Ron Drogo, (spnited), RIP

I have no doubt that Ron is awash in lobster bisque and really good beer. What would be the point otherwise?

 

I still think this thread represents the best of this place, even as we memorialized one of the worst things to ever happen here. I've thought about quitting SJ 1,000 times, and it's obvious many of us have done the same, either out frustration or lack of productivity or whatever. But this weird shared community keeps calling us back, like our friendships and shared passions and love of baseball and bad jokes are the sirens that continue to lure us home. I still feel proud of this place for threads like this, proud that I've spent so much time here, debating nonsense. For me, that's Ron's legacy.

 

I would hope they'd have beer in heaven.

But correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Carter drank alcohol. I remember reading something (I think it was Pearlman's book on the '86 Mets), where Carter was so worn out after the MEts beat the Astros in the NLCS, he had a couple of beers himself, and the rest of the team was shocked.

 

Well I'd think after fighting brain cancer, he'd consider that a battle worth having one beer with the Mets' biggest fan.

If not, then Ron would get him a soda and not care one bit.

 

So it's been a year now. And it is duller without Ron. And we haven't replaced him here, haven't come close. He is gone and we are poorer.

There are people who knew him better than I did, but I knew him well enough. I have an old friend from NYC/NJ and in the 1980s we both found ourselves working in California and my friend once said in utter frustration, "This difference between here and there is that in L.A. they say let's do lunch and they mean fuck you, and in New York they say fuck you and mean let's do lunch."

A funny line, but a bullshit one. New York's metro area has enough phonies to repopulate the entire Great Plains, for one thing. And the salt-of-earth Easterners he had in mind, like Ron, are more multidimensional than that. Ron could say fuck you and mean it for three decades. He could say fuck you and mean it for five minutes. He could say fuck you and mean it as a compliment.

But even if you knew Ron only from here, it would have been nearly impossible to confuse the three. He was a man of passion. Anyone who worked within 50 feet of him at two newspapers can recall the intensely angry phone conversations Ron had with his eventual ex-wife just about every night for at least a decade. If you believed Ron liked you deep down, almost assuredly he did. Don't forget that. You were his friends and how you met was irrelevant. Do not undervalue what you shared here.

On a more personal note that I've shared only by PM with a few people, at some stage later in life Ron and I found us in a professional situation that neither created but that often leads to jealousy at best and an adversarial relationship at worst. We never spoke about it until about eight years later; till that time, mutual respect, basic professionalism and standard decency got us through it. Ron was a man of many levels. He likely would blush at the compliment, but he had as strong and as genuine a moral compass as you were likely to see. Consistently he tried to do right by the paper and the people in his life.

 

Frank, having worked with Ron in the past, I can honestly say that you don't replace a Ron Drogo. RIP

 

Well shit. Wish I had met him so I could have told him to stick his South-hating head up his ass. Followed immediately by purchasing him a beer.

 

I think he would've enjoyed that.

 

This is a fantastic post.

A year later and this Dickhead still misses you, you cantankerous old coot. (I'll never meet anyone as worthy of the expression "cantankerous old coot" as Ron)

 

I think Ronald would have enjoyed the Mets no-hitter tonight down here. But he might have enjoyed it more up there.

 

Frank might be right.