Do you know who hit the most home runs in 1962? Or who won the NBA title in 1979? Or who led the NFL in rushing in 2003? There was a man who knew the answers to all these questions — and who could even tell you every fact of that NFL rushing leader’s career, from where he went to college to how many teams he played for to what jersey number he wore to what he had had for breakfast that morning. Well, maybe not that last one, but if he had happened to know that too, it wouldn’t have surprised us. That’s because this man was Howie Schwab, the human sports almanac who was ESPN’s leading sports researcher for over 20 years and the star of the network’s hit sports trivia show “Stump the Schwab.”

Schwab, who died this past week in Aventura, Florida, at 63, was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 17, 1960, and was raised on Long Island. Young Howie was not gifted athletically, but those who knew him claim that he was blessed with a photographic memory. He found an outlet for his sports fandom in numbers — and in helping other sports fans make sense of them.