Buona Notte, Marino Parascenzo, Great Friend of Golf
I shed more than one tear as I wrote this story. My best friend died yesterday.
It might seem odd for a man in his mid-50s to call a 95 year-old who was not his father his best friend, but God sends people to each other. That’s best how to describe my friendship with Marino. We were meant to be friends; it was natural. Our rapport became a daily ritual for many years. I’d check in on the old salty dog, and he’d call to tell me it was my fan club on the line.
The second-best way to describe Marino was written by Marino’s good friend Gerry Dulac who noted that Marino’s greatest gifts were always to encourage young aspiring writers. ***Raises hand!***
It was 2005, the Pinehurst U.S. Open. I was green as peas, attending my first professional golf event since I was either four or five years old. (I was too young to recall at the time. And that was a ladies’ event in Rochester, not a U.S. Open.) It was also my first time in the media center with a cred. The USGA had allowed internet writers with recognized outlets to apply, and I was selected.
It seems a custom in the golf media center – the new guy sits in the back row, between GWAA folks, in my case Melanie Hauser, Secretary-Treasurer on my left and Marino, former president on my right. It changed my life forever to the better that they did.
The three of us made the most of the week, clucking away like broody old hens about golf history, golf design, and Pittsburgh. My eyes must have been the size of pie plates when I learned he covered he covered the same Steelers I revered since I was a five year-old kid, including the glory years of Bradshaw and Chuck Noll. Of Franco Harris and Frenchie Fuqua. Of Stallworth and Swann and the Steel Curtain. I was ni my glory, and Marino had a willing, eager audience.
When the conversation turned to Pittsburgh’s venerable U.S. Open venue Oakmont, that’s when a penny dropped, and it was my turn to make Marino’s jaw hit the table. Golf writers covering majors know that to locate my desk in the media center, look for the books. I’m one of only two writers to bring in “accessories” to the media center. In my case, it’s books – a rack of reading and research material for the week stacked neatly at my desk. “Look for the books” is the mantra for anyone wondering which desk is mine.
Some of the books I tend to bring with me are past programs of the tournament. As I sat there that Tuesday afternoon in the media center, occurred to me that the Marino Parascenzo I was talking to was bloody damn likely to be the same Marino Parascenzo who wrote the quintessential golf story “The Tricked Up Open,” published in the 1983 U.S. Open program to commemorate the 1983 playing at Oqkmont. So I pulled out his article in that old program and showed it to him.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he chuckled with his typical middle-America earnestness. But as they say in the infomercials, “But wait, there’s more!” As it happened, that story helped my “Loveable Screwball” college roommate graduate at the last minute. Back in 1989, I was the only kid at Trinity College who had a computer in his room to write papers. Meanwhile, Loveable Screwball was failing everything because his only ambition was to get laid with girls, play songs on his guitar, and inherit his father’s mega-multi-million dollar toothpaste and shampoo empire. With weeks to go before graduation he was flunking everything, even golf! He didn’t tell anyone he was taking it, and kept sleeping through the Tuesday-Thursday 3pm hitting of balls for that crucial, final one-quarter credit to graduate.
But with a mild intervention from his friends and many nights under my cruel tutelage (Horror! He had to study!) and passing golf by “Writing a paper on the history of the game” he graduated on time. It was Marino’s article that saved Loveable Screwball. I helped him wrote a paper on how hard the U.S. Open had become over time, and the “professor” – some administrator in the athletic department whose swing looked like a man fighting a cloud of bees in phone booth – let him pass.
Marino howled about that story and even went so far as to buy some of the shampoo and toothpaste my roommate is now worth $50 million dollars of. He said, “Tastes like there’s a hippie in my mouth, and he’s no longer invited…”
Our twin love of Pittsburgh – his home grown, mine a childhood sports loyalty – became a solid pillar of our friendship. We celebrated Steeler victories, no matter how often he claimed they were a “Horse@#$% Team!” even when they won the Super Bowl. (“The bums were lucky!”)
Rooting for the Penguins with him was even more fun. On the night they won the Stanley Cup in 2009, I accidentally stumbled into the only Pittsburgh Penguins bar in Manhattan (above a Five Guys, of course). I called him from the mayhem as the clock counted down the final seconds, and we celebrated together on speaker with everyone in the bar.
The other indelible memory so many golf writers have is Marino’s tradition of Saturday Night Writers’ Dinner at the majors. No matter what deadlines, a small but stalwart groups of old school newsies would go out for Italian Saturday night.
“I need my Spaghetti Bolognese,” he’d intone with the grave, critiquing tones of Gordon Ramsay, and he’d always ask for a taste of the house sauce before he’d order his dinner.
Ordinarily his taste in cuisine was a fistful of white bread and a hunk of Velveeta but when it came to Bolognese sauce, he was a cordon bleu.
On the night Marino invited me to be a part of that dinner custom, I knew I’d arrived. To sit and listen to the stories – decades of major championship interviews and chance meetings with players and historical moments – those nights were worth diamonds, a sports fan’s dream come true and catnip to a journalist.
I learned to listen. And was rewarded.
But far more than the humor, the camaraderie, the memories, and endless wise and poignant words, Marino was a Journalist’s Journalist, right down to the newsprint and ink stains. He honored both the craft of journalism and responsibility it requires to do the job the right way -the old school way.
I want nothing more than to do this job right and well, and Marino’s example was always the gold standard. Word after word – every letter, comma, and paragraph – article after article, decade after decade, Marino was a rock. Steadfast, reliable, unflinching, dedicated: Marino made me proud to be a journalist, and he brought pride upon not only the craft but upon everyone around him that he worked with. He always, unfailingly chose the right, noble, and honorable path.
Better still, Marino’s was an egalitarian soul. Marino was President of the GWAA when he ushered a young Melanie Hauser – the first female journalist credentialed by the Tour – into her first locker room. From that august moment on, golf has always been at the forefront of welcoming young journalists with inclusion. And Marino took similar pride in glad-handling around the first blogger to ever get into a major sports event media center. He was a champion of the underdog, of the little guy of the workaday Joe and Jane Lunchpail and of every metaphoric Little Engine that Could.
It was because of that that devastating combination of longevity, reliability, and earnestness that Marino was honored in 2008 with the PGA of America Lifetime Achievement Award.
As golf writers, that’s the highest honor we’ve got.
I applauded loudly and proudly that night, and all of us do again, now at this bittersweet moment. A Literary Lion of Sports Writing has passed. He’s now shaking the hands of Dan Jenkins, Herbert Warren Wind, and Grantland Rice. Well-deserved glory.
I loved Marino. And I love his beautiful, charming family.
My Dad used to say, “Son, if you have one friend in your life who would do anything for you no matter what – anything for you, no matter what – cherish and keep them and consider yourself lucky.” Not only all golf writers, but all golf can consider themselves lucky to have called Marino a friend. His gifts to both the game and to sports writing as a craft and egalitarian occupation both monumental and indelible.
When I am at the majors now, I carry on the tradition of the Writers’ Dinner on Saturday night at major tournaments. At next year’s U.S. Open, my desk will have a tribute to Marino, complete with Terrible Towel. And I’m paying Marino’s devotion to my career forward. Soon you’ll read even more about a young English student/caddie looking to study in the States that I’ve befriended. I pray that someday I’ll make as much a difference in his life as Marino made in mine.
I’ve got a hell of a long way to go. But I have a hell of a heart to try anyway.
A piece of my heart died yesterday, and I sorrow for that. But more importantly, a piece of sports writing history died, and I sorrow for that as well. If there is any wisdom to find at a moment like this, it’s a simple one, but vitally important. Cherish your friends, everyone. Call them up and tease them. Tell them you’re their fan club. Love each other with reckless abandon and live life with la dolce vita.
And at the end of the day, that’s why we loved Marino so much. He loved us and golf back with everything he had, which was considerable.
Buona notte, my friend. Eri incomparabile.
