R.I.P. Jimmy Breslin

First thing I thought of.

His book about the 1962 Mets "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" is a great, breezy read.

 

Loopy (yeah, I know):

LUPICA: Jimmy Breslin, old-school genius and voice of New York

 

Jimmy Breslin tells of cops who aided John Lennon in 1980

 

His work during the Son of Sam murders was excellent. RIP

 

RIP to one of the greats.

 

There's a line in his Runyon biography, which is a great read and a terrible biography, historically speaking, where he describes the life of a sportswriter as "a welfare recipient, but with less supervision." Always stuck with me.

 

"A small man in search of a balcony" to describe Giuliani is just brilliance

 

Had a good-natured argument many years ago with a co-worker who grew up in New York during which I referred to Breslin as "New York's version of Royko."

Knowing my Chicago-area roots, co-worker replied, "No. Royko is Chicago's version of Breslin."

All jokes aside, both were consistently great.

 

No wonder YF gets so mad at us.

 

Jimmy Breslin wrote about New York characters, and one who showed up often in his columns over the years was Donald J. Trump. Here are three of his columns for Newsday – from 1990, 1989 and 1988 -- taking note of Trump as a grandmaster of illusion.

Columnist Jimmy Breslin on Donald Trump

Gold nugget: "Trump is the white Al Sharpton."

 

Kornheiser had a lengthy and heartfelt tribute to Breslin on his podcast this morning (Breslin stuff starts at the 48:30 mark):

"Hey kid, ya gotta bic?"

Goes on for about 15 minutes and ends with a great anecdote about Breslin borrowing a pen from him at a basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden in the early 1970s.