Missouri Jay

By Steve Marantz, August 18, 2021

When Jay Greenberg succumbed to West Nile virus on August 12, at 71, he was remembered as a brilliant and beloved sportswriter in Philadelphia, Toronto, and New York City.  But he had an earlier incarnation, the guy who laid the foundation. Missouri Jay.

Jay and I met as undergraduates at the University of Missouri in Columbia, fall of 1971. He was a senior in the Journalism School.  I was a junior.   He had the coveted Tiger football beat.  I had no beat — yet — just classes in reporting, editing, and ‘mass media’ theory.  Jay was a rising star.  I read every sentence he wrote.

We bonded over the Pittsburgh Pirates, and a worshipful regard of Roberto Clemente, who was about to bestow upon Pittsburgh another championship.  Jay was from Johnstown, Pa., about 65 miles east of Pittsburgh.  My first 12 years were in Weirton, W.Va., about 35 miles west.  As kids we both had listened to Bob Prince’s play-by-play.  Bill Mazeroski’s home run in 1960 was a youthful touchstone for both of us, for different reasons.

Whereas I remembered hearing the radio call of Mazeroski’s home run, Jay had a humorous recollection of not hearing it.  He recounted it in a 2018 podcast episode he wrote for me: (3:28 to 4:26)

I soon learned that Jay was a devoted student of sports.  He read the histories, and gorged on daily coverage.  It was Jay who led me to a corner of the J-School library to devour big-city newspapers.  Jay had opinions on all the columnists, and held them to a high standard.  They had to be knowledgeable and original and perceptive.  Their writing had to have something special: A bit of poetry, irony, indignation, social relevance.  Wit and humor.  Especially wit and humor: Jay’s trademarks.

He was 21, at the start of his career.  Before he would lay claim to the Flyers beat for two Philly papers, become a columnist in Toronto, write for Sports Illustrated, and become a columnist for the New York Post.  Long before he would write two histories of the Flyers and go into the writers’ wing of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

As a 21-year-old sportswriter, Jay was more mature than he had a right to be.  He instinctively understood what the job required:  playfulness, imagination, objectivity, fairness, judgment, tenacity, diligence and a thick skin.  It was as though he had practiced the craft for decades instead of a year. 

Indeed, Jay knew from a young age what he wanted to do.  He told Troy Treasure, author of “Icing on the Plains”, the story of the Kansas City Scouts:  “It was probably in junior high.  I never wanted to do anything else.  In school I was good at English, history and geography, not math and science.”

University of Missouri was a bit exotic for a Johnstown kid, Jay recalled.

“My father read about Missouri’s journalism school.  I thought, ‘I’m there’.  And my parents supported the decision.  Even with out-of-state tuition, it wasn’t much more than Pitt or Penn State.”

So in fall of 1968 Jay found himself in Columbia, Mo.

“I’d never seen the place before,” he said.  “I went on faith.  I was homesick the first year.”

But Jay acclimated, forged friendships with classmate/journalists Mark Schlinkmann and Bob Kelly, reported for student-run outlets, KCCS radio and Maneater newspaper, and excelled in the J-School.  His senior year he was assigned the most prestigious beat, Missouri football, for the Columbia Missourian.  The season was a 1-10 train wreck.  New head coach Al Onofrio was laid bare before an angry fan base.  Jay dissected and reported his shortcomings, but he never stripped Onofrio of his dignity, never made him the butt of cheap humor.

Jay’s last column for the Missourian, in April 1972, was titled, “The Final Confessions of a 21-year-old Truant”.  It’s a masterpiece which I’ll condense:

 He starts by citing a letter from a fan who accuses him of elevating cleverness over “caring” about the teams and athletes he covered.

 Jay writes:  “See, it hurts to be called a wise-guy.  But I insist not all of it was my fault.

“Where there was no tradition of criticism, it was very hard for people to accept that even in sports, even in Columbia, Mo., that pointing out the bad, even when it is obvious, was part of the press’ role.

“There was some confusion about the role of public relations and the role of reporting.  There are some members of the sports media in this town who practice nothing but promotion and that makes it hard on the rest.

“I am not naive enough to believe I could completely divorce myself from the school I was attending, yet even when I didn’t., when I cheered along with everyone else, I can’t help but think I wasn’t doing my job.

“Loyalty was never an issue.  Objectivity was and entertainment was certainly, and sometime, especially during the football season, compassion was.  But never loyalty.

“If anything, there were times I should have said more.  Generally, because of my tender 21 years, I tried to be the feature writer rather than the commentator, but still there were times when I could have said more.

“So I leave town with friends, but a slightly guilty conscience.”

His column imagines “going-away presents” he wants to leave to favored coaches, administrators, and athletes.  He questions the amateur facade of college athletics, and cautiously comes down in favor, but only if it is “self-supporting”.  

Then he concludes.

“My education was not of a classroom sort…but I learned.  And if what I picked up came occasionally from wandering the halls of the athletic department while Econ 51 or Copyediting was meeting, then I refused to feel guilty about it.

“Thus, the confessions of a 21-year-old truant.

“Graduation exercises will be on Tuesday, I’m told, but there doesn’t seem to be much reason to stick around.

“The ceremonies will not be particularly meaningful.  The diploma will come later, in the mail.  And with all due respect to the Dean, the wrong people will be doing whatever is done at college graduations where they don’t give diplomas.

“If Sparky Stalcup, or Al Onofrio, or Joe Knight, the old soccer club coach, were going to be there to call out my name or even shake my hand, then I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

“As it was, my classroom education was so completely secondary that I would rather have the guy who passed out the towels in the locker room under Rothwell Gymnasium slip my diploma that way.  Wrapped in a towel. And if he would like to say a few words, then I promise not to get bored.

“That guy taught me a lot.”

Classic Jay Greenberg.  Profound and funny.

Now, almost 50 years later, I read that column and think, “Seriously? Who writes like that at 21?”

After Jay left Mizzou, I inherited his Tiger football beat, and later his column.  By then Jay was on the staff at the Kansas City Times/Star, covering junior colleges and high schools, alongside another rookie hire from Mizzou, Mike DeArmond. A young hotshot from Arkansas, Gerald Jordan, completed their beat.

Typical of Jay’s style was a piece in October ’72 about the football team of a newly-opened high school:  “This is a Cinderella story in which Cinderella stood 6-3, weighed 225 pounds and had been taking judo instructions.  If it’s not glamorous, at least it’s efficient.  If Red-Riding-Hood had a club under that cape, then let the truth be known.  Hickman Mills High School won its first football game last week.  That’s the payoff pumpkin, but the story goes farther than that.”

In June ’73 the KC Times/Star hired me.  Deja vu, another front-row seat to Jay’s career.  I had the high school beat while Jay ascended to the NFL/Chiefs beat, as backup to Bill Richardson.  In 1974 Sports Editor Joe McGuff assigned Jay to the new NHL expansion team, the KC Scouts.

Jay’s affinity for hockey went back to his hometown where, as a 9-year-old, he discovered the minor-league Johnstown Jets. 

“I was pretty well hooked,” he recalled. “Tickets were 35 cents and kids liked to sit together in Section 6.  They called it the Rinky-Dink Club.  The visiting team had to walk to the ice through a corridor and portal under Section 6.  You can imagine the abuse they got from the kids.”

(Johnstown’s War Memorial arena later would be used to film ‘Slap Shot’, which Jay ranked among his three favorite sports movies, with ‘A League of Their Own’ and ‘Seabiscuit’)

The expansion Scouts proved to be a good fit for Jay.  They were as hapless as the 1-10 Mizzou gridders, provided as much comedic material as the fictional skaters in ‘Slap Shot’, and gave Jay a blank slate to display his cleverness and literary palette.

 June ’74: On the day of the Scouts first amateur draft, Jay writes from Montreal. “After two years of maternity care the National Hockey League will slap the breath of life into the baby Kansas City Scouts this afternoon.”

August ’74: Jay writes about the Scouts’ second-round pick, a too-thin 20-year-old wing from western Canada. “Glen Burdon may be only a barbell or a banana split away from stardom.  Skinny is a little too harsh and muscle-bound is not true. Sleek and smooth are just the words to warm a general manager’s heart. If his body could produce with a pepperoni pizza what his hockey stick can do with a puck, the consensus would read ‘All-Star’.”

Burdon’s estimated salary of $50,000 to $75,000, Jay writes, “should easily keep the cupboard full so he can eat his way to stardom.”

September ’74:  Jay writes from Port Huron, Mich., where head coach Bep Guidolin, who had coached Boston’s Bruins the previous season, prepares to open camp. “It may suddenly hit Bep Guidolin this morning exactly what he has done to himself.  The new Kansas City Scouts will line up in birthday red, blue, and gold uniforms for their baby pictures this morning, an appropriate time for Bep’s expansion shock to set in.   When it’s time for No. 4 to take his turn in front of the flash it won’t be Bobby Orr who skates out…If Guidolin is under any remaining illusions that coaching the Kansas City Scouts won’t be a different trip from coaching the Boston Bruins they should go up in a blaze of ice chips before the last shutter snaps shut.”

September ‘74: In their first exhibition game, with a two-man advantage, the Scouts pass the puck into their own net to cap a 4-1 loss to the Penguins.  Jay writes: “The Scouts’ historic first game was not without its comic overtones, but neither was it a start-to-finish clown act.”

The Scouts opened their regular season with eight road games because the new Kemper Arena was still under construction. They returned to KC with an 0-7-1 record. “When the plane landed on the runway in Kansas City, the team broke into applause,” Jay recalled. “But I’m 24 years old with my own major beat and traveling for the first time. It was a blast.”

November ’74:  Jay writes of the Scouts’ home opener at brand-new Kemper Arena:  “From an esthetic standpoint it’s not exactly the Taj Mahal, and it’s not exactly finished either, but lest we pinch ourselves and wake up from this dream we are all having, Crosby Kemper Memorial Arena is seated in its proper place in the stockyards and awaiting the turning of a key…It is culmination night for the Ed Thompson follies, the night the founder, president and at one time thought-to-be pathetic dreamer of the Scouts has pointed to for four years of merry-go-rounds and roller coasters concerning franchise applications, referendums, law suits, construction sites and bonus babies.”

January ’75:  Jay writes of the high point of the Scouts’ first season.  Dateline: Bloomington, Minnesota.  “Beyond Cloud Nine there may be a Cloud Ten, and the Scouts flew here yesterday in an attempt to reach it.  Whether the airplane was necessary was conjecture after the Scouts scored an astounding 3-2 victory over the Bruins Thursday night in Boston Garden.”

The Scouts finished 15-54-11. As bad as they were, Jay was good.  Didn’t take long for larger markets to notice him.  In October ‘75 the Evening Bulletin of Philadelphia plucked him out of KC.  Hired him to cover the Stanley Cup champion Flyers in one of the most competitive markets in the country. Three years out of college.  

I hated to see Jay go, but knew dominos would fall.  After he had left Mizzou in ‘72 I got his beat and column.  This time it took three months for his beat to fall into my lap, in January ‘76.  I covered the Scouts until they packed up and moved to Denver that summer, never to return. By the next winter KC had a Central Hockey League team, the Blues.  My beat was minor league, but only for a season, thanks to Jay.  He called me in the spring of ‘77 with a tip.  The Boston Globe needed someone to cover the Bruins.

“Get your application in,” he urged.  

“Can I use you as a recommendation?”  

His signature chuckle erupted.

“Not if you want to get hired.” 

Self-effacement was part of Jay’s shtick, too.  Turns out, his recommendation helped.  I worked for the Globe for 15 years, and I’ve lived near Boston since 1977.  The early direction of my life was influenced by Jay.

Our friendship endured, through all the twists and turns, his marriage to Mona and mine to Alison, and the joy and challenge of fatherhood. Jay’s career was always a success, but never more so than after his 17 years at the Post ended in 2011.  He forged ahead, wrote three books, covered Princeton football for the university, and churned out freelance hockey articles. His opus, “The Philadelphia Flyers at 50” came out in 2016, and the next year he brought one to Boston and gave it to me over lunch.  A massive 594-page coffee table book. 

“Congratulations,” I said. “Does it come with a forklift?”

His signature chuckle.

“Open it,” he said.

So I did.  The inscription reads: “To Steve. With Almost 50 Years – Can You Believe It? — Of Friendship and Respect.  Jay.”

I learned a lot from Jay, one thing being that a story needs a strong kicker.  He was masterful at kickers.  And I am certain that he would have one now, politely offered, for his own ending.  Something funny and sensitive and truthful.  The way he wrote his life.