Notable deaths last week: NFL, broadcasting legend; NASCAR 'Gentle Giant'

• An NFL championship with the New York Giants. An Emmy award as television's “outstanding sports personality.” Induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Frank Gifford, as well known for being a buffer for fellow announcers Don Meredith and Howard Cosell on “Monday Night Football” as for his versatility as a player, has died at 84.

A running back, defensive back, wide receiver and special teams player in his career, Gifford was the NFL's MVP in 1956, when the Giants won the title. He went to the Pro Bowl at three positions and was the centerpiece of a Giants offense that went to five NFL title games in the 1950s and '60s.

Beginning in 1971, he worked for ABC's “Monday Night Football,” at first as a play-by-play announcer and then an analyst, winning his Emmy in 1976-77.

“Frank's talent and charisma on the field and on the air were important elements in the growth and popularity of the modern NFL,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said.

Later in life, Gifford stayed in the spotlight through his marriage to Kathie Lee Gifford, who famously called him a “human love machine” and “lamb-chop” to her millions of viewers.

Gifford hosted “Wide World of Sports,” covered several Olympics — his call of Franz Klammer's downhill gold medal run in 1976 is considered a broadcasting masterpiece — and announced 588 consecutive NFL games for ABC, not even taking time off after the death of his mother shortly before a broadcast in 1986.

Gifford's 5,434 yards receiving were a Giants record for 39 years, until Amani Toomer surpassed him in 2003. His jersey number, 16, was retired by the team in 2000.

• Buddy Baker, who won the 1980 Daytona 500 and at 6-foot-6 was NASCAR's “Gentle Giant,” has died at 74.

Baker rode for more than 30 years and was honored as one of NASCAR's 50 greatest drivers in 1998. He was the first driver to exceed 200 mph on a closed course. The milestone came in 1970 at Talladega Superspeedway, where he won four times.

Born Elzie Wylie Baker Jr., Baker was the son of two-time champion and NASCAR Hall of Famer Buck Baker. He made his Cup Series debut in 1959 and ran his final race in 1992.

Baker won 19 races, highlighted by the 1980 victory at Daytona. He also won the 1970 Southern 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 in 1968, 1972 and 1973. He ranks 14th in NASCAR with 38 poles from 700 starts from 1959-1992. He had 202 top-five finishes and 311 top 10s.

• George Guerre, the 1940s Michigan State running back who spent a year at Michigan, has died. He was 91.

The 5-foot-5, 157-pound Guerre led the Spartans in rushing, total offense, all-purpose yards and punting for three straight seasons from 1946-48.

He ran for 1,721 yards and 11 touchdowns in his career, with six 100-yard rushing games. His average of 6.75 yards per carry is the best in school history. Guerre accounted for six other scores — throwing five TD passes and catching one.

• John Nerud, a thoroughbred racing pioneer who trained the great Dr. Fager and helped create the Breeders' Cup, died Thursday from heart failure. He was 102.

During his 44-year training career mostly for Tartan Farms in Ocala, Florida, Nerud won more than 1,000 races. His top horse was Dr. Fager, the first to win four championships in one year. In 1968, Dr. Fager was champion top sprinter, turf horse and handicap horse and chosen Horse of the Year. He won 18 of 22 career races.

Among other champions he trained were Delegate (1949), Intentionally (1950), Ta Wee (1969-70), and Dr. Patches (1978).

In 1957, Nerud was on the short end of one of the strangest finishes in Kentucky Derby history. Gallant Man, with Bill Shoemaker aboard, lost by a nose to Iron Liege after the Hall of Fame rider misjudged the finish line. A few weeks later, Gallant Man came back and won the Belmont Stakes.

Nerud was inducted into racing's Hall of Fame in 1972.

• Winthrop Adkins, a Columbia University psychologist who devised and managed a coping skills educational program intended to help at-risk youths and adults deal with everyday life issues, has died in Stamford, Connecticut. He was 82.

For more than 40 years, Adkins and his wife, Caroline Adkins, directed the Institute for Life Coping Skills, initially under the auspices of Teachers College at Columbia and since 1992 based in Stamford.

• Bob Fillion, who won the Stanley Cup with the Montreal Canadiens in 1944 and 1946, has died. He was 94.

Fillion became the oldest surviving Canadien when his former teammate Elmer Lach died at 97 in April. Gerry Plamondon, 91, who played between 1945 and 1951, is now believed to be the oldest surviving Canadien.

Fillion played seven years in the NHL. The mainly defensive left winger often played on a line with Ken Mosdell and Murph Chamberlain. He finished with 42 goals and 61 assists in 327 games, all for the Canadiens. He added seven goals and four assists in 33 playoff games.

• Horace Balmer, the head of NBA security from 1985 to 2002, has died. He was 76.

“Horace Balmer was a great friend and a longtime member of the NBA family,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “During his 17-year NBA career, he oversaw the security of events in arenas around the world and built life-long relationships with countless players, teams and league executives. Horace also dedicated himself to assisting those in need, particularly in his hometown of Norfolk, Virginia. Our thoughts and prayers are with Horace's family and friends.”

Balmer was a detective in the New York City Police Department for 20 years. After his retirement from the NBA, he co-founded the Hampton Roads Sports Hall of Fame. Balmer also owned several businesses in New York and Virginia.

• Uggie, the Jack Russell terrier who became a canine star for his scene-stealing role in the Oscar-winning movie “The Artist,” has died.

Uggie was euthanized Friday after a bout with prostate cancer, his owner, Los Angeles animal trainer Omar Von Muller, said Wednesday. The dog was 13.

• Harald Nielsen, a Denmark center forward known as “Gold Harald” after scoring six goals at the 1960 Rome Olympics, has died. He was 73.

Nielsen first played for Denmark in 1959 and scored 15 goals in 14 games.

• Angus “Gus” Mortson, the eight-time NHL All-Star defenseman who helped the Toronto Maple Leafs win four Stanley Cup titles, died Saturday. He was 90.

• When Jerome G. Miller arrived in Massachusetts in 1969 to lead an overhaul of the state's reformatories for juvenile delinquents, young people incarcerated in the facilities, also known as training schools, were routinely gagged and bound.

In other cases, they were stripped of their clothing and placed in cells. There were reports that the youths drank from toilets and that corrections officers ordered them to kneel on pencils or strapped them to beds and beat the soles of their feet. One young man hanged himself.

“Training schools are so bad that the average kid would be better on the street,” Miller told Time magazine in 1972.

Miller, a psychiatric social worker who had once considered joining the Catholic priesthood, set out in his position as commissioner of Massachusetts's youth services department to fix the reformatories. But he found their conditions so dire, and resistance to change so fierce, that he concluded a more radical move was necessary.

In 1972, in a controversial action that would bring sweeping changes to juvenile corrections practices across the United States, Miller began shutting down Massachusetts's reformatories. He moved approximately 1,000 young people to foster care, group homes and other community-based accommodations in a project that became known as the “Massachusetts experiment” — and that today is widely considered a model for the treatment and rehabilitation of young offenders.

Miller, 83, died at a nursing home in Woodstock, Virginia.