He was always Noble. I don’t know why. His wife always called him Marty; my wife called him Marty. But I don’t believe I ever called him Marty. I don’t know why. Even when mentioning him to another reporter, he was Noble. Moss Klein was Moss. Dan Castellano was Dan or Danny. But Noble was Noble.
The name didn’t matter. What was important was the respect I had for the man and his work. I respected no writer more than I respected Noble, and there are few I respected as much.
Noble died March 24 at the age of 70. That’s not old these days, but heart attacks don’t ask one’s age. He was in Florida when he died, not for work – he was retired – but for the pleasure of seeing some members of the Mets’ organization he had covered and seeing our friend, Danny, who moved to Florida a few years ago.
We were competitors, but more importantly we were friends. Our work never intruded on our friendship, even though it easily could have. We were close enough and I had enough respect for Noble that a few weeks ago I invited him to write a column for this web site. It turned out to be one of the best ideas I have ever had and one of which I am proudest.
Noble had covered the Mets for decades – for the Record in New Jersey, for Newsday on Long Island and for MLB.com. He didn’t just cover the team. He smothered it, getting to know the players, the managers, the coaches and the front-office executives as well as anyone, better than most.
In his fashion Noble got to know the people he covered intimately. He knew Tom Seaver intimately, and when Seaver’s family recently announced that the Hall of Fame pitcher was suffering from dementia and would withdraw from public view, I thought of Noble. That, I guess, was the editor in me.
Who but Noble was in position to write about Seaver? He was no longer writing for MLB.com, his last employer, and was free to write anything he wanted for anyone who asked. I asked, and a couple of days later Noble responded with 2,800 words of intimate thoughts, impressions and stories of Seaver.
No one else could have produced the piece Noble provided for our readers. If you haven’t read it, you should. It is still available and can be found here (http://www.murraychass.com/?p=11928). That piece was the last one Noble ever wrote.
Sadly, Noble is no longer available. Heart attacks have a way of doing that. Eerily, what Noble wrote about Seaver could have applied to him as well.
“Dementia. Damn it! Sad to say I saw it coming,” Noble wrote of Seaver’s dementia. “And I hardly was the only one. At the very least, I had disturbing suspicions, some from four and five years ago.”
Sad to say, I saw Noble’s heart attack coming and I was hardly the only one. Noble was huge, size quadruple X huge. He had a stomach far too big for his body, certainly too big for his heart, but he always denied he had a problem in waiting. “My doctor says I’m ok,” he would say any time I brought up his weight.
Noble loved to eat, and he loved to drink. He could have been a walking commercial for Mountain Dew and not even diet Mountain Dew. Even with his girth, or maybe because of it, he enjoyed playing basketball and during one spring training when he was covering the Yankees he got George Steinbrenner to join the game the writers had going.
He had a fascination for numbers and always found ways of expressing that fascination, especially in “Scorebook,” the journal of the annual dinner of the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
In recent years, “Scorebook” was Noble’s passion. Writing, editing and producing, he worked on it year round and produced a handsome book of which any editor would be proud.
Did I mention ads? Yes, he solicited ads, too, finding reasons why baseball people and others should buy ads. He got $20 from me more than once to be part of a full-page ad that celebrated the winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink award for contributions to baseball writing.
Jacob deGrom wins the National League Cy Young award? Solicit ad contributions from his team, the Mets, and his agent, Creative Artists Agency.
Noble’s efforts brought in thousands of dollars to help pay for the dinner, but some ignorant members of the chapter weren’t satisfied and were critical of Noble, acting at times without his knowledge to take steps that would undermine or complicate his work when they really didn’t know what they were doing.
I would say to those misguided members now they can have the job and the opportunity to show they can do the job better than Noble did it. They have about nine months to demonstrate their Scorebook ability. Long before they reach nine months they’ll be wishing Noble was still here.
Bobby Valentine, the former manager, who has disappeared from the baseball world, did not like Noble, with whom he long feuded, but he didn’t like me either. He once met my nephew and told him I was “a despicable human being.” Valentine linked me to Noble by saying I was doing Noble’s dirty work.
On the other hand, Fay Vincent liked Noble. The former baseball commissioner recalled meeting Noble when the reporter came to interview him as deputy commissioner under Bart Giamatti. Vincent had come to baseball after running Columbia Pictures.
“How do we know you know anything about baseball?” Vincent recalled Noble asking. Vincent said he rattled off the starting lineup of the 1952 Philadelphia Athletics, and that satisfied Noble.
One of my favorite Noble stories goes all the way back to the mid-1970s. He was working for the Record in Bergen County, N.J., and he wrote an article about Thurman Munson, the Yankees’ star catcher, who at times could be a grump. I decided to play a prank on Noble.
I called him, said I was Munson and chewed him out for what he had written. I hadn’t thought about that incident until now, but I wish I could have asked Noble if he remembered it. I’m sure he would have. The prank worked well. I had him practically stuttering and stammering until I revealed myself.
On a more personal basis, there was the assignment Noble gave me when his daughters, Carolyn and Lindsay (who was born on the day of Game 7 of the 1986 World Series), were young. I was to play “Ho Ho,” a.k.a. Santa Claus, call the girls and ask what they wanted for Christmas.
I don’t remember how many years my role lasted, but I was pretty good in it. I just wish Noble were around to give me another assignment.
Heart attack. Damn it!