"Triple-A" Yankees Reclaim Their Throne: 1st Place

Clint Frazier on the Iron Throne,

wearing the T-shirt given away at last night's game

The Yankees began another showdown with the 1st place Tampa Bay Rays last night. It was Game of Thrones Night, in honor of the pop-culture phenomenon whose last first-run episode airs on HBO this Sunday night. A replica of the show's Iron Throne was placed on the Yankee Stadium concourse, and commemorative T-shirts were given away to all adult fans.

The irony is, series creator George R.R. Martin is a Mets fan. Which explains why so many of his characters die horribly, get disfigured, or go mad -- or some combination thereof. Forget "You gotta believe": Happy endings are not his style.

They are the Yankees' style. At least, they're supposed to be. Valar Defeatus. High Valyrian for "All men must lose." Well, what do we say to the God of Defeat? "Not today."

Carsten of House Sabathia, second of his name (CC's full name is Carsten Charles Sabathia Jr.), the Well-Fed, Paw of the South, Fanner of the Three Thousand, started for the Yankees. He went 6 innings, allowing 1 run on 6 hits and 2 walks. Ordinarily, that would be enough to win, especially against the Rays, with their "no starter" philosophy.

Kendrys Morales gave CC a 1-0 lead with a home run in the 2nd inning, but the Rays tied it in the 4th. It was still 1-1 going into the 7th, when Aaron Boone brought Adam Ottavino in to pitch. He got the 1st 2 outs, but then walked a batter, and Boone brought in Tommy Kahnle. He allowed a hit, before getting a strikeout to end the threat.

There was no need to relieve CC: He had thrown only 84 pitches. And when Boone sent Chad Green out to pitch the top of the 8th, he allowed 2 runs, on 2 doubles, a single and an error by Gleyber Torres. "The night is dark, and full of errors." It was 3-1 Rays, and then came a rain delay. If the game were called, the score would revert to what it was at the end of the last inning: 1-1.

The game was resumed, and the Yankees went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 8th. Jonathan Holder pitched a perfect 9th, and Jose Alvarado came out to close down the win for the Rays.

But the 1st batter he faced was Luke Voit, and he hung a slider to him. Voit hung it over the fence. 3-2. Gary Sanchez singled. Thairo Estrada was brought in to pinch-run for him: Boone was either going for the win, or trusting Austin Romine to both bat and catch from the 10th inning onward. (Gulp.)

Morales struck out. But Torres made up for his earlier error with a double, getting Estrada to 3rd. Now, I ask you: What was the point of bringing in a pinch-runner, if he wasn't going to be able to score on a double? Clint Frazier was intentionally walked, to set up a play at any base.

Cameron Maybin was the batter, and Alvarado threw a wild pitch that got Estrada home. Tie ballgame. Maybin grounded to 3rd, and the force play was made at home plate. The Yankees now had the tying run, Frazier, on 3rd, and the winning run, Maybin, on 1st, but were down to their last out, and a sacrifice fly would no longer be sufficient.

The batter was 3rd base find Gio Urshela. Following Maybin, whose run meant nothing, stealing 2nd on defensive indifference, maybe the right call would have been another intentional walk, setting up a play at any base, and pitching to DJ LeMahieu, who was already 0-for-4.

The Rays didn't do that. They pitched to Urshela. Big mistake: He ripped a drive to right-center. Frazier scored easily. Ballgame. Yankees 4, Rays 3. WP: Holder (3-1). No save. LP: Jose Alvarado (0-3).

With the win, the Yankees are now 27-16, in 1st place in the American League Eastern Division, half a game ahead of the Rays, even in the all-important loss column.

This bunch of "Triple-A" Yankees are a lot like Arya Stark (played by Maisie Williams on the show): They may not be big, and they may not be the hero we expected -- "the princes that were promised" -- but they are getting the job done, slaying the enemies, exacting the revenge. And, like Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) did last Sunday, we have taken what is ours -- not with fire and blood, but with leather and wood.

The South Bronx remembers. So bend the knee, Tampa Bay.

The series continues this afternoon. Masahiro Tanaka starts against Blake Snell. Hopefully, Winning is coming. Brace yourselves!

Top 10 TV What-Ifs

Vic Mignogna as Admiral James T. Kirk

in the final episode (so far) of Star Trek Continues

It's May. One of 3 "sweeps months" for TV networks. (The others are February and November.) And the end of the TV season, with reruns thereafter until September. This means big season finales, many including cliffhangers, some of which produce stories that change a show irrevocably.

Such stories, whether they change a show or simply end it, often leave us wondering: What if something different had happened?

Top 10 TV What-Ifs

These are in chronological order, from our perspective, if not necessarily from theirs.

1. 1956: What if the Kramdens and the Nortons had kids? The Honeymooners aired on CBS from October 1, 1955 to September 22, 1956. When the show began, the 4 main actors were the following ages: Jackie Gleason, as Ralph Kramden, 39; Audrey Meadows, as Alice Kramden, 33; Art Carney, as Ed Norton, about to turn 37; and Joyce Randolph, as Trixie Norton, about to turn 31.

Ralph frequently mentioned how long he has been driving for the Gotham Bus Company: 15 years until the New Year of 1956, and 16 years thereafter. So he started in 1940. Most likely, this was considered an "essential occupation," and, along with his weight, probably kept him from being drafted in World War II.

I find it hard to believe that a bus company, even before the U.S. got into "The War," would have hired someone not yet 21 years old as a driver. So, if not the same age as his portrayer, Ralph had to be at least 36 when the show began.

Ed (always called "Norton" by Ralph, but "Ed" by everybody else) said on at least 2 occasions in the "Classic 39" episodes that he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Whether he started working in the New York City sewer system after that, or his service interrupted his employment with them, isn't clear. (He did say he took a night school course in typing on the G.I. Bill, but said, "I couldn't stand to be cooped up in a stuffy office!")

We don't know when he got into the Navy, but I suspect that he enlisted soon after Pearl Harbor. So if he didn't lie about his age, then he was a minimum of 18 in 1941, which makes him no less than 32 when the show started.

It is reasonable to presume that each man's wife, Alice and Trixie, was about the same age as her husband. This means that, despite the Kramdens' failed attempt to adopt in an earlier version of the show, when it was still just a sketch on The Jackie Gleason Show, they could still have had children, even though it was unusual in the 1950s for married couples in their 30s to not yet have had their 1st. I'm presuming that neither couple had children because of the costs of hiring child actors. (A few did appear on the show, but never as a Kramden kid or a Norton kid.)

But all 4 performers lived into the 1980s: Gleason until 1987, Meadows until 1996, Carney until 2003, and Randolph is still alive, at age 94. We could have seen, in the 1970s or the '80s, The New Honeymooners, or The Honeymooners: The Next Generation. (UPDATE: Joyce Randolph died on January 13, 2024, 9 months short of what would have been her 100th birthday.)

Maybe we could have had the best story of all: Ralph finally got his promotion to traffic manager, Ed got his to sewer inspector -- as Norton suggested, "You keepin' things runnin' smoothly up above, and me keepin' things flowin' down below!" -- and they were able to move out of their Bushwick slum (328 Chauncey Street is a real address, but it's in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, not Bensonhurst like the show always said), moved out to one of those two-family homes in Queens like the Bunkers had on All In the Family, and could afford to have kids.

(Admittedly, there was hardly any birth control in the 1950s, other than "the rhythm method." As somebody, I forgot who, joked, once The Pill was released, the Catholic Church forbid its use, so a Catholic couple still had to use math rather than science.)

And maybe, just maybe, in the 1980s, before Ralph shuffled off this mortal coil (if not to Buffalo), a Ralph Kramden Jr. could have married Edith Norton, and they could have become "the new honeymooners," and lived happily ever after.

There is a lesser-case, if not worst-case, scenario. Maybe the Kramdens or the Nortons had a kid who was so dumb (How dumb was he?), he became one of the Sweathogs on Welcome Back, Kotter! Come to think of it, not only was that 1975-79 show set in Brooklyn, but if you told me that Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo) was related to Ed Norton, I would have believed it.

Then again, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) on Seinfeld certainly shares several resemblances to Ed Norton: Wacky neighbor, his wild entrances into his best friend's apartment, always thin no matter what he eats, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.

But there are big differences: Norton could hold down a job, Kramer never wore a hat (except for that one episode where he ended up looking like a pimp), and Kramer came up with his own "crazy harebrained schemes" that turned into disasters, instead of getting roped into them by the fat guy in the building (Wayne Knight as Newman -- quite the opposite, as Kramer often roped Newman in, with the Michigan Bottle Scam being an exception).

2. 1969: What if we had gotten to see the completion of the starship Enterprise's five-year mission? This has been tried a number of times. The best one was the fanmade series Star Trek Continues, which told some several fantastic stories, including sequels to "Who Mourns for Adonais?" "Mirror, Mirror" and "The Paradise Syndrome."

It got some notable guest stars, including Chris Doohan, taking over his father James' role as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, a.k.a. Chief Engineer Scotty; Michael Forest, reprising his role as Apollo from "Who Mourns for Adonais?"; Bobby Clark, the Gorn captain in "Arena," as an Andorian; from The Next Generation, Michael Dorn and Marina Sirtis as computer voices, and John de Lancie as a planetary administrator; and, not from Trek but already known for playing a large green man, Incredible Hulk portrayer Lou Ferrigno as an Orion slave trader.

Its last episode, "To Boldly Go," was a sequel to "Where No Man Has Gone Before," linking Captain James T. Kirk's earliest known Enterprise adventure to the last days of the five-year mission. It included references to all the other Constitution-class starships being destroyed or ruined; Kirk (the William Shatner role played here by Vic Mignogna) regretting the 73, eventually 75, members of his crew who had died under his command; Kirk's promotion to Admiral (complete with the green and white Star Trek: The Motion Picture uniform); and a viable reason for why Spock (the Leonard Nimoy role played here by Todd Haberkorn), chose to leave Starfleet and go back to Vulcan for the Kolinahr training.

STC did not give Kirk a girlfriend and potential wife, which might have changed the way the movies were written. It might have been too easy to tease the South and put Kirk and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (played here by Kim Stinger) together, but original portrayer Nichelle Nichols probably wouldn't have liked that.

3. 1980: What if J.R. had died? TV seasons used to end in March. On March 21, 1980, the CBS drama Dallas closed its 3rd season by showing J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), President of Ewing Oil, shot in his office. The season-ending cliffhanger was invented.

The reason J.R. getting shot was written into the script in the first place is that Hagman wanted more money, and they hadn't yet decided to give it to him. If the threat of writing him out was supposed to make him give in, it backfired completely: For 8 months, the country was obsessed over 2 questions: "Will Jimmy Carter get the hostages out of Iran before the election, or will Ronald Reagan beat him?" and "Who shot J.R.?" And Hagman, formerly Major Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, became a bigger star than ever. The repeated episodes got higher ratings than when they were first run, and CBS ended up making enough money on them that they could cave in to Hagman and save face at the same time.

As it turned out, the shooter was Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby), J.R.'s sister-in-law and former mistress. J.R. survived, although he was in a wheelchair for the 1st few episodes of the 1980-81 season. He also seemed to be a changed man. By the end of the season, he was revealed to be just as bad as he always was.

He could have died. If he had... actually, as the series' last episode, in 1991, showed, maybe everyone would have been better off. It was a reverse It's a Wonderful Life, with what J.R. thinks is an angel (played by Joel Grey) showing him what the world would be like if he had never been born. Everybody was better off, from Sue Ellen (his wife and Kristin's sister), Kristin (she didn't die in an "accident" at Southfork a year later), Bobby (J.R.'s brother), and Ewing family arch-rival Cliff Barnes (who becomes the President of the United States in this fantasy).

4. 1983: What if we had gotten to see what happened to the 4077th staff after M*A*S*H? Putting the failed spinoff AfterMASH aside, I tried my hand at imagining that in September 2015. I hope all the fates I wrote out are appropriate. Certainly, for Frank Burns (Larry Linville), I think I got it right.

5. 1987: What if Sam had married Diane? Shelley Long left Cheers and her character of Diane Chambers at the end of the 1986-87 season, leaving Ted Danson's Sam Malone before they could have their wedding. Long wasn't the 1st actor to leave a show and bet on making it big in movies, and have it not pay off (that might have been Pernell Roberts of Bonanza, in 1965), and she wasn't the last (David Caruso of NYPD Blue, in 1993, is the most notorious example since). She may be the best-remembered, though.

The replacement of Long with Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe, and the accompanying change in the storyline, made Sam an underdog and more sympathetic, and probably contributed to the show lasting until 1993.

A 1987-88 season with Diane as Mrs. Malone would have made the show just another sitcom. And then there would be the inevitable wait for a baby, and then all the baby-themed storylines after the birth, and it probably wouldn't have lasted much longer. There probably wouldn't have been a Frasier, or any other spinoff, either.

6. 1996: What if Susan had lived, and George had married her? On Seinfeld, George Costanza (Jason Alexander) wanted to be able to say he was married. He didn't actually want to be married. And, though unintentional, and he was unaware that he had done so until it was far too late, he caused Susan Ross' death in the weeks before the wedding.

George found relationships suffocating, and this seemed to be especially true during the engagement. But Susan was no prize, either. In more ways than one: Supposedly, the reason the character was killed off is that no one in the cast could stand her portrayer, Heidi Sweberg.

George would have been miserable -- but at least he would have had access to the Ross family's money. Is it possible that he would have done something to make Susan divorce him, and cut him off, and return him to his previous bankrupt state? Sure, it is. Is it possible that he would have gone in the other direction, and taken the money, and cut off his friends Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards)? Yes, that is possible as well.

I guess George is lucky that Susan didn't get pregnant, leaving a little Ross-Costanza baby, who might have inherited the worst of both families. Could that child have inherited the best of both families? We don't even know what that was.

But had the wedding gone forward, and the writers used the usual trope of the 1st baby being born at the end of the next season, 1997, that baby would now be 22 and (unless it was a complete idiot, or something unfortunate had happened, either of which is possible) graduating from college.

It would kind of serve George right if such a baby had been a girl. Can you imagine her dating? Can you imagine little Georgia Costanza dating a guy like Kramer? Or even... dating Kramer? "George is gettin' upset!"

7. 1996: What if Ross hadn't cheated on Rachel? Rachel Greene (Jennifer Aniston) never actually told her boyfriend, Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), "We are on a break." She said, "Maybe we should take a break." In other words, it was her idea, but just an idea, not something that they agreed upon.

She then admitted to her best friend and roommate, Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), Ross' sister, "I don't want to take a break." The problem is, she didn't say this to Ross until after it was too late.

Certainly, Ross didn't want to take a break. But he acted like he had no choice in the matter. He did have a choice: He could have told Chloe, "the chick from the copy store" (Angela Featherstone), that he was still in love with someone else, and that he couldn't go through with it.

If that had happened, he might have proposed to Rachel later that season, and, at the end of the 1997-98 season, when he said, "I, Ross, take thee, Rachel" at his wedding, it would have been to the right words to the right woman.

So then the rest of the series would have been about Monica and Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) heading to the altar. But would that have cut the series short? Yes, and that would have been a good thing: Like Seinfeld, Friends lasted too long, and the main characters had all become parodies of their respective excesses.

8. 2005: What if Gibbs had saved Kate? We already know the answer to this one, because NCIS examined a few what-if scenarios in a 2012 episode. If Special Agent In Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) had managed to prevent the murder of Special Agent Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander), she would have gone on to marry Special Agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and have a child with him. Happily ever after?

As ESPN's Lee Corso would say, "Not so fast, my friend!" In the scenario that episode showed, Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) never becomes Mossad's liaison officer to NCIS, never joins the team, and ends up getting arrested and interrogated by Tony. We don't see the result of that, but it's implied that her life isn't as good as the one we know, in which she is the one who eventually gets together with Tony and has a child with him -- only to (apparently) die, leaving Tony to leave the team and care for their daughter.

Alexander left the show after only 2 seasons because she wanted to start a family with her husband, film director Eduardo Ponti -- son of film producer Carlo Ponti and acting icon Sophia Loren. Two children later, she was ready to go back to work, and starred with Angie Harmon on Rizzoli & Isles.

(UPDATE: Ziva did survive, and she and Tony did reunite.)

9. 2006: What if we had gotten to see the Santos Administration? The final episode of The West Wing showed the end of the 8-year Presidency of Josiah "Jed" Bartlet (Martin Sheen), and the Inauguration of the new President, Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits), the 1st Hispanic President.

But the seeds of the Santos Administration's destruction may have already been sown. Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), now White House Chief of Staff after running the campaign, and having been Deputy Chief of Staff for 7 years under Bartlet, is as much of a nervous wreck as ever, and marriage to his former secretary Donna Moss (Janel Moloney) isn't going to help, as she always drove him crazy, and not in a good way.

Furthermore, the peace offering to the defeated Republican nominee, Senator Arnold Vinick of California (Alan Alda), of the post of Secretary of State couldn't have lasted. Vinick and the former Houston-based Congressman Santos may have earned each other's respect, but they didn't exactly share policies. I think that, sometime in the 3rd year of the Administration, Vinick would resign over a difference of principle. I don't think he would have run for President again, challenging Santos for re-election -- not at his age, and already knowing what kind of stress a full campaign can give.

But Vinick could have solidified support behind a single Republican candidate, even if it was one as far to the right as the pro-choice but otherwise conservative Vinick selected for his running mate, Governor Ray Sullivan of West Virginia (Brett Cullen). And with Bartlet having avoided a recession for 8 years, there might have been only so much that President Santos could do to avoid one, especially if the Republicans retook the House of Representatives (having kept the Senate all along) in the midterms. I suspect that Sullivan would have beaten Santos in 2010.
(The show never did explain why the elections happened in 1998, 2002 and 2006, instead of 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. And since they showed real-life Presidents up to and including Richard Nixon, re-elected in 1972, we know the elections still happened on schedule up to that point. And screenshots of things like computer screens and TV broadcasts showed that the show was moving with the actual calendar, and not taking place 2 years in the past or the future.)

So the Democratic effort to regain the White House in 2014 would be very different. President Bartlet, if he was still alive (Sheen still is), would likely be so afflicted by multiple sclerosis that he couldn't take an active part. His 2 Vice Presidents are out: John Hoynes (Tim Matheson) was politically radioactive, and Bob Russell (Gary Cole) only got as close to the 2006 nomination as he did through sheer inertia, as he was the "incumbent" due to Bartlet being limited to 2 terms by the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.

Santos isn't going to run again, although, constitutionally, he could. His 1st choice for Vice President, Bartlet's former Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer), is dead. His 2nd choice, which we are led to believe is Governor Eric Baker of Pennsylvania (Ed O'Neill), wouldn't be a young guy, either. As the Number 2 guy in the recent failed Administration, as was the case with the real-life Walter Mondale under Jimmy Carter, there'd be a cloud over him even if he led a blameless life and served 4 years as Vice President with class and distinction.

And who would do the campaigning? Josh? Forget it: As his Deputy Chief of Staff and Bartlet's top speechwriter, Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), pointed out, Josh was already close to a heart attack and a stroke in November 2006; by the early 2013, when the next campaign would start, he's probably dead? Donna? As his widow, unlikely: She would blame politics for killing her husband. Sam himself? Given that he left politics after his failed run for Congress in the special election of 2003, and only came back with great reluctance because he thought Josh would work himself to death or insanity if he didn't, I doubt it.

Former White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff)? Still scandalized from his leak about the "military shuttle." Former Chief of Staff and Press Secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney)? Smart lady, but she wasn't exactly an organizational genius as Chief of Staff. She can express policy, but she's not good at making it.

White House aide Charlie Young (Dule Hill) and, presumably by that point, his wife, the former President's daughter, Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth Moss)? It's not hard to see Charlie being elected Mayor of Washington in the coming years. A future Presidential candidate, possibly; and, with Barack Obama either not existing in this world or still serving in the Senate, the honor of becoming the 1st black President is still available -- but, for Charlie, not this soon. If he was 19 when the show began, he would be 34 in 2014. More likely, with a Democratic win, he'd be up for a Cabinet post or an Ambassadorship.

It's entirely possible that 2014 will see President Sullivan re-elected. By the time the 2018 campaign gets underway, a new generation of Democratic leaders could have emerged -- and there would be conservatism fatigue. Maybe by then, Sam, C.J., Donna, Charlie and Zoey could be ready to be the new campaign leadership team. For whom? I'm glad I don't have the job of writing out the details of such a new character.

10. 2011: What if Ned had exposed Joffrey's true parentage? In the storyline of Game of Thrones, Ned Stark (Sean Bean) discovers that, while Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) is the son of Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), wife of the King, Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), he is not Robert's son. Rather, his father is Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), Cersei's own twin brother.

I should note that, in Westeros, which may take place on a different planet than Earth (series creator George R.R. Martin has also written science fiction), incest is not considered a taboo. The problem isn't the incest, it's the illegitimacy: If Joffrey is not the son of the King, then he is not the next rightful King.

And when Robert dies -- probably killed while hunting by someone loyal to House Lannister -- Joffrey is King, and shouldn't be. Ned, who had been Robert's "Hand of the King" -- effectively, the Prime Minister of the Seven Kingdoms, and probably a play on the term "right-hand man" -- reveals this to the nobles, and threatens to reveal it to the public. The King would then be Stannis Baratheon, brother of Robert.

Ned is told by Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), father of Cersei and Jaime, and the true power behind the throne, that, as his daughter, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), is engaged to Joffrey (at least politically, it was a good idea at the time), her life would be forfeit as well as his for the treasonous revelation he was threatening. By taking it back amongst the nobles who now knew, Ned would spare himself and his family.

Except King Joffrey, whose genetic makeup has left him a sadistic little jerk -- a bastard in both senses of the word -- orders Ned's execution anyway, and in front of his family: His wife, all 5 of his legitimate children, and the young man he has raised as his own son even though... well, the true origin of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) doesn't need to be spelled out here.

If Ned had managed to escape from custody, and escape with his family intact, many GoT fans believe it would have prevented all the suffering that followed. But this theory is ridiculous: Knowing Tywin, Cersei and Joffrey, there is no doubt in my mind that Ned and his brood would all have been hunted down, and wiped out. It would have been what "The Red Wedding" nearly was. Atrocious pun alert. It would have been a total eclipse of the Starks.

As bad as things became for House Stark, they are still better now, as the show comes to a close without its resolution yet being known, than they would have been if Ned hadn't made a fool of himself and unknowingly forfeited his life.

UPDATE: On November 19, 2019, ScreenRant did a post about Ned's survival, how it could have happened, and what the results would have been. Most of them would have been good, including the Lannister forces being wiped out at the Battle of Blackwater Bay, and the lives of the Lannister family as a whole being forfeit (with the exception of Cersei and Jamie's 2 younger children, as Ned would have spared them as innocent minors); and no Red Wedding, so Ned's wife Catelyn and eldest son Robb live longer.

But Arya never would have had to leave Winterfell to train as a warrior, and would not have killed the Night King. So either someone else would have had to do it (Jon? Robb?), or Westeros would have fallen. If Ned had lived to that point, maybe everyone would have died. Instead of Infinite Earths, the Crisis In Seven Kingdoms could have been the end of life as they knew it.

Top 10 Real People Whose Names Were Given to Fictional Characters

His name was Bond. James Bond.

I'm not talking about close calls, like Captain James Cook becoming Peter Pan's nemesis Captain Hook or the McDonald's character Captain Crook. Or real-life University of Iowa football coach Hayden Fry inspiring Barry Kemp to name the title character of his sitcom Coach "Hayden Fox."

10. Peter Parker. Famous people named Clark Kent (like Superman), Bruce Wayne (like Batman), or Diana Prince (like Wonder Woman -- and Princess Diana of Wales doesn't count) are hard to find. But I found a few men with the same name as the comic book character who became Spider-Man.

Sir Peter Parker (1721-1811), 1st Baronet Parker of Bassingbourne, was Admiral of the Fleet in Britain's Royal Navy from 1799 until his death. He had reinforced the British effort in the Carolinas in the War of the American Revolution, and was a mentor to Britain's greatest modern naval hero, Horatio Nelson.

His grandson, also Sir Peter Parker (1785-1814), was the 2nd Baronet. Like his father and grandfather, he served in Parliament. He was also, unlike his grandfather, a cousin by blood of the poet Lord Byron. And, like his grandfather, he was wounded in battle against the U.S. Unlike his grandfather, he died from his wound, while commanding HMS Menelaus at the Battle of Caulk's Field, part of the blockade of Baltimore that led to the Battle of Fort McHenry. He was only 29 years old.

There was yet another Sir Peter Parker (1924-2002), who was chairman of the British Railways Board from 1976 to 1983, but this was after the character of Spider-Man was created. There was also a Dr. Peter Parker (1804-1888), the 1st Protestant medical missionary to China.

9. Dale Cooper. Before the FBI Agent played by Kyle MacLachlan on Twin Peaks, there was Dale Troy "Stoney" Cooper (1918-1977), a country singer and expert fiddler of the 1940s and '50s.

8. Harry Crane. Born Harry Kravitsky (1914-1999), the Brooklyn-born comedian and screenwriter was a childhood friend of Jackie Gleason's, and became a writer for The Jackie Gleason Show, which began the sketch that became the TV show The Honeymooners. He also became the grandfather of actresses Melissa and Sara Gilbert.

A generation later, Harry Chapin used the name for his song about a mail-order bride in the Wild West, "Mail Order Annie," because the surname rhymed with "train." Although also a native of Brooklyn, it's not clear if Chapin knew about Crane the writer.

7. Walter White. Long before Bryan Cranston played the science teacher turned drug kingpin on Breaking Bad, Walter Francis White (1893-1955) was Chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1931 to 1955.

He founded the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which led to the Brown v. Board decision, in which the Supreme Court unanimously struck down segregated education. Essentially, he was the leading figure in the civil rights movement before Martin Luther King came along. Unlike Dr. King, and fellow civil rights activists Harry T. Moore in 1951 and Medgar Evers in 1963, he was not murdered: He did die in office, but from a heart attack.

6. Crash Davis. In the 1988 film Bull Durham, Kevin Costner played Crash Davis, a slugging switch-hitter with power, whose real name was never revealed, and plays in the Carolina League. Director Ron Shelton had found the name "Crash Davis" in The Baseball Encyclopedia -- which was what we used to look up baseball facts before the Internet gave us Baseball-Reference.com.

Lawrence Columbus Davis (1919-2001) earned his nickname at age 14, when he crashed into a teammate going for a fly ball. The Georgia native was Captain of the baseball team at Duke University, and played for the real-life Durham Bulls, in the same city, in the real-life Carolina League. But while the movie's version was a catcher who spent just 21 days in the major leagues, the real Crash Davis was a 2nd baseman who played 3 seasons with the Philadelphia Athletics, 1940 to 1942, before serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

He later coached baseball at Harvard University, and became friends with Shelton, enjoying his late-in-life celebrity.

5. Edward Hyde. Before Robert Louis Stevenson gave the name to the dark side of the character of Dr. Henry Jekyll in his 1886 novel, there had been Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor to King Charles II in the 1660s, and grandfather of both Queen Mary II and Queen Anne.

There had also been the grandson of the preceding, the 3rd Earl of Clarendon, the 14th colonial Governor of New York and the 1st colonial Governor of New Jersey (at the same time, 1701 to 1708); and a distantly related Edward Hyde, who served as colonial Governor of North Carolina.

4. Jo(h)n Snow. Well before Jon Snow became the name of the protagonist of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, there were several famous men with variations on the name.

In the 1850s, a Dr. John Snow in London became the father of anesthesia and epidemiology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a John Snow was one of the foremost bowlers in English cricket and a published poet. In the 2000s, John W. Snow was Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush. And Jon Snow (Jonathan George Snow) has been the anchor of England's Channel 4 News for nearly 30 years.

How these men reacted to being called a "bastard," I have no idea.

3. Wade Wilson. Before it became the secret identity of the Marvel Comics antihero Deadpool, Wade Wilson was a quarterback, who got the Minnesota Vikings to the 1987 NFC Championship Game, before losing to the Washington Redskins. He later became a renowned quarterbacks coach.

2. James Bond. In 1952, Ian Fleming was living in Jamaica, then a British colony. He was writing a novel about a character much like himself, who had been a British secret agent, enjoyed smoking and drinking, and couldn't keep it in his pants. He needed a name for his protagonist, wanting one "as ordinary as possible." Fleming was a birdwatcher, and noticed a book on his desk: Birds of the West Indies, published in 1936.

The author was James Bond, 36 years old at the time of its publication, a native of Philadelphia who spent his high school and college years in England. He returned to his hometown, worked in a bank, and when he heard that the Academy of Natural Sciences, now a unit of Philadelphia's Drexel University, was forming an expedition to the Amazon jungle of Brazil, he jumped at the chance.

He must have impressed someone on that trip, since the Academy hired him as an ornithologist (someone who studies birds for a living), and he became their curator of ornithology. His 1936 book, originally titled A Field Guide to the Birds of the West Indies, was the only book published on the subject for over half a century, so it must have been considered definitive until someone decided that it had become obsolete.

Noticing the name on the book, Fleming contacted Bond, who gave his permission to use the name. Fleming later wrote to Mrs. Bond, and said, "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed." And so, when Casino Royale was published in 1953, Agent 007 was Bond -- James Bond. But that affectatious introduction was not used until the films, starring with Sean Connery in Dr. No in 1962.

James Bond the secret agent has escaped death in dozens of ways. (UPDATE: Daniel Craig's last outing, the 2020 film No Time to Die, is the 1st film to show Bond actually dying.) The book version was said to be born in 1920, making him nearly 100 years old now. If we accept that the movie version was, like his original portrayer, Connery, born in 1930, then he's 88. (A 1954 teleplay of Casino Royale broadcast in the U.S. starred Barry Nelson as Bond.) If we count only from the reboot, starting with the 2006 film version of Casino Royale, then it's not clear how old he is, although he's, at most, the age of his current portrayer, Daniel Craig, who just turned 50.

James Bond the ornithologist seemed to be fine with his tangential fame, but, like everyone in real life, he could not escape death forever, and died in 1989, age 89.

In 2002's Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan's last appearance as Bond (and probably the last canonical appearance of the "original Bond"), in Cuba, 007 shows Halle Berry's Jinx Johnson a recent edition of Birds of the West Indies, with a finger covering the author's name.

1. James T. Kirk. I found references to 3 men named James Kirk who were war heroes before Gene Roddenberry gave the name to the Captain of the starship USS Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. Second Lieutenant James Kirk of the Manchester Regiment gave his life, covering his mates with gunfire toward the enemy, in a retreat across the Oise Canal in France, just 1 week prior to the Armistice that ended World War I. He was 21 years old, and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military honor.

2nd Lt James Kirk VC

In August 2013, Captain James A. Kirk was named the 1st commanding officer the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Zumwalt. He held the command for 3 years, until December 2016, and is currently assigned to the Pentagon.

With the 2nd aircraft carrier named USS Enterprise having been retired, a 3rd is now under construction, but it won't be ready until at least 2027, and this Captain Kirk may be retired by then. (UPDATE: He retired in 2023, with the rank of Rear Admiral.)

UPDATE: In 2021, America's own Captain James Kirk

was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral.

But only 1 of these men was a James T. Kirk. James Thompson Kirk was born in 1826 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, later the hometown of singers Perry Como and Bobby Vinton. He was a tailor who opened his own clothing shop, and enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Colonel James T. Kirk commanded the 10th Pennsylvania Reserve Regiment, and was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run, badly enough to be allowed to resign his commission. He resumed his mercantile business, and lived until 1886.

Headstone of Colonel James T. Kirk.

There appears to be no surviving photograph of him.

UPDATE: Found one!

Captain James A. came to public knowledge well after Star Trek debuted. Whether Roddenberry knew about either 2nd Lieutenant James or Colonel James T., I suppose only he knew.

Holy Cow, We Held the Door!

I was more tense for this win-or-go-home game than I would have been if it had been Game 7 of the World Series. At least that would have meant winning a Pennant. At this point, I could live with winning the Pennant but losing the World Series.

And when Luis Severino, our putative ace, allowed the Minnesota Twins 2 home runs in the top of the 1st inning, to leadoff hitter Brian Dozier and to Eddie Rosario, I thought, "Well, at least I won't be tense all night long. They spared us that."

But a funny thing happened on the way to my "But because Joe Girardi is an idiot... " post: The Yankees came back to tie it in the bottom of the 1st, 3-3, including a home run by Didi Gregorius. Brett Gardner hit a home run in the 2nd, to give the Yankees the lead, 4-3.

Chad Green bailed us out in the 1st inning, and held the Twins off in the 2nd and the 3rd, before getting tired in the 4th, and allowing the tying run. David Robertson came in, and got out of the jam.

Gary Sanchez led off the bottom of the 3rd with a double. Then, 2 strikeouts, and I thought this would come back to haunt us. But Greg Bird singled El Gary home. 5-4 Yankees.

There was a long way to go. The Yankees needed 18 more outs, and to hold the lead.

I was reminded of how the Game of Thrones character Hodor (played by Kristian Nairn) was left unable to say anything but, "Hodor." It was because of a mental time-travel forced on him at the moment of his death, that turned "Hold the door" into "Hodor."

And I thought of our old friend Phil Rizzuto:

HOLD THE LEAD NOW!
HOLD DA LEAD NOW
HOLD LEAD NOW
HOL LEA NOW
HOLEA NOW
HOLY COW

HOLY COW!

Robertson held the lead through the 4th, and the 5th, and the 6th. Tommy Kahnle came in, and held the lead through the 7th, and the 8th.

In the bottom of the 4th, Here came da Judge. Aaron Judge hit a home run with Gardner aboard, to make it 7-4. Okay, he's not quite as big as Hodor, but you know what they say: Some heroes wear capes, some hold the door, some swing a bat.

In the bottom of the 7th, the Yankees loaded the bases. Just when it looked like the Yankees might not get any of those runs, and that it might come back to haunt them, Aaron Hicks drew a walk to force 1 home. 8-4 Yankees.

I said before this game that it didn't matter if the Yankees had a 10-run lead with 1 out to go: Knowing Girardi, I wouldn't trust his pitching decisions until the 27th out was in the books.

Aroldis Chapman came on. He was rested. He was ready. He struck Robbie Grossman out. He struck Dozier out. That was the Chapman we needed at the end of last season. That's the Chapman the Chicago Cubs got at the end of last season. That's the Chapman we've had for most of this season.

One out to go, and up by 4. I still wasn't fully confident.

The next man up was Joe Mauer, one of the best hitters of this generation. He was with the Twins when they lost American League Division Series to the Yankees in 2004, 2009 and 2010. (He wasn't there yet for the 2003 ALDS, as 2004 was his rookie year.) The local boy made good, from St. Paul, is 34, and he has never played in a World Series game, or even an AL Championship Series game.

Mauer got a hit. Now, the tying run was on deck. The batter was Jorge Polanco. And we all began feeling a little queasy. This was the Chapman we'd gotten a few too many times this season.

We needed Chapman get this last out, any way he could. It didn't have to be a strikeout. It just had to be an out.

He blew a 103.7-mile-per-hour fastball past Polanco.

Cue John Sterling: "Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!"

Yankees 8, Twins 4. WP: Robertson. No save. LP: Jose Berrios.

This was the Yankees' 1st postseason game won, and their 1st postseason round won, since October 12, 2012. It's been just under 5 years, but, in so many ways, the world has changed.

Nevertheless, the Yankees move on. For the 1st time in 5 years, they are 1 of the last 8 teams standing.

That, of course, is not enough. Far from it. But now, they have a chance to get "enough."

I know some groups of soccer team supporters like to adapt Depeche Mode's song "Just Can't Get Enough" to their team. Me? I can get enough. I have -- 7 times. Not counting the 20 World Series the Yankees won before I was born. Also not counting the Devils' 3 Stanley Cup wins.

So, Joe Girardi is now 2-4 all-time in win-or-go-home games.

He gets to keep his job.

Well, he was going to keep it no matter what. Which is part of the problem.

Anyway, the Yankees move on, and will face the Cleveland Indians. Game 1 will be in Cleveland at 7:30 on Thursday night. Game 2 will be in Cleveland at 5:00 on Friday afternoon. Game 3 will be in New York on Sunday. If necessary, Game 4 will be in New York on Monday. If necessary, Game 5 will be in Cleveland next Wednesday. Times for Games 3, 4 and 5 are yet to be determined.

92 wins down. 11 to go. Title 28 is still possible.

How the Mets Explain "Game of Thrones"

George R.R. Martin, author of the the books that comprise the series A Song of Ice and Fire, and inspired the HBO series Game of Thrones (taken from the title of the 1st book in the series), has a Twitter account. Nevertheless, there is a joke: "George R.R. Martin isn't on Twitter, because he's already killed 140 characters."

Martin is from Bayonne, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City. He is a fan of the New York Mets, and also of the New York Jets.

This explains a lot of things. Season 6 of Game of Thrones premieres on Sunday. Perhaps no show fandom in history has hated spoilers more, but, really, there's the books. (Although there are plenty of differences.) Anyway... Brace yourself: Spoilers are coming.

Top 10 Ways George R.R. Martin Being a Mets Fan Explains Game of Thrones

First, let me mention a few that didn't quite make the cut: The Best of the Rest.

Winter Is Coming. Did you ever attend an early-season game at Shea Stadium? Sometimes, the wind blasted off Flushing Bay, swirled around under the overhangs, and made a Met game in April, or even in May, as cold as a Jet game in December.

Scary, Noisy, Smelly Flying Creatures. ASOIAF/GoT has dragons. Citi Field, like its predecessor Shea Stadium, has planes taking off from LaGuardia International Airport. Citi Field was also featured in the film Sharknado 2.

Zombies. ASOIAF/GoT has the White Walkers. On September 13, 2013 (a Friday the 13th), in connection with the film Warm Bodies, whose climax was filmed at Citi Field, Zombie Night was held at the ballpark.

There's a difference, though: Unlike Met fans, zombies seem to be aware that they need brains.

Now, for the Top 10.

1. The Long Waits. Waiting for a new season of GoT can be interminable. Waiting for a new ASOIAF book is even longer.

Mets' Pennant wait: 1973 to 1986. 13 years.
Mets' Pennant wait: 1986 to 2000. 14 years.
Mets' Pennant wait: 2000 to 2015. 15 years.
Mets' Pennant wait: 2015 to 2031? 16 years?

2. The Immaturity. You could argue that a preoccupation with fantasy is a sign of a mind that is not fully mature. Or maybe it isn't.

However, where the TV version shows an immaturity is in its attitudes toward nudity and sex. Most of it is not necessary to either move the story along or to express some artistic vision. It's just there to either titillate the viewer or to humiliate the female characters.

I'm not saying Met fans are immature when it comes to nudity or sex. But, in general, they are immature.

3. The Daddy Issues. Ned Stark, patriarch of House Stark, was executed, and his decision to sacrifice himself, which didn't work, changed everything for the worse. Aerys Targaryen, went mad and had to be killed, thus sparking his daughter Danerys' mission. The dark truth about the parentage of Cersei Lannister's children is that their father isn't her husband Robert Baratheon, who usurped Aerys as King, but her own twin brother, Jamie Lannister. And while we are told that Ned is Jon Snow's father, this may not be true: Fans' guesses at who Jon's real father is tend to try to "explain the whole show."

The Dodgers and Giants left New York, stolen from the fans by their greedy owners, and Met fans have been trying to emulate their efforts ever since. But the Mets' "guardians" have taken it a step further. Their founder wasn't a patriarch, but a martiarch, Joan Payson. This may explain the choice of a name for their first stadium: They named it not for Mrs. Payson, but for the male figure most responsible for the Mets' very existence: If Mrs. Payson was the Mets' mother, then their father was Bill Shea.

Since then? Mrs. Payson fell into a long illness, leaving her unable to handle the team's day-to-day affairs, and then died. Her illness and death put the team in control of a new "mommy," her daughter Lorinda de Roulet, and a new "daddy," M. Donald Grant, the Cersei and Jamie of Flushing Meadow. (As far as I know, they weren't bed-partners, but if they were, few Met fans would be surprised.)

Then came Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday. When Daddy Fred bought Uncle Nelson out, the team went to pieces, and Daddy Fred's son Jeff, not the team, is the favored son. Well, shouldn't he be, since Jeff is his actual son? But giving Jeff effective control did the Mets fewer favors than Big Ed McCaskey, son-in-law of George Halas, did the Chicago Bears when he handed the keys to the kingdom over to his son Mike McCaskey, and he eventually had to take the keys back. Fred hasn't done this to Jeff yet. (Nor has Charles Dolan, owner of the Knicks and Rangers, yet done this with his son, Guitar Jimmy.)

4. The Focus On the Younger Siblings. The Mets are always going to be "the little brother franchise" to the Yankees. In ASOIAF/GoT, foolishness and/or tragedy often befalls the eldest sibling: Viserys Targaryen, Robb Stark, Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon. (In some cases, they deserve it. But not in all cases.)

Neither Danerys, nor Sansa Stark, nor Arya Stark, nor Tyrion Lannister, nor Tommen Baratheon was meant to be heir to their house's head. But all currently have much more of the focus of the books and the show than their eldest siblings.

5. Bastards. Characters named "Snow" are not necessarily related to each other. Nor are characters named "Sand." These are surnames given to illegitimate children. The names are always attached to them: Jon is never simply "Jon," always "Jon Snow," as if to remind him, "You are one of us, yet you are not one of us." In other words, the bastards get all of the drawbacks of being a member of a particular family, and few of the perks. Yet they seem to have more nobility than those of natural birth.

The major exception, thus far, being Joffrey, who became King upon the death of his official father, Robert Baratheon, but (known only to a few) is actually the son of the twins Cersei and Jamie Lannister.

Now that Ned and Robb Stark are both dead, "the hero" of the show, if there is such a thing, appears to be Jon, who still thinks Westeros, and House Stark (to which, being a bastard, he has never fully belonged), are worth fighting for.

What does this have to do with the Mets? Met fans believe in the myth that the Yankees "cheat," and are therefore "illegitimate." In contrast, Yankee Fans look upon the Mets as the illegitimate offspring of the Dodgers and the Giants. Certainly, I've known a few Met fans who were the other kind of "bastard."

6. A Hero Who "Knows Nothing." Ygritte, Jon's girlfriend from behind the Wall, frequently told him, "You know nothing, Jon Snow." It's not that Jon is stupid, but he started out having a lot to learn.

I have questioned the knowledge, the intelligence, and the judgment of Met fans many times. And I will again. I'm not saying they know nothing, but they don't know as much as Yankee Fans, and a lot of what they believe they know simply isn't true.

Examples: New York is a National League town, the NL is better than the American League, the '86 Mets were better than the '98 Yankees, Roger Clemens was a steroid cheat and Mike Piazza wasn't, Matt Harvey is an "ace," the Mets' 2015 Pennant puts them ahead of the Yankees when they still haven't won the World Series in 30 years, etc.

7. False Kings. Aerys Targaryen may have had to be removed from the throne due to his murderous madness, but Robert Baratheon was never a legitimate King. Nor was his son Joffrey, illegitimate both on the throne and of his birth. Nor is Robert's other son, Joffrey's brother Tommen. Nor was Robb, who, in his rebellion against Joffrey, proclaimed himself "King in the North." Nor have been any of the leaders who have called themselves "King-Beyond-the-Wall," most recently Mance Rayder.

Since the Fall of House Seaver in 1977, Met fans have put their faith in many a "false king." Lee Mazzilli. Keith Hernandez. Dwight Gooden. Bill Pulsipher. Mike Piazza. David Wright. The latest have been Matt Harvey, Yoenis Cespedes and the recently-departed Daniel Murphy.

8. The Need to "Take Over" from a "False King." Every so often, Met fans have said they're going to "take over New York" or "take back New York" from the Yankees, whom they see as false kings, illegitimate rulers, usurpers. They did it in 1969, lost it again in 1976, took it back in 1984, lost it again in 1993, and haven't regained it since. No, the 2015 Pennant does not mean that the Mets have "taken back New York." Not by a long shot.

Likewise, Robb and Danerys were determined to take over from House Baratheon/Lannister. Robb failed because he trusted the wrong people, and paid for it with his life. Danerys? Stay tuned.

9. Shocking Defeats. Ned's sacrifice. The Red Wedding. Ygritte's death. Jon's apparent death at the end of last season.

Gooden vs. Mike Scioscia in 1988. Dropping the last 5 games in 1998, when winning any 1 of them would have gotten the Mets into the Playoffs. Kenny Rogers in 1999. The 2000 World Series, the most humiliating moment in Met history. (Watching the Yankees clinch at Shea Stadium must've been like if Jon Snow had to watch Joffrey screw Ygritte right in front of him, and she liked it.) Yadier Molina's home run and Carlos Beltran's called 3rd strike in 2006. Tom Glavine's meltdown in 2007. The "Groundhog Day" loss of 2008. And the Mets' unique achievement of blowing leads in 5 games in a single World Series, including the game they ended up winning, last year.

10. A Tendency Toward Unhappy Endings. George R.R. Martin is not George Lucas. He's not Steven Spielberg. He's not Frank Capra. He's more Martin Scorsese: The endings tend to be depressing. Or Francis Ford Coppola or Quentin Tarantino: Even when the ending is favorable to the main character, it's going to be bloody, and a shadow will hang over it all.

There are those who believe that the "Ice and Fire" are Jon Snow and Danerys the Unburnt, who will end up together, overthrow the Baratheons/Lannisters, and rule the Seven Kingdoms together. But, as I said, Martin is not Lucas, who believes in happy endings. Whenever things look like they're looking up, that's when GoT fans need to quote one of the more familiar lines from the Star Wars films: "I've got a bad feeling about this!"

Anyone familiar with the Mets, or the Jets -- and Martin is a fan of both -- knows not to expect happy endings. Met fans may quote Tug McGraw and say, "Ya gotta believe!" and talk about "Magic" and "Miracles," but who's kidding who?

No matter how bad things get for the Yankees and the Giants, there's always the belief that they'll be competent enough, or (at least, in the Yankees' case) rich enough, to find a way to get out of it. But no matter how good things get for the Mets and the Jets, there's always the sinking feeling that something is going to happen -- whether a blunder or something beyond the team's control, like an injury or an opponent coming through with a stunning victory -- that will ruin it all.

Maybe Martin will write a happy ending to his saga. After all, he's announced that the 7th and final book will be titled A Dream of Spring.

But that doesn't mean that the dream will come true. Or maybe it will. Remember this exchange, taking place in New York, in the film Watchmen? With everything in total disarray? In 1977, when the Grant/Seaver fiasco exploded, and the Yankees, like the City itself, barely held together long enough to get it right?

Nite Owl: "What the hell happened to us? What happened to the American Dream?"
Comedian: "'What happened to the American Dream?' It came true! You're looking at it!"

If you're a ASOIAF/GoT fan, do you really want George Martin's dream to come true?

UPDATE: On May 19, 2019, the show aired its last episode. The bad guys all got what was coming to them, and peace came to Westeros, but at a horrifying cost -- the Scorsese, Coppola or Tarantino kind of ending I suspected was coming. And lots of fans hated it, making their objections known like sports fans calling in to WFAN.

Meanwhile, in real life, the 2019 MLB season ended with the Mets still having New York's most recent Pennant, but looking like idiots as they so often do -- and with a new "king," Carlos Beltran. Winter is still here.

Top 10 Most Devastating TV Character Deaths

This is not about sports.

This past Sunday night, Game of Thrones aired "Red Wedding," in which there was a Total Eclipse of the Starks.

And it wasn't like "the Moldavian Wedding Massacre" on Dynasty on May 15, 1985, where pretty much everybody got shot, but none of the major characters died. Although a character played by Ali McGraw did, and she was a big name in those days.

(For you younger readers: Confusing Dynasty with Duck Dynasty is like comparing Noel Coward to Larry the Cable Guy -- if, that is, Noel Coward had been a mean old bastard whose current and ex-wives kept trying to beat each other up.)

Surely, "Red Wedding" was one of the most shocking moments in TV history. Indeed, one guy on Twitter wrote of the series' creator, "Why doesn't George R.R. Martin use Twitter? Because he killed all 140 characters." (Another Twitterer said, "It's too bad Entourage didn't end like that.")

But how does the loss of Robb Stark, his wife Talisa, and his mother Catelyn compare to the most devastating TV character deaths ever?

It just happened, so, obviously, it hasn't yet stood the test of time. But the shock value, even for a show that killed off its seemingly most important character (Robb's father Ned) in its Season 1 finale, was huge. How vicious the murders were adds to it.

For this list, I'm only going to include the unexpected. That means that any character killed off by the writers because the actor playing him died can't be included. So you won't be seeing the likes of...

* Harold "Mr." Hooper, played by Will Lee on Sesame Street, December 7, 1982.
* Sgt. Phil Esterhaus, Michael Conrad on Hill Street Blues, November 22, 1983.
* Ernie Pantusso, a.k.a. Coach, Nicholas Colasanto on Cheers, February 12, 1985.
* Selma Hacker, Selma Diamond on Night Court, May 13, 1985.
* Ike Johnson, John Hancock on Love & War, October 12, 1992.
* Leo McGarry, John Spencer on The West Wing, December 15, 2005.
* J.R. Ewing, Larry Hagman on Dallas, November 23, 2012.

Nor will you be seeing Lt. Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation, April 25, 1988. It was already well-known that Denise Crosby wanted to leave the show, so it wasn't really a shock.

And you certainly won't see Chuckles the Clown (who was never shown onscreen) from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, October 25, 1975. That was played for laughs. Same with the many deaths of Kenny McCormick (cartoon character voiced by Matt Stone) on South Park.

And forget about Rosalind Shays (Diana Muldaur) on L.A. Law, 1991. Yes, it was shocking. But devastating? Hell, some of us cheering when that bitch (literally) went down, when she (literally) got the shaft. Shaft. Can you dig it?

The deaths on ER? Losing Lucy Knight to a knife-wielding maniac was hard, especially since Kellie Martin, then 24 years old, still looked as young as she did on Life Goes On (she was 14 when it premiered). Losing Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) was hard, but this was his second go-around with the brain tumor, so it was hardly unexpected. As for Dr. Robert "Rocket" Romano (Paul McCrane) to a second mishap with a helicopter within a year, well, he didn't deserve death. He did, however, deserve humiliation. But no one of these deaths makes the list.

Nor can I quite put Detective Bobby Simone, Jimmy Smits on NYPD Blue, on this list. The same goes for Grey's Anatomy or Lost, which, unlike ER, I didn't watch: When you frequently kill characters, or get rid of characters for reasons other than death, it doesn't sting as much.

One final disclaimer: This list is mainly affected by shows I've actually seen. In some cases, I didn't watch the shows, but I'm aware of their impact, and so I've made an allowance for that.

Top 10 Most Devastating TV Character Deaths

Honorable Mention: Matthew Crawley, Dan Stevens on Downtown Abbey, December 25, 2012 (episode taking place in 1921). He survived World War I and the Spanish influenza epidemic that followed it. His wife Mary was about to have a baby, and show viewers were afraid that, for the second time, a female character would die in childbirth. (Lady Sybil Branson was the first, 2 months earlier). Wrong: Matthew is driving his convertible, in high spirits, when he is hit by a truck.

Honorable Mention: Gary Shepherd, Peter Horton on thirtysomething, February 12, 1991. I never watched the show, but people who did had to watch as Nancy (Patricia Wettig) battled cancer, and while she's in the hospital, having just heard that the results of her latest test have come back negative for a relapse, she's told that Gary is dead in a car crash.

Honorable Mention: Omar Little, Michael K. Williams on The Wire, February 24, 2008. Omar was a thief who robbed drug dealers in Baltimore. In the tradition of "honor among thieves," he did have a kind of moral code. And he ended up killing 5 men over the course of the show's first 5 seasons.

With that kind of rep, clearly, he was going to get taken down. Who killed him? A drug lord, sick of Omar muscling in on his territory? A hitman, working on behalf of such a drug lord? A victim's loved one, taking the law into his own hands, to get revenge? A cop, angry that Omar had, himself, taken the law into his own hands? Someone objecting to the fact that Omar was openly gay? An ex-boyfriend?

Actually, it was a kid named Kenard (Thuliso Dingwall). True, he was involved with the Fayette Street Mafia. But he was only about 12 years old, and he took Omar down simply for the sake of gaining some street cred, being able to say he took him down, like in the Wild West.

Honorable Mention: Adriana La Cerva, Drea de Matteo on The Sopranos, May 23, 2004. Another one of those shows that always seems to have somebody dying, and in this one's case, violently. So when the death of a single character stands out to the show's fans, attention must be paid.

To me, the shocking thing was not that she'd been whacked, bumped off, rubbed out, taken out, taken down, whichever killing metaphor you want to use; or even that it happened when (she thought) she and boyfriend Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) were going to go off together in the Witness Protection Program. It was that her killer turned out to be Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt).

Silvio? In a "life" of bad guys, he seemed like one of the more moral ones. Maybe he saw how Tony Soprano's (James Gandolfini) men, including Chris-tuh-fuh himself, had botched jobs before, he thought, "If you want something done right, ya gotta do it yourself."

Now, the Top 10:

10. Dan Conner, John Goodman on Roseanne, May 7, 1996. In the Season 8 finale, Darlene Conner (Sara Gilbert) and David Healy (Johnny Galecki) have gotten married, but Darlene's morbidly obese father Dan has a heart attack. As Season 9 begins, we find out he's going to be okay. Then he and wife Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) win $108 million in the lottery. Then things get crazy.

Then comes the series finale, and we find out that Roseanne made the whole thing up, writing it as a novel after Dan's heart attack turned out to be fatal. Dan wasn't perfect, but he was a good guy, and he didn't deserve to go out like that.

UPDATE: In 2018, Roseanne was revived, and it was revealed that the made-up part was the fact that Dan had died. He discovered the novel that Roseanne had written but never gotten published, and said the book would have been a success if she hadn't killed off "the most interesting character." Then, in a weird twist, Barr made some unacceptable comments, and the producers fired her, and the writers killed her character off, leaving Dan a widower.

9. Susan Ross, Heidi Swedberg on Seinfeld, May 16, 1996. The circumstances of the death of George Costanza's fiancee in the Season 7 finale are too stupid to repeat here.

That none of the characters, least of all George (Jason Alexander), seem particularly troubled, made this one tough to take. I mean, yeah, Susan wasn't especially likeable, but she wasn't a rotten person. Certainly, she wasn't as callous as George, Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) were when they found out. Damn it, show some respect for the dead.

8. Captain Roy Montgomery, Ruben Santiago-Hudson on Castle, May 16, 2011. It was known that RSH was leaving the show, and in the next-to-last episode of Season 3, Montgomery said he was retiring. You know how that works: As soon as the old man, especially if he's a cop, says he's gonna retire, and live the good life with his wife, get the condo in Florida, travel the world, buy the boat -- or, as Montgomery said when Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) asked him what he would do if he won $100 million in the lottery, "Buy me a big-ass boat" -- he's toast.

Montgomery was killed trying to protect Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) from the men in the plot to kill her mother, crusading lawyer Johanna Beckett, in 1999. And before he died, he managed to get off a shot that killed one of the plotters, the man who had shot him. You know how it goes: "If I'm goin' down, I'm takin' a bunch o' them bastards with me!"

The shocking part was not that Montgomery was going to die, and violently, but that he had been in on the plot as a younger cop. Not that he had anything to do with Mrs. Beckett's death, but that he was one of 3 cops involved in the kidnapping of Mafia hitmen, and that Mrs. Beckett found out about the kidnappings (if not about Montgomery's involvement), and the cops had to get rid of her.

That brought Kate's "Batman moment," abandoning her plan to go into her mother's line of work, and becoming a homicide cop. And she ended up coming under Montgomery's command (meaning that somebody in the trail between Kate and the killers slipped up), and so he kept her under his command to watch over her. He did, until he no longer could, and it was either her life to forfeit, or his.

Kate was right when she told Castle and her homicide squad partners Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas) and Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever), "As far as anybody outside this room knows, Roy Montgomery died a hero." Yes, he blew it as a younger man. But when he had to come through, he was a hero.

RSH had previously died in the 2nd-ever episode of The West Wing, as President Bartlet's Air Force officer doctor, aboard a Middle East trade mission plane shot down by Syria -- something I had totally forgotten until after he'd died on Castle.

7. Joyce Summers, Kristine Sutherland on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, February 27, 2001. Unlike most of these, this episode was neither a season finale nor a season premiere. Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) battled all kinds of supernatural bad guys and bad girls. Characters dying on that show was not unheard of. But Buffy's mother died from a brain aneurysm.

No vampire draining her blood. No werewolf mauling. No evil spirit scaring her into a heart attack. No Jason axe, or Freddy blade-glove, or Leatherface chainsaw, or even a Norman Bates kitchen knife. No violence. She's betrayed by her own body. Buffy loses her mom to something that could have happened even if she'd never heard of the supernatural world in which she battled. And it's not like she could pick up a weapon and pursue the killer and gain her revenge. There was nothing that could be done.

6. Special Agent Caitlin Todd, Sasha Alexander on NCIS, May 24, 2005. Alexander, wife of film director Eduardo Ponti (and thus daughter-in-law of Sophia Loren) wanted to leave the show and start a family.  (They now have a 7-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son, and she has returned to TV on Rizzoli & Isles.) There were no hard feelings between Alexander and the show's producers, or between Alexander and CBS. She wanted out, and had the best possible excuse. And, unlike some of these other, she had no problem with her character going out in a blaze of glory.

By this point, a major TV show character dying, even violently, was no longer unheard of. But this was nasty. Kate Todd, who previously had 2 chances to kill Israeli doctor turned Palestinian terrorist Ari Haswari (Rudolf Martin), is shot by him from a sniper's nest shortly after she, Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) busted up a terrorist plan in Washington, D.C. This, just a moment after she dove in front of Gibbs to save him from a different sniper, saved by her bulletproof vest, so it looked like she would be okay.

This was about 58 1/2 minutes into the episode, so there was no time for either viewers or characters to process the moment before the credits rolled.

Sadistic bastard thought he was, Ari liked Kate, and, on a deep level that she painfully admitted, the feeling was mutual. But he killed her anyway, as the beginning of a plan to get Gibbs: First to break him down by killing people around him, and then killing him. This was in the Season 2 finale, seen from the agents' perspective.

The Season 3 premiere begins with the same scene shown from Ari's perspective, and after pulling the trigger, he says, "Sorry, Kate" -- probably the least sincere apology in the history of television. To make his point to Gibbs (if not to Kate), the rifle he used is nicknamed a "Kate" -- a nickname Gibbs knows, having used it himself in combat.

5. Edith Bunker, Jean Stapleton on Archie Bunker's Place (previously All in the Family), October 1980. The death this week of Stapleton reminded us of this one. It won't escape your notice that Numbers 2 and 5 on this list were on shows created and produced by Norman Lear. Unlike with James Evans, Lear and the performer in question were not at odds; Stapleton had simply decided that she'd had enough of playing Edith.

So, when the 11th season of the combined Bunker family sitcom premiered on November 2, 1980, it is revealed that Edith died a month earlier. To see Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), TV's biggest blowhard, reduced to a grieving widower was hard to take: "It wasn't supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be the first one to go... You had no right to leave me that way... without giving me just one more chance to say I love you... "

4. Alice Harper Cartwright, Bonnie Bedelia on Bonanza, September 12, 1972. (Taking place in 1873. Various Civil War references, and a tombstone date, in earlier episodes proved that the show always took place 99 years in the past.) One of the running gags of pop culture was that all the women romanced by the Cartwright men die.

Ben, a.k.a. Pa (Lorne Greene) married 3 women. The 1st 2 died shortly after childbirth. The 3rd, Marie, was originally believed to have died in a fall from a horse, when her son with Ben, Joseph, a.k.a. Little Joe (Michael Landon as an adult) was very young. Decades later, in the prequel series Ponderosa, there is a retcon: Her name is Felicia, and she is murdered.

The fact of the Cartwright men's lady loves dying was even referenced on an episode of Happy Days, when Marion Cunningham (Marion Ross) watches Bonanza, says that Little Joe is getting married again, and that he hopes his wife doesn't die this time.

Actually, the "fact" is a bit of a stretch: Only once did Little Joe get married on the show. By 1972, 13 seasons into the iconic NBC drama's run, Westerns were long out as a popular form, although CBS' Gunsmoke hung on until 1975.

And, to make matters worse, Dan Blocker, who played 6-foot-3, 300-pound middle son Eric "Hoss" Cartwright, had died, from a pulmonary embolism during what should have been routine gall bladder surgery. (He was only 43 years and 5 months old -- exactly the same age I am now. My grandfather had his gall bladder taken out when he was 76 and wracked with emphysema, and he lived.) With Pernell Roberts, who played eldest son Adam, already having left the show a few years earlier, it was time to wrap it up.

The Season 14 premiere, "Forever," had originally been written by Landon as a Hoss episode. He was the one supposed to get married. But when Blocker died, it was rewritten for Joe, and Landon directed it, as he would later direct, produce and star in Little House On the Prairie and Highway to Heaven.

Joe meets Alice Harper, who'd been brought to Virginia City, Nevada by her brother. But, deeply in debt, the brother skipped town. She needs money. Joe needs a wife.  They get married. Time passes, and the couple discover they're going to become parents.  But the brother's creditors send thugs out to find him. Unable to do so, they go after his sister, the new Mrs. Cartwright.

Standing at her grave at the end of the episode, Joe simply says, "I love you" -- which was Landon's way of saying those words to Blocker, who had been his brother on film and dear friend in real life.

This may have been the 1st time in TV history, or at least on a major series, where "Bad things happen to good people," and that's what made it so difficult, as Bonanza was, and remains, 40 years after it rode off into the sunset, one of the most beloved TV shows ever.

So much of it is iconic: Pa's admonishments about right and wrong, telling the boys (well, mostly Little Joe) to, "Take your feet off the table," yet always letting them know that he was a loving father; Adam's moody brooding; Hoss' signature ten-gallon hat and Jackie Gleason-esque moon-faced smile; Little Joe becoming TV's first truly angsty teenager, even if he was already 22 when the show debuted; Victor Sen Yung being forced to speak broken English as Ponderosa Ranch cook Hop Sing but still standing up for himself, becoming an early role model for Asian Americans; and, of course, that epic opening, with the burning map of Virginia City and the 4 men riding their horses into the camera.

Today, Bonnie Bedelia is better known as Holly Gennaro McClane in Die Hard. Her full name is Bonnie Bedelia Culkin, and she is the sister of Kit and thus the aunt of Macaulay, Kieran and Rory Culkin.

A sequel series revealed that Little Joe married again, and had a son (played by Michael Landon Jr.) and a daughter; that Adam moved to Australia and had a son there; and that Hoss had a son he never knew, and that these cousins ran the Ponderosa early in the 20th Century.

3. Dolores Landingham, Kathryn Joosten on The West Wing, May 9, 2001. Joosten has since died, but was still very much active after this. Mrs. Landingham had known Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) since he was in a preppy New Hampshire private high school, becoming secretary first to Jed's headmaster father and then to Jed himself as Congressman, Governor and President.

Everyone felt betrayed that he had kept his sleeping-giant illness a secret from them, let alone from the country. There was going to be a Congressional investigation, possibly even impeachment. And, oh yeah, he had to decide, right now, whether he was going to run for re-election -- this, after he'd made a deal with his wife, Abbey (Stockard Channing), that, because of his condition, he would serve only one term.

With the cloud of scandal hovering over him, it seemed like the White House was caving in on the most popular POTUS in TV history. And then, in one of those episodes where the network concludes the preview by saying, "Whatever you do, don't miss the last 5 (or 2) minutes," we find out that she'd just been killed in a car crash -- having just bought the first new car of her 70-or-so-year life. This, after her husband had been dead for years.  This, after they had both been predeceased by both of their twin sons, Army doctors in a firefight in Vietnam.

Her death was announced in the next-to-last episode of Season 2, and in the finale, the President had a little chat with God after her funeral at the National Cathedral. And yet, she comes back to him as a ghost, telling him that if he's too scared to run again just because he thinks people won't vote for him because of his refusal to disclose, "Then, gosh, Jed, I'm not sure I even want to know you."

So at his press conference after announcing it, he's asked if he's going to run for re-election. And he says, "Yeah. And I'm gonna win." And he does. And he makes it through the second term alive. Unlike Mrs. Landingham, Admiral Fitzwallace, and, most heartbreakingly of all, his best friend Leo.

Speaking of Fitz (sort of)...

2. James Evans, John Amos on Good Times, September 22, 1976. Like a later sitcom with a mostly-black cast set in Chicago, Family Matters, Good Times was supposed to be about a black couple trying to be role models for their children. Fans latched onto a "breakout character," and it almost ruined the show.

Jimmy Walker's J.J. Evans (James Jr.) was a very different character to Jaleel White's Steve Urkel on Family Matters, but his too-eager embrace of his sudden fame ticked off his castmates, in particular the actors playing his parents, Amos and Esther Rolle as Florida Evans. Rolle: "He's 18, and he doesn't work. He can't read or write. He doesn't think. The show didn't start out to be that... They have made J.J. more stupid, and enlarged the role." Amos: "The writers would prefer to put a chicken hat on J.J., and have him prance around, saying, 'Dy-no-mite!' And, that way, they could waste a few minutes, and not have to write meaningful dialogue."

Finally, Amos had enough, and let Norman Lear know how he felt.  Lear essentially fired him: As with McLean Stevenson a year and a half earlier, CBS decided after Season 3, "You ain't stayin', you ain't leavin' alive."

The 2-part episode was titled "The Big Move." James is from Mississippi, and moved to Chicago after returning from the U.S. Army during the Korean War.  (Another sort-of connection with Henry Blake.) The family was poor, but never lost hope. But good news comes: James has an offer of a better job back in his home State. He goes down there to prepare for it -- Amos is never actually seen in this episode -- and is killed in a car crash.

At first, the reaction is not one of overwhelming sadness, which bothers son Michael (Ralph Carter). Even Florida doesn't seem all that affected.  Eventually, though, she realizes she is alone, not just in the room but in life, and loses it, smashing a punchbowl and saying, "Damn, damn, damn!"

This was the first time an Amos character would be killed off on a TV show, but not the last: Retired Admiral Percy Fitzwallace, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would be killed on The West Wing episode "Gaza," airing on May 12, 2004. At this writing, in real life, Amos, born in Newark and growing up in neighboring East Orange, is still alive, 73 years old.

1. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, M.D., McLean Stevenson on M*A*S*H, March 18, 1975.  The episode was titled, "Abyssinia, Henry." "Abyssinia," the former name for Ethiopia, was a slang term for farewell, sounding like, "I'll be seein' ya," and Blake had used the term on the show before.

The commanding officer of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War, Henry was a drunk and a womanizer, and totally unsuited to the role of commanding a military unit. But he was a good doctor, and, like his successor, Col. Sherman T. Potter (Harry Morgan), understood that the people under his command were human beings first, their jobs second, and soldiers third; and that, sometimes, "going by the book" meant there would be some unfairness.

As the episode starts, the company clerk, Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff), tells Henry, whom he sees almost as a father figure (as his own dad died when he was very young), that a message has come in from I-Corps: He's got all his rotation points. He's being discharged, going home to Bloomington, Illinois. (Stevenson's real-life hometown -- he was a cousin of that town's favorite son, 2-time Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson.)

Some time after Henry leaves, probably a few days, there is an operating session, which appeared in the script as just an empty page -- in other words, the actors didn't even know what was going to happen, except for Burghoff. Radar walks in, and says that Henry's plane was shot down by an enemy plane, and, "There weren't no survivors."

There is silence, except for the dropping of a surgical instrument clanging on the floor, and the tears of head nurse Major Margaret Houlihan, as her portrayer, Loretta Swit, seemed genuinely moved by the death of a fictional character, one with whom she was so often at odds. Even Larry Linville, playing nasty gung-ho hypocrite Major Frank Burns, seemed saddened. Operating on the same patient, Captains Ben "Hawkeye" Pierce and "Trapper John" McIntyre (Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers) looked like they were doing whaver they could to not cry, for fear that their tears would infect the patient.

Stevenson was still on the set to see the filming of this scene, and was deeply hurt. Producers Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds got over 1,000 letters, some understanding, many not. Gelbart later regretted the way it was handled. The first time the episode was repeated, the last scene was cut out of the broadcast, although it was included in syndication and on VHS & DVD.

Why did the writers and producers do it? They knew Stevenson wanted to move on, but did they have to kill Henry off? Why not just send him home alive? Or, if they had to have him die, let him pass away quietly in his bed, before he had a chance to leave? Why such a violent and terrifying death as a plane crash? Simple: The show was about war, and war is hell.

(Father Francis Mulcahy, played by William Christopher, used that line on the show during an OR session, and Hawkeye contradicted him: "I think war is worse than hell. There are no innocent bystanders in hell.")

If "Red Wedding" was a slug in the gut, even for generations used to shocks on TV, "Abyssinia, Henry" was not: It was a slug in the gut for generations not used to this sort of thing. Sure, they were used to the Vietnam War (for which M*A*S*H was an allegory), and had seen the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, riots in the inner cities and at the Democratic Convention, a massacre on a college campus, and a President go too far and commit an unintentional long-term suicide for his Administration -- all within the last 12 years.

But TV wasn't like that: It was escapism. Sure, there were serious TV shows before M*A*S*H, but even on shows like that, you knew the major characters were going to be okay in the end. "Abyssinia, Henry" meant that you could never take that for granted again.

It seems self-serving, even obnoxious, for me to point out the crap people had to live through in the 12 years before "Abyssinia, Henry," and to then say that the years of my childhood were "a more innocent time." But for TV viewing, other than for the news, it really was. When Henry Blake died, so did a certain way of looking at television. And not for the better.