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Last night's special comment is not political. It is deeply touching, and illuminates a bond between old school journalists. Keith's column tonight is Nick Charles: Lead Pipe Cinch, with a link to a beautiful tribute by Joe Posnanski. In boxing terms, tonight's Olbermann commentary is a one, two punch.
"Lead Pipe Cinch" was one of Nick Charles favorite expression. Nick Charles was Keith's mentor at CNN Sports.
Keith lets us know the character of Nick Charles with recollections of his old boss and mentor.
It alll began when Nick Charles, the anchor, was given a garbled video clip by a young freelance reporter named Keith Olbermann and the resulting unhappy look.
Keith continues that the unhappy look of Nick Charles...
was a practiced dyspepsia, a studied world-weariness that had given him a gravitas that exceeded his 34 years, and had already made him a success in the Baltimore and Washington markets while most of the rest of his CNN Sports columns had come no closer to Baltimore and Washington than what they read on the backs of their baseball cards. Nick was our star and our credibility, literally the anchor that let punk kids like me and Fred Hickman and Gary Miller, and later Dan Patrick, learn our craft in front of the eyes of viewers who probably often looked at us the way Nick looked at me that first night when I suddenly showed up in the middle of his Joe Torre soundbite
Keith relates the impact that Nick Charles had on his career in a series of anecdotes about the way it was for sports reporters in the days before the internet when CNN got its newspaper feed by sending Keith to Times Square to pick up the "bulldog" edition of the Times.
“Nick Charles will die soon.” He was diagnosed with Stage 4 bladder cancer in August of ’09. There have been some improvements since, but we’ve all known what was coming and I know a lot of us did our interviews nearly a year ago with CNN about Nick and how he influenced our careers and supported us and led us in that way that makes you not notice he was doing anything until years later and how some of his ‘kids’ like Dan and me moved on to compete with him from ESPN in the ’90s and he never expressed anything but pride. I don’t know of any of these interviews that were completed without tears. Joe tells Nick’s story beautifully and simply, and I urge you to read it. I did. I will not be able to read it a second time.
Lessons of the Fight Game by Joe Posnanski
Joe Posnanski's tribute to Nick Charles is worth a read.
He was born Nicholas Charles Nickeas and grew up in Chicago's inner city, a cab driver's son. It was a childhood of mustard sandwiches and cold nights with the heat off. It was a childhood that taught him to love self-made people. This, he feels, is what drew him to boxing. From 2001 through '10 he covered boxing almost exclusively—first for Showtime, and then for Bob Arum's Top Rank. "You know why I love boxers?" he asks as he looks out his living room window at the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. "I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone. They came from nothing."
By Christmas of 2010, he knew that the fight was over. The doctors said that one more terrifying round of chemo offered a small chance to extend his life by a couple of months. Charles said no. "Remember the look on Thomas Hearns's face when he realized that no matter what he did, he could never slow down Marvin Hagler?" he asks. He decided then that he would spend the last few months fighting a different fight.
"I want to feel everything," he says.