Halberstam leaves legacy of hard work, passion

	David Halberstam possessed a curiosity for reporting that stretched from the jungles of Vietnam to the sidelines of the NFL. AP

While David Halberstam is best known for his work as a reporter covering politics and business, he wrote often about sports, and loved the subject. I believe David especially enjoyed writing about sports because he so admired great athletes and could celebrate them, whereas he so often had to write critically of his subjects in other fields. He also firmly believed that so much of the greater world could be revealed through the prism of sports.

David was a terrific sports fan and knowledgeable about games, but there is no doubt that it was the humanity of his subjects which primarily showed through his work. His best-seller, Teammates, about Johnny Pesky, Bobby Doerr and Dom DiMaggio, and their love for their old friend, Ted Williams, is an especially moving book, and my favorite of his -- for what it says of teams, particularly, and of friendship, universally.

No one worked harder than David. He was 73 when the automobile accident took his life Monday, but even though he'd recently endured a heart attack, he was still going full-bent as a journalist. He had only recently finished what he believed to be one of his finest books -- on the Korean War -- and he'd already begun to research his next book, which would be about the legendary Colts-Giants championship game of 1958 and the players of that era. I know how very excited he was about the project because I came from Baltimore, and we had talked a great deal about that time and place and whom he might best interview.

Indeed, David met his death in California on his way to interviewing Y.A. Tittle, the great quarterback, who had played for both Baltimore and New York. He had made another sports trip just for fun only a few weeks ago, when he flew down to Chapel Hill with Tommy Kearns, the playmaker on the '57 North Carolina national championship team and was celebrating its 50th anniversary of the victory.

David had written a wonderful little story on Kearns a few years ago. It was typical of him and his work. He met Kearns at the gym where they both worked out in New York and simply became fascinated with the man even before he learned that he had been a basketball star. The piece he wrote was touching and illuminating, representative of all his work.

Halberstam may have found sports a less intense subject, but he wrote sports with the same dedication and ferocity that he devoted to his more serious subjects.

Indeed, he was a great student of sportswriting and believed that some of the best works in the literature of journalism were to be found on the sports pages. He admired the best sports writers, and particularly credited Bill Heinz, whose work he read and treasured as a boy. I think Halberstam himself showed us that sportswriting is no strange discipline. If you write well, as David did, the subject doesn't matter. It's all about storytelling, be it Vietnam or a pennant race, Robert McNamara or Bill Belichick.

David was always wonderful company. He was a large man who spoke with a voice so deep that it made James Earl Jones sound like a high tenor. He also spoke very deliberately and, always, it seemed, in well-rounded, complete sentences. You listened when David Halberstam spoke, but, like any good journalist, he was a good listener, too. And he could laugh and jest with the best of men.

I now most remember a late night a few years ago on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, when my wife and I were out walking our little bichon frise, Bijou. Our apartment was near where David and his wife, Jean, lived, and we ran into him. He immediately said we must have a drink together. I pointed out that we had the dog. Never mind, he said, he often just took his own dog into bars. It'd be fine. And so the three of us, with Bijou, waltzed into the Café des Artistes, took a table and ordered drinks. Remarkably, Bijou behaved wonderfully, even if she'd never been in a bar before. I think she knew that the big man with the deep voice was responsible for her being there, and she better be grateful and good. David Halberstam brought out the best in people, too -- as a journalist and as a friend.

The three of us had another round and talked about many things into the night.