By Alan Swyer
Inching his way through heavy traffic en route to a cemetery in Brooklyn, Ben Klein found himself remembering his initial encounter with the man whose funeral he would soon be attending. It was Ben’s first day covering the Yankees. Having taken a seat in the press box, he was trying to mask his nervousness when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
“That’s my seat!” grumbled a large, white-haired man.
“I-I didn’t know they were reserved.”
“Know who I am?”
“Tommy Gallagher, my favorite columnist.”
“Guess who’s in his favorite columnist’s seat.”
Chastened, Ben scooted over to the next seat, then faced Gallagher. “You’re the main reason I wanted to be a sportswriter.”
“Lucky you.”
Though Gallagher proceeded to exchange a few words and nods with other sportswriters, it wasn’t until the fourth inning that he again acknowledged Ben. “Your daddy in Who’s-Who or something?”
“My dad?” responded Ben with a chuckle. “More like So-What.”
“Then how’d you get the job? Columbia Journalism?”
“The editor saw some pieces I wrote for a little weekly in Jersey.”
The frown Ben received didn’t go unnoticed by others in the press box. That led to two longtime sportswriters – Al Damiano and Sol Shapiro – approaching once Gallagher departed after the sixth inning of a blowout.
“Tommy’s not the worst guy in the world,” said Damiano.
“Or the best,” joked Shapiro.
“But don’t take it personally,” offered Damiano.
“He’s an equal-opportunity grump,” said Shapiro with a shrug.
Ben Klein wasn’t the least bit unhappy that Tommy Gallagher was a no-show at the next Yankee game, as well as the one that followed.
His absence, Al Damiano explained to Ben, owed to the fact that unlike beat writers, whose presence was required, a columnist like Gallagher could pick and choose when to show up.
It wasn’t until after Ben’s first road trip with the team – a three-game stand in Baltimore – that another conversation with Gallagher took place. “You write pretty well,” the columnist announced as he again arrived at the press box.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” responded Ben.
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“For good writing you can buy the New Yorker. Sports writing comes down to two things. Ready?”
“Sure.”
“Insights and personality. Hoping to have a column of your own some day?”
“You bet!”
“Then heed those words.”
“I will,” said Ben. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. What’s with this Benjamin shit?”
“It’s my name.”
“Not if you want to go far in sports. Ever hear of Robert Costas? Or Michael Lupica? It’s Red Smith, Jimmy Breslin, Larry Merchant, Pete Hamill.”
“And Tommy Gallagher,” added Ben.
With a nod, Gallagher started toward his seat.
“One question?” blurted Ben, causing Gallagher to turn. “Since you thought I was some kind of nepo baby, why the advice?”
“Because,” said Gallagher, “I take sports writing seriously.”
Though Tommy Gallagher was not seen at the ballpark during the week-and-a-half that followed, he was never quite out of Ben’s mind. Yet instead of Yankee Stadium, it was at a restaurant in Little Italy that their paths again crossed. Together with his girlfriend, Ben was entering when he heard Al Damiano call his name.
Surprised to find Gallagher seated with Damiano and Sol Shapiro, Ben led the way toward their table. “Tommy, Al, Sol, this is Andrea.”
Greetings were exchanged, then Tommy eyed Ben. “So you dumped the Benjamin?”
“Somebody read my stuff,” said Ben, nodding. “Happy now?”
“It’d take a lot more than that to make me happy,” responded Tommy, drawing a knowing laugh from Al Damiano.
“Enjoy your meal,” said Sol Shapiro, puncturing the awkward silence that ensued.
Never in a million years would Ben have expected an early morning call from Tommy Gallagher. Even more astounding was being summoned to meet him at a dim sum place in Chinatown. Determined not to be late, Ben left his apartment so early that he wound up having to kill forty-five minutes before entering the still half-empty restaurant. Moments later, the lunchtime crowd started pouring in, among them Tommy Gallagher.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I called,” he said while approaching.
“It wasn’t for companionship?” Ben teased.
“I hate what passes for sports writing these days. Not Damiano or Sol. I mean twerps who tell you what your own eyes have seen. Beyond lazy, it’s useless. With me?”
“I guess.”
Gallagher frowned. “If you only guess, I’m wasting my breath.”
“I understand,” Ben said, correcting himself. “But are you happy with the insights I’m adding?”
“Not entirely. I didn’t only mean baseball insights. Want my definition of what sports writing should be?”
“You bet.”
“A look at a game it was, and life as it should be. That pretentious enough?”
“I like it.”
The two of them shared a laugh, then Gallagher went on. “I don’t mean baseball strategy – when to bunt, or when to bring the infield in for a play at the plate. I’m talking big picture: race, values, shit that matters.”
The conversation was interrupted while the two of them made selections from the carts wielding various kinds of dumplings.
Gallagher wolfed a har gow and a shu mai, then spoke. “In an internet world where ballparks fill every empty second with nonsense on the Jumbotron. I’m a dinosaur whose days as a columnist are numbered.”
“Your columns are good,” Ben protested.
“Good’s not good enough. After ten years, even the best of us start repeating ourselves. After fifteen, we should all be put out to pasture.”
“That’s harsh.”
“But true. And I’m on year seventeen.”
“So where do I come in?”
“You’ve got a shot at keeping the tradition – the real stuff – going.”
“I’m flattered,” said Ben.
“Forget flattered,” countered Gallagher. “Earn it.”
Any hope that the heart-to-heart with Gallagher would lead to an ongoing series of get-togethers faded quickly. For several games in a row, the columnist was a no-show. Nor did he accompany the team on a road trip to Chicago and Detroit.
When the Yankees returned to the Bronx, Ben was surprised to find Sol Shapiro waiting for him before a Friday night game.
“Want to do something nice?” Shapiro asked. “Go see Tommy.”
“Where is he?”
Shapiro darkened. “You didn’t hear about the heart attack?” When Ben shook his head, Sol continued. “He’s out of Intensive Care, but going nuts at the hospital.”
“Is he going to make it?”
“Think he’d give his new editor the satisfaction of burying him?”
Lying unhappily in his hospital room, Tommy Gallagher looked up to see Ben Klein peering in.
“No flowers?” joked Gallagher. “What’re you doing here?”
“Disturbing your peace and quiet.”
“Some peace and quiet when a nurse wakes me up every fifteen minutes.”
“Sol says you’re on the mend.”
“Much to my editor’s chagrin.”
“Why’s that?” asked Ben.
“I’m old, cranky, and expensive. Plus I scream bloody murder when he mucks with my column just because I call an owner racist. Or a shortstop a wife beater. Or say a center fielder’s juicing.” Gallagher frowned. “Be nice,” the birdbrain tells me. “Be entertaining. What am I, a Vegas lounge act?”
Gallagher started to laugh, only to have his laughter lead to a coughing fit.
“You okay?” wondered Ben.
“If I were okay, would I be in this goddamn bed? Sure sports writing’s for you?”
“It’s what I want.”
Gallagher smiled. “Then maybe there’s hope.”
“It meant a lot to Tommy,” Al Damiano informed Ben that evening at the Stadium. “He was feeling forgotten.”
“He must know a million people,” replied Ben. “Where are they?”
“It’s the price he pays for not pulling punches,” Damiano explained, adding that nobody holds grudges like people in sports. First as a sportswriter, then more so as a columnist, Gallagher always said what he felt needed to be said, personal relations be damned. That, Damiano noted, was also true in his personal life, costing Gallagher two marriages.
“Any kids?”
“A son in Oregon, a daughter in London. Interpret the distances any way you want. Except for Sol and me – and maybe now you – Tommy’s basically on his own.”
“So,” said Andrea as she and Ben stepped out of an ice cream place, “is Tommy a role model? A mentor? A surrogate big brother?”
“All of the above,” admitted Ben. “And if I’m lucky, maybe even a friend.”
Lying in bed beside Andrea that night, Ben found himself thinking about the direction his life had taken. Expected by his parents to become a doctor, lawyer, or at worst a dentist, he had spent his childhood dutifully doing what was expected.
That continued into his college years, when it became clear that science was in no way his forte. The presumption, therefore, was that next up would be law school. With that in mind, Ben signed up for the necessary exam, the LSAT.
Unable to sleep the night before the test, Ben couldn’t shake visions of himself stuck in a law office, engulfed by stacks of dull, dreary paperwork.
When morning finally came, he dragged himself out of bed and made his way to the appropriate building, where he took a seat. But once the go-ahead was given, Ben sat immobilized for close to ten minutes. Suddenly, in a rare and uncharacteristic bit of spontaneity, he jumped out of his chair and bolted.
When his parents asked how the exam went, Ben gave a one-word response: “Great!”
“You knew all the answers?” wondered his mother.
“Only the most important one. No way I want to be a lawyer.”
Realizing that what he loved most was sports, Ben decided that what he most wanted to be was a sportswriter.
Unable to get hired at one of the major New York or New Jersey newspapers, Ben, to his parents’ chagrin, took an internship at a local weekly. Initially, he covered regional high school sports. But over time he was able to convince his editor to add some Rutgers and Princeton games. Then came an occasional piece about the Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Nets, Giants, or Jets.
All the while, Ben did a deep dive into the work of the great sportswriters, both past and present. First it was Grantland Rice and Damon Runyon, then Red Smith, Breslin, Hamill, and finally Tommy Gallagher.
Then came the call that led to Ben covering the Yankees.
Once Gallagher was released from the hospital, Ben was pleased to be included in a series of lunches that took place whenever the Yankees weren’t on the road. Usually at a Thai place near where Tommy went for physical therapy, Tommy, Al, Sol, and Ben would do their best to solve the world’s woes, despite the awareness that even with their soapboxes they were merely voices crying out in the wilderness.
As weeks went by, Ben realized that Tommy was getting itchy, then itchier, to return to work.
Then came a Thursday when Ben, Sol, and Al watched Tommy trudge into the restaurant with none of his usual swagger.
“You okay?” asked a concerned Sol Shapiro, getting only a shrug for an answer.
“Problems with your ticker?” wondered Al Damiano.
“If only,” said Gallagher glumly.
“Then what?” demanded Ben.
“My fucking editor,” said Gallagher sadly.
“Rushing you back?” asked Ben.
“Letting me go.”
“No fucking way!” insisted Shapiro.
Gallagher shook his head. “After the little stroke a couple of years ago, they stuck a fitness clause into my contract.”
“Still –” said Damiano.
“What does your lawyer say?” asked Ben.
“That we can try to fight it,” answered Gallagher with a sigh.
“Try?” gulped Damiano. “Where’s the moxie? Where’s the Tommy we know?”
Gallagher merely frowned.
“Buy you a coffee or a beer?” Ben asked when he called Gallagher two days later.
“Why?” responded Gallagher.
“That a yes or a no?”
Despite grumbling from Gallagher, a time and place were set.
“So why the get-together?” asked Gallagher when he and Ben met for coffee.
“Maybe I missed you,” replied Ben.
“Somebody’s getting syrupy.”
“More like somebody doesn’t want you sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself.”
Gallagher started to say something, then caught himself and took a breath. “That’s nice,” he then admitted. “So what can I tell you?”
Ben smiled. “What it was like to see Mantle and Mays. And where Michael Jordan stands next to Kobe and LeBron. Plus where you started from, and how you wound up where you are.”
Gallagher chortled. “The first two are easy, but the third might take a while.”
“Who’s in a rush?”
Over the next few weeks, Ben learned about Tommy Gallagher’s childhood in Hell’s Kitchen, a part of Manhattan controlled by an Irish gang known as the Westies. When his father, who was more likely than not under the influence, was killed one night while crossing 10th Avenue, Tommy, at 16, dropped out of school to help pay the bills. After a series of nowhere jobs – busboy, bellhop, dishwasher, mover – he was sorely tempted, to his mother’s chagrin, to sign on with the Westies when he landed a spot as a runner for a newspaper called the New York Journal-American.
Though that paper, like the World Telegram, became a casualty of the great newspaper strike that began in 1962, Tommy had found his calling. He loved the excitement and adrenaline rush, but what appealed to him most was the camaraderie he found among the hardworking, hard-drinking, heavy-smoking guys on the sports desk.
Ever so slowly, Tommy moved up the food chain – a stint on the copy desk, then an occasional writing assignment, then as the Yankee beat writer, where he came under the influence of a crusty old columnist named Ed Flaherty.
“So he was to you what you are to me?” asked Ben.
“Yeah, only ten times harder,” answered Tommy.
By the time the World Telegram folded, Tommy had built enough of a name for himself to land elsewhere. With a subsequent move to yet another paper, he finally made the leap to columnist.
Still carrying a large chip on his shoulder from fighting his way out of poverty, Tommy quickly became known as a relentless fighter against injustice. He derided sportswriters in Pittsburgh for quoting the great Roberto Clemente in pidgin English, while making rednecks sound like Shakespearean scholars. He vexed the movers and shakers of Major League Baseball by championing Curt Flood’s quest for free agency. He infuriated fans of Pete Rose by supporting the ban for betting on games.
“Since you’ve got great stories to tell,” said Ben one Monday morning when he showed up at Gallagher’s place with bagels, “why not write your memoirs?”
Gallagher shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to tell stories, not be the story.”
“So tell your own stories.”
Gallagher sighed. “I don’t know if I’ve got enough fight left in me to face a blank page.”
“So tape it. Or I’ll ask questions, and you’ll respond.”
“Let me think about it,” said Tommy with a shrug.
But as days turned to weeks, then weeks to months, it became increasingly clear to Ben that his friend was fading. Tommy’s energy was diminishing, his memory failing, and the fire inside of him vanishing.
Then early one morning, Ben was awakened by a call. “Let’s do it!” announced Tommy, sounding surprisingly upbeat and vigorous. “You leave today, right?”
“For the Astros and Rangers,” Ben mumbled, still half-asleep.
“Get your questions ready. We’ll start when you’re back from Texas.”
Brimming with excitement, Ben shared the news with Sol Shapiro and Al Damiano on the flight to Houston. Throughout the three-game stand against the Astros, he made notes for his first couple of sessions with Tommy Gallagher.
But everything changed when, as they were checking out of their hotel, Ben, Damiano, and Shapiro all received the news they had long feared. Their friend Tommy had suffered another heart attack, and it was fatal.
After listening to Sol Shapiro, Al Damiano, and others speak solemnly at Tommy Gallagher’s funeral, Ben stepped up to the podium. “Some people,” he began, “are synonymous with a golden era. “Think of Mantle, Mays, and Duke Snider with the heyday of New York baseball. Or Bogart, Gable, and Gary Cooper when Hollywood ruled. Or Miles, Monk, and Mingus New York City was alive jazz. All of them were great when their respective fields were still great. But sadly, nothing remains great forever. That’s certainly true of newspapers. Tommy Gallagher was great when papers mattered and were great. In fact, in my eyes, he was the last of the greats, since it’s no longer possible to be great when people get their news through Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
“Officially Tommy died of a heart attack. But if you want my opinion, the real cause of his death was something worse. As I see it, the guy who spent his whole life fighting against injustice died of a broken heart.”
Ben glanced at Al Damiano and Sol Shapiro, who both nodded. Only then did he speak again.
“I doubt,” said Ben, “that we’ll ever see the likes of him again.”
—
Alan Swyer is an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentaries have dealt with Eastern spirituality in the Western world, the criminal justice system, diabetes, boxing, and singer Billy Vera. In the realm of music, among his productions is an album of Ray Charles love songs. His novel The Beard was recently published by Harvard Square Editions. His newest film is When Houston Had The Blues.