Milt would have hated every minute of this. Hated the attention. Hated the personal stuff. Hated the fact that he was the story and not merely the teller.
Old school all the way, he was, perhaps not so shocking for a guy born in 1905.
But the first thing you need to know about Milt Dunnell, the great sportswriter of the Toronto Star, who died late Thursday, was that though he lived to a ripe old age and worked for a couple of decades past his official "retirement" date, he was always right there, in the moment.
No nostalgia for bygone days. No easy columns about great events that he had witnessed in the distant past - though he witnessed just about all of them in person, sports-wise, in the second half of the 20th century.
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Even on the day he finally decided to pack it in - it had long since been understood around the Star that the timing would be entirely his - Milt wrote on the issue of the moment (Should the Toronto Blue Jays pursue Larry Walker?), filed for deadline and then announced, "That's it."
Many lesser lights have been moved to offer career retrospectives, with much less career to celebrate. But that simply wasn't his style.
As a writer, he was elegant and spare and to the point, perhaps less of a poet than some of his contemporaries in what was Canada's golden age of the ink-stained wretch, but always on the mark, always sharp, just about always right. And not a hint of narcissism.
In what would become increasingly a world of the easy, first-person opinion, Milt was a happy anachronism, believing the one word that should never appear under his byline was "I."
He was also different from much of his own generation.
In a notoriously boozy age in this business - one reason a lot of his peers hit the finish line long before the age of 102 - Milt didn't drink. Gambling, instead, was his jones, in its many and varied forms, though he played cards and dice not with the desperation of an addict, but with a cool logic, always understanding the math. He was still playing a bit of blackjack until a few weeks before he died.
They say that back in the day, Milt could be mean when he felt he had to be. On the old Sports Hot Seat television show (Milt was one of the first writers here to fall prey to the siren song and cross over to the electronic side), he played the role of the tough guy, the one unafraid to ask uncomfortable questions. And some who felt the sting of his criticism - boxer George Chuvalo, for one - never really forgave him for it.
But as a colleague, as a competitor, as one who considered him a mentor, what lingers in memory today is his generosity, his kindness and his absolute professionalism. Leading a shy kid into a group of his contemporaries - Harold Conrad, Barney Nagler, all of them long dead now - and offering introductions. Only when asked, offering up something from the vast catalogue of his experiences.
The query "Did you ever see something like that, Milt?" would be met with a pause, and then, quietly, something along the lines of "Well, when Marciano fought Jersey Joe Walcott the second time. ..."
Never forget watching him the night Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks, right up against deadline, when in the chaos of the ringside press section Milt scrambled over a table on his old man's arthritic, spindly legs, hustling to get his story in. And, of course, it was terrific.
Angelo Dundee, the legendary trainer of Muhammad Ali, among others, when he sees a familiar face hailing from Toronto, always asks the same question: "How's Milt doin'?"
For so many years, now, the answer has been pretty much the same.
Hanging in. Playing a bit of cards. Writing very well in an age so distant from the one in which he began his career back in his hometown of St. Mary's, Ont., at an age when all of us will be happy just to be breathing.
Living a quiet life in the same house, on the same street. Missing his wife. A bit frail, but still sharp as a tack, still knew when to split, when to double down and when to stand pat.
Now, the answer's different. In the ancient code of the business, originating in the days of hot type, it is written like this: -30-
That's how he would have wanted to sign off, without all of this fuss, without getting in front of the real news of the day. So be it, so long, Milt, and thanks.
-30-
