No. 103: MILT DUNNELL & JAMES MELROY / When the In Memoriams don't make the cut. Sometimes gone really is forgotten.

There's no truth to the "fade away" stuff--old sportswriters die. Unfortunately young ones do too. A couple of life stories, previously and unfortunately unpublished.

BACK in 2008, when I was writing a fair bit for espn.com on a weekly basis, I pitched my editor an end-of-the-year lives-lived package. My idea in a nutshell: Rather than just a list of names of the most famous of the recently departed, we could do both the big names but also the bit players, those in a shadows, celebrate in death those less celebrated or maybe even unnoticed in life. And the treatments would be personal, idiosyncratic even, as stark a contrast to the standard obit treatment of cataloguing accomplishments and listing survivors. The New York Times Magazine always did a great package in this fashion and I was cribbing it completely when I made my pitch.

My editor told me to write a couple to see if it would fly. So I knocked off these two samples about folks in the sports media who had shuffled off this mortal coil in 2008. Really, I just wanted to give my editor a sense of length and tone—these weren’t polished drafts or anything. Sketches rather than blueprints, if you will.

Maybe doing folks in the sports media wasn’t the best idea.

My editor suggested a different approach and these two brief pieces never ran, so here they are, raw but aired for the first time and approximately 15 years too late. I had forgotten all about them until, for other reasons entirely, I searched Milt Dunnell’s name in my email archive. Again, the usual warnings attached: These were pitches or samples, not edited pieces, so nitpick a typo if you like but I don’t need to hear about it. Oh, and after the second piece a little extra value for subscribers is offered.

MILT DUNNELL, 102

Milt in an undated photo

ON THAT SATURDAY afternoon in September of 1973, there were two knockdowns at Maple Leaf Gardens.  

The first came in the fifth round when the undisputed welterweight champ Jose Napoles dropped Clyde Gray to the canvas with a well-timed straight right. It didn't make or break the fight. Gray was a very good fighter in against a great one, a Hall of Famer who had owned the 147-pound division for years. By the sixth or seventh round, the outcome seemed inevitable.  

The second knockdown came after the fifteenth round, after the unanimous decision was announced, after the ref raised Napoles's mitt. And it came outside the ring, on the arena floor. 

ABC was broadcasting the fight that day on Wide World of Sports, which meant that Howard Cosell was doing his signature blow-by-blow. What’s more, Napoles-Gray was supposed to be the first in a ten-fight series at Maple Leaf Gardens promoted by a production company fronted by Muhammad Ali, who did the prefight introductions and joined Cosell to banter at ringside.

That star power was enough to have 16-year-old me running out of the stands down to press row, in the hope that I could get Ali’s and Cosell’s autographs. My friend Ian fell in behind me, mostly because I had the car. We didn’t have much in the way of a crowd to navigate—though a crowd of 8,285 was announced, the number seemed wishful. The Gardens wasn’t half full. We didn’t have to push through a throng—it was more like running a slalom course.  

I was only twenty feet from the ring when I felt a light graze of my shoulder. I caught a glance of a body on the floor in my wake but didn't break stride. Ian fell off the pace to help the fellah get upright. As it turned out he didn’t need help off the deck—might have been ruled a slip, no worse than a flash knockdown.

Alas, Ali and Cosell were nowhere to be found and all I could do is look at the blood on the canvas in Gray’s corner.

When Ian caught up to me, he gave me an accident report, my brush with history. "That was Milt Dunnell you put on his ass." 

Milt was 67. I suspect his fedora was older than me. If I had my wits about me, I wouldn't have bothered trying to get Ali’s and Cosell's scrawl and would have pursued Milt Dunnell instead. I wish I had his autograph. I wish I had one of his old typewriter ribbons. I wish I had his ability. And anybody would wish for his genes. 

Milt died in January at age 102. He had started out writing for the Stratford Beacon Herald back in ’26 and was still writing three columns a week for the Toronto Star at age 88, still travelling to major events, still working on deadline 

Those in the press box called Milt "the Sports Editor of Canada." They retired the title when he retired for the third and final time in 1994. Maybe he'd be a better-known name if he came along now. With the internet, with hits on sports-talk radio, with 24/7 sports-network roundtables, maybe he'd be known right across North America. No matter. He was the biggest fish in a lightly populated northern pond.

Then again, Milt had no interest in self-promotion. He never submitted a piece in the National Newspaper Awards, claiming he had never written anything worthy. He didn't let his bosses at the Star and evidently even his friends know in advance about his retirement a few months short of his 89th birthday. He just wrote a column about the Expos lacking the wherewithal to sign Larry Walker and the Blue Jays crying need for a Canadian star--then he told the folks at the Star that he was done.   

Milt was old school but he was no loud, brash, stogie-smoking, hard-drinking stereotype. He never shouted, never bragged, never smoked, never drank. He had one vice and indulged it on green felt tables in casinos and at pari-mutual windows. He'd examine his cards and Daily Racing Forms in his owlish deadpan.   

One of the last road trips was Mike Tyson's first-heavyweight title fight in Vegas. There Dunnell was braced by one of the few scribes older than him, Harold Conrad, whose own career inspired The Harder They Fall. You know you're talking old when it's a guy who was played by Humphrey Bogart. Tyson was 20 and, as Dunnell wrote, "flatter than the wallets in the surrounding salons of chance." 

Conrad was not impressed. "Joe Louis would have murdered this guy," Conrad said. 

Dunnell shook his head and in a whispered aside to some kid on press row he said: "Poor Harold, he's living in the past." 

Accounts vary. After the fight, a melee blocked the aisles from the press seats to the work room where Dunnell had to file his story. Dunnell, whose rickety legs were so bowed that it looked like he was straddling an oil drum, vaulted over a press table like gymnast working the pommel horse.    

No doubt, he stuck the landing, unlike that afternoon back in ’73 on the Gardens floor.  

MILT DUNNELL from the foreword of a collection of his columns  

You're always glad you're there. I was there the day Bobby Thompson hit his home run. I was there the day Northern Dancer won the Kentucky Derby. I was there the first time the Russian hockey team played the stars of the NHL in 1972 and I was there the night Muhammad Ali won the world heavyweight championship.

JAMES MELROY, 36

James in an undated photo

IT WASN’T THE worst thing that ever happened on the gym floor at Long Beach Jordan High School. Just a hoops practice with a few brain cramps, no second effort and first effort at a discount. Middle of a nothing-special season and the players were wishing they were doing something else. Ron Massey had enough. "You're wasting my time," he yelled. "Go home." Heads hanging, the players sauntered off the floor. 

On the sidelines the players passed by their team manager, James Melroy. They thought the shouting was over. It had only started. Melry spun his wheelchair around. "You should be ashamed," he told them. "If I had a chance to get out of this chair I'd give everything I had in every practice." 

A minute later the players went to Massey and told them they were ready to pick up where they left off. And as Massey remembers it, "It was a real good practice from then on." 

James Melroy loved a lot of things and loved them a lot. Some of them were a little nerdy--nobody should know that much about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, nobody should have so much invested in the next episode of Lost. Some of them were stand-by stuff, like friends and family. There were two things that he loved and loved nothing more: sports and newspapers. 

James was born with arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that hooks and immobilizes joints, so he never did get out of his wheelchair and get in a run on the Jordan gym floor. But he would have chewed you out if you suggested that he had ever been cheated. He was the first kid on two wheels to make Eagle Scout in Long Beach. He graduated with honors and academic awards from the journalism program ay Long Beach City College. And, yes, he was a favorite of the ladies. His little black book was filled and frayed.   

It was games and broadsheets that he occupied a special place in an out-sized heart, the Angels and the Press-Telegram. Those two places were the closest thing to heaven on earth and bliss was an Angels win and a paper put to bed. He'd probably say that's too maudlin, too sentimental, too shmaltzy, but that's the way his friends remembered it.  

He never did work Angels games for the Press-Telegram. His first few years he did the preps beat. He made it out to high school fields and gyms, riding shotgun with a photographer. Later on he was moved to the desk to edit stories and layout pages. And he ended up in the slot, the top desk job, the linchpin of the sports section. 

"He was the most generous member of the staff," former Press-Telegram staffer Matthew Zimmerman says. "If you had a problem, something that you needed to work out, he was always there for you. It wasn't just that he was never down, but that he never let you get down." 

It wasn't always sunshine. It was hard for him when the Rams left L.A. and even harder when the Press-Telegram laid off staffers, thinning the ranks of the newsroom night staff. The desk had been all banter and laughter before, but with James working alone a lot of nights it was as quiet as the Coliseum on a Sunday afternoon in December.   

“James didn't talk about it much but he had a sense that his time was going to be short," Matthew Zimmerman says. "The last couple of years he had good days and bad days with his health. He had some trouble eating and sleeping but he never missed a day of work. He was the sole financial support for his family. He was very tough-minded that way." 

Like Milt Dunnell, James caught everyone by surprise with his last byline. In June he wrote an obituary for his grandfather, Eugene Sonye, a former boxer, serviceman, horse trainer, bartender and rolling stone. 

"Eugene D. Sonye never met a stranger," James wrote. "Whether it was on a horse trail, at a baseball game or in one of the various Long Beach bars where he bartended, the man known to everyone as "Geno" made a point to interact with everyone, even if for the briefest of moments." 

In tribute to his grandfather he used "James Sonye" as a byline. At James’s memorial service they said he stopped eating after his grandfather died. They held the celebration of his life at the Jordan high school gym, right where coach Massey chased his players off the court. There was a small stage and a podium with a microphone. Ten people stood up to deliver eulogies, Massey among them. Beside the podium was James's wheelchair. His Angels hat sat on the empty seat.

TRIPP McNEELEY

(JAMES MELROY’S HANDLE ON THE sportsjournalists.com CHAT ROOM)

JUNE 17, 2008:

So, on a night when normally I'd be all broken up about the Lakers losing in the NBA Finals, I can only sit here and wonder about him, since I was told today [he] is now almost completely unresponsive. He no longer eats. The pain has become so bad, all he can do is moan. The previous few days weren't much easier as he no longer recognized people who'd become everyday fixtures in his life.

I again looked up at Kevin Garnett, balling his eyes out on national television. Good for him. He and the Celtics deserved to win the title. I also thought about some younger generation Celtics fans, who might've been lucky enough to have been able to share this with their special someone.

All I can do tonight is cry, and hope that he goes quickly and as painlessly as possible. I also hope he knows how much I love and admire him. I did my best to make sure he knew, but I still worry. He isn't a religious man, so I don't ask for your prayers for him. What I ask is you call someone in your life who means as much to you as he does to me, and let them know it.

JUNE 19, 2008 ON sportsjournalists.com

At approximately 2:25 a.m. on the west coast, my grandfather/dad took his last breaths, surrounded by family members at his home.
I wanted to thank everyone who either responded on this thread, by private e-mail, or who didn't respond at all and instead decided to let a few important loved ones know just how important they are to them.
Life is to be cherished.
Thanks, all.
Now the hard part begins..

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THANKS for reading along. If you’ve never clicked a link here, please click the one linking to James’s story of his grandfather’s life. You can find it above or for your convenience right here. Two little offerings for folks here. First the video below.

Until today I had never seen this video from the Wide World of Sports broadcast because I was at the fight and these were the days long before VCRs and the like. It explains why we were chumped when he raced down to get Ali’s autograph after the Napoles-Gray decision was finally, finally, announced. Ali left ringside at the start of the 15th round to catch a plane out of town (as he’d break the news to Cosell on the air).

And for paid subscribers, here’s the column that Milt wrote for the Star after I knocked him down. Frankly, not his best, probably still feeling the effects. Jim Kernaghan who later would become one of my best friends on the beat wrote the main story for the Star that day. (I didn’t include a nut-and-bolts deal, “Thumbnail Tales” tacked on at the end of Milt’s column, which included this note, the very last in a string: “Ken Dryden, who intends to spend this season completing his law studies, has not been replaced as president of the NHL Players’ Association. No successor will be named before the start of the season. Then his retirement will become official. In the meantime, there always is the possibility—no matter how remote—that he could return to the Habs …”)