Finite Lives

  I have had a lot of time in my busy retirement schedule to think about things now that Memorial Day is in the past and Summer approaches. While New Jersey hasn’t been the beneficiary of an extended string of warm temperatures and rain has been prevalent, refilling our needy reservoirs and nourishing our trees and plants, sunny days with some heat are coming. 

MLB teams have played nearly 60 games, leaving 100 games to go. The Los Angeles Dodgers still seem to have the New York Yankees number, putting up 26 runs in the first two games they played. The NBA Finals matchup is set between Oklahoma City and Indiana, both teams having decimated their opponents and calling into question the job security for New York’s Tom Thibodeau and Minnesota’s Chris Finch. NHL fans get a rematch of last year’s best-of-seven for the Stanley Cup between Edmonton and Florida. College baseball and softball teams are in their tournaments—DI softball is barreling towards a championship; DI baseball is in the regionals; and both DIII softball and baseball have begun the elimination within the final 8 teams to crown winners. 

Yet with all the sports on TV and in the myriad of articles I come upon from numerous sources, there was one small story that captured my thoughts. Especially now that I am careening towards my 75th birthday in October. 

It was an obituary. For Dave Klein, a sportswriter. Those outside the immediate New Jersey vicinity might be unfamiliar with him. 

I really didn’t know him very well. I met Dave Klein once at an affair and was unimpressed. And maybe I shouldn’t have been.

So who was this Dave Klein? He was the son of Willy Klein, the late, great Sports Editor of The Newark Star-Ledger. The Star-Ledger grew to be the greatest newspaper in New Jersey, distancing itself from the locals in New Brunswick, Trenton, Asbury Park, Camden, Jersey City and Hackensack. Its influence on the Garden State remains monumental—even if the print version no longer exists. 

Dave Klein covered one topic the best: the New York Football Giants. Just like his brother Moss, who was the paper’s beat writer for the New York Yankees. Forget the New York Mets, New York Jets, New York Rangers, New York Knicks. They didn’t matter that much. And while they were in-state teams, the coverage for the New Jersey Devils and New Jersey Nets was more than adequate—just not what the Kleins produced for their assignments. 

Were the Klein boys the products of nepotism? More than likely. Yet they filled a void from which fans could quench their thirst for anything about their beloved teams. And fans for those teams are among the most rabid of all in the NFL and MLB. 

I thought Dave Klein was acerbic at times. He clearly had his likes and dislikes among the players. But his articles and columns were must-reads on he front and inside pages of the most detailed sports page around. 

He commanded respect because of his passion. His words carried weight, and he was given latitude because of his position. No greater authority than Hall of Fame Coach Bill Parcells, who coached the team when the likes of Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor made the Giants always newsworthy, spoke affectionately about Dave Klein upon learning about his death.

Klein was one of three writers to have attended the first 54 Super Bowls. Fellow Ledger columnist Jerry Izenberg, now in emeritus status, is one of those three. The other is a fellow from Detroit. 

He worked at his craft. The deadlines and jostling for stories must have taken a toll. He bridged the teletype to typewriter to computer eras. 

I’m a Jets fan and I read what he espoused about pro football. Many times I disagreed with what he had written. That was the good and bad about sportswriters—they had a forum to state their opinions, which we, the paying subscribers willingly forked over our good money to read and react. 

The Kleins and Izenberg came from the Weequahic section of Newark when it was a thriving Jewish enclave. Discussion and debate was the norm there. They presented sports in color and shared it with the outsiders they could reach. 

Dave Klein’s death was another reminder to me that I am not getting any younger. While he was about 11 years older than me, dying in the mid-to-late 80’s has become more commonplace. I don’t know how he kept himself or much about his life other than he had a wife and married children who survived him. But from the outside, it appears that he certainly had lived a very full life, even if his time at the newspaper ended with a new regime. 

His death comes on the heels of the demise of Around The Horn, a staple on ESPN for 23 plus years. This was a home for sports reporters we came to know from different venues and eras. In a format that allowed them to shine with their wit, wisdom and sports acumen.

I was a devotee of the precursor to ATH—The Sports Reporters, another ESPN mainstay until the untimely death of host the erudite author Dick Schaap. ESPN let the Sunday morning staple hang on before finally ending it . There I, along with other sports addicts, met the likes of Mitch Albom, known to us from The Detroit Free Press and the best seller, “Tuesdays With Morrie.” Then there was the excitable Mike Lupica from The New York Daily News. Or a younger, with hair, Tony Kornheiser, then with The New York Times after a stint at Newsday; he went on to a pretty fair career at The Washington Post before exclusively co-hosting the Emmy Award-winning Pardon The Interruption on the same network, right after ATH.

With ATH, I was able to see the sardonic Bob Ryan, a holdover from The Sports Reporters who actually was roommates at Boston College with an attorney I worked with at the Office of the Public Defender, Appellate Section. Or Woody Paige’s histrionics, who wrote for The Denver Post. Ditto for old timers like Bill Plaschke who writes for The Los Angeles Times, and Tim Cowlishaw with The Dallas Morning News. Plus middle-aged guys like Frank Isola, the soccer-loving writer formerly with The New York Daily News and now with The Athletic, who seemingly freelances for MSG Network and ESPN as well, presenting his fact-based offerings. 

These guys had seen it all, reported on it all, and commented on it all. Just like Dave Klein. 

ATH also gave time to women like Jackie MacMullan, first of The Boston Globe, then affiliated with ESPN. And younger talents like Mina Kimes, Pablo Torre, Courtney Cronin, Elle Duncan, Emily Kaplan. Race and gender didn’t matter—intellect and entertainment value did. Never was it lacking. 

ATH was held together by a production staff based primarily in Washington, DC and also in New York City, where the show aired from. More importantly, it gave a young talent a place to really shine and make the show so engaging.

That would be one Anthony Reali. Born on Staten Island, Reali grew up in suburban Marlboro Township in Monmouth County, New Jersey and attended the prestigious Christian Brothers Academy in nearby Lincroft before he matriculated at Fordham University, majoring in History and Communications. He found work as an intern and then became the corrections officer as “Stat Boy” for the errors made on PTI by Kornheiser and his sidekick, Michael Wilbon. 

Reali shined in making the writers the stars. He was the yin to their yang. His unique scoring methodology gave a needed element of pizazz to the program. Tony Reali was the heart of this show and I wish him well in his next endeavors.

We were fortunate to view sports programming like The Sports Reporters or Around The Horn (PTI will not likely survive when Kornheiser and Wilbon say sayonara). Now we will be left to the different, fast-paced ways of the likes of Stephen A. Smith and podcasters-turned-hipsters to report what we  have watched and make sense of it. 

This is why the death of Dave Klein struck me. Another dinosaur gone, another part of my transition to manhood in the Garden State lost and forever extinguished. 

Not to worry, though. Yes, I watched the series between the Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, their first meeting since the Yankees imploded in Game 5. Just like I will turn my TV on to the NBA and NHL, the Belmont Stakes and French Open. 

I will visit The Athletic, CBS Sports, ESPN, NCAA.com and NJ.com on line to garner as much information as I can about the many sports I follow. It’s who I am. It’s what make this blog go.

Don’t fault me for being a bit nostalgic in this installment. I simply recognize that bloggers like me, newspapermen such as Dave Klein, may he rest in peace, and shows like PTI, ATH, The Sports Reporters which exist in a culture crazed about sports have finite lives.