00:00R.I.P. Brooksy. I'm excited to announce that longtime senior hockey columnist and Rangers writer for the New York Post, Larry Brooks, passed away Thursday morning after a brief battle with cancer.
00:12We want to honor the Hockey Hall of Famer by taking our viewers and readers into the sports world and the legacy that he leaves behind.
00:20On with us today is longtime New York Post sports columnist and colleague and friend, Mike Vaccaro.
00:26Mike, thanks for hopping on with us this morning. 38 years with the Post on two separate tenures.
00:33He was the guy on the Rangers beat, and he also worked with the Devils back in the 1980s.
00:39Mike, who was Larry Brooks, the man, the legendary writer, and what legacy is he leaving behind both in hockey and in New York sports?
00:48Well, Brandon, Larry was a kid who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a ferocious Rangers fan, ferocious Yankees fan,
00:57altogether just an enormous sports fan, dreamed his whole life of working for a New York newspaper,
01:03used to voraciously read every New York paper he'd get his hands on, even in grade school.
01:09He was a brilliant man, skipped two grades in high school, and was just an engaging, curious, and altogether generous man.
01:21I mean, he was a guy who would take a young writer under his wing, and it was important to him that he was able to offer the kind of advice
01:29that had shaped him from the men and women who would come before him.
01:33And he really did that, and he was a guy who was a joy to sit next door in the press box.
01:38And what's more, he was the rare guy that people who played the games, John Davidson, Sean Avery,
01:45people who ran teams like Lula Morello, they enjoyed his company every bit as much as we did.
01:52As John Davidson told me this morning, you know, everybody in the entire NHL used to wait with bated breath
01:57for Larry's Slapshots column to come every Sunday, half of them wanting to know what Larry knew,
02:03which was more than they did, and the other half, hopefully they weren't in the column
02:06because they were probably getting crated, if that's what that meant.
02:10Just a one-of-one. We're never going to see his likes again.
02:13It was a privilege for me to have been his colleague and to have been his friend all these years,
02:19and I'm going to miss him. I miss him already.
02:21Is there a moment from your friendship that you think that you're always going to remember?
02:27Yeah, yeah. I don't cover a lot of hockey, Brandon.
02:33I would always kind of show up when the Rangers were a step or two away from the playoff
02:38and from the Stanley Cup, rather.
02:40And one night for a Dead Devils-Rangers game, game one, it was a frantic game.
02:45It ended in the last minutes of the game.
02:47And, you know, look, I'm a hockey novice, and I really always turned to Larry,
02:51not only for how to write but what to write when he came to hockey.
02:54And before he ever got around to his column, he talked to me about what I was going to write
03:00because he wanted to make sure I was in a good place.
03:02And that, to me, summarizes who he was.
03:05You know, I know he wanted to write a certain subject,
03:09and he actually offered that to me thinking that maybe I'd be more comfortable writing it.
03:13But, you know, I knew enough to know that the Post's readers wanted to read
03:16what Larry wanted to write primarily, and I would work off of him.
03:20And that just summarizes what he was like.
03:23He was a gregarious guy who could sometimes, you know, have his own feuds.
03:29And he had a lot of feuds with a lot of people, but almost always they wound up reconciling
03:34because most of the time the people that he feuded with realized that Larry had a point.
03:38And that's a gift that is so rare among those of us in the media,
03:43and I think you know that as well as I do, Brandon.
03:45You mentioned his legendary Slapshots column, and everyone around New York knows that.
03:52But is there like another article or maybe another column or a piece of work that Larry has out there
03:58that you think New York and New York sports will always remember him by?
04:04Well, he was a guy who just knew how to capture a moment.
04:06And so, for instance, you know, he was actually covering the Devils in 1994
04:11when they lost Game 7 of their epic playoff series with the Rangers.
04:16But his Devil's Sidebar was about as readable a story as you'll ever come across.
04:21Sidebars aren't always all that easy to write, but Larry wrote it in such an engaging and passionate way.
04:28The first time I really got a chance to spend time with Larry was
04:33we both covered the Devils' second Stanley Cup in 2000.
04:38And I was working for the Newark Star-Ledger at the time,
04:41a guy who really was just struggling day to day to come up with hockey ideas.
04:44And I know that I was inspired every day by seeing not just the passion and energy that Larry brought,
04:50but also just the wordsmithing and the ability to make a game that's hard to write on deadline.
04:56And anybody who's ever tried to write a double overtime game on deadline from a hockey press box,
05:02those that I'm talking about, and yet he was able to do that with almost a magic and grace and elegance.
05:08And I really learned a lot.
05:10Anybody who wants to go back to the Post archives, just read, you know,
05:14a month's worth of columns that Larry did during that Devils run.
05:18I think you'll learn all you need to know about what real hockey writing is all about.
05:23And the thing of it is, I mean, everybody in the league wanted to talk to him.
05:27And, you know, I thought that Dave Maloney said it best.
05:30He said, you know, he was a guy who was a guy who lived in the crease.
05:33I mean, he talked about Larry the writer as if he were a hockey player.
05:37And that was the best description that I've heard so far about the way Larry worked.
05:41I mean, he was in the crease and he'd tip in his share.
05:44But he was also known for the assist and the hockey assist.
05:48You know, he would do what he could to make sure that everybody who was working with him was better.
05:53I mean, the New York Post was better.
05:55Well, Mike, I thank you for coming on today and talking about Larry's legacy.
06:01I'm sorry you lost a friend and a colleague.
06:04RIP Brooksy.
06:06RIP Larry Brooks.
06:08Rest in peace to a legend.
06:11Thanks, Brandon.
06:11Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about him
06:13because Larry was really one of one, one of a kind.
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