The Wall

Top Ten Losses of 2024

Now that the New Year has started, it is time for the Top Ten list for 2024. Question whether life is worth living if you can’t argue about who is the most important dead person of the previous year? Here goes. Some of the choices will lift you, some will anger you but most will baffle you. Feel free to comment if I overlooked your favorite dead person for 2024, but since I write this rag, I get to pick ‘em. Here goes:

13. Ed Kranepool. First, he was a Met, and perhaps more importantly, if I don’t include him, my mom may well rise from the dead to smack me.

12. Bill Walton. Quirky with talent will always get you here and Walton was loaded with both. That he was a huge bicycle rider didn’t hurt him.

11. William Post. I am not a fan of Pop Tarts but they are almost a food group of their own.

10. Every top ten list needs a bona fide hero and for 2024, Bob Pardo, is it for us. A daring F-4 Phantom pilot during the Vietnam war he literally pushed (the “Pardo Push” it came to be known as), a badly damaged plane with his own badly damaged plane, to save both. He did it because his dad had always told him that when your friends need help, “you help,” and he knew when he saw his father he would be asked, what did you do to help? That’s upbringing.

9. Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Having a doctorate permitted her to talk dirty to all of us. What is better than that?

8. James Earl Jones. The voice of pretty much everything.

7. Quincy Jones. The music of pretty much everything.

6. Rickey Handerson. My favorite baseball thief.

5. Pete Rose. Baseball robbed him of a place in the Hall of Fame, where he deserves to be.

4. Willie Mays: Say great.

3. Dickey Betts. If only for the “Blue Sky” solo he gets here, but being part of the greatest live album is the cream on top.

2. Norman Lear. He changed television more than anyone I can think of besides Philo Farnsworth (who invented the thing).

1. Jimmy Carter. Like him or not, he was the President, and he made it to 100.