Column: Jerry Magee may have missed true calling

As a writer, Jerry Magee seldom took a break.

He went from major event to major event, eloquently writing whatever he was asked to cover.

Most of his summers through Januarys were dominated with pro football, particularly the Chargers. He’d write from the first day of camp through the 42 Super Bowls he covered. Then he’d move onto golf and tennis in the spring, along with the NFL Draft. And come fall, he’d find time to cover the U.S. Open in tennis and major boxing matches.

“I love the action of major events,” Jerry once told me. “Just not the competition but all the people around the competition.”

But I’ve always thought The San Diego Union missed the mark on Jerry Magee.

He should have been one of the newspaper’s featured columnists. For some bad reasons he was not.

Not only was he a great writer — as many have mentioned since his passing Wednesday — but Magee was a great observer. Plus, he was versatile and witty. Magee could be funny. And he could criticize with the best of them. He possessed all the strengths of a great columnist.

But the leaders of the newspaper rarely allowed Magee to use his voice in columns. He covered the greatest of events for The Union, but not as a columnist.

However, Pro Football Weekly did see Jerry Magee as a columnist. He wrote weekly columns for the national magazine — leading to a weekly ritual for myself and another colleague, Wayne Lockwood.

We’d rush to the mailbox each Thursday (or Friday) when PFW arrived and turn immediately to Magee’s column. They were sensational — a real chance for Magee to strut his stuff. Some of those columns won awards.

The point here is Magee didn’t complain about not being a columnist. He responded by writing the maximum out of any event he covered — including once an eating contest that featured Chargers defensive lineman Ernie Ladd.

It was my honor early in my career to have Jerry Magee as my mentor ... although he probably didn’t know it.

After three summers of being a vacation replacement, I was hired full time by The San Diego Union in 1967 with little background in journalism other than covering high school and junior college games as a stringer.

My champion was Union sports editor Bob Williams, who immediately gave me an empty desk facing the desk shared by two future Hall of Fame writers — Phil Collier (baseball) and Magee (football).

“Read Magee,” said Williams. “Watch Magee. Listen to how he conducts interviews. If any of it rubs off, you will be fine.”

Of course, I already knew Magee. He was writing for The San Diego Union in 1956 when I was an 11-year-old delivering the paper. I read him every morning. And I first met him in 1962 when I was doing game stats during Chargers games for Lyle Bond and KFMB Radio.

Hours into my first day, Jerry appeared downtown after a Chargers practice and sat down at his typewriter. There were no computers or email in those days. Writers came into the office after covering many events to type on deadline.

And as they say, Magee could type. I learned much from Magee over the years, but I never became the writer he was ... a fact that groups me with 99.5 percent of the other sportswriters in the land. As well as being an exceptional writer, Magee saw things most of us didn’t. That and the combination of his writing skills made Magee special. Very special. The kind of special that makes for a great columnist.

Ten minutes after Magee sat down on my first day, he looked across the desk and said: “Forgive me, I had an idea and I had to get it on paper ... you’re the new guy, but I know we’ve met.”

After we introduced ourselves to one another, Magee said: “Bob Williams says you work hard ... that’s good ... you’ll be OK ... Center, let’s get back to work.”

Magee seldom called me by my first name. And I loved it. I learned much about being a newspaperman from Jerry Magee, who’d answer his office phone by saying “Sporting, Magee.”

Several days into my career, Magee said: “Center, I have to go down the hall. If my phone rings, can you answer it?”

Minutes later, it rang. “Jerry Magee’s desk,” I said. “Is Jerry around, tell him Pete is calling,” said the voice on the other side of the line. I said Magee was steps away and I could take a message or go get him. “I’ll hold,” responded the voice. I tracked Jerry down. He walked back to his desk, picked up the phone and said, “Commissioner.”

The caller holding for Magee was Pete Rozelle.

Center is a freelance writer. He worked with Jerry Magee for four decades at The San Diego Union and Union-Tribune and was a friend for even longer.