Everybody Needs a Reggie

"I didn't do right by you." Those words were uttered by Gerald M. Boyd during our last conversation of substance. Gerald wasn't managing editor of The New York Times yet, but he had ascended to the masthead. It was at a dinner at Gerald's East Side apartment, where he urged Michel Marriott to return to The Times from Newsweek. I was at The Daily News, having gone there after Marty Gottlieb offered me a job as an Assistant City Editor, a position I knew I would not get at The Times. Marty had returned to The Times and Gerald suggested that I do the same. "You can write your own ticket," he said.

I didn't have the heart to tell him he was wrong. I had upset too many people there and I knew it. Nonetheless, I agreed to talk to the paper. One of the first things I was told during that talk was that I could not expect to return anywhere near my Daily News level. I said thank you and left.

Gerald and I had subsequent conversations after my Times visit, mostly at journalism conventions. None of those talks were of great significance. We joked around, teased each other and drank scotch. Chivas seemed to be his favorite then. Occasionally things would get out of hand. Gerald had this way of taking gentle swipes at you, the mischief in him. Sometimes those swipes were hard and he had to be reminded to back off. Such an occasion occured when we were having drinks with other black journalists at a convention. Gerald made a comment and I took offense. I think Gerald realized what he had done. He quickly announced to everyone that I was the conscience of the Metro desk when he was its editor.

I thought about those incidents as I read Gerald's posthumously published memoir, "My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times" (Lawrence Hill Books, $26.95). The book brought back a flood of memories, some good, others not so good. The more I read the more I thought about the lament I gave him when he did something I did not like or when I wanted him to know someone had his back, ready to step up and take the heat for him.

"Gerald, you're gonna mess around and lose your Reggie," I would say. "If you don't know what that means, just look at the Yankees and what happened to them after Steinbrenner lost his Reggie. Everybody needs a Reggie."

Gerald would smile, shake his head and walk away.

I also thought about the first time I met Jayson Blair, who had not yet been found out. I was having drinks with a friend at a bar around the corner from the old Times building.

"Man everytime I come in here I see you," my friend told Jayson.

"Then maybe you come in here too much," Jayson replied.

"Look man, I'm off. You're supposed to be at work."

"You're lucky I'm not at The Times anymore," I interrupted. "I'd have my foot so far up your ass you'd be tasting shoe polish for a month."

Jayson stared at me. My friend laughed.

"He would," my friend said. "He would."

But most of all, I thought about how a proud, black journalist was left hanging in the wind by several of his colleagues and people he thought were his friends. As I finished "My Times in Black and White," I thought, "Brother, you could've used your Reggie."

Wooing Makes Fools of Us All

It was enough to make Mars cringe, to throw his gold chain and medallion in the Hudson River.

Cheers reverberating off the ceiling and rafters of New York City bars as the Boston Celtics and the Cleveland Cavaliers battled in a decisive game six in the National Basketball Association Eastern Conference semi-finals. But it wasn’t transplanted Bostonians celebrating every Celtic basket or rebound, and every LeBron James turnover or missed shot. It was die-hard New Yorkers: Fans of the Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Giants, Jets, Rangers and Islanders.

They stood in bars around New York City Thursday night, the wishful suitors, praying that the one they want to woo the most gets pulverized, embarrassed, humiliated so that they can offer comfort.

“They hurt you, King James, those big bad Celtics? Then come here and we’ll love you, come to our Garden and we’ll embrace you. Forget that we prayed for you to lose, for you to become a loser. We think you’re more apt to join our losing team if you’re a loser. So lose James, lose. We want you and we don’t care if you have to be hurt in order for you to love us.”

Even Spike Lee, the ultimate Knicks fan whose movie character Mars once insulted a black man by calling him a Celtics lover, was cheering for Boston to win, hoping that a wounded James, not a victorious James, would be more likely to come to the hapless New York Knicks.

Mars is throwing up right now.

When Death Is a Reminder

They were lazy days, those summers in Detroit, sitting with Big Daddy on the porch on Humphrey, his pipe, filled with Prince Albert tabacco, dangling between his lips. Big Daddy was my grandfather, a large man, more than six feet, four inches tall. Even when he sat on the porch swing he looked larger than life, his brawny right hand grasping the bowl of his pipe as white smoke haloed his head. Prince Albert had a wonderful smell, soft and fruity. Whenever I remember Big Daddy, I remember that tobacco, the way its aroma permeated the area around him. It was as if he and the Prince were one, sharing the same aura.

At the time, I was a young child, looking up into the pecan-colored face of my mother's father. Sitting next to Big Daddy was my favorite way to spend summer days. He wouldn't say much, except to occasionally warn me when Big Mama, my grandmother, was stalking around the house, looking for someone to blame for treading through her flower bed or leaving popsicle sticks in the grass. In that way he was my protector. Big Daddy, a son of the late 19th Century, died decades ago, and I still miss him, particularly on those days when a death reminds me of the times he and I spent together.

That happened Wednesday when I read the news that Ernie Harwell, the longtime radio voice of the Detroit Tigers, died the night before. Ernie Harwell was a big part of those summer days with Big Daddy. Harwell's voice carried us through those moments on the porch swing, when the Tigers were battling through 1968 and we were on Humphrey. I am not alone in such feelings. Harwell's voice carried many a person through the season, first introducing them to baseball, then solidifying their love of the game.

For me, he will always be the silky voice that came through my grandfather's black transistor radio as we sat in the shade of the awning, on a porch on Humphrey, on the west side of Detroit.