The Waitz is Over

Or
Grete Excavations
Like many strangers to New York City, Grete Waitz ran through the streets as quickly as possible to avoid the perils that befall outsiders, from muggers to flashers to the inescapable stench of garbage and urine that pervades America’s Calcutta. Unlike most strangers, Waitz was generally successful, and wisely timed her visits for the first week of November, winning the New York City Marathon 9 times in 12 tries, setting a record in her first marathon and breaking that record three more times. She ran that first marathon as a lark at her husband’s urging that a trip to New York City would be a second honeymoon. As part of their celebration, the two dined on shrimp cocktail and filet mignon… the night before the marathon. Waitz was in such agony over the last 10 miles that after she crossed the finish line, she took off her shoes and threw them at her husband, proclaiming she would “never do this stupid thing again.” As with most women, she couldn’t be trusted, and was back the following year to shave almost 5 minutes off her record.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Or
Goodbye, Mistress
Elisabeth Sladen, who spent 4 years shrieking and giving the Doctor a reason for extensive exposition, has died of cancer at the age of 63. As Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who, Sladen endured Jon Pertwee’s old man smell and Tom Baker’s unhealthy obsession with his own scarf while bouncing around time and space for three and a half years in the TARDIS. The most popular traveling companion for the Doctor in viewer polls, Smith’s departure made front page news in England, but most importantly, she took K-9, TV’s most annoying robot this side of Twiki, with her. Despite leaving, Sladen kept reprising the role – in a spin-off pilot K-9, several specials, BBC radio plays, a few cameos on the mother ship and then, 30 years after leaving the series, getting her own show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which ran 4 seasons on BBC, which is like 15 ½ episodes. In the series, Smith leads a bunch of kids to defeat monsters and aliens, suggesting the whole nigh-immortal Time Lord deal is pretty overrated.

Are You Being Served Cold?

Trevor Bannister, haplessly horny salesman at Grace Brothers, has died of a heart attack at the age of 76. As Dick (or James, as the show apparently forgot midway through the series) Lucas, Bannister pined for buxom Miss Brahms on Are You Being Served?, but lost prominence as the show became more of an ensemble, and left at the peak of the show’s popularity for paying gigs that lasted longer than 7 weeks. With Bannister’s passing, the only Served survivors are Frank Thornton (Captain Peacock) and Nicholas Smith (Mr. Rumbold).

And Joost Iced For All

Eddie Joost, who had the lowest batting average for any player with 400 or more at-bats in a season, has died at the age of 94. The slick-fielding shortstop spent 17 years in the majors, helping to fuel a brief revitalization of the Philadelphia Athletics in the late 1940s after Connie Mack had sold off anyone worth watching, dooming the A’s to the second division for 12 years in a row. After years of dwindling attendance and the cross-town Phillies relevant for the first time in a generation, Joost led the team to a winning record and a franchise record attendance in 1948. The resurgence was short-lived and Joost served as the player-manager of the team in 1954, their last before moving to Kansas City and ceded the city to the Phillies, a decision that would pay off with a World Series parade just 26 years later. He played one more season with the Boston Red Sox before retiring. No longer an athlete, Joost was an active Athletic supporter, as a frequent guest of Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society events, and throwing out first pitches in Philadelphia and Oakland as the abomination of interleague play brought the Phillies and Athletics franchises together again. Joost was also notable as one of the few baseball players to wear glasses in the field to correct an astigmatism, as toric IOLs were a half century away, was the last living player to have played at Baker Bowl, the Phillies home from 1895 to 1938, and was the last surviving member of the 1940 World Champion Cincinnati Reds, the earliest World Series winner that still had a surviving player. With his death there are just 37 surviving players from the Philadelphia A’s.

He's Dead As Hell and He's Not Going To Take This Anymore!

Or
One Really Angry Man
Sidney Lumet, who directed The Wiz, has died of lymphoma at the age of 86. Other films included Henry Fonda as a pansy-ass liberal combating the world’s worst dad trying to get an innocent kid acquitted in 12 Angry Men and then making my day by bombing New York City in Fail-Safe, Al Pacino as a back-stabbing cop in Serpico, and as a bad bank robber trying to pay for his boyfriend’s sex change in Dog Day Afternoon, Paul Newman as a drunk lawyer with a soft spot for turnips, Peter Firth as a deranged kid who couldn’t stop horsing around in Equus and the increasingly prescient television satire Network.