Flashfact: Remembering Bert Sugar

When Bert Sugar died last weekend, the sportswriting world didn't just lose a colourful character, it lost a unique voice: someone who knew professional sports are hype and bullshit and wasn't afraid to fill his copy with clever jokes. In an age where a backup quarterback commands a press scrum so large they have hold a media conference on a practice field, his less-than-serious while knowing almost everything attitude will be missed.

From my short piece at Flashfact:

I can’t help but wonder if there’s some kind of cosmic connection at work in New York these days. On Sunday, Bert Sugar – the last remnant of the Golden Age of Sports Writing – died at 75. On Monday, Jets quarterback Tim Tebow was introduced to a crowd so large it wouldn’t fit into the media room, forcing the presser to be held on the practice squad. As Vonnegut wrote, so it goes.

Sugar was a reminder of the past, of a long-gone print media sports writing type. He was something of a character, a half-made-up, half-for-real man in his fedora, suit and ever-present cigar. He looked like he could have stepped out of one of the old volumes of sports writing and I half expect to see his byline among the long-dead writers in the great anthology No Cheering in the Press Box.

Read the whole story by clicking here.