I think the only modification should be upping the DP candidates allowed into the pool. I think it needs to be 20.
According to this article, he was 54.
Jim Delsing, who had a solid career as an outfielder for several Major League Baseball teams but was best known for his supporting role in one of the game’s great stunts, has died at 80. In a 1951 game against the Detroit Tigers, the St. Louis Browns sent midget Eddie Gaedel to the plate as a pinch-hitter. After Gaedel predictably received a base on balls when four straight pitches missed his miniscule strike zone, he came out of the contest and was replaced by pinch-runner Delsing.
No, if you really want to pick someone who is 90+, you know what you are getting. Good odds of few points. If you want more points, don’t pick the 99 year old, pick the 89 or 49 or 29 year old. That is how it works.
Yes, it’s easy to predict that really old folks are going to croak soon. If that’s the way you want to play, then load up your list with centegenarians and go for the “Quantity not Quality” prize.
And I think 13 is exactly the right number of picks for a Death Pool. 13, get it? Unlucky 13!
My list looks like a geezery over-stuffed baked potato, and I still haven’t gotten a score this year.
Oh great, change the rules when I have my first decent showing in this thing. 
No, you just have to be really morbid, and do a Google search like this: “diagnosed with” cancer
That will return announcements like this:
So, according to Fear Itself we should all subscribe to wwwdotcelebritiesknockingondeath’sdoordotcom. 
I like it!
I’m thinking of offering to put celebrities on my list each year for a fee, since making my death pool list apparently gains one instant immortality.
Bingo.
What I did – search Google News:
“Diagnosed with lung cancer”
“Diagnosed with cancer”
“Gravely ill”
“Admitted to the hospital”
Then the winnowing: Ignore those with prostate cancer, breast cancer, thyroid cancer, etc. Ignore those who are over 85 no matter what, and those who are over 70 unless there’s a very good reason to put them in. etc.
That got me about half my list. The other half of the list hasn’t died, and I’m pretty sure won’t die.
Also, if I’d followed that method better I’d have kept Tammy Faye Bakker, instead of omitting her - an omission I’m pretty sure is going to get me bumped from first place later in the year. At which point you will no longer care what my strategy is, so I’m posting it now 
Shirley Ujest! There’s something so right about the macabreness of 13!
Heh…looks like I’m not the only one who did some serious research. I have a standing Factiva search of:
((“suffering from” same cancer) or (“diagnosed with” same cancer) or (has w/4 cancer)) not died (plus a few indexing code exclusions to weed out non-celebs)
I’m somewhere in the top ten this year, so it looks like the strategy is working.
[Former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson dead at 71]](http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/20060511-0954-box-obit-patterson.html)
Former NY Times editor A. M. ‘Abe’ Rosenthal dead at age 84, according to Yahoo News.
Eh. Don’t need serious research with google. The point is it’s easy as hell and doesn’t require brains as long as you know your cancers. Took me about an hour to come up with my list. And half of that was spent debating whether it was wrong to post it or not. (yes, it is - this is all wrong).
Wow. Even simpler. A totally automated death pool list.
Frank Boos , The Bow Tie Guy from The Antiques Road Show has died.
Singer Soraya has died at the age of 37
Longtime Congressman G. V. “Sonny” Montgomery is dead at 85.
George Lutz, whose 28-day tenure as a resident of a Long Island house gained him notoriety, has died at the age of 59. Lutz claimed that he, his wife, and their children were driven out of the three-story colonial in 1975 by the spirits of the DeFeo family members who had been killed by Ronald DeFeo a year earlier. The story served as the basis for a novel and subsequent film, each called The Amityville Horror.
I was skimming the radio dial last night and Art Bell had a repeat of an old episode with an interview with George Lutz. It a becomes clear to me now.
Poet Laureate Stanley Kuntiz dead at 100