Goodbye To A Great Person, Friend And Mentor: Rick Sadowski

We were competitors in a vicious old-school newspaper rivalry - but were great friends, all because of Rick's class as a person

Phew, this one hurts. My friend, Rick Sadowski, has passed away. Life starts getting just a little too real when your friends and colleagues and people you used to run with in life are suddenly taken from us by the Man Upstairs, and despite what I fervently believe is God’s infinite wisdom, I wish he’d let Rick stay around a while longer.

Rick Sadowski. Where do I start? I’ll start with this, as it relates to my relationship with him: In 1995, I suddenly was given the job as “beat writer” of the Colorado Avalanche - which at the time of the job, still didn’t have that official name as a team. They were officially called “Colorado NHL” on the day they were officially named as an NHL team - and it would take a while before the name “Avalanche” was settled upon.

When I got the job, I didn’t know a wrist shot from a wristwatch. Yet, here I was, given a very big job by The Denver Post to be the official beat writer of the new team. I soon heard from the grapevine that my competitor on the job, at the evil newspaper rival across town, the Rocky Mountain News, was this guy from L.A. who had already covered the Los Angeles Kings for more than a decade for big-time LA. newpapers. Some guy named Rick Sadowski.

The name “Rick Sadowski” haunted me for a couple of months. He would be a cutthroat guy who would come into town and lay waste to this unheard-of hayseed from New Hampshire in this newspaper war where, truly, every reader, every subscription (even for $3.65 a year for full delivery - look it up) mattered.

Rick was a massive threat to my professional existence, just based on his professional competence alone. I stressed about him a lot. Then I actually met him in person, on the first day of Avalanche training camp in 1995, at the old DU Arena.

This guy I thought would be my mortal enemy turned out to be one of the nicest guys I had ever met to that point.

Rick was new to town, and he was actually asking ME - a transfer from another state myself - questions about what was what in Denver. I immediately thought he was much better a person/rival than I expected, but maybe I was being played for a newbie sucker by this veteran hockey insider, who had covered the Kings in the “Triple Crown Line” days of Marcel Dionne, Dave Taylor and Charlie Simmer. That line, from a pure statistical standpoint, remains one of the greatest in NHL history.

Then, starting in 1988, Rick covered an LA Kings team that had some guy named Wayne Gretzky added to the roster. Rick would end up chronicling Gretzky’s first few years in LA in his superb book, “Hockeywood”, which I would urge anyone who wants a great telling of a major turning point in hockey history to order on Amazon.

This is true: On my second game in my own Avalanche coverage history (and that of the team itself) Rick was honored by the Kings at center ice, with a framed, signed jersey of the Kings team, Gretzky included. I remembered sitting there, at the Fabulous Forum, wondering how the hell I was ever going to compete with this guy.

But, to back up a bit: I had met the real Rick Sadowski a couple of weeks before, on the Avalanche’s first preseason road trip, in September of 1995. I went on behalf of the Denver Post and Rick went on behalf of the Rocky Mountain News. My first year ever covering NHL hockey, and Rick’s first year covering a new team in a new city - but with about 15 years of previous professional, big-city newspaper experience.

I don’t remember the details of how this happened but: after the newly-named Avs’ first preseason game, in Cornwall, Ontario, Rick and I somehow ended up in a rental car together, driving from Cornwall to the Avs’ next game, in Montreal. I was the driver, Rick was the passenger.

This guy who I was afraid of and thought would be a personal nightmare to all my personal career ambitions was suddenly just a really, really nice guy who I soon learned I could talk with on almost any subject. Being a newbie to the full-time business of covering a pro sports team I thought any real true tricks-of-the-trade question would be forbidden with Rick, but it was just the opposite. Rick freely told me of any and all tricks of the trade, and shared many of his experiences to that point - which included things like interviewing The Great One many times as a King, and going back even further to his days working for a New Jersey newspaper and a time when he shared a breakfast booth with Dr. J, Julius Erving, for a story on his days as a New York Net and current Philadelphia 76er.

Rick and I would go on to “compete” on the Avalanche beat - me at the Post, Rick at the News - for the next 15 years.

I won’t lie and say I didn’t think many evil thoughts of the News in those days. As I said, it was a vicious newspaper war, and Rick was on the enemy side. They were trying to take away my livelihood, and my newspaper career before it even really started. That’s what I thought - and in many other instances in that rivalry, it was true. And one thing about me, then more than now: I had a lot of John McEnroe A-hole in me. I was a cocky, brash kid from the East Coast who grew up reading the Boston Globe, and I had a vicious competitive demeanor, honed from just living on the East Coast and from being picked on a lot before discovering that lifting weights as a 6-6 skinny kid could transform me into a 6-6 guy who could curl 185 pounds for reps of 10 with ease.

But, unlike some of my colleagues at the Post in those days who had real issues with their News competitors (Mike Klis once jumped on the back of News competitor Tracy Ringolsby in the Coors Field press box when they covered the Rockies back in the ‘90s, and Nuggets beat writer Mike Monroe and News competitor Dave Krieger never ONCE spoke a word to each other for several years after an early 1990s beef), I never once had cross words with Rick.

Sure, we’d needle each other at times about the “other” paper (probably me more than him) but we always got along - starting with that first three-hour road trip from Cornwall to Montreal.

We ended up sharing many rental cars and many cabs after that, usually on Rick’s lavish RMN Scripps corporate credit card, which entitled him to ZERO receipt accountability for anything under $75 - while at the Post, anything over $10 had to be accounted for).

Rick was the nicest guy in the world, but he would also drive me crazy at times. He was a major creature of habit. For instance: On every single road trip/flight Rick and I traveled on together, and no matter what the arrangements we had made for taking a rental car or cab together beforehand, once we got off the plane:

• Rick had to go to the airport gift shop/convenience store and buy every one of the local newspapers for sale. No matter what, Rick bought those local papers, and it had to be done, no matter how long, no matter what time of day it was and no matter how tired I was from the flight. If it took 20 minutes to get those papers, so be it. If you were traveling with Rick, that was the deal.

• When you ate out with Rick, he had to always: order a nice loaf of bread, and even if the restaurant only gave a muffin instead of any bread, Rick would painstakingly cut the bread/muffin into perfect halves and then lavishly/slowly butter each half until just so. Only then could he eat. I would be halfway done with my entire meal before Rick had finished buttering his bread, but that’s how Rick rolled. You had to pace yourself to eat out with him, or else drink a lot more to fill the time, which I had no trouble doing.

• Rick absolutely had to physically transcribe every interview he ever did. That meant: writing down in longhand what every Avs player ever said to him in an interview. 95% of it would probably never be used, but that was Rick’s way: transcribe, get it down on paper, then write it officially as what the player said, for the next day’s paper.

• I waited on Rick for MANY hours in the press box, my story already long since filed for the Post, while waiting on old-school Rick to hurry up and get done before we could get back to the hotel in time for last call.

But you know what? Rick was never, ever accused of getting wrong something a player said to him. And, his stories never had any factual mistakes in them, or nothing serious as I can recall.

Rick always got the story right. That would drive me crazy at times too. I would sometimes feel good that I got the story quicker - and I thought that mattered most back then. But sometimes there would be a factual error in there, while Rick never had any factual errors. That’s because he took his time - even if that was more and more considered a relic of the past - to get every little fact right.

I’ll always remember Rick for his overall kindness. That extended to everyone. I would be the hothead in the rental car, bitching at the parking lot attendant who didn’t accept our press passes as proof we deserved free admission to the night’s game, and Rick would calmly say, “Here, I got this” and rightfully tell me I should calm down a little.

Rick loved his wife, Pamela, and his two daughters, Rebecca and Samantha, more than anything. A more devoted family man, you’ll never meet. I hung with Rick and Pam a couple times, including what was for me a memorable night in Venice Beach, 1996, covering an Avs-Kings game then. We all hung out on some beach restaurant patio, listening to some great Beach Boys music, while Rick - drinking his favorite drink, a Manhattan- talked old Kings stories, including great ones about Gretzky and Dionne.

Rick grew up in New Jersey and was a major Yankees and New York Giants fan. I hated both teams and still do, so we had many lively barstool trash-talking debates about that, with me being a major Boston fan growing up.

Yet, Rick always used to crack up whenever I’d do impressions of Ralph Kramden from his favorite show, “The Honeymooners”. I suppose I knew the lines well because that show was often one the only ones I could watch in syndication as an only child of 1970s TV.

Rick loved - loved - vacationing in Maui. I got many a photo from Rick enjoying his summertime vacations there, while I’d be stuck in Denver working under the Post’s terrible benefit plan.

Rick loved Bruce Springsteen, and almost anything Joisey. His raspy voice, despite decades of living in L.A. and Denver, still had a Joisey accent. He would legitimately get upset when the Yankees or the Giants lost. He was maybe the biggest New York Giants fan I’ve ever come across.

Rick loved - loved - dogs. He was a tireless advocate for rescue dogs.

Rick’s face would contort when he laughed heartily, and he would soon take a good sip from his favorite drink, a Manhattan, straight up, and you knew you were in for a fun night at that point.

So, here’s my own paraphrased saying that Ralph often closed from that show: “Rick, you’re the greatest.”

Rest easy, my friend.

OTHER TRIBUTES TO RICK:

• From Ryan Boulding, NHL.com Avalanche correspondent, who Rick personally recommended to succeed him in that role a year or so ago: “I always appreciated the time we had to chat, whether it was waiting for a presser or player availability. He told me about being on the road covering the Kings when the earthquake in L.A. happened. He said the team flew him home on their plane so he could get back to his family. He used to talk about his daughters all the time. He was so proud of them. He was always a professional, and I try to embody that spirit of his.”

• Bob Kravitz, former Rocky Mountain News columnist: “My memories of Rick were trying to tame a Type A whack job columnist. Rick was the ultimate beat man - and that’s meant in the fondest way possible. He was always the voice of reason.”

• Roger Phillips, former NHL newspaper beat writer in LA, 1980s and ‘90s: “He was nice to me from the start. I was working in Long Beach. The paper didn’t have a hockey writer and I was literally the only person on our staff who knew about the sport (lifelong Ranger fan from NYC). So I became the Kings beat writer literally from the day they get Gretzky. I’d read Rick for years in the Herald Examiner and admired his work. I swear, he took me under his wing the first time we met. He was hilarious and we enjoyed cracking each other up. We had lots of good times on the road”