Lessons from a legend
Our first house was a
converted summer bungalow, barely winterized, in a neighborhood that had once
been a cheap weekend getaway spot for Newark businessmen and lawyers. In the
summer, you could understand why. A decent private swimming pool, with the Rockaway
River running beside it. Plenty of foliage. If you needed a dose of
civilization, two downtowns, antique Boonton and the more-worldly Denville
awaited, a mile’s drive west or east.
Outside of summer, it
could be ugly. Unpaved roads, nowhere to push the snow, flooding and the
occasional rat. So why would the world’s greatest football writer live there?
We guessed, rightly I think, that there was a divorce, and this was where Paul
Zimmerman landed.
I saw him at the pool
one afternoon and recognized him right away, sitting in a lounge chair, holding
court with two of those older Jewish guys who spent their summer by the pool,
talking about old baseball players. I hovered nearby to listen, then moved on.
The next time I saw him at the pool – if anybody can be said to look like they
were reading something intensely, it was him, at that moment. I steered clear,
remembering that irritability he sometimes played up in his writing and
television appearances. It was part of his appeal, but I didn’t want to test
it.
If I had, I might have
told him about that earlier time at Giants Stadium when I shadowed him roaming
the locker room, buttonholing two rookies, Billy Ard and Byron Hunt, a guard
and linebacker. While he made them the focus of his article for Sports
Illustrated that week, I came away from watching him with three observations
that served me well in corporate communications: acknowledge those toiling
behind the scenes, take an unconventional approach to storytelling and be
professional, but conversational, when interviewing someone.
He’d eventually
remarry and move to Mountain Lakes, a more-fitting landing spot for the world’s
greatest football writer. One morning I saw him outside the Denville Smoke
Shop, tearing apart the Sunday Times, throwing out the sections that were of no
use to him. It seemed symbolic of his writing: no tolerance for bullshit, defined
as anything that got in the way of telling the story, whether he was reporting
on a game, the draft or a league meeting.
 |
| Paul Zimmerman, 1932-2018 |
Zimmerman was
insightful and opinionated, with the kind of cynicism only a seasoned reporter
can dredge up. He deciphered plays and game strategies. Discovered underrated
players. Each season he wrote a column ranking every NFL announcing team. Today,
there are entire websites dedicated to that kind of scrutiny. Once, he vented
in an online column about some frustrations he was experiencing with customer
service at my old company, Medco Health (I dutifully sent the link to my boss,
with a note that more people probably read Zimmerman’s column than anything
written about us in the Wall Street Journal).
One Friday in November
2008, he wrote his final column as a series of strokes left him unable to
communicate. He couldn’t speak, write or read. Occasionally there was a story
about his ongoing therapy or a colleague would write about a visit with him.
His spirits were up. He had a great appetite at lunch. Nobody mentioned if he
still watched football, or if it even mattered to him anymore. Was he still
listening to each announcer and analyst, and somewhere in his head ranking them?
We’ll never know.
