If I had to pick one guy, outside of the immediate circle of musicians or lyricists, who was responsible for the success of the Grateful Dead, it would be Augustus Owsley Stanley III.

If you were a member of the GD circle, you knew him as Bear. If you bought LSD anywhere on the west coast in the late 1960s or early 1970s, you knew him simply as Owsley, the guy who cooked millions of doses, before and after the drug was deemed to be illegal in 1966.

Bear was killed on Sunday, in a car accident near his home in Australia.

Bear’s underground industry helped him finance the band, which he first saw at one of the Bay Area Acid Test shows. He bought gear, he paid for their living expenses and allowed them the time to develop from something of a novelty to the biggest band in the San Francisco area. He even took them in while he lived in Los Angeles for a spell, feeding the band’s members only steak — he thought vegetables were toxic and carbohydrates caused diabetes — kept them stoned nearly all the time, because they all lived in the lab where he was cooking the substance that paid for the band’s expenses.

He observed early on that the band’s live harmonies were horrible; he actually went as far as to suggest that they play only songs that didn’t require background vocals. The guys didn’t go for that, so Bear did the next best thing — he upgraded their monitors and sound system, a process that continued with him until he designed the Wall of Sound, a monstrous system that could produce crystal-clear sound at a staggering decibel level. For those two-and-a-half years, the band had to use two Walls of Sound, so one could jump ahead to the next venue while the band used the other for the current show. It was a sonic success but a business nightmare — the expenses associated with hauling two of those things around the country nearly bankrupted the band and was a big factor in the hiatus that started in 1974.

Bear was a notorious pain in the ass, and he pushed the band through the years about matters both artistic and acoustic. That had an impact, back then and today, as Weir said in a statement posted at Jambands.com:

He taught me to take myself and my interests out of the picture and work with the subject under consideration so that the best deductions or conclusions are made. I guess this means working from the point of view of the higher self, though that term never came up; it was always just assumed…Most important was the approach he taught me: Always be open and engaging – always critical and questioning, but not negatively so much as playfully.

There are pictures of Bear available through the magic of Google, and I’m not going to post any of them here. Bear preferred to be a behind-the-scenes guy, and that’s something I’ll respect here.

Instead, you get a Stealie, which Bear helped design as a stencil to easily identify the band’s gear. It’s a pretty good symbol of the impact he had on the band. He needed something to make his job and that of the crew a little easier; what he came up with because the best-recognized icon for an iconic band.

Thanks, Bear, for that and everything else.

He struck out 15 in his first start. He was 17 years old.

He willingly enlisted in the Navy at the start of World War II. He was the first Major Leaguer to do so, and he gave up four years of his prime to do it.

In the off seasons, he led baseball barnstorming tours, often including players from the Negro Leagues.

He continued going to Indians games — and live in Cleveland — after his retirement. He signed anything and everything fans asked him to.

He won 266 games. His career ERA was 3.25. He threw three no-hitters — including the only one ever thrown on an opening day — 12 one-hitters and was selected to the All-Star Game eight times.

Without question, Bob Feller was the greatest player to wear the Cleveland Indians uniform. He died last night.

There was a time that I didn’t really know that the Cleveland Indians existed. But I knew about the Cincinnati Reds, and I knew about the white-haired guy who guided the Reds through most of the 1970s.

I was a huge baseball fan back then, an easy thing for an Ohio kid when the team you listened to on the radio every day and every night had Bench and Perez and Rose and Foster and Concepcion and Geronimo and Griffey and Morgan and Gullett and Borbon … and Sparky Anderson, their manager.

I know there were playoff runs early in the decade, including a series loss to Baltimore in 1970s, but my memories really start with the 1975 season, when Sparky moved Pete Rose from left field to first base early in the season to make room for George Foster — who proceeded to hit something like 25 home runs and bat .300 for the remainder of the year, adding even more power to an already insanely talented offense.

My memories of the 1975 series are so solid because I was allowed to stay up to watch the games — that wasn’t the chore it usually is these days, but still, Game Six, won by that damn Carlton Fisk home run, went long (11 innings? 12?). But I got to see every pitch of what might have been the best series ever, won by what might have been the best team ever.

The Reds swept the Yankees the following year, and then I gave up on baseball for a while; during that offseason, much of the team was shipped out, and my 10-year-old brain couldn’t comprehend that the business side of baseball might somehow overrule the notion that HELLO, YOU’RE UNLOADING THE BEST TEAM EVER.

Of course, through the miracle of cable television, I discovered the Indians a few years later, and by then Sparky had been the manager of the divisional rivals in Detriot for a while. It was easy to hate the Tigers — there’s that whole Michigan thing — but I could never hate Sparky. He helped give me some of my favorite memories of my childhood, and for that, I will always be grateful.

But the music — whether we’re talking about the steady stream of old stuff the band continues to release or tours by Furthur, Ratdot, Phil, the Rhythm Devils, etc. — is alive and well.

This departure, however, is a pretty big deal. And a much more important reason to be upset.

Thanks, Harvey, for sharing your life with us and reminding us of the depth, humor and joy we can all find in our common, everyday lives.

When I was a kid, my family’s evening routine was pretty simple. It revolved around two things: dinner and the CBS Evening News.

My folks were pretty strict about television and the dinner table — generally the rule was once the food was ready, the TV had to be turned off. But once my sister and me were old enough, the news was an exception. And by “the news,” I’m talking about Walter Cronkite.

Cronkite told my parents the news when John Kennedy died in Dallas. He was the narrator when, 40 years ago, Apollo 11 landed on the moon, something I imagine I watched, but don’t recall. I do remember Cronkite explaining the Watergate hearings, a seemingly endless process to a 7-year-old boy.

I remember watching him just about every night. And I remember at some point, in the late 1970s, and starting to think about the news business, because I had been watching him for my entire life. I first thought about broadcast journalism, even to the point of spending a day at one of the local stations in Columbus — the CBS affiliate, naturally — because that’s what I wanted to do.

I discovered during high school that I could write pretty well, and veered away from the broadcast side of the business. But I never could shake the idea that the news was important, and that being in a position to relate and explain what was going on in the world — whether on a nationally televised newscast or in a 50,000-circulation newspaper — was a noble and worthwhile way to spend my professional life.

It might be a stretch to say I owe my career to Cronkite, but there is no question I started thinking about a career in journalism while watching him at the dinner table, night after night, for the first 15 years of my life.

I didn’t watch a second of the Michael Jackson service today.

I haven’t said anything here about what I think about the biggest pop musician of my lifetime, the one who shaped what my contemporaries listened to while we grew up. Back then, I was chasing a different kind of musical buzz, and Mike’s stuff never did much for me. Later on, my skepticism about his personal life — and some of the things he was accused of doing — kept me from even a nostalgic appreciation of his music.

I haven’t said anything about it here. Beyond the previous paragraph, I won’t.

It’s easy to look at the mobs of people wandering around LA for the last couple days and wonder about what they’re thinking and how genuine their grief for a person they’ve never met can be.

I think about Aug. 9, 1995, and I understand.

I certainly didn’t know Jerry Garcia, and I never had a chance to interact with him beyond the confines of Richfield Coliseum, Deer Creek, the Omni or, a little more than a month before he died, at Three Rivers Stadium. But it would be insane for me to try to deny the impact that he, or his band, or the group of people who used to follow him around the country, had on me. I followed the Grateful Dead around the eastern half on the country for 11 years, in hopes of finding that elusive moment when music and energy and luck and timing all converged — BAM — on the stage in front of me. When it did? There was nothing better. Experiencing that just once was enough to keep me coming back for another dozen more.

When I see a clip of someone sobbing outside the MJ service, I understand. I was in a complete daze for about 48 hours after learning about Garcia’s death; it took an assignment to do a local obit about him to get me to shake the funk.

My friend Dawn posted a Facebook status earlier today, after reading the endless snark — much of which made me laugh, I admit — that rolled by today in our Twitter streams. In part, she said:

I’m seriously about to go postal on holier-than-thou people who think they’re above appreciating a person for the joy they brought to the lives of others. You don’t like it or him? Fine. Keep it to yourself and show some respect for others.

She’s right. Fourteen years ago, I was one of those people. The day after Garcia died, I was heartbroken to listen to young guys on our sports staff joking about the dead hippie and all the dirty hippies who were upset about his passing.

But I understand the response, then and now. You think the people gathered around the Staples Center looked a little odd? Imagine a group of old hippies and younger Deadheads gathered in Golden Gate Park on a late summer afternoon, to mourn another flawed idol, one who had a heroin habit that contributed to his early death, one who couldn’t maintain a long-term relationship with any of his wives, one who came close to killing himself on two different occasions because of his horrible personal choices.

Sound familiar? It does to me.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

Just about everyone I know has been tagged already, so I’m skipping that part. If you haven’t yet been tagged, consider this as your big chance.

1. I saw the Grateful Dead 39 times between 1984 and 1995. Eight different states. By far the most shows at the old Richfield Coliseum south of Cleveland.

2. The best show? Could be Atlanta or Hampton ’88, could be one of a couple shows at Deer Creek, could be night one of the run at Chapel Hill. The worst? A clunker at the Palace of Auburn Hills in 1992. I should have known better than go to Detroit for spring break.

3. I wasted a lot of time mourning Garcia’s death in 1995 when I could have been seeing some kickass Phish shows.

4. My Pittsburgh friends assume I know much more about technology than I actually do.

5. I never had a craft beer epiphany — no one single moment when I realized I had been wasting my life drinking Budweiser and Old Milwaukee.

6. My favorite beer? Way too difficult. My favorite brewery? Also difficult; let’s go with East End for now.

7. I realized that writing might be the way to go for me when I researched and wrote my first-ever term paper — for a composition class during my junior year of high school — the night before it was due. I got an A minus, after being docked a few points for typos.

8. If I had to give up every single other sport I watch in favor of just one, the one I would pick would be college football. And it’s not even close.

9. I still think journalism is important. I’m not yet sure where I’ll be doing my thing in the near future, though.

10. I went through a vodka phase when I was younger. That’s over now, for the most part. I’ll have bourbon or Irish whiskey, please.

11. I am proud to carry on my father’s fondness for Manhattans.

12. I love cooking. I don’t do it enough.

13. I’m pretty good with Italian food, too, although I have absolutely no Italian in me whatsoever. I make better spaghetti and meatballs than you do.

14. Sometime during the mid-1990s, I stopped skiing. For no reason. There was still snow, and I still had skis; I just didn’t go. That changed a few years ago, when I did a story about the little tiny ski hill at Boyce Park, a county park east of Pittsburgh. I haven’t stopped since. I don’t think I could stop ever again.

15. I used to be a pretty good water skiier too, good enough that I made OU’s team the first time I tried out. I know why I stopped that, though — I got fat and it hurt my back.

16. I think Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are both abysmal as solo artists. If there was ever a musical couple who needed each other, it’s those two.

17. I recently became a homeowner. After three months, I still wonder how that happened. And I’m still thrilled that it did.

18. I’m a cat person. Always have been.

19. I hope I always have some kind of homemade jewelry hanging on my wrists.

20. I hate spiders. And I’m afraid of heights.

21. I declared myself an NFL free agent fan in 1996, after the Browns left for Baltimore. It’s possible I could do that again, if I am forced to endure another few seasons like the one that just finished.

22. If Athens, Ohio, had a newspaper worth a shit, I might still be there. I loved that town that much.

23. I love jazz in all its flavors. if you ask me to choose a genre, I’m going to pick Dixieland. Every time.

24. I don’t think I’ll ever learn to dress like a grownup.

25. I’m lucky. I married the person I was supposed to spend my life with.

“Tonight’s forecast — dark. Continued mostly dark tonight, turning to widely scattered light in the morning.”