MEMORIES OF BOB BROEG

10/29/2005
Among the many who revered Bob Broeg were his colleagues and those who played on the teams he followed. Following are some of their memories. The nicknames Broeg gave them are in parentheses.Jim (Jamesy) Creighton, Palmdale, Calif., retired Post-Dispatch editor: "For the last 20 years or more, it has been the fashion for columnists to be controversial or hyper-critical, but that was never B.B.'s style. As you know, his columns could be Byzantine, but he was great at pounding out a running account of a game."Kevin Horrigan, former sports editor and columnist, now a Post-Dispatch editorial-page writer: "It was a great experience for me, hearing him talk about the Hall of Famers and then getting to the Otesaga Hotel (Cooperstown, N.Y.) and sitting down for lunch with B.B. and having all these legends stop by the table to talk. Ted and Bobby Doerr actually had lunch with us, so I still brag about the time I had lunch with Ted Williams."Longtime Post-Dispatch baseball writer Rick (Ricky Ricardo) Hummel: "B.B. popping off the team bus in Boston before Game 7 of the 1967 series against the Red Sox to buy a starving Bob Gibson two egg sandwiches. Gibson says he ate one before the game and one after, but the suspicion is he ate both of them afterward." Gibson won, and the Cardinals took the Series.
Bob (Killer Mac) McCoy, vintage copy editor, who always smiles when he talks about editing the syntax in Mr. Broeg's columns: "It's like fishing. You thought you had it and were reeling him into the net, and he'd break out somewhere else."Creve Coeur lawyer Jerome Wallach, a 1960s star lineman for the Missouri Tigers. In 1960, '61, '62, they won 32 games and lost only three, the greatest period in MU history: "I always think of him in the context of Mizzou football. He always had his bow tie perfectly tied and started talking about something that happened in the Oklahoma State game, things I didn't remember, but he had it down pat."Richard (Dickie Bird) Kaegel, a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star, formerly with the Post-Dispatch: "The season the (Mizzou) Tigers went to the Fiesta Bowl and played Arizona State in Tempe, I was all geared up to do the 'running' on the game (the major play-by-play account) when, just about kickoff, I heard this voice: 'Uh, Dickie Bird, maybe I better do the running.' So he did. I guess with his beloved Tigers in a bowl game, B.B. couldn't stand the thought of having someone else's byline on the story."Joe Pollack, retired Post-Dispatch columnist and critic and a former Globe-Democrat sportswriter: "Broeg won the pool among sportswriters on the final score of a Mizzou-Oklahoma game. Riding in a police car, we were speeding, running red lights, so we could meet the team charter plane. Broeg turned to Bill Callahan, the Mizzou sports information director, and asked for his winnings. He asked more than once, as the police car sped around corners on two wheels. Callahan replied, somewhat peeved, 'Can't you wait a little while? Don't you trust me?' Broeg replied, 'Oh, I trust you, but I'd rather the money were found on my body than yours.'"Dave (Doorman) Dorr, former Post-Dispatch sportswriter and Hall of Fame basketball writer: "Beyond his measureable achievements as a sports journalist, I think his legacy - and what I will always remember him for - was his compassion and thousands of kind gestures on his part for others, many of which were unknown to anyone but Bob and the person he befriended."Marty Hendin, Cardinals vice president of community relations: "I have always considered him to be the Cardinals historian. And every time I saw him, one of the first things he'd say was, 'When are you going to retire Frankie Frisch's No. 3?' - his boyhood hero, the Fordham Flash."Gary (Movie-Star Handsome) Clark, Post-Dispatch copy editor in sports and now business: "We used to count the names he dropped in his column. The record is in the 60s or 70s, and the number was in dispute because we couldn't decide whether to count 'the man who shot Liberty Valance' as one or two."Terry Edelmann, a daughter of the late Globe-Democrat sports editor and columnist Bob Burnes. Edelmann is community relations director for the Catholic Education Office: "The Broegs and my parents held court in Ruggeri's restaurant on Wednesday nights. All sorts of sports celebrities would come in there; it was very exciting. With Garagiola and the Berra brothers working there, it was a sports hot spot."

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/