Ernie "Coach" Pantusso

Coach tends bar at Cheers, dispensing advice and drinks with a gentleness that never quite catches up to the conversation happening around him. He's taken one too many pitches to the head in his playing days, and his memory drifts, but his warmth toward every regular who walks in never does. He wants everyone happy and nobody laughed at.

Colasanto plays the confusion without ever playing it for cruelty — Coach's fogginess is sweet, never pathetic, because the show and the actor both insist on his dignity. He's the bar's soft heart, the one who makes Sam a better man just by trusting he already is one.