I ruminated on John Pruett’s 2008 retirement the challenges I had as the “other columnist” to Pruett on the pages of the late, lamented Huntsville Times. John worked at The Times 42 years. He collected readers and friends by hundreds. He wrote with grace and insight. He brought an air of positivity in the days when hatchet-job columnists were becoming the trend, but was never afraid to tsk-tsk about a coach or an athletic program or someone taking the wrong direction. I always equated a negative Pruett column to the old feeling as a kid where you’d rather have your parents yell at you than say, “I’m disappointed.” A lot of yelling goes on in sportswriting. But a Pruett criticism was showing disappointment, and the subjects felt that.
To be “the other columnist” was like, I don’t know, being a lieutenant governor. Or whatever was playing on ABC the night CBS aired the finale of “M*A*S*H.”
John Pruett died this morning, at age 83. He was a colleague, friend, mentor and inspiration. He was sleeping peacefully when I visited yesterday. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything but a soft whisper of “Thank you. I wouldn’t be here without you.”
He wouldn’t take the credit – or blame – for recommending me 36 years ago for a job in another Alabama city. All that led to a convoluted path that brought me to Huntsville, swapping column days and assignments with John. He was supportive of my hiring and generous with sharing contacts, the history of sports in Huntsville and Alabama and fair in divvying up plum assignments. (Less generous, as years went along, with sharing college football games when it came down to afternoons and the leisurely writing time and night games with the deadline monster huffing over one’s shoulder.)
When John retired, he bequeathed me the lead columnist’s role – albeit for a short time before I felt the need to escape the sports hierarchy at al.com – and even more. My “here” because of John’s passing the torch includes, or has included, role as state chairman for the Heisman Trophy, voting privileges for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and membership on the board of the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame.
In those newspaper glory days, when The Times was as ambitious and had as much talent as any sports section in the state, John and I seldom ventured into the office except for some meeting and planning sessions. Still we’d email or talk almost daily. He’d pop into the press box at Joe Davis Stadium regularly and we’d gab for innings.
What we seldom did, being The Columnist and The Other Columnist, was cover anything together. That may have been the biggest drawback to my role. Now, he did finagle a credential for me one year to join him at the Kentucky Derby. And we were part of the delegation at the Alabama-Auburn game. One of the best staff projects we ever did, we teamed up for massive pre-inauguration coverage and were on-site for John Stallworth’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But so often, we’d be heading opposite directions.
An exception came my first year at The Times. Tennessee was playing Florida State for the BCS national championship in Tempe, Ariz., in January 1999. John and I both went. There was a block party that week, a bunch of food and beverage trucks with high-top tables sprinkled throughout parking lots and blocked-off streets in Tempe. John and I had dinner, then wandered over to the party. I grabbed us a couple of beers and, being single at the time, I spied a vacant high-top near a group of attractive women in their 30s. Hearing a last-call advisory, the women hustled to the closest beer truck and grabbed two fresh beers apiece. They were overly optimistic. A few minutes later, noticing John and I were close to empty, one said to us, “We’ve gotta go and we can’t finish these. Why don’t you take them?”
I couldn’t wait to get back to Huntsville, to tell Bobbi Pruett that a table full of young women bought beer for her husband.
I think, as the years went along, she was quite all right with the fact that The Other Columnist seldom traveled with The Columnist.
Never a Bad Game 