BOCA RATON, Fla. – Tommy Holmes, who hit in 37 consecutive games in 1945 to set a modern National League record that stood until it was broken by Pete Rose, died Monday. He was 91.

Holmes died of natural causes at an assisted living facility, daughter Patricia Stone said.

Holmes’ hitting streak came while he played for the Boston Braves and is the ninth longest in major league history.

Rose hit 44 in a row in 1978, the post-1900 NL mark. Monday was Rose’s 67th birthday.

In 11 years in the majors with the Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers, Holmes had a .302 batting average, 88 home runs and 581 RBIs.

In 1945, Holmes finished second in MVP voting and earned his first of two All-Star appearances.

From 1973 to 2003, he worked for the New York Mets as director of amateur baseball relations.

“Tommy Holmes was one of our sport’s truest gentlemen,” said Jeff Wilpon, chief operating officer of the Mets. “His passion for the game and up-and-coming players, along with his 30-year association with our franchise was unsurpassed.”

Stone said her father loved baseball and watched games until the end of his life.

“When he played baseball, there would be days he’d leave early and he’d pass children playing and he’d stop to play with them,” she said.

Besides his daughter, Holmes is survived by his wife of 67 years, the former Lillian Petterson; a son, Tommy Holmes Jr.; two sisters; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Widow of boxing champion Gene Tunney dies at age 100

STAMFORD, Conn. – Polly Lauder Tunney, the Carnegie Steel Co. heiress whose marriage to heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney made international headlines in 1928, has died, her family said. She was 100.

Tunney, whose husband died in 1978 at age 81, died Saturday at her home in Stamford, a son, Jonathan R. “Jay” Tunney, said Monday. One of her other sons is former Sen. John V. Tunney of California.

Mary “Polly” Lauder was 21 when she married Tunney in Italy in 1928, a year after he successfully defended his heavyweight boxing title against Jack Dempsey in the famous “long count” fight in Chicago.

According to a biography published last year, he promised his fiancee he would quit boxing and defended his title just once more, with a TKO of New Zealander Tom Heeney.

The engagement of Tunney, who escaped a childhood of poverty through his boxing prowess, and his heiress sweetheart was the source of much speculation and media attention.

The Los Angeles Times headlined one story “WEDDING GONG CALLS GENE, This Time Heiress to Steel Millions Rumored as Ready to Sign Up With Champion.” A later story datelined Rome had as a subhead: “Bride-to-be Quickly Hidden in Hotel as Eternal City Burns With Curiosity.”

The New York Times reported that after the wedding, photographers had their clothes torn and cameras smashed in “something that looked mighty like a riot” as they tried to capture the couple leaving the ceremony.

Polly Tunney’s grandfather was George Lauder, first cousin and close business partner of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, founder and head of Carnegie Steel Co.

Other survivors include another son, Gene L. Tunney of Honolulu, and a daughter, Joan Cook of Arkansas.

Their late father is most famous in boxing annals for the fight with Dempsey on Sept. 22, 1927, in front of 104,000 at Soldier Field in Chicago, a rematch of a bout won by challenger Tunney in an upset a year earlier.

Dempsey knocked Tunney to the canvas in the seventh round, but the referee delayed the count because Dempsey did not immediately heed a new rule that it could not start until the fighter was in a neutral corner.

Tunney rose at the count of nine and went on to win the match. Many fight fans and reporters contended that Tunney would have been counted out if it had not been for the delayed count.

Buzz Nutter, former Baltimore Colt, dies at 77

LA PLATA, Md. – Buzz Nutter, the center for John Unitas on NFL championship teams with the Baltimore Colts in 1958 and 1959, has died. He was 77.

He died Saturday of heart failure at Civista Medical Center, the Raymond Funeral Home in La Plata said Monday.

Nutter was a 12th-round draft choice of the Washington Redskins in 1953 but failed to make the team. A year later, the Colts signed him. After being traded in 1961 to the Pittsburgh Steelers, he returned to Baltimore in 1965 for his final season.

Nutter lived in La Plata, where a Mass will be held Saturday.

From Associated Press reports