The Captain & The Writer

By Bob Decker

(Bob Decker spent “47 wonderful years” in sports print journalism that included 15 years at the NY Daily News rising through the ranks to an assistant sports editor and then five years as sports editor of the NY Post.)

DFA’s Executive Sports Editor This was originally posted Monday, August 6, 2018: People in the newspaper business recall huge newsworthy events differently than normal folks. We all know where we were, what we were doing, and how we reacted when we first heard about JFK, Ruby-Oswald, MLK, Twin Towers, etc. – but newspaper people also remember how they and their newspapers covered the event.

I remembered all this earlier this month when stories started to circulate about the anniversary of New York Yankee Thurman Munson’s fatal plane crash on August 2, 1979 – 39 years ago.

I was working at the New York Daily News at the time and recall vividly the way the office changed from its usual work-day buzz to an almost frenzy once the wires posted their first bulletin about the tragedy. Buddy Martin was sports editor at that time and assignments were quickly distributed as we started to put together the Munson news package.

Baseball writer turned columnist Phil Pepe was off that day and I asked Buddy to include him in the coverage mix. I was told we had enough people writing and it wasn’t until I begged and then argued for Pepe to be included that I was told to give him a call at home and ask him to write a column.

Now, you have your favorites and I have mine, but Pepe to me was the best baseball game reporter I ever read. His coverage of a World Series game, a playoff game – any game, in fact – was always spot on. If Pepe left anything out of a game story, it wasn’t worth knowing.

But this day, Pepe was asked to write a column – a commentary or opinionated piece – on Munson’s death. Pepe and Munson had a history – one

that didn’t start out all that well – and this is why I had pushed for Pepe to be included in the writing mix.

A few years earlier, Pepe had written something that had not sat well with Munson. Munson didn’t hold anything back in letting Pepe know about it in the locker room the next day and Pepe defended himself with the same vigor.

Later, on a Yankee road trip, Pepe was coming back to the hotel after filing his story one night when he spotted Munson sitting alone in the lobby. Pepe went over to him and asked Munson if he wanted to “… go for a burger.”

“I was hungry,” Pepe told me years later when recounting the story. “Plus I figured this would be a good way for us to clear the air.”

It was over those burgers that they discovered they both had a lot in common outside of their love for the game of baseball. They got to know a lot about their likes, dislikes, families, problems and their hopes and dreams. More road-trip burgers and long conversations later, the two became close friends.

So it was with heavy heart that Pepe came into the News’ sports department and sat down to write a farewell to his friend.

Some well-meaning editors hovered over Pepe with pages of wire copy in their hands, reading out bits of information they felt Pepe should have in his column. Pepe was thinking about how he was going to start his story about his friend and was clearly agitated at the barrage of facts being tossed his way.

Finally, after seeing Pepe’s obvious discomfort, I went over to where Pepe was working and sort of kind of got myself between the editors and Pepe and sort of kind of gently moved them away from Pepe.

Phil sat there for another 10 minutes or so and then looked at me and asked: “Deck, what do you want?” To which I replied: “Phil, just write what you feel.” Pepe’s piece was excellent, of course. It included a lot of the things about Munson that made him the player and person he was as well as off-field things that put The Captain in a more gentle light than his brusque, unshaven, dirty-uniform baseball demeanor.

Years later, I ran into Pepe and, in catching up, one of us happened to mention Munson’s death and how different the coverage would have been today what with the Internet and all the 24-hour sports and news TV and cable stations.

I kiddingly chided Pepe for never thanking me for keeping the editors off his back while he was in the office writing his Munson column.

“I wasn’t in the office … was I, Deck?” he asked. “I thought I wrote that from home.”