Tribune sportswriter Bob Moran died this morning. It wasn’t unexpected news for his friends and colleagues who followed his three-and-a-half-year battle with cancer. But it still hits you in the gut.
I’ve been at the Tribune for 21 years — the first nine in sports — and I can’t imagine the place without Bob. Even the past few years, as Bob valiantly fought his cruel disease, there were visits and lunches and phone calls. I don’t think a day went by when someone didn’t ask about him, talk about him or say a prayer for him.
Now, we can only remember him.
The Tribune has written the official story: his career, his accomplishments, his friends’ reactions. As with most people who leave us — in Bob’s case, far too soon — that tells you only a little about the person he was.
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Back in 1987, the Tribune’s owners decided to consolidate small newspapers in Mesa, Tempe and Chandler into a single paper to cover the entire East Valley. It included hiring a lot more staff. They called the plan “Rosebud.”
Bob was a “Rosebud” hire. So was I.
Bob was one of the first people I met at the Trib. When I asked why everyone called him Coach, then-sports editor Dave Lumia explained to me, “Bob knows more about college sports than anyone. Even the coaches at ASU refer to him as Coach.” It didn’t take long to find out that was true.
In those early days, I planned the weekend sports sections, which meant I went into work around noon Saturdays and Sundays. The newsroom was usually empty that early, except for Bob, who often came in to write his columns or check the wires for football scores.
That’s where our friendship started. We’d talk college football or college basketball for hours on those afternoons. He taught me to appreciate NASCAR, which he loved almost as much as college football. We also shared a passion for ASU baseball, where Bob always waved me up to the press box during sparsely attended games.
Just like at the paper, Bob seemed to know everyone at games or around town. It didn’t matter if you were the paper’s editor or the janitor, the team’s head coach or the groundskeeper, Bob knew who you were and you probably knew him.
But that was the public Bob. Not many got the privilege of knowing the private Bob. He jealously guarded his private life. Until he got sick, few of his colleagues had been to the apartment where he lived for two decades. Most didn’t even know what city he lived in.
I was one of the lucky ones. Today, the memories are flooding back.
Like the time in 1989 I talked Bob into joining two friends and me for a “boys night out” at the fancy Scottsdale singles bars. Bob wasn’t a drinker or a partyer, so it was the rarest of occasions. My two friends and I even wore ties because Bob was the only reporter at the Trib who wore a tie to work most days.
I think that night — which ended with us getting kicked out of Downside Risk when Bob began arguing too loudly about Nebraska football with some guys at the next table — was probably the last time I wore a tie.
After that, Bob pretty much stuck to his neighborhood Applebee’s, where he often liked to sit alone at the bar and watch the late-night football games on TV. He could have picked up the phone and asked any one of a hundred people to join him. They would have loved to.
But that was the private Bob again. The one who watched the daytime soap “The Young and the Restless” every day. The one who loved fried chicken and Cajun food.
He also loved stock-car racing, and especially Chevys. Bob always drove a Chevy. He even built a small-scale toy model of a Monte Carlo — the car Chevrolet ran in NASCAR races back in the ’80s — and painstakingly applied all the proper miniature decals. Then he had it mounted under glass so he could display it on his desk.
When Chevy later switched to the Lumina, he built a new model. Bob complained when actual Luminas were not made available to the public until a year later. Of course, he eventually bought one.
He’d drive it to work, park it in the Trib lot, then get a specially-made car cover out the trunk and carefully wrap the vehicle to protect it from the Arizona sun. I don’t think he would have done that for a Porsche or BMW. He wasn’t a car guy, he was just a Chevy guy.
In fact, Bob never forgave for buying a Ford F-150 pickup back in 2001. “What were you thinking?” he’d ask. When the truck caught fire and burned down my house in 2004, he never let me hear the end of it.
He was very happy when I used the insurance money to buy a Chevy.
Rest in peace, my friend. I will miss you.
Stephanie Izard, a graduate of the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, won Bravo’s “Top Chef” cooking competition Wednesday. The 31-year-old Chicago resident is the first female champion in the cable show’s four seasons.
