 On July 9, 1986, at the age of 43, Spider died of lymphoma.In his honor, a "Spider patch" was worn by the Giants throughout their Super Bowl XXI-winning 1986 season.In 1993, his widow won a $15.7 million malpractice verdict, after claiming that doctors at St. Vincent's Hospital had misdiagnosed swollen lymph nodes when he went to the hospital in 1979 and told a doctor there that he feared that he had cancer.