Settling the Score

Gil McDougald, who nearly killed Herb Score, has died of prostate cancer at the age of 82. McDougald won the 1951 American League Rookie of the Year, hitting .306 for the Yankees, made 5 All-Star teams and won 5 World Series titles with the Yankees. He made the trivia books as the first rookie to hit a grand slam in a World Series, and made one of the most difficult plays in Don Larsen’s perfect game, throwing out Jackie Robinson after his 2nd-inning grounder deflected off third baseman Andy Carey. As part of the ruthless Yankee domination of the 1950s and 1960s, in a 1957 game, he hit a line drive off the face of Herb Score, a brilliant young left-hander who had led the AL in strikeouts in his first 2 seasons in the majors, but missed extensive time as a result of his injuries, then injured his arm and was never the same pitcher.

The Naked Gun and the Dead

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Leslie Nielsen – Dead and Loving It

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I Don’t Know Where He is Now, But He Won’t Smell Too Good, That’s for Sure

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Surely He Can’t Be Dead. He is. And Don’t Call Me Shirley.

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Leslie Nielsen was taken to a hospital in Florida. A hospital? What is it? It's a big building with lots of patients, but that's not important right now.
(Kudos to Monty)

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Hey, It's Enrico Deadazzo
(Props to Phil)

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Guess those 5 Shakesperian Actors got their revenge
(Word to Phil)
Leslie Nielsen, best remembered for battling Cliff Robertson in The Sheepman, has died of pneumonia at the age of 84. I know this obit comes at a bad time. I would have sent it before, but he wasn’t dead then. Writing these obituariess is always difficult, even more so for a beloved figure like Nielsen, so like a midget at a urinal, I am going to have to stay on my toes. Born into a disgustingly Canadian family, complete with a drunken, wife-beating Mountie for a father and a brother who would grow up to be deputy prime minister, Nielsen plodded along in middling dramas and sci-fi movies for more than 30 years, wrestling a bear in Day of the Animals, battling an invisible monster in The Tempest in Space, aka Forbidden Planet, and sinking the Poseidon. Then in 1980, the Zucker Brothers asked him to employ that same earnest approach as Dr. Rumack in Airplane! and a star was born. He followed that up in 1982 with the ahead of its time Police Squad! (In color) as Det. Frank Drebin, a failed 6-episode experiment that netted him an Emmy nomination. The series proved to be exactly 6 years ahead of its time, as 1988’s Naked Gun was a hit that spawned two sequels, all due to Nielsen saying things like “Hey nice beaver,” while admiring Priscilla Presley’s taxidermy collection while never cracking a smile. Roger Ebert dubbed him the Olivier of spoofs, and just as Olivier had The Jazz Singer and Clash of the Titans, Nielsen appeared in a string of direct to crap witless parodies that played like 12:45 a.m. Saturday Night Live sketches including Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 2001: A Space Travesty, Repossessed, Spy Hard and the Scary Movie series. Among his many other roles were the guy that Barbra Streisand kills in Nuts, Col. Buzz Brighton, a ring-banging gung-ho military man in an episode of MASH; Lucas, Blanche’s uncle who marries Dorothy in the finale of The Golden Girls (after getting shot down by Mona on Who’s the Boss?), and the curling-based Canadian romantic comedy Men with Brooms. Although he was a naturalized American citizen, he was Canadian to the core, and in a moment of life imitating art, helped welcome Queen Elizabeth II to the centennial celebration of Saskatchewan, and thwarted Reggie Jackson’s attempt on her life.

The Director Strikes Out

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Never Say Anything Again

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I bet God is telling Irvin Kershner that Empire Strikes Back is the best sequel since the New Testament.
(Stolen from Frank Conniff, aka TV’s Frank)
Irvin Kershner, best remembered for the Amazing Stories episode Hell Toupee, about a hairpiece that inspires homicidal thoughts, has died at the age of 87. Sequels less successful than Empire Strikes Back on his resume: RoboCop 2, The Return of a Man Called Horse, the pseudo sequel Never Say Never Again and sequel-ish S*P*Y*S, which reunited M*A*S*H co-stars Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland. Non-sequels included The Flim-Flam Man, Raid on Entebbe, and Eyes of Laura Mars and his dues-paying Roger Corman flick Stakeout on Dope Street.

Pitts’ Pendulum Has Stopped

Ingrid Pitt, a relic from the days when movie vampires and vampire lovers were hot and frequently topless instead of whiny and angsty, has died at the age of 73. Having survived a concentration camp during World War II, the fangs for the mammaries style of thriller that Hammer Films specialized in during the 1970s was child’s play, and she plied her wares in The Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula and The House That Dripped Blood.

Burns Out

Pat Burns, former holder of one of the best mustaches in the NHL, has died after collecting a very unwelcome hat trick, with lung cancer following previous bouts of colon and liver cancer at the age of 58. A former junior hockey player, Burns was a detective sergeant in Gatineau, Quebec with 16 years on the force when Wayne Gretzky told him he should be a coach for a junior hockey team he owned. In Canada, when The Great One tells you to be a coach, you coach. He quickly made the NHL and raised the hopes of 3 of the Original 6 with his tough tactics earning him the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year three times, as he took the Canadiens, Bruins and Maple Leafs to the playoffs, even pulling off the miracle of getting the Maple Leafs within a game of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals, before his teams tired of his rage-filled tirades shy of the prize. Then came 2003 when he took a New Jersey Devils franchise that had only won the Stanley Cup twice in the previous 8 seasons to an NHL championship in his first season with the team. Then got fired after an upset in the first round the following year. In all, his career record was 501-353-151, and his teams missed the playoffs only twice in 14 seasons.

No mustard, Grandma / The rye bread stays on the shelf / Dave Niehaus has died

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Fly Fly Away
In baseball, players, managers, coaches and even stadia come and go. The constants are the fans, and, if you’re lucky to have a good one, the broadcasters. Dave Niehaus, the voice of the Seattle Mariners since their debut in 1977, has died of a heart attack at the age of 75. Niehaus broadcast 5,284 of the Mariners 5,385 games, most of them losses, and his audible frustration with Dave Valle, Mike Moore and Mario Mendoza endeared him to similarly suffering Mariners fans. Although attendance dropped off as the losses mounted, the Mariners radio share was always among the tops in the league. For his time and trouble, Niehaus was inducted in the Broadcasters Wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008, there was no one else who could have thrown out the first pitch to open the Mariners new stadium in 1999, and the next year he was the second man inducted into the Mariner Hall of Fame. Having seen so much ineptitude, no one appreciated the Mariners break-through to win the 1995 ALDS over the Yankees, and his enthusiastic call on Edgar Martinez’ game-winning double in the 11th inning of Game 5 to complete the comeback win ranks with the all time greats.

Twas Beast Killed the Beauty

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Body of Evidence

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The Dead Zone
Dino De Laurentiis, the man who ruined the King Kong, Hannibal Lector and Evil Dead film franchises, has died at the age of 91. Coming of age with the Italian New Wave, including Fellini’s La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, both Academy Award winners, De Laurentiis had a few gritty hits in the United States in the 1970s with Serpico, Three Days of the Condor and Death Wish, but is best remembered for the overblown dreck that earned him the nickname Dino De Horrendous from Michael Medved, or whoever Medved stole it from. He produced the too-tame-to-be-porn, too-tedious-to-be-watched Barbarella, allowed Peter Jackson to hold the title of producer of the third-worst King Kong movie, claiming both the first King Kong remake and King Kong Lives for himself, and, not put off by unsuccessful remakes, he soldiered on with the mind-numbing Flash (a-ah) Gordon. They said Frank Herbert’s Dune series of novels couldn’t be made into a movie, and De Laurentiis proved them right with the craptastic Kyle MacLachlan opus. He had a talent for finishing things off, producing the last of the Evil Dead series, Army of Darkness, and The Shootist, the valedictory for John Wayne and the Hollywood Western. De Laurentiis also managed to just miss the point in trying to copy others’ far superior work, like Roger Corman with a bigger budget and better accent. Instead of a taut thriller involving a brilliant but psychotic physician in Silence of the Lambs, he produced the other 4 Hannibal Lector movies, highlighted by Ray Liotta eating his own brain in Hannibal. While Irwin Allen found exciting and extravagant ways to kill Hollywood stars in disaster movies, DeLaurentiis bored them to death with the talky and comical Hurricane. Steven Speilberg thrilled with Jaws; De Laurentiis had Orca bite off Bo Derek’s leg. DeLaurentiis produced Blue Velvet, regarded as David Lynch’s best film, but that was probably because he just didn’t understand it. Most importantly and impressively, he produced the genes that ultimately resulted in Food Network molto benne babe granddaughter Giada de Laurentiis.

I’m Dying as Fast as I Can

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An Unbreathing Woman
Jill Clayburgh, an Oscar-nominated actress best known for playing women with complicated relationships with her children, has died of leukemia at the age of 66. In Bernardo Bertolucci’s La Luna, she gives her son a hand job to shift his addiction from heroin to therapy. In Where Are The Children? she stands accused of murdering two different sets of her own children. In The Face on the Milk Carton, she kidnaps a child to claim as her own. She played Kitty, doting mother to Erik and Lyle Menendez in Honor Thy Father and Mother. Most recently, she was the adulterous matriarch of the dysfunctional Darling family on Dirty Sexy Money.

Big Dead Machine

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Hooked

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Lost its Spark
George “Sparky” Anderson, the only player in major league history to play 150 games or more in a season but never play a game in a season before or after, has died of complications of dementia at the age of 76. After stinking out Connie Mack Stadium with the 1959 Philadelphia Phillies, Anderson went back to the minors for several seasons before figuring out his real place actually was on the bench. Hired from obscurity by the Cincinnati Reds following the 1969 season, over the next 9 seasons, he oversaw the development of the Big Red Machine, which averaged 96 wins a year, won five divisional crowns, four World Series appearances and two world championships. Then got fired for finishing 2.5 games out of first, and for not firing his coaches, 2 years removed from a World Series sweep of the Yankees. After a brief stint hosting a sports call-in show on WKRP in Cincinnati, he took over the Detroit Tigers (picking them over the Chicago Cubs), and in his 5th full season, became the first manager in major league history to win World Series in both leagues. He only managed one more playoff appearance over the last 11 years, but was just too likeable to fire. He ended up with 2194 wins, 6th all-time, probably 6 times that many pitching changes, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2000. Sparky was a statesman for the game, and a brilliant tactician, and while doing it made about as much sense as Plan 9 From Outer Space translated into Portuguese. After publishing his third memoir, in 1998, the joke became that he was the first man to have written more books than he had read. Known for his homespun style, Anderson was a beat writer’s dream, explaining why he ignored his wife’s suggestion to take grammar lessons: “I told her it ain’t gonna help me. Or should I say, ‘It ain’t gonna help me none?’,” saying the well-chiseled Jose Canseco “looks like a Greek goddess,” saying a struggling player: “He wants to do so good so bad,” defending his fondness for issuing intentional walks by explaining: “Don’t let Superman beat you,” explaining how a team could overcome the loss of a star: “You can go to the cemetery and see where Babe Ruth is buried,” and saying of a pitcher he inaccurately proclaimed would be the next Bob Gibson: “If you don’t like him, you don’t like ice cream.” Anderson was noted for his overestimations, calling Kirk Gibson “the Mickey Mantle,” saying Mike Laga would "make us forget every power hitter who ever lived," proclaiming Johnny Bench wished he could throw as hard as Mike Heath, and expecting greatness for Torey Lovullo, who would appear in 303 games over 8 seasons.