July 28, 2010
OFFSIDE REMARKS
Remembering a man who gave you a chance
By Michael Lewis
BigAppleSoccer.com Editor
The news is always stunning when someone you know passes away.
That was the case when I read that Vic Ziegel had died last week. Ziegel, long-time sports columnist at the New York Daily News, was the jack of all trades and master of most of them.
He was only 72 -- and the cause was lung cancer, even though he did not smoke.
He could edit and write, and write beautifully. His favorite sports to write about were baseball, boxing and horse racing.
Last week Daily News sports column Filip Bony remembered Ziegel, that he "brought the art of tabloid writing to another, more clever level."
"Very seductive, the sound of laughter," Ziegel would comment about his work, Bondy wrote.. "If I wanted to continue hearing the pleasing sound of laughter, I could keep writing sports. At least until I discovered what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Nothing seems to have changed. I can still be found in the sports section, still trying to earn a smile."
While he would never be considered a soccer fanatic, Vic understood where it fit and how important it was in the metropolitan sports culture.
So, not surprisingly, Vic will always have a place in my heart. He gave me my chance at the New York Daily News, an opportunity to write about soccer -- at the time, the local club scene -- in 1988.
It was about a year later that Vic called me late one morning -- I was still in a fog, just getting up after a long, long night putting Soccer Week, that glorious weekly publication of long ago -- to bed.
vic asked me if I had seen the New York Post from that day and I replied no.
He said that they had added an international soccer column and that there was no way that the Daily News would not have one.
He then asked me if I could write one. I said, yes, even though I did not have the faintest idea of where I would get my information from. Remember, those were the days before the internet -- so I had to buy foreign newspapers and listen to BBC broadcasts over a radio to get results and details. There certainly was something romantic about that. I felt I had to "earn" those facts because it wasn't given to you on a silver platter like on the internet today.
That international column lasted until about 1996 or 1997, when the MetroStars came to be. It morphed into a MetroStars/Red Bulls or best soccer news story of that day piece because I figured people could get their international scores on the web. Why duplicate the effort? Besides, at the time, where else could they get info on the MLS?
The first time I encountered him was sometime in the early seventies at a sports editors day for high school and college students at Yankee Stadium. Then a member of the New York Post, he addressed the group, talking about sportswriting and editing.
He seemed so old at the time.
Now, he seemed so young.
Man, how the years change us.
Michael Lewis would like to hear from you. If you have a comment, drop him a line at email.
