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Gordon Monson: Sen. Orrin Hatch cheered hard for his teams, just like you. Unlike you, he once almost killed a BYU football player

The seven-term senator was a controversial Republican force. Tribune columnist Gordon Monson will also remember him as a diehard sports fan.

(Douglas C. Pizac | AP) Utah Jazz forward Karl Malone, right, has fun with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, second from left, during a fund-raising event at a bed and breakfast inn owned by Malone's wife Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999, in Salt Lake City. Hatch, accompanied by his wife Elaine, left, was making a bid for president under the GOP ticket.

Orrin Hatch died in Salt Lake City on Saturday at 88 years old. About 80 of those years, he spent as a sports fan, and for a good measure of that time, he was one of the most powerful sports fans in America.

He played all the major sports as a kid, and was especially fond of basketball and boxing. He was a trained fighter and almost killed a football player at BYU when he, as a freshman student there, and the player got tangled up in a brawl near the school’s football stadium. “I lit into him,” Hatch once told me. “I beat him to a pulp. I hit him harder than I ever hit anyone, probably 15 straight times. When I left, he was lying face down. I was bleeding. I had to get my eye stitched up, so I left, but I started worrying that maybe I had killed him. I made up my mind then that I would never fight again, except in the ring.”

And on the U.S. Senate floor.

Still, Hatch, who did not kill the Cougar, found enough space in his jammed, longtime schedule as a high-ranking senator — he served seven terms — from the state of Utah to follow whatever sports were in season.

(Ira Schwarz | AP) President Ronald Reagan is presented a jacket and autographed football from the coach of the National Champion college football team in the nation, LaVell Edwards, head coach of the Brigham Young University ?Cougars?. With them is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, center on Jan. 14, 1985 in Washington.

Years ago, Hatch took two hours out of a day — and blew off for 45 minutes a speaking engagement at a national lieutenant governors conference he was scheduled to address — packed with meetings about tobacco settlements and judicial issues and matters of ways-and-means in Washington to talk about the Utah Jazz, about the San Francisco 49ers (he was a big fan of Steve Young), about Major League Baseball, about golf, about the Cougars and Utes, about his favorite sports-viewing memories, about every sports subject he could think of, and about a special guest who walked into his office, and when he did, the powerful senator thought, “how lucky I was to have the greatest, most well-known fighter ever right there in my office.”

His name? Muhammad Ali.

Hatch said Ali, on one occasion, came to his golf tournament in Utah and met up with legendary Utah fighter Gene Fullmer, and as Hatch watched the two greats visit with such enormous respect for each other, his only swing thought was, “You know, I’m nothing compared to these guys.”

Others can talk and write about Hatch’s politics, but I mostly knew of his over-the-top fandom. He struck up friendships with LaVell Edwards and Rick Majerus and Jerry Sloan and Johnny Miller, among many others. He went out of his way to travel to road and home games in which the Jazz played. He bragged that when he showed up in Houston for a Jazz-Rockets playoff game, Clyde Drexler and Charles Barkley came over to greet him, Barkley telling him, “I like what you do.” Said Hatch: “It was quite thrilling.”

(Rick Bowmer | AP) Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, poses with the Utah Jazz Bear before an NBA basketball game between the Jazz an the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, in Salt Lake City.

After Jazz games, he invariably invited himself into the locker room to speak with the players. Antoine Carr once said he and others enjoyed the visits.

“Mostly he comes in to tell us how proud he is of us, on the court and for the stuff we do in the community,” said Carr. “It means something to us, having someone of that clout come in and say something like that. It’s cool.”

Longtime Jazz owner Larry Miller once said this of Hatch’s visits: “He enjoys the camaraderie of and access to the team. Sometimes, when you get in the public eye, it gets cumbersome. Coming in here with the players is an escape that takes you back to your youth. It’s only momentary, but the feelings are there, your childhood dreams come back with it.”

Hatch grew up in Pittsburgh, Steel Town, where his family moved from Utah when his father sought work during the Great Depression. It was there that his love of sports edged from passionate to fanatical.

He could shoot a basketball, throw and catch a football, and jab, bob and weave.

“I could really sting it,” the former welterweight said. “I knocked a bunch of people out.”

(Charles Tasnadi | AP) Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), leaves a Senate and House Leadership Conference on crutches, Jan. 25, 1983 in Washington. Hatch injured his foot playing basketball with his son.

What he enjoyed most was the competition, the games, the spectating, the same way all sports fans do. That’s his commonality.

It was somehow comforting — and maybe a bit alarming, too — to know that someone at the upper reaches of government felt the same way about sports as every other Joe and Jill Sixpack, sitting in the stands, screaming, swigging cold beverages and scarfing hot dogs.

Sports, he said, “and athletes have a special place in my heart.”

More so than politicians, likely.

Not surprisingly, Hatch, like Joe and Jill, also had strong opinions about the teams he watched and cared about. He was a savvy enough politico to know the benefits of stating publicly his love for local teams and to cheer for them. But this was more than just that.

Once during a live, in-studio interview on my radio show, Hatch lectured then Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey, who was also in the studio, about players he should have kept and players he should have obtained.

It was slightly uncomfortable but fascinating to see one powerful man, a powerful fan, hand it to another powerful individual, a team executive, in such a rawboned fashion.

I came thiiiiiiiis close to busting up in laughter.

Hatch also had and freely shared thoughts about the inner workings of college football, college basketball, the NFL, MLB, the PGA Tour, tennis, all of it, any of it.

In that way, whether you agreed with his political stances or not, the senator from Utah was just like you, a sports maniac, only one with an office in the U.S. Capitol Building and maybe a security detail in tow.

May he rest in peace.