Rubin: A salute to the late Mike Downey — which he would have written better

Mike Downey always had trouble sleeping, so when I came across a supposed cure for insomnia years ago, I sent it to him in Los Angeles.

"Thanks for the great book," he wrote back. "It kept me up all night."

In London covering Wimbledon tennis in 1987, he previewed the men's final, debating whether the crowd would root for exuberant Australian Pat Cash or the gloomy Czechoslovakian Ivan Lendl.

"They would take a Czech," Downey concluded, "but prefer Cash."

Ten days ago, we were emailing about retirement, which he had done twice and I theoretically will attempt someday.

"Keep writing," he advised, "until you feel you can fill your free hours without needing to write."

Downey had a way with words unlike anyone else's. When he wasn't being instinctively quick and funny, he was carefully, thoughtfully wise.

In the early 1980s, he revolutionized the writing of sports columns in Detroit, crafting his so that people who didn't know whether a football was pumped or stuffed would read him in the Free Press for the pure fun of it.

He died at only 72 Wednesday, of a heart attack at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, and there have been loving obituaries read by distraught friends and fans in every city he graced.

It's nice to know he was as adored elsewhere as he was here, where his followers wore Downey Does Detroit T-shirts to stadiums where he found angles and perspectives no one else considered.

More: Mike Downey, Free Press sports columnist during '84 World Series, dies

Embracing a new clan

We hit the basics in our story a few days ago: raised south of Chicago, started writing for a suburban newspaper at 15 or so, moved on to the Chicago Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times and then the Free Press until April 1985. Spent 15 years at the L.A. Times, in sports and then as a metro columnist. Retired, was lured back to work in sports by the Chicago Tribune from 2003-08, retired again.

Other things were left between the lines. He did not like talking on the phone, for instance, though he once gladly accepted a collect call from prison from Robert Downey Jr. He had a big heart, though it turns out a deficient one, and also a bad knee.

He outlived his only sibling, a sister, by decades. He rented long after he could easily afford to buy. His childhood was stark, but his sudden onset of parenthood at almost 48 was a joy.

His wife, the former Gail Martin, came with children and grandchildren and all their noise and drama. Downey embraced every stage and decibel. They were his kids, his sons-in-law, his Little League games to attend as eagerly as he used to go to the World Series.

He had a network of old and new friends from Chicago, among them actors Dennis Farina and George Wendt, and he owed nearly 25 years of marriage to that group.

Comedian and Chicago guy Tom Dreesen, who used to open for Frank Sinatra, was at dinner with Martin when she mentioned how much she liked the writing of this fellow in the Times. One introduction later, she and Downey were a couple.

A side note: Downey used to take the 5?-hour hop from L.A. to Maui three or four times a year. My wife and I overlapped our vacation with his at some point in 1998, and, to her consternation, he wasn't dating anyone.

Then in June 1999, he left me a message that he was engaged, and she was protectively outraged. This relative newcomer must be a gold digger, she said — and to an extent, she was correct.

Dean Martin's backup singers were known as the Golddiggers, and when she wasn't busy with her solo career, Gail Martin used to sing with her dad.

His father-in-law died in 1995, but Downey embraced his memory the same way he embraced Dean's grandkids.

Writing by the numbers

Post-journalism, Downey wrote frequently and lyrically on Facebook and less often for CNN.com, where one of his columns celebrated a new movie about Jackie Robinson and shook its digital head at his own misadventures in screenwriting.

"I saw Brad Pitt in 'Se7en' and saw Fellini’s '8?,' " it began. "I saw Daniel Day-Lewis do 'Nine' and why Bo Derek was a '10.' I saw the 1919 White Sox sell out baseball in 'Eight Men Out' and the 1961 Yankees belt out baseballs in '61*.'

"The one movie I wrote in my mind a hundred times and on paper nine or 10 times, though, was '42.' Of course, it wasn’t called that 20-odd years ago when I was under contract to be the Jackie Robinson biopic’s screenwriter."

Ultimately, he wrote, he had "zero to do with '42,' " squeezing one last number onto the page. It was typically vivid, typically honest, typically a treat to breeze through.

I could quote his work until the end of time, and probably will, but for now we'll leave that to Google. Instead, I'll quote Mark Kram, the author of a terrific biography of boxer Joe Frazier called "Smokin' Joe" and a former Free Press sportswriter.

Kram was young and talented when he and Downey overlapped in Detroit, and also awkward and unsure.

"Mike was the walking model of how to be a professional and handle myself," Kram told me.

Beyond that, "he taught me a valuable lesson: a kindness given is much more rewarding than a kindness received."

Mike Downey was always gracious, always concerned, always interested. And while he'd never say it or probably even think it, he was always a bit sharper than most of us — a point he made with a borrowed cigarette at the Atlanta Olympics in the summer of 1996.

The Olympics were Downey's favorite spectacle, and he covered a dozen of them. In Atlanta, as former Los Angeles Times sports editor Bill Dwyre recalled in that paper's excellent tribute, the drop-off point for the media shuttle was half a mile past the cluster of hotels.

For three days, overburdened photographers and weary writers backtracked. On the fourth day, as they approached the logical spot to disembark, Downey asked the driver, "What would you do if I lit up a cigarette right now?"

"I'd stop right now," the driver replied, "and throw you off."

Downey took out his unlit cigarette. The driver pulled over. Downey stepped out. The bus pulled away.

As everyone else watched the hotels grow smaller, Downey smiled at his friends and walked to his room.

Reach Neal Rubin at [email protected].

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Neal Rubin salutes game-changing Free Press sportswriter Mike Downey