My favorite story about Soupy Sales, who passed away last night at 83, is most likely the same one most everyone else would pick: that New Year’s broadcast in 1965 when Sales told his young viewers to tiptoe into their parents’ rooms and pull those funny-looking little green pieces of paper with the pictures of presidents on them out of mommy’s purse and daddy’s wallet, then put them in an envelope addressed to him and mail it.

What happened next, typical of a joke bombing, was that Sales got a pie in the face.

But the joke was on Sales, when over the next few days, envelopes with money — both real and play — arrived, along with phone calls from angry parents.  Sales ended up suspended for two weeks for the attempt, but he succeeded in demonstrating the power of TV.

Sales, for the most part, was before my time.  His kids’ show went off the air before I was born.  By the time I was first introduced to him, it was during his appearances on 70s game shows like What’s My Line?, Match Game and The Hollywood Squares.

Still, he was one of those legendary figures who helped create the path that TV went, and it’s always sad when one of those pioneers leaves us.

Tonight’s CBS Evening News aired a clip of an interview in which he said he’d like to be remembered as a nice guy who made people laugh.  By most indications, that’s exactly how it happened.