Sports
Mike Downey, Free Press sports columnist during ’84 World Series, dies
Former Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mike Downey, whose breadth and wit brought non-sports-fans to his section of the paper in the 1980s, died Wednesday in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 72.
Downey, twice named Michigan’s sportswriter of the year by the National Sports Media Association, had a heart attack at home, according to close friend Ron Rapoport.
Raised in Chicago, Downey started his newspaper career at age 15 with a chain in the southern suburbs. He went on to the Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times, then came to the Free Press. In a product designed to be disposable, his work is preserved on tavern walls throughout Michigan bearing framed front pages from Oct. 15, 1984, the morning after the Detroit Tigers beat San Diego to win the World Series.
“They won it, just the way everyone in Detroit thought they would,” he wrote, typing for posterity against a fierce deadline.
“They won it, in a way nobody thought they would.
“They won it on a sacrifice fly … to second base.
“They won it on a pinch-hit, bases-loaded sacrifice fly … by Rusty Kuntz.”
The column went on to mention Kirk Gibson’s two home runs, but the focus on detail and on an unsung character was typical Downey.
“Mike was an extraordinarily talented human being − eclectic to say the least, with a great sense of humor,” said former Free Press publisher David Lawrence Jr., who brought Downey to Detroit. “He handled words as well as anyone I can remember.”
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It was Downey’s wide array of interests, including entertainment and history, as well as his knack for inducing smiles, that made him a favorite of people who had no interest in pucks or balls.
He left Detroit for the Los Angeles Times in April 1985, and transitioned there from sports to a news column before retiring. The Chicago Tribune lured him back to work as a sports columnist from 2003-08, and there, he expanded his number of state sportswriter of the year awards to 11 − seven in California, and two apiece in Michigan and Illinois.
Then he retired again, to the Palm Springs area, with his wife, Gail Martin Downey.
The daughter of Dean Martin, they met when she mentioned to a mutual friend how much she enjoyed his writing in the Times. A lifelong bachelor, he became a husband, father and grandfather on the same day in June 1999, preserving the occasion in yet another memorable column.
He misspoke only in predicting how the marriage would end.
“Some partnerships do break up. Some don’t,” he said.
“It is taken on faith that Gail Martin last weekend made a marriage that will last the remainder of her life, when, for reasons only she can explain, she took as her lawfully wedded husband a talent-free and tone-deaf newspaper columnist from the Los Angeles Times.”
Unlike his wife and father-in-law, he could not sing. But his words always did.
Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.
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