RIP Vic Ziegel

New York brownstones are notorious for non-smoking lung cancer cases. Usually radon gas.

 

RIP Mr. Ziegel.

 

Awful news.

RIP to a great, great man.

 

This is dreadful news. My condolences to his family and to the family of sportswriters whom Vic graced with his presence. There was never a better working companion in the business. He was also an astonishingly good writer.

 

I never met him -- in our business, there's often a New York school and an Everyplace Else school, and I was from there -- but I obviously have heard about Vic multiple times over the years, and there's absolutely no doubt he was my kind of newspaper person and my kind of guy.

Thoughts and prayers for his friends and family.

 

When Vic -- whose work I worshipped growing up in New York -- was running the Daily News sports department and I was covering the NBA, he began to edit a back-page column for the paper's Sunday magazine. Write something, he told me. About what, I asked? Whatever, he said.
Tennis being my new-found passion, I wrote about a recent dream I'd had where I found myself in the semifinals of the US Open. The other semifinalists were Jimmy Connors, Bernard King and a kid I'd grown up with in the West Brighton projects on Staten Island. In the dream, I was all agitated because I drew Connors, when I'd wanted to play one of the other guys. The tournament director tried to calm me down by explaining that somebody had to play Connors, the draw was the draw.
The dream ended with me on court, warming up against Jimbo, nervous as hell but taking on the challenge. Later, it came to me what the dream was about: I was about to get engaged to my lovely wife Beth, I was frightened of change, and the three other players represented different times of my life -- the kid from Staten Island, King being the current star of the Knicks and Connors from the uncertain future. But at least, I reasoned, I was out there, going for it.
Wrote the piece for Vic, printed a copy, dropped it on his desk, walked out of his office. Five minutes later, he calls me back in. Love it, he says, and I have the perfect head for it, too. What's that, I say? He scribbles it on the top of the first page and hands it to me: "A Basket Case," it said. Loved the wit and wisdom almost as much as the man. -- Harvey Araton

 

Damn if Lupica didn't rise to the occasion:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2010/07/24/2010-07-24_we_lost_one_of_the_best_in_daily_news_vic_ziegel_a_character_and_a_gentleman.html

 

Really nice job by Lupica.

 

BTW, those familiar with the NY guys of the '60s and '70s might want to keep a good thought for Maury Allen, who is in tough shape.