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.