AP News, November 17th, 2007
Gen. Sergio del Valle Jimenez
HAVANA (AP) — Gen. Sergio del Valle Jimenez, a doctor in Fidel Castro's rebel army in the late 1950s and army chief of staff during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, has died, state media reported Friday.
A short article in the Communist Party newspaper Granma did not give a cause for del Valle's death late Thursday or say how old he was, but he was at least in his 70s.
Del Valle joined Castro's revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista through a Havana underground movement in the mid-1950s, and entered the rebel army as a physician and soldier fighting against Batista's troops in eastern Cuba in 1957.
After Batista fled and the rebels took control of the island on Jan. 1, 1959, del Valle held various positions in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.
He was army chief of staff when a U.S.-backed exile army tried unsuccessfully to invade the Bay of Pigs in 1961, as well as the following year when the U.S. discovery of Soviet missiles on the island pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. The Soviets eventually removed the missiles.
Del Valle was also interior minister in the late 1960s and health minister from 1979 to 1986.
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Joe Nuxhall
CINCINNATI (AP) — Joe Nuxhall, the youngest major leaguer at age 15 and later a beloved broadcaster as "the ol' left-hander" in Cincinnati, has died. He was 79.
Nuxhall died Thursday night while hospitalized for treatment of pneumonia, the team said. He was awaiting surgery to insert a pacemaker, and had been slowed by a recurrence of cancer since September.
Brought up by Cincinnati to pitch during World War II — just out of junior high classes, he unraveled at the sight of Stan Musial in the on-deck circle — Nuxhall worked more than six decades for the Reds. He continued to pitch batting practice into the 1980s and was a member of the team's Hall of Fame.
While he won 135 games, it was on the radio where he became best known. On a franchise filled with Hall of Fame players and big personalities, Nuxhall might have been the most popular of all.
Nuxhall's place in baseball lore was secured the moment he stepped onto a big league field. With major league rosters depleted during World War II, he got a chance to pitch in relief for the Reds on June 10, 1944.
At 15 years, 10 months, 11 days old, Nuxhall was big for his age. He was 6-foot-3 and his parents let him join the Reds when school let out.
Nuxhall spent most of the time watching from the bench, assuming he'd never get into a game. The Reds were trailing the St. Louis Cardinals 13-0 after eight innings when manager Bill McKechnie decided to give the kid a chance.
Nuxhall was so rattled when summoned to warm up that he tripped on the top step of the dugout and fell on his face in front of 3,510 fans at Crosley Field. He was terrified when it came time to walk to the mound.
Nuxhall walked one and retired two batters before glancing at the on-deck circle and seeing Musial. Nuxhall unraveled — Musial hit a line-drive single, and the Cardinals scored five runs as the young pitcher lost his ability to throw a strike and failed to get another out. In all, he walked five and threw a wild pitch in two-thirds of an inning.
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Peter Zinner
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peter Zinner, who worked as a film editor on the first two "Godfather" films and won an Oscar for his work on 1978's "The Deer Hunter," has died. He was 88.
Zinner died Tuesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica of complications from an almost five-year battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his daughter Katina Zinner said.
Born in 1919 in Vienna, Peter Zinner, who was Jewish, fled the Nazis with his family and moved to the Philippines in 1938. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1940 and "always wanted to be in film," said his daughter.
After working as a taxi driver and piano player in silent movie theaters, Zinner landed a job as an apprentice film editor at 20th Century Fox in the early 1940s.
In 1960, he quit MGM and started his own company with two other film editors, his daughter said.
It was Zinner's film editing work on Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 groundbreaking mob drama "The Godfather" that earned him an Academy Award nomination with coeditor William Reynolds.
Zinner's other notable movie editing credits included 1967's "In Cold Blood," 1974's "The Godfather: Part II" and 1976's "A Star Is Born."
He snagged a film editing Oscar for the Vietnam War film "The Deer Hunter," which won best picture. He later picked up an Oscar nomination for 1982's romantic drama "An Officer and a Gentlemen."
Zinner appeared only once as an actor, playing an admiral in 1990's "The Hunt for Red October," and directed one movie, 1981's "The Salamander," a political thriller set in Italy with Anthony Quinn.
Last year, Zinner collaborated with his daughter Katina, also a film editor, on the documentary "Running With Arnold," about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
