If you have spent any time around a locker room in New York in the past 40 years you knew who Robert Elkin was. Robert was a Zelig-like character, covering everything from boxing, where he once had a very unintentional and almost comical exchange with Mike Tyson during the boxer’s heyday, to high school track and field meets. He wrote, and always produced clips, from everything from News World to the Long Island Tribune to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and any series of weekly, monthly or yearly paper one could find in a supermarket. If there was a small newspaper in Syosset that wanted World Team Tennis stories, Robert was the guy.
Now he was not a snappy dresser, or one with a quick wit or a particular writing style. If you saw Robert, sometimes people would go the other way. He was quiet, slim with Coke bottle glasses and always a crewcut. And the outfits; aviator caps, tweed jackets, raincoats, Converse sneakers; Robert was always one who was easy to spot.
He stuttered a bit and had this high pitched voice that made him the brunt of jokes. And there were always the rumors…he was a flasher, he lived in a house that looked like one the Adams Family lived in, he was independently wealthy, he had a nervous breakdown when he was a kid and on and on…few people knew for sure because in a business of storytelling, few people ever talked to Robert. Most just pushed him aside, but he always came back and he always showed up and he was never, ever disrespectful to anyone. In all these years I never ever even heard him raise his voice.
Most importantly he always…showed…up. You had a half marathon press event in Central Park. Robert was there. A Knicks press conference. There was Robert. An oyster eating contest at South Street Seaport, Robert had his notebook. You never had to worry about having a press conference or any media event with an empty room, Robert Elkin always found his way there, and he always asked questions. Sometimes at events like women’s golf or tennis, it became a little awkward, with this socially challenged middle aged guy asking Ashley Harkelroad about her serve, but he was there to write a story, and write he did. And he always produced clips; always. There are so many people we have accumulated over the years who are just there for the free lunch, literally. Robert always justified the reason for coming, and for those whose events were small and screaming for coverage, he was the guy.
I first met Robert when I was in high school in Brooklyn. He and another sports lifer, Burt Beagle, yes that was Burt’s real name, were always there covering high school basketball, baseball, track meets, whatever it was. Burt was the official statistician for the Catholic High School Athletic Association, and Robert was always somewhere nearby. Always showing up. That continued throughout my career. Any time there was an event in new York, there was Robert Elkin.
The “always showing up” thing was also a phenomenon into itself. Robert you see, didn’t drive, and he did live most of his life in the town of Long Beach on Long Island. So he was always taking subways , busses, and part of the Elkin lore; would always ask someone for a ride home late at night, or at least to a bus station. Tom Dewey, the longtime track coach at Nazareth High School and Fordham University, was one of those kind souls who took some pity on Robert, and would always give him a ride after a day of covering meets at fields far and wide. He would sit quietly and then get out and continue on, travelling at all hours of the night and getting the stories done for the little papers and outlets who, we always hoped, would pay him for his work. No one was ever sure.
Then there were the phone calls. Robert was the oldest of old school. Never had access to a fax machine and for the most part, did not have a cell phone and only recently started to have email. So he would call and ask for results or followup questions and somehow he found a way to get your home phone, which for many, was a source of annoyance. If it was the New York Times or Sports Illustrated calling, great. But annoying Robert Elkin, who you had to answer the same question about a location five or six times…enough already. Trust me, those calls were never easy and rarely welcomed, but here was a guy doing his job. That is what Robert did. His job.
In a city of millions in a high profile business like sports and entertainment, it is very easy to forget the little guys or gals. They blend into the woodwork and like many who keep the city moving with their roles no matter how small, are swept away like so many grains of sand in the rising tide, replaced by others. However for such a slight person, not working for a major outlet, Robert was hard to miss. His look was unique, certainly bordering on bizarre and even comical some times, and he was always there, part of the media horde at the big events, solitarily asking questions at the small ones. And it was his look, much more than his work, that even athletes and coaches always noticed. Larry Johnson, Patrick Ewing, John McEnroe, Rulon Gardner, Stephon Marbury, Serena Williams all knew of Robert. Most looked at him quizzically, some joked about his appearance, but all remembered him. Marbury used to call him “the weird dude with the propeller hat,” a reference to the hat with the ear flaps Elkin often wore.
I mentioned a Tyson incident at the top of the post. Legend has it that Robert was at a Tyson press conference in New York and attempted to ask the champ a question. The mercurial boxer snapped back at the curious looking scribe and berated him, almost coming to blows while Robert sat there in stunned and embarrassed silence. No one came to his aid, some laughed, the legend created, and the presser moved on. He returned to the blend of the wood. Back to his seat to show up another day, taking buses and subways to hotel ballrooms, or the Armory or some high school in Queens, depending on the day.
One person who remembered Elkin, and they made for a curious pair, was Hall of Fame basketball coach Larry Brown. While few knew of Elkin’s upbringing in Long Beach, Brown knew him; they went to high school together. At one of Coach Brown’s media sessions when he was head coach of the Knicks he went out of his way to stop and talk with Robert while the other beat writers stood off to the side, two sports lifers whose paths had taken different courses, reunited in the bowels of Madison Square Garden. Coach Brown called Robert, actually called him “Bobby” “a quiet kid who loved sports,” and remarked that he hadn’t changed a bit, something, at least in appearance was probably true.
In the last few years Robert’s presence became less and less. There were all kinds of stories; the money his parents had left him had run out and he lost the house; he had gotten sick and dementia had set in; he was homeless; he was in a nursing home. Joe McDonald, the publisher of New York Sports Day (and another of those unique New York media characters) would share occasional accurate updates. It turned out Robert was in a senior living facility (no one short of Larry Brown ever asked or knew his age, he was just always there) and health issues had taken over. This year he was not at the U.S. Open, and hadn’t been seen at any of the usual places…track meets, wrestling, various and sundry press conferences…where he was always a regular.
However there was one unique Robert sighting that really encapsulated his Zelig-like life. Last fall at the US Open, my colleague Randy Walker and I were looking at a series of photos from the 1970’s telling the story of the great Arthur Ashe, his trailblazing past, and his path to success as an activist and tennis star. There in one of the photos, in the cramped press room of the former home of the Open, The West Side Tennis Club, was Robert. As Ashe held court with various and sundry media types, a young Mr. Elkin, glasses, slight buck teeth, jacket and tie, was standing there listening. He would only be noticed by people who knew him, and maybe he snuck in a question to the recently crowned star of tennis that day, no one will know, but he was recognized; his look and his presence captured for eternity.
It was with a bit of sadness that we found out from Joe McDonald that Robert passed away from pneumonia this week. I doubt many would have visited him; no one knows if he even had family left, and pictures, let alone information about him, was scarce as of today. The funeral according to one report is in Clifton, New Jersey, a place Robert would have had a heck of a time getting to do during his driver’s license-less life, and it also adds to the mystery.
When I mentioned on Thursday night to several media types at the New York Jets uniform unveil, an event Robert would not have missed, the reaction was surprisingly the same; sadness. With all his quirks, his peccadillos, Robert Elkin, in his own way, was a member of the New York media fraternity. Not always a welcome member, but a member nonetheless. He was never sarcastic, or mean, he was just happy to be there, covering events and telling stories big and small. He never really bothered anyone, and the urban legends surrounding his life were just that; like so many in New York, few asked, and he didn’t tell. I wouldn’t ever call him a friend per se, but I always appreciated that he showed up and was willing to do what he could do in his own way, with his own style.
Many may say he was a pain, a weird little piece of New York that won’t be missed. I will say he was a unique character, and I’m sad that in the homogenous media world we are now in that characters like Robert Elkin are more and more scarce. He did his job and probably loved what he did, even with the scathing criticism and belittling. I always thought there should have been a “tales of New York” story about him, and now he is gone.
Thanks Robert for being around. I think I appreciated you more later in my career than I did when you were on the edges of events in high school and college. Your life was noticed, not just by me but by many others, and although I don’t know if you will be really missed, you will be remembered, and that’s probably what would make you smile that crooked smile one more time.
