Ernie Pitts (March 8, 1935 – September 24, 1970) was a

Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...

wide receiver and

defensive back In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...

for the

Winnipeg Blue Bombers The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are a professional Canadian football team based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Blue Bombers compete in the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a member club of the league's West division. They play their home games at IG Fiel ...

and the

BC Lions The BC Lions are a professional Canadian football team based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Lions compete in the West Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL), and play their home games at BC Place. The Lions played their first season ...

in a 14-year career in the CFL from 1957 to 1970. He won four

Grey Cup The Grey Cup (french: Coupe Grey) is both the championship game of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the trophy awarded to the victorious team playing in the namesake championship of professional Canadian football. The game is contested be ...

s with Winnipeg. In August 2019 he was inducted into the Canadian Football League Hall of Fame.

College

Ernie Pitts played intercollegiate baseball and football at

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private university, private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Mountain States, Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is ...

Professional career

Winnipeg Blue Bombers

Ernie Pitts was a standout wide receiver who also played

for the

from 1957 to 1969. For all those years except the last two,

Ken Ploen Kenneth Ploen LAYN (born June 3, 1935) is a former star quarterback in American college football and for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League (CFL). College football In 1956, Ploen became the University of Iowa Hawkeyes s ...

was at quarterback. Together, along with Jim Van Pelt 958-59 Pitts and Ploen were major factors in Winnipeg's six

appearances (1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1965), including four victories:

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

1961 Events January * January 3 ** United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba ( Cuba–United States relations are restored in 2015). ** Aero Flight 311 ...

1962 Events January * January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand. * January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism. * January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wors ...

and two losses:

1957 1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th y ...

1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lyndo ...

. His highest totals in caught passes was 68 in 1959 and 62 in 1962. In 1959, he scored 16

touchdown A touchdown (abbreviated as TD) is a scoring play in gridiron football. Whether running, passing, returning a kickoff or punt, or recovering a turnover, a team scores a touchdown by advancing the ball into the opponent's end zone. In Ameri ...

s. He once caught 5 touchdown passes in one game and scored on a 107-yard touchdown pass play. Evidence of his prowess on defense included 7

interceptions In ball-playing competitive team sports, an interception or pick is a move by a player involving a pass of the ball—whether by foot or hand, depending on the rules of the sport—in which the ball is intended for a player of the same team b ...

in 1968 and 5 more in 1969.

BC Lions

Pitts ended his career with the

in 1970.

Sudden death

Pitts, on September 24, 1970, was fatally shot (by a

.38 caliber .38 caliber is a frequently used name for the caliber of firearms and firearm cartridges. The .38 is considered a large firearm cartridge; anything larger than .32 is considered a large caliber.Wright, James D.; Rossi, Peter H.; Daly, Kathleen ...

revolver) in the neck by his estranged wife during a domestic dispute on the porch of their home in

Thornton, Colorado The City of Thornton is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality located in Adams County, Colorado, Adams and Weld County, Colorado, Weld List of counties in Colorado, counties, Colorado, United States. ...

."Death was waiting as Ernie Arrived", ''Winnipeg Free Press'', Saturday, September 26, 1970, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada They had six children. She was charged, tried for murder, and, in June 1971, acquitted, mainly for reasons of self-defense of a forcible entry by Ernie Pitts.

Family

One of Pitts brothers, George E. Pitts (1925–1987), was an influential and longstanding newspaper entertainment columnist, notably with the ''

Pittsburgh Courier The ''Pittsburgh Courier'' was an African-American weekly newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1907 until October 22, 1966. By the 1930s, the ''Courier'' was one of the leading black newspapers in the United States. It was acqu ...

.'' One of his nephews, George Pitts (1951–2017) was a photojournalist.

External links

*http://www.bcshof.org/halloffamers/pitts1980.htm *http://canoe.ca/CFLGreyCup97/nov13_taylor.html

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pitts, Ernie 1935 births 1970 deaths American players of Canadian football BC Lions players Canadian football wide receivers People from Aliquippa, Pennsylvania University of Denver alumni Winnipeg Blue Bombers players Denver Pioneers football players Canadian football defensive backs Players of American football from Pennsylvania Sportspeople from the Pittsburgh metropolitan area People murdered in Colorado Deaths by firearm in Colorado Male murder victims Mariticides