Sad news to pass along: Rick Hader, better known as baseball entertainer Myron Noodleman, has passed away, the victim of a rare form of sinus cancer. He was 59.
As Noodleman, Hader was an institution at professional ballparks across the country since unveiling the character at the 1993 Winter Meetings. Portraying himself as a mix of “Groucho Marx, Pee-wee Herman, the Nutty Professor and Urkel,” the high-school teacher would spend his summers entertaining fans and teaching math during the school year. From Tulsa World:
“What makes the character work is that he’s a nerd, but he’s cocky about it. That’s what makes it funny,” Hader told the Tulsa World once. “When people first see me, they think, ‘Who is this idiot?’ After they see the act, they like it.”
Hader had family ties to the entertainment industry. His brother, Matt, is a screenwriter, and he was the uncle of Bill Hader, the Tulsa-born actor and former “Saturday Night Live” cast member.
He passed away at 2:59 a.m., the victim of a rare sinus cancer that kept him from appearances last summer. Since 2014, he was a math teacher at Union High School in Tulsa.
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