An ode to my friend and ultimate sports fan Ernie Accorsi

This one hurts.This one stings.

Ernie Accorsi was a great many things in a full, vibrant life that spanned 84 years before that enormous heart of his was stilled at last Saturday night. He was a sports fan.He was a sports writer.

He was a sports executive.He provided the questions for the “Colts Quiz” that Eddie gave his fiancés on the eve of their wedding in “Diner.” He was first an acolyte, then a co-worker and later a close friend of the great John Unitas, of whom Ernie once said: “God had a good day the day He came up with Johnny U.”He was also a gentleman, and exceedingly good company, and it was my privilege to call him a friend for the last 30 years. The stories are what come flowing back in these sad hours, so many stories, all of them told in a way only Ernie could tell them, or involving Ernie in a way that only he could have made them turn out the way they did. Here’s one:This was 20 or so years ago, because Ernie was still the GM of the Giants then.

I received a call from my friend John Feinstein. “Do you have Ernie Accorsi’s number?” he asked.It’s a long-held protocol that a reporter will only ask another reporter if they will share a number if the subject in question would be a willing recipient of a call or a text.A lot of today’s sports figures ask one question before any other when receiving such a call — “Where’d you get this number?!?!” — and then it’s 50-50 whether the next sound you hear is dial tone. I told John that not only would Ernie be delighted to talk to someone vouched for by me, but he might keep him on the phone an extra hour or two.

Ernie read every sports book published in the last 75 years or so; I told John he probably would be able to recite “Season on the Brink” and “A Good Walk Spoiled” back to him from memory. So imagine my surprise when about an hour later I received a call from something I’d never seen before: an irate Ernie Accorsi, who was yelling at me by the time ...