I lost a friend Saturday. We weren’t beer-drinking buddies, but we had a relationship others thought was strange. Nobody else understood we played by a different set of rules.
I knew Bobby Cox in a different light. I appreciated all the little things about him not related to baseball. I was a NASCAR guy who reported part-time on baseball. He was a baseball guy who liked NASCAR. I’ve always said get a guy out of his element, and he’ll talk to you about anything else.
We leaned against a chained-link fence on the left baseline in the outfield during the Georgia High School playoffs watching his daughter play first base for Parkview. The topic of our conversation was Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt. He knew I knew them both personally. It should be no big surprise that he was a big fan of both.
That was a time before social media, when there was an unwritten understanding of what was out of bounds, before media became obsessed with gotcha moments. I miss those days.
Sure, I covered games, but I didn’t carry a scorebook and chart pitches. I wrote who won, how they won and what it means. And I still challenge the readers to know the difference.
Bobby quickly took notice of me when our regular reporter snidely “warned” him the NASCAR reporter would cover several games. I made a huge impression during my first assignment when the Braves played at Fulton County Stadium, he said he wanted to see Dale Earnhardt qualify at the Talladega Superspeedway, but he couldn’t drive back in time for the game.
I told him to ask Earnhardt to get his pilot, Mike Collier, to bring the helicopter. He was friends with Earnhardt, so sure enough, four days later, at the end of batting practice, Earnhardt’s helicopter landed in centerfield and Bobby got out.
When I was the Sports Editor for Morris News Service, an organization that owned a group of newspapers that included Athens, Augusta, Savannah, Jacksonville and St. Augustine, we covered every Braves game. Our fulltime writer didn’t want to cover Philadelphia, Miami or Washington games, so I covered them. That made Bobby happy, because it meant I gave him help setting his NASCAR Fantasy lineup.
I covered a Monday night game in Atlanta in 2000 when the Braves lost 6-4 to Montreal. Bobby had a routine where he’d smoke half a cigar before the game and let it burn out on the edge of his desk during the game. After the game, he’d relight it and smoke the rest of it while he answered questions from the media.
Two weeks earlier, Jeremy Mayfield purposely spun Earnhardt on the final turn in the rain-delayed race at the Pocono Raceway to win. In Victory Lane, Mayfield proudly yelled, “I just wanted to rattle his cage.”
Bobby talked about Atlanta’s problems getting Montreal’s Expos’ right fielder Vladmir Guerrero out, when he looked at the back of the media scrum and he saw me (I was filling in for our beat writer). In mid-sentence he shifted from the game to, “What was Mayfield thinking? You stick your hand in the lion’s mouth you’re going to get bit.” Every reporter turned to shock, thinking he had just suffered an aneurysm. I just chuckled.
When the Braves traveled to Philadelphia to open the 2007 season, Cox was ejected for arguing with one of the umpires. It was one of his Major League record 162 ejections. He conducted his informal pregame press conference in the dugout during batting practice. I asked a question that had regular baseball reporters scrambling for cover, when I said, “Bobby, you got jacked in the last game, but you don’t seem like you’re really an ‘a---hole.’”
He looked and laughed.
“I’m not. It just shows how many guys in this league can’t see.”
The other reporters were in shock. How can a manager known for his fiery temper let an unknown reporter get away with a question like that?
That’s the Bobby Cox I knew. That’s the Bobby I will miss.
I didn’t know him that well as a baseball guy, but it’s clear he was a legend of the game. I’ll leave that for others and enjoy our infrequent and crazy times off the basepaths.
