An airplane of some sort flew over my house the other day, so high up there you couldn’t see it – just the long wake of silken contrail across the sky. At some point the white vapor line began to fold, like ribbon candy, then it broke apart.

Then it became a smudge, a streak of white slowly erased from a blue chalkboard.

As you know, this great little newspaper is fading away, the victim of relentless arithmetic and a soulless economy.

And nothing will be missed more than the Citizen Sports section.

Forever ragged-on as the toy department, Sports has actually been an island of sanity in a stormy sea of political, financial and crime news.

What you’ve read here has made sense, for the most part. And that’s why you turned to Sports.

Press Row has always had an essential part in the games we love to watch. I can’t imagine a big sporting event without the ink-stained wretches of the media there to tell the story.

In times like these, the sports pages are like a warm breath blown through cold fingers.

And it saddens me more than I can tell you that the Tucson Citizen is about to draw its last breath.

We’ve been there on the greatest days of University of Arizona athletics. We covered the national championships, the Olympic gold medalists, the dreams come true.

And more than a few nightmares.

It was my great fortune to join the Citizen’s Sports department in August 1976, after two years on the news side. Bruce Johnston covered Wildcats football, Steve Weston basketball, Regis McAuley wrote columns, Naaman Nickell was the copy chief and Jack Rickard was the sports editor.

For the better part of three decades, I slid in and out of various beats. After Regis retired, I stuck mostly to columns.

Johnston became sports editor after a time, followed by Peter Madrid and then the current top guy, Mike Chesnick. Somewhere in there, the late Phil Hamilton filled in briefly.

Nothing I ever covered was as much fun as the Tucson Sky professional volleyball team. The Sky was the last world champion of the International Volleyball Association, in 1979. The league folded the following year; the Sky never did.

And every once in a while, somebody will dig up the grave of that motley mascot, Spike the Skygull, and wear the costume to a party. Doug Clark owned the Sky, along with Burt Kinerk and others. Games were played at Catalina High School. At halftime, fans would go outside on the parking lot to smoke. Some used tobacco.

Bob Garrett was the general manager, the funniest man alive. I went to lunch one day with Bob at the old Cafe Olé downtown. In order to pay for his liverwurst sandwich, he first had to go to the bank and I went along. All of a sudden I noticed Bob, standing in line as if nothing were wrong, wearing the large, yellow foam feet of Spike, including ugly toenails.

The most inspirational team was the 1980 Arizona national championship baseball team, so ably coached by Jerry Kindall, Jim Wing and Jerry Stitt. The Wildcats, led by outfielder Terry Francona, now the manager of the Boston Red Sox, were dead last in the Pacific-10 Conference Southern Division (“Six Pac”) at semester break.

They roared back, winning almost every game in the final inning or two, and took the conference title. Then they came back through the losers’ bracket at the College World Series in Omaha to win the NCAA championship, UA’s first in a team sport.

Jim Young was the finest coach I ever met. He was Arizona football coach from 1973 through 1976. He was a winner here, at Purdue and then at West Point, using different offensive philosophies at each stop.

The late Larry Smith and his Arizona football teams were a joy to cover. I still can’t believe Smitty’s been gone now more than a year. His wife, Cheryl, brought the same positive influence to Arizona football that Bobbi Olson, Lute’s late wife, did to Wildcats basketball.

Lute, of course, is a Tucson monument. His 24 years as head coach brought the school its greatest athletic accomplishments . . . 589 victories, the 1997 NCAA championship, four Final Four appearances, 11 Pacific-10 Conference championships, an unbelievable 43-7 record against Arizona State.

As sports columnist, I got to travel along with some wonderful beat writers to the big games: Dave Petruska, Steve Rivera, Bryan Lee, Charles Durrenberger and then John Moredich in football. . . . Rickard, Cindy Somers and then Rivera in basketball. . . . Petruska in baseball.

It was a pleasure to work with some of the finest athletic directors in UA history . . . Dave Strack, Cedric Dempsey and Jim Livengood. And with sports information directors Frank Soltys, Bob Jacobsen, Mike Parkinson, Butch Henry and Tom Duddleston.

Covering Tucson’s La Fiesta de los Vaqueros rodeo for many years was a treat. So was the old Tucson Open golf tournament, run so well by the Conquistadores, the greatest group of volunteers in the country.

The men and women I’ve worked with in Sports, writers and editors, were dedicated, talented people. We were an afternoon paper in an age when people preferred to read their news in the morning. We felt we had to work harder than our competitors.

We were like a Jeep battling its way out of the swamp.

I wish the Arizona Daily Star nothing but the best. You’re on your own now, guys. We can’t help you anymore. Good luck.

From the perspective of a retirement which I entered two years ago, I have grown to appreciate even more the work of the two daily newspapers in Tucson.

Now there’ll be only one.

And it breaks my heart.

Former Citizen Sports Columnist Corky Simpson’s book, “Corky: 30 Years of Sports Commentary, Heroes, Egos, Gloves, Sweat and Tears,” is still available. E-mail him at jokwriter@yahoo.com

Corky Simpson and Jeff Smith

The parade’s gone by. No more trumpets. No more drums. No hoofbeats, no streamers.

And the hush of the street is overwhelming.

The death of a newspaper is very much the end of a living, breathing soul. And there’s never been one quite as unique as the Tucson Citizen.

Years from now when you tell young people what the Citizen was like, remember this: It had a heartbeat.

It was the harvest, the milling and the preparation of ideas by people of character, most of whom were characters. They gave the paper its heart, its spirit and its blemishes.

Some had swagger, and over the years many had stagger.

We’ve been peopled by saints and sinners, wise men and flim-flammers and in the old days, a few fall-down drunks who always got up in time to put the old gal to bed.

We’ve had Daniel Boone characters who talked like Jed Clampett and wrote like Stephen Vincent Benet.

We’ve had stutterers who sounded like Mortimer Snerd but had a mind like Carl Sagan.

And there were the legends.

Ted Craig was a gifted editor and writer, but his real talent was the telling of tall tales. Well, that and sizing down human monuments to arrogance.

Ted was a fine athlete, though he didn’t exactly look the part. He was an outstanding golfer because he hit the ball so straight, no matter what club he used.

He also played a good game of tennis and was known to pack the most potent “grapefruit juice” ever tasted in his Thermos bottle.

Phil Hamilton was an Okie. I mean, he dripped Okie. He lived in my part of town and gave me a ride one day after I’d left my old Ford with Bill the mechanic at Palo Verde Automotive out on East 22nd Street.

“Cain’t have a body out in this heat, footback a’ walkin,’ ” Hamilton drawled.

Phil did everything. Reported, edited, wrote a column, covered politics, read copy, wrote headlines. And he was superb.

Bob Campbell was one of the funniest men who ever lived. Our liaison with the back shop when we actually had a back shop, Bob occasionally came to work late – and always had a story to tell to start off the day.

Such as the time, around Halloween, when Campbell announced he knew exactly how many people had come to his house to trick or treat – even though Bob wasn’t at home.

“I went to the bank and got 20 shiny new silver dollars,” he said, “and I spread them out on a card table in my front yard. When I got home, every one of them was gone, so I know conclusively, that there were 20 trick-or-treaters.”

Stu Robertson was a copy editor who occasionally nodded off late in the day. One afternoon he had a cigarette between two fingers and he had that hand on his forehead as he drifted into dreamland – and set his hair on fire.

Micheline Keating wrote the most beautiful movie reviews you’ve ever read. Somebody told me “Mike” had been a friend of the famous writer-poet Dorothy Parker, known for her wit and wisecracks.

John Jennings may not have been the best storyteller on the old Citizen staff, but he could imitate storytellers in such a way that he outdid their talent. Just recently we laid our beloved “J.J.” to rest.

There were so many characters. Such as the guy on the copy desk way back when, who came to the Citizen out of rehab and who thought he was Humphrey Bogart. Had the lisp, the voice and the mannerisms. Unfortunately, he didn’t have Lauren Bacall.

For nearly 140 years the Citizen brought you news from around the community, the state, nation and world. Through war and peace, famine and times of plenty. From the frontier of territorial days through statehood.

Not just anyone can do this job and do it right. Not even trained journalists. Especially trained journalists!

It takes newspaper people, some of whose personal flaws over the years somehow enabled them to create professional refinement.

The awards, the prizes, the hardware from corporate honchos were just trinkets. The Citizen’s real honor was a decoration of the heart – hardworking professionals doing their best to give Tucson its best news coverage and presentation.

Now the little paper at Park and Irvington has been given its summons to join the innumerable once-upon-a-time caravan.

When you remember the time this city had two newspapers competing – and making each other better – don’t think of this one as the loser.

The loser is the community. Tucson has lost an essential voice, living, breathing, ink-stained history recorded by the finest, most competent and dedicated ding-a-lings on Earth.

Things happened, news broke and time passed away. So, now, has the Tucson Citizen.

The parade’s gone by.

And now, final words from Corky and Jeff

Our heart beat as one with the Old Pueblo’s

Corky Simpson is a retired sportswriter who graced our pages regularly from Labor Day 1974 to Dec. 22, 2006.

Glory days: The Tucson Toros' infield, circa 1970 (from left): Mickey McGuire, Steve Huntz, Luis Alcaraz and Bob Spence.

Hi Corbett Field is more than a ballpark. The Toros are more than a nickname. And the reunion of these icons means more to Tucson than simply good news.

Bring out the fireworks, the mariachis, children singing and dancing. Send a squadron of fighter planes low across the city, shaking light poles, windows, chandeliers and apathy.

Break out a keg of cheer, folks – happy days are here again.

May the Triple-A baseball franchise we’ve just lost amuse the newly divorced of Reno. Let those fans pour out their die-hard devotion on players not around long enough for anyone to catch their names.

We’re getting a bunch of kids who’ll bust their britches all summer to get discovered, young players who won’t complain about sharing their wonders with such things as piñata-busting, pie-throwing, three-legged races and hot dog-eating contests.

And if the storks at Reid Park Zoo get diarrhea again – as was diagnosed once, due to a July Fourth fireworks exhibition in nearby Hi Corbett – well, bring the birds to the ballpark and feed them popcorn.

We’ve lost Pacific Coast League baseball but we’re getting a team in the Golden Baseball League. We’re back in the minors and darn proud of it.

Jay Zucker couldn’t sell Triple-A baseball down on Ajo Way, so he sold the Tucson Sidewinders to Nevada interests.

But Jay refused to yell “uncle,” and he’s bringing a Golden League team to town next season. He’ll call them the “Toros.”

I think Tucson will buy this brand of baseball.

Maybe Jay will patch up the old “Tuffy” costume and get someone dumb enough to wear it for four hours on a hot summer night, hugging children and posing for pictures.

Remember years ago when Tuffy and a fan who was trying to outrun the mascot down the third base line got into a fight? Fists flew and they rolled in the dirt. That video still turns up on highlight – and low-light – shows on TV.

We all have our memories of Hi Corbett Field and the Toros. Some of us are old enough to remember teams called the “Lizards” and the “Cowboys” of long-ago summer nights at the ballpark between Broadway and 22nd Street, west of Alvernon.

I remember the San Diego Chicken and Max Patkin, the Clown Prince of Baseball. I remember talking to Ricky Nelson along the third base line before a postgame concert in 1985, shortly before the singer died in a plane crash in Texas.

And “Tucson Lenny” Rubin, the greatest go-fer in minor league baseball history.

And Ray McNally, print and broadcast journalist, PR man and golf hustler. Jack Donovan, the first of a string of remarkable general managers. Mike Feder, another GM and his wife, Pattie, who was part of the front office.

Little Dave Bell, so devoted a fan that he brought a scorebook to every Toros game. Dave knew all the ballplayers, even visitors such as future big leaguers Steve Garvey, Ron Cey and Mike Marshall – and they knew him, on a first-name basis.

Lee Marvin made it to a lot of Toros games. Michael Landon, James Garner, Kevin Costner, Phil Harris, Robert Duvall, Pat Paulsen and other entertainment figures showed up in the grandstand from time to time.

Pitching coach Brent Strom taught actor Kevin Kline how to pitch for some movie.

“Major League” was filmed there in 1989. Forty years before that, “The Kid From Cleveland” used Hi Corbett for a lot of background shots.

A decade ago, 91-year-old Roy Drachman threw out the first pitch – ever – at the new Tucson Electric Park. But Roy saw a lot more games at Hi Corbett over the years and was instrumental in talking the Cleveland Indians into training there, beginning in the 1940s.

But the old ballyard’s most memorable character was a cat, Garfield. He owned Reid Park, and for years haunted Hi Corbett nightly in search of squirrels, gophers and world-class cockroaches.

Then one night Garfield discovered baseball. Actually, he discovered fans in the grandstand naive enough to share their nacho-cheese-jalapeno snacks, their hot dogs and their beer. Garfield loved them all – the food and beer, not the fans.

When Garfield died in May 1985, Rubin, in his best Brooklynese, delivered this moving eulogy over the public address system:

“Dey put da cat to sleep, folks. He had distempah and – whatchacallit? – no white corpuskies or somethin’. Now, I know yous’ll miss da cat, but please don’t bring no cats to da ballpock. I don’t want no tree-hunnerd cats here tomorrah night.”

Ah, minor league ball at Hi Corbett Field. The legend lives on, thanks to Jay Zucker’s love for baseball and the fans of Tucson.

Corky Simpson is a retired Tucson Citizen sports columnist who attended an untold number of games at Hi Corbett Field.

Where to begin? Well, how about “The End”? This is it for me at the Tucson Citizen. This effort will be my final column after 32 years as a full-time employee and a year writing once a week.

My column has been put out to pasture. I’ve been a deskman, reporter and sports columnist, and now I’m a budget cut.

It’s a strange assignment, but if the absence of my presence is what the newspaper needs, at least I’m helping the cause.

I actually retired Dec. 22, 2006, the last dinosaur on Planet Newspaper, and was given the opportunity to write one column a week.

It’s been fun, and the Saturday gig kept me in the game a while longer. Had it lasted just a few weeks more, I could have bragged about being a 50-year man in the business.

My wife, Marge, and I moved to Green Valley at the end of October. I am the only man down here who doesn’t play golf. If this gets out, I’ll be evicted, so when I’m standing in line at the grocery store or some public place, I practice my backswing and putting stroke.

The truth is, I have neither a backswing nor a putting stroke. What I do have is a lot of great memories from a newspaper career that began Feb. 2, 1958, at the Carthage (Mo.) Evening Press.

Friends occasionally have asked about the most exciting events in my career, and in the interest of precious news space, here are just a few:

• At the 2001 Final Four in Minneapolis, very late one night or early one morning (I forget which), I mistook a real bus for media transportation. I realized something was wrong when I saw the outline of windmills and farm buildings passing by. We were about 35 miles into the Minnesota hinterland.

The story doesn’t stop there. The bus driver was convinced he was dealing with a mental patient, and as I live and breathe, he turned around and took me back to the arena.

The story doesn’t stop there, either. Afraid of being alone in a scary part of the city, I looked around for someone to walk with back to my hotel.

I found a large group of people dressed in green. It didn’t occur to me that they were Michigan State fans until one of them asked where I was from. Arizona had just beaten Michigan State to advance to the national championship.

No matter, the good-natured Spartans fans let me accompany them.

It doesn’t quite stop there. Pretty soon a van came by and half a dozen of those Michigan State fans jumped in, pulling me with them.

The driver was bombed, and he ricocheted off one curb to the other, zigzagging all the way toward downtown Minneapolis. I could just see a mention in Steve Rivera’s notes column for the Citizen the next day: “Fellow reporter arrested with other drunks after game.”

About eight blocks from my hotel, I told my new friends, “This is where I get off.”

One of them was sober enough to notice there was no hotel in sight. I said, well, my rental car is parked nearby. I didn’t have a rental car.

• In San Antonio one year, after writing breathless prose about another basketball game, I went to the NCAA hospitality room in the media hotel and asked for a $2 glass of communion wine. The place was almost empty. I decided to stroll out on the veranda, a sort of patio on the 15th floor, to enjoy the downtown lights.

I contemplated the absolute beauty of San Antonio, one of my favorite cities, and thought deeply about the Alamo and the meaning of what took place there. A while later, I decided to call it a night (or early morning) and discovered I had locked myself out of the hospitality room, which, of course, was now closed. Not a soul in sight.

Then I pondered death by hypothermia. An hour or so later, screaming and pounding on the glass door, I managed to get the attention of a janitor, who unlocked the door and saved my life.

• Riding in the first row, window seat on the right side of a media bus on the Santa Monica Freeway in California one day decades ago, I heard a loud “BOOM!” and felt something weird in my right ear. I pulled tiny pieces of safety glass from my ear – after the driver said he saw a young citizen with a rifle raise up from shrubbery and shoot the window.

I was thus introduced to the modern phenomenon of freeway snipers.

• As I was watching the Giants play the Dodgers one night, sitting in the upper deck of the right-field stands at frigid Candlestick Park in San Francisco, my tam-o’-shanter-type cap was removed from my freezing noggin by University of Arizona baseball coach Jerry Kindall. He yanked the cap down over his ears, and it was one of the funniest sights I’ve ever seen. J.K. could have auditioned for “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.”

• Many years ago, I spied the actor Lee Marvin early one morning in an otherwise empty Tucson airport.

I yelled out, “Shelleen!” He used that name for one of the two characters he portrayed in the movie “Cat Ballou.”

Marvin grinned and drew on me, aiming a deadly finger in my direction.

There actually were ballgames and stuff. Pretty exciting, too, some of them. But I’ve already written those stories, so I thought I’d finish with real-life drama I experienced . . . along the way.

Take care. See ya later.

A year into retirement, what I miss the most is what I thought I’d miss the least:

Press row and those who monger words at that great exaggerated workbench.

I said goodbye to this strange Honah Lee in December 2006, leaving the Citizen after 32 years.

Sportswriting is a curious business, and I miss the boys and girls engaged in it.

Their work can bring out the best in the worst of them, the bad in the best of them, and always comes within a pressure-cooker of haste. Allegro and fortissimo had better be their tempo and tone, otherwise they’ll be working on an assembly line at a pretzel-salting factory.

They sit there at this weird courtside laboratory where verbs and nouns and adjectives – lots of adjectives – are zapping and snapping like electrodes into the air. Thoughts burble like green goop in a glass container.

In the back of their minds there’s always one mandate, best illustrated, I think, in “Animal Crackers,” by Groucho Marx:

“If you get near a song, play it.”

Their words’ eye view is very much a part of the game itself, as detached from patronage – hopefully – as the performance of the officials.

People who watch sitting down quite often know more about the game than people who watch it running up and down the court or the field. Most of them are on press row.

But you wouldn’t know it by talking to critics – fans who judge sportswriting by whether it puts their team in the most favorable light.

Sportswriters don’t always have a cold eye for talent, for sure.

Some do, most don’t. But their accounts and descriptions put the official brilliance on brilliant point-guards, the power on powerful running backs and often bring about as much tingle to the back of your neck as the story line of the very same contest you watched.

Doing calisthenics with words can be a treacherous thing and these reporters have to be careful. Those who aren’t, pay the price. They can lose credibility, respect, the ear of the ones written about or their assignments or jobs.

It’s easy to get carried away as a sportswriter. It’s possible to confuse athletic success with genuine character. Happens all the time, in fact.

The truth is – and sportswriters must never forget this – that too many of our sports heroes, champions and conquerors will one day sleep in hallways, on stairs and beneath bridges like trolls, or wander the streets in utter confusion.

Rote characterizations in the analyses of ballgames can’t translate to these human disasters. Such real-world defeat requires portrayal in a completely different language.

Fans and readers should remember that sportswriters do their best to put the story in print in the most accurate, readable and hopefully, entertaining way.

Contrary to what you probably think, it’s not the easiest or the most pleasant job in the world. A publisher I worked for once told me, “There are people in this community who make 10 times your salary who’d give it all to have your job.”

Uh huh. But let them battle a gimpy computer or failed electrical socket in a darkening and silent press box about 1 a.m. on the road and on deadline – while angry, anxious editors yell colorful words of Anglo-Saxon origin into their cell phones.

Let sportswriter wannabes walk into a Major League Baseball clubhouse and discover the joy of being treated like a green fly at a picnic.

Let them understand, clearly, that which is deep and lasting as opposed to the superficial payoff of the moment – and deal with the fact they MUST go the superficial route once in a (painful) while to explain a play or a strategy or a game.

Let them interview, on deadline, a coach who talks in tongues or technicalities, or an athlete who can’t articulate the language at all and dots his incomplete sentences with “you know” and leaden clichés that make no sense.

Just the same, sportswriting is not only an honorable profession, but a pleasure when the bright word falls and is right on target.

That powerful slugger Robert Frost hit a home run in a letter to a friend named Louis Untermeyer in 1916. Describing what poetry was all about, Frost said, “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a lovesickness . . . it finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”

Sometimes that happens in the strange world of sportswriting, when a feeling from the heart finds a thought and the thought finds the right words.

Not all of my heroes are on the court, on the diamond or the field. A lot of them are looking out on their pond, fishing from a log called Press Row.

Editor’s note: Corky Simpson’s weekly column will end Jan. 5. It is among features that are being cut under budget constraints for 2008.

Maybe you’ve noticed the new look in Arizona men’s basketball jerseys. It could have been inspired by Old World ecclesiastical underdrawers, tighter at the neck and shoulders as if to cover up as much as possible.

Hanging is too good for a lot of today’s uniforms, and the Wildcats’ duds are no exception.

Why this sport has developed such a tolerance for eccentricity in dress is puzzling.

The worst thing that ever happened was the bloomer craze, influenced by Michael Jordan, who obviously liked to play in his pajamas.

It’s still in vogue, unfortunately. Jordan wasn’t the first superstar guilty of starting a silly fad.

Wilt Chamberlain was the leader of the band – sweatband gripping his noggin and rubber bands around his wrists – when he played. Kids picked up on that in a hurry, and as soon as they were old enough to pick up a ball and bounce it, they were doing the sweatband and rubber band thing.

Frankly, I think one reason the Wildcats are playing a better brand of basketball this year is the absence of sweatbands. Those things don’t soak up sweat as much as they squeeze rational thought out of heads.

Bloomers are different. I debated the subject with no less a traditionalist than Lute Olson a few years ago, and he took the side of the new fashion. He claimed to have won with this summation:

Well, the trunks kids wear today are a lot more comfortable than the bun huggers of our era.

True enough. In my day, basketball trunks came in three sizes: small, medium and don’t bend over.

But today, it’s not just the length, it’s also the upcreep. There are some major league wedgies on the hardwoods of Our Land created by these crazy, oversized trunks.

In the spirit of fairness, though, they are long enough at the hem to hide skinned knees.

Lute may be right about comfort. But as clownish as those 17th-century pantaloons worn in England during the reign of Charles II were, today’s basketball bloomers and B.V.D. jerseys are funnier.

This era will surely go down in basketball history as the age of dopey costumes.

For years the look was simple: undershirts and shorts. From there, the tailors took off on trimming and stripes and slashes, tried out belt loops and belts for the trunks and mostly settled on a combination of elastic and drawstrings to hold them around the waist.

Sadly, the new generation of players doesn’t seem to want its drawers held at the waist, preferring that they rest – barely – on players’ behinds.

Maybe they shouldn’t be looked at in this tone of voice, but those outfits are hideous.

Whatever obscure prank is being played on us, because surely the prank is there, must have the tailors and manufacturers in stitches.

Assuming the work is now done overseas, long ago outsourced to some place where the people don’t know a high-five from a hive of bees, the needle workers must wonder what in the hell folks look like who wear this stuff.

Gussied up in knee-length culottes to race back and forth on a wooden floor, to stuff a ball filled with air through netting dangling from a metal hoop, all beneath a clock that runs backward . . .

Wouldn’t you love to have been there when the sporting goods manufacturers first told those foreign seamstresses, none of whom knew what a basketball was, what they wanted and what it was for?

Of course, the people who wear these outrageous uniforms are built like skyscrapers. But that’s another story.

Many years from now, when you tell others what today’s uniforms looked like, be kind.

And remember, the athletes have to wear what they’re given in the equipment room.

But you have to wonder, where do we go from here?

It’s not inconceivable that down the road a bit, basketball will become the kind of event where one team shows up dressed in barrels and the other in chicken suits.

But the object of the game itself will always be: Mirror, mirror on the wall . . . who’s the quickest to the ball?

Corky Simpson writes a column every Saturday for the Citizen.

On the very same day the mailman brought my first ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame, listing 25 candidates. . .

On the very same day Alex Rodriguez signed a $275 million dollar contract to play for the New York Yankees. . .

What may be the worst scandal in the history of the sport explodes.

The Mitchell Report officially proclaims the Steroid Era, a decades long trail of treachery and double-dealing by so-called “heroes” of the game.

To stay on top, to add to their statistics and above all to make more money, superstars of baseball sold their souls for the magic in a vial of goop.

“Why did they do it? What were the pressures of the baseball world, of America. . .that would turn decent, normal, talented men to engage in such betrayal?”

Sounds up-to-the-minute in light of this week’s bombshell. But those words were written 44 years ago about a scandal that happened 88 years ago.

Eliot Asinof was the author and his masterpiece was “Eight Men Out,” a detailed account of the sellout of the 1919 World Series, up to now the saddest day in the history of our national pastime.

“Pride and vanity led to his doom,” another author, Johann von Goethe, wrote in his 19th Century magnum opus, “Faust.”

So far, 86 — eighty six! — players have been fingered in the steroid scandal, 33 of them active. More reputations and careers will doubtless float down this sewer before the smell dies out.

In Faust, Mephistopheles, the devil, asks Faust: “Poor son of Earth, how couldst thou thus alone have led thy life bereft of me? I, for a time at least, have worked thy cure. . .”

How could, and why would, a modern baseball player with the physical gifts to make it to the Hall of Fame on his own, inject himself with a drug known to be dangerous, to give himself more strength?

To answer that question with another: Do we need any more proof that they’re paying these clowns too much money to perform?

A good friend of mine in the medical profession told me not long ago, “Before long we’ll have to take drugs ourselves to watch these idiots play.”

The players aren’t the only ones to blame, as Sen. George Mitchell, who headed the steroid investigation, said in his report. Baseball is a billion-dollar industry of plutocrat owners and lavishly rich ballplayers. Turning a blind eye to the problem of juicing up was easy.

Not only that — baseball was late in banning drugs in part because of the Players Association, the most aggressive and successful labor union in the history of mankind. In out-thinking and out-flanking ownership on every issue ever raised in working agreements, and in its protecting player privacy at all costs, the union aided and abetted the drug culture.

The game is afloat in performance-enhancing drugs.

Coincidentally, the International Olympic Committee has just stripped the world’s biggest track and field star, Marion Jones, of her five Olympic medals — taking her name off the record books — after she confessed to being a drug cheat.

But she had the courage to step forward and admit it. Baseball stars were outed by clubhouse employees and training staff who, under pressure to talk or face serious penalty, spilled the beans.

Those who care about the game can’t allow sadness and sentimentality to interfere with what has to be done.

Commissioner Bud Selig, whose overwhelming incompetence in dealing with the union’s slick bossman, Donald Fehr, has diminished the sport, must take action. He has promised to do exactly that, but this time he must act for the good of the game — not for the good of the union or for player agents.

“Every American, not just baseball fans, ought to be shocked into action,” Mitchell said. His report showed us in painful detail, how player after player injected himself (or was injected) with steroids or human growth hormone, bought illegal substances, signed bank checks and accepted shipping receipts.

All for an edge. Grow bigger and disport with the gods of the game (not to mention pink elephants).

Bulked up, they smashed the most cherished records of a sport which, above all others, cherishes records. Now they must pay the devil his due.

Union or no union, players who used a syringe to accumulate Hall of Fame numbers should be kept out of Cooperstown. Let them have their own shrine, preferably in some sleazy backyard laboratory.

The commissioner, the owners and all who care about the game must do everything in their power to clean up Major League Baseball or watch it become just another cheap sideshow unworthy of decent followers.

“Where did we go right?”

- “The Producers,” by Mel Brooks

Life is too confusing. So often, what seems real and certain and sure to last forever isn’t and doesn’t. What shouldn’t be, is.

It’s a crazy, crazy world.

Take love. It usually finds a way to conquer all, but many times winds up like a motorcycle daredevil trying to jump over one too many Greyhound buses.

Lute Olson’s marriage to second wife Christine Toretti Olson appears over.

He has filed for divorce in Pima County Superior Court. They were married four years ago, about two years after the death of Lute’s first wife, Bobbi, from ovarian cancer, on Jan. 1, 2001.

Lute has been on leave from the University of Arizona basketball team since Nov. 4.

It would be nice to leave this story alone at this point and let the lawyers work things out. Quietly.

But Lute, 73, is the most famous man in Tucson, if not Arizona, and the divorce is the Big Secret everyone has been asking about – all over the country.

It helps explains Lute’s mysterious absence from the team he recruited and put together and then suddenly, just over a month ago, turned over to top assistant Kevin O’Neill.

Here we have an authentic sports legend, with a soul stoked by competitive coals, wed to a captain of industry. . .

That’s not a match, it’s a match-up.

As beautiful as this couple were together, it would appear the marriage was as difficult and stinging as what every family faces, or will eventually face. That’s life, dammit.

In “The Producers,” two zany characters try to come up with the worst possible idea for a Broadway musical in order to fleece investors.

In the marriage of Arizona’s Hall of Fame basketball coach and the high-profile businesswoman/Republican national committee woman, it looked for the world to most of us that an impossible match had become a dream marriage.

Apparently not.

Lute has said he won’t be back for the rest of the season. Fortunately, the Arizona basketball team has O’Neill, one of the few coaches in the country as good as Olson.

Maybe Lute had this in mind when he brought O’Neill aboard earlier this year, as defensive coordinator, and lobbied successfully for a salary for Kevin far above that of most assistants.

It was appropriate, though, because O’Neill has skills far above most assistants. The guy who helped Lute build and coach the best team in UA history – the 1987-88 bunch that went 35-3 and was the first from Arizona to reach the Final Four – is the right man at the right time.

Whether O’Neill leads the Wildcats through the remainder of this season and then returns to his position as assistant, or becomes the head coach should Lute decide he’s too old to attempt a comeback, this much is certain:

O’Neill is equal to the task, whatever it is.

He has plenty of head coaching experience, at Marquette, Tennessee, Northwestern and the NBA’s Toronto Raptors.

He knows the game inside-out. He connects with the players. And he has a passion for basketball at least equal to Lute’s.

But the task at hand is for Lute and Christine to deal with one of life’s toughest situations, while O’Neill deals with one of college basketball’s toughest schedules.

The hope is that the Olsons’ private agony won’t become a media feast. The reality is, that is probably impossible.

Lute and Christine are simply too famous – and the price of fame is notoriety, often unwanted. We would like to leave this thing alone, but it is a genie out of the jug.

It’s sad. We feel terrible for this extraordinary couple.

A marriage fallen apart is a tragedy, and our heart goes out to two excellent people who may have attempted the impractical – in an impossible time.

Corky Simpson writes a column every Saturday for the Citizen.

Kush

They call it the Territorial Cup, or the “Duel in the “Desert.” But it ought to be the Frank Kush Cup.

More than anyone else, this tough old bird and Hall of Fame coach made the Arizona-Arizona State football game what it is.

Hostile . . . snarly . . . caustic . . . harsh . . . pick your poison.

Fans at both schools root all season for their favorite – and every week leading up to the finale – for whoever is playing the dreaded enemy.

The more Frank Kush improved Sun Devil football from 1958-79, the more he increased the resolve of the Wildcats to knock them off. He was brilliant at both.

Even at 78 and coming off knee replacement surgery, Kush still gets fired up during the week of the bitter rivalry.

It’s more than a football game, he said.

“ASU-Arizona is more like two separate states in some kind of border war,” said the man who contributed more than anybody to making it so.

“People don’t realize the level of intensity between these two institutions,” Kush said. “It’s not only in athletics, but business-wise, politically and every way you can think of, these schools compete against each other.

“I learned when I first came to Arizona in 1955 as an ASU assistant under Dan Devine how intense this game was,” Kush said. “I was just a young kid at the time and ‘rivalry’ to me meant Michigan State, where I played, vs. Michigan.

“But I didn’t know what I was in for. This thing out here on the desert was . . . chaotic in its intensity. And I think that’s great. I hope it never changes.”

It did change during Kush’s 21 years as head coach at Arizona State. It got even more intense.

Kush was a marvelous teacher and motivator, but his disposition could get crabbier than the grass. His teams were rugged and ferocious, but Kush never coached a player as tough as he was.

There’s a bronze statue of Kush on the ASU campus and it isn’t half as hard as this amazing man. There’s a hill at Camp Tontozona where the Sun Devils train, called “Mount Kush,” and its rocks and cactuses soften in comparison to the old coach.

Kush built a national power at Arizona State, and in the process gave the archrival Wildcats tremendous incentive to improve . . . and they did.

The Kush Devils were 16-6 against Arizona, including a nine-game winning streak from 1965-73.

Bob Crawford, who covered the Sun Devils for many years for the old Phoenix Gazette, recalled the genesis of that ASU dominance.

“In the late summer of 1963, just before the start of the next season,” Crawford said, “the Arizona Coaches Association staged its annual high school All-Star football and basketball games in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona University. Coaches from all the schools were invited to an annual luncheon a day or so before the game.

“Kush and Jim LaRue of Arizona were asked to say a few words. LaRue, who had beaten ASU three years in a row, said something on the order of ‘I want to thank the coaches association for inviting me up here, and I want to thank Frank Kush for helping to make the last three years enjoyable.’

“I sneaked a look at Kush,” Crawford said, “and he was absolutely furious . . . and silent.”

Many years later, Kush said, “I told myself that afternoon that I was never going to lose to that (!!##*%!) again.”

Kush still works for ASU in public relations, and maintains an office in the athletic department complex.

On one wall, there’s a photograph of John Jefferson’s amazing catch (UA fans recall it as a “noncatch”) that helped the Devils defeat Arizona 24-21 in 1975.

“My son Danny kicked three field goals in that game,” Kush said, “so it was very special to me. We went on to beat Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl and finished 12-0 and No. 2 in the country.

“I thought we should have been No. 1.”

Kush expects the usual intensity and fireworks in Saturday’s renewal of the rivalry.

“I think the two coaches are a lot alike,” he said of ASU’s Dennis Erickson and UA’s Mike Stoops. “They know what it takes to get the job done – recruit well and teach well.

“You can see the gradual progress at both schools. Dennis has been around longer and knows the necessary ingredients – although the Devils’ bubble was burst last week by Southern California.

“Stoops has done a commendable job at Arizona. I admire what they’ve done.”

He may be Mr. Sun Devil, but Kush must have a soft spot in his heart for UA’s Medical School.

A son, David, is a graduate and has worked as an anesthesiologist the past 12 years in Phoenix. He was in med school here at the time Mike Parseghian, son of former Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian, was in residency at UA.

So, Frank Kush was asked, you’ve got to appreciate UA for its medical school, right?

“Well, they need it more than we do,” he said in false grouchiness . . . before a big laugh.

Corky Simpson writes a column ever Saturday for the Citizen.

Maybe Charles Barkley was right after all. Sir Charles took a lot of heat for a Nike television spot some 14 years ago when the great pro basketball star declared, “I am not a role model . . . parents should be role models.”

We were reminded of this the other day when TV caught up with Mike Tyson, Michael Vick, Barry Bonds, O.J. Simpson and “Pacman” Jones – and it was a news report, not sports.

Tyson was getting out of jail for DUI and cocaine possession. Vick was going in for running a dogfighting business and for murdering pooches.

Bonds was under the legal microscope again for alleged steroid use, and O.J. was back in court because of the “sting” operation he reportedly organized to regain personal items from a memorabilia collector that the former USC and Buffalo Bills football star argued were stolen.

Pacman’s name was brought up in a conversation about athletes and various off-hours altercations, the sort of thing to which the multitalented Tennessee Titans gridiron star is not exactly a stranger.

What’s the problem with big-time sports heroes, anyhow? How come so many of them seem to have so much trouble obeying the law?

If one of them isn’t throwing a 135-pound ribbon clerk through a mirror at some sports bar, another is busting somebody’s head or leading a raid reminiscent of ancient Vikings to rape and pillage and plunder.

Parents should be role models, indeed.

We’re no longer surprised when a name athlete steps out of bounds with the legal system. In fact, we’ve almost come to expect it. And it’s a shame.

Because kids do try to model themselves after athletic heroes, Barkley’s disclaimer to the contrary notwithstanding.

But what is it with a millionaire ballplayer, fighter, running back, whatever . . . acting like – or being in position to be accused of acting like – a cheap thug?

Pauline Wallin, a Ph.D., in an essay titled “Are Sports Heroes More Trouble-Prone?” answers that question in the affirmative.

“It’s ironic,” she writes, “that so many champions who made it to the top through determination, focus and discipline could display such poor judgment off the playing field.”

How true.

Ms. Wallin says many people blame a system that rewards athletes with outrageously high salaries and provides them instant celebrity and privilege.

While this may be true to a degree, she suggests professional athletes have personality traits that not only enhance their ability in games – but also make them more likely to get into trouble.

To begin with, she writes that most of them are more aggressive and competitive than other people.

“People who are aggressive and competitive don’t back down from a challenge,” she says.

Strangely enough, one characteristic we all admire in athletes – confidence – can also turn a hero into one of those stars behind bars.

“An inflated sense of confidence is one of the factors that leads athletes to take more risk than the average person,” Wallin writes.

Overconfident, an athlete can minimize the consequence of risky behavior.

“Most of these guys thrive on action, quick-changing situations and uncertainty,” she says. “This is what gives them the edge until the very last second of a game.”

Unfortunately, when the game is over, the athlete neglects to turn off that initiative and aggressiveness.

What’s the answer?

“Sports stars have to work harder,” Wallin writes, “to stay out of trouble.”

One of my friends suggested, tongue in cheek, paying bonuses to athletes who obey the law. Maybe another two or three million dollars a year to stay out of jail.

Or they might be forced to play without a helmet (but the way some of them act, it seems they’ve already tried that).

They are what they are – overgrown kids with overgrown egos and a certainty deep inside that because they can run fast, jump high or throw far, they can get away with any damn thing they please.

Barkley was right. Parents should be the role models.

Former UA assistant football coach Tom Roggeman

All the seasons of glory and days of thunder are gone, except on the fresh-trimmed fields of memory. The old coach still prowls those sidelines.

Tom Roggeman is a monument of a man, the sum of life as a football coach.

“Rogge’s” rare breed gives the game of football a worthiness beyond won-loss records, personal acclaim and fortune. They give it a sacred character.

He’s 76 now and alone, his lovely wife, Florence having died after their 49 years together.

“I probably would have cashed it in when Florence passed,” he said, “but the kids all made it home and stayed with me for a while. At one time we had 13 in the house, kids and grandkids. They didn’t give me time to slip into remorse.”

Home now is Granger, Ind., near Mishawaka, where Tom was a high school star.

He and Florence retired to Indiana in the mid-’90s after Tom worked under head coach Larry Smith at USC. Before that, he coached at Arizona for seven years under Smith. Roggeman first came to UA on the staff of Tony Mason in 1977.

Captain of Purdue’s 1952 Big Ten Conference co-champions, then a Marine and then a lineman for the Chicago Bears, he coached for 37 years, seven at the high school level followed by 25 years of college ball.

Roggeman’s skills were far more than X’s and O’s. He was a carnival barker and the football field was his midway.

When the team needed a motivational speech, he was always the speaker. Was he ever! Rogge was William Jennings Bryan tearing into that “Cross of Gold,” Franklin D. Roosevelt pointing to a “Rendezvous With Destiny,” Ronald Reagan telling Russia to “Tear Down That Wall.”

And when he finished, a little army of fired-up football players was ready to tear down any wall.

Too many coaches today live in a private apathy born of fatalism, rather than passion born of hope. They play the part rather than living the life, not realizing their bluff is transparent.

“What I remember most about our time at Arizona,” Roggeman said over the telephone, “was the camaraderie players developed when they got to UA. Some were highly recruited, some were not. We didn’t get a lot of blue-chippers. But we got guys who really wanted to play.

“The bigger the team that was coming in to Tucson, the more fired up our kids got. We were never ready to concede. The other guys might have been highly favored to beat us, but they had to do it on the field.

“We were never beaten before the game started. Our kids just rose up. . . . It was the Gunfight at the OK Corral every doggone Saturday.”

And Rogge looked the part of a tough guy – hefty, muscular and bald.

At Southern Cal, the student section loved the old coach and called him “Uncle Fester” after the goofy ghoul on television’s Addams Family series.

Rogge has been sacked a few times in recent years. In addition to losing Florence, whom he coached in the weight room he built at their Indiana home, he has undergone two hip replacements and not that long ago, had major back-reconstruction surgery.

“I was using a walker for a while,” he said. “My kids put a basket on it, like you’d put on a bicycle, so I could carry things. I’m on a cane now, but that limits you to one hand. So the walker with a basket comes in handy at times.”

Carrying on the respected family name in the sport, sons Buck and Rock Roggeman are football coaches.

Both played high school ball in Tucson. Buck went on to Stanford and is a successful high school coach at Pacific Grove, Calif. Rock, nicknamed for the great Knute Rockne of Notre Dame, played for the Fighting Irish and is on the staff of Skip Holtz at East Carolina.

Time and a battered body have done nothing to lessen their dad’s love for football. The thump of padded gladiators slamming into each other still echoes in Rogge’s mind, and it can inspire the old coach to unpack his heart.

No one ever loved the game more. And few coaches were ever more loved than Tom Roggeman.

Retired Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes every Saturday.

Stitt

You stand there on the bleacher steps at the beautiful, immaculately cared-for campus baseball park and think about him.

You think about the games played there, the oohs and ahhs of the crowd. You think about the championship years and the kids who went on to play in the major leagues.

But on this day, you think about the Greatest Wildcat of Them All – for what he gave and the spirit in which he gave it – Jerry Stitt.

The quiet man known as “Stitter” played four years under Frank Sancet, a tough- minded old coach who left a lasting imprint on Stitt.

Stitt led the team in hitting with a .366 average in 1968 and was a first-team All-American center fielder. He was drafted by the Cleveland Indians and played three years in that organization.

Stitt coached hitters – boy, did he ever! – for 15 years during the Jerry Kindall era before becoming the head coach himself for six seasons.

And now the hitting guru, who helped so many players develop and polish that sweet swing necessary to succeed in baseball, has been inducted into the 2007 Arizona Sports Hall of Fame.

Individuals joining Stitt in the induction class at UA on Friday were Dana Burkholder, volleyball; Tara Chaplin, cross country and track and field; Jennie Finch, softball; Brianna Glenn, track and field; Roland Schoeman, swimming and diving; and Sarah Tolar, swimming and diving.

Stitt was more than an outstanding athlete. In addition to earning first-team All-American honors as the Wildcats’ center fielder, he was an excellent student who graduated on time and then earned master’s and doctoral degrees.

You think about the man who handled himself with such pride and grace and commitment to the game to forever be thought of as a ballplayer (there is no greater title I am aware of), but a competitor always cut deep by defeat.

The Wildcats would win two games out of three in a series and Stitter would say something like, “Yeah, but we let one get away.”

Nobody ever played the game harder. He coached with the same intensity, and more than anyone who ever left a cleat mark on the dirt of that ballpark, he cared.

He cared about the players, he cared about the team, and he cared about the tradition of Arizona baseball.

Terry Francona, who just managed the Boston Red Sox to their second World Series championship in four years, was one of the many players who benefited from Stitt’s teaching.

Francona, also an outfielder, was the NCAA’s player of the year when he led Arizona to the 1980 national championship. He played 10 years in the majors and is managing his second big league ballclub.

“Stitter was the most influential person with me as a young hitter,” Francona said. “And I’m talking about beyond college days at UA. I even went to him after I signed professionally.”

The Wildcats were always among the nation’s top teams offensively under Stitt. Francona, Jack Howell, J.T. Snow, Jack Daugherty and Shelley Duncan, who made a big splash this season with the New York Yankees, were among the many students who learned under Jerry.

Snow, Kevin Long, Scott Erickson and Lance Dickson, all of whom made it to the majors, were on hand to cheer Stitt and the other inductees Friday at the Jim Click Hall of Champions ceremony.

Stitt is now the director of the Baja Arizona Baseball Academy. He is also the hitting instructor for the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Rookie League team in Montana, the Missoula Osprey.

Originally from Phoenix, Stitt was an all-city player at Central High School.

When he followed Kindall as head coach of the Wildcats, Stitt became only the fourth head coach in school history. J.F. “Pop” McKale was the first, Sancet was second, and Kindall was third.

Current coach Andy Lopez, who followed Stitt, is the fifth.

Stitt began his coaching career at Salpointe Catholic High School in 1971.

During his time as hitting coach and then head coach at Arizona, 57 players who sharpened their batting skills under Stitt were drafted by major league teams.

He has an excellent eye for talent and, during his years in college baseball, for recruiting.

His best recruit ever? That’s easy.

It’s Linda, his beautiful and devoted wife. They still live in Tucson.

Who’s afraid of the big, bad blogs? Kevin Allison of the Financial Times’ online operation asks that rhetorical question in a studied and polished essay about “the periodic rants and raves of . . . armchair pundits . . . who opine on everything from politics to pornography to the latest computer gadgets and everything in between.”

That includes college football.

If I live to be 100 (I’m told there are one or two local bloggers out there who believe I already have), I will never understand this phenomenon.

What possible pleasure do people get out of hiding behind a wall of anonymity and throwing grenades at other people?

Moreover, why would the anger and gall of these underachievers be of any interest to normal people?

Well, for one thing, their conversational style of writing is usually pretty good. And for another, their nihilistic raving is fascinating. Sort of like screeching tires on the street outside your house, instinctively you look to see what’s going on.

UA football coach Mike Stoops has endured the wrath of many bloggers this season, but more poison darts have been thrown at his predecessor, John Mackovic, than at anybody else in Tucson’s corner of cyberspace. And the former Arizona Wildcats coach says bloggers are worse than ever.

A brilliant young assistant coach under Jim Young at Arizona in 1973-76, Mackovic returned here after head coaching assignments at Wake Forest (his alma mater), the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL and the universities of Illinois and Texas.

He wasn’t successful as the head Wildcat and was replaced in the middle of his final season here, 2003.

The media were tough on Mackovic, and the bloggers were merciless.

When Mackovic was an ESPN football analyst in 1998, he visited the UA campus.

“I was talking with (head coach) Dick Tomey and his assistants when I asked if any of them knew much about Internet chats and all the garbage that bloggers were writing,” he said. “They looked at me like I was talking about a foreign government.

“Well, now it’s 2007, and the bloggers are bigger and worse than ever.”

Coaches expect criticism, but, as Mackovic said, “nobody likes to be a punching bag.”

During his TV career John told ESPN executives that he wouldn’t participate in “coach-slamming.”

A southern California resident now, Mackovic has written on football for the Palm Springs newspaper.

“Even when I really do not like someone, I try my best to write with a sense of purpose to address the bigger picture,” he said.

Gloom-and-doomers rule the blogosphere this season. Not only here, where the Arizona Wildcats have struggled, but also at Notre Dame and Nebraska and anywhere there’s a vulnerable college football team.

You will learn from bloggers that the coach “is on his way out and he knows it”. . . that the program is doomed unless the athletic director hires a proven winner. . . and that the AD is on his way out, too, if he doesn’t.

All sorts of secret inside information is passed along as quickly as it can be invented by the radical, over-the-edge blogger (as opposed to the rational one).

In the fantasy land of the nut-case blogger, big-time boosters are always getting together and demanding this or that, and it’s only a matter of time till the spit hits the fans.

The writing is always on the wall, even when it’s visible only to these anonymous experts. Their job is to spread the news as fast as they can make it up.

To them, nothing is more fun than kicking a coach while he’s down. It’s much like the two-minutes-of-hate ritual in George Orwell’s “1984.” And because the writers of this stuff are anonymous, there’s no accountability.

Newspaper and magazine online readership has mushroomed in recent years and for good reason.

Dissemination of legitimate news is not only as quick as a lightning bolt – and essential – but it also reaches an immense audience of readers on their personal computers.

But there are invisible trolls on the Internet highway.

Many of the bloggers are temperate and sensible. But there are others who deal in the kind of literature that once defaced the walls of public restrooms.

Blogging is not bad, but bloggers often are.

Earlier this year, the technology researcher Gartner Inc. reported that there are 200 million bloggers out there, but many may give it up because they’re bored and perhaps fed up with the muck merchants.

“A lot of people have been in and out of this thing,” an Associated Press article said, quoting Gartner fellow Daryl Plummer.

Could blogging be near the peak of its popularity? the AP asked.

A college football tradition is the radio postgame show, where unhappy – and sometimes irate – fans call in, demanding pretty much the same as radical bloggers, but in a more civil tone.

When things go bad, fire the coach. That’s the blogger invocation.

It’s hard to ignore them, though. That’s the problem.

Corky Simpson, who retired from the Citizen last year, writes a weekly column every Saturday.

Ty Cobb once dropped in on Shoeless Joe Jackson’s shop

Jackson

A lot of customers knew the old guy behind the counter but out of misplaced courtesy – or embarrassment – never spoke to him.

He was an outcast, an untouchable.

But into his little liquor store in Greenville, S.C., one April day in 1946, came two friends from the old days.

They were passing through on their way home from the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Ga.

Joseph Jefferson Jackson, the proprietor, looked up and for a fleeting instant . . . forgot that he was a nonperson.

As quickly as he looked up, he looked down again. He busied himself with a make-believe spot on the counter, wiping away nothing with an old cloth.

He was careful not to make eye contact.

Joe Jackson was a paunchy old man by now. He moved slowly. The years and the pain had taken away the twinkle in his eyes, extinguished the fire that made him the best player in baseball. Maybe the best ever.

At the top of his game he was a comet racing across the baseball sky. He’d grip his war club, the famous “Black Betsy,” his homemade bat which he stained with tobacco juice, and whack the ball all over the field. Against any pitcher.

When Shoeless Joe Jackson dug in, it didn’t matter who was on the mound.

He was the toughest hitter in the game, a man whose slugging style was copied by a youngster named George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

Jackson could run like the wind, chase down any fly ball that didn’t leave the park, stop on a penny and throw the ball back to the infield with a cannon of an arm.

He would have been in the very first class inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., without a doubt.

He would have, except that his team, the Chicago White Sox, dumped the 1919 World Series to Cincinnati.

Seven players who were involved, and one who wasn’t but knew about the fix and kept silent, were banned for life.

One of the banished was Shoeless Joe Jackson, even though he was the batting star of the series. He had 19 hits, eight RBIs, nine runs scored and the only home run hit by either team.

But Joe kept the money somebody left under a pillow in his hotel room. First he said yeah, he was in on the fix. Then he changed his mind.

Joe was acquitted – they all were – by a Cook County jury of fans who applauded when the verdict was read, then asked for autographs of the accused.

The players were more than a bit smug until a newly chosen czar of baseball, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, a seedy old tobacco-chewing politician, dispensed his own law.

Landis had once sentenced an old man convicted of robbery to prison for 16 years. “Judge,” the geezer said, “I ain’t got that much time left.”

Said Landis, “Well, do the best you can.”

Baseball’s first commissioner banned for life all eight White Sox players, including third-baseman Buck Weaver. He had refused to take part in the fix but knew about it and kept silent.

A quarter-century later, Joe Jackson was tending his liquor store in Greenville when these two old friends came in, writes Harvey Frommer in his book “Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball.”

At first, the two pretended to be buying booze. From time to time they’d take a glimpse of Shoeless Joe.

Eventually, the taller of the two walked up and said, “I know you. You’re Joe Jackson. Don’t you remember me, Joe? I just came by to say hello.”

It was Ty Cobb. Many considered him the greatest ballplayer in history. Just as many believed he wouldn’t have been had Shoeless Joe not been exiled.

Cobb came into the American League in 1905 and left as the game’s No. 1 hitter in lifetime batting average, hits and runs scored. In 1928, at the age of 42, he hit .328.

Joe Jackson came into the league in 1908 and set baseball afire. But the year Cobb hit .328 at age 42, Shoeless Joe was playing sandlot ball under an assumed name. Picking up pocket money, blasting 75 mph fastballs over – and a couple of times through – rickety wooden fences ringing bush league ballparks.

Here they were, after all these years, face to face. One was a Hall of Famer, the other an outcast, a Judas.

Cobb’s bat, glove and spikes went to Cooperstown. He became a millionaire with shrewd investments, including Coca-Cola, which earned him a fortune. Shoeless Joe went the other way, downhill, back to the mill town where he came from, scratching out a living in obscurity.

“Don’t you know me, Joe?”

“I know you,” Joe Jackson said, straightening some bottles that didn’t need straightening, on a shelf behind the counter. “But I wasn’t sure you wanted to speak to me. A lot of them don’t.”

“Joe,” said Cobb, “you had the most natural ability and the greatest swing I ever saw.”

Jackson looked at Cobb, then looked away, wishing, maybe that he could be for just a second what he once had been.

Then Joe smiled at Cobb’s companion, the famous sportswriter Grantland Rice. He knew Rice like family.

All three men went back to the early years of the 20th century, when every crossroads, every whistle-stop town in America had a baseball “nine,” and the boys who went on to the big leagues were celebrities as big as rock stars are today.

“Joe, could I get an autographed ball from you?” asked Cobb. “You know, I always wanted one.”

Shoeless Joe rubbed the stubble on his chin, looked at Cobb with one eye closed and said, “I’ll get you one, Ty. But you’ll have to come back tomorrow. I’m purty busy.”

“Well,” said Cobb slowly, “we’re just passing through, Joe. Tell you what, we’ll do it another time.”

There wouldn’t be another time. This was a duty stop.

Their visit to the liquor store was out of a feeling of responsibility. Somebody really needed to drop in and say hello to Joe.

Rice knew, but Cobb may not have, that Jackson couldn’t give an autograph to anybody. He was an illiterate mill hand before he became a baseball star. Cast out of baseball, he was an illiterate liquor-store owner.

Shoeless Joe died five years later, on Dec. 5, 1951, at age 62. He maintained to the end his innocence in the Black Sox scandal.

Cobb died July 17, 1961, at 74.

Grantland Rice died July 13, 1954, at 73.

Corky Simpson retired from the Tucson Citizen in December. He writes a column every Saturday.

Frank "Pancho" Gonzales, a Tucson Conquistadore who ran local Mexican restaurants for 41 years, died this week at 66.

Frank Gonzales sold us beans and burritos. Then he sold us Buicks.

But mostly the friend we called “Pancho” sold us on the spirit of Tucson, an indomitable energy and warmheartedness unique to this community.

Pancho died this week at 66 after a long illness. The last time I saw him was at Rincon Market several months ago. He was having coffee with friends and he looked like a ghost – a very tall ghost with big feet.

“Panch,” I said, “what’s the matter?” He told me about his illness and said, “They can’t do anything about it, Cork.”

He said he was a churchgoer and “that’s all taken care of.”

His last trip to church was Friday, where immediate family, the Tucson Conquistadores, family and friends gathered for his funeral mass at St. Augustine Cathedral.

Pancho was in the restaurant business for 41 years, owning and operating a number of eateries bearing the family name. The main one was Pancho’s on Grant Road, a Tucson landmark.

In 1971, he joined the Conquistadores, which sponsored the Tucson Open golf tournament for many years, and worked his way up to the top. Conquistadore Bill MacMorran recalled that Pancho was one of the group that started the tradition of early Sunday breakfasts before each final round.

Pancho would cook, of course, along with Richard “Sandy” Sanderson and Don Hickey, who competed in ferocious pancake duels each year.

Gonzales retired as a restaurateur and in 1994 became a salesman at Royal Buick on Speedway. “Sure, I miss the restaurant business,” he told us once. “But I don’t miss the problems and laws and regulations and insurance.”

Pancho said that in selling automobiles, he no longer had to worry “about who burned the beans or why the refrigerator didn’t work.”

“Besides,” he said, “thanks to the best boss in town, Paul Weitman, I’m very happy selling cars.”

He sold me a couple of them. The last one I bought came after I insisted on a test drive – in a Hummer. I told Pancho I couldn’t afford a Hummer and even if I could, it wouldn’t fit in my garage. Those things are w-i-d-e.

But he agreed to the test drive and got permission from Weitman. Then I bought the Buick.

On Sunday, my wife, Marge, and I were on our way home from Missouri and Kansas when the left rear tire of that Buick blew out. We were on Interstate 10 in New Mexico, about eight miles from the Arizona line. I had never seen the spare tire, had no idea how the jack worked or even how to find all that paraphernalia, hidden in the trunk.

We pulled over to the side of the road, literally inches from enormous semis and other vehicles rocketing past at well over the speed limit.

While I was probing the mysteries and complexities of a tire tool – after finally finding the darned thing, buried under one of those tiny spare tires that look like it came off some kid’s little red wagon – Marge was on her cell phone calling our roadside insurance company.

I heard her tell the people on the other end of her call, “My husband is pretty old, he has a touch of arthritis and has no idea how to change a tire.” Something like that.

No husband could back away from such a challenge.

But the whole thing was a scene of chaos and comedy worthy of a Marx Brothers movie. Me, bending down and turning handles, getting dirty and then trying to remove the carcass of a very heavy, very hot tire . . . Marge on her cell phone explaining our plight and for all I knew, talking to somebody in India to whom the matter had been outsourced.

We finally solved the issue – without roadside assistance – and came home, as the old World War II song went, “on a wing and a prayer.”

There was a message on our answering machine from Linda Carter, one of the great amateur golfers in Tucson history, telling me of Pancho’s death.

And I realized that while I was dodging semis and trying to fathom the intricacies of tire-changing, there was this very tall angel with very big feet Up There laughing his wings off.

Rest in peace, Panch. You will be missed.

Retired Citizen sports columnist Corky Simpson writes every Saturday.