Cast members of Cheers have lost one of their own, but many of those who watch and love the show certainly feel that Nicholas Colasanto was one of their own, too.

Colasanto played Ernie Coach Pantusso, agile bartender and simple-minded philosopher, and it`s the nature of television and a result of a superb continuing performance that you could adopt Coach electronically and make him a member of that old gang of yours.

Television characters are immortal but actors are not. Colasanto died recently in Los Angeles of a heart ailment. He did not take Coach with him, because although the character will be written out of Cheers, he still exists on film and will return in reruns as if still among us. Indeed, an old episode in which Coach was prominently featured was rerun by NBC on the Thursday after the actor`s death. It was preceded by a still photograph of the actor in character and the voice of Cheers costar Ted Danson who said,

This encore presentation of `Cheers` is dedicated with love and appreciation to the memory of Nick Colasanto.

At one point in the show, Coach, trying as usual to get his bearings, said, This is the nineteen . . . what, eighties? Coach was a daft comic exaggeration, but sports fans in particular recognized him as a kindred spirit. Glen Charles, who with his brother Les created this great show, said there was a little bit of Yogi Berra, Sparky Anderson and Casey Stengel in Coach.

These were certainly not dumb men, Charles said. They just had a different perspective on things. We tried to make Coach not so much stupid as indecisive and pursuing his own line of reasoning. Behind the seeming stupidity was a sweetness and innocence and a striving to make sense out of life.

The beauty part was that Colasanto didnt just bring the character to life from the printed page; he completed Coach and gave him qualities even the Charles brothers didnt know were there. We have absolutely lucked out with all our cast, Charles said. ``Each one has taken their character farther than we thought they could go. That was certainly the case with Nick.

Among other things, he was a great listener--Nick as an actor and in the role. The character was somebody all the other characters could explain things to. And we could always cut to Nick for a silent reaction, when another character did a joke and we needed something to break up the laughter. We`d cut to Nick because as Coach he was always trying to make sense of what was going on.

Charles says there will be a Cheers episode in which the death of Coach is dealt with by the other characters, much as the cops on Hill Street Blues contended with the loss of Sgt. Esterhaus after the death of actor Michael Conrad. Years ago--and, on some TV shows, even today--the

disappearance of a character because of an actor`s death might never be accounted for out of fear of depressing or alienating the audience. That these things can be faced is one small indication that television and its audience have matured.

Nicholas Colasanto (1924)