Mike Downey obit

Mike Downey, Free Press sports columnist during '84 World Series, dies

 

He was not on the list.

Former Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mike Downey, whose breadth and wit brought non-sports-fans to his section of the paper in the 1980s, died Wednesday in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 72.

Downey, twice named Michigan's sportswriter of the year by the National Sports Media Association, had a heart attack at home, according to close friend Ron Rapoport.

Raised in Chicago, Downey started his newspaper career at age 15 with a chain in the southern suburbs. He went on to the Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times, then came to the Free Press. In a product designed to be disposable, his work is preserved on tavern walls throughout Michigan bearing framed front pages from Oct. 15, 1984, the morning after the Detroit Tigers beat San Diego to win the World Series.

"They won it, just the way everyone in Detroit thought they would," he wrote, typing for posterity against a fierce deadline.

"They won it, in a way nobody thought they would.

"They won it on a sacrifice fly ... to second base.

"They won it on a pinch-hit, bases-loaded sacrifice fly ... by Rusty Kuntz."

The column went on to mention Kirk Gibson's two home runs, but the focus on detail and on an unsung character was typical Downey.

"Mike was an extraordinarily talented human being — eclectic to say the least, with a great sense of humor," said former Free Press publisher David Lawrence Jr., who brought Downey to Detroit. "He handled words as well as anyone I can remember."

It was Downey's wide array of interests, including entertainment and history, as well as his knack for inducing smiles, that made him a favorite of people who had no interest in pucks or balls.

He left Detroit for the Los Angeles Times in April 1985 and transitioned there from sports to a metro column before retiring. The Chicago Tribune lured him back to work as a sports columnist from 2003-08, and he expanded his number of state sportswriter of the year awards to 11 — seven in California, plus two in Illinois to go with the first pair in Michigan.

In a wide-ranging and far-roaming career, he covered an America's Cup yacht race in Australia, Wimbledon tennis, and 12 Olympic Games. He particularly enjoyed the Olympics and always thought to bring back gifts for the Free Press sports staff.

At the Times, he wrote about holding hands with Mr. T as the actor sobbed, discussing his diagnosis of cancer.

Jon Pepper, who worked with Downey at the Free Press and later became a columnist at The Detroit News, said his friend was "an inspiration to me as I know he was to many journalists across the country."

"He was also one of the most thoughtful people I've ever known," Pepper said, "never forgetting a birthday, an anniversary, or Christmas. His notes were always clever, timely, and personal, usually evoking some shared history."

After his second and more permanent retirement, from the Tribune, he wrote occasionally for CNN.com and more frequently on Facebook, where he intertwined history and personal recollections of people like actor Dabney Coleman, whom he saw eight or nine times as they dined separately at the famed West Hollywood restaurant Dan Tana's.

"Dabney Coleman played dozens of characters," he wrote when Coleman died last month, "and was one himself."

Downey married for the first and only time in June 1999, a few weeks shy of his 48th birthday. Having become a husband, father and grandfather on the same day, he relished all three roles.

His wife, Gail Martin Downey, is a daughter of Dean Martin. They met when she mentioned to a mutual friend how much she enjoyed his writing in the Times, and he revealed their wedding to readers in yet another memorable column.

He misspoke only in predicting how the marriage would end.

"Some partnerships do break up. Some don’t," he said.

"It is taken on faith that Gail Martin last weekend made a marriage that will last the remainder of her life, when, for reasons only she can explain, she took as her lawfully wedded husband a talent-free and tone-deaf newspaper columnist from the Los Angeles Times."

Unlike his wife and father-in-law, he could not sing. But his words always did.

He was known for his columns in the Chicago area, such as writing pieces for the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Daily News. In his later years, he began writing for The Los Angeles Times and CNN.

He also was a columnist for The Sporting News and Sport Magazine and for 15 years wrote a humor column for Inside Sports magazine known as "The Good Doctor." He was a featured sports correspondent for KABC radio in Los Angeles and for WJR radio in Detroit and was often a panelist on ESPN television's weekly talk show, The Sports Reporters. He was a voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame.