I spoke to Bert Sugar on Tuesday. I had found out only recently he was sick and called to see how he was. He seemed to be Bert. He answered the phone, and within two minutes he had told me a joke about a husband, wife and a remote control that I can’t repeat here. He told me about some projects he had in the works. I was making plans for a trip to New York to see my friend and mentor.
Five days later, Bert Sugar — one of the great boxing and baseball historians of his time, one of the original Mad Men on Madison Avenue with a championship personality and the signature fedora and cigar — was dead at the age of 75 of a heart attack in his battle with lung cancer.
I got the news on my iPhone via Twitter and was going to respond with a tweet. But I realized that Bert would have hated that.
He despised tweets and texts and emails. He was one of the last great dinosaurs, and cell phones and computers were the tar pits that had made his species nearly extinct.
Bert wrote more than 80 books and never used Google. A search engine for him was a cab to the next bar.
Though he cursed the evolution of the world around him, Bert Sugar remained as popular and recognizable as any sports writer in America.
He couldn’t walk 10 feet in Las Vegas without someone stopping him and asking for a picture. To be out with Bert was like being with a rock star.
We went out one night in Chicago after the baseball All-Star Gala in 2003. It ended at midnight.
We closed down the last bar on Rush Street at 4:30 a.m. We didn’t pay for a drink all night.
He was 66 years old at the time.
When Joe DiMaggio would come east and head for Atlantic City, he called Bert Sugar to join him.
That’s how Bert Sugar rolled.
One night Bert got a call at home from a fan who was upset with a greatest boxers list he did on an ESPN show.
It was Bob Dylan.
He was a brilliant man with a law degree from Michigan and an undergraduate degree from Maryland, where he was on the boxing team.
Bert was born and raised in Washington. He was one of the crew hired in 1961 by Cowboys owner Clint Murchison to try to sneak chickens into D.C. Stadium to disrupt owner George Preston Marshall’s halftime show during a Redskins-Cowboys game.
He had a sense of wonder and adventure throughout his remarkable life. He was Peter Pan.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
