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LINCICOME: Sports will go on, just without the Rocky

By Bernie Lincicome, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 26, 2009 at 11:12 p.m.
Updated February 26, 2009 at 11:53 p.m.

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I didn't read the News today. Oh, boy.

Nor tomorrow and tomorrow.

What comes to mind is poetry, how absurd. Lines that were committed to memory for a college grade back when the written word had value, a B-minus as I recall.

Stop all the clocks, shut off the telephone . . . let the mourners come.

The best newspaper is dead and for no good reason, save the spine to fight on, a battle lost to lessers and to a marketplace diverted by ease. The world today can be held in the palm of the hand, with all the news and sounds and motion a tap away.

These are familiar agonies that grip the newspaper industry across the land and may yet do in the survivor here, victory not a conclusion as much as an amnesty.

Sports is a small part of it all, the writing of it, the reporting of it, the celebrating of it, the censuring of it. The sports page is the proxy for harder reality, where the wars are only mock and success and failure matter only as long as it takes to turn off the scoreboard. Or turn the page.

The scores will stand, heroes will come and fools will go without this newspaper to note any of it.

It is impossible now not to think of endings, of those I witnessed and wrote, others who faced the finish, most with tears, even the hardest of men. I recall that little knuckle of a shortstop, Larry Bowa, weeping in a scruffy laundry room hastily set up for his departure from the Cubs.

They all cry at the summing up.

My most vivid memory is the last fight of Muhammad Ali, in Freeport, The Bahamas, a shadow lurching and gasping in the ring, and then finally slumped in his makeshift dressing area, a cinderblock men's room reeking of urine, facing the finish, a weeping young John Travolta at Ali's knee.

Martina Navratilova, exiting Centre Court for the final time, stopped to pull up a piece of sod. Jack Nicklaus posing on the footbridge on the 18th hole at St. Andrews, stubbornly dressed in a sweater vest in fashion when he was.

Joe Louis, the great Brown Bomber, became a prop to various promoters, and I cannot see old films of him in his prime without recalling the last time I saw him, poking around a post-press conference dining room looking for left over coffee in discarded cups still warm enough to drink.

Just this week I saw a picture of the last scrap of Shea Stadium, what looked like a walking ramp standing stark against the sky. An awful place, Shea, one of the most uncomfortable, inhospitable places I ever covered a game, football, baseball and even soccer.

And still the sadness came when thinking of all the memories made there. It is much too easy to walk into Invesco Field, past the parking lot where Mile High used to sit. As if it was never there.

Beginnings are not as easy to know as endings, nor do they stick as long. I saw it in Chris Evert, then 14 years old, knocking balls on a clay court in the town where I first worked for a newspaper.

Michael Jordan was it from the start and remained it until his final shot in Utah that won his sixth championship. The perfect finish, the most perfect ever, except Jordan could not leave it there.

I understand that. If this were a perfect column, the final and best of any I've ever written, I would still want to write another. And another.

If this newspaper had another day, another edition, it would want more. It most certainly deserves more.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

Comments

  • February 27, 2009

    7:27 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    dannakao writes:

    R.I.P., RMN. Bernie, I thought you were one of the more astute columnists with the Chicago Tribune and I'm sorry to see the RMN die. I was hoping the RMN can survive as an online newspaper and I'm sure that was one of the possibilities explored during the past month. Best of luck in your future endeavors and I hope to columns again soon.

  • February 27, 2009

    7:28 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    dannakao writes:

    I meant to say: I hope to read your columns again soon.

  • February 27, 2009

    7:43 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    cmcray1 writes:

    Encore! Encore!!

  • February 27, 2009

    8:41 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    johngriffith writes:

    I've been reading Bernie since the early 80's in Chicago. Where will he show up next?

  • February 27, 2009

    10:39 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    laoleary writes:

    Very, very sad time.

  • February 27, 2009

    9:05 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    ecologicjr writes:

    Sad, Sad goodbye to my morning reading for the last 40 years. Almost 1/3 of the paper's life. God, I'll miss it

  • February 27, 2009

    9:09 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    fromCOtoAZ writes:

    I live in Phoenix and i have to have my RMN fix at least every week, but usually every day. There are a lot of people out there who would call ya nasty things, hiding behind a keyboard and treating sports as if it really were a live or die situation. It's sports, folks. Bernie, i thought you did a heck of a job. thank you for making me THINK about sports, and life, rather than doing the thinking for me. that is the mark of a good writer. i'm gonna miss you and the RMN.

  • February 27, 2009

    10:29 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Mile_High_Magic writes:

    Life goes on without the RMN, but sorely. You will be missed.

  • February 28, 2009

    1:09 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    holdeninpdx writes:

    As a, now, out-of-towner, I counted on the Rocky for my fix of all things Denver for many years. I'm saddened, though not surprised, at the paper's demise. My only hope is that the Post will bring on some of the Rocky's best, including Bernie, and that paper buyers will see what can happen when apathy reigns.

    Good-bye, Rocky...and good luck to the Post.