Soupy Sales off into the sunset, but Yankees will remember him tonight

The cartoon caption contest in The New Yorker next week will feature an illustration of Don Rickles wearing ice skates and yelling at a hockey puck.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that the final request of the comedian who took 20,000 pies to his face and made 5,000 live tv appearances, was to have his name changed to "Supine Sales" to reflect the lying down face up position he will hold for eternity.

Sales was born Milton Supman in 1926, in Franklinton, N.C., where his was the only Jewish family in town. His parents, owners of a dry goods store, sold white sheets to members of the Ku Klux Klan. Well, it wasn't as if there were any Orthodox Jews around to use the sheets for the wall of separation in bed.

Getting a pie in the face became the cool thing to do in the Mad Men era. Among celebrities who took it in the face were Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Meryl Streep (as Shirley Maclaine in a former life).

The Yankees' Rodriguez says he's looking forward to getting a pie in the face tonight after he hits a walkoff homer in the ninth inning to put the Yankees in the World Series for the first time in six years. "It has been a long road for me. All the horrible postseason games. Then the steroid thing this year. But having it culminate with a memorial to Soupy will almost make it all worth it.

"You know, Soupy was from another era. An era in which Ernie Kovacs could draw a laugh by doing a ten-minute bit that ended with a Cadillac going through a stage floor. Can you imagine an audience paying attention that long for one gag? Heck, if audiences could rivet their attention these days, I wouldn't have had to take the 'roids to hit all those homeruns to keep the fans in the game," Rodriguez said.