National Obituaries

NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright Christopher Durang, a master of satire and black comedy who won a Tony Award for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist with “Miss Witherspoon,” has died. He was 75.

He played four seasons with his hometown Saskatchewan Roughriders, but Jim Hopson's greatest contribution to the storied franchise came in the boardroom.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — John Barth, the playfully erudite author whose darkly comic and complicated novels revolved around the art of literature and launched countless debates over the art of fiction, died Tuesday. He was 93.

Though he was best known for the multitude of characters he embodied on "SCTV," Joe Flaherty had a long and varied career in film and television. Flaherty died Monday at age 82.

SYDNEY (AP) — Stefano Cherchi, who rode more than 100 winners in the United Kingdom, has died after being injured in a fall in Australia last month, the New South Wales Jockeys Association said Wednesday. He was 23.

BOSTON (AP) — Larry Lucchino, the hard-driving force behind baseball’s retro ballpark revolution and the transformation of the Boston Red Sox from cursed losers to World Series champions, has died. He was 78.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — John Sinclair, a poet, music producer and counterculture figure whose lengthy prison sentence after a series of small-time pot busts inspired a John Lennon song and a star-studded 1971 concert to free him, has died. He was 82.

Joe Flaherty earned guffaws among fans of "SCTV" and “Freaks and Geeks," but the comedian was also a "mentor" and the "funniest" among his pals, famous friends said Tuesday as word spread of Flaherty’s death.

RALEIGH, N.C.

NEW YORK (AP) — Maryse Condé, an acclaimed French-language novelist from Guadeloupe who in novels, stories, plays and memoirs imagined and redefined the personal and historical past from 17th century New England to contemporary Europe, has died at ag