Bob Hoskins is dead at 71. Sad news. He was a wonderful actor.

Watch:

Damn.

Cool obit in the Times:

Connie Marrero, a chunky right-hander from Cuba with a windmill delivery and a wicked curveball, was nearly 39 years old when he reached the major leagues with the 1950 Washington Senators.

He went on to become an All-Star in his second season, when he threw a one-hitter against the Philadelphia Athletics, and he won 39 games in five seasons with lackluster Senator teams.

When he died on Wednesday in Havana at 102, two days short of his 103rd birthday, Marrero was the oldest former major leaguer. But his time with the Senators was only one chapter of a long career in which he became a cherished figure in Cuban baseball.

[Photo Credit: Al Fenn/Time Life Pictures via Getty Images]

R.I.P. Peter Matthiessen. Check out this recent profile of the author by Jeff Himmelman:

In his own life, Matthiessen found a home in Zen. As he writes in “The Snow Leopard”: “In the longing that starts one on the path is a kind of homesickness, and some way, on this journey, I have started home. Homegoing is the purpose of my practice.” And yet, in “In Paradise,” Matthiessen takes even that consolation away. The evil that Olin encounters at Auschwitz is so terrifying that spiritual practice can’t mitigate it. Olin reflects on Solzhenitsyn’s observation that “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,” and then decides to show it to one of the retreat leaders — who responds with a Buddhist bromide about eliminating “all self-lacerating partial truths while good and evil fall away.” It is correct doctrine, but Matthiessen makes it sound like claptrap. Of spiritual practice in general, with which he has a casual and conflicted relationship, Olin wonders: “How long would such delicate attainments have withstood the death camp’s horrors?” It is another way of asking the question we all ask of ourselves: How would I have fared?

The book is grim, but Matthiessen isn’t. Earlier that morning, I watched as he said goodbye to a guest who stayed over the previous night. They were business associates, friendly but maybe not friends, and as the guest was at the door, he good-naturedly offered optimistic advice about radical experimental measures that Matthiessen might take. Matthiessen smiled and said: “I don’t want to hang on to life quite that hard. It’s part of my Zen training.” In preparing for our interviews, having read “In Paradise,” I wondered whether the Buddhist teachings were providing him any more consolation than they did the characters in his book. I hoped so. “The Buddha says that all suffering comes from clinging,” Matthiessen said. “I don’t want to cling. I’ve had a good life, you know. Lots of adventures. It’s had some dark parts, too, but mainly I’ve had a pretty good run of it, and I don’t want to cling too hard. I have no complaints.”

The characters in “In Paradise” cling too hard and are full of complaints, which is one reason that the book doesn’t feel like any kind of “final word.” The novel lacks the beautiful and affirming moments so much more present in Matthiessen’s nonfiction, moments more beautiful even than the dancing at Auschwitz, because they don’t come with the same complications. When Matthiessen was happy, as a writer and as a traveler, he always let us in on it; most often, he found that happiness in reverence of the natural world and in a hard-won, if fleeting, acceptance of his own uncertain place in it. “Lying back against these ancient rocks of Africa, I am content,” he writes in “The Tree Where Man Was Born.” “The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that I have found what I was searching for without ever having discovered what it was.”

[Photo Via: Getty Images]

Rest in Peace, Frank Jobe. 

Oh, man. This is sad news. 

Sid Caesar, the comedy giant, has passed away at 91.

See for yourself.

I just read on Twitter that Ralph Kiner has died. Salute.

A few brief highlights from the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman:

[Photo Credit: Desmond Muckian]

Salute, Pete Seeger, who died yesterday at the age of 94.

[Photo Via: Camp Woodland]

Salute Judy Protas.

Rob Neyer pays tribute to Jerry Coleman. 

Farewell, Joan Fontaine. 

Here’s the obit from the N.Y. Times. 

[Photo Via It’s a Long Season and Ian Berry]

Rest in Peace, Judy Rodgers. In her honor, try this.

A moment of silence for Junior…then:

Rest in peace, Saul Leiter, dead at 89. A beautiful artist.

Leiter:

“There are certain people who like to be in the swing of things, but I think I’ve been out of the loop a lot of the time. When Bonnard died, one critic accused him of not participating in the great adventures of Modernism. And Matisse wrote a letter in which he defended Bonnard, saying that when he saw the Bonnards in the Phillips collection, he told Mr. Phillips, ‘Bonnard was the strongest of us all.’

I’m not like those photographers who went up to the top of the mountain and hung over and took a picture that everyone said was impossible and then went home and printed it and sold 4,000 copies of it and then went on and on with one great achievement after another.

Max Kozloff said to me one day, ‘You’re not really a photographer. You do photography, but you do it for your own purposes – your purposes are not the same as others’. I’m not quite sure what he meant, but I like that. I like the way he put it.”

Welcome Back to Where & When.  This will be a special edition to highlight the recent loss of a cultural icon.  For several generations and cultures who inhabit the city, this was their Penn Station. I present this without further comment, but feel free to post thoughts.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013:

 Here is a Google Gallery of what was 5 Pointz. 

Here is a little history.

Michael Weiner, the executive director of the MLBPA, passed away yesterday at 51. Over at ESPN, Jerry Crasnick salutes a voice of reason.

Patti remembers Lou. 

Here’s more on Lou Reed:

From our man Luc Sante.

Jody Rosen.

Sasha Frere-Jones.

Kurt Loder and Carl Wilson.

And a playlist from The Daily Beast.  

[Images Via: This Isn’t Happiness]