Presumably a closed casket

Earl Hindman, known primarily…. Ok, only, as often-heard, never completely seen neighbor Wilson W. Wilson, Jr., on Home Improvement, died yesterday of lung cancer at the age of 61. Hindman was also an original cast member on Ryan’s Hope, playing Lt. Bob Reid for the show’s entire run and has done KFC commercials, for the sharp-eared among us. He should be more well remembered for seizing the subway Pelham One Two Three along with Robert Shaw, Hector Elizondo and Martin Balsam and threatening to kill passengers unless a ransom is paid in the underrated 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. But it’s for dispensing folksy wisdom to Tim Allen’s addled handyman on Home Improvement, for being the Spock to his Kirk, the Edmund Exley to his Bud White, the Larry to his cousin Balki, that Hindman will be remembered.

Pope Off

While everyone else has been waiting for the other Pope to pass, Philadelphia lost its own Pope - Paul Owens - who passed away Friday at the age of 79. Nicknamed for his resemblance to Pope Paul VI, he would emerge as the most important figure in the 121 year history of the Philadelphia Phillies, spending 48 years with the franchise, serving as player-manager, director of player development, general manager, manager and assistant to the president. With his hand at the till, the long barren minor league system developed a Hall of Famer in Mike Schmidt, and All-Stars in Larry Bowa, Bob Boone and Greg Luzinski. His many trades, generally completed in a hotel bar over a couple of highballs, yielded such players as Manny Trillo and Bake McBride and he signed free agent Pete Rose, key ingredients to the Phils 5 NL East titles from 1976-1983. His profanity-laced tirade in September of 1980 also spurred the moribund Phils to a stretch run that secured the NL title and World Series championship in 1980. Without him, it is no great stretch to think the Phils might still be looking for their first World Series title. In 1983, he stepped onto the field and led the aging Wheeze Kids to another World Series, falling short to the Baltimore Orioles. After the 1984 season, he served as a special assistant in a number of capacities, and was still employed by the Phillies until his death. Illness kept him from attending spring training this year and from participating in most of the year-long celebrations of the final year of Veterans Stadium, but his appearance in the Closing Ceremonies drew some of the loudest applause of the afternoon. As Owens touched home plate for the final time, it was a moment both significant, for without Owens many of the memories being celebrated would never have occurred, and poignant, for it was clear even from the upper deck that this frail figure was unlikely to see another season.


A-Bated
Tony Winner Alan Bates, also known for roles in Zorba the Greek and other films, died Saturday at the age of 69. He was also nominated for an Oscar in 1969 for The Fixer. Last year he was able to overcome the indignity of appearing with Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears by earning the Tony Award for his role in Fortune’s Fool and being awarded knighthood on New Year’s Eve.

Cock a Doodle Dead
Ivan Calderon, former major leaguer and cock-fighting ringleader, was shot and killed Saturday night in his native Puerto Rico at the age of 41. An outfielder with the Mariners, White Sox, Expos and Red Sox, he was an All-Star in 1991 with the White Sox. Even during his playing career, he was a man who loved to watch, and bet on, roosters killing each other, which is legal in Puerto Rico. Once during contract negotiations in the offseason, team officials claimed to be unable to find him. Peter Gammons, then baseball beat man for The Boston Globe, flew down, stepped off the plane, headed toward the nearest cock-fighting establishment and found Calderon. He had been involved in a car accident, but assured Gammons that he was getting back into playing shape. The accompanying photo showed a chubby Calderon with a pack of cigarettes rolled in the sleeve of his T-shirt.

Old Lange's Time

Hope Lange, who earned an Academy Award nomination for Peyton Place, the lurid drama about small-town New England scandal, died yesterday at the age of 70. Lange also won back-to-back Emmys as the widow Mrs. Muir in the series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, mostly for putting up with Charles Nelson Reilly. She also drew attention when she quit The New Dick Van Dyke Show in 1974 after the show's producers refused to air an episode suggesting the married couple was having sex, prompting the show's cancellation. And you thought he had problems with an ottoman.

Brown Out

Hall of Fame Cleveland Browns quarterback Otto Graham died yesterday at the age 82. In his 10 years in pro football, Graham proved to be one of the all-time winningest quarterbacks, leading the Browns to 10 title games, winning 7 championships, including all 4 titles of the All-American Football Conference and then 3 NFL titles. For his career, Graham's teams went 105-17-4, winning an astonishing 86% of their games. No one-trick pony, Graham also played a year of pro basketball, winning a National Basketball League title in 1946 with the Rochester Royals. Graham, who was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary team, was a 5-time NFL All-Pro and won two NFL MVP awards; ironically, one of them came in 1953, one of his three seasons without a title. After retiring, he took over as coach at the Coast Guard Academy, and led the team to its first undefeated season. Graham's winning ways eventually wore out, as he went 17-22 as Washington Redskins head coach and general manager in the early 1970s.

Rhue-ined

Madlyn Rhue, a veteran character actress who kept a career going for more than a decade despite an escalating battle with multiple sclerosis, died Dec. 18 at the age of 68. First diagnosed with MS in 1977, she concealed her illness as the result of a car accident and later arthritis to avoid losing work. When she finally came forward in 1985, she became a spokesperson for MS and also earned a recurrent role as a wheelchair-bound ballistics expert in the forgotten Houston Knights. She also landed a recurring role as town librarian Jenny O'Neill on Murder, She Wrote, after Angela Lansbury found that she was in danger of losing her Screen Actors Guild health insurance as a result of her diminishing roles. She appeared in dozens of TV series, with perhaps her best-known turn as a Starfleet officer in the classic Star Trek episode Space Seed, where she is charmed by Ricardo Montalban's superhuman Khan Noonian Singh. She nearly helps him capture the Enterprise and opts to join him in exile on Ceti Alpha 6, where her death helps foster the rage that results in another attack on the Enterprise in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, a masterpiece of overacting. (I'm a geek; sue me.)

-- kudos to Tammy for not overlooking what I had

Offsides

(Props to Monty)
Former Chicago Blackhawk tough guy Keith Magnuson was killed in a three-car accident when the car in which he was riding, driven by former Toronto Maple Leaf Rob Ramage crossed over a median and hit an oncoming car in suburban Toronto. Ramage had been drinking and was charged with "impaired driving causing death," a charge that could keep him on ice for life. Ironically, Magnuson and Ramage were returning from the funeral of yet another former NHLer (because you can't swing a dead defenseman in Toronto without hitting an ex-hockey player) Keith McCreary, who helped form the NHL Alumni Association. And really, what better way to pay your respects than to get drunk at a funeral and kill someone? A two-time NHL All-Star, in 2001 Magnuson was named to the Blackhawks 75th Anniversary team, high praise from a team that has won 1 Stanley Cup in the last 66 years and for three seasons in the 1960s featured a horse on skates as a right winger.

Slightly Gray

Jeanne Crain, an Oscar-nominated actress who appeared in more than 60 films, died Sunday rather than watch Hollywood dredge up another tired idea in the remake of her 1950 film Cheaper by the Dozen. She starred opposite such leading men as William Holden, Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra, but is best remembered for her role as a black woman passing herself off as white in the film Pinky, for which she earned her only Oscar nomination. The film was highly controversial in its day, and was banned in at least one Texas town for its depiction of a white man who wants to marry the woman even after learning of her background.

Final Deposit in the Roth IRA

It's said that the two things you can't avoid in life are death and taxes, and after a career spent eliminating the latter, former Republican Senator William V. Roth, Jr. succumbed to the former, dying at 82. Having served Delaware for 34 years in the Senate and House, Roth reigns as the First State's foremost legislator, and made economic measures his hallmark, including a 1981 tax cut and the creation of the IRA that bears his name. He also took the Pentagon to task for wasteful spending in the 1980s, and brought such items as a $9,600 wrench and $640 toilet seat to light. He died at the house of his daughter, who now gets to pay the estate tax Roth had fought to eliminate.

Keiko the Bucket

Or
Fin-ished
In the tale of yet another child actor who couldn’t handle life after the spotlight had faded, Free Willy star Keiko died after contracting pneumonia at the age of 27. His rapid rise to fame and fall from grace is a whale of a tale. Taken from his native Iceland to a shabby Mexican water park, Keiko was found and starred in three Free Willy movies. International blubbering led to his return to Iceland, where after a time in captivity, orca-nizers released him into the wild. But how you gonna keep him down on the farm after he’s seen Paree? Keiko made a B-line for Norway and human contact, and he continued to bask in his fame, as tourists and locals fed him and lured him inland. Scientists believe this abandonment of his natural lifestyle may have lowered his immune system, and ultimately led to his flushing.

The Law of Supply Side and Dead Men

(Props to Monty)
Robert L. Bartley, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal for more than 30 years, once again did the fiscally responsible thing to help save Medicaid, dying this week at the age of 66. Suckered by Arthur Laffer's cocktail napkin-based economic theories, during his tenure the Journal emerged as a practical treatise on why taxes and liberals are bad, honing its status as one of the leading conservative voices in the nation. The self professed "mouthpiece for supply-side economics" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and earlier this month was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In later years at the Journal, Bartley was highly critical of President Clinton and his administration, particularly White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster. When Foster killed himself, a note in his briefcase read, "WSJ editors lie without consequence."

Survive heart surgery, uh uh uh, I didn't say Simon says

Or
Hello Darkness My Old Friend
(Props to Jon Surmacz)

Or
The Sounds of Silence
Former Illinois Senator and presidential contender Paul Simon died today following heart surgery at the age of 75. Well-regarded throughout his career for honesty and forthrightness, Simon was a fiscal conservative and social liberal who did not assume that liberalism presupposed wasteful spending. Although his appearance, with oversized glasses and ever-present bow tie, made him appear to be the white Louis Farrakhan, Simon possessed a great sense of humor, appearing on Saturday Night Live as a co-host with that other Paul Simon, and appearing as himself in the Ivan Reitman film Dave. After his retirement, he also made a guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Lateline, starring alongside Al Franken, who had played Simon in SNL skits during the 1988 presidential campaign, summing up his candidacy with a nasal: "I wear a bow tie."

Saddle Sore

Mass murderer Ross R. Millhiser, who as an executive at Phillip Morris employed the Marlboro Man to encourage thousands to curtail their life expectancies, died Saturday at the age of 83. When he became the brand manager for Marlboro in 1954, it was viewed as a woman's brand, but by 1966, it was the second-leading seller in the United States, and by 1975 it was No. 1. In 1978, he countered growing criticism of the health costs of smoking in an op-ed piece that argued smoking was good for mental health because it provided "a certain sense of personal satisfaction, relaxation and even pleasure." One can hope that his many victims arranged an appropriate welcome.

Bring Out Your Dead

And we're off. Or more hopefully they'll be off - they being the members of the pool.

This year is a bit of a bump - from 14 entries last year to 40 for the 2004 edition, so our winner this year will take home $200. At least if you're going to risk eternal damnation, you ought to have a little walking around money.

A total of 217 picked people in the pool, and if our selections are anything to go by, Ronald Reagan (on 18 lists), Pope John Paul II (15), Fay Wray (13), Lady Byrd Johnson (10) and Billy Graham (8) better not buy any green bananas. Sure when they get selected that many times they aren't worth points, but we get to laugh at the people who missed out. Course, for the record, this is Reagan's second straight year on the top picked list.

The attached spreadsheet features all the 2004 entries. If there is an error, please let me know as soon as possible. Feel free to add a team name if the spirit moves you. For the many newbies in the game, the number below your name is the total number of bonus points you can earn if all 10 of your picks have enjoyed their last November. As a reminder, the winner shall be determined by total dead, with the points serving as a tie breaker. Column H is the paid up column. If there's an X, I have received payment. If there isn't you're a deadbeat. If you've made arrangements to pay up, great. If not… ahem. Sheet 2 lists all the pool peeps, the number of people as smart as you are and the total points they're worth, and as the year progresses, the year in death, both for those in the pool (noted in bold) and those that strike my fancy, will be chronicled on Sheet 3.

Good luck to all, and for our listees let's not be too careful out there.