrote, "for George Shearing to be acknowledged not as a commercial purveyor of bop-and-water, but as an exceptionally versatile artist who has given pleasure to countless listeners for whom such critical hairsplitting is irrelevant."
Shearing is survived by his wife, Geffert.
http://www.newser.com/article/d9lcme8g2/jazz-great-george-shearing-who-wrote-lullaby-of-birdland-dies-at-91.html
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