A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
Defensive Back Jack Tatum passed away on Tuesday in an Oakland hospital. He died of a massive heart attack; he was 61 years old.
Tatum was given the nickname “The Assassin because of the excruciating hits he would deliver on his opponents. Jack once paralyzed New England wide receiver Darryl Stingley and, notoriously, never apologize for that tackle.
It is safe to say that Jack played football with such intensity which is rarely seen now a days.
“From my perspective, he saved a lot of our lives. Plain and simple.”
These were the final words of Without Bias, ESPN’s latest documentary in its superb 30 for 30 series. It is impossible to know for how many people specifically that lines applies, but to put it in the hundreds of thousands probably would not be an overstatement.
The hour long film, which premiered tonight and was directed by Kirk Fraser, chronicles the life and death of Len Bias, who passed away 23 years ago when I was only four years old, but whose legacy lives on in perpetuity…today and beyond.
There were some aspects of the story that I did not know before watching it tonight, most notably that Bias had done cocaine before the night he died and that his brother Jay died four years later. Despite these surprises, the familiar feeling and lessons of the Bias story remained true and as strong as ever:
