You may not have known Bill Shannon or Joel Blumberg personally, or maybe even knew their names, but if you had anything to do with watching, reading or going to a sports event, either in New York or around the country at any point in the past 25 years, Bill and Joel were somewhere in the vicinity.
Sports lost a great deal of good story tellers this past yea.writers like Maury Allen, Mike Celizik, Phil Jasner, Bill Handlesman and Vic Zeige.a publicist in Matt Dobe.a TV and sports.matchmaker in Jay Larkin No better spectacle in football on a fall afternoon. Who sits down next to my famil. Joel Blumberg and three of his buddies, taking a.Busma.s Holida. to West Point. We talked throughout the game about mutual friends (he had gotten his seats from another mutual colleague, Arm.s Bob Baretta),.and about family. We had daughters the same age, and he wanted to bring his family to see the Lombardi play we were working on..Joel also had a love for trivia and movies and was eager to see Dan Lauria play Vince on stage…Before he left that day, my wife Laura took a picture of Joel and his buddies, a picture which still lives on his Facebook page. We talked several times since. His schedule did not give him the opportunity.to see the play yet, but we confirmed he would come in January. That was until the sad and sudden events of last Friday, when we lost another in a line of personalitie. of New York sport.
The same is true of Shannon, a man whose sideburns and outfits were retro but his memory and capacity to assist others in the business were.wha.s needed in the 21st century. He was a writer, and probably best known as the official scorer for so many baseball games over the years that people came to know his decisions, but not the man, more than anyone else in the game in New York. Like Blumberg, he too was a storyteller, one who could roll off stories of long gone athletes as easily as he could the stats of the latest callup. He was an encyclopedia of New York sports, and always had an answer for whomever needed help in the media. Also like Blumberg, Bill was taken suddenly, in a house fire in New Jersey, and no one at the time had a chance to say goodbye and thank you (although in the subsequent weeks a series of articles and memorials have brought together thousands who Bill touched first hand over the years.)
Many of the others mentioned.were.known as.writers. but they were much more than that. They too were story tellers, keepers of the flame, links through generations for millions of fans, and mentors to new faces in the pressbox,.whether they were writing about some local phenom, the latest scandal, or on the beat covering a team from thousands of locales in between..Two others had their own careers, one as the keeper of all things Detroit Pistons, from The Bad Boys to just bad teams, the other as one of boxings most beloved and respected matchmakers, and a pioneer in television.
What they all had in common was the gift of spinning a tal.at a lunch, in a bar, in a pressroom, along with the enduring capacity to give back to those coming along the way. Those qualities, more than anything else, may have made them dinosaurs in toda.s.?me generation. However if they were dinosaurs, the ability to assist and share are treasures that should be polished and preserved as much as any museum piece.
The sad thing is that none of these folks probably generated all the fan fare and public acknowledgement that would come with the passing of a local dignitary or celebrity. There wo.t be a school named after any of them, although their knowledge and street smarts and ability to communicate could fill volumes. Their.seats in press boxes have been reassigned..Time marches on.
Yet the legacy of each of these men remains in the lives they touched, which if added.together could fill stadia for years to come. As talented.as they were as professionals, they were even more talented as people, and those people skills make their collective passing so sad for so many, especially at this time of year.
However there is another common trait that bound this talented group. The ability to move on to the next game, the next season, the next assignment. To a man they would probably all reflect and remind us all to go ahead for the start of whatever came next, and that is what we will be forced to do in 2011. Their voices and their ability to tell us the stories may now be silent, but we will all speak very loudly about their memory and their impact.
It is a sad, this class of who we lost in 2010, (and .m sure I have left a few others out) , but it was one of great character and characters, and that is what we always need more of..We are sorry they are gone, but we are so glad to have had them around to help us mark the times of our lives through the stories of sport.
As we said at the beginning, you may not have known them personally, but they certainly knew you.
And on we g.
..…
Buynow it…