Down with the Ship

Or

Last Survivor of the Titanic Finally Submerges

(Props to Monty)

In the worst chapter of the Final Destination franchise, Millvina Dean has died 87 years, 1 month and 16 days after cheating death on the RMS Titanic. The youngest passenger on board at 9 weeks of age, she was its last survivor. En route to Wichita, Kansas to open a tobacco shop, the Deans were not supposed to be on the Titanic, but were transferred to the ship because of a coal strike. Dean, her brother and mother were among the first steerage passengers to escape, while her father was given directions to swim to New York. Rather than keeping with the plan to head for safe, land-locked Kansas, the family got back on a boat and returned to England.

O Mickey, You’re So Dead

Wayne Allwine, the third man to voice Mickey Mouse, following Walt himself and Jimmy Macdonald and the longest serving, adopting the annoying falsetto for 32 years, has died at the age of 62 from complications of diabetes. Allwine was married to Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse, and the two were known to slip into role playing, giving new meaning to the phrase, “Oh, Mickey.”

Give Us This Day Our Daly Dead

Chuck Daly, whose thuggish approach to basketball with the Detroit Pistons was the palate cleanser between the Los Angeles Lakers Showtime and Michael Jordan’s artistry with the Chicago Bulls, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 78. What do you expect from a guy who coached at Boston College? In addition to the back-to-back titles with the Pistons in 1989 and 1990, Daly coached the Olympic Dream Team to the 1992 gold medal, and earned a spot in the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA 50th anniversary team as one of the 10 top coaches.

Where Have You Gone Dom DiMaggio? Oh, St. Paul’s in Wellesley.

Dom – the Harpo of the DiMaggio clan – has resumed his place in the shadows of his brother and outfield mate, following Joe and Ted Williams into the grave at the age of 92. The 7-time All-Star spent his entire 11-year career with the Red Sox, hitting .298 with 7 100-run seasons, and a Red Sox record 34-game hitting streak in 1949. With the Sox, he had the two toughest jobs in baseball – center fielder, where he had to cover most of left while Ted practiced batting stances, and lead-off hitter, the first witness for Teddy Ballgame’s third degree on what the day’s opposing starter was throwing. Still, theirs was a more cordial relationship than he had with his brother. The joke in baseball was that Joe was the best hitter, Dom the best fielder and Vince was the best singer, and even Dom said that the only two things he did better than Joe were playing pinochle and speaking Italian, but Joe never missed the opportunity to burnish his own image and didn’t dissuade anyone of the supposition that his brothers followed on his coattails. As a member of the Red Sox for 11 years, the Little Professor contributed to the 84 years of heartache between titles. In the top of the 8^th inning of Game 7 of the 1946 World Series, his 2- run double tied the game 3-3, but he pulled a hamstring in the process. DiMaggio, who had already thrown out three runners in the series, was replaced by Leon Culberson, whose weak arm did nothing to deter Enos Slaughter from racing around from first to score the winning run in the bottom of the 8^th.

O Danny Boy, Your Pipes, Your Pipes are Failing

Danny Ozark, the manager who dragged the Phillies out of the dregs to the brink of their first World Series title, but has haunted by playoff failures, has died at the age of 85. His 1976 and 1977 teams were the best in team history – both winning a team record 101 games. The 1976 season ended in an NLCS sweep by the Reds, who then did the same to the Yankees in the World Series. The 1977 season will be remembered for Black Friday, when Ozark failed to lift the slow-footed Greg Luzinski in left field for a better fielder in the 8th inning of Game 3 while the Phils held a 5-3 lead, as he had done all season. A Red Sox-esque collapse followed as the Dodgers mounted a 2-out 3-run rally, helped by a blunder in left by Luzinski and a blown call by Bruce Froemming at first (Davey Lopes was out, you fat bastard). The Phils lost game 4 in a monsoon. Another division title followed in 1978, as did another early exit in the playoffs. When the still talented team failed to answer the bell in 1979, Ozark was out, and hard-ass Dallas Green was brought in to berate the team into a championship. Along the way, Ozark amused off the field far more than on it. When explaining a slump, he offered that "even Napoleon had his Watergate." Asked how team morale was holding up, he said, "Morality isn't a factor at this point." On getting a rare ovation from a Veterans Stadium crowd, he was moved to observe: "It really sent a twinkle up my spine," he said. In 1975, when the Phillies fell 4 games back of the Pittsburgh Pirates with 3 to play, he insisted, "We're not out of it yet."

Silence of the Ham

(An epitaphany shared with Joe)

Or
Doomed DeLuise

Or
All Doms Go to Heaven
(Tip o’ the cap to Joe)

Or
Pizza Sent Out for Him
(Another accolade for Joe)
Dom Deluise, best remembered for opening the 1987 Oscars performing Fugue for the Tinhorns with Telly Savalas and Pat Morita, has died at the age of 75, I’m guessing not from choking on cauliflower. The Paul Prudhomme impersonator will be buried in a Ziploc bag to keep him fresh forever. I have it on good authority that he was the only one worth watching in the Mae West-Timothy Dalton-Regis Philbin-Tony Curtis-George Hamilton-Ringo Starr opus Sextette. The manic load had a big fan in Mel Brooks, who cast him as the larcenous priest in The Twelve Chairs, the mincing director at the Python-esque conclusion of Blazing Saddles, director’s assistant Dom Bell in Silent Movie, Emporer Nero in History of the World – Part I, Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs, Godfather-like Don Giovanni in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and whose wife Anne Bancroft starred him as Fatso in her lone directorial attempt. He also served as Burt Reyolds’ good luck charm, doing double duty as Victor Prinzim and his alter ego Captain Chaos in the Cannonball Run franchise, and appearing in The End, Smokey and the Bandit II and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The rest of us were pretty content watching movies he had nothing to do with, and after his career dried up with dreck like porno king Harry “the Hippo” Gutterman in Loose Cannons and Animal Cannibal Pizza in The Silence of the Hams, he turned to a line of cookbooks. Write what you know, they always say.

A fat lot of good that did Fred, who scores his first career hit, a solo job that puts his Death Row squad into the dogpile at 13th.

Jack Kemp Cooked

Jack Kemp, who helped extend the Buffalo Bills losing streak as Bob Dole’s running mate in 1996, has died of cancer at the age of 74. A former MVP quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, Kemp went on to serve western New York in Congress from 1971 to 1989. In Congress, he helped develop the only ideas in the Republican arsenal for any and all economic shortcomings: tax cuts and deregulation. He was considered a leading candidate for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, but lost to the towering personality of George Herbert Walker Bush, and got the token bitch position of HUD Secretary. His real legacy was helping to empower inept offspring: pissing away the Republican party in 1988 gave rise to the Bush dynasty, and we know how well that worked out. Even more significantly, his jackass son Jeff cost the Philadelphia Eagles a playoff appearance in 1991 with two interceptions against the Dallas Cowboys, despite having the league’s best defense behind him.