Y. A. Tittle died...

...at age 90, and his obit would be notable for no other reason than that historic picture, above. From the New York Times:

The end for Tittle as one of football’s best and most resilient quarterbacks essentially came in Pittsburgh on Sept. 20, 1964, in his 17th bruising year in the pros, when a massive lineman slammed him to the ground in a game that Tittle’s Giants lost to the Steelers.

Slowly, Tittle tried to pull himself up off the turf, woozy from a concussion, and Morris Berman, a photographer for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was there to snap the picture: Tittle kneeling, his shoulders drooped, his helmet knocked off, his bald pate exposed, his face bloodied.

Perhaps more than the Pro Football Hall of Fame would do later, the image immortalized Tittle in football lore — in the image of the aging warrior who had finally fallen.

The Giants were leading, 14-0, by the second quarter when Tittle, deep in Giants territory, dropped back to pass. From the right side — Tittle’s throwing side — John Baker, a 6-foot-7, 280-pound defensive end, saw an opening and smashed into Tittle, 6 feet and 190 pounds or so, as he was about to pass. The ball floated loose and into the arms of Steelers tackle Chuck Hinton, who ran it back for an easy touchdown.

As the Steelers celebrated in the end zone, Tittle knelt there, dazed and injured, and Mr. Berman captured the moment.

The Post-Gazette did not run the photo the next day; editors there did not think it was anything special. But Mr. Berman entered it for prize consideration, and it won the National Headliner award for best sports photograph of 1964. It now hangs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

“Baker had crushed the cartilage in my ribs and brutally gashed my forehead,” Tittle recalled in his memoir, “Nothing Comes Easy” (2009), written with Kristine Setting Clark.

“I also suffered a concussion and a cracked sternum. That photo would later become one of the most enduring images in sports history. What a hell of a way to get famous!”

John Baker, the huge Steelers lineman who pummeled Tittle, died in 2007 after serving for 24 years as sheriff of Wake County, N.C., where he was wryly known as Little John. When Baker first ran for the office, his supporters printed posters with the photo of the battered Tittle and the caption “This is what Little John is going to do for crime in Wake County.”

“I didn’t object to that,” Baker told The Post-Gazette in 1979. 

“I was just doing my job,” he said of his crushing hit on Tittle. “It’s a tough business.”
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Another reason for mentioning his death would be that name, Yelberton Abraham Tittle Jr., which would certainly qualify for Name of the Day if it weren't already so famous. (I think the only other NFL name that approaches it would be Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson.)

But I wonder about that pronunciation, "Tittle." It mentioned in the obit that Mr. Tittle never won a title. Maybe he should have changed the pronunciation to "Title," like Joe Theismann did to his name to rhyme with "Heisman." Just a thought.
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Finally, there was this tidbit from the Times obit:

Shortly before the 1961 season began, Tittle was traded to the Giants for Lou Cordileone, a young guard, in what became one of pro football’s most lopsided deals. “Me for Tittle?” a startled Cordileone remarked. “Just me?”