I once almost killed Brad Rock.
After a Jazz game on a dark winter night, after the crowd had departed, after his column had been written and his deadline met, he was traversing a street corner outside the Vivint Arena, firmly in a crosswalk, moving toward his parked car. I sped around a corner and nearly planted the badge on my SUV hood into his midsection.
That would have made for one helluva headline: “Tribune columnist kills Deseret News columnist after Jazz game.”
We laughed about that later, but it wasn’t all that funny at the time.
Rock and I laughed together a lot — before, during and after a thousand games. We didn’t always see things exactly the same, but I respected the man and his talent, his sharp wit, his goodness.
Brad, I swear, had a diminutive devil on one shoulder, whispering in his ear, and a tiny angel on the other. And the two were at odds, in constant disagreement, offering divergent, colliding trains of thought.
And that’s a beautiful thing, out of which Rock’s fair and well-considered and riveting insight on matters of sports emerged.
The longtime columnist at the Deseret News, who recently announced he would be retiring after four decades at the paper as of the BYU-Utah game on Thursday night,is, indeed, one of the nicest humans on the planet. But he had that critical side, too. Thank heavens.
Deep down, he was — whoa, pardon the past tense … he’s retiring, not dying — a decent man, a gifted writer, but a deep thinker, too. There were all kinds of angles to almost every issue, and Brad pondered them at length before typing them out and committing them to publication. At least he did unless the game ended at 11 p.m. and his deadline was at 11:05.
“Only a fool tries to be clever on deadline,” he once told me.
It was after many such games, over a span of 25 years, walking out of empty stadiums, that the Monster of Rock and I discussed our craft, dissected the players, coaches, teams and issues we covered, and swapped approaches, notions and ideas. His spoken words were consistent with his written ones.
We talked about the importance of a columnist’s No. 1 charge, one some readers understand completely and others never fully grasp — to have a point of view. That’s the job. A reader once complained to Rock that he would enjoy his columns a whole lot more if he left his opinion out of them. We both got a good chuckle out of that.
Standing in a cleared-out parking lot of an arena after a game one night, after the columns were finished, before getting into our cars, Rock talked about the craft of writing, how important it was, beyond the stats and the numbers and the analytics and the results. He was passionate about story-telling, and it showed in his work.
He also numerous times spoke of the hate mail he received, figuring I might be able to relate. I could. Somebody barked at Rock because he was, in the reader’s mind, an idiot, a clown, a moron for coming to whatever conclusion was contrary to the reader’s own, not getting that agreement was never the goal. Stirring the pot was never the goal. Stirring thought was. Expressing that point of view.
Rock understood — and appreciated — that the strong reactions of readers revealed just as much, if not more, about the reader than the writer. And that’s OK, too. Every sports fan can and should have his or her own opinion.
And he never rooted for one team over another. He was not a fan of any team. That’s important to know because so many cannot relate to it — on account of the fact that they themselves are fans and, in this community, it’s inconceivable that there isn’t some existing bias — a rooting interest — for the red or the blue or the whatever.
Rock did not root for any outcome of any game other than the one that matched up with the angle he already had started on during the contest, the one he had to start because a tight deadline demanded it. Nobody can write 800 words inside of a few minutes.
As the first, second, third and fourth downs transpired, the jump shots were made or missed, as the numbers on the scoreboard shined, as one team celebrated and the other dealt with defeat, as the postgame interviews were conducted, as the devil on the one shoulder whispered for him to write this and the angel told him to write that, Rock was always there, considering all of it before hitting the keys on the computer, before settling on his point of view.
And then, he offered it, cleverly, eloquently, earnestly, sarcastically, bitingly, sweetly. He did his job. And thankfully, he lived to do it.
GORDON MONSON hosts “The Big Show” with Jake Scott weekdays from 3-7 p.m. on 97.5 FM and 1280 AM The Zone.
Follow @GordonMonson