Jack Scheuer spoke his own language, had his own shorthand.
Amid a well-played college basketball game — whether in his beloved Palestra or elsewhere in Philadelphia — the long-time Associated Press correspondent might scribble “GH” on the notepad of a friend seated next to him on press row (and indeed everyone seemed to be his friend). “Good hoops,” that meant. Sometimes it was “VGH” — i.e., “Very Good Hoops” Or, conversely, “BH” (“Bad Hoops,” natch) when play lagged.
Other times, he would seek out someone who had written something he enjoyed.
“You’re starting to get the hang of this,” he would say.
And on nights when the Palestra was really hopping, he would survey that venerable arena and proclaim it a “corners game,” since spectators had filled in every corner of the place.
Now Jack is gone, having succumbed to cancer and kidney disease at age 88 last Friday, and I wonder what the Philly sportswriting tribe is supposed to do. I mean, who asks the trivia questions in the media room before games? Who cheerfully helps out the newbies and needles the veterans? Who runs the media pickup game every Wednesday at noon in the Palestra?
Put simply, who fills in all those corners that Jack filled for so many people, over so many years?
Mike Jensen, 32 years into his sportswriting career at the Inquirer and a friend of Jack’s (again, a redundancy), said retired colleague Bob Ford put it perfectly the other day: It’s a hole that can’t be filled. And that is damn right. In Philly, as in a great many other places, there are almost as many egos in the pressbox as on the playing surface. But Jack moved easily and cheerfully in his little corner of the world, happy to greet one and all, happy to help somebody else out, happy to poke fun at those who took themselves a tad too seriously.
“Jack,” Jensen said, “was part of the landscape, as much as the pizza at Temple and the hoagie you got at the Palestra. But much more nourishing.”
In all Jack (a.k.a. “Jackie” or “Coach”) spent over a half-century covering sports in Philadelphia — mostly college hoops, but also the Phillies and the Sixers. He was so revered that he was named to the Big Five Hall of Fame in 2002, so beloved that acclaimed author John Feinstein dedicated his most recent book to him (as well as Dick “Hoops” Weiss), so trusted that the folks at Penn gave him a key to the Palestra. (Funny aside about that, courtesy of Jensen, who has written lovingly and well about Jack over the years: When Fran Dunphy, yet another friend of Jack’s, was coaching at Penn, he wanted to hold a mid-day practice over Christmas break. One problem: Scheuer was presiding over the regular Wednesday run. Dunphy moved practice elsewhere.)
Small wonder that his loss is so deeply felt.
“I thought I was prepared for this,” Jensen said, “and I just wasn’t.”
And really, who could be? You just always thought Jack would be there — that you would walk into the press room, now and forever, and he would approach with his trivia question. (I learned that a common answer to one of his baseball-related queries was often Adrian Beltre, the retired third baseman, as Jack — who as a teenager had had a short-lived tryout with the Phillies and was later a star shortstop on the softball team at the old Bulletin — considered Beltre vastly underrated.) You figured he’d be able to provide a stray fact or two as you waited in the gloomy hallway outside the visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park, or that he could help you out with a quote if deadline loomed.
“Jack was such a fixture in the fabric of Philadelphia sports and Philadelphia sports journalism,” said Aaron Bracy, who for the last 23 years has worked alongside him for the AP. “He was always there.”
Bracy, who on Saturday shared a moving tribute to Jack, remembers first crossing paths with him when he was still a student at St. Joe’s. As for me, I became aware of Jack several years earlier — Jan. 6, 1990, to be exact, at halftime of a Loyola Marymount-LaSalle game in the old Civic Center. Marymount, which played at a blistering pace and was keyed by two Philly kids, Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers, outlasted the Lionel Simmons-led Explorers, 121-116. Definitely VGH, though in retrospect it was a game with tragic overtones; Gathers died of a heart ailment two months later, during a West Coast Conference Tournament game.
Anyway, they called Jack onto the court to shoot a free throw at halftime for some reason, and I remember him heading out there, quickly and purposefully, grabbing the ball, pausing only momentarily to shoot (and make) his attempt and then returning to press row. He employed the same two-hand set shot he had used at Frankford High School 40 years earlier, and would use for nearly 30 years beyond that night, in those Palestra pickup games. (Yes, he played well into his 80s. And yes, he always jokingly claimed to be the leading scorer in arena history.) But it was his let’s-get-this-over-with bearing that struck me: No, this is not a problem. Nor is it a big deal. I mean, the guy barely broke stride. It was kind of like a walking set shot.
So that was my entree into his world. I got to know him over the years, because everybody did. We became friendly, because he invited that, indeed cultivated that.
It was much the same for Bracy, who continues to cherish those days and nights in the Palestra alongside a guy he so respected. It reached the point, Aaron said, where he talked on the phone with Scheuer “more than anyone else, outside of my family.”
But in the last six months Bracy could hear the strain in Jack’s voice when they spoke, could feel him slipping away. They last spoke no more than two weeks before his death.
“I knew he wasn’t doing great,” Aaron said, “but I still didn’t expect the suddenness of this.”
One of Jack’s daughters emailed last Monday to let Bracy know that her dad was going into hospice care. And by Friday he was gone.
His obituary noted that he and his wife of 64 years, Jean, had four children in all, as well as eight grandchildren. That he had served in the U.S. Army in Korea. That he had done some coaching, worked in sales, even served as the marketing director for the old Philadelphia Bell of the World Football League back in the day.
But eventually he gravitated to the sportswriting corner of the world. Cleaned it up. Made it a happier place, just by being himself. And those he leaves behind wonder about filling an unfillable hole, about whether things can ever truly be the same again.