MH at MK 'Saturday Nights Lights'
a great way to open the season
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     Posted Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2010 - Mike Sabo says there will be more people at the game than there were at his team's state championship game at Giants Stadium two seasons ago.
     Bill Regan says the game has taken on a life of its own, above and beyond the excitement generated by a season-opening game.
     The game, of course, is Morris Hills-at-Morris Knolls, the 2010 season-opening high school football game for both teams.  The game has been scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 11, at Caruso Stadium at Knolls and kickoff is set for 7 p.m.
     Just call it the Denville-Rockaways version of "Saturday Night Lights" and wait for the fireworks to begin.
     Last year's game marked the first time the two sister-schools met in 10 seasons and Morris Hills walked away with a 20-0 victory, a result that has been part of the Morris Knolls summer and preseason preparations because a copy of the story of the game is posted on the Eagles' football bulletin board.
     "They played very well against us last year and we did not look sharp at all," says Regan, who is entering his 36th season as head coach of the Morris Knolls football program. "The kids weren't happy about their performance and are pretty focused on what they have to do to make sure it doesn't happen again.
     "Coach Sabo and his staff did a nice job in game-planning and their players executed well last season and I'm sure they will be just as ready this time."
    Morris Hills went on to finish 4-6 last season, winning a state consolation game for win No. 4. Knolls finished 3-7, losing its state consolation game.
     Sabo looks at the game as the first of one of his many "David vs. Goliath" games his club will have this season since the Knights are a low Group 3 (if their 813 enrollment of sophomores, juniors and seniors was two students less, Morris Hills would be a high Group 2) and Knolls is a solid Group 4 team with an enrollment of 1179 sophs, juniors and seniors.
     "The numbers are the numbers," Sabo says. "Their roster is twice the size of our (81 to 40) and that means they can do so many more things than we do as far as resting players and keeping them fresher for the fourth quarter.
     "We know we have to play another great game against them in order to be competitive and we're hoping to be in a position to win the game when the fourth quarter comes around. Our kids and coaches have a lot of respect for their players, Coach Regan and their entire program. But we have kids who are competitive and scrappy and ready to go.
     "We enjoy the challenge presented by opening the season against Knolls."
     Regan also talked about the "challenge" presented by the Knolls-Hills opening-day game.
     "The long, hot summer and a very warm preseason is almost behind us and we welcome the new challenge of facing Hills and of opening another new season," Regan said. "I'm sure that Morris Hills shares the same sentiment about the game and is just as excited as we are about facing each other.
     "We just want to get started."
     Morris Hills vs. Morris Knolls ... Saturday, Sept. 11 ... at Caruso Stadium at Knolls ... 7 p.m. kickoff ... the 2010 season opener ... "Saturday Night Lights" ...

Cooper had a ball
on his 8th birthday
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      Posted Monday, August 30, 2010: It was "Birthday Week" for two of our grandkids at son Bob and daughter-in-law Chrissy's home in Hackettstown this past week as Cooper turned eight on the 29th and Faith turned five on the 25th.
      There was a great family party on Saturday and then on Sunday, the kids got to use their birthday gift cards and the parents got to clean up.
      Earlier in the week, Bob and Chrissy took the kids to Boston for three days and, with Bob Jr. and Cooper HUGE Red Sox fans, he four of them attended last Tuesday's day game against Seattle. The next day, they took the guided tour of Fenway Park, a tour that included a visit to the seats behind the Green Monster.
      Before the game started, Bob and Cooper worked their way down to the field level boxes along the right field line and were able to watch Tim Wakefield and one of the Red Sox bullpen catchers throw. When they finished, the catcher turned to Bob and made a tossing motion to him to see if Bob wanted the ball.
     Bob,of course, shook his head yes and put out his hands and the catcher, who was about 10 yards away, flipped him the ball..
     "All I could think was '... don't drop it, don't drop it,'" Bob was saying from his cell phone less than five minutes later. "I can't believe it ... my first major league ball!"
      He told me he handed the ball to Cooper and and Cooper was able to shout out a few excited "thank yous" as the players walked away.
       Bob said he didn't recognize the catcher and didn't get his uniform number because he had a warmup jacket on. He knew it wasn't Martinez or Kash, his backup, and figured it was "... a bullpen catcher - or maybe a coach."
       Cooper then got on the phone and retold the entire story, excitedly saying he had the ball right there in his hand and it was "... the best birthday present" he could get. (Of course, that was before he got all the school clothes that Grandma Decker bought for him).
      Faith had her moment, too. With the four of them standing in front of the hotel and Mom and Dad talking about whether they should walk, take the train, or take a cab to the ball park, Faith made the decision for them when she stepped to the curb and stuck out her hand and immediately hailed a cab, just the way her father had done it earlier.
      But for Cooper, his eighth birthday will always be remembered as the day he got a "real baseball" at Fenway Park in Boston. It was very exciting for him.
      Truth be told, it was hard to figure out exactly whom was the most excited, though ...  Cooper or his father.
      ... or Grandpa.

Sweet Lou has retired
... there goes my brag
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    Posted Thursday, August 26, 2010: Oh, well ... there goes my brag!
    Lou Piniella, who had said he would retire at the end of this season, left his job as manager of the Cubs earlier than he had intended the other day so he could go home and be with his ailing mother.
    I enjoy bragging about Lou Pinella. When Louie went off on one of his tantrums, I'd either end up laughing out loud by myself in front of the TV laughing or I'd break out into a Sweet Lou story or two if there were baseball people around. 
    Piniella and I were teammates in 1963, playing the entire season together on the Peninsula Grays in the Carolina (A) League as property of the then Washington Senators.
    If you think Sweet Lou has a temper now, you should have seen him as a 19-year-old minor leaguer.
    I've told these stories before but, with Louie retiring, this may be my last chance to tell them again. So if you've heard them or read them before, please bear with me and help me laugh through them again.
    First off, there was no doubt Louie was going to be a big leaguer. You talk about work ethic, Louie's obsession with becoming a better hitter is a prime example of an athlete working toward a goal.
     If he wasn't stealing extra swings in the cage, he'd be swinging a bat on the side, checking the position of his bat, arms, shoulders, elbows, head, legs, hips, hands, etc., at each and every phase of his swing.
     He'd talk hitting constantly, most of the time with a bat in his hands. Never mind if you didn't understand what he was saying, Louie talking about hitting helped make Louie a better hitter, I'm convinced of that.
     No pitcher ever got Louie out - it was always HIS fault. Instead of giving us pitchers credit for working hard at our trade, too, he would always attribute his failure to get a hit to something he did wrong ... and then work on correcting it.
    Between innings of one of our home games one Sunday, I had finished my warmup pitches and was getting ready to make the first pitch of the inning when our catcher (Jimmy French) suddenly stood up, took off his mask and laughingly pointed to center field.
     Louie had his glove on the ground (using it as home plate) and his back to the infield ... he was working on his stance. Oblivious to his surroundings -- working on his hitting.
     Temper? Two quick stories ...
     In another between-innings incident at our home field, the game is about to resume when all of a sudden Louie comes charging in from center field, stops just behind second base and starts yelling his head off and shaking his fist at the press box behind home plate. Louie never could hide his anger very well. 
     After the inning, a somewhat calmed-down Louie explained to us that the PA announcer had neglected to turn down his microphone volume completely and Louie was able to hear part of a conversation leak out through one of the outfield speakers.
     A conversation that included the phrase that set off Piniella: "... why, my kid's Little League team plays better than these guys."
     Another time, Louie came back into the dugout enraged over just striking out and took out his anger and frustration on our trainer Paul Raibon's old medicine box that was sitting innocently on the bench.
     Louie gave the box a couple of quick shots with his bat and, when that wasn't enough, picked up the box and slammed it to the floor of the dugout and then stomped it and its contents to bits before walking away from the mess.
     Paul, a slightly-built black gentlemen who was all of five-foot, six-inches tall, sat quietly nearby with a bemused look on his face all through Louie's tantrum. When Louie sat down, Paul went up to him and quietly asked: "Are you finished with my bag, Mr. Piniella?"
     Louie's two-word answer (it wasn't "Yes, Paul") assured Paul that Mr. Piniella was, indeed, finished, and Paul quietly cleaned up the mess.
     Next day, Paul walks into the lockerroom with a completely stocked brand new leather medicine bag and goes right up to Louie and hands him the receipt and says with a smile: "Thank you for my new bag, Mr. Pinella," and then walks back into the trainer's room.
     Pinella paid it, too.
     These and other tales come to mind whenever I saw Louie go at it with umpires or berate some poor pitcher in the dugout. Even in his managerial days, he wouldn't hesitate to go at with one with of his players, either.
      Smart TV producers always had a camera on Louie when one of his pitchers was having problems locating the strike zone. Great theatre. Didn't have to have a degree in lip-reading to know what Pinella was saying, either.
      Saw him in a TV clip couple years ago helping break up a little skirmish in the Cubs' dugout and, after everything had calmed down, the camera caught a seated Pinella laughing about the incident.
      That was him, too. As intense as he was about hitting and about managing, it always seemed as if he really enjoyed the game. The tall, skinny kid with a temper and a great bat 47 years ago emerged into great major-league hitter (.291 career BA) and then a great manager (1,835 wins, .517 winning percentage)  with the Yankees, Reds, Mariners, Devil Rays and Cubs.
      And now he has retired ... so, too, has my brag.

The umpire always wins

the argument ... eventually

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       Posted Friday, August 20, 2010: Watched with great interest the way Tiger manager Jim Leyland went at it with the umps during the Yankee game the other night ... the fact it took him so long to get tossed meant the umps probably felt he had a beef coming.
      The incident took me back to 1964 in my third year of an all-too short four-year minor league career when I was pitching in the late innings of a close game in which we were ahead by one or two runs.
      "Late innings" back then for starting pitchers were the eighth and ninth; not like today when a starter's "late inniings" are the fifth and sixth. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)
      Anyway, they had man on first with one out and the batter drills a hard one-hopper back to me about belt high. I catch the ball cleanly and I pivot nicely and then proceed to trip over the mound, causing my throw to the shortstop covering second to resemble an infield fly.
      The shortstop had to slow down his trip to the bag so he could get the ball on the move and get out of the way of the runner bearing down on him. In so doing, he had to leap as high as he could to haul down my high throw and sailed gracefully over the bag, never even coming close to touching it. 
      He continued with his throw to first and nailed the batter/runner by a good two steps.
      The base ump was a guy named Frank and I got to know him because he was from Jersey, too. We'd always say at least "hello" when I saw him and I'd often ask him questions on rules and interpretations.
      Frank was a very good umpire - good behind the plate and on the bases as he always hustled to get in good position (only one base ump was used).
      He was a bit of a clown and liked to showboat on some calls. But he did it in such a way that even the guys he called out would usually trot off the field smiling. And he never tried to embarrass or poke fun any anyone.
      This particular play was right up his alley. It wasn't even close so nobody would get mad at him if he added some entertainment value to the game. He made an big exaggerated  "SAFE" call at second (which was correct, of course) and then proceeded to imitate what the shortstop had just done - not once, but twice - by leaping over the bag without even coming close to touching it. Since he was on the short and squat side, it really WAS funny.
      But then, almost as an afterthought, he turned his attention to first base, pointed to the runner/batter  and said with emphasis: "And he's safe, too."
      He was 100 percent correct on the call at second and 200 percent incorrect on the call at first. It was just that he was so busy showboating, he never saw the play at first.
       I stood on the mound with my back to home plate and, without even looking in Frank's direction, started calling him every name in the book. I got all the hyphenated ones in there, too, and even came up with some new ones. Our manager argued the call briefly and pleaded with Frank to ask the home plate for help and Frank just stubbornly shook his head.
       All the while I'm still letting Frank know about what I thought about his umpiring and clowning skills. Frank let me go that night ... he let me have my beef. After all, I wasn't making a scene or in his face or yelling.  As far as anybody in the stands knew, I was regaining my composure after making a bad play by staring out into the outfield.
       And, I stopped my little tirade the second Frank said:  "Okay, Bobby - that's enough!"
      We got out of the inning and won the game and, the next night, Frank and I apologized to each other - him for blowing the call at first base and me for ... well, for all the unpleasant things I had said.
     Two weeks later, we're on the road and I'm pitching and Frank's behind the plate. This was time, however, the game was neither close nor in the late innings and I was getting pounded. Frustrated that we were losing because of the way I was pitching, it all came to a head when I walked a guy on a 3-2 pitch, a pitch that I thought was good and Frank didn't.
      I walked to the front of the mound and snatched the catcher's return throw out of the air and glared at Frank and said: "That ball was NOT low, Frank ... c'mon!"
      He tossed me. Immediately. He made a big show of it, too. The fans loved it. No warning ... no nothing. Just the thumb. I was stunned. But I was gone.
      Next night, I went up to him during infield practice but, before I could ask why he threw me out, he looked at me and said with a laugh:
 "Bobby, I did you a favor last night ... you were horsebleep."

-

(Bob Decker can be reached at bobdecker@deckbob.com)

 My George Steinbrenner story

... from 20 years ago in NYC

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   Posted Tuesday, July 13, 2010 - Anybody and everybody who has come in contact with George Steinbrenner has a George Steinbrenner story.
    You'll be reading and seeing a lot of stories about Steinbrenner as the result of his death this morning, just nine days after his 80th birthday on July 4th..
    I had 15 minutes with him about 20 years ago during the first couple months of my five-year stay as sports editor of the New York Post. It was 10 minutes more than what I was allowed and it resulted in my George Steinbrenner story, one that I believe shows a lot about the man they call "The Boss."
    Sitting in my office at The Post's South Street digs one afternoon, I got a phone call from Yankee beat writer Joel Sherman, who was covering a spring training game in Florida.
    "Deck, the Yankees just made a minor trade and all the writers here except me have had callbacks from Mr. Steinbrenner," Sherman said. "Here's his phone number at his Tampa office ... please call him and find out what I've written lately that has him so annoyed he won't return my calls?"
     I called Steinbrenner's office and got a secretary who took my name, phone number, and the nature of my call.
    "If Mr. Steinbrenner wants to talk with you, he'll call you back within the half hour," she said. "If he calls, don't take any more than five minutes of his time."
      I told her I wouldn't and thanked her and 10 minutes later Steinbrenner called.
     "What can I do for you young man?" he asked.
     I explained why I was calling and Steinbrenner said something like, yes, Joel had written something he didn't like and yes, he was still annoyed about it and yes, that is why he wasn't going to call him and give him any comments about the trade.
     I asked him what had Sherman written to annoy him so and he laughed and said he couldn't remember but he knew he was still bothered by it.
     I told him that if he never talked to people who bothered him, he wouldn't have anybody with whom to talk.
     "You're right," Steinbrenner said with another laugh. "I'll give Joel a call right now."
     Then he asked me my name again and, after I told him again, he asked me why he had never heard of me before. I told him I wasn't a writer, but that I had been at the Daily News working in sports for 15 years before coming over to The Post for this new job.
      I thanked him for his time and he wished me well and, feeling good about "taking" more than the five minutes I had been allotted, I decided to push it and ask one more question.
      "You hear from Piniella much?" I asked.
      "You know Lou?" he asked back.
       "He and I were on the same minor league team in the Carolina League in 1963," I answered.
      We traded a couple of Piniella stories and a couple more laughs and then said our goodbyes again ... he said he enjoyed our chat and wished me well in my new job.
      ... it's his parting line, however, that has me smiling even now.
      "It's about time we got a sports guy in that city who knows how to put on a jock!"

-
(Bob Decker can be reached at bobdecker@deckbob.com. And yes, George Steinbrenner did call Sherman)

Knolls coach meets Knolls grad

on the basketball court, and ...

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    Posted Monday, Feb. 8:  It all started with an e-mail sent out by the Kinnelon High School athletic department seeking an opponent for its junior varsity girls basketball team.
    "We answered it right away," says Morris Knolls JV girls coach Rob Moore. "Of course, we wanted to play them."
     It wasn’t that Moore & Co. needed another game, it was because the Kinnelon JVs were coached by Morris Knolls 2003 grad Jess Garrabrant, a Denville resident who went on to play four years at Montclair State University.
     Although Moore was the Knolls JV coach and assistant varsity coach when Garrabrant played for the Lady Eagles, she never played on his JV team because Garrabrant played varsity all four years she was there, finishing with "... more than 900 points and 700 rebounds while starting at point guard all four years," Moore recalls.
    "Her talent and her work ethic made her a huge asset to the program," Moore continues. "Her game and her confidence improved each year.
      "I remember her senior year when she took us to the county semifinals where we lost to Roxbury at Madison-FDU. We were playing Parsippany Hills in the quarterfinals and Par Hills was unbeaten at the time and our game was close.

     "During a timeout, I really got on Jess and challenged her. She looked tired and seemed frazzled, but I told her that she was the one who had to step up and take us to FDU.
    "She was annoyed with me for a week ... but she did the job and got us to FDU, which was awesome for us."
     Moore and Garrabrant faced each other as coaches on Friday, Feb. 5, at Kinnelon and Moore came out the winner this time as the Lady Eagle JVs won the game, 41-17.
     Moore says he still saw the spark that Garrabrant had as a player, and  "... she’s getting her players to play the same way.
     "Jess' passion for the sport and for teaching is obvious in her kids' effort and in their improvement during the season," Moore adds. "She is such a positive influence on her team and she is doing a great job.
    "“It was a lot of fun to play against her and to watch her coach ... but, knowing how much of a competitor she was and still is, she may not agree with the 'fun' part."

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(Bob Decker can be reached at deckbob@optonline.net)

'Homecoming' for Gallagher, too

     Posted Wednesday, Oct. 7: Gerry Gallagher knew it was going to be "Homecoming Day" at Morris Hills High School long before he led his Montville team up the hill to Gifford Field for last Saturday's game between the two schools.
     After all, it was kind of a "homecoming" for Gallagher, too.
     Gallagher has lived in Rockaway Township the past 12 years. As a youngster, he and his family lived in Rockaway Borough and he and his father would climb that same hill he climbed Saturday to watch Morris Hills teams play football.
     Later, he attended Morris Catholic High School where he played football. Even later, he returned to Morris Catholic as an assistant coach for four years before taking over the head coaching job for seven years.
      Eventually, after a stint as a successful college coach at William Paterson, he came to Montville, where he is now in his 13th season.
      Even with all that moving around, there is still a lot of Rockaway left in Gallagher ... and he'll be the first to tell you about it.
      "The last thing I wanted to have to do is to go down to Quick Chek for my morning coffee after losing to Morris Hills," Gallagher was saying from his office at Montville High three days after Montville beat Morris Hills, 29-17. "I see kids from Morris Hills, Morris Knolls and Morris Catholic all the time ... no way I wanted to have to face them after getting our butts kicked."
      Gallagher also sees Tony Lusardi in Quick Check "... maybe two-three mornings a week."  Lusardi is the Morris Hills assistant coach in charge of strength and conditioning at the school who also runs Lusardi's Health & Training Center in the middle of town. The two coaches will have a quick football conversation before moving on with their mornings.
     "I've known Tony a long time and I know how he works with kids to get them in shape -- good shape," Gallagher said. "I told my kids all week we'd be facing some tough, hard-nosed kids who would be ready to play four quarters of football and who would not quit."
      This is why Gallagher admits he couldn't relax during the game in spite of the big leads Montville gave him.
      "We were winning 20-3 at halftime and I wasn't comfortable," Gallagher said. "We were ahead but I felt as if we were struggling.
      "We go up  27-3 and I'm still not letting anybody feel too good about themselves because we still had a lot of football left.
      "Then they score a TD early in the fourth quarter and then recover an onsides kick that made us look as if we had never even seen one before. That leads to a quick TD and all of a sudden they are only 10 points behind with about five minutes to play."
      Again, Gallagher reminded his troops that Morris Hills wasn't about to quit. He also reminded his players they had lost a 17-10 game to Pope John the previous week when Pope John scored a TD and 2-point conversion with 1:41 to play.
      After Morris Hills' second TD, Montville went on a long drive only to fumble on the Morris Hills 1-yard line. And, with a little less than two minutes to play, Montville sacked the Morris Hills quarterback in the endzone for a safety and Gallagher suddenly had a 12-point lead, the ball, and a clock that was running toward zero.
     "That's when I started to feel better about the game," Gallagher said. "We got the four quarters of football we expected and we got the win, too."
      Gallagher had coached at Gifford Field one other time, a 1998 consolation game 26-18 loss to Morris Hills and head coach Pat Bobo.
     "That was a lot like this game," Gallagher said. "We came back at them at the end of the game ... our kids didn't quit then just as their kids didn't quit this time."
      So how was coffee at Quick Chek Monday morning?
      "Their morning guy, Mike, was there and he congratulated me," Gallagher said with a laugh. "But then he reminded me that he had to stay neutral about the outcome.
     "Tony hadn't come in for his coffee yet."

  (Bob Decker can be reached at deckbob@optonline.net)

     Posted Thursday, Sept. 24 - On Saturday, Sept. 26, Morris Knolls and Delbarton School will meet on the high school football field in a regular-season game for the first time.
     The game is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. and will be played on William O. Regan Field, a field named in honor of Knolls coach Bill Regan's late father who coached at Delbarton from 1944 to 1985 and compiled a record of 236-83-10.
      Bill Regan Sr. was one of the main reasons that Monday football luncheons sponsored by the Daily Record newspaper back in the mid-60s were so popular and so well-attended by the county's head football coaches of the day.
     Bill Regan Sr. and John Bauer Sr. would hold court before the luncheons and the other coaches (and young writers) would sit and listen - not talk, just listen.
     Forget the lunch itself and forget the few paragraphs about each team that appeared in the paper the next day. The real attraction was Mr. Regan and Mr. Bauer.
     The other coaches listened ... they learned ... and they laughed, too. There were always a lot of laughs.
      Bill Regan Jr. practically grew up at Delbarton School, where he would attend his father's football practices and games  "... as soon as I learned how to walk." 
      The coaching was there, too. The father not only taught the son the game of football; he instilled his love for the game in him, too.
     This Saturday's visit to Delbarton - where Regan played quarterback for his father before graduating in 1963 - has already stirred the memory banks of the Morris Knolls coach.
     Regan tells of his brothers - Brian, Steve and Terry - and his cousin Jack treating Delbarton "... as our own personal playground.
     "There were 400 acres there and we used every one of them," Regan was saying over the phone the other night. I remember running around the field as a kid during my father's practices ... and when I was in grade school, I'd go on scouting trips with my father."
     When they got older, they all played for Regan Sr., too.
    "There was a 10-year span where one of us - and sometimes two - was always in my father's backfield," Regan says. "Steve's team was unbeaten in his senior year and one of Brian's teams was unbeaten, too.
    "My teams? Oh, they were OK ... we played some decent football."
     Regan's thoughts this week will be on Morris Knolls vs. Delbarton, on preparing his Morris Knolls football players the best that he knows how so they will play the best that they know how.
     It's going to be a tough game for the players and the coach.
     In more ways than one.
     "There are a lot of wonderful things that will be coming back to me this week ... that was a very special time for me," Regan says. "It's going to be difficult for me being on the other sideline."

        Somehow, it got to the point where an interview with a coach (any coach, any sport, any level) about his team's next game could not be concluded without the coach saying: "... and they are well coached." 
        It became a throw-away line ... almost a cliche, in fact.
        Sometimes the other team would be "very well coached," or "extremely well coached," but there was always a "well coached" in there somewhere.
        And you can "throw out the record books" in these interviews, too, because you know the 8-0 coach will always say the 0-8 team he is facing next is "... well coached."
        Makes you wonder how any pre-game stories ever make the opposing team's bulletin board these days. Or how all these well-coached teams out there ever lose.
        The other day, however, Morris Knolls High School football coach Bill Regan had some kind words to say about the coaching staff at Morris Hills and you had to listen to them because he was in the middle of talking about a game that didn't leave him very happy about his team - Morris Hills' 20-0 victory over Morris Knolls the day before.
        "They were coached well and they played well," Regan said the day after the game. "They put together a good game plan and the kids executed it ... they obviously had a very good summer."
        Sabo acknowledged that Regan had said basically the same thing when the two met at mid-field for a quick handshake after the game.
        The compliments were not considered 'throw-away lines" or "cliches" by Sabo, however.
        "Any time you go up against a Bill Regan-coached team and win, it's quite an accomplishment," Sabo said the afternoon after the game. "And when Bill Regan pays compliments like that, we as a coaching staff appreciate it. It's an honor, coming from him.
       "As a young coach, you look up to the veteran coaches in the area and you see where Bill Regan has won 200 games in the big-school division of the Iron Hills Conference. That's not an easy task and I respect that."
        Last Saturday, the coach going into his sixth season as a head coach beat the coach who is going into his 35th season.
        What they each did and said before, during and after the game speaks well of them both.
         Win or lose.

The Captain & The Writer
   Posted Sunday, August 2, 2009: Today is the 30th anniversary of the tragic death of Thurman Munson, the Yankee catcher and captain who was killed when his light plane crashed while he was practicing takeoffs and landings near his Ohio home.
   I was working at the Daily News in New York City at the time and you can only imagine the coverage the tragedy commanded in the Times, News and Post the next day.
  Longtime Daily News baseball writer Phil Pepe was called at his home in Jersey when the news moved on the wires because the editors wanted a column from him to be included in the coverage.
  Now, you have your favorites and I have mine, but Pepe to me was the best baseball game reporter I ever met or read. His coverage of a World Series game, a playoff game - any game, in fact - was always spot on. If Pepe left anything out of a game story, it wasn't worth knowing.
  But this day, Pepe was asked to write a column - a commentary or opinionated piece - on Munson's death. We had a brand new sports editor in charge at the time and I had mentioned to him that a column from Pepe would enhance our coverage because of Pepe's long-time association with the Yankees as a writer.
  Also, Pepe and Munson had a history - one that didn't start out all that well, as I learned later.
  A few years ealier, Pepe had written something that had not sat well with Munson. Munson didn't hold anything back in letting Pepe know about it in the locker room the next day and Pepe defended himself with the same vigor.
  Later, on a Yankee road trip, Pepe was coming back to the hotel after filing his story when he spotted Munson alone in the lobby.
  "How about a burger?" Pepe told me he said when recounting the story years later.
   Over the burger, after the two had agreed to disagree on what Pepe had written earlier, they both discovered they both had a lot in common outside of their love for the game of baseball.
   More road-trip burgers and long conversations later, the two had become close friends.
   So it was with heavy heart that Phil Pepe came into the Daily News' office on 42nd Street that August 2nd 30 years ago and sat down to write a farewell to his friend.
   The new sports editor hovered over Pepe with pages of wire copy in his hands, reading out bits of information he felt Pepe should have in his column. Pepe was thinking about how he was going to start his story about his friend and was clearly agitated at the barrage of facts (type of plane ... time of crash ... weather conditions, runway conditions, etc.) being tossed his way by our well-meaning boss.
   Finally, after seeing Pepe's obvious discomfort, I went over to Pepe to say hello and sort of kind of got myself between the sports editor and Pepe and told Pepe: "Phil ... write what you feel." And then I turned and asked the sports editor if I could see the stories he had in his hand while I was sort of kind of gently moving him away from Pepe.
   Pepe's piece was excellent, of course. It included a lot of the things about Munson that made him the person he was, off-field things that put The Captain in a more gentle light than his brusque, unshaven, dirty-uniform baseball demeanor.
   Years later, I ran into Pepe and, in catching up, one of us happened to mention Munson's death and how different the coverage would have been today what with 24-hour sports and news TV stations as well as the Internet.
   I kiddingly chided Pepe for never thanking me for keeping the sports editor off his back while he was in the office writing his Munson column.
   "I wasn't in the office, was I, Deck?" he asked. "I thought I wrote that from home."