Crazy Eddie died last weekend – not the star of the TV commercials I loved as a kid, but Eddie Antar, the founder of the chain of Brooklyn-based electronics stores his iconic commercials advertised. His Times obituary headline identified him as “Retailer and Felon,” which seems like a gratuitous kick in the nuts of a dead man, even if he did used to fly to Israel with bundles of cash that should have belonged to his shareholders taped to his body.

I never set foot in one of his stores. I grew up far in the suburbs after all. I am not, however, the only person with a childish fondness for him. On those infrequent days when I wear my Crazy Eddie tee shirt, strangers stop me and say they love it.

“He’s practically giving it all away!”

Eddie Antar was 68 when he died, a descendant of the famously insular Syrian Jewish community of Gravesend, Brookln. Did Eddie have to die to make room for the Syrian ceasefire, which was announced that very day, to become possible? No, that would be crazy.

But when we mourn his passing we mourn the loss of a regional-sized TV market and consumer identity. His homespun commercials remind us of a time before practically all brands were national, before “Charlie Bit My Finger.” People of regions outside New York have their own fabled marketers and, often, children’s TV shows, such as Minnesota’s Axel and His Dog, that they love. Living on the cusp of the Philly-New York markets, I was, if anything, even more fond of Philly retailers such as Ideal, whose jingle my wife and I still sing around the house.

Crazy Eddie was special though. And his legal demise years later made him even more so. There was truth in advertising in Crazy Eddie. I feel a wee bit sorry for whomever he defrauded, but, y’know, he did tell you he was crazy!

Thinking about that fact yesterday, I was reminded of another great TV personality who flamed out around the same time: Jimmy the Greek. Yesterday was the beginning of American football season (and the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, and Eid, but what can I say about that?).

Jimmy the Greek.

I hate American football, and have hardly watched it at all since Jimmy the Greek was still a fixture of football commentary. I always found it sad that The Greek got fired for making racial comments, alleging that African-Americans are better athletes because slave owners specifically bred them to be stronger. Never mind that it’s racist bunk. Can you really fault an odds-maker for thinking in ethnic categories, when he goes by the name “Jimmy the Greek”?

I discovered an ESPN documentary, surprisingly viewed less than 10,000 times on Youtube, about Jimmy the Greek’s life. Born Dimetrios Georgios Synodinos in Steubenville, Ohio, he would have turned 98 on Friday. (What a weekend!) He was neighbors with Dean Martin as a kid, and his uncle shot both his mother and his aunt, and then himself, in a murder-suicide. Three of his five children died from cystic fibrosis, but his public service announcements about the disease have been scrubbed from public memory too.

He popularized sports gambling, for which he’s hopefully suffering some torments in hell. But he was a real personality, from a time when personality was rewarded, a time that receded a lot further in the past this week.